"vanitatum" poems
All the flowers of the spring
Meet to perfume our burying;
These have but their growing prime,
And man does flourish but his time:
Survey our progress from our birth—
We are set, we grow, we turn to earth.
Courts adieu, and all delights,
All bewitching appetites!
Sweetest breath and clearest eye
Like perfumes go out and die;
And consequently this is done
As shadows wait upon the sun.
Vain the ambition of kings
Who seek by trophies and dead things
To leave a living name behind,
And weave but nets to catch the wind.
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What is so powerful
As to chain man’s heart to earth
Chasing after fleeting things
Yet as man chases
His hearts desires
Trying
To break the mesh
Stubbornly holding on
To that which forms his life
All he suceeds in doing
Is destroying his flesh
‘Vanitus vanitatum et omnia vanitas’
Jan 13, 2014
Jan 13, 2014 at 11:41 PM UTC
it is so easy to **** me unknown brother
carved Samaritan image
do yourself a favor I’m an undecided blotch of color
indigo reaching for purple
shut at once the book you read from
and I’ll become a butterfly with my wings crucified
on two pages
~~~
maybe because of the need to forget
I see death as a hindrance on the wheel of torture
a camphorated ointment for nervous fibers ends
I’m closer today to the tree for hanging the noose
from which God forbid you to taste
look vanitas vanitatum
Yorick’s head lies on your plate when you receive your alms
the candle the baked apple and the wheat porridge helping
~~~
I stand up facing the wall
my voice isn’t yet untied
I wonder what is stronger and if the heart tips the scales
my achy breaky heart
on the balance between life and death
there are a few extra grams of soul
we will need very tiny jewellery weights
psalm 103
Fibonacci’s series the golden ratio
~~~
look my child the soft carpet
my warm body upon which you step this sacred day
my soles are thin they stick to the red clay
I turn upon the potter’s wheel
my everlasting mentioning
like I was that’s how I’ll stay
a crumb of Eucharist bread on the lips
the first and the last
Aug 17, 2014
Aug 17, 2014 at 12:34 PM UTC
"THE BREAKDOWN COMES WHEN YOU STOP CONTROLLING YOURSELF / AND WANT THE RELEASE OF A BLOODBATH" - JENNY HOLZER
I. Vanitas Vanitatum
[The stage is set: a paper moon against a starless, greyscale sky. GINSBERG howls. He's nostalgic for all he'd assumed was forgotten; desperate to never recall it again. His numbered days are manufactured: ELIOT reclines, watching the world end.]
CHORUS OF PROPHETS:
In our own sins we trusted,
both in essence and in nature.
Hell was never an inferno:
it is an echo chamber.
We have nothing (-- we have nothing --)
but maxims and jumbled alphabets
and lightly-sparkling bitterness
when the cork pops feebly from the bottle;
(-- nothing! --) dripping saltine hate.
We've lived large and small, been tiny and tall;
always filling too much space in a too-big room
where our presence is ironically scarce.
There is nothing for you here,
bar vacant lungs and river water --
take a breath and join us
in sinking to
(sinking!) the
(sinking!) bottom
(sinking,) of
(sinking...) the
Styx.
II. Et Omnia Vanitas
[Enter PLATH, SEXTON, WOOLF, BYRON, DICKINSON and VARIOUS PHARMACEUTICAL BRAND REPRESENTATIVES.]
You know not what you could be
but merely what you are
and that alone is traumatic enough.
Taste it, a slice at a time:
the disillusionment from having raised your hopes beyond rotting in the soil,
the anger upon realising this was your own fault and all you want to do is scream,
the bargaining, the denial, the scream (you were not born to live). The gradual processing. The scream!
Scream at the moon and scream at the walls and scream into pillows and howl and wail and hack away at the flesh and screech until plastic surroundings melt and it is only you and the void you willed upon yourself.
III. Epitaph (What Now?)
[A white-fur baby seal is camouflaged upon the ice
and, eyes closed, fools itself into thinking it survived.]
What happens next is no act of evil:
this is survival of the fittest.
We are bottom-rung of the food chain
and starving predators need to eat.
[We lick the ground and taste defeat.]
Ruby poppies reach heavenward --
small birds take their maiden flights.
I shrivel, putrid in the soil,
in the winter of my life.
Aug 29, 2019
Aug 29, 2019 at 7:44 PM UTC
Antonio Machado, Fernando Pessoa, Juan Gelman crearon de un plumazo sus heterónimos, unos señores que tuvieron la virtud de complementarlos, ampliarlos, hacer que de algún modo fueran más ellos mismos. También yo (vanitas vanitatum) quise tener el mío, pero la única vez que lo intenté resultó que mi joven heterónimo empezó a escribir desembozadamente sobre mis cataratas, mis espasmos asmáticos, mi ****** zoster, mi lumbago, mi hernia diafragmática y otras fallas de fábrica. Por si todo eso fuera poco se metía en mis insomnios para mortificar a mi pobre, valetudinaria conciencia. Fue precisamente ésta la que me pidió: por favor, colega, quítame de encima a este estorbo, ya bastante tenemos con la crítica.
Sin embargo, como los trámites para librarse de un heterónimo son más bien engorrosos, opté por una solución intermedia, que fue nombrarlo mi representante plenipotenciario en la isla de Pascua. Por cierto que desde allí acaba de enviarme un largo poema sobre la hipotética vida ****** de los moairs. Reconozco que no está nada mal. Se nota mi influencia.
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Truth told be : Afraid am I
It all a rather bizarre Thing, rather strange
Why worry - Why torture oneself So
So full of worry What is the Mind doing
How has it come to (This) Why has it come to (This)
Why What How The Eternal questions of the Mind
Why this How that From what
..., so useless this enforced Form
Rather empty; attempting to define the Fluid
Give Edges to a Ball Give Edges to the Earth
Idealize the Real Why not Realize the Ideal
I torture turn and churn Squaring and managing
No Soul to be found by that Only Breath
Breath and Hot air
Why so inauthentic Why not be a Poet not a poet
Why quality what quality How quality
Is it Ideal or Real nor any?
Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas
- Thou(gh) Art?
Sep 16, 2024
Sep 16, 2024 at 4:58 PM UTC