https://www.huffingtonpost.com/patricia-lockwood/poetry-future_b_5071308.html
One thought
- Postmodern poetry is succeeded by posthuman poetry.
Category: Thinkings and poems
Poems on hard times
https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2017/04/your-favorite-poems-on-hard-times/523191/
The Laughing Heart by Charles Bukowski
your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
— by Charles Bukowski
Read more about Charles Bukowski here.
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Dreaming
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She’s my niece in flaw
Gather ye coal dust all through May
That’s not a man,it’s my husband.
He’s my brother-in-flaw.
That’s my sin in law.
That’s my cats tale.He only has one but it’s good.
Can I carry my sister?
I do worry my sister
He was my uncle but no newt.
She was my aunt by barrage
He tells lies as if he was born to Trump
If he is a liar, I’ll eat my cat
He’s as honest as the ploy is wrong.
If he wins I’ll boot myself.
I want to see the natives of Britain.But they are all dead.
I can’t stand being a fake anymore.
I want to be good but I need Grace.
I sin every day.But at least I know.
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My husband and twenty other questions
My husband said he was angry because I beat him at Chess.But I’ve never even been to Chess and I never use corporeal punishment anyway.I believe it should be spiritual if it ever is needed.
He said I was too not house proud.Well,I’m just not proud at all.It has nothing to do with the house or the louse.
He said I had a brilliant personality but my body didn’t turn him on.That was lucky as he had severe heart failure.To think, if we had had sex he could have died.But he did die anyway.Is that a conundrum, a paradox or a lie?
He used to go out with no money but hated me to pay for our lunch.It’s a bit like Russell’s paradox only more.You know.
He had a Mobius strip neck warmer which I had knitted.the next thing they are in Marks and Spencers.Shall I sue them>
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The fields of Athenry
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Unfair
She was so beautiful a drake drowned chasing her reflection in the water.
She was so bright, the sun asked for a pay-rise at dawn
She was so kind everyone hated her, but politely and behind her back
She was so curvaceous men fainted as she passed by
Her lips were so red she had to cover them up with makeup normally used for scars or risk causing a traffic jam.
Her voice was so sweet that nobody noticed what she said.
She was so intelligent she didn’t believe in it
She was so creative she hid her talents out of modesty.
She was so poor she lived in her neighbour’s caravan.
She was so sensitive she wore band aid all over and asked if her nerves could be given plastic surgery on the NHS
Her weight was so right it seemed unfair
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The dangers of meditation
https://programminglife.net/danger-meditation/
Over-Meditation: When Meditation is an Addiction
Turns out, though, that meditation harbors the same sort of risk. In The Book of Meditation, author Patricia Carrington writes:
If meditation is prolonged for a matter of hours this process of tension-release can be magnified many times. When a person spends this much time meditating, powerful emotions and ‘primary process’ (bizarre) thoughts may be released too rapidly to assimilate and the meditator may be forced into sudden confrontation with long-buried aspects of himself for which he is not prepared. If he has enough inner strength, or is doing the extra meditation under the supervision of an experienced teacher, he may weather such an upsurge of consciousness and emerge triumphant. If he has fewer inner resources or has a past history of emotional disturbance, he may be overwhelmed by it, fragile defenses may break down, and an episode of mental illness result.
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Raindrops
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Baffle is a strange word
They say the hearing will take place in camera
Inside a camera? What sort?
I have no idea.Ask a barrister
Hi, can you tell me about courts and cameras?
I’m a barista!
Well, no need for that tone.
What tone?
I heard an undertone of menace
Stop hearing between the sounds!
I hear an overtone of malice
It’s all just projection/
Are you Freud?
No,I’m quite cool.
Well, hearing all these extra emotions around voices is a bit uncanny
Well,I know what I am doing
What?
First to get coffee and second to baffle you
Baffle is a strange word
Like muffle or duffel?
Waffle and raffle
Offal and Neville
Neville who?
That psychoanalust
Lust? I thought it was desire
Desire is free.If you can find it.
Lust is free as well.To the young
Do I have to pay to feel?
Pay and Feel, sounds like a way to make money.
Payment is not always in money.
True.But nowadays we don’t care to think of that
Or anything except politics and finance
Artificial intelligence and spying
How about having artificial spies?
Or Dreaming Spies!
It’s all a great big mystery to me
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My view
In my bedroom at the dawn,
I wake up all alone
I no longer know your face,
Nor the places fingers traced
I’m just one lens from blindness,I can see.
The world looks faint and blurred
As if no human cared.
I cannot feel my heart
Except by stinging darts
Just one lens left working out for me.
I made some honey tea
I heard the buzz of bees
Feeling so alone
Are humans made of stone?
A lens is all I have,infinity.
Two little holes so dark
Where the vision starts
The eye singularly blue
Shone for love so true
Let me keep this lens or I’m not me.
The fragility of flesh
The place where we feel best
The eye so wide in gaze
With passion will engage
The lens and nerve and brain will help me through
So God made me from clay
And I shall say a prayer
I don’t want to be blind
To other human minds
The focal length and strength will aid my view
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I carry your heart with me
Hutton Crags path in Cumbria
Virtue and vice
Now virtue's not the providence of kings And vice is chosen by so many men The intimations when the church bell rings Are words that do not end with an Amen. Now sacred acolytes are driven by power not love And children fearful to reveal their plight. How can we trust the smoke and pure white dove? How can we know the darkness from the light? And yet there is a store of store of sacred signs And rituals that may give a person grace. Symbols are expressions thought divine. And allocate each person a pure space. Though we destroy in envy and in hate Evil's not our necessary fate.
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Love
When first I saw your soulful face,
Then wished I most to you embrace.
I wished as well to clothe you in
The sacred images within.
To find a home for love without;
To fold my dreams all round about
Your loving body and your face
Were covered in such joy and grace.
But now my dreams are cast aside
The world of meaning denied life.
What seemed most precious now is fled…
And I lie sleepless in my bed.
What is the world when unadorned
With all that in my heart I’ve formed?
There is no meaning I can trace.
As in a mother’s empty face.
On these grey rocks my path is hard.
From paradise, my self is barred.
To struggle or to grief succumb
When this dark day of mourning’s done?
Into His dazzling darkness dart
My dreams and love like dying sparks.
Into His Mystery so fair
I’ll cast both hope and my despair.
Thus my dreams will be transformed
To show themselves in other forms.
What feels a loss may foretell growth.
On my hope,I’ll take an oath
That nothing in my life is waste,
That I have not for phantasms chased.
And you are human,as am I.
Let’s live again until we die.
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See the light
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A long and beautiful post about the history and use of metre in poetry
via Why do Poets write Iambic Pentameter?
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Ironically, the mourner must console
Ironically, the mourner must console
Must lend an ear , must seem,must exhale calm
To visitors and friends who make their calls
We are not permitted rightful roles
Of grieving widow,mother, woman harmed
Ironically, the mourner must console
The cancer patient’s told to be more whole
The illness, like a poison snake, to charm
Say visitors and friends who make their calls
How much of our self can be controlled
By power of will or meditation’s balm?
Ironically, the sufferer must console
Was there Eden, was there a great Fall?
Is there a God or has he been embalmed?
Oh visitors and friends go make your calls
Like the Mariner I am becalmed
For I did not gather death into my arms
Ironically, the mourner must console
The visitors and friends who feel the call
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How much feeling can we bear to feel?
How much feeling can we bear to feel
The joys of love ,the total loss in death
Indifference makes our losses seem less real
Emotions pressed down yearn with great appeal
To rise like lava and release our wrath
How much feeling do we dare to feel?
Numbness makes our loss and grief congeal
We know but do not take the heartfelt path
Indifference makes our losses feel less real
Do we trust a friend, can we reveal
The sorrow and the anger that engross?
How much feeling do we dare to feel?
I mostly keep my true feelings concealed
For bullies take advantage of the past
Indifference makes our losses seem less real
Yet feelings hidden make nobody laugh
When demonstrated,onward they will pass
How much feeling can we bear to feel?
Without affect, our presence is less real
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Five best political novels
Photo copyright
Let’s talk about your first choice: Nostromo (1904). I like how Conrad seems to have this above-it-all gaze, taking in the workings of everything on the fictional island of Costaguana. Neither side offers fix-it-all solutions; badness exists, to a degree, on both, or all, sides, so there’s no absolute opposition between good and bad and no revolution leads to a bettering of circumstances on the island. Is it consciousness of that that constitutes awakening here?
I don’t think Conrad is interested in asserting any type of moral equivalency—I don’t think he believes the exploited and the exploiters have equal moral claims. Instead, what Conrad cares about is individuality—the possibility or impossibility of a world of individuals—and how each of them, each of us, might be trapped, or might resist being trapped, in the positions and circumstances into which we were born. This, in Nostromo, is best dramatized in the person of Charles Gould: is the mine his birthright? From there, it’s a very direct line to asking the question: To what degree are birthrights delusions, or self-invented?
Again, an awakening as stepping up or away from the unit you were born into–but obviously, as with Yoav and Uri, it’s not enough to leave your motherland. So what does that stepping up entail for Conrad?
For Conrad, especially in Nostromo, it’s a question of personal ennoblement, of honour. So many of his characters have conflicting loyalties and are always trying to negotiate between them. Conrad is especially engaged with the ways in which people fail, or feel as if they have failed, the standards that were set for them. So, for him, “stepping up” as you put it, usually takes the form of a “stepping down,” a betrayal—not least of notions of Empire, or of duty.
Do you think his focus on the individual defining himself, making himself the best he can be, as opposed to his birth–and nationality, and class, and so on–defining him, derives from Conrad’s own status as a kind of transnational drifter?
Sure. He was the displaced son of a Polish patriot who hated the Russians and spoke French and wrote in English. This, for him, is what the sea did. His style is ship style: when you work and live on a ship, it doesn’t matter where you’re from, or where your shipmates are from. The only thing that matters is that they can do their jobs, and that you can do your job. You’re forced to become mutually reliant, for survival. At sea, or on Conrad’s sea, problems of origin fall away or become translated into problems of individual talent and character. The sea, in Conrad’s imaginary, becomes a democracy, a meritocracy, of survival. This, at least, is the “governance” that his Europeans aspire to and are tried by. This is Conrad’s European way of understanding the “natives,” not by appropriating them culturally, but by enlisting and rallying them in a campaign against the elements, a campaign against the pitilessness of
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Like a refugee
Every heart to love will come
Where next for the people of Gaza?
From the BBC page IDF watch fires at the edge of Gaza
War seems eternal in our human world
Killing me will not change anything. They need to kill every last one of us to change the facts.
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The artist Jean Cooke
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Kyrie Eleison
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Dirac sea
I dreamed I rowed in a large pea green boat
Accompanied by seventeen cats.
And across the Great Lake,without a mistake
I saw mountains of gentleman’s hats.
I was making no waves in my effort to move,
The cats were discoursing on geometry.
I looked in the mirror fixed onto my boat,
The moon spoke entrancing Theology.
“I wonder who’ll help me”I thought to myself,
When I saw an entire spectrum of men–
Dirac, Archimedes,Niels Bohr, with their theories.
I got my great inspiration just then.
I need seventeen physicists,that’s one for each cat,
All tied to my boat with a chain.
The force they exert will just compensate
For the magnetic attraction of rain.
Paul Dirac came up, and I looked into his eyes,
They were full of anxiety and pain.
“I am sorry I am unable do what you wish,
But my father never taught me to swim.”
“That is perfectly alright”,I politely replied,
“You can walk on the water instead”
So that’s how my boat and its cargo of cats
Were accompanied back to my bed.
When I awoke the next day,I was filled with dismay.
I saw that Paul Dirac was gone,
With the cats and the boat,of which I just wrote
And I was now completely alone.
I took a quick look,in my old physics book
And there was a photo of Dirac
I stared at his eyes,and I am not telling lies,
He threw me a very strange look.
I caught this strange look,it’s here in my book.
I am saving it for a special event.
When I gather more Data on Relative Quanta,
I’ll understand just what Paul Dirac meant.
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Cheerio
Why is writing an email more difficult in its etiquette than writing a letter?
For a letter it was always
Dear Mr Digge
Or Dearest Rose.
only varying this with the person and their position in your life.~
As I wrote recently,it appears beginning an email with “Dear John” is considered wrong.Too formal.Dear no longer means anything much.
As in
Dear Mr X
Your execution has been rescheduled and will now be at 3 p,m Friday
Sorry for any inconvenience.
Yours truly
P.Pilate
Also having a greeting at odds with the ending is always a problem
My own dearest John
I hate you
Worst wishes ever
Anne
When you meet someone in the street it can be the same.
How are you?
I have got brain cancer
You’re meant to say, I’m fine
I’m terribly sorry.The chemotherapy has affected my mind
Your hair looks odd.
You’re not meant to say that
I’m so sorry.You look great.
Excuse me , the ambulance is waiting
Don’t let me get in the way
But you are in the way
Always moaning, aren’t you? Look on the bright side.
You are blocking the sun
I can’t help where the sun moves to.
OK.Nice to see you
Mutual
See you later.
See you soon
Cheers,old boy
Cheerio
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I used to have a heart when I first wrote
In this cubicle I sit and read
“How to live inside a little house”
Does it matter if the heart is dead,
If I have a new kitchen ,but no spouse?
I see a folding desk and chair beside
Floors of marbled vinyl in deep teal
Yet now inside a cubicle resides
My entire body and my soul revealed.
I used to have a heart when I first wrote
I felt it like a pressure in the chest
But now I have none,see I merely float
And go the way the current thinks is best
I’ve handed in my notice,I am done
A cubicle is not the place for fun
I
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I fixed the lamp in an original manner
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Battered lamp
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Poetry and logic
Town centre
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57615/logic-56d23b4c891a9
Logic
BY ALICE NOTLEY
It was a poem
men took because it said ovary
didn’t take my
political poems
they took the one that said ovary
Are you sure it was because it
said ovary?
Yes, for them that’s logical.
—————————
Destroy another
city
What
else
is war for? So
you’ll go down
each of you does. dies in
whirlwind
each of you who does, dies
paying
for the pain you experience
Just that
and nothing is established
Because I am a woman
Cutting as many cords
as tie you to me. this isn’t
anarchy
it isn’t anything you
could name
You’re still here
without ties?
because they were logical.
—————————
Dance little asshole dance
oh he gets elected, like a Calvinist
He says, I have these guts
Men, I have these guts.
—————————
Having dedicated whole
regions to the destruction
you inspire, the
logic will be to go on doing it
doing it. Having proceeded by
the logic
of your per-
sonal vaccuum
you will perceive your continued
lightlessness
as an excuse to go on. having
gone on
as you have. And so one continues.
—————————–
Lead the boy out of
the building on fire
his head twisted
upwards
all fucked
What else is there to
know if
one has gotten
twisted up
all fucked
he is a screaming fire
—————————–
In the explanations
of our lives’ experience
they’ve left out this wild moment
the long mirror on the right-hand wall of the
corridor suddenly shattered
I can’t see myself anymore.
—————————–
I repeat that I am not frightened
and why not
I don’t know
what my reactions
are supposed to be.
—————————–
“Please tell me something
with which I’m familiar.”
isn’t there another part of now
Alice Notley, “Logic” from Songs and Stories of the Ghouls. Copyright © 2011 by Alice Notley. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
Source: Songs and Stories of the Ghouls (Wesleyan University Press, 2011)
- Related
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Good evening
I heard there was a sacred horde and they teased the Lord. Eliezer a Cohen
You don’t really stare at Newsnight
I said text me, not vex me.
Missing you like I miss the cat’s claws.
Do not prebake me,oh,my darling.
I shall forsake all mothers for you,
With all my tart I feed you
I’ll never regret your apple jumbles
Please deport me or let me flee.
Your memory will always be a dessert for me,
With my body,i flee worship,
I never desired any lover less than you.It was hard both coming and going,
Never invite me to share your dread again.
Please pre-decease me or I shall go run away
Nobody we grow will love me quite like you,Eliza.
How are lead fillings with you these days?
I took you to be my awful,dreaded husband.
With all my worldly grubs,I thee endow.also my rods and tackle,
Come from the heartache to me
There’ll be blue words over,the ravines round Dover,
Scarlet ribbons for her heirs.
God never made those little stone Chapels
Like a bird on the fire,like the junk in the Cathedral choir.I applied one fine day to be free
