June 2010
2 posts
Abstracts
At the store, I cried by the lobsters, a loose child, moved by a cruel tank of glass walls and salt. Too often, too often, I met the same wall: the cut-apart district with houses, untouched, the words that fly-out and splat, unheard, the dinner guest leaving early, unloved. I knew we were not made for this; I knew our bodies could not enclose us. With a head stuffed-full of dirt and desire, I...
Food in Heaven
I remember he said “I’m thinking: what is the taste of food in heaven?” The cancer cells were quick to try and take the “grandpa” from him. Soon, all that kept him with us would look like nothing more than an unmoving mannequin. And now, here we are, tasting earthly tastes, our jaws severing burritos, our thinking-skulls, above ground, below heaven, asking if there...
March 2010
3 posts
Digital Lover
My world will end. These words end here. I could hold the world, but I want you here.
We miss our flesh, our flesh is pixels. The digital clock ticks very slow… You are not far. Things are not far, but still the old cast laws in depths of static. No tablets; I write to infinity, a head full of micro-chips and bibles. Now, I learn how to love in an online clip, I recite epics in quick...
2 tags
Sonnet
by Lynn Xu
Terror. The chocolate machine glistens In the night. The universe hangs on this Malheur. Mal de Mer. The sea-worm listens To its Latin noise, mingling parti pris With the bastion of deal, its missing knob, Terra infidel, how the lunar month Makes appetite with its special eye. Slob Jelly on eyelids slagged with salt. The month Cannot end like this. And wanting nothing Of this in...
1 tag
The Onion, Memory
by Craig Raine
Divorced, but friends again at last, we walk old ground together in bright blue uncomplicated weather. We laugh and pause to hack to bits these tiny dinosaurs, prehistoric, crenelated, cast between the tractor ruts in mud. On the green, a junior Douglas Fairbanks, swinging on the chestnut’s unlit chandelier, defies the corporation spears— a single rank around the bole,...
February 2010
7 posts
Preachers Warn
by Charles Simic This peaceful world of ours is ready for destruction— And still the sun shines, the sparrows come Each morning to the bakery for crumbs. Next door, two men deliver a bed for a pair of newlyweds And stop to admire a bicycle chained to a parking meter. Its owner is making lunch for his ailing grandmother. He heats the soup and serves it to her in a bowl. The windows are open,...
Prayer #1
O Lord, God Almighty, The Compassionate, The Merciful, I lay my failed body on your cool, eternal stone. Tune my eyes to Your Full Picture, let-off all Your light. Erect Your Timeless Structure in the hallways of my thought. Show Satan in his corner; no more invention or disguise; Show Angels above skylines; let me see how they light-up. Like the Roman, two-faced Janus, send me complete vision;...
Cassandra, Iraq
by C K Williams 1. She’s magnificent, as we imagine women must be who foresee and foretell and are right and disdained. This is the difference between we who are like her in having been right and disdained, and we as we are. Because we, in our foreseeings, our having been right, are repulsive to ourselves, fat and immobile, like toads. Not toads in the garden, who after all are what they are, but...
The Guest House
by Rumi This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the...
Dollhouse
(an original) I come to a home full of honey and spice; qur’ans and bibles lay side by side. This is where opposition is beauty; this is where madness turns calm. Our tiny house is surrounded by green. Below, waits the stale, dank Normal. Up in heaven no boredom is irking; the earth—that was hell—still reminds. Yes, the sweet isn’t sweet without sour; but here, out the window flows sour: A mob of...
3 tags
Lust
by nobel laureate, Harold Pinter
There is a dark sound Which grows on the hill You turn from the light Which lights the black wall. Black shadows are running Across the pink hill They grin as they sweat They beat the black bell. You suck the wet light Flooding the cell And smell the lust of the lusty Flicking its tail. For the lust of the lusty Throws a dark sound on the wall And...
An Evening Thought
iampoetry:
Jupiter Hammon’s ” An Evening Thought ” was the first work by an African-American to be published in the United States. The text below is taken from Benjamin Brawley’s Early Black American Writers. An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ, With Penitential Cries Salvation comes by Christ alone, The only Son of God; Redemption now to every one, That love his holy Word. Dear Jesus,...
January 2010
16 posts
2 tags
Dulce Et Decorum Est
by Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of disappointed shells that dropped...
4 tags
Nightwalk
by Franz Wright
(I rarely find poems where I personally intervene and praise their “amazingness,” but for this one, I must. If I ever felt like stopping, ending, this piece has often been the song, the mantra, the psalm that helped me put one foot in front of the other, and move.)
The all-night convenience store’s empty and no one is behind the counter. You open and shut the...
Girl From The North Country: Lyric
by Bob Dylan
Well, if you’re travelin’ in the north country fair, Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline, Remember me to one who lives there. She once was a true love of mine.
Well, if you go when the snowflakes storm, When the rivers freeze and summer ends, Please see if she’s wearing a coat so warm, To keep her from the howlin’ winds.
Please see for me if...
When You Are Old
by W.B. Yeats
When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down...
A Martian Sends A Postcard Home
by Craig Raine
Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings and some are treasured for their markings — they cause the eyes to melt or the body to shriek without pain. I have never seen one fly, but sometimes they perch on the hand. Mist is when the sky is tired of flight and rests its soft machine on ground: then the world is dim and bookish like engravings under tissue paper. ...
Screwdriver
He jabs the code of heaven. A machine of sour diamonds. The sharp prattle of melody. Our hot flesh burns like spice.
© 2010 Constantine Kulakov
To My Wife
by nobel laureate, Harold Pinter
I was dead and now I live You took my hand I blindly died You took my hand You watched me die And found my life You were my life When I was dead You are my life And so I live
The wall that ran through my heaven...
(an original) And I thought I could make my own little heaven Where the “They” and “We” aren’t in defeat And where strawb’rries and strangers grow sweet. But the wall’s genetic; always there; who can change? Even in your touch it was cement, cement… Even in my heaven, people slid to their side As they danced to their learned and tragic divide. And so...
Sonnet II
(an original)
For you, I must be dangerous and brash, Fiercely cruising through dark and undone streets; I must be loud and slit all rules within a flash, Flying over all that carefulness defeats. Yet, to have you, I must please not only you, But your parents — whose wants are all but yours; They want a man careful and patient and true; Most importantly, a man who is not me. And so I find...
“ See, I am making all things new….
Revelations 21:5
...”
– Journey - Linda Annas Ferguson (via syrferchyk)
4 tags
, said the shotgun to the head
by Saul Williams
she had eyes like two turntables mix(h)er in between my dreams and reality blend in ancient themes the bass is of isis (basis) cross-faded to ankh the beat drops like a cliff over looking my heart and you never loved her for what she possessed you powdered her face and came on her head dress oil slicked feathers, putrid stenched water bed “mother nature’s a...
The Backstreets of Moscow
by Sergei Esenin (translated by Paul Schmidt) The farmhouse is lonely without me, And my old dog is gone from the door; God sent me to die in the backstreets And I can’t go home any more. I’m in love with this overdone city, Though it’s dirty and falling apart; It reminds of stories at bedtime, And the street sounds hurt my heart. I go out for a fix after midnight, And the fix...
The Urban Wanderer: A Lament
Urban Wanderer In the mute scream of city, I shut my mind’s closet, seek comfort, warmth in the Lord, and wait for my heart-vault to open. A road-driver, I thought this, with a Jeep of torn speakers, blaring electro, longing for a hot hall of sex-dance. On these nights, it was custom to seize love, to kiss the necks of tipsy strangers, custom not to speak, just move, move. No language now,...
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
by E.E. Cummings
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience,your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first...
The Chef and the Poet Walk in the Park
(To Adrain, written in strict rhyme and meter by his request)
“Write me a poem,” said the blond chef— to me my critic and cousin at best. Again, we seize the park, stealing air, our Eden from this bitter city’s glare. “Write me a poem.” He said it, it was so!, from behind gold, Russian curls that flow: flow! from our land’s poesy itself, golden as the pages on...
Lynn Xu →
December 2009
8 posts
An Unexpected Meeting (1962)
blogut:
We treat each other with exceeding courtesy; we says it’s great to see you after all these years.
Our tigers drink milk. Our hawks tread the ground. Our sharks have all drowned. Our wolves yawn beyond the open cage.
Our snakes have shed their lightning, our apes their flights of fancy, our peacocks have renounced their plumes. The bats flew out of our hair long ago.
We fall...
Beefy Devil
The beefy devil isn’t rotting in the corner; he’s the young man flying into towers. The big, bad wolf isn’t hunting for grandma; he’s your cousin turned against your brother. But where are the witches to ask about him? Where’s bright, where’s dark if both are unseen? I’m so happy to find my good enemy. I’m so friendly when there’s someone to...
For Drug Addicts
by Jason Reynolds
How do you kill two birds With one stone You grind the stone into powder And stuff it into Each birds nose Because it ain’t no reason for us to try To spread our wings and fly When we are already high I suppose
Real lyrics
Wokringman’s Blues #2 by Bob Dylan
“My cruel weapons have been put on the shelf Come sit down on my knee You are dearer to me than myself As you yourself can see I’m listenin’ to the steel rails hum Got both eyes tight shut Just sitting here trying to keep the hunger from Creeping it’s way into my gut”
Ode to Bathtub (Yet another Ode)
O Bathtub, ceramic pit, where adolescence concocted love-dreams. Many hours I spent staring at the dun faucet, forgetting its being. Many taut worries loomed in heavy waters, then choked down the drain. World went on around me as I lay, head above water, chanting, “Above others, rise.” I cannot leave you when you have contained something memory can’t.
© 2009 Constantine Kulakov
5 tags
"Which Shakespeare answered very badly..."
Oxford University’s professor of poetry, A.C. Bradley’s, influence on Shakespearean criticism was so great that the following anonymous poem appeared: I dreamt last night that Shakespeare’s Ghost Sat for a civil service post. The English paper for that year Had several questions on King Lear Which Shakespeare answered very badly Because he hadn’t read his Bradley.
(Hawkes 1986 as...
“I write / to astonish myself”
– Geoffrey Hill
Ode to Bed
(A friend needed an ode for class. They wanted it to be about a bed. So I wrote it. And was pleased:)
O Rectangle, I love thee much. You always wait, no matter time. You are stable and gentle as beauty; old-age can’t steal your kindness. You are a box, and no less dumb; yet your sheets offer genius pity. People speak love, people speak hate; but I can trust your silence. All...
November 2009
24 posts
3 tags
This Gentle Surgery
by Malachi Black Once more the bright blade of a morning breeze glides almost too easily through me, and from the scuffle I’ve been sutured to some flap of me is freed: I am severed like a simile: an honest tenor trembling toward the vehicle I mean to be: a blackbird licking half notes from the muscled, sap-damp branches of the sugar maple tree … though I am still a part of any part of every...
5 tags
My Great-Grandmother’s Bible ( a sonnet)
by Spencer Reece
Faux-leather bound and thick as an onion, it flakes— an heirloom from Iowa my dead often read. I open the black flap to speak the “spake”s and quickly lose track of who wed, who bred. She taped our family register as it tore, her hand stuttering like a sewing machine, darning the blanks with farmers gone before— Inez, Alvah, Delbert, Ermadean. Our undistinguished line she pressed...
3 tags
Writing the Impossible
Where was God, the Yahweh, as we sat in my car, timid, a Christian and Muslim, missing? Was it goodness we felt when my lip pierced your Heaven, pouring out thick, Islamic lore? At night, would I go to sleep, Bible beside lamp — or would Angels leaf though the Surahs? And as my dreaming unclasped would it be streets of gold— or Houris, and rivers of milk? But this is all I hold true: your hot,...
5 tags
Monsters of Beauty
Where’s your shame: barging into dreams, torturing with beauty?
© 2009 Constantine Kulakov
7 tags
Real or Unreal
Every night, before going to sleep, I don’t need it. I set it down, my phone. This is something towers can’t transfer; no text message has such use. Instead, I open my imaginary pill case, and let out winged, imaginary happys— i send them to all, to descend midst the mush of brains, unclasping for dreams.
© 2009 Constantine Kulakov
7 tags
Chuck Palahniuk's 13 Writing Tips
author of Fight Club, Choke
http://chuckpalahniuk.net/features/essays/chuck-palahniuk
“Number One: Two years ago, when I wrote the first of these essays it was about my “egg timer method” of writing. You never saw that essay, but here’s the method: When you don’t want to write, set an egg timer for one hour (or half hour) and sit down to write until the timer rings....
7 tags
Ovid in the Third Reich
by Geoffrey Hill non peccat, quaecumque potest peccasse negare, solaque famosam culpa professa facit. Amores, III, xiv I love my work and my children. God Is distant, difficult. Things happen. Too near the ancient troughs of blood Innocence is no earthly weapon. I have learned one thing: not to look down So much upon the damned. They, in their sphere, Harmonize strangely with the divine Love. I,...
4 tags
To Kevin and Dasha Crawferd on their Wedding Day...
Sticky, southern, summer nights. Two people and their brittle dreams. No fears, just eyes like love and lights. Thru concrete & world fights, their love gleams. Beam your smiles: let go of all things city; let the Tuscan skies seal your spirits. Sprint thru madness; destroy with beauty. In your love, the universe will never forget you.
© 2009 Constantine Kulakov
8 tags
political poetry
call this political poetry! let Mayakovsky applaud! but still, the television talks. glowing faces giving names, searching, scraping for the game. i could live off hate all day. who must feel shame, CNN? who’s my enemy, Fox? but let your voices mute, let the dead glow die… they all say so much, while silence never let me down.
© 2009 Constantine Kulakov
7 tags
Today's Top Poets
My top five living poets and their pieces.
1. Geoffrey Hill, September Song
2. Yevgeny Yevtushenko, The House Swayed…
3. Maya Angelou, Alone
4. Tony Harrison, V
5. David Lehman, Sexism
Working Draft for Slums and Suburbs
I. Morning The sun is always sober, tearing through cement and glass, vamping intentions, calculations… Our mirrors wait, warnings of complexion, fault, and past. Awake, some of us would pray. And some wished they could, just like before, children, seeing Angels. It’s morning: a city reaching for life. II. Streets Now we brace the streets: cut-apart districts, skin tones of steel; and...
7 tags
electric suns won't burn it
but they’ll never stomp it out, Hitler couldn’t hide it, electric suns won’t burn it, even Adam knew cement would never bury shame © 2009 Constantine Kulakov
6 tags
poetry & fame
michael jackson known to a body wrapped in cloth. what’s left behind there? scorched gossip? music? once we were rockstars: turned kitchens to stages. on dim, lonely fridays the world felt our cries. now i’m running my fingers through mamas old hair, guessing where I’ll lay when I start going grey.
how many poems must i leave broken-hearted? pounding my chest, oh where is...
5 tags
song of the tone-deaf
i kept dreams of bridges built, of skin tones crumbling like concrete walls. i kept dreams of clasping love, logic broken like a bulb in the throat. i kept my windows down, turned music up, looked through her eyes — to catch a soul. but all that’s left is smoke and time. and how much setback must one really stomach? see, sometimes dream-spans must be trimmed, and expectation’s best...