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
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"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...