homage to the once little one

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 will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose.
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses).
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.

:: edward estlin cummings::

love is not all

Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
and rise and sink and rise and sink again.
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
pinned down by need and moaning for release
or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It may well be. I do not think I would.

:: edna st. vincent millay::
posted at 360 on 8-07-06

Existence

Nevertheless it is strange
That spare mornings are unkempt
Among shameless mornings.
I anticipate likeaverystupidchild
To care for small things beyond
This pervert hour of
the
day
I shout capsules balls wanton minds
Asps wolves flower shaping
Dying
And dearly, my oaf figure moves out
Cross and inaudiable.
Therefore
It is to kiss my own craven kiss
I, am not wanting this
This constricting bed
This waiting swelling
half-colored
dawn.

sharon ignes c.88

someday,love will perhaps be

someday, love will perhaps be
a courageous windflower
that will unbosom on my galoshes
and make me look to where it is
with my unassuming eyes.
but i
because of my rare coldness
will have but to cavort
past it
like it was
a
weight
less
cobblestone.

shane.ignes

i don't know.
i am not making sense
this pleasure is propagating around.
on my regions
no songs. no thoughts. no windows.
i cannot even embrace
the shadow of the rain.

From Chubby

The love of human beings was the one value of the world.
I could not believe that it vanished. I could not believe that
suffering and anguish were meaningless. I would have liked
to have journeyed all around the world, and lived for all time,
and heard all the woes and all the loves of every man that lived.
Each tale would be so beautiful...
Each would be so painful....

from my erstwhile friend a j luzon

Song

at last, to meet you
while in my desolation,
where has the truant
little girl gone? i ask
in the silence of
your responsiveness,
where there has never been
a time for it,
a reason to it,
a voice in it.
perhaps there was a dream?
out of our worship
for the stars and
the greater heavens
we have settled into this littleness,
where we can spin
to our delight
and forget that
there has never been
a Life
written
in your name.

welcome, little girl.

A poem I wrote in march 21 1992 for Honey Love de Vera, a girl I never met, but whom I learned died at age 5 after she succumbed to myelogenous leukemia.

anyone lived in a pretty how town

from one of my favorite poets
E. E. Cummings

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

Poetry in Motion

a favorite poem. written by nikki giovanni.

poetry is motion, graceful as a fawn,
gentle as a teardrop, strong like the eye,
finding peace in a crowded room.
we poets tend to think our words are golden
though emotion speaks too loudly
to be defined by silence.
sometimes after midnight, or just before the dawn, we sit,
typewriter in hand, pulling loneliness around us,
for (getting) our lovers or children who are sleeping, ignoring
the weary wariness of our own logic to compose a poem--
no one understands it
it never says love me, for poets are beyond love
it never says accept me, for poems seek not acceptance but controversy
it only says I am, and therefore I concede that you are, too.
a poem is pure energy, horizontally contained between
the mind of the poet and the ear of the reader
if it does not sing, discard the ear
for poetry is song
if it does not delight, discard the heart
for poetry is joy
if it does not inform, then close off the brain
for it is dead
if it cannot heed the insistent message
that Life is precious
which is all we poets
wrapped in our loneliness
are trying to say...

Deluge

A day comes when my mind
Is spellbound to the violent rush
Of emptiness. It feels
As though the agonies
Might last forever.
The deliberate curse of Silence
Is strangely wearing me down
To the skirmish of a deafening loss.
My senses follow me
In every corner, drawing out
The contents of my life
Until the broad daylight
To which I only hang on
Sparks away, too.
This is the very time when
I need to see the viciousness of things
And stir them down
To surround my solitude
Because when forevermore
I choose the loneliest
Of places, I have nothing
To understand me in my
Narrow convergence.

Poetry

Poems that I wrote at a time when I was, as a friend put it, oozing ars poetica from the thorax of an eyeless monster...

DEATH SONG

It dies, as I regurgitate into a poem
And rub its temples with thoughts of death, Kafka,
And a thousand black lies.
We had it in common, a spell
that hid commonness
As though perfect was the word for us
And the sense that I was truth
And he was daylight
And that both of us, combined, is uncommonly
Beautiful still Life.

It dies, because a Lover
Can't be himself anymore
Since I have flowered in two
While the baby wells inside me like a tiny celebration
And even I looked up the astral signs, knowing
He must be Capricorn in the future.
And even I dreamed of those little hands
Or sprout eyes, each to each, opening to my world,
While the Lover is gone into the ponderance
Of himself unto himself
To spite the baby's truth.
And all felt like a joke, chasing into me
Like a sad, sad attempt
Unknowing.

It died, because I was heavy and blind
As if we could not look into each other's eyes
When the stars couldn't guide us to the edge
Of our unknowing.
Compatibility, or Love
If that is so they may call it. But I, heavy again
Weep for the nudeness of Life
The harmony of men
The meaning of the future
That dies
Away with my baby.

There's a poetry I've always remembered by heart. It was written by Alison Wailey.
It tells of a woman who never lost hope in waiting for a beloved in spite of her many tribulations


If only a seed shall fall, even among the waterless stones,
A tree will grow.
If you love, and I love
Can it be we shall never meet?

As flogged by tempests, a wave I have seen
Dash itself against the rocks
So in the bitter hours myself only
Am by my thoughts destroyed.

Likethe waters of the river, that in the swift flow of the stream
A great rock divides
Though our ways seem to have parted
I know that in the end we shall meet.