regardless of reaching nowhere, a propos of nothing, another prose pome

one step nearer to world's end
one day nearer to death
did something significant happen tonight?
did a dark cloud eclipse the sun?
"i've got sunshine on my stomach
like i just rocked my baby to sleep"
the sanhedrin's been re-formed
the mark of the beast, readied
the temple they say will soon rear its top
and the "machine messiah" his head
i'm just sitting here reading words
that have been well-crafted, that pern
or listening to music
or watching good movies
or looking at (pics) icons that shine
like the boatman i get enlightenment from the river and its dazzling depth
like siddhartha i get compassion, knowing each family has lost someone
and my hemlock drunk i echo the words of socrates: learn to die
and like the nazarene who walked the dusty roads of the earth's navel once
i rest in the calm assurance that it is how one dies that counts
and not the shame, since we are all nailed
before i drift off to sleep in the pale
autumn moonlight that adorns my dreams
and draws a tracery of silver leaves
like a crown around my poem, while my sleeve
draws a heart to it in its last appeal...

another favourite poem, another post

I was a little scared of posting the whole poem here (it's long, and I can't copy/paste because blogspot messes with the format) but for anyone interested:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=177287

Brooklyn

Yesterday I went to Brooklyn for the first time, to have lunch with the novelist Amitav Ghosh and his family. While there I realized I was, eighty or so years late, in the area where "A View From the Bridge" is set. I did go up a road mentioned in the play (Flatbush Avenue, where Mike and Louis go bowling).

I have to say that the area is nothing like its description in the play. Today it is reasonably affluent, pretty, and on the whole a decent place to live in, although it lacks the life of Manhattan (especially the Village). It is still pretty Italian, however.

I also saw the movie "The Last Kiss", with Zach Braff. It isn't as good as "Garden State", but I did really like, especially the ending. Definitely worth watching!

Don't dream it's over. - Neil Finn

I like both the versions - I mean the Crowded House one and the Sixpence None the Richer one.
I don't know why I like this song so much. Shows I'm a romantic at heart, I guess.



There is freedom within, there is freedom without
Try to catch the deluge in a paper cup
There's a battle ahead, many battles are lost
But you'll never see the end of the road
While you're traveling with me
Hey now, hey now
Don't dream it's over
Hey now, hey now
When the world comes in
They come, they come
To build a wall between us
We know they won't win
Now I'm towing my car, there's a hole in the roof
My possessions are causing me suspicion but there's no proof
In the paper today, tales of war and of waste
But you turn right over to the T.V. page
Now I'm walking again to the beat of a drum
And I'm counting the steps to the door of your heart
Only shadows ahead barely clearing the roof
Get to know the feeling of liberation and relief
Hey now, hey now
Don't dream it's over
Hey now, hey now
When the world comes in
They come, they come
To build a wall between us
Don't ever let them win
From the album Crowded House
Single release date: December 1986
ABOUT "DON'T DREAM IT'S OVER":
Crowded House's biggest hit in America, it peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard singles chart.Lyrics Copyright © 1986 Roundhead Music (BMI).

Since we're all following this post a poem or post a song format I bet Keshava started, I guess it'll eventually be my turn. And so I'm hurrying it up and getting it over with.
(please remember that I simply write poetry because I like doing so, not because I'm any good)


Windows half closed, curtains pulled tight
Murmuring voices through cellophane light
Her powdered cheeks shine dimly and
Black rimmed eyes search the tiny
Velvet folds in the chairs
And between the yellow-stained sheets.
Crumpled notes and coins
Will get her another beer, perhaps
Some lace stockings to go with the lipstick
Before he comes back.
He’s always coming back,
Greedy and fat, pockets bursting
With more money for more love.
The door is weak with crumbling
Paint, locks won’t hold.
Anyway, he’d push through
Until he reached the heart she’d sold
Long ago. Her heavy breathing
Echoes past the thin walls
As another maid knocks out
Room service, ma’am?

(This one actually has a title, but it suddenly sounds so pretentious. Oh well. "paper love in an old hotel room" or better still, poem #38)

A song I love

Title: Alchohol
Artist: Barenaked Ladies- words and music by Stephen Duffy and Steven Page

Alcohol, my permanent accessory
Alcohol, a party-time necessity
Alchool, alternative to feeling like yourself
O alcohol, I still drink to your health

I love you more than I did the week before
I discovered alcohol

Forget the caffe latte, screw the raspberry iced tea
A malibu and coke for you, a G&T for me
Alcohol, your songs resolve like
My life never will
When someone else is picking up the bill

I love you more than I did the week before
I discovered alcohol
O alcohol, would you please forgive me?
For while I cannot love myself
I'll use something else

I thought that alcohol was just for those with
Nothing else to do
I thought that drinking just to get drunk
Was a waste of precious booze
But now I know that there's a time
And there's a place where I can choose
To walk the fine line between
Self-control and self-abuse

I love you more than I did the week before
I discovered alcohol
Would you please ignore that you
Found me on the floor
Trying on your camisole?
O alcohol, would you please forgive me?
For while I cannot love myself
I'll use something else.

Would you please forgive me
Would you please forgive me

Modern Times

When the rain falls down
I would like to think:
It's tears and memory.

I would like to declare:
My children will play
in the streets, without fear.

I would like to dream:
A world where we walk
"under the red sky,"
not looking up at planes;
- trepidation in our hearts -
having eyes for the beauty of the clouds -

I would like to write
poems that don't stink of history,
vomit politics,
but have in them words that curl like smoke, into images
like a woman's soft, curving back
as she arches it up to...

I would like to forget most things.

I would like to remember the spruced up look of winter's and spring's coats
in the forest of my hopes,
the beauty of nature and the dale of the future
reverberating with the music of soft leaves
floating up in a spiral, defeating
all things of "gravity," making them stand
triumphantly, on their maidenheads!

Another favourite poem

Since I've been putting various things I like up, I thought I'd add this quatrain by Philip Larkin. He never put it in any of this four books of poetry, perhaps because he thought it betrayed rather too much about himself! It came to readers thanks to the posthumous "Philip Larkin: Collected Poems", my most well-thumbed volume of poetry.

Administration

Day by day your estimation clocks up
Who deserves a smile and who a frown.
And girls you have to tell to pull their socks up
Are those whose pants you'd most like to pull down.

-Philip Larkin

An amazing poem by Seamus Heaney

Punishment

I can feel the tug
of the halter at the nape
of her neck, the wind
on her naked front.

It blows her nipples
to amber beads,
it shakes the frail rigging
of her ribs.

I can see her drowned
body in the bog,
the weighing stone,
the floating rods and boughs.

Under which at first
she was a barked sapling
that is dug up
oak-bone, brain-firkin:

her shaved head
like a stubble of black corn,
her blindfold a soiled bandage,
her noose a ring

to store
the memories of love.
Little adultress,
before they punished you

you were flaxen-haired,
undernourished, and your
tar-black face was beautiful.
My poor scapegoat,

I almost love you
but would have cast, I know,
the stones of silence.
I am the artful voyeur

of your brain's exposed
and darkened combs,
your muscles' webbing
and all your numbered bones:

I who have stood dumb
when your betraying sisters,
cauled in tar,
wept by the railings,

who would connive
in civilized outrage
yet understand the exact
and tribal, intimate revenge.

Seamus Heaney, from the book Stations (1975)

Gay Messiah

Song title: Gay Messiah
Artist/Composer: Rufus Wainwright
Album: Want Two (2004)

He will then be reborn
From 1970's porn
Wearing tubesocks with style
And such an innocent smile

Better pray for your sins
Better pray for your sins
'Cause the gay messiah's coming

He will fall from the star
Studio 54
And appear on the sand
Of Fire Island's shore

Better pray for your sins
Better pray for your sins
'Cause the gay messiah's coming

No it will not be me
Rufus the Baptist I be
No I won't be the one
Baptized in cum

What will happen instead
Someone will demand my head
And then I will kneel down
And give it to them looking down

Better pray for your sins
Better pray for your sins
'Cause the gay messiah's coming

Something

I wrote in a dreadful rush, and therefore expect no literary value in this, it's merely a confession.

I have been guilty of
the blackest treachery
that the world has known.

And I have spent countless days
in the effort to exonerate myself.
In the attempt to convince
others but mainly myself
that it was not me who
committed any crime.

I have failed in this effort.

My only excuse is that never,
ever was I insincere.

Always did I mean what I said to you.
And while there were several things,
too many to name or number,
that I should have voiced, and didn’t voice,
for far, far too long, when I did say something;
whatever it was that I said-
I meant it.

Now vast constructions have been wrecked
by the lateness of my actions;
by the baseness of my treachery.
And no longer do I know where
we’re going to go.
But there is only one thought that I would
like to repeat, no longer in the effort to excuse
my actions, but merely to qualify them.
Never was I insincere.