The Prophet

Joy and Sorrow from The Prophet

Then a woman said, “Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.”
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

-Khalil Gibran

While I generally don’t relate or react well to poetry with thinly-veined Christian subtexts (or those of any religion, for that matter) the imagery in this particular poetic essay by Gibran has comforted me since the first time I came across it my freshman year of college. Lately, some of the writing that I’ve enjoyed the most has been more stereotypically masculine and thus lacking in the lush description that I used to find so affecting. Gibran is illustrative without being overwraught, which is a delicate balance to strike.

elimae

Zimble Zamble Zumble by M. Sarki

Elimae, which stands for “Electronic Literary Magazine,” has been slow-burning in my mind for a few months now. Some of it is too cerebral, too self-referential, but much of it is delicious and perplexing and disarming, like this poem by Donora Hillard:

Creature

Stared at me under glass. Brought me home. Outfitted the cage with a wheel, sawdust, a bottle that never dripped
enough of you into my mouth. Invited friends over to watch. Saw me groom myself until the skin split. Took me to a
field. Drove off.
You still find fur on your tongue.

If I wrote a poem like this one today, I could die tomorrow.

Other Lives and Dimensions and Finally a Love Poem

My left hand will live longer than my right. The rivers
of my palms tell me so.
Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finish
at the same time. I think

praying, I think clapping is how hands mourn. I think
staying up and waiting
for paintings to sigh is science. In another dimension this
is exactly what’s happening,

it’s what they write grants about: the chromodynamics
of mournful Whistlers,
the audible sorrow and beta decay of “Old Battersea Bridge.”
I like the idea of different

theres and elsewheres, an Idaho known for bluegrass,
a Bronx where people talk
like violets smell. Perhaps I am somewhere patient, somehow
kind, perhaps in the nook

of a cousin universe I’ve never defiled or betrayed
anyone. Here I have
two hands and they are vanishing, the hollow of your back
to rest my cheek against,

your voice and little else but my assiduous fear to cherish.
My hands are webbed
like the wind-torn work of a spider, like they squeezed
something in the womb

but couldn’t hang on. One of those other worlds
or a life I felt
passing through mine, or the ocean inside my mother’s belly
she had to scream out.

Here when I say “I never want to be without you,”
somewhere else I am saying
“I never want to be without you again.” And when I touch you
in each of the places we meet

in all of the lives we are, it’s with hands that are dying
and resurrected.
When I don’t touch you it’s a mistake in any life,
in each place and forever.

-Bob Hicok

On vulnerability

It is one of the many ironies of my particular human condition that I feel at ease exposing myself, vulnerabilities and all, on such a public forum as a blog, while I rarely allow myself the same luxury in my private life. I think it’s because of this contradiction that, despite all my (purportedly) feminist leanings, I have such such an affinity for Charles Bukowski. It’s poems like Bluebird that remind me that this alcoholic, abusive libertine was as intense, perceptive, and emotive a poet as I can ever hope to be.

Bluebird

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks never know that
he’s
in there.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?

- Charles Bukowski

Backwaters

First of all, I didn’t intend for this to become a blog about my favorite poetry, but in the winter I tend to revisit old favorites. I read this poem in the English translation first and sought out the original a few years ago once my Spanish was fluent enough to read poetry without wanting to weep in frustration. I had always thought that “remanso” translated directly to “pool” or “backwater,” so I was surprised to see that Kemp opted for “still waters” in his (definitive) translation of Variación. It seems renegade to chose a phrase when equivalent single words exist, but the more I read both versions the more I liked what the repetition of “water” in the second verse evoked. Translating someone else’s work is a bittersweet kind of creativity, I think.

Variación

El remanso del aire
bajo la rama del eco.

El remanso del agua
bajo fronda de luceros.

El remanso de tu boca
bajo espesura de besos.

Federico Garcia Lorca

Variations

The still waters of the air
under the bough of the echo.

The still waters of the water
under a frond of stars.

The still waters of your mouth
under a thicket of kisses.

Translation by Lysander Kemp

I cannot wait to use two commas in a row.

Though I’ve mentioned it before, I didn’t realize until re-reading this poem just how effective and affecting vagueness can be. Just as my Swedish style icon used “he” to stand not only for her personal, but for universal, love, ee cummings fully manipulates ambiguity. Referring to a body’s “hows” and “this” and “that”  is at once unclear and perfectly intimate; for what reason do you touch me if not to figure out my hows and thises and thats? For what reason do we leave each other if not to figure out someone else’s?

i like my body when it is with your

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like,, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big Love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you quite so new

-ee cummings

A poem for the first hot day of winter

After a cold fortnight, on a day that reminded me why I’m happy to be alive, it was appropriate for me to pick up Good Poems for Hard Times and open up to the Bukowski. In that inevitable, incessant way that bookstores have, that book led me to e e cummings and I ended up with Love is a Dog From Hell, which  I hadn’t touched since high school. I spent most of my time reading Bukowski and picking my jaw up off the floor afterward, flushed and damp and feeling like I had done something wrong. Bukowsi is made for hot, angry summer days when all you want is someone’s feelings to hurt.

The Six Foot Goddess

I’m big
I suppose that’s why my women always seem
small
but this 6 foot goddess
who deals in real estate
and art
and flies from Texas
to see me
and I fly to Texas
to see her–
well, there’s plenty of her to
grab hold of
and I grab hold of it
of her,
I yank her head back by the hair,
I’m real macho,
I suck on her upper lip
her cunt
her soul
I mount her and tell her,
“I’m going to shoot white hot
juice into you. I didn’t fly all the way to
Galveston to play
chess.”

later we lay locked like human vines
my left arm under her pillow
my right arm over her side
I grip both of her hands,
and my chest
belly
balls
cock
tangle into her
and through us
in the dark
pass rays
back and forth
back and forth
until I fall away
and we sleep.

she’s wild
but kind
my 6 foot goddess
makes me laugh
the laughter of the mutilated
who still need
love,
and her blessed eyes
run deep into her head
like mountain springs
far in
and
cool and good.

she has saved me
from everything that is
not here.

Charles Bukowski

First, not foremost

I don’t remember where I first encountered this poem, but I imagine it was in one of the books given to me by my mother when I was a teenager. Those books were always too cerebral and too sexual all at the same time, but hey- at least I was reading.

Enter Without Knocking

If I get to love you, please enter without knocking,
but think it over well:
my straw mattress will be yours, the dusty straw,
the rustling sighs.

Into the pitcher fresh water I’ll pour,
your shoes, before you leave, I’ll wipe clean,
no one will disturb us here,
hunched over, you could mend our clothes in peace.

If the silence is great, I will talk to you,
If you are tired, take my only chair,
If it’s warm here, loosen your collar, take off your tie,
if you are hungry, there’s a clean sheet of paper
as your plate if there’s food,
but leave some for me—I, too, am forever hungry.

If I get to love you, enter without knocking,
but think it over well:
it would hurt if you stayed away for too long.

-Attila Jozsef (Translated from the Hungarian by John Batki)