a song in language

language_and_World

Here is language
standing in the world
like an obese piano

here are my lips
caressing chaotically
a plaintive arpeggio

a strung mass
of sea splatter
struck by mechanical
whim

I sense freedom
in verbal form
that suckles the
shadow behind
vocal foam

here are the colors
aligned in black mountain
& white valley
here the world
trickles in echo

here is language
standing in the immense
like sculpted fluid

here are my lips
opening like rain
the bouquet of sound

 

 

Contemporary Poetry

one hundred twenty-one words

abyss_above_us

Yesterday there,
could have written
a poem, a tunnel
to something greater
than what we amassed
in many units
of cyclic century

I could have, yesterday.
Created a segment of fiction
that borrows truth as tool
and made universe
a cog in a bigger dream

Yesterday, there
was only need for one hundred
twenty-one words
to serve as ligament
between the earth
and a single
human heart

I could have, yesterday.
Covered my eyes, my eyes
with pungent dust and
swallowed the interior
of a cloud. Something vague
but elementary, could have
been spoken

Yesterday there,
could have left legacy
to some mad prophecy,
I could have dropped
an ounce of voice
into the hole
that is an abyss
above us.

Contemporary Poetry

behold the word

basis_of_Earth

 

 

A poet holds a word
like a heavy tragedy.
A poet holds a word
like a loud apocalypse.
A poet holds a word
like an epic miniature.
A poet holds a word
like a historic voyage.
A poet holds a word
like the cup of disease.
A poet holds a word
like the blood’s island.
A poet holds a word
like the axis of light.
A poet holds a word
like the noise of truth.
A poet holds a word
like an immense event.
A poet holds a word
like a vital bone.
A poet holds a word
like the spine of god.
A poet holds a word
like eternity’s tear.
A poet holds a word
like the basis of the earth.

 

Contemporary Poetry

Pose for me

body_despair_sketch

 

Take off your clothes.
Peel off every last layer.
Squat, further down.
Place your left arm over your left knee. There.
Bend your upper body to the right. Just there.
Right foot a tad over to the right. Lean forward
the other arm straight down touching
the coldness of the earth. Don’t look
at me, look down as if something
great and heavy was pushing you down
restraining your mobility, locking you
with the awkward chain of the body itself.
Untighten your abdomen. Relax the brow,
look defiant as if you’ve been angry
for years, but tired and nearing hopelessness,
like an irrational animal that’s exhausted
from growling in its cage.
There, let your member hang. Let the
pain of the bones and joints led
to convulsions, feel the crush and the pendulum.
Begin to accept this position as your end,
as your skin’s predestination.
There, that’s it. It will be over soon.
I almost got it.

It will be over …. soon.

 

Contemporary Poetry

a minute’s peace

minute_of_peace

when 3:13
it was foggy
and too careless
to measure the vastness of solitude

when 3:15
a slither of divine ache
clashed against a clump
of earth
probably though
it was against my
awfully wakeful heart.

when 3:17
my extended hand
kneads the air
and the eyes slough
a peel of memory
towards a new gloriousness

when 3:29
I show my membership card
staff smiles. They know me.
I ask: what’s the time?
3:29, they say.

3: 38
the southernmost minute’s gone

3:39
without consenting to our isolated reasons

when 3:43
I begin reading:

Religion is the last subject that the intellect beings to understand. In our youth we may have resented, with proud superiority, its cherished incredibilities; in our less confident years we marvel at its prosperous survival in a secular and scientific age, its patient resurrections after whatever deadly blows by Epicurus, or Lucretius, or Lucian, or Machiavelli, or Hume, or Voltaire. What are the secrets of this resilience?

when 3:45
I don’t want to smear eternity
with another coat of futility

when 3:59
got up comically
confusedly
coquettishly
can’t wait for spring to come

when 4:01
outside again
ready to concoct
some opaque purpose.

when 4:05
with a beer
throwing away the wreaths
of opinion that cling to my hair.

when 4:26
murmuring:
everyman’s angelic grave

4:26
surrender the surrounding suffering

4:27
for a sparse minute of peace.

 

Contemporary Poetry

the joy of Heidegger

desolation_landscape

 

Throughout itself,
ordinary nature
would no longer
be its opposite.

Truth occurs

within itself
no longer in earth

but open,
clearing, never rid of primal conflict

notice this Open

the world of paths
lighting
the self-closing
center

at bottom
intended to denote
that the essential
has rid itself
of everything
concealed.

 

(All the words, including minor phrases were extracted from page 53 of Heidegger’s essay The Origin of the Work of Art, found in the book Poetry, Language, Thought as translated by Albert Hofstadter, printed by Harper Perennial Modern Classics)

Contemporary Poetry

mammal joy

mammal_joy

how can I evaporate
the pearl of clitoris
these hands that are fat
clusters of touch
and render shine
like a drop of moon
my crash that rubs against torment
strung and the column’s
fresh pound
strikes upon the amalgam
of velvet
I have forgotten where
this clump of noises
originates
the moan scrapes morning
and the last mammal joy
escapes from
this splatter of skin.

 

 

Contemporary Poetry

book of hours

book_of_hours

This is the book of hours.

It starts
with something
much earlier
than life.

Brighter than
a halo,
shorter than
a sigh.

As you begin
to flip the pages,
there is
something of elements
and monumental drift.

Every letter
glides as a cloud
in exquisite detail.

It is all there,
frail and impermanent,
the stones and
the race.

It is an exercise
of contemplation
within this verse
of sight.

The mother
holding
the pendulum
of her breasts

and the hours
careening by
as dry

leaves
from nowhere.

This is the book of hours.

Contemporary Poetry

earthliness

earthliness_poem_pablo_Saborio

One drop
of
commonplace,
one drop
but completely
silent
within
empty engrossment.

A sole drip
of the mundane,
a trickle,
tingling
through
the minute
sense of being.

One gentle
course of earthliness,
a splash of it,
but soundless
echoing like
wings,
as a
boundless alleluia.

A speck
of prosaic,
a solitary
wandering
mote
concisely panoramic,
wordlessly grasped.

 

Contemporary Poetry

the meaning

the meaning

and this that I
see is not a symbol
but the meaning itself

I see
the world
bloated like a vein,
pushing, thrusting
its contents forward,
violently,
towards a new woven
germination.

It does not stall
nor does it rest
at every corner or turn,
it continues like a flood,
as the blood of phenomena
surges through every vessel
of this quivering world.

There is no pause,
no break in its
wild mutations.

I cannot say that I understand
this upheaval, these eruptions
as the muscle of matter convulses
as the nerve of energy pulsates.

But I see a clump of red push,
the flare spreading from night
towards some illusive perpetuity,
the multitudes of twilights
flickering like feathers and swords
in this horrible clash of sensations.

This I see, not a representation
but bulges of smoke billowing
at the end of a sprouting disaster,
whiteness overflowing with obscurity
darkness softening into a monsoon
that shall cast billions of pearls of light.

 

 

Modern Poetry