postmodern poetry

delicate delusions

delicate_delusions_poem_pablo_Saborio_2018

 

Man
climbs
the scaffold
leaving the arc
of his head pressed
against the blue horizon.
The world pulls calmly his hairs
until clouds are wet winds of white distance.
The hand organizing, playing the music of meaning
in strong steps, structures of size, rooms the shape of moons.
The man sleeps with the night tightly wrapped around his naked arch.
The street was pixelated with the yellows, crimsons and cadmiums
of thin leaves that clung like things leaving their mother’s veins.
The mouth took in the morning and the air snoozed a minute
before it rose, a wisp of paper infinitely exiting the world.
The day held its edge lightly above the lake
where swans wrote delicate delusions
on the waters’ smoke; the clouds
glitched, errors on the screen
once the eye caught serpent
moves on the silk that was
almost as blue as the sky,
the lake, the eye
all being
one.

Inside the screech of an owl

three contemporary postmodernist poems

Three poems published (buried) at The Screech Owl.

Poems titled:

  • The Postmodernist
  • Four.
  • Hardly a time for poetry.

—

THE POSTMODERNIST
exploits
the game of reason
to escape the predicament of truth,
s/he operates the machinery
of logic
only to jam it
with its self-generated contradictions.

The new literati
are not avoiding the difficulties
of meaning,
they are stirring the flame
that will one day consume
the substance of our values.

The postmodern human
does not rise above the ideology of symbolic interpretation
and gladly participates
in the confusion of verbs and vituperations
aimed against the metaphysically-drained
ambiguity of the world’s narrative.

The certainty of facts is no longer
the underlying foundation of knowledge; rather,
the elusiveness of truth
is what impels us to disclose
what lies
just beyond the grasp of language.

—

Four.

Is it ridiculous
to open the door,
and expect the world
to dissipate
like the isolation of a cloud.

Is it worth
inventing a concept
where sadness is all
puckered and arguably
thick as a shadow.

Is it futile
to attribute to movement
an arm that ends
in the grasp of decay.

Is it strange
to find in this image
manifold flames
slowly wounding the eyes. \

—

Hardly a time for poetry.

I have tried to avoid
negating the
exaggerated passions
of the poets.

There is a colossal amount of desire.
And any contradiction
of the size of the sky
is often no more than the obscured
simplicity of a pebble in your hand.

I have been sympathetic
while successfully demystifying
the emptiness that gathers in pools
inside the poetry of the modern.

Some time ago
when the edifice of silence
merged with the horizon of knowledge,
many placed the value of paradise
in the service of an absurd rage.

I suppose that the reason
we expose our insights in the light
of years is only to remember
the minute cave of their origin.

After we have transcribed
the entire system of our impulses into monuments of smoke,
we can then go on and specify
how many illegible dreams transcended
the ordinary realm of the image.

The question as to the real significance
of the rapid decay of our art
does not bother me so much now
as the hopeless need to lose oneself
in the numinous stage of the ineffable.

migrations

poetry_of_swans

How they got into thought

– the swans –

nobody knew

how they would echo through logic

like a kite in the wind

and

like little girls

they would comb their feathers

with infinite time on their hands

– these swans–

had a sense of mission

but they are complex

creatures with sin as a stain

on their coats of snow,

who knows if they’ll go back

to the nervous quivers of the pond;

for now, they’re stuck

like a satellite

to the cusp of an hour

and I’m embarrassed

to admit

that I stare at them

all the time

as they sleep between

the chunks         of words.

 

 

Contemporary Poetry

Tripartite

postmodern_poem_2013

Hello.
Anybody here?
Heylooo?

A priest
and a prostitute
enter a bar.

They come up to the counter.
The bartender: what canna getcha?

The hooker smiles,
same as yesterday, Sam.

The priest, swollen
and sweating smiles,
I’ll have a dark century, Sam.

The clouds moved through
my notebook, anxious
as snails along rugged time.

Someone?
Anybody?

The prostitute shows
the sweetness of her blackberry nipples.
$15 a boob job.

Alfred white as a number says, OK.

I drew a whole city in my notebook
and
in one corner
I built a home
yellow with a mountain of beauty
inside the living room.

Knock, knock.

Alfred was gratified, the stars
trembling in his dark glassy pupils.

That’s $15, she said.

Half the pages are torn out,
theoretical mistakes I say;
but the bulk of my notebook
has black markings

like the shadows of birds
in a mile of snow.

Contemporary Poetry

us

postmodern_poem

They told me to squeeze
structure
into home
and open windows
to air out essence
see I have been obedient
shedding coats of laughter
like films of light over
a miracle of corner,
and this thing
consciousness is hanging
like dust

in the atmosphere
but we’ve
made arrangements

and passion is hard
like furniture,

mahogany and steel
like dream and real

together bound
in braid

somewhere near
the end of this

and the world
tiny pretty thing

climbs into the air
like a moth

to disappear
over the object
and become invisible
like the rest of

us.

Contemporary Poetry

Memory has become an uncomfortable lump in my consciousness.

poetry_of_memory

It quivers
constantly and endlessly
ripens into new peculiar
shapes.

Needless to say
it increases weight
every minute,
often requiring immense
exertion to fit it in a corner
so it does not overshadow
the timid appearance of
the present.

It branches out
like a gluttonous tree
in all directions,
wavering disparate aspects
of itself without logic
or internal organization.

A primeval adolescent kiss,
a manure fight in the fields,
a quote from Montaigne
the location of masking tape
in a storage room, all mingle
shamelessly like an orgy
of bacteria in the Petri dish
of my mind.

Language is forced to perform
extreme feats of lucidity
to convey the peculiar manifestations
with which memory
fuddles the intellect.

I imagine a day
when consciousness of the present
will be completely drowned
by the swelling tsunami of memory,
leaving the brittle instant of now
floating like débris
on a flood of lifelong reminiscence.

 

Contemporary Poetry

BASED ON

bukowski_burning_in_Water_drowning_in_flame

‘in the madhouse a man kisses the walls

and dreams of sailboating down some

cool Nile’

I have this book open at page 93.

I don’t know why.

It could have been another page

even another book.

if it belongs here

IN YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS (you fool)

should you consider

finding a knife

and begin carving the letters

of the thing of tomorrow

on that table in front of you

we are all arms around the world

and we share the flesh

and it’s going to be hard to explain

why bukowski decided to write

‘the dark is empty;

most of our heroes have been

wrong’

it is opposite of the page: part II

of his book Burning in Water

Drowning in Flame

was he dissatisfied with the idols

that humanity has been able to cough up so far

was he frustrated with the incomplete answers

that savants have left after more than

2500 years

we are left in the dark

as to the reason he decided to title

part 3 of that book:

At Terror Street
and Agony Way

imagine writing

‘it was a splendid way in Spring

and outside we could hear the birds

that hadn’t been killed

by the smog’

as a subtitle to your third chapter

was he implying

that it’s a miracle

that the morning is not stained

with our mumbling

that the evening is not polluted

with our parades

 

the last page

the last three lines

state unequivocally

I will never understand men

but I have lived

it through

 

AND I UNDERSTAND HIM

BECAUSE HE NOW SLEEPS

LIKE PLASMA IN A

CLOUD OF  MEMORY.

ANTIPoetry

A noun is a thing that serves as a vehicle for the quality of its adjective

2013_poem

In the sky
whiteness
travels like a passenger
inside the cloud
I have seen it journey
across the blue
until it reaches the golden
arc of horizon
where it suffers
through a whim of fate
a mutation
from pure whiteness
to the brightness
of the gold;
but abruptly
as a bullet
entering a vein of blood
the vehicle cloud
turns red
in the throb or throe of twilight
and whiteness dies like a sigh
in the expanding gloom
of purple tinge.

 

 

Contemporary Poetry

They

were sitting on the ledge of a building
talking about the pursuit of happiness,
how every human action is motivated
by self-love and trying to reconcile
morality with a mechanistic view
of a universe, everywhere ruled
and determined by inflexible laws
the talk went on for some time
they would interject a few modern expressions
to avoid falling into a complete anachronistic conversation
reminiscent of the 18th century philosophes
then the one on the right said,
– What if we jump?
– there’d be a fall
– yeah, and then what?
– who knows
– do you think there’s consciousness after death?
– as much as you can find in the drunk man’s sleep
– should we jump? what stops us from finding out?
– fear, our loved ones, the desire to seek new experiences and store them in the insatiable coffins of memory. But mostly fear.
– if you could have anything in the world before you die, what would it be?
– another lifetime to figure that out
– do you often think of death?
– on rare special occasions, like funerals and that kind of thing
– do you find any consolation in the thought of death?
– yeah in the thought that death dissolves all suffering with the same intensity as life withheld happiness from the individual
– I’m going to jump
– I’ll take the stairs

He did not jump but was he really considering it? They decided to go home. As they walked together over the bridge they both noticed the sea was restless that day.

 

21st_century_poetry_blog

21st century Poetry

a bibliography

poetry_of_death

People breathe. Struggle. Write.
Talk. Read. Write. Publish.
Die.

While most will never even
know his name.

And will die as well.

Poetry: main collections
1966: Death of a Naturalist, Faber & Faber
1969: Door into the Dark, Faber & Faber
1972: Wintering Out, Faber & Faber
1975: Stations, Ulsterman
1975: North, Faber & Faber
1979: Field Work, Faber & Faber
1984: Station Island, Faber & Faber
1987: The Haw Lantern, Faber & Faber
1991: Seeing Things, Faber & Faber
1996: The Spirit Level, Faber & Faber
2001: Electric Light, Faber & Faber
2006: District and Circle, Faber & Faber
2010: Human Chain, Faber & Faber

Poetry: collected editions

1980: Selected Poems 1965-1975, Faber & Faber
1990: New Selected Poems 1966-1987, Faber & Faber
1998: Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996, Faber & Faber

Prose: main collections
1980: Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968–1978, Faber & Faber
1988: The Government of the Tongue, Faber & Faber
1995: The Redress of Poetry: Oxford Lectures, Faber & Faber
2002: Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971–2001, Faber & Faber

Plays
1990: The Cure at Troy A version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, Field Day
2004: The Burial at Thebes A version of Sophocles’ Antigone, Faber & Faber

Translations
1983: Sweeney Astray: A version from the Irish, Field Day
1992: Sweeney’s Flight (with Rachel Giese, photographer), Faber & Faber
1993: The Midnight Verdict: Translations from the Irish of Brian Merriman and from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, Gallery Press
1995: Laments, a cycle of Polish Renaissance elegies by Jan Kochanowski, translated with Stanisław Barańczak, Faber & Faber
1999: Beowulf, Faber & Faber
1999: Diary of One Who Vanished, a song cycle by Leoš Janáček of poems by Ozef Kalda, Faber & Faber
2002: Hallaig, Sorley MacLean Trust
2002: Arion, a poem by Alexander Pushkin, translated from the Russian, with a note by Olga Carlisle, Arion Press
2004: The Testament of Cresseid, Enitharmon Press
2004: Columcille The Scribe, The Royal Irish Academy
2009: The Testament of Cresseid & Seven Fables, Faber & Faber

Limited editions and booklets (poetry and prose)
1965: Eleven Poems, Queen’s University
1968: The Island People, BBC
1968: Room to Rhyme, Arts Council N.I.
1969: A Lough Neagh Sequence, Phoenix
1970: Night Drive, Gilbertson
1970: A Boy Driving His Father to Confession, Sceptre Press
1973: Explorations, BBC
1975: Stations, Ulsterman Publications
1975: Bog Poems, Rainbow Press
1975: The Fire i’ the Flint, Oxford University Press
1976: Four Poems, Crannog Press
1977: Glanmore Sonnets, Editions Monika Beck
1977: In Their Element, Arts Council N.I.
1978: Robert Lowell: A Memorial Address and an Elegy, Faber & Faber
1978: The Makings of a Music, University of Liverpool
1978: After Summer, Gallery Press
1979: Hedge School, Janus Press
1979: Ugolino, Carpenter Press
1979: Gravities, Charlotte Press
1979: A Family Album, Byron Press
1980: Toome, National College of Art and Design
1981: Sweeney Praises the Trees, Henry Pearson
1982: A Personal Selection, Ulster Museum
1982: Poems and a Memoir, Limited Editions Club
1983: An Open Letter, Field Day
1983: Among Schoolchildren, Queen’s University
1984: Verses for a Fordham Commencement, Nadja Press
1984: Hailstones, Gallery Press
1985: From the Republic of Conscience, Amnesty International
1985: Place and Displacement, Dove Cottage
1985: Towards a Collaboration, Arts Council N.I.
1986: Clearances, Cornamona Press
1988: Readings in Contemporary Poetry, DIA Art Foundation
1988: The Sounds of Rain, Emory University
1989: An Upstairs Outlook, Linen Hall Library
1989: The Place of Writing, Emory University
1990: The Tree Clock, Linen Hall Library
1991: Squarings, Hieroglyph Editions
1992: Dylan the Durable, Bennington College
1992: The Gravel Walks, Lenoir Rhyne College
1992: The Golden Bough, Bonnefant Press
1993: Keeping Going, Bow and Arrow Press
1993: Joy or Night, University of Swansea
1994: Extending the Alphabet, Memorial University of Newfoundland
1994: Speranza in Reading, University of Tasmania
1995: Oscar Wilde Dedication, Westminster Abbey
1995: Charles Montgomery Monteith, All Souls College
1995: Crediting Poetry: The Nobel Lecture, Gallery Press
1997: Poet to Blacksmith, Pim Witteveen
1998: Commencement Address, UNC Chapel Hill
1998: Audenesque, Maeght
1999: The Light of the Leaves, Bonnefant Press
2001: Something to Write Home About, Flying Fox
2002: Hope and History, Rhodes University
2002: Ecologues in Extremis, Royal Irish Academy
2002: A Keen for the Coins, Lenoir Rhyne College
2003: Squarings, Arion Press
2003: Singing School / Poems 1966 – 2002, Rudomino, Moscow
2004: Anything can Happen, Town House Publishers
2005: The Door Stands Open, Irish Writers Centre
2005: A Shiver, Clutag Press
2007: The Riverbank Field, Gallery Press
2008: Articulations, Royal Irish Academy
2008: One on a Side, Robert Frost Foundation
2009: Spelling It Out, Gallery Press
2010: “Writer & Righter”, Irish Human Rights Commission

 

 

21st century Poetry