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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
it's a dog eat dog world, you taste like chicken's LiveJournal:
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| Sunday, May 6th, 2012 | | 5:44 pm |
Writing Exercise: "....She told no one about the body in the river." ~Joyce Carol Oates "Husband and Wife" from THE POISONED KISS start here and end before you start ripping off Richard Siken again. | | 4:58 pm |
| | Monday, April 30th, 2012 | | 2:14 pm |
napowrimo anthology day 30
Negro Hero
to suggest Dorie Miller
I had to kick their law into their teeth in order to save them.
However I have heard that sometimes you have to deal
Devilishly with drowning men in order to swim them to shore.
Or they will haul themselves and you to the trash and the fish
beneath.
(When I think of this, I do not worry about a few
Chipped teeth.)
It is good I gave glory, it is good I put gold on their name.
Or there would have been spikes in the afterward hands.
But let us speak only of my success and the pictures in the
Caucasian dailies
As well as the Negro weeklies. For I am a gem.
(They are not concerned that it was hardly The Enemy my
fight was against
But them.)
It was a tall time. And of course my blood was
Boiling about in my head and straining and howling and
singing me on.
Of course I was rolled on wheels of my body itch to get at
the gun.
Of course all the delicate rehearsal shots of my childhood
massed in mirage before me.
Of course I was child
And my first swallow of the liquor of battle bleeding black
air dying and demon noise
Made me wild.
It was kinder than that, though, and I showed like a banner
my kindness.
I loved. And a man will guard when he loves.
Their white-gowned democracy was my fair lady.
With her knife lying cold, straight, in the softness of her
sweet-flowing sleeve.
But for the sake of the dear smiling mouth and the stuttered
promise I toyed with my life.
I threw back!—I would not remember
Entirely the knife.
Still—am I good enough to die for them, is my blood bright
enough to be spilled,
Was my constant back-question—are they clear
On this? Or do I intrude even now?
Am I clean enough to kill for them, do they wish me to kill
For them or is my place while death licks his lips and strides
to them
In the galley still?
(In a southern city a white man said
Indeed, I’d rather be dead;
Indeed, I’d rather be shot in the head
Or ridden to waste on the back of a flood
Than saved by the drop of a black man’s blood.)
Naturally, the important thing is, I helped to save them, them
and a part of their democracy.
Even if I had to kick their law into their teeth in order to
do that for them.
And I am feeling well and settled in myself because I believe
it was a good job,
Despite this possible horror: that they might prefer the
Preservation of their law in all its sick dignity and their
knives
To the continuation of their creed
And their lives.
~Gwendolyn Brooks
Selected Poems
Harper & Row pretty sure that the indentations are because the lines were longer than the margins of the book could accommodate, but I like them, so I'm keepin' 'em! | | 2:11 pm |
napowrimo anthology day 29
Hair of the Dog
When he realized he could cause dreams, he started with his horse. Run, he said, and the horse stomped and pawed in its sleep. Fly, he said, and it twitched and shook.
This must be how God discovered himself. Then cry, he commanded his sleeping wife. She spilled out of the joints in her lids. Drown. She coughed, sputtered, head from side to side.
How power can stop accumulating, he could not be sure. All he could do was gather his breath, assume his role, do what I’m meant to do. So he clapped his hands and flakes of stone and clay turned to rain from his palms.
He made them dream death and penance, made them tie it around their wrists like balloons. I’ll teach them consequences. Then his life started to revolve around checking to make sure everyone was breathing.
And the story began, though he was mysteriously absent when it ended, hat in hand, standing on the mountain, looking down as if in shame at what he had done, at his wife and horse in the dirt.
~Kristin Abraham
Rattle (www.rattle.com)
issue #28, Winter 2007 | | 2:09 pm |
napowrimo anthology day 28
Nurse’s Song
When the voices of children are heard on the green
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast
And everything else is still
Then come home my children, the sun is gone down
And the dews of night arise
Come come leave off play, and let us away
Till morning appears in the skies
No no let us play, for it is yet day
And we cannot go to sleep
Besides in the sky, the little birds fly
And the hills are all covered with sheep
Well well go & play till the light fades away
And then go home to bed
The little ones leaped & shouted & laugh’d
And all the hills echoed
NURSES Song
When the voices of children, are heard on the green
And whisprings are in the dale:
The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind,
My face turns green and pale.
Then come home my children, the sun is gone down
And the dews of night arise
Your spring & your day, are wasted in play
And your winter and night in disguise.
~William Blake
Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Oxford University Press
| | 2:08 pm |
napowrimo anthology day 27
Skin Like Brick Dust
In bed, your back curved
to answer the heat of my holding
& Harlem was barely awake below us
when a half-broken building
gave in. First, a few loose bricks,
then decades crashed to the street
just as a bus pulled up. Passengers,
choking on dust, rushed
to escape the wrecked weight
of someone else’s memory.
Two blocks beyond gravity,
I pressed into you, into you & away
from all the breaking. I didn’t know
your name, so I kissed one
into your mouth. Told myself
he is my body but you
were already on your way
out into the sirens.
~Saeed Jones
therumpus.net/2012/04/national-poetry-month-day-18-skin-like-brick-dust-by-saeed-jones/ | | Thursday, April 26th, 2012 | | 12:06 pm |
napowrimo anthology day 26
The Other Penelope
Penelope emerges from the olive trees
her hair more or less tidy
her dress from the neighborhood market
navy blue with white flowers.
She tells us it wasn’t obsession
with the idea of “Odysseus”
that pressed her to let the suitors
wait for years in the forecourts
of her body’s secret habits.
There in the island’s palace –
with the fake horizons
of a saccharine love
and only the bird in the window
comprehending the infinite –
she had painted with nature’s colors
the portrait of love.
Seated, one leg crossed over the other,
holding a cup of coffee
up early, a little grumpy, smiling a little
he emerges warm from the down of sleep.
His shadow on the wall:
trace of a piece of furniture just taken away
blood of an ancient murder
a single performance of Karagiozi
on the screen, pain always behind him.
Love and pain indivisible
like the pail and the child
on the sandy beach
the ah! and a crystal glass that slipped from one’s hand
the green fly and the slaughtered animal
the soil and the shovel
the naked body and the single sheet in July.
And Penelope who now hears
the evocative music of fear
the cymbals of resignation
the sweet song of a quiet day
without sudden changes of weather and tone
the complex chords
of an infinite gratitude
for what did not happen, was not said, cannot be uttered
she signals no, no, no more loving
no more words and whispers
caresses and bites
small cries in the darkness
scent of flesh that burns in the light.
Pain was the most exquisite suitor
and she slammed the door on him.
~Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke
A Century of Greek Poetry
translated by Edmund Keeley and Mary Keeley | | 1:30 am |
napowrimo anthology day 25
So Thick?
[Freud, presented with a copy of Wilhelm Reich’s new book
The Function of the Orgasm, is said to have remarked “So thick?”]
As thieves, as clotted cream, molasses poured in March,
or dullards duly quizzed, as thin’s mate in
the marriage vow, or black fly hoverings
upon Katahdin, ketchup in the kitchen’s
bottleneck, or traffic’s slow red ooze
on I-5 every dusk, as musk
in the mind of an elephant,
or malice in the minds of men,
this treatise on the uses
of the human love-cramp
isn’t surely anywhere as thick.
But what’s the use of use, at this
imponderable juncture? Just
how practical are practices? Is poetry
poetic? And to what high end
the spondee’s spasm? If the seizure leaves us
sobered up, we’re lucky. Lucky
(after the humpback’s beached) to have a bath
of modest aftermath, a tristesse to
redress the tryst! We’re lucky to escape
the clutch of Sophocles’ “furious master” (feeling’s fist),
for the rest of the evening. A breather from breathing!
If the world for a merciful while be spared our craving,
or if spilling brine by brimful can
(for only the blink of an animal eye)
undo a few of our meaning’s demeaning,
our siring’s desiring, and give us one
pure moment’s peace, I’d say the fucking
function’s clear. One fewer war for now!
(Meanwhile, in the wombs
engorged with worm,
the drumroll starts
its endless again.
They’ll come from some
deep months away,
the humped-up little beating forms of men…)
~Heather McHugh
The Father of Predicaments
Wesleyan University Press | | 1:25 am |
napowrimo anthology day 24
Cassandra’s speech (lines 424-470)
That servant is a vile thing. Oh, how can heralds keep
their name of honor? Lackeys for despots be they, or
lackeys to the people, all men must despise them still.
You tell me that my mother must be slave in the house
of Odysseus? Where are all Apollo’s promises
uttered to me, to my own ears, that Hecuba
should die in Troy? Odysseus I will curse no more,
poor wretch, who little dreams of what he must go through
when he will think Troy’s pain and mine were golden grace
beside his own luck. Ten years he spent here, and ten
more years will follow before he at last comes home, forlorn
after the terror of the rock and the thin strait,
Charybdis; and the mountain striding Cyclops, who eats
men’s flesh; the Ligyan witch who changes men to swine,
Circe; the wreck of all his ships on the salt sea,
the lotus passion, the sacred oxen of the Sun
slaughtered, and dead flesh moaning into speech, to make
Odysseus listening shiver. Cut the story short:
he will go down to the water of death, and return alive
to reach home and the thousand sorrows waiting there.
Why must I transfix each of Odysseus’ labors one by one?
Lead the way quick to the house of death where I shall take my mate.
Lord of all the sons of Danaus, haughty in your mind of pride,
not by day, but evil in the evil night you shall find your grave
when I lie corpse-cold and naked next to my husband’s sepulcher,
piled in the ditch for animals to rip and feed on, beaten by
streaming storms of winter, I who Apollo’s sacraments.
Garlands of the god I loved so well, the spirit’s dress of pride,
leave me, as I leave those festivals where once I was so gay.
See, I tear your adornments from my skin not yet defiled by touch,
throw them to the running winds to scatter, O lord of prophecy,
Where is this general’s ship, then? Lead me where I must set my feet on board.
Wait the wind of favor in the sails; yet when the ship goes out
from this shore, she carries one of the three Furies in my shape.
Land of my ancestors, good-bye; O Mother, weep no more for me.
You beneath the ground, my brothers, Priam, father of us all,
I will be with you soon and come triumphant to the dead below,
leaving behind me, wrecked, the house of Atreus, which destroyed our house.
~Euripides
The Trojan Women
Lattimore Translation
University of Chicago Press | | 1:21 am |
napowrimo anthology day 23
14 The Otter’s Ransom
“This tale begins with my father, who was named Hreidmar, a great and wealthy man. One of his sons was named Fafnir, another Otr, and I was the third, the least accomplished and the least honored. I knew how to work iron as well as silver and gold, and from everything I could make something useful. My brother Otr had a different occupation and nature. He was a great fisherman and surpassed other men in this skill. He had the likeness of an otter during the day and was always in the river bringing up fish in his mouth. He brought his catch to his father and thus greatly helped him. He was in many ways like an otter. He came home late and ate alone with his eyes shut, because he could not stand seeing his food diminish. Fafnir was by far the largest and the fiercest of the sons, and he wanted to call everything his own.
“There was a dwarf named Andvari,” said Regin. “He was always in the waterfall called Andvari’s Fall. He was in the shape of a pike and caught food there for himself, for there were many fish in the falls. My brother Otr used to go into the waterfall and bring up fish in his mouth, laying them one by one on the bank. Odin, Loki, and Hœnir were traveling and came to Andvari’s Fall. Otr had caught a salmon and was eating it, half dozing on the riverbank. Loki took a stone and struck the otter to death. The Æsir considered themselves fortunate in their catch and skinned the otter.
“That evening they came to Hreidmar’s and showed him the catch. Then we seized them, imposing as their fine and ransom that they must fill the skin with gold and cover the outside with red gold. They sent Loki to obtain the gold. He went to Ran and got her net. Next he went to Andvari’s Fall and cast the net out for the pike, and it leapt into the net. Then Loki said,
2. Which is the fish
That runs through the flood,
And knows not to guard himself from danger?
Your head,
Ransom it from Hel
And find me the fire of the well.
3. Andvari is my name,
Odin was my father,
Many a falls have I fared over.
A wretched Norn
Destined in ancient days
That I should wade in water.
“Loki saw Andvari’s gold. And when Andvari had handed over the gold he kept one ring back. But Loki took it from him. The dwarf went into the rock and said that the gold ring would be the death of whoever owned it, and the same applied to all the gold.
“The Æsir delivered the riches to Hreidmar, stuffed the otter skin, and set it on its feet. Then they had to pile up the gold next to it and cover the outside. And when that was done, Hreidmar came forward and saw one whisker and demanded that it be covered. Then Odin drew the ring, Andvaranaut, from his hand and covered the hair. Then Loki said,
4. With gold you are now paid
And as payment you have
Much for my head.
No ease
Is assigned to your son;
Death it is to you both.
“Afterward Fafnir killed his father,” continued Regin, “and it was murder since he hid the body. I obtained none of the treasure. Fafnir became so ill-natured that he set out for the wilds and allowed no one to enjoy the treasure but himself. He has since become the most evil serpent and lies now upon his hoard. Afterward I traveled to the king and became his smith. And this is the story of how I lost the legacy of my father and compensation for my brother. Gold has since then been called Otter’s Ransom and is spoken of as such.”
Sigurd answered: “You have lost much, and your kinsmen have been vile.”
~from The Saga of the Volsungs: The Norse Epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer
Intro and Translation by Jesse L. Byock
University of California Press | | 1:16 am |
napowrimo anthology day 22
The Maim’d Debauchee
[The meter of this poem appears to be a parody of that in Sir William Davenant’s romantic epic Gondibert (1651).
The text is that of the Huntington Library copy of the 1680 edition, with variants from the 1691 edition.]
AS some brave Admiral, in former War,
Depriv’d of force, but prest with courage still;
Two Rival-Fleets, appearing from a far,
Crawles to the top of an adjacent Hill.
From whence (with thoughts full of concern) he views
The wise, and daring Conduct of the fight,
And each bold Action, to his Mind renews,
His present glory, and his past delight.
From his fierce Eyes, flashes of rage he throws,
As from black Clouds, when Lightning breaks away,
Transported, thinks himself amidst his Foes,
And absent, yet enjoys the Bloody Day.
So when my Days of impotence approach,
And I’m by Pox, and Wines unlucky chance,
Drov’n from the pleasing Billows of debauch,
On the dull Shore of lazy temperance.
My pains at last some respite shall afford,
Whilst I behold the Battails you maintain,
When Fleets of Glasses Sail about the Board,
From whose Broad-sides Volleys of Wit shall rain.
Nor shall the sight of Honourable Scars,
Which my too forward Valour did procure,
Frighten new Listed Souldiers from the Wars,
Past joys have more than paid what I endure.
Shou’d some brave Youth (worth being drunk) prove nice,
And from his fair Inviter meanly shrink,
‘Twou’d please the Ghost of my departed Vice,
If at my Councel, He repent and drink.
Or shou’d some cold complexion’d Sot forbid,
With his dull Morals, our Nights brisk Alarmes,
I’ll fire his Blood by telling what I did,
When I was strong, and able to bear Armes.
I’ll tell of Whores Attacqu’d, their Lords at home,
Bawds Quarters beaten up, and Fortress won,
Windows demolish, Watches overcome,
And handsome ills, by my contrivance done.
Nor shall our Love-fits Cloris be forgot,
When each the well-look’d Link-Boy, strove t’ enjoy
And the best Kiss, was the deciding Lot,
Whether the Boy us’d you, or I the Boy.
With Tales like these, I will such heat inspire,
As to important mischief shall incline.
I’ll make them long some Ancient Church to fire,
And fear no lewdness the’re called to by Wine.
Thus States-man-like, I’ll sawcily impose,
And safe from danger Valiantly advise,
Shelter’d in impotence, urge you to blows,
And being good for nothing else, be wise.
~John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester
Eighteenth Century English Literature
eds. Tillotson, Fussell & Waingrow
Hartcourt Brace Jovanovich | | 1:09 am |
napowrimo anthology day 21
Sonnet 18
Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,
When beauty liv’d and died as flowers do now,
Before these bastard signs of fair were born,
Or durst inhabit on a living brow;
Before the golden tresses of the dead,
The right of sepulchers, were shorn away,
To live a second life on second head,
Ere beauty’s dead fleece made another gay.
In him those holy antique hours are seen,
Without all ornament, itself and true,
Making no summer of another’s green,
Robbing no old to dress his beauty new;
And him as for a map doth Nature store,
To show false Art what beauty was of yore.
~William Shakespeare
The Sonnets of William Shakespeare
Cotman House | | Friday, April 20th, 2012 | | 11:46 am |
napowrimo anthology day 20
Laugharne Off and on, up and down, high and dry, man and boy, I’ve been living now for fifteen years, or centuries, in the timeless, beautiful, barmy (both spellings) town, in this far, forgetful, important place of herons, cormorants (known here as billy duckers), castle, churchyard, gulls, ghosts, geese, feuds, scares, scandals, cherry trees, mysteries, jackdaws in the chimneys, bats in the belfry, skeletons in the cupboards, pubs, mud, cockles, flatfish, curlews, rain, and human, often all too human, beings; and, though still very much a foreigner, I am hardly ever stoned in the streets any more, and can claim to be able to call several of the inhabitants, and a few of the herons, by their Christian names. Now, some people live in Laugharne because they were born in Laugharne and saw no good reason to move; others migrated here, for a number of curious reasons, from places as distant and improbable as Tonypandy or even England, and have now been absorbed by the natives; some entered the town in the dark and immediately disappeared, and can sometimes be heard, on hushed black nights, making noises in ruined houses, or perhaps it is the white owls breathing close together, like ghosts in bed; others have almost certainly come here to escape the international police, or their wives; and there are those, too, who still do not know, and will never know, why they are here at all: you can see them, any day of the week, slowly, dopily, wandering up and down the streets like Welsh opium-eaters, half-asleep in a heavy bewildered daze. And some, like myself, just came, one day, for the day, and never left; got off the bus, and forgot to get on again. Whatever the reason, if any, for our being here, in this timeless, mild, beguiling island of a town with its seven public houses, one chapel in action, one church, one factory, two billiard tables, one St. Bernard (without brandy), one policeman, three rivers, a visiting sea, one Rolls-Royce selling fish and chips, one cannon (cast-iron), one chancellor (flesh and blood), one portreeve, one Danny Raye, and a multitude of mixed birds, here we just are, and there is nowhere like it anywhere at all. But when you say, in a nearby village or town, that you come from this unique, this waylaying, old, lost Laugharne where some people start to retire before they start to work and where longish journeys, of a few hundred yards, are often undertaken only on bicycles, then, oh! the wary edging away, the whispers and whimpers, and nudges, the swift removal of portable objects: “Let’s get away while the going is good,” you hear. “Laugharne’s where they quarrel with boat hooks.” “All the women there’s got webfeet.” “Mind out for the Evil Eye!” “Never go there at the full moon!” They are only envious. They envy Laugharne its minding of its own, strange, business; its sane disregard for haste; its generous acceptance of the follies of others, having so many, ripe and piping, of its own; its insular, feather-bed air; its philosophy of “It will all be the same in a hundred years’ time.” They deplore its right to be, in their eyes, so wrong, and to enjoy it so much as well. And, through envy and indignation, they label and libel it a legendary lazy little black-magical bedlam by the sea. And is it? Of course not, I hope. (1953)
~Dylan Thomas
Quite Early One Morning
New Directions it seems that "Laugharne" is code for "How great Austin was 5 years ago...blah...blah...blah..." | | Thursday, April 19th, 2012 | | 3:15 pm |
napowrimo anthology day 19
Memorial I
In a time of mock funerals and
pagan prayers for the living,
your death was real.
When there is nothing to mourn but
the future, how can we go on
laying wreaths at your feet?
You spoke of love; but the World
Collective, the collective word
would never understand. You spoke of love,
O, the hole in the breath
like a blessed egg, stillborn
with blood in its eye. You were a winter fury
cursing the lovers
your cold
drove together for warmth… Pity
the dead telephone
whispering in your ear
stories of others; and the sun
trying to enter through your frosted window
gave only a bright cold,
a vivid shield of hell.
After you died
they lied about your beauty;
the sun melted everything into the sea.
And they will go on casting your bones
relentlessly, in the wines of many thanksgivings,
until the living find your dying words.
~David Wevill
Firebreak
St. Martin’s
in relation to the tone of this one, a joke to my cousin Lovdy from her 5 year old Evelyn:
evelyn "what do you get when you have love in your heart?"
lovdy "i don't know. what?"
evelyn "a skeleton in your heart and you will never love again."</i> | | Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 | | 12:55 pm |
ah, ef it. I'll re-format it later. | | 11:55 am |
napowrimo anthology day 18
Hell pages 14-16
Something is wrong in the house.
Something has been, is, and always will be wrong in the house, though at first glance you’d never guess.
The mother is in the kitchen, the Parcheesi “man” she sometimes uses as a potato masher clamped under her arm since her fingers won’t bend. On the white stove a copper frying pan and in it three split peas; on the white kitchen table three slightly-smaller-than-tabletop-sized pewter plates, a plaster milk bottle, a plastic ketchup bottle, a Venetian blown-glass tumbler (the only one left from the original set of six). In the dining room the father is propped so stiffly in his chair that his eyes are trained on the ceiling, even though there’s a newspaper waiting to be read on the table, its single headline (HAZEL HITS PHILLY! EVERYONE DEAD!) eye-catching to say the least. One daughter is taking a bath fully clad (her red-and-yellow-checked dress sewed to her torso) with her thumbnail-sized porcelain dolly. The other is in the rosebud-papered night nursery, lying in her trundle bed reading as per usual, the book’s deep blue cover (black twisted tree, yellow moon, yellow-and-black clouds) glued to a single disappointing block of wood.
And then just when you think it will go on like this forever there’s a flicker of orange in the upstairs bathroom. Somebody falls off the edge of the world and lands far far below in what might be mistaken for a boat of some kind but is really a fur-trimmed moccasin. Momentarily everything is so bright it’s as if color and dimension no longer exist; there’s a loud crack, followed by a plunge into eerie midday darkness.
The living room sofa (minus cushion) is on the second floor balcony, the father in the broom closet, the broom and dustpan on the coffee table, the gilt-framed mirror in the third-floor bathroom, the dog-in-a-basket on the roof between the two chimneys. There’s a giant soup spoon on the floor, its bowl face up in the hall blocking the door to the broom closet, its stem extending through the doorway and into the living room. It’s easily twice the size of the girl who is lying on the floor right next to it; no one seems to know how or when it got there. In the yellow-tiled kitchen the butler is reaching his handless arm toward the mother lying spread-eagle atop the table.
The storm has come on so fast no one is prepared; the lights go out.
Sergeant-Major Morris is at the door with you-know-what in his pocket…
Stop it you’re scaring me.
Baby.
I’m telling.
Yeah sure.
Another flash, another crack but louder, different, the sound of something actually being torn asunder. The phone rings, an antic fraction of a ring, meaning it’s the storm calling. The storm hopes you’ll pick up the phone so it can zap you through the wires.
Girls! Girls! Your mother wants you in the cellar.
In the basement we can barely stand to look at one another. The Sterno stove has been hauled out of the carton where, normally, it is stored with other emergency items: the bedpan, the salmon poacher, the vaporizer. And while there isn’t any fuel, there are plenty of canned goods, though chiefly the ones no one wanted upstairs (Campell’s Scotch Broth, for instance, which Henny claims smells like human sweat). No chairs either and the floor’s too damp to sit on. Maybe this is the first time we’ve all been in the basement together: usually we come separately, my father to hammer or saw, my mother to hang laundry, my sister to play dolls, the dachshund to pee in the corner behind the laundry sink when the weather is inclement.
The whole house shakes. The giant picks it up and shakes it. This is a family given to the idea of apocalypse, some of us because we know we deserve to be punished, others because it suggests a convenient way out.
~Kathryn Davis
Hell
Back Bay | | Tuesday, April 17th, 2012 | | 1:24 pm |
| | 1:22 pm |
| | 1:18 pm |
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