Zombie

Zombie - Hadara Bar-Nadav

A zombie is a head
with a hole in it.

Layers of plastic,
putty, and crust.

The mindless
must be sated.

Mottled men who will
always return

          mouthing wet                          
          promises.                                  

You rise already
harmed and follow

          my sad circle

as if dancing
on shattered legs.

Shoeless, toeless,
such tender absences.

You come to me
ripped

          in linens and reds,

eternal, autumnal
with rust and wonder.

My servant, sublimate
and I am yours

(the hot death
we would give each other).

My dark ardor,
my dark augur.

Love to the very open-
mouthed end.

We are made of
so much hunger.

Black Cat

Are you superstitious of black cats? ?


Black Cat - Rainer Maria Rilke

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:

just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.

She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once

as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.

Ghosts

It's Halloween soon, which means some spooky poetry is called for!




Unbidden - Rae Armantrout

The ghost swarm.
They speak as one 
person. Each
loves you. Each
has left something
undone. 

*

Did the palo verde
blush yellow
all at once?

Today's edges
are so sharp

they might cut
anything that moved. 

*

They way a lost 
word

will come back
unbidden.

You're not interested
in it now,

only 
in knowing
where it's been.

Lamps

The nights are drawing in...


Lamps - Mary Oliver

Eight o’clock, no later
You light the lamps,

The big one by the large window,
The small one on your desk.

They are not to see by—
It’s still twilight out over the sand,

The scrub oaks and cranberries.
Even the small birds have not settled

For sleep yet, out of the reach
Of prowling foxes. No,

You light the lamps because
You are alone in your small house

And the wicks sputtering gold
Are like two visitors with good stories

They will tell slowly, in soft voices,
While the air outside turns quietly

A grainy and luminous blue.
You wish it would never change—

But of course the darkness keeps
Its appointment. Each evening,

An inscrutable presence, it has the final word
Outside every door.

Monday

What better way to start the week than with Billy Collins? 


Monday - Billy Collins

The birds are in their trees,
the toast is in the toaster,
and the poets are at their windows.

They are at their windows
in every section of the tangerine of earth-
the Chinese poets looking up at the moon,
the American poets gazing out
at the pink and blue ribbons of sunrise.

The clerks are at their desks,
the miners are down in their mines,
and the poets are looking out their windows
maybe with a cigarette, a cup of tea,
and maybe a flannel shirt or bathrobe is involved.

The proofreaders are playing the ping-pong
game of proofreading,
glancing back and forth from page to page,
the chefs are dicing celery and potatoes,
and the poets are at their windows
because it is their job for which
they are paid nothing every Friday afternoon.

Which window it hardly seems to matter
though many have a favorite,
for there is always something to see-
a bird grasping a thin branch,
the headlight of a taxi rounding a corner,
those two boys in wool caps angling across the street.

The fishermen bob in their boats,
the linemen climb their round poles,
the barbers wait by their mirrors and chairs,
and the poets continue to stare at the cracked birdbath or a limb knocked down by the wind.

By now, it should go without saying
that what the oven is to the baker
and the berry-stained blouse to the dry cleaner,
so the window is to the poet.

Just think-
before the invention of the window,
the poets would have had to put on a jacket
and a winter hat to go outside
or remain indoors with only a wall to stare at.

And when I say a wall,
I do not mean a wall with striped wallpaper
and a sketch of a cow in a frame.

I mean a cold wall of fieldstones,
the wall of the medieval sonnet,
the original woman's heart of stone,
the stone caught in the throat of her poet-lover.

Moon Landing

This day 50 years ago history was made when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Archibald MacLeish was the poet tasked with writing a poem for the occasion for the next day's New York Times. No easy feat!

Here it is:

Voyage to the Moon - Archibald MacLeish

Presence among us,
wanderer in the skies,

dazzle of silver in our leaves and on our
waters silver,

O

silver evasion in our farthest thought–
“the visiting moon” . . . “the glimpses of the moon” . . .

and we have touched you!

From the first of time,
before the first of time, before the
first men tasted time, we thought of you.
You were a wonder to us, unattainable,
a longing past the reach of longing,
a light beyond our light, our lives–perhaps
a meaning to us…

Now

our hands have touched you in your depth of night.

Three days and three nights we journeyed,
steered by farthest stars, climbed outward,
crossed the invisible tide-rip where the floating dust
falls one way or the other in the void between,
followed that other down, encountered
cold, faced death–unfathomable emptiness . . .

Then, the fourth day evening, we descended,
made fast, set foot at dawn upon your beaches,
sifted between our fingers your cold sand.

We stand here in the dusk, the cold, the silence . . .

and here, as at the first of time, we lift our heads.
Over us, more beautiful than the moon, a
moon, a wonder to us, unattainable,
a longing past the reach of longing,
a light beyond our light, our lives–perhaps
a meaning to us . . .

O, a meaning!

over us on these silent beaches the bright earth,

presence among us.

Summer Solstice

Happy Summer Solstice! The Sun - Mary Oliver Have you ever seen

anything

in your life

more wonderful

than the way the sun,

every evening,

relaxed and easy,

floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,

or the rumpled sea,

and is gone--

and how it slides again

out of the blackness,

every morning,

on the other side of the world,

like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,

say, on a morning in early summer,

at its perfect imperial distance--

and have you ever felt for anything

such wild love--

do you think there is anywhere, in any language,

a word billowing enough

for the pleasure

that fills you,

as the sun

reaches out,

as it warms you

as you stand there,

empty-handed--

or have you too

turned from this world--

or have you too

gone crazy

for power,

for things?

Consolation

In memory of Paul, 4 years on x







Consolation - Robert Louis Stevenson




Though he, that ever kind and true,


Kept stoutly step by step with you,


Your whole long, gusty lifetime through,


    Be gone a while before,


Be now a moment gone before,


Yet, doubt not, soon the seasons shall restore


    Your friend to you.




He has but turned the corner — still


He pushes on with right good will,


Through mire and marsh, by heugh and hill,


    That self-same arduous way —


That self-same upland, hopeful way,


That you and he through many a doubtful day


    Attempted still.




He is not dead, this friend — not dead,


But in the path we mortals tread


Got some few, trifling steps ahead


    And nearer to the end;


So that you too, once past the bend,


Shall meet again, as face to face, this friend


    You fancy dead.




Push gaily on, strong heart! The while


You travel forward mile by mile,


He loiters with a backward smile


    Till you can overtake,


And strains his eyes to search his wake,


Or whistling, as he sees you through the brake,


    Waits on a stile.