Showing posts with label poems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poems. Show all posts

Monday, November 7, 2011

Ernst Fuchs... Vision... 1953



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previous Fuchs

A vision

I lost the love of heaven above,
I spurned the lust of earth below,
I felt the sweets of fancied love
And hell itself my only foe.

I lost earth's joys but felt the glow
Of heaven's flame abound in me
Till loveliness and I did grow
The bard of immortality.

I loved but woman fell away
I hid me from her faded fame,
I snatched the sun's eternal ray
And wrote till earth was but a name

In every language upon earth,
On every shore, o'er every sea,
I give my name immortal birth
And kept my spirit with the free.

John Clare
(1793 - 1864)



Sunday, November 6, 2011

Edgar Allan Poe poem... Dolorosa pen & ink sketch...



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pen and ink sketch Dolorosa


A Dream Within A Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow--
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?



Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Maman Brigitte ... Jessica Grote, poem & Claude Saintilius, art.



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Maman Brigitte by Claude Saintilius



~~ Our Lady of the Cemetery: Maman Brigitte ~~

The Face of Death

Ruby-red drops of blood mix with the white flour. The strong
alcohol is still burning in her throat. Passion overcomes her,a
yearning, a desperate physical hunger, spreading her legs wide
open, shivering through her body. She wants to embrace...the
Dead. 
Fixing her gaze on the purple candle, raising it high
above her head, she whispers... Maman... Ma mere... An irresistable
urge has her pouring the purple wax over her body
while calling out to HER...
You are walking down the long and sparely lit hallway.
Following a noise, a whisper, the distant echo of MY voice.
It is cold, you are alone and yet you know we are all around -
waiting for you.
Treading on the path of the unknown, you feel fear, my child,
I know.
Be brave, go ahead, follow MY call, open that door.
I am over here, standing below the willow on that old cemetery
Yes, it is music coming out of this crypt. Have a look, go inside,
you will see strange rites but also merry dancing and laughter.
Dance with the Dead, my child! Dance with my children!
Do not take yourself too serious!
I am the Mother of the Dead and we are everywhere. In fact
everyone is a walking Dead.
So why not laugh in the face of Death?

by Jessica Grote ~October 2010 excerpt from Atua



Sunday, October 16, 2011

Robert Taylor... Pen & Ink drawings and Poem...





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Rose ~ pen and ink


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Sri Yantra for the Kali Yuga ~ Pen and Ink
 
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Flower of  Freya ~ Pen and Ink


The Pointillist

In the gathering indigo of evening
at the twilight of the day,
as ghosts of blue smoke be rising
from chimeys red and grey,

an ink-besmeared drawing board,
testament to lonely nights
of labor-intense endeavors
where his patient work is wrought.

The small key rolls the tumblers
of an oiled, aged lock
that opens the door to stillness.
He feels for the light switch
to vanquish the dark.

Alchemist of the stipple-pen
in his black kitchen of art,
pursuing the endless journey
from ink to pen to dot.

His hair now streaked with silver,
Myopia dims his sight.
His years in dots are measured,
subtracting from his life...


more wonders here at the Red Salon



Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Gerrit van Honthorst.... Saint Sebastian... c1623



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The Love Song of St. Sebastian

T. S. Eliot

I would come in a shirt of hair
I would come with a lamp in the night
And sit at the foot of your stair;
I would flog myself until I bled,
And after hour on hour of prayer
And torture and delight
Until my blood should ring the lamp
And glisten in the light;
I should arise your neophyte
And then put out the light
To follow where you lead,
To follow where your feet are white
In the darkness toward your bed
And where your gown is white
And against your gown your braided hair.
Then you would take me in
Because I was hideous in your sight
You would take me in without shame
Because I should be dead
And when the morning came
Between your breasts should lie my head.
I would come with a towel in my hand
And bend your head beneath my knees;
Your earls curl back in a certain way
Like no one’s else in all the world.
When all the world shall melt in the sun,
Melt or freeze,
I shall remember how your ears were curled.
I should for a moment linger
And follow the curve with my finger
And your head beneath my knees---
I think that at last you would understand.
There would be nothing more to say.
You would love me because I should have strangled you
And because of my infamy;
And I should love you the more because I mangled you
And because you were no longer beautiful
To anyone but me.

1914




Saturday, August 13, 2011

Shuji Terayama... Collage & Haiku poem...



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while an ant
toiled from the dahlia
to the ash tray
I was forming
a beautiful lie



more here > UBUWEB






Thursday, August 11, 2011

Felicien Rops & Victor Neuburg... erotic print. & poem excerpt...



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L'Amante du Christ, 1888 ~ Felicien Rops


Sweet wizard, in whose footsteps I have trod
Unto the shrine of the most obscene god, and
Let me once more feel thy strong hand to be
Making the magic signs upon me! Stand,
Stand in the light, and let mine eyes drink in
The glorious vision of the death of sin!


from 'The Romance of Olivia Vane' Victor Neuburg.









Monday, February 14, 2011

Edward Estlin Cummings...poem & drawings...



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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 so quite new


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previous posts EE CUMMINGS



Saturday, February 5, 2011

Edmond Jabès ... poem...



From "Groundless,"
by Edmond Jabès (b. Cairo, 1912–d. Paris, 1991)

Translated by Keith Waldrop


I

No-man's-land, obsessed page

A dwelling-place is a long insomnia
in the hooded trails of a mine.

My days are days of roots,
love's yoke extolled.

The sky is always to cross and
foreground to be bed with new nights.

I form, in my weeds,
a wedge in the wall's opaque brightness.

The earth is steeped in
empty dreams of travel.

VI

Land beyond night, which the sun wrenches from
meditation, from the thorns of doubt.

Flowers parade their artful candor. The stems
emulate grand adventures in space.

Honey flows between stones
which this cement will join.

VII

Around the branches, the world mimes its hunger.
So many cries for a tree, fragrant god to
plant, to bend by a magic round. . .

My secrets are orchards.
There is no trick to the mystery.

* with thanks to Ruairi



Sunday, January 16, 2011

Paul Holman... poem... 3






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3


 She had been earthed
( had i earthed
her by my intrusion? )
eyes no longer turned

upon phenomena I
could not locate.
She considered me a 
plunderer, a facund man,
a madman: one who
scries alphabets
of daggers, of arrows.
Zigzagged tights in a

knot in her pocket,
the tip of each
hair luminous a fox-
fire or rotten wood,

she opened the violet
gate at her throat
to release the fractal
silhouette of Pan.



Published in a wonderful collection of esoteric poetry and essays > Datura by Scarlet Imprint 
previous POEMS
 
PAUL HOLMAN is the author of The Fabulist (1991) and The Memory of the Drift (2000). He was co-editor of Invisible Books in the 1990s.




Friday, January 14, 2011

Harry Crosby... Sun Testament....





SUN-TESTAMENT

(For W.V.R.B.)

I, The Sun, Lord of the Sky, sojourning in the Land of Sky, being of sound mind and memory, do hereby make, publish and declare the following to be my Last Will and Testament, hereby revoking all other wills, codicils and testamentary dispositions by me at any time heretofore made.

First, I hereby direct and elect that my estate shall be administered and my will construed and regulated and the validity and effect of the testamentary dispositions herein contained determined by the laws of the Sky.

Second, I give and bequeath absolutely to my wife, the Moon, four octrillion centuries of sun-rays, this legacy to have priority over all other legacies and bequests and to be free from any and all legacy, inheritance, transfer, successions, taxes or duties whatsoever, said taxes or duties to be borne by my estate.

Third, I give and bequeathe the sum of one million centuries of sun-rays net free from any and all legacy, inheritance, transfer, succession, taxes or duties whatsoever, said taxes or duties to be borne by my estate, to my Executors, to be used for the erecting of an Obelisk to the Sun.

Fourth, I give and bequeathe to my beloved wife the Moon my assortment of sunstones, my sun-yacht that for many aeons has navigated the sea of clouds, together with my collection of butterflies which are the souls of women caught in my golden web and my collection of red arrows which are the souls of men caught in my golden web.

Fifth, I give and bequeathe to my sons and daughters the stars, my mirror the ocean and my caravan of mountains.

Sixth, I give and bequeathe to Aurora Goddess of the Dawn a sunrise trumpet and a girdle of clouds.

Seventh, I give and bequeathe to the planet Venus all my eruptive prominences whether in spikes or jets or sheafs and volutes in honor of her all-too-few transits.

Eighth, I give and bequeathe to Lady Vesuvius a sunbonnet, a palace of clouds and the heart she once hurled up to me.

Ninth, I give and bequeathe to the Sun-Goddess Rat the Lady of Heliopolis and a garden of sunflowers.

Tenth, I give and bequeathe to Icarus a sunshade and a word of introduction to the Moon.

Eleventh, I give and bequeathe to Horus (Egyptian Hor) the falcon-headed solar divinity a thousand sun-hawks from my aviary to be mummified in his honor.

Twelfth, I give and bequeathe to Amenophus IV of Egypt my golden gourd that his thirst for me may be assuaged.

Thirteenth, I give and bequeathe to Renofer, High Priest of the Sun, my shares in Electric Horizens and Corona Preferred.

Fourteenth, I give and bequeathe to Louis XIV of France, Le Roi Soleil, my gold peruke.

Fifteenth, I give and bequeathe to Arthur Rimbaud a red sunsail.

Sixteenth, I give and bequeathe to my charioteer Phaeton my chariot of the sun and my chariot-horses Erythous Acteon Lampos Philogeus.

Seventeenth, I give and bequeathe to each of the Virgins of the Sun in Peru, to each and every citizen of Heliopolis, to the Teotitmocars of Mexico who built the giant pyramid to the Sun, to each and every of the Incas, to the Hyperboreans dwellers in the land of perpetual sunshine and great fertility beyond the north wind, my halo, rainbows and mirages, to the Surya-bans and the Chandra-bans of India to each a sunthought and to my lowly subject the Earth ten centuries of sunrays.

Eighteenth, I give and bequeathe likewise to the Japanese Flag whose center is a Red Sun and to the flags of Persia (the Lion and the Sun) and to the flags of Uruguay and Argentine my fiery flames and furious commotion.

Nineteenth, I give and bequeathe to all the inns, cabarets, bars, taverns, bordels whose ensign is the Sun, pieces of brocaded sunlight.

Twentieth, I give and bequeathe sunbonnets to various high monuments in particular the Eiffel Tower, the Woolworth Building, and to an imaginary tower built by the combined height of the phalluses of men.

Twenty-First, I give and bequeathe to Apollo of Greece a temple of the sun to Osiris of Egypt a temple of the sun to Indra of India a temple of the Sun this legacy is over and above any and all commissions to which they may be entitled as executors.

Twenty-Second, All the rest residue and remainder of my estate of whatsoever kind and nature, wheresoever situated, not specifically given or bequeathed hereinabove, including any and all void or lapsed legacies or bequests, I give, devise and bequeathe to Mithra of the Persians and to Surya of the Hindus, or to the survivor with the request that they establish therewith a fund for Sun-Birds (i.i. poets) to be organized and administered by them in their sole discretion and judgement, this fund to be known as the Sun and Moon Fund for Sun-Birds.

Twenty-Third, I hereby nominate, constitute and appoint Osiris of Egypt Apollo of Greece and Indra of India Executors of this my last will and testament.
In witness thereof, I have herewith set my hand and seal to this holographic will, entirely written and dated and signed by me at my Castle of Clouds this nineteenth day of January nineteen hundred and twenty eight.


Signed : The Sun


Signed, sealed, published and declared by The Sun, the Testator above named as and for his last Will and Testament in the presence of us who at his request and in his presence and in the presence of each other have hereunto subscribed our names as witnesses thereto.
Hu of the Druids
Ptah of the Egyptians
Vitzliputsli of the Mexicans

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Sleeping Together

cry in your sleep and implore
cry autumn’s fire still small
cry as the door to the wind
cry for the touch of the snow upon snow
cry of the things that you fear
cry in the darkness a distant
dream in my ear

(from Sleeping Together, 1929)





previous Harry Crosby



Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Francis Picabia ... Untitled drawing & poem





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Gstaad

The sea pitches endlessly
The role mirrors her pupils
From memory
So mirthful
Swaying of gravity
Expresses a resonance
Of constant desires
I have excuses
And lack strength and courage
influence is a useless thing
She is the most beautiful of the women
On my mind 

previous PICABIA



Saturday, October 30, 2010

Justin Lee Brown (Desiderata)... Of Dreams and Madness ...poem&drawing..




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Of Dreams and Madness


I am one stutter-step away from the rails, too late for a hail mary pass. I've become an intentionless phen-omega-non, tearing it up in a senseless dynamic, tearing it down in the mine fields of mutilated flesh where the bloody stumps of a futile resistance twitch out before the final paralysis. Flex paradoxical, just for the thrill of it. Pussy, pussy, run. Don't you see? In life birds fly where cats can't follow, towards a seemingly unfathomable destiny; climb towards ferocious heights where tender hope and unmolested sky momentarily erupt into the plausible. But not for me, the untouchable one.

In these final days of absurdity I AM the gravitational pull. I am the freedom that must extend, spiraling downward towards the rhizome, the mechanism of molecular, towards the intention itself in spite of all its pointlessness. I seek out the lowest level of libidinal energy rendered down to its quintessence, deconstructed and abstracted to the point of consummate alienation just to see it rise above terrestrial. I am the only conviction of my own contradictions, in the end the solitary breath that I draw from the collective will be drawn in the isolation of a solipsist consciousness. The journey of ages begins and ends with a solitary gasp.

It took me decades to find my voice, recognize it, flesh out my screams against impartial instruments and enigmatic signifiers, my ferocious investment only partially returned before I flipped the switch of void. Still alive and swollen with the genealogy of rage, I come to merge the violence of the self with the rogue cells of sadistic attraction. I AM blood. The native ancestry of a florid massacre. Against whom do we release our suicide? Who's skulls do we crush with rubric truncheons of dereliction? Step to the center and slide right. Five squares and three circles intersect at madness. The schism of imaginary presence augments a glistening archetypal voidness where the clatter of runes speak but leave no trace. I dissolve into this lush unified field of consciousness, an incandescent surreality of disaster, then cathexis, until I am a ruin of my own imagination. The aesthetic revenge of a simple madness comforts me as I descend.

Bathed in quiet rings of latern light, the figurative darkness of cognition divides me until I am scattered, only lonliness remains intact. Pushed along by cool atomic winds while pursued by consumptive assassins with cold enamel eyes, I sing ludicrous ballads while choking on shards of ivory bone. Three obsidian figures from childhood aberrations appear beyond the rumor of distant cries. Their starling smiles encode death and empty me of fractal infinites. Have you come here to dream code with me? How long will you stay before the Machinic explodes? Suddenly I am elsewhere in this discursive amalgam, sequencing dread through involuted time. Its symbolic order expressed through ripples of multilevel perception searing its way through waxy axon terminals, mindflesh, and the endless paroxysmal twitching of my eyeballs. I begin at last to see.

I AM become the manipulations of the paranoiac as I plunge through strata of cosmic drift. I float naked in its ether above Byzantine gardens, through a sudden burst of metallic rose petals quivering like dragonfly wings, float further down across pools of cobalt blue tipped with jade quantum foam. An ensemble of grey stone herrings suddenly take flight, flood my synapse with a cultivated integration of pain. The sound of wingbeats rushing around me, a soft static noise of cruel.

Voltaic penetration as an act of malice invades my dreaming with disquieting dialog of subatomic consciousness trapping me between layers of earth and stratosphere. The smell of seared flesh wraps around me to the point of suffocation. I struggle through emptiness, cryogenic tears pound like hail against my skull. Illumination and exposure bind me. Am I still dreaming? Who has come to judge my emptiness? I say, bring me the sweet enigmatic growl that I can adhere to. I much prefer the sun when obscured by cloud and your mouth when sewn tightly shut.

Justin Lee Brown /aka Desiderata

more poetry featured  in The Plebian Rag  & Clockwise Cat
previous post here

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Man, member, And the holy fluid... Cocteau & Takahashi



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Jean Cocteau from the White book




The God Statue I Love


Your body is made of lily and sex
Piles of strong-smelling, night-illuminating lilies
Upon them your pageboy has spread the ointment of nard
For the lower half of your body you wear a bullfighter's tight
costume
The elegant joints of your big fingers press on the brocaded
arabesques
Beneath the costume, between the two overpowering thighs
Wrapped in highly fragrant clouds
Sleeps a beautiful lion cub, I think
The gentle beast is made of particularly splendid lilies
The suspenders press into your dark chest
The night sky framed by the lions silky hair
Hooked to the chain of stars a medal shines like the moon
One arm, gathering the flow of muscles, like a river
Leisurely hangs towards the center of the earth
The hand grips a whip
The leather lash of the whip snake-coils on the ground
You will suddenly jerk it up and imprint a swift welt on the
air
From the wound brilliant blood will spurt
I will put your standing figure
On the horse's fluffed buttocks, in the shining sky at dawn
On your shoulders
I shall put the wrestler's head as thoughtful as a forest
(I clipped it from the pictures in a sports magazine)


In the name of
Man, member,
And the holy fluid

Amen




poem by
Takahashi Mutsuo



Friday, September 24, 2010

The graphics works of Arthur Boyd (4 Jul 1920–24 Apr 1999) part 2



Arthur Boyd was one of Australia’s most widely respected and prolific artists. He was born in 1920 in Melbourne, Victoria and was part of a dynamic generation of artists and thinkers, which included Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, and Joy Hester. Boyd was brought up in a lively family of practicing artists, with whom he studied and developed his painting and printmaking.
My favourite of his pieces are collaborations with one of my favourite poets fellow Australian Peter Porter, whom he collaborated with on 4 books during 70s and 80s.
Jonah 1973, The Lady and the Unicorn 1975, Mars 1988 and 
Narcissus 1984 ( images shown below)


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Narcissus, Seckers & Warburg London 1984


"But what Arthur & I was trying to do in Narcissus was sort of turn upside & like the rest of us when you look in the water we are turned upside down. that we wanted to produce, of really really how the Natural world doesn't . . . we don't see ourselves in the Natural world. The Natural world, in fact, enters us and becomes ,well, becomes really a kind of life, it has a pilgrimage through us. "
Peter Porter




A wonderful collection of drawings and prints



Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven...poems...





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The Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Dec. 1915


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"Kindly" in a letter to Djuna Barnes undated



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"Ejaculation" undated

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven -wiki

Baroness Elsa > more poems




Friday, August 6, 2010

The Sphinx...Oscar Wilde & Alastair...1920


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Your lovers are not dead, I know;
They will rise up, and hear your voice,
And clash their cymbals, and rejoice,
And run to kiss your mouth, -- and so

Set wings upon your argosies! 



more on the background of this book and other illustrators  > THE SPHINX 


previous Alastair posts L'Anniversaire de L'Infante







Monday, July 19, 2010

Abdellatif Laâbi... poetry



Abdellatif Laâbi: from Fragments of a Forgotten Genesis
Translation from French by Gordon Hadfield & Nancy Hadfield

FRAGMENT 1

In the beginning was the cry
and already discord

Which tore
the marriage of fire

Confused
violation
sordid struggles of separation
and staggering blows of solitude

Sky drew back from fire
water drew back from sky
earth drew back from water
idea drew back from clay
and the form surged
cut in two

One half was retained
the other thrown in the abyss

No one thought of good
or evil

Who could have done otherwise?

It was necessary to pile
embers against embers
to awaken this unshakeable
fire in the eyes

The prey softens and submits
offers its hairy neck
to the belly’s
voracious germination

Everything devours everything
each cunningly takes its turn
the gluttonous sounds of swallowing

Vast was the destruction

The tadpole
in its stagnant pool
could not fathom

If only he had an antenna
with a small lens attached to the end
he could have …
But what would that accomplish?

Destruction
sole witness to destruction


With this indictment the water returns
cloaking the unsavory spectacle


Amplifying the disorder

These purposeless waves

For a lapse in eternity
there was nothing but waves

A wineskin
its contents shaken
as if something begrudged its roots

With somber jaws
the waves cut to the quick
stifling these stammers
mixing and remixing

For which fleeting idea did they seek revenge?

The waves mixed primal decline
excess of matter
meagerness of memory

This upheaval spawns Hybrid
arch menace
cauldron of pure insanity

Hybrid frolicked
proliferated
color is invented
by a simple rustle of light
free from its form
the gaze rises from the offal
mouths adorned
by either a retractable vulva
or an edible penis
Organs mirthfully
exchanged
One even hears snatches
of clear music

Being sculpts Being

Limbless life
examines itself

Like a vital flowering
with a sprig of intelligence
and immediate love

There were only dreaming leaps
in the dance of origins

Body of all bodies
Hybrid
the possible denying the impossible
progress from the horizon to the whole
genesis in love with genesis


But a darkening
from flashes of rage
and a flood of meteorites
What endures great trials
will last
Then the waves ebbed
abandoning the earth
that overturned cauldron
with its bloodless population

Why this confusion?



from the wonderful collection at >

POEMS AND POETICS

 




Saturday, March 6, 2010

Joseph Jengehino...poems and drawing..




a physiology of conversion (collab with Amely Jones)

Gerald slices his thoughts with a citrus knife. Removes the matter.
His fiction is the salt she sucks from open wounds.
Her machinery is too much for him. At night he tears it down.
He likes to watch her mouth sleep.
likes the way it is crooked but still toxic. but silent.
He's afraid of her.
He's afraid of her unobstructed mind and the traps and equations she uses.
He wants to get under her skin
his static can break her. disrupt her.
break the plane of her bones,
break the circuitry of her mind,
give her parachutes to numbness.
Her head is turned, the profile of a bird on a pillowcase.
he touches her throat, a little
Hides his hands
He wants to hold her
in the softest prison,
place a thumb on her eye,
and feel the kaleidoscope's stained and transparent explosions.
The dreams are fueling her mind
maybe he can make her smile when she is like this...
but he won't touch those toxic lips
even with the latex fingers
he envisions her a future huffing oxygen from an apparatus.
sees her body tied to machines
sees the bricks of her mind dissolving
in a place where he can forever watch her mouth sleep




The Broken Neck of the Swan




Joseph Jengehino blog at MYSPACE



Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Paen for Pan...Poem & drawing




Dolorosa

PAEAN FOR PAN

Brashest of the clan
my half-brother Pan is
my pet pandemaniac
my quite incorrigible
my fleet unflappable
His is the pipe of my my panegyric
He pantheizes my natural nature

I feed for my health on
his organic folly
I work out on the exercise of
his indiscretion
He is my undressable beast
He is the wildlife in my bedroom

I take him for
my cohort cavorter
my itch-twitchy goat
my knockout smeller
my randy rumpus
my pantophagous marauder

Him I adore and hump for
Him am crazy to jump with

James Broughton 1981