“there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock. people so tired mutilated either by love or no love. people just are not good to each other one on one. the rich are not good to the rich the poor are not good to the poor. we are afraid." Charles Bukowski
Enjoy this month of appalling transformations in the larger stores? Actually far less hectic and draining than Christmas. From the standpoint that you only have to waste selecting time and money on buying candy, and maybe the kids or grandkids could use the same costumes from last year (along with recycled decorations). And unless you're an extension of the Addams Family or the Munsters, probably no visiting relatives/guests and "feast at home" get-togethers. Of course, the best deal is if your country doesn't participate in Halloween. But then you don't have anything to offset or contrast to December dread. (We won't mar the situation additionally with the varying international aspects of generic Thanksgiving that might contingently apply, since some of those create a double whammy of co-occurring in October or are outside the year-closing, tri-month pile-up hell zone via being as early as August.) - - - - - - - - - - - - October Portents Cece I may have seen the Grim Wife once In a tall grass glade where the grey cat hunts. Why she grieves so long after loss Spans beyond my ken, too cryptic to cross. Some hedge a boding widow's task With warming solace from a drinking flask. Trust they have in such spirits known. But not those exhumed, oh not those wind blown. I may have heard the Grim Wife thrice At a late hour when the owl spots mice. She's not hopeful like scrying seers. Folk bury their eyes, they smother their ears. If only wailing could relate Whatever she gleans from the forge of fate. Is it yours or is it mine or A far tragedy, on another shore? I may have felt the Grim Wife's hand In early shivers from the autumn land. Distant clouds were gravid with rain When old rites took two, both man and son slain. Fostered by a lingering dread. It's the wool local storytellers spread. None dear lost at an ancient well? Just a faded woe, no legend to quell. I may have breathed the Grim Wife's prayer In the scented speech of the eldritch air. Wafting from where the moonlight played On dark lake ripples, as a red dog bayed. _
A Rhyme for Halloween BY MAURICE KILWEIN GUEVARA Tonight I light the candles of my eyes in the lee And swing down this branch full of red leaves. Yellow moon, skull and spine of the hare, Arrow me to town on the neck of the air. I hear the undertaker make love in the heather; The candy maker, poor fellow, is under the weather. Skunk, moose, raccoon, they go to the doors in threes With a torch in their hands or pleas: "O, please . . ." Baruch Spinoza and the butcher are drunk: One is the tail and one is the trunk Of a beast who dances in circles for beer And doesn't think twice to learn how to steer. Our clock is blind, our clock is dumb. Its hands are broken, its fingers numb. No time for the martyr of our fair town Who wasn't a witch because she could drown. Now the dogs of the cemetery are starting to bark At the vision of her, bobbing up through the dark. When she opens her mouth to gasp for air, A moth flies out and lands in her hair. The apples are thumping, winter is coming. The lips of the pumpkin soon will be humming. By the caw of the crow on the first of the year, Something will die, something appear.
Theme in Yellow BY CARL SANDBURG "I spot the hills With yellow balls in autumn. I light the prairie cornfields Orange and tawny gold clusters And I am called pumpkins. On the last of October When dusk is fallen Children join hands And circle round me Singing ghost songs And love to the harvest moon; I am a jack-o'-lantern With terrible teeth And the children know I am fooling."
“won't you celebrate with me what i have shaped into a kind of life? i had no model. born in babylon both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself? i made it up here on this bridge between starshine and clay, my one hand holding tight my other hand; come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed.” ― Lucille Clifton
"Want the change. Be inspired by the flame where everything shines as it disappears. The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much as the curve of the body as it turns away. What locks itself in sameness has congealed. Is it safer to be gray and numb? What turns hard becomes rigid and is easily shattered. Pour yourself out like a fountain. Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins. Every happiness is the child of a separation it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming a laurel, dares you to become the wind." Rainer Marie Rilke, from Sonnet to Orpheus II, 12
"I wanted to destroy this entire contemporary mess I'm caught in, the social lies, the motherfucking so-called civilization which seems to lack the freedom we all crow about so goddam much, the idiot middle-class I'm trapped in by the fact that my art is ignored, as all contemporary art is ig- nored until it is no longer contemporary, until it is old and respectable and safe." ~William Wantling
Ghost BY CYNTHIA HUNTINGTON "At first you didn’t know me. I was a shape moving rapidly, nervous at the edge of your vision. A flat, high voice, dark slash of hair across my cheekbone. I made myself present, though never distinct. Things I said that he repeated, a tone you could hear, but never trace, in his voice. Silence—followed by talk of other things. When you would sit at your desk, I would creep near you like a question. A thought would scurry across the front of your mind. I’d be there, ducking out of sight. You must have felt me watching you, my small eyes fixed on your face, the smile you wondered at, on the lips only. The voice on the phone, quick and full of business. All that you saw and heard and could not find the center of, those days growing into years, growing inside of you, out of reach, now with you forever, in your house, in your garden, in corridors of dream where I finally tell you my name."
Yeah, a few hours early, but Halloween will soon be defunct. Time to move ahead to the event after Thanksgiving. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Black Friday (November tidings) Cece Quickly, quickly, pass through that day. Comfort not those sickly, nor falter for the stray. Will the old gods intervene when the victims' pyres are lit? Will the halls be red or green when the poised marauders quit? Boldly, boldly, defend the gate! Sunrise glowers coldly at the masses who wait. Survival is a beacon after tawny beasts flood in. Only saints left uneaten shall enjoy the final sin. Harken, harken, our times are cursed. If the gentry bargain and hill tribes plunder first. Let brash mortals buy and trade as fey halflings stock the shelves. Let their paladins parade as new victors preen themselves. Hasten, hasten, reach high retreats! The mad throng will chasten stragglers lost in the streets. Eschew fabled jubilees, and be deaf to frantic howls of pale wretches on their knees, when the Devil drains his bowels! _
AUTUMNAL "Pale amber sunlight falls across The reddening October trees, That hardly sway before a breeze As soft as summer: summer's loss Seems little, dear! on days like these. Let misty autumn be our part! The twilight of the year is sweet: Where shadow and the darkness meet Our love, a twilight of the heart Eludes a little time's deceit. Are we not better and at home In dreamful Autumn, we who deem No harvest joy is worth a dream? A little while and night shall come, A little while, then, let us dream. Beyond the pearled horizons lie Winter and night: awaiting these We garner this poor hour of ease, Until love turn from us and die Beneath the drear November trees.” ― Ernest Dowson, The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson
I Grant You Refuge by Hiba Abu Nada¹ (trans. Huda Fakhreddine), 10 October 2023 1. I grant you refuge in invocation and prayer. I bless the neighborhood and the minaret to guard them from the rocket from the moment it is a general's command until it becomes a raid. I grant you and the little ones refuge, the little ones who change the rocket's course before it lands with their smiles. 2. I grant you and the little ones refuge, the little ones now asleep like chicks in a nest. They don't walk in their sleep toward dreams. They know death lurks outside the house. Their mothers' tears are now doves following them, trailing behind every coffin. 3. I grant the father refuge, the little ones' father who holds the house upright when it tilts after the bombs. He implores the moment of death: "Have mercy. Spare me a little while. For their sake, I've learned to love my life. Grant them a death as beautiful as they are." 4. I grant you refuge from hurt and death, refuge in the glory of our siege, here in the belly of the whale. Our streets exalt God with every bomb. They pray for the mosques and the houses. And every time the bombing begins in the North, our supplications rise in the South. 5. I grant you refuge from hurt and suffering. With words of sacred scripture I shield the oranges from the sting of phosphorous and the shades of cloud from the smog. I grant you refuge in knowing that the dust will clear, and they who fell in love and died together will one day laugh. [Protean↱]____________________ Notes: ¹ Hiba Abu Nada died in an airstrike on 20 October 2023, ten days after penning these verses.
This may seem prudish, but I’m somewhat fine with swearing in songs, just not poetry. Otherwise, I enjoyed this poem. Swearing to me belongs in Netflix series about mafia bosses or something. lol It seems like a lazy way to express one’s self, like the author is going for shock value or whatever. It’s not shocking at all though, because the “technique” is so overused. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I have no problem with anyone using profanity, either in writing or speech.To me it's just another form of communication, often expressing anger and desperation. To each their own I guess.
I agree that our traditional "vulgar vocabulary" has now become pretty much corny and kaput. The only language that has potent shock value in our era is speech violations and thought-crimes related to social justice. I mean, the efwerd still isn't at the level of "heck" or "darn", but it is sliding toward that neighborhood. Even if one regards "vulgar vocabulary" as a significant part of the everyday jargon of some hipster and Ulster Scot (redneck) descended subcultures, that likewise means it has been rendered trite or common. But counterculture poetry from the '50s. '60s. and '70s (as well as literature in general) was coming out of a period of heavy censorship (of the traditional ilk). So working with obscenity back then (like in the Beat movement onward) was an experimental novelty, and it did generate psychological, rebellious, disorienting, and sometimes surreal effects for those vintage readers (including outrage). This particular poem is from that era, so it can be retrospectively "valued" or "excused" in terms of that historical setting. But if written today it would certainly be nothing new (operating within a spirit or template already introduced in the past). Even the Marxist-like ranting against Western civilization and the middle class (bourgeoisie) was older than the hills back then. Given the imprisonment, substance addictions, and military background of its author, it's also arguably using some kind of "confessional writing" approach similar to what Plath adopted from 1960 onward, that reflected "personal, private material". While she managed to navigate that territory without delivering the poetry equivalent of the taboo hand grenades that, say, William S, Burroughs released in his unrestricted prose... It's a style that nevertheless even today is going to be prone at times to drop something that would have been disturbing to the Old Establishment (but which has long since been replaced -- the original counterculture having hybridized with it). _
I got used to "shocking words" reading Ginsburg, Burroughs, Bukowski, and O'Hara. I actually like it. It lends a sort of everyday grittiness and rawness to the prose..
A Supermarket in California Launch Audio in a New Window BY ALLEN GINSBERG "What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations! What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons? I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys. I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel? I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective. We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier. Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight? (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.) Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely. Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage? Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?" Berkeley, 1955
Probably helped that drafts of Beat poetry were often rendered verbally in front of small audiences, before they ever wound up being published. Hearing how such was meant to be elocuted by the authors themselves, and that traveling about, maybe aided the ultimate editor in deciding that what looked like prose really did qualify as a poem. Of course, some of the stuff outputted literally was performance poetry. But Ginsberg usually wrote his material down first, even if he did recite it early before crowds. There wasn't improvisation thrown in, which is a key aspect of the other. If only Roger Corman had done it first... - - - - - - - - - - - 1965
Jack Keorouac reading several of his poems, Steve Allen playing piano in the background. 1959 record album release. link --> Jack Kerouac & Steve Allen ~ Poetry For The Beat Generation 1 October In The Railroad Earth 7:09 2 Deadbelly 1:05 3 Charlie Parker 3:45 4 The Sounds Of The Universe Coming In My Window 3:17 5 One Mother 0:49 6 Goofing At The Table 1:45 7 Bowery Blues 3:56 8 Abraham 1:17 9 Dave Brubeck 0:31 10 I Had A Slouch Hat Too One Time 6:12 11 The Wheel Of The Quivering Meat Conception 1:55 12 McDougal Street Blues 3:23 13 The Moon Her Majesty 1:36 14 I'd Rather Be Thin Than Famous
