Richard Siken | Dirty Valentine

In barlight alchemized: gold pate, the bellmouth
tenor, liquor trapped in a glass. The e-flat
clarinet chases time, strings shudder,
remembering the hundred tongues. Here comes old
snakeshine, scrolls stored in the well, here comes
the sobbing chazzan. O my lucky uncle,
you’ve escaped the Czar’s army. Thunder
is sweet. Here comes the boink, boink bossa
nova slant of light. Snow-dollars
dissolve on a satin tongue. The river
swells green, concrete trembles, and we
sweat, leaning toward mikes and wires
as the last tune burns down to embers. Ash-
whispers. We were born before we were born.

Joan Larkin | The Combo

The liar lives in fear of losing control. She cannot even desire a relationship without manipulation, since to be vulnerable to another person means for her the loss of control.

[…]

This is why the effort to speak honestly is so important. Lies are usually attempts to make everything simpler—for the liar—than it really is or ought to be.

In lying to others we end up lying to ourselves. We deny the importance of an event, or a person, and thus deprive ourselves of a part of our lives. Or we use one piece of the past or present to screen out another. Thus we lose faith even with our own lives.

The unconscious wants truth, as the body does. The complexity and fecundity of dreams come from the complexity and fecundity of the unconscious struggling to fulfill that desire. The complexity and fecundity of poetry come from the same struggle.

[…]

The liar is afraid.

But we are all afraid: without fear we become manic, hubristic, self-destructive. What is this particular fear that possesses the liar?

She is afraid that her own truths are not good enough. She is afraid, not so much of prison guards or bosses, but of something unnamed within her.

The liar fears the void.

[…]

The liar may resist confrontation, denying that she lied. Or she may use other language: forgetfulness, privacy, the protection of someone else. Or, she may bravely declare herself a coward. This allows her to go on lying, since that is what cowards do. She does not say, I was afraid, since this would open the question of other ways of handling her fear. It would open the question of what is actually feared.

She may say, I didn’t want to cause pain. What she really did not want is to have to deal with the other’s pain. The lie is a short-cut through another’s personality.

[…]

It isn’t that to have an honorable relationship with you, I have to understand everything, or tell you everything at once, or that I can know, beforehand, everything I need to tell you.

It means that most of the time I am eager, longing for the possibility of telling you. That these possibilities may seem frightening, but not destructive, to me. That I feel strong enough to hear your tentative and groping words. That we both know we are trying, all the time, to extend the possibilities of truth between us.

The possibility of life between us.

Adrienne Rich | from “Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying”

I must keep from breaking into the story by force
for if I do I will find myself with a war club in my hand
and the smoke of grief staggering toward the sun,
your nation dead beside you.

I keep walking away though it has been an eternity
and from each drop of blood
springs up sons and daughters, trees,
a mountain of sorrows, of songs.

I tell you this from the dusk of a small city in the north
not far from the birthplace of cars and industry.
Geese are returning to mate and crocuses have
broken through the frozen earth.

Soon they will come for me and I will make my stand
before the jury of destiny. Yes, I will answer in the clatter
of the new world, I have broken my addiction to war
and desire. Yes, I will reply, I have buried the dead

and made songs of the blood, the marrow.

Joy Harjo | “Equinox” (from How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975-2001)

XLVI.
Lord, goes the prayer, increase my bewilderment,
which really means allow me to question
everything, but not be lost within that
stance to the small flowers of common sense
in season. Increase, Lord, my discontent.

XLVII.
But keep me from resentment. Reason as well
has its season, although we don’t believe it,
or put too much faith in it. It’s true that
one and one, on occasion, is three or more.
And the middle way is often mystical.

XLVIII.
Lord, goes the prayer, keep me from delusion.
Which really means allow my mind to open
to all that comes my way, without bringing
ruin upon me—through fusion of things that are
distinct at heart. Keep me from conclusion.

XLIX.
While the case is being made. And the world
is all that is the case. Keep me from too much
seclusion. Increase my confusion with
Thee, it says. But is that in fact another
matter, I wondered, as the dervishes whirled?

L.
And may my love and language lead me into
that perplexity, and that simplicity,
altering what I might otherwise be.
But let it happen through speech’s clarity—
as normal magic, which certain words renew.

Peter Cole | from “Notes on Bewilderment”

(Source: books.google.com)

because there are seven kinds of loneliness
the receptionist keeps a basket of candy
by her desk. I keep my hair long
out of some poorly sublimated need

for tangible accomplishment. on Tuesdays,
the local crackhead calls me Miss America.
most afternoons, the jobless gather in pockets

to shout compliments to each other across Sheridan.
it sounds a great deal like seagulls calling
other seagulls over the lake, or more
accurately, around the raw ascending buildings

where they screech directions, one
to the other, headed for water that is not
the river, past the bridge and the Picasso,

over the heads of the unlisteners, headphones
tucked into our ear-beds, and this is the first
loneliness. in the dream, I pull away slowly,
and you stand there, very still. when I turn

the corner, you are still there, and the next,
still there in the rearview, then it’s not a car at all
but a movie, you’re in an airport in San

Francisco, on an ex-lover’s couch
in Seattle, it’s unseasonably cold
for October, even for Chicago.
there’s too much room on the mattress

and your shoes sit panting in the closet.
what do I know about loneliness.
you’re on your way home to me

and a kitchen where the overhead light
sighs into a dim, the spoons tuck
their worn faces away. it’s best
to argue in person, so you can see

where to aim the knives. this is the third.
I don’t know what I would name a child. four.
across the train, a grown man memorizes the pattern

of a girl’s school uniform skirt. a shirt button
is about to come undone. he leans forward
in his seat, our traincar a compression chamber
draining. five, somebody says, you have

to show up early if you want to get
the chocolate. I want to name this
something other than sorrow, tell you

I have a bird behind each knee. one
is always in a panic. the other, most often
asleep. I wish I could tell you that I know
what I’m doing. was I ever a woman

who could shave her head without flinching?
I was. this is the sixth. we have time
for mistakes. the men on the street orbit

the employment office in a set rotation
visible to none of them. what loneliness
is left? you have the most beautiful face.

Marty McConnell | the fidelity of disagreement

(via speakthesewords)

(Source: martyoutloud.com)

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Tom Waits | Hoist that Rag

We stick our fingers in the ground
Heave and turn the world around
Smoke is blacking out the sun
At night I pray and clean my gun
The cracked bell rings as the ghost bird sings
The gods go beggin here
So just open fire as you hit the shore
All is fair in love and war

(via burnjoyfully)

(Source: anti.com)

William S. Burroughs | The Thanksgiving Prayer

(via BoingBoing)

The first etymology given by the OED suggests that religion comes from the Latin root religare, “to tie or bind together,” and thus religion shares its origin with the English words ligature and ligament. Augustine recognized this usage. This derivation suggests that religion somehow binds our lives together in a meaningful way, just as our ligaments hold our bones together and allow them to function. Without our ligaments, our bones would be rather randomly organized. With them, our bones work together effectively. In this sense, religion should “re-ligament” us.

Gary Eberle | from Dangerous Words: Talking about God in the Age of Fundamentalism

Fanny Howe | from “Bewilderment” (The Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and Life)

7 p.m.

Rumour was loose in the air,
hunting for some neck to land on.
I was milking the cow,
the barn door open to the sunset.

I didn’t feel the aimed word hit
and go on in like a soft bullet.
I didn’t feel the smashed flesh
closing over it like water
over a thrown stone.

I was hanged for living alone,
for having blue eyes and a sunburned skin,
tattered skirts, few buttons,
a weedy farm in my own name,
and a surefire cure for warts.

Oh yes, and breasts,
and a sweet pear hidden in my body.
Whenever there’s talk of demons
these come in handy.

Read More

John Ashbery | The History of My Life (from Your Name Here, 2000)

The National | Lemonworld (May 25, 2010, Los Angeles)

Lay me on the table, put flowers in my mouth
And we can say that we invented a summer lovin’ torture party

ná fan rófhada liom
mura dtagaim sa samhradh bán
uaireanta meallan an fharraige mé

ar an mbóthar fada chugat
níl inti ach mo dheora féin

slánaigh do chroí
ná habair gur thréigeas thú
abair gur bádh mé

/

don’t hold out too long
if I don’t come in sweet summer
sometimes the sea has her way with me

on the long road to you
she is swollen with my tears

salvage your heart
never say I left you
say I drowned

Michael Davitt | Chugat (To You), 1981, translated by the author

(via babybirch)

(Source: books.google.com)

On the one hand we have a political notion of love as “love of the same,” which functions as a kind of racism, a kind of nationalism, etc., and it does involve love it seems to me. It’s important to think of it that way. But, it’s horrible. It’s “love gone bad,” let’s say. Whereas, we can think of using that as a caution or a warning: a political notion of love that is not only open to difference—like not only a kind of tolerance, but a love that loves the stranger, a love that functions through the play of differences, rather than the insistence on the same. There’s a second criterion one might add to that. As you can tell … this is something I’m still in the process of figuring out, so one gets partial formulation of this. It seems to me there’s also a horrible form of “love gone bad,” in which love is thought of as a merging into one. We get this in Hollywood romances and in romantic poetry, which is when two become one in love. It seems to me to be a horrible idea—both at the level of personal relationships, but also politically. I think rather love has to be thought of as a proliferation of differences, not the destruction of differences. Not merging into unity, but a constructing of constellations among differences, among social differences.

Michael Hardt | interviewed by Leonard Schwartz (Interval(le)s 2.2-3.1, 2008/2009)

(Source: cipa.ulg.ac.be)