Tom: “You know it don’t take much intelligence to get yourself into a nailed-up coffin, Laura. But who in hell ever got himself out of one without removing one nail?”
Month: October 2013
second thoughts: Frank D at 33
the voices keep calling you
tormenting what passes for your soul
you know you must be leaving
but hang onto the day
days that run dawn to dusk
in a place you don’t belong
you try to kill that restless feeling
with responsibilities
obligations
with boundaries that bind
these things were tried before
this life you’ve lived before
and though you hear your name spoken
it is not the name you answer to
and there are voices on the wind
impossible to resist
this time there just isn’t much to hold you
and the names
the names you carry
send sorrow through the air
and the weight
the weight fills your lungs
and your mind
your perfect weapon
yearns to go down to the sea
and purify itself
how it works
just remember
it works like this
if they don’t get you first
they get you second
The Unmarried Woman At Mass by Federico Garcia Lorca
Beneath the Moses of the incense,
asleep.
Eyes of bulls were looking at you.
Your rosary was raining.
In that dress of deep silk,
do not move, Virginia.
Give the black melons of your breasts
to the whispers of the mass.
translated by Robert Bly
on books by Ralph Waldo Emerson
“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”
a Chinese proverb
A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.
End by Robert Creeley
End of page,
end of this
company–wee
notebook kept
my mind in hand,
let the world stay
open to me
day after day,
words to say,
things to be.
Clouds by Robert Creeley
The clouds passing over, the
wisps still seeming substantial, as
a kid, as a kid I’d see them up there
in the town I grew up in on the hills
in the fields on the way home then
as now still up there, still up there.
Eugene Ionesco on writing
“Why do people always expect authors to answer questions? I am an author because I want to ask questions. If I had answers I’d be a politician.”
the glasses: for Frank
are gone
you discover that in the morning
on your way to the subway
when the street looks hazier than usual
you remember a street sign
First Avenue
and think
they’re somewhere on First Avenue
you feel slightly woozy
like you did in the shower
when you realized you were still drunk
you know your ex-wife would say
see why I married someone boring
and yeah, you think
yeah I see
and somehow, some way
the day will end
and you’ll go home
to sleep like the baby
you never were
Leonard Durso 