Ragas for Sleepy Bee
for Krishna, both of them, god, man
And so we began
the cooking lessons
the first demur approaches
the blushing papayas then
the fires the chilies harvested
curtains drawn
1
Dawn.
Slow him down.
He speaks
his accent thickly
richly Tamil
enunciating
each syllable
a child's story
stutters a boy
waking at dawn
asking for something
to eat
Sleepy Bee - she calls to him -
Go my Sleepy Bee to the garden
smell the jasmine there touch
softly the spices in trembling
rows fetch then chilies of many
colors I will prepare for you a
meal as you desire
when teacher makes you drowsy
by noon smell the spices in finger rows
upon your hand there remember the touch
of chillies smooth whispering of lingering
liaisons to come and you will brighten
my Sleepy Bee
A chili omelet she makes
a side of yogurt to soothe
the burn and milk from the
cow drawn as dawn's first
udder swells against the
press of distant hills where
the Temple soundly sleeps
so very pleased with itself
Mother each morning - rubbing his eyes
as he stumbles into the garden - sings
You may shout if you wish to wake
the Temple for the cow cannot speak -
Wake up! Awake! Make haste!
Lord Indra comes! Prepare the wicks,
the incense sticks for Holy Fire!
Hasten! Hurry! Quicken!
There beside Indra's captured fire
the little grate her Bee awakens
watches slow movements slicing of chilies
removal of seeds washing again plump
hands cracking of eggs beating them
bent spoon spreading ghee sings upon
hot stone enchantment of liquid becoming
firm becoming food she turns in rhythms
round she rhythmically prays
After breakfast the rose oil is
poured his raven hair smoothly
brushed his shining face his smile
reveals prepares him for school
kisses his uniform clean ironed
smelling too of rose scented soap
lunch a string of chilies many colors
sewn together when still in a waking
dream smell of chapatis fresh from
palms to stone
Chilies burn - he speaks slowly
each syllable enunciating practicing
through smiles -
but the touch of her
hand is fire She is far away
but I can feel her burning
hand upon me now
He is quiet
It is I who stammer
How can one enunciate such wonder?
2
Krishna complains of tilting
his head when he speaks
while his hands speak
too in their own way of
entwining morning glories,
the morning cock already
at quarrel with the world
head tilted too just beyond
the tin roof reaching in to
steal too enticing to pass
the untimid spices
3
He will soon be bored with me, I fear,
my humble 'ministrations' but still he
sweeps into my small room - the candles
lit, the incense rich - a young prince
beaming, more stories to tell, and food,
spicy hot, prepared for me, an offering.
Smiling, he strips instantly lays upon the
pallet in easy, unabashed nakedness
a proud new tattoo of a god on his shoulder
he wears an amulet a sacred bracelet
and a waist scapular the image of which
is just below his navel
So why - I ask only myself and the god,
never Krishna - why must I hide my large
wooden statue of the god? I hide it in
deference to Krishna's wish thus become
willing consort to the god-in-miniature,
scraping it with an ear, a tongue, receive
a scapular kiss its image upon my forehead
as I trace the wonderful hairlines of his
body on my way to other deities
4
Ah! give me all the cabbages
in the world in all my poverty!
Am I not, too, a Raj of floors
and scented pillows, this heaving
god upon me thrusting utterly
to reveal Himself, His mystery
to me who am not a god?
5
So please the intemperate
humanity in face of patient
deities burning I am ill with
grief with prayer into now
emptier hands the sea
I am when he departs
the wax hardened long
sputtered without form
the stories to me return
I reach then beggars fingers
to my face smell his flavors there
remember chilies smooth skinned
touches whispering of lingering
liaisons finally come
'and you will brighten my Sleepy Bee'
In my sputtering darkness O return
6
The room fills with Krishna
aromas of rose oil in his hair
pungent spices and sweat
upon his hands, his skin, his sex.
I retrieve the god from his little
sanctuary of hiding - it seems
I am always retrieving deities -
and we are both laughing
anointing cologne upon Him
pour milk into the votive bowl
rub His belly light another candle
the other extinguished panting
while busy bees exchange knees
and sighs diffuse male spices
to vapor migrant fingers upon
chilies thickening in always
morning hunger
7
More incense then
thank the god in all his forms
appearing both large and small
His adornment of secrets though
one cannot easily hide such deity
man-love and more in such intimate
universe whose toes I tickle shoes
abandon as tides shrink swell
grow diminish upon worshipers
those who will do so
in spite of those who would kill
delicate or manly infidels whose
worship - forever babies breath -
is all the more meaningful
because forbidden
Be damned the trellises
the petals reach
shall extend outward
the violin's throat cut
Do not ask me to see it
Then - deity restored to rightful place
good-natured from obscurity
again revered - return
to the kitchen onion slices garlic crushed
wine poured then begins fire O Indra
more aromas extend into
entwine
He leaves me the better for the wear
more the better for me.
8
He is leaving me
will be returning to India soon
He is departing such as our strange
arrangement has been almost four
years of weekly 'chillies gathered'
Sad I knew as empty hands know
at the start to keep the reins ever
taut while keeping open the heart
for new breaching
how I had to teach him what lovers
give to each how to kiss how to touch
how love is fluctuate fluent in dirty
tongues entanglements with the world
Still I have fluttered mightily in long tangles
of hair black, black his darker eyes shine
his bottom lip petulant hungry for mine and
those his parts smooth rivaling Everest
always beckoning to be climbed
Surprises tenderness on his part
graces unexpected quick disrobing
the easy nakedness the hunger so
clean the affection grown from early
flings to ring heart rosaries
toes fall down to tumbles
grasps and pressing flesh
its own alchemy merging
but let there be two solid
but encroachable objects
together crushed into each
He is soon departed
likelihood of similar rare
the room empties
late afternoon shadows
his leaving leaves ghosts
traces and I am full
yet
emptiness is never fuller but
for beloved's absence felt which
of course is the mystic's launch
the desert dweller and the roof
the longing tooth gnawing
one claws inwardly through
layers to find that Name that
Holier Ones say is written on
the back of the Heart
Thus remain I here in monk cell
soon to be more the monk's than
the once spunk monkey's boudoir
9
I retrieve the god
from his little sanctuary
of hiding - it seems I am
always retrieving deities -
O retrieve thou me my heart
poem by Warren Falcon
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Related quotes
from 'Ragas For Krishna
A little boy waking up at dawn, asking his dear mama for an omelet to eat:
'Sleepy Bee, ' she called to him. 'Go, my Sleepy Bee, to the garden and be sure to smell the jasmine there, touch softly the spices in trembling rows, fetch then some chilies of many colors and I will prepare for you a dish as you wish. When the teacher makes you sleepy by noon reach then your fingers to your face, smell the spices there, remember the touch of smooth skinned chilies whispering of lingering liaisons to come, and you will brighten my Sleepy Bee.'
A chili omelet she would make, a side of yogurt to soothe the burn, and milk from the cow drawn before dawn's first udder swelled against the press of distant hills where even the Temple soundly sleeps so very full and pleased with itself. Mother, each morning as he stumbles, rubbing his eyes, into the garden, tells him,
You may shout if you wish to wake
the Temple for the cow cannot speak -
Wake up! Awake! Make haste!
Lord Indra comes! Prepare the wicks,
the incense sticks for His Holy Fire!
Hasten! Hurry! Quicken!
There beside Lord Indra's captured fire in the little grate her Bee awakens watching her slow movements, the slicing of chilies, the removal of seeds, the washing again of plump hands, the cracking of eggs, beating them with the whisk, spreading ghee upon the hot flat stone, the enchantment of liquid whites and yokes becoming firm, becoming food. She turns them in round rhythms as she rhythmically prays.
After eggs and chilies are eaten comes the rose oil poured upon his raven hair smoothly brushed back to reveal his shining face, his smile. She prepares him for school with kisses, his uniform freshly cleaned, ironed, smelling, too, of rose-flavored soap. Then off to school with a lunch, a string of chilies of all colors sewn together, sewn when he was still in a waking dream.
'The chilies may burn, ' he tells me, speaking slowly, enunciating each syllable, practicing through smiles, returning to my gaze. 'But not like the touch of my mother's hand. She is far away but I can feel her burning hands on me now.' He smiles. I stammer. How can one enunciate such wonder?
\Visionary company, Krishna, his mother, and me.
from 'Ragas For Krishna'
poem by Warren Falcon
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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from 'Ragas For Krishna' Part 2
from 'Ragas For Krishna' Part 2
I have been encouraging Krishna (which is a funny thing to say, Krishna being a bold, blue God) to find a language coach to help him with his accent, to tone it down while keeping the wonderful music/lilt of it...he complains of tilting his head as he talks 'as all Indians do' but I insist he merely speak and let his head and hands speak, too, in their own way. If he does more public events he will need to be understood clearly when he speaks while preparing his magnificent dishes from his country, his rich feasts of stories of the chilies from his mother's garden entwined by morning glories, the morning cock already at quarrel with the world just beyond the tin reaching in to take some spices too enticing to refuse...
I always feel as if he is, or will soon be, bored with me and my humble 'ministrations' but he sweeps into my little room like a Raj, a young prince beaming, brimming full of stories to tell me, usually some food spicy hot he has prepared for me offered with a grin. Then he strips instantly down, lays upon the down pallet in easy, unabashed nakedness - it catches my breath, I do want to see! I hurriedly 'hide' my Ganesha, the prominent statue of the god I have in front of my useless fireplace; this hiding I half understand...but still, naked, he has a fresh and beautifully made tattoo of Ganesha on his shoulder, he wears a Ganesha necklace, a Ganesha bracelet, and a Ganesha waist scapular, the image of which is just below his navel. So why, I ask only myself and Ganesha, never Krishna, why must I hide my large wooden Ganesha statue? But I do hide Him in deference to Krishna's wishes and meanwhile have intercourse with the god-in-miniature, scraping a necklace trunk with an ear, a tongue, receive a scapular kiss of the image upon my forehead as I trace those wonderful hairlines of the male body on my way to other deities.
Ah! give me all the cabbages in the world in all my poverty! Am I not, too, a Raj of floors and scented pillows, this beaming god beneath me thrusting utterly to reveal his secrets, his desires, his pleasures to me who am not, when all is done, a god?
Life, dear Valdosta, over all, is good, yes? I wish it no ill. But, agreeing with the cock, I will quarrel, even fight, with life when young men still leap too soon from bridges because I have learned (and relearn it hard lesson by hard lesson at a time) visionary company insists its tracings in many forms, man to man being but one holy expression, those sons, burning mother's hands upon them demanding, insisting to life that each her sons is a rajah, a Sleepy Bee.
So please the intemperate humanity, in the face of patient deities the burning ones are leaping still and I am ill with grief, with prayer, their dead bodies gone, their now emptier hands.
And he leaves me.
I return to my poems.
The room is filled with Krishna, aromas of rose oil in his hair, pungent spices in his sweat and upon his hands and skin, and sex.
I retrieve Lord Ganesha out from his little sanctuary of hiding (it seems I am always retrieving deities) and we both laugh richly. I remember to sprinkle some cologne upon Him, to pour out some milk into His votive bowl, to rub His belly, to light another candle (the other extinguished, panting, while we were busy bees exchanging knees and sighs, diffusing male spices into bracing air, fingers upon oily chilies thickening in always morning hunger) .
I light more incense and thank Lord Ganesha in all his forms, appearing both large and small, His adornment of Secrets, though one cannot easily hide an Elephant, man-love, and more in such a small universe whose toes I seek to tickle then gather for a shoe as tides shrink and swell, grow and diminish depending upon the worshipers, those who will do so in spite of those who would kill delicate or manly infidels whose worship, forever babies breath, is all the more meaningful.
Be damned the trellises. The petals shall reach, shall extend outward.
The violin's throat is cut.
'Do not ask me to see it! '
poem by Warren Falcon
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Sleepy Bee, He Is Rising Beneath Me, The Hidden God Is Pleased
Sleepy Bee, He Is Rising Beneath Me, The Hidden God Is Pleased
for Karthik
Somniculosus Apis, Sleepy Bee
Ascendit infra me, He rises beneath me
Deus absconditus placet, The hidden God is pleased
'...descend and of the curveship lend a myth to God.' - Hart Crane
The boys, seven falling: Jamey Rodemayer, Tyler Clementi,
Raymond Chase, Asher Brown, Billy Lucas, Seth Walsh, Justin Aaberg
Oh Valdosta,
He is busy preparing a repast for many paying guests who will watch him cook sacred chilies of his Mother's garden born, who will hear him sing their praises...Krishna was over yesterday more radiant than when we first met beside the cardamom and the ghee in the intoxicating basement of the Indian spice and food shop not easily hidden below the sidewalk, such aromas cannot to be tucked away like the shop is beside and below the avenue.
Which flower should I adorn my table with? I ask, approaching shyly beside the spice bins. I buzz inside, a bee for the nectar.
If you serve, said he, If you serve with cardamom and ghee then flowers three are best, the jasmine, the oleander, the anthurium. But if choosing only one, he looks at me, something insistent, responding, in his eyes, I would choose for you the anthurium.
And so we began our time together, the first demur approaches, the blushing papayas, the cooking lessons, then the fires, the chilies harvested, curtains drawn. One day perhaps I to shall fall but in this way:
I shall fling back the curtains
Open the window
Throw cut sleeves for years
gathered, hidden, to the street.
Shouting out names of lovers,
I shall then leap openly into life
land softly upon the Autumn
ginkgo leaves and, golden,
kiss every parked car
on the street leaving
lips like leaves and all
the cut sleeves in love
with all the world and if
not all the world then
all the cars and a fiddle
dee dee for the fall of me
Yesterday I coached him how to slow down as he speaks (his accent is thickly, richly Tamil) , how to enunciate each syllable. He had several stories to choose from which he may relate to the guests, all of which he related to me, a sweet one of him as a little boy waking up at dawn, asking his dear mama for an omelet to eat:
'Sleepy Bee, ' she called to him. 'Go, my Sleepy Bee, to the garden and be sure to smell the jasmine there, touch softly the spices in trembling rows, fetch then some chilies of many colors and I will prepare for you a dish as you wish. When the teacher makes you sleepy by noon reach then your fingers to your face, smell the spices there, remember the touch of smooth skinned chilies whispering of lingering liaisons to come, and you will brighten my Sleepy Bee.'
A chili omelet she would make, a side of yogurt to soothe the burn, and milk from the cow drawn before dawn's first udder swelled against the press of distant hills where even the Temple soundly sleeps so very full and pleased with itself. Mother, each morning as he stumbles, rubbing his eyes, into the garden, tells him,
You may shout if you wish to wake
the Temple for the cow cannot speak -
Wake up! Awake! Make haste!
Lord Indra comes! Prepare the wicks,
the incense sticks for His Holy Fire!
Hasten! Hurry! Quicken!
There beside Lord Indra's captured fire in the little grate her Bee awakens watching her slow movements, the slicing of chilies, the removal of seeds, the washing again of plump hands, the cracking of eggs, beating them with the whisk, spreading ghee upon the hot flat stone, the enchantment of liquid whites and yokes becoming firm, becoming food. She turns them in round rhythms as she rhythmically prays.
After eggs and chilies are eaten comes the rose oil poured upon his raven hair smoothly brushed back to reveal his shining face, his smile. She prepares him for school with kisses, his uniform freshly cleaned, ironed, smelling, too, of rose-flavored soap. Then off to school with a lunch, a string of chilies of all colors sewn together, sewn when he was still in a waking dream.
'The chilies may burn, ' he tells me, speaking slowly, enunciating each syllable, practicing through smiles, returning to my gaze. 'But not like the touch of my mother's hand. She is far away but I can feel her burning hands on me now.' He smiles. I stammer. How can one enunciate such wonder?
Visionary company, Krishna, his mother, and me.
I have been encouraging Krishna (which is a funny thing to say, Krishna being a bold, blue God) to find a language coach to help him with his accent, to tone it down while keeping the wonderful music/lilt of it and he's going to do that...he complains of tilting his head as he talks 'as all Indians do' but I insist he merely speak and let his head and hands speak, too, in their own way. If he does more public events he will need to be understood clearly when he speaks while preparing his magnificent dishes from his country, his rich feasts of stories of the chilies from his mother's garden entwined by morning glories, the morning cock already at quarrel with the world just beyond the tin reaching in to take some spices too enticing to refuse...
I always feel as if he is, or will soon be, bored with me and my humble 'ministrations' but he sweeps into my little 'box-doir' - you recall how tiny my expensive studio on the 5th floor is! - like a Raj, a young prince beaming, brimming full of stories to tell me, usually some food, spicy hot, he has prepared for me, offered with a grin. Then he strips instantly down, lays upon the down pallet in easy, unabashed nakedness - it catches my breath, I do want to see! - checks his Blackberry for the latest cricket scores while I hurriedly 'hide' my Ganesha, the prominent statue of the god I have in front of my useless fireplace; this hiding I half understand...but still, naked, he has a fresh and beautifully made tattoo of Ganesha on his shoulder, he wears a Ganesha necklace, a Ganesha bracelet, and a Ganesha waist scapular, the image of which is just below his navel. So why, I ask only myself and Ganesha, never Krishna, why must I hide my large wooden Ganesha statue? But I do hide Him in deference to Krishna's wishes and meanwhile have intercourse with the god-in-miniature, scraping a necklace trunk with an ear, a tongue, receive a scapular kiss of the image upon my forehead as I trace those wonderful hairlines of the male body on my way to other deities.
Ah! give me all the beans in the world in all my poverty! Am I not, too, a Raj of floors and scented pillows, this beaming god beneath me thrusting utterly to reveal his secrets, his desires, his pleasures to me who am not a god?
Life, dear Valdosta, over all, is good, yes? I wish it no ill. But, agreeing with the cock, I will quarrel, even fight, with life when young men still leap too soon from bridges because I have learned (and relearn it hard lesson by hard lesson at a time) visionary company insists its tracings in many forms, man to man being but one holy expression, those sons, burning mother's hands upon them demanding, insisting to life that each her sons is a rajah, a Sleepy Bee.
So please the intemperate humanity, in the face of patient deities the burning ones are leaping still and I am ill with grief, with prayer, their dead bodies gone, their now emptier hands.
And he leaves me.
I return to my poems.
The room is filled with Krishna, aromas of rose oil in his hair, pungent spices in his sweat and upon his hands and skin, and sex.
I retrieve Lord Ganesha out from his little sanctuary of hiding (it seems I am always retrieving deities) and we both laugh richly. I remember to sprinkle some cologne upon Him, to pour out some milk into His votive bowl, to rub His belly, to light another candle (the other extinguished, panting, while we were busy bees exchanging knees and sighs, diffusing male spices into bracing air, fingers upon oily chilies thickening in always morning hunger) .
I light more incense and thank the Lord Ganesha in all his forms, appearing both large and small, His adornment of Secrets, though one cannot easily hide an Elephant, man-love and more in such a small infinite universe whose toes I seek to tickle then gather for a shoe as tides shrink and swell, grow and diminish depending upon the worshipers, those who will do so in spite of those who would kill delicate or manly infidels whose worship, forever babies breath, is all the more meaningful.
Be damned the trellises. The petals shall reach, shall extend outward.
The violin's throat cut.
'Do not ask me to see it! '
Then, Ganesha restored to His rightful place; good-natured about being hidden, it is back to the kitchen, the slicing of the onion, the crushing of the garlic, the pouring of the wine, the selecting of the greens and washing them of the clinging sand and grit they kindly bring, then to the pot to cook them in, the meat to go with, and begins the fire, O Indra, more aromas extend into, entwine with what Krishna has left to me and the god and I am grateful, full of heart, for each time he is here is a miracle. A grace. Mother India with hot hands gifts me one of Her Raj's who graces me with his presence evoking praise bestowed from oft bitter lips and tongue made the more bilious by aging, aching joints, laxer muscles, and yet the encroaching decrepitude is bent and stretched, the better for the wear from Krishna's 'half nelsons' and yogic overreaches. More the better for me.
Yet I remain bitter, too, from the senseless loss of young men who could not endure, no fault of their own, for sure, who leap from bridges, forced to by killing edges broken open within and by hateful, fearful others forgetting, if ever had, those restorative burning constancies of a Mother's hands upon them
I have placed your picture, dear Valdosta, upon my altar beside Lorca's portrait, and Hart Crane's young face, the image of a sweet Christ holding a lamb en perpetua, and the yellowed newspaper clipping from Spain of the Matador's death, along with photos of the young men in the past two weeks who have joined Hart becoming ghostly visionary company. They now remain forever chaste not having lived long enough to be wasted, emptied of love from loving deeply out into love for more love, endlessly bleeding out like our Lorca, a corrida of laurel encircling his head no longer remembering but remembering only one sound, guns exploding outward, extending, bullets, petals, one by one beyond the wall where he stood stunned, 'how young and handsome are assassins' faces', he flew backward in the wall graced with his brave shadow then his blood until he fell. I believe he fell hard for life demands it as does death which will continue its duende.
Love, as Hart and all hearts love, is still a vision not yet fully, solidly formed in spite of stones and walls forgetting noble shadows, but there are foolish Krishnas, restoring Krishna-moments, patient hidden gods though human hearts and bodies remove themselves from the potter's wheel too early, too broken, too tired, too alone to try to shape love from Love from the tiny shard, the remnant bone of the ancient mastodon, the last one, dreaming within each heart of that Love which all Nature yearns for.
I pray for my inherited brood of brothers, and remember to be gay for all the gray afternoons in this sad but forgiving confessional, while not forgetting mine and the cock's quarrel with life, in the booth by the cracked window near the corner of 7th and Second.
I am yours, bleating, sometimes crowing, but almost always bestowing praise. I am loved, Valdosta, and I love you.
N. Nightingale
poem by Warren Falcon
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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from 'Ragas For Krishna' - Part 3
from 'Ragas For Krishna'
Sleepy Bee, he is rising beneath me, the hidden god is pleased
Somniculosus Apis, Sleepy Bee
Ascendit infra me, He rises beneath me
Deus absconditus placet, The hidden God is pleased
He is busy preparing a repast of sacred chilies of his Mother's garden born. Who will hear him sing their praises but me present alone with him here?
Yesterday Krishna arrived more radiant than when we first met beside the cardamom and the ghee in the intoxicating basement of the Indian food and spice shop not easily hidden below the sidewalk, such aromas cannot to be tucked away like the shop is, beside and below the avenue, just as his radiance cannot, should not, be hidden.
Which flower should I adorn my table with? I ask, approaching shyly beside the spice bins. I buzz inside, a bee for the nectar.
If you serve, says he, If you serve with cardamom and ghee then flowers three are best, the jasmine, the oleander, the anthurium. But if choosing only one, he looks at me, something insistent, responding, in his eyes, I would choose for you the anthurium.
And so we begin our time together, the first demur approaches, the blushing papayas, the cooking lessons, then the fires, the chilies harvested, curtains drawn. One day perhaps I shall fall but in this way:
I shall fling
the curtains back
Open the window
Throw cut sleeves,
for years gathered,
hidden, to the street.
Shouting out names
of lovers, I shall then
leap openly out, into,
land softly upon ginkgo
leaves and, golden, kiss
every parked car leaving
lip traces upon hoods,
trunks, windshields and,
lustily, rear view mirrors
reviewing all yore's cut
sleeves of love, secret
no longer, newly in love
with all the world and
if not all the world then
all the grinning griddled
faces of chrome and a
fiddle dee dee for the
fall of me into he who
has become my home
How I had to teach him what lovers
give to each how to kiss how to touch
how love is fluctuate fluent in dirty
tongues entanglements with the world
Still I have fluttered mightily in long
tangles of hair black, black his darker
eyes shine his bottom lip petulant hungry
for mine and those his parts smooth rivaling
Everest always beckoning to be climbed
And surprises
tenderness on his part
graces unexpected quick disrobing
the easy nakedness the hunger so
clean the affection grown from early
flings to ring heart rosaries forged
toes fall down to tumbles
grasps and pressing flesh
its own alchemy merging
but let there be two solid
but encroachable objects
together crushed into each
He is soon departed
likelihood of similar rare
the room empties
late afternoon shadows
his leaving leaves
traces and I am full
yet
emptiness is never fuller but
for beloved's absence felt which
of course is
the mystic's launch
the desert dweller and the roof
the longing tooth gnawing
one claws inwardly through
layers to find that Name which
Holier Ones say is written on
the back of the Heart
Thus remain I here in monk cell
soon to be more the monk's than
once spunk monkey's boudoir
poem by Warren Falcon
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Of Ancient Mastodon, Sleepy Bee & Young Men Who Leap Too Soon From Bridges - Nightingale Confesses Into Straighter Teeth
'...descend, and of the curveship lend a myth to God.' - Hart Crane
Pueri aeterna, septem cadens
Etiam plures ad
The boys eternal, seven falling
Too many more to come
Jamey Rodemayer
Tyler Clementi
Raymond Chase
Asher Brown
Billy Lucas
Seth Walsh
Justin Aaberg
Sub olivae, pacem
Ut vos omnes adoremus orientatio
Under the olive trees, peace
May you all adore this orientation
******
"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their
hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once
hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain."
- James Baldwin
'Ignacio goes up the tiers
with all his death on his shoulders.
He sought for the dawn
but the dawn was no more.
He seeks for his confident profile
and the dream bewilders him
He sought for his beautiful body
and encountered his opened blood
Do not ask me to see it! '
- Federico Garcia Lorca*
1
Even the pigeons on my stoop are silent now.
One mourning dove coos tenderly for these who
have taken their own lives publicly on our behalf,
for those many gone before them, broken hearts
enraged, no more to engage the unpersuaded
world which, one of them, one of the public ones,
in spite of murmuring wharves, in spite of amorous
dark alleys bitter in the pitch of the last hateful
American Century, Hart Crane, wrote before his leap
from the ship beside the phallic curve where Cuba
meets the lisping sea, took his tongue away which
sang of chill dawns breaking upon bridges whose
spans still freely splinter light returning hungover
from the night wharves, grottoes, and denim World
Wars, industrial embraces crushing every man and
now another one abandons his fingers and fiddling
to scattering light, takes flight from ledges to
edge close to an embrace no longer forbidden -
'And so it was I entered the broken world
to trace the visionary company of love...'
I am at the 'Way of Peace Bistro, ' where the server
Alberto whose cousins are the famous Wolf Boys in
Jalisco, Mexico, hirsute himself, gives me free double
espressos so I may hear his confession, who only just
yesterday came out to me in my confessional booth
here at the perpetually wobbly table in the far corner
at the cracked window rocking with Hart's un-confessed
bones wrapped in soothing silt which he now dreams
to be his silken pall.
Life is indeed strange above the veiled bottom.
I do receive confessions here where I weekly haunt
for studying, writing, chasing down dreams, waves,
receding horizons.
Why, I wonder, is each window where I sit cracked?
I am the itinerant priest who sits at meager feasts.
Suffering congregants, forlorn over their starfish
and soup, ask about dreams, confess to anguish, ask
what should be done. I consult espresso foam, open
the nearest book at hand willy nilly to see what advice
or wisdom might be gained from That which, we hope,
indiscriminately sustains us all here straining after
some realing thing to keep us going when Hart and
those too recent others obey some impulse to place
at last the final period, reifiying the punctuate
though unrepentant ending of this too too long run-on
sentence of hate. One hopes this period holds fast,
that Logos/meaning is somehow, plates of starfish
with fork and knife beside, true or truing at least.
One serves where needed. And when.
So come unto me you 'sad young men.
All the news is bad again so kiss your dreams goodbye.'**
Here at my confessional I can only plead mercy upon the boys
who have jumped from bridges, hung themselves, cut, sliced their
compulsive hands, exploded hearts, leaping dears eyes ablaze in
thrall of antlers, trembling flanks strong to fly decrying the
violent hunt which always ends in a death bequeathing these
chopped bits to me and to others like me who remain at table,
plates before, to stare at what is to be later scattered, sown,
these pieces in and for Love-without-name still a stain upon
confused local deities and their wild-eyed supplicants.
But there is no stain upon the promiscuous sea.
The compliant sky is not confused.
Neither is all that is between confused,
allowing birth and blessing, passing of
all kinds in all manner of motive and motion.
But in the human world, distressing, there
will be more boys, more men growing up as
from the very beginning where earliest enmity
mythically grew strong before shoes, before
hearts were capable of breaking, before turgid
theological floods spilled blood of brother
by brother turning witness stones toward silence,
echoing lamenting Federico,
'Do not ask me to see it! '
I don't want to see it!
I will not see it!
But I, but perhaps we, who remain to plant these
petaled parts of these unwitting scapegoats whose
eyes are milk now forever, we must bar sentimentality,
must move toward genuine knowing which comes from
the long hard stare beyond Milky Ways at the way
things still inexorably are. 'Nothing gets better -
or changes for the better - until it is what it is.'
But the falling ones, half-way to eternity while
here and eschewed, know what the 'is' is of the matter,
that it is the others, too many of them, who don't
or won't know, who willingly refuse to see 'what is'
in order to reach beyond the collective NOT SEE
solutions' of hetero-normative culture/religion.
Perhaps even in the deepest fault of the ocean that
very visionary company - in league with stuporous
pigeons, a mourning dove, me here who remains-not
-yet-remains, tearful over my espresso looking for
signs, finding only an endlessly fracturing rainbow,
remembering, too, the murmuring secrets of wharves
and co-mingled breath - that very visionary company
traces all the sunken ones, the jumping ones, those
with other means for departure by their own hands
empty now of demands for love.
Here I sit, arthritic living hands still
demanding, remembering full of past and
present griefs the Violin with a cut throat
in a youthful suicide once writ years ago,
hidden, hiding out, refusing to shout my
rage to Almighty 'Nothing-But':
Do not hear nothing but the cabin walls,
do not hear nothing but late summer roses
petal by petal leaping from the still too
white trellises, leaping pinkly, redly,
memory to breezes, overwhelmed by trellises
shagged with cut sleeves.***
But not me. Not yet.
I don't want to see it!
I will not see it.
On the mute page, the Violin refusing to sing
- in love with Garcia Lorca,
the goring horn of the Bull,
the destined cornada -
each and all appalling, commanding 'Write'
in long nights working where the mentally ill
wandered with me, keys ironically in my hand,
the yellowing hallways with even more ironic
EXIT signs brightly RED above the locked doors,
silent companions somnolent but for the jangling
joke of the keys.
Do not ask me to see it!
I don't want to see it!
I will not see it.
Still, I have now these better days in the Village,
broke or near to it, with eggs and beans, cheap but
edible things. An epicurean after all, I do luxuriously
head to the Polish butcher shop nearby to gather meat
but not any of the young butchers want to be gathered
- too Catholic - for Poland is 'passing strange' with
bad teeth, fingers stained with nicotine. Or is it rust
from once Curtains of Iron,
or the Blood of the Acetylene Virgin? ****
I get my meat, cook my greens and things, have good-enough feasts for garlic and the right spice make grander the demanded abstemiousness of current coin. I purloin my pleasure during eats in my dirty yet happy apron with recordings of poetry, lectures or a good aria or two to salt my food with tears, a blubbering fool beside his one low watt lamp, darkness too too comfortable like a pooch or cat at feet. What is that bleating in the darker corner? I shall wait for daylight to see what it can be. And if I can I shall free it from it's trap and in doing so perhaps free me from all this, all this witnessing as life demands I must, of young ones setting themselves free because they are forced to do so by collective psychopathology now rendered even more effective and efficient via technology, via internet, emphasis upon the 'net', where the ills set free from Pandora's Modem have only begun to be revealed.
But I shall use that 'net' and my still goodly paper and goodly pen to dim whatever ill tides there are and to come, as they surely will in spite of low wattage. I'll jangle keys on the night watches reading my mystic books, making my prayers with roamers of wards and wharves glancing up, considering bridges, edges, silty bottoms. The tides are here even now. But right now I wish to sing a lullaby in protest to those hurting departed, even to those coming ills, that I may sing innocence dumbly back to those who may come ashore again more gently having forgotten enforcing depths insisting them toward resistant yet resolved embraces...
...So breech then, waves. Feet first. Heads in the brine. I shall keep time on your wrinkled toes sticking up from the sand, play peek-a-boo. Then while you sleep I shall harvest gently, place them firmly in that old woman's shoe...'there was an old woman who lived in a shoe, had so many children she didn't know what to do'.
She may yet have learned what to by now.
I haven't. But for my one strange harvest here below...
2
Somniculosus Apis, Sleepy Bee
Ascendit infra me, He rises beneath me
Deus absconditus placet, The hidden God is pleased
He is busy even as I write this preparing a repast for many paying guests who will watch him cook sacred chilies of his Mother's garden born, who will hear him sing their praises...Krishna was over yesterday, nervous and excited about it all. Working out regularly at the gym he is now very toned, muscular in a good way, not too pumped in exaggerated lumps, and he is even more radiantly beautiful/handsome than when we first met beside the cardamom and the ghee in the intoxicating basement of the Indian spice and food shop not easily hidden, such aromas are not to be tucked down like the shop is beside and below the avenue.
Which flower should I adorn my table with? I ask, approaching shyly beside the spice bins. I buzz inside, a bee for the nectar.
If you serve, said he, If you serve with cardamom and ghee then flowers three are best, the jasmine, the oleander, the anthurium. But if choosing only one, he looks at me, something insistent, responding, in his eyes, I would choose for you the anthurium.
And so we began our time together, the cooking lessons, the first demur approaches, the blushing papayas, then the fires, the chilies harvested, curtains drawn. One day perhaps I to shall fall but in this way:
I shall fling back the curtains
Open the window
Throw cut sleeves for years
gathered, hidden, to the street.
Shouting out names of lovers,
I shall then leap openly into life
land softly upon the Autumn
ginkgo leaves and, golden,
kiss every parked car
on the street leaving
lips like leaves and all
the cut sleeves in love
with all the world and if
not all the world then
all the cars and a fiddle
dee dee for the fall of me
Yesterday I coached him on slowing down as he speaks (his accent is thickly, richly Tamil) , how to enunciate each syllable. He had several stories to choose from which he may relate to the guests, all of which he related to me, a sweet one of him as a little boy waking up at dawn, asking his dear mama for an omelet to eat:
'Sleepy Bee, ' she called to him. 'Go, my Sleepy Bee, to the garden and be sure to smell the jasmine there, touch softly the spices in trembling rows, fetch then some chilies of many colors and I will prepare for you a dish as you wish. When the teacher makes you sleepy by noon reach then your fingers to your face, smell the spices there, remember the touch of smooth skinned chilies whispering of lingering liaisons to come, and you will brighten my Sleepy Bee.'
A chili omelet she would make, a side of yogurt to soothe the burn, and milk from the cow drawn before dawn's first udder swelled against the press of distant hills where even the Temple soundly sleeps so very full and pleased with itself. Mother, each morning as he stumbles, rubbing his eyes, into the garden, tells him,
You may shout if you wish to wake
the Temple for the cow cannot speak -
Wake up! Awake! Make haste!
Lord Indra comes! Prepare the wicks,
the incense sticks for His Holy Fire!
Hasten! Hurry! Quicken!
There beside Lord Indra's captured fire in the little grate her Bee awakens watching her slow movements, the slicing of chilies, the removal of seeds, the washing again of plump hands, the cracking of eggs, beating them with the whisk, spreading ghee upon the hot flat stone, the enchantment of liquid whites and yokes becoming firm, becoming food. She turns them in round rhythms as she rhythmically prays.
After eggs and chilies are eaten comes the rose oil poured upon his raven hair smoothly brushed back to reveal his shining face, his smile. She prepares him for school with kisses, his uniform freshly cleaned, ironed, smelling, too, of rose-flavored soap. Then off to school with a lunch, a string of chilies of all colors sewn together, sewn when he was still in a waking dream.
'The chilies may burn, ' he tells me, speaking slowly, enunciating each syllable, practicing through smiles, returning to my gaze. 'But not like the touch of my mother's hand. She is far away but I can feel her burning hands on me now.' He smiles. I stammer. How can one enunciate such wonder?
Visionary company, Krishna, his mother, and me.
I have been encouraging Krishna (which is a funny thing to say, Krishna being a bold, blue God) to find a language coach to help him with his accent, to tone it down while keeping the wonderful music/lilt of it and he's going to do that...he complains of tilting his head as he talks 'as all Indians do' but I insist he merely speak and let his head and hands speak, too, in their own way. If he does more public events he will need to be understood clearly when he speaks while preparing his magnificent dishes from his country, his rich feasts of stories of the chilies from his mother's garden entwined by morning glories, the morning cock already at quarrel with the world just beyond the tin reaching in to take some spices too enticing to refuse...
I always feel as if he is, or will soon be, bored with me and my humble 'ministrations' but he sweeps into my little 'box-doir' - you recall how tiny my expensive studio on the 5th floor is! - like a Raj, a young prince beaming, brimming full of stories to tell me, usually some food, spicy hot, he has prepared for me, offered with a grin. Then he strips instantly down, lays upon the down pallet in easy, unabashed nakedness - it catches my breath, I do want to see! - checks his Blackberry for the latest cricket scores while I hurriedly 'hide' my Ganesha, the prominent statue of the god I have in front of my useless fireplace; this hiding I half understand...but still, naked, he has a fresh and beautifully made tattoo of Ganesha on his shoulder, he wears a Ganesha necklace, a Ganesha bracelet, and a Ganesha waist scapular, the image of which is just below his navel. So why, I ask only myself and Ganesha, never Krishna, why must I hide my large wooden Ganesha statue? But I do hide Him in deference to Krishna's wishes and meanwhile have intercourse with the god-in-miniature, scraping a necklace trunk with an ear, a tongue, receive a scapular kiss of the image upon my forehead as I trace those wonderful hairlines of the male body on my way to other deities.
Ah! give me all the beans in the world in all my poverty! Am I not, too, a Raj of floors and scented pillows, this beaming god beneath me thrusting utterly to reveal his secrets, his desires, his pleasures to me who am not a god?
Life, dear Valdosta, over all, is good, yes? I wish it no ill. But, agreeing with the cock, I will quarrel, even fight, with life when young men still leap too soon from bridges because I have learned (and relearn it hard lesson by hard lesson at a time) visionary company insists its tracings in many forms, man to man being but one holy expression, those sons, burning mother's hands upon them demanding, insisting to life that each her sons is a rajah, a Sleepy Bee.
So please the intemperate humanity, in the face of patient deities the burning ones are leaping still and I am ill with grief, with prayer, their dead bodies gone, their now emptier hands.
And he leaves me.
I return to my poems.
The room is filled with Krishna, aromas of rose oil in his hair, pungent spices in his sweat and upon his hands and skin, and sex.
I retrieve Lord Ganesha out from his little sanctuary of hiding (it seems I am always retrieving deities) and we both laugh richly. I remember to sprinkle some cologne upon Him, to pour out some milk into His votive bowl, to rub His belly, to light another candle (the other extinguished, panting, while we were busy bees exchanging knees and sighs, diffusing male spices into bracing air, fingers upon oily chilies thickening in always morning hunger) .
I light more incense and thank the Lord Ganesha in all his forms, appearing both large and small, His adornment of Secrets, though one cannot easily hide an Elephant, man-love and more in such a small infinite universe whose toes I seek to tickle then gather for a shoe as tides shrink and swell, grow and diminish depending upon the worshipers, those who will do so in spite of those who would kill delicate or manly infidels whose worship, forever babies breath, is all the more meaningful.
Be damned the trellises. The petals shall reach, shall extend outward.
The violin's throat cut.
'Do not ask me to see it! '
Then, Ganesha restored to His rightful place; good-natured about being hidden, it is back to the kitchen, the slicing of the onion, the crushing of the garlic, the pouring of the wine, the selecting of the greens and washing them of the clinging sand and grit they kindly bring, then to the pot to cook them in, the meat to go with, and begins the fire, O Indra, more aromas extend into, entwine with what Krishna has left to me and the god and I am grateful, full of heart, for each time he is here is a miracle. A grace. Mother India with hot hands gifts me one of Her Raj's who graces me with his presence evoking praise bestowed from oft bitter lips and tongue made the more bilious by aging, aching joints, laxer muscles, and yet the encroaching decrepitude is bent and stretched, the better for the wear from Krishna's 'half nelsons' and yogic overreaches. More the better for me.
Yet I remain bitter, too, from the senseless loss of young men who could not endure, no fault of their own, for sure, who leap from bridges, forced to by killing edges broken open within and by hateful, fearful others forgetting, if ever had, those restorative burning constancies of a Mother's hands upon them
I have placed your picture, dear Valdosta, upon my altar beside Lorca's portrait, and Hart Crane's young face, the image of a sweet Christ holding a lamb en perpetua, and the yellowed newspaper clipping from Spain of the Matador's death, along with photos of the young men in the past two weeks who have joined Hart becoming ghostly visionary company. They now remain forever chaste not having lived long enough to be wasted, emptied of love from loving deeply out into love for more love, endlessly bleeding out like our Lorca, a corrida of laurel encircling his head no longer remembering but remembering only one sound, guns exploding outward, extending, bullets, petals, one by one beyond the wall where he stood stunned, 'how young and handsome are assassins' faces', he flew backward in the wall graced with his brave shadow then his blood until he fell. I believe he fell hard for life demands it as does death which will continue its duende.
Love, as Hart and all hearts love, is still a vision not yet fully, solidly formed in spite of stones and walls forgetting noble shadows, but there are foolish Krishnas, restoring Krishna-moments, patient hidden gods though human hearts and bodies remove themselves from the potter's wheel too early, too broken, too tired, too alone to try to shape love from Love from the tiny shard, the remnant bone of the ancient mastodon, the last one, dreaming within each heart of that Love which all Nature yearns for.
I pray for my inherited brood of brothers, and remember to be gay for all the gray afternoons in this sad but forgiving confessional, while not forgetting mine and the cock's quarrel with life, in the booth by the cracked window near the corner of 7th and Second.
I am yours, bleating, sometimes crowing, but almost always bestowing praise. I am loved, Valdosta, and I love you.
N. Nightingale
******************
*Opening quote is from Lorca's elegy, 'Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías'
** The Ballad of the Sad Young Men
Music written by: Tommy WolfLyrics written by: Fran Landesman
(best version sung that I know of is by an aged Mabel Mercer in concert, hard to find it now)
Sing a song of sad young men
Glasses full of rye
All the news is bad again so
Kiss your dreams goodbye
All the sad young men
Sitting in the bars
Knowing neon nights
Missing all the stars
All the sad young men
Drifting through the town
Drinking up the night
Trying not to drown
All the sad young men
Singing in the cold
Trying to forget
That they're growing old
All the sad young men
Choking on their youth
Trying to be brave
Running from the truth
Autumn turns the leaves to gold
Slowly dies the heart
Sad young men are growing old
That's the cruelest part
All the sad young men
Seek a certain smile
Someone they can hold
For a little while
Tired little bird,
She does the best she can
Trying to be gay for her
sad young man
While the grimy moon
Blossoms up above
All the sad young men
Play at making love
Misbegotten moon
Shine for sad young men
Let your gentle light
Guide them home again
All the sad young men
***In China homosexuality was referred to as 'the cut sleeve'.
Read an excellent account of this in
Passions of the Cut Sleeve, The Male Homosexual Tradition in China.
http: //www.ucpress.edu/book.php? isbn=9780520078697
****Surrealistic Sutures For The Acetylene Virgin by Warren Falcon
'I think that poetry should stay awake all night drinking in dark cellars.' - Thomas Merton
Look to the body for metaphor
Look to blood, use this word
in relation to dreams or flowers
while silver runs in veins which
are usually streets or vines.
Breasts, male and female,
are stars, have to do with
a handful or feet to span them.
Abdomen, then, is a great
Milky Way gathering,
holding, expelling comets,
caroling colons' humming.
Spleens are bones to
pick teeth with, teeth
which are, of course,
sea horses or gravestones
bearing images of the Flagrant
Heart to tame this spot of
gypsum and flint, to charm
where Violin's cut throat
sings itself awake, one
black breast out of its fold
slapping metal seas against
dropping metal shores in
Sidelight's shadow across
this hand writing now,
slap of waves mute in
this stillness of knees.
So lend a darkness to gardens,
ancient pattern of a breast,
cloth lightly lifting, black on black.
From Her chest reveal a slenderer throat
that nods when she swallows
and names her peace.
The delicate will not pass away just yet.
Great Seamstress of Space
sew, please,
with fingers of dew.
poem by Warren Falcon
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Photos of War
Photo of War - 1
no milk for her
child the nipple
droops a sad
thing while dogs
run wildly about
Photo of War - 2
Geese tell of return
the burning village
counts its embers
measured in hands
Photo of War - 3
there are treaties
generals
prisoners and
gilded boxes
exchanged
then the
Mongol spices
Photo of War - 4
boys
muddy feet
cheer
chase behind
battalions
innocent fists
raising threat
for them
such regrettable
punctuation
Photo of War - 5
Hold Fast
the greatest
among us
he knows
only war which
makes him great
in one thing
alone
I know
of waiting
what the horizon
safe keeps behind
its ear
of love, yes
Photo of War - 6
your top knot my hand
unknotting
your long hair my
scented bedding
sudden
startled
wildness of laps
in the vase
so very
still
a clutch of stamens
Arrival at last -
the fallen petal
of your navel
Photo of War - 7
Dream again
of moonlight
of sewing
that work of warriors
naked needling of seams
In this dream
I know the pattern well
so near to hand
a blessing
let the dead bury
theirs
Photo of War - 8
his face
sleeps upon my
belly
I do not breathe
do not wish to disturb
Dawn just
light fingers
trace in circles
each my
breasts
what tickles
but a sigh interrupted
Photo of War - 9
In your dream
a gentle
boat slowly rises
with waves
the gentler subsiding
slides up
my torso
to keel
to kiss
Never again will I go to war
Photo of War - 10
I lie
Already
the men are heavily gathering
new arrows hot for flesh
only for yours I am
Photo of War - 11
Fortress a better world
between the teeth
on tips of tongues
on lip perimeters
strung by kisses
Photo of War - 12
From childhood our song:
Hurry awake sleepy bee
Softly sings the breeze
To sweetness we are called
when the sun high shall be
freshened with tears our parting
Photo of War - The Last
behind the barred door wait
a lock of wound hair
silk pouch of my gated heart
it will be a hard arrow to pierce it
poem by Warren Falcon
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Love of Radha, Lord Krishna!
Radha was Krishna's Love,
Nay, Radha was Krishna's part,
Krishna was Radha heart,
She came dancing to tune of flute,
She was breath of his music,
She filled his Murali with Love divine,
He made her spine his flute,
Chakras become seven holes of flute,
played strange notes, became her light and joy,
Sitting below lean against tree,
with legs stretched like kind loving mother,
She took his head in her lap,
Love talked for hours in silence,
Her face Krishna saw in his own light,
And in her eyes his own figure,
In her heart his own face,
Love is that lamp glowing in her heart,
light of love spread whole world,
even the Sun and moon reflected Radha's love!
He became her smile,
she laughed his hearts joy,
She shed tears of his pain,
Never cared for shame and blame,
Never showed shyness,
As her star like love shines
Sound was there companionship,
Innocent she was about his divinity,
He gave his all to her plain love without vanity!
Radha, Radha was Krishna's breath sounded,
Krishna, Krishna her heart danced,
No jealousy no possessiveness,
Radha was great and her love too,
No touch of selfishness, love's spotless devotion,
Pure was heart without corruption,
Her love revolved around Him,
Just as Earth around the Sun,
Or moon around the earth!
Sometimes she was satellite,
Sometimes she is star or planet,
Her love shined in the sky,
Shaded clouds shy red at dawn and dusk,
Golden sun rays of dawn, adorned her love,
white face of high clouds shy to red,
Black low clouds shed tears when krishna was a bit late,
Cooling the burn,
to put off the fire of longing!
Radha was nature and she was filled with Krishna's spirit,
Radha was great to make Krishna Great,
She was her Guru, she became his motherlike at times,
She was friend and guide,
Never enjoyed his downward slide,
He filled her breath in his heart and mind,
Made it wide and light,
Prepared him for his high flight
No internal fight, every thing straight and her heart was ever light
Filled with eternal love's light
She taught every thing in love is always right,
When only heart is light
with love's innocent purity extreme!
poem by Ramdas Bhandarkar
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Green Eyes Blue
Green Eyes Blue
Waking with warmth in my heart and your golden body next to me
A smile on my face morning upon morning
Minds eye scanning memory of every touch, sound, sight of you
The feel of your arms around me, the sweet smell of your breath
And from above…searching me, are your Green Eyes Blue
Eager new flavors, smells and touches brings new joy
Desire for love and hunger for flesh bring these gloves off to touch you
Lips wet and breathes quiver and our legs tangled tight
I want for nothing but your Green Eyes Blue
This woman is awakened by your touch and inspired by your goodness
The fire once thought dead now stoked by your careful hands
Beautiful man of mine holding my heart as we are afloat in this life
I am safe with you beside me as we become lost in each other
My heart is lost in your Green Eyes Blue
poem by Ellie Cook
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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From the Encampment Of Heart Strife, A Young Warrior's Journal - Fragments From an 11th Century Japanese Scroll
for Goodfew
'like unto like'
but do not say it
my forbidden simile
one is not immune
to jealous couriers
who would come
between lovers
Rice paper is thin
Tender words never
tear though ink and
tears fade sure
words to guesses
Distance reconciles
murmurers with desire
Duress strengthens
supple resolve
supple resolve
thickens skin
thickened skin
feels the better
when simple
loves caress
paper curtains
for ink yearn
their brush strokes
burning stories
to bear
a fly
strolls a realm
just on the other
side of light
only silhouettes
guesses too
thrills at motion so
slight framed in
window gray
in love with
small things
keep what
is seen where
hides the wind
Geese tell
of return and
so I will when the
burnt village
counts its embers
measured in hands
there are treaties
generals
gilded boxes
are exchanged
and the
Mongol spices
no milk for her
child the nipple
droops a sad
thing while dogs
run wildly about
Hold Fast
the greatest
among us
he knows
only war which
makes him great
in one thing
alone
I know
of waiting
what the horizon
safe keeps behind
its ear
of love, yes
your top knot my hand
unknotting
your long hair my
scented bedding
sudden
startled
wildness of laps
the vase
so very
still
a clutch of stamens
I dream again
of moonlight
of sewing
that work of
warriors naked
needling seams
In this dream
I know the pattern well
so near to hand
a blessing
let the dead bury
theirs
his face
sleeps upon my
belly
I do not breathe
do not wish to disturb
Dawn just
light fingers
trace in circles
each my
breasts
what tickles
but a sigh interrupted
In your dream
a gentle
boat slowly rising
with waves
the gentler subsiding
slides up
my torso
to keel
to kiss
Never again will I go to war
I lie
Already
the men are heavily gathering
new arrows hot for flesh
only for yours I am
From childhood our song
'Hurry awake sleepy bee
Softly sings the breeze
To sweetness we are called...'
When the sun
is high
shall be
freshened
with tears
our parting
behind the barred door wait
a lock of wound hair
silk pouch of my gated heart
it will be a hard arrow to pierce it
Small boys
muddy feet
cheer
chase behind
innocent fists
raising threat
for them
such punctuation
I regret
only this
to take a quiet supper
to hear the dipper spilling
too full
the deep well
yielding
knowing a hand of dew
brings such sweetness wet, cool
wet
poem by Warren Falcon
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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No Difference In Memory - After Reading Li-Young Lee
for Karthik
I am flying.
I am falling.
No difference in memory,
the smell of rose oil in your hair
my body can find even in the dark
its scent upon me when I awaken
is the cup alone I drink.
I shall go on drinking when
you leave before dawn
departing to another life
I cannot live but only steal
from mysterious bankers
who lend but never give.
I am not free of this cup.
I have stolen it to remember
milk and a scent of rose
entangled in black hair.
Put me on any cross then,
one of two thieves beside any
good Christ and I'll be with Him
in any paradise above or below.
When He says, I thirst,
if I can reach with nailed hands,
I will gently touch it to his bruised lips
and say, Take. Drink. Drink it all.
I return this cup to you.
poem by Warren Falcon
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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I Want To Wake Up With You
When the morning coming and i' m opening my eyes,
I want to see your face and your amazing eyes,
Your smile to wrap me in happiness and joy,
I want to wake up with you.
I want to be the first one that you see,
To give me your first smile and a kiss to me,
To feel your warmth, your silence, your joy,
I want to wake up with you.
I want to keep your hand into mine,
And play with my fingers through your hair,
Kissing you tenderly each time you smile,
I want to wake up with you.
To lay my head on your shoulder,
And feel your breath so close,
I want to hold your heart and protect it,
I want to wake up with you.
To listen your tender whispers,
To feel your smooth skin touching mine,
Your arms passionately hugging me,
I want to wake up with you.
So, i had open my eyes in morning,
Surrounded by roses and love,
I feel like a gorgeous woman in your arms,
I want to wake up with you.
poem by Cristina Teodor
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Sh.. You may be Killer Of God!
when I was kid and innocent,
Often I was hanging on her
waist,
weeping to take me into her
arms,
when she was free, She gladly fulfilled my request
But when she was busy,
She used give toys,
When my imaginations fail to
please me,
I get bored of toys and threw them away,
Then she came and told,
See god is there in toys too,
You hurt Him when you throw!
She showed Some photos and
pictures, strange to me some were with
four hands
One with an eye on forehead!
Some are having beautiful face,
Some with some strange face,
I asked her who are these, Why they have strange faces
and too many hands and eyes?
Tell me the how I look?
Is My face is like you?
She told me several stories,
I then started playing with dolls as if they are Gods!
Strangely the toys started
winking and talking with me,
When in play I talked and
laughed with them! Mother was telling the stories of
rivers, mountains and men with
fountains of extraordinary
spirits, Mother was telling more and
more stories
Mother Wanted me to sleep,
so that she can go to work!
But I was not bored of these
stories, Ever I was eager to listen, even
when I was in sleep! So many time when I fell asleep,
She fed my food and milk,
Simply I eat and drank without
knowing!
Next morning I used to complain,
No one cares when I am hungry, Where I sleep and why they
forget me,
Later I came Mother never forgot,
Only I forgot and slept! When my mother died
Too young I was and never cried, Then in dreams, one day I saw
the death of my father,
and when that dream become
true,
I never wept as I wept in dream
itself! Then my brothers and sister and
friends
And I boldly accepted,
As soldier in war field,
Then my son, I laughed and said
strange these dolls who played with me,
Fell and shattered into pieces!
Then went that Lord,
elephant headed giant,
Then to the one with three eyes
Then to the one with lion head, All came and played and Became
one with me,
Still question came to mind is it
true,
Then Buddha, then Jesus then
then finally Ever smiling Krishna, All were dwelling in me with
mother Goddess,
Then came that day when I called
no one came,
Mad I was, went wandering..
Came and sat on a grave, I was weeping, weeping And
weeping,
Oh God!
Where are you?
There came a dog,
There was a cow and donkey
Suddenly came a man who
looked mad,
In dirty clothes clad
He sat beside me and looked into
my eyes, I too looked into his
Calm lakelike eyes, The stone, the tomb, the air and
everything,
All around started saying I am
here,
I am here,
The dog, the cow, the ant at my feet and that man and trees
around me started singing,
I am here, I am here,
When I saw where that man
gone,
He become every thing, from, dirty shit of donkey to
infinite world,
Then became small and entered
my heart,
See I was always with you and
always everywhere, None can express me completely
than that pure soul,
Clean with love and kindness,
Some day if you lose these
virtues,
You kill me and crucifix Me and
I can't resurrect in dirty heart,
And you will be Killer of God!
poem by Ramdas Bhandarkar
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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In The Night
Where art thou, thou lost face,
Which, yet a little while, wert making mirth
At these new years which seemed too sad to be?
Where art thou fled which for a minute's space
Shut out the world and wert my world to me?
And now a corner of this idle Earth,
A broken shadow by the day forgot,
Is wide enough to be thy hiding place,
And thou art shrunk away and needest not
The darkness of this night to cover thee.
Where art thou hidden? In the boundless air
My hands go forth to thee, and search and feel
As through the universe. I hold the night
Caught in my arms, and yet thou art not there.
Where art thou? What if I should strike a light
So suddenly that thou couldst never steal
Back to thy shadows? What if I should find
Thee standing close to me with all thy hair
Trailing about me and thine eyes grown blind
With looking at me vainly through the night?
There are three rings upon thy hand to--night,
One with a sapphire stone, and one there is
Coiled like a snake, and one on which my name
Is written in strange gems. By this dim light
I cannot read if it be writ the same.
See, I have worn no other ring but this!
Why dost thou look at it with eyes estranged?
Is it not thine?--Ah, God! Thou readest right!
And it is changed, and thou and I are changed,
And I have written there another name.
Oh happiness, how has it slipped away!
We, who once lived and held it in our hand!
What is the rest that these new years can bring?
Did we not love it in our love's to--day,
And pleasure which was so divine a thing,
The sweetest and most strange to understand?
And that is why it left regret behind,
As though a wild bird suddenly should stay
A moment at our side and we should find
When we looked up that it had taken wing.
And thou, hast thou forgotten how to love?
Hast thou no kissing in thy lips? Thy tongue,
Has it no secret whisper for my ear?
I have been watching thee to see thee move
A little closer to my side in fear
Of the long night. Oh, there is room among
The pillows for thy head if thou wouldst sleep!
And thou art cold, and I would wrap my love
To my warm breast and so my vigil keep
And be alone with darkness and with her.
Thou standest with thy hand upon my heart,
As once thou used to stand, to feel it beat.
Doth it beat calmer now than in those days?
Thy foolish finger--tips will leave a smart,
If they so press upon my side. Thy gaze
Is burning me. Oh speak a word and cheat
This darkness into pain, if pain must be,
And wake me back to sorrow with a start,
For I am weary of the night and thee
And thy strange silence and thy stranger face.
Canst thou not speak? Thy tale was but begun.
How can I answer thee a tale untold?
Whisper it quick before the morning break.
How loud thou weepest! Listen, there is one
Dreaming beside me who must not awake.
Close in my ear !--Ah! child, thy lips are cold,
Because thou art forsaken.--Misery!
Is there not room enough beneath the sun
For her, and thee, and me?
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Crucifix
"Into thy hands I commend my spirit."
[This very ancient crucifix is sculptured on the exterior wall of the Abbey Church of Romsey. Its characteristic is a hand reaching down from the clouds, over the cross. It is said to be unique.]
In a quiet nook it standeth,
Which careless eyes might miss,
That image of Thy sorrow,
And fountain of our bliss.
Low within reach it standeth,
Close to the old church, door,
And by the common pathway,
Appealing evermore.
Low on the wall, that never
The dimmest eyes may miss,
And the lips of the little children
May reach the feet to kiss.
That humble, simple image,
Wrought by the hands of old;
Good hands! that so many ages
Helpless have grown and cold.
That blessed, sacred image
Born of the heart of old
That through the endless ages
Shall nevermore grow cold.
In the common stone rude-carven,
By no great artist's touch;
Yet never the wide world over
Will you find another such.
You may search the wide world over
From freezing to burning zone,
You will never find another
Quite like this only one.
Deep, deep the nails are driven
In the hands they crucified -
So deep, the nails you see not,
But only the arms stretched wide.
And over the head, so weary,
Bowing itself to die,
An open hand down-reaching
Forth from the clouded sky.
The torturers' hands have finished;
His hands are nailèd fast;
"Into thy hands my spirit -
Father, thy hands!" - at last.
. . . . . . .
Lord, ere thou call our spirits
Within thy hands to be,
Give us some such dear likeness
To leave behind of thee.
Hid in some quiet corner,
Cut in the common stone,
Poor, yet our best, we pray thee,
Our best, and our very own.
. . . . . . .
Dear Lord, our hearts grow bolder;
We dare to ask much more,
Knowing the more we ask thee,
Thou art hut pleased the more.
Give us to be that image
By the common paths like this:
Low, where the dimmest vision,
The features need not miss;
Low, where the lips of the children
May reach to cling and kiss.
Where the nails to the cross which fix us,
So deep in the wounds may hide,
That men see no more the torture,
But only the arms stretched wide.
A humble, simple image,
Cut in the common stone;
Like thee, yet like no other,
Because thy very own.
poem by Elizabeth Rundle Charles from Littell's Living Age, Volume 131, Issue 1693
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Lord Krishna
O my Lord! O my Krishna!
Hare Krishna! Hare Krishna!
You are the embodiment of love
you are the divine joy,
you are protector of the religion
all pain and sin, you destroy.
Hare Krishna! Hare Krishna!
Wicked and cruel king Kansa
put your parents in prison.
You released them from jail
appeared as Vishnu's incarnation.
Hare Krishna! Hare Krishna!
As child you led cow herds
had great love for your mother
Grown with magic of your flute
as hero loved by peers and others
Hare Krishna! Hare Krishna!
Kansa sent sinful Putana to kill you
by feeding breast's poisoned milk.
She herself was met to her end
you sucked blood, failed her trick.
Hare Krishna! Hare Krishna!
He was desperate to kill my Lord
So he sent many other demons.
You defeated all of the demons
killed his wicked men one by one.
Hare Krishna! Hare Krishna!
Supported villagers and cattle,
lifted mountain to make shelter,
You killed poisonous snake in river
where cattle used to drink water.
Hare Krishna! Hare Krishna!
Always blessed, who followed your path
taught Arjuna lessons of truth and war.
You turned result of Mahabharat war
into the victory of righteous Pandwas.
Hare Krishna! Hare Krishna!
You come on earth again and again
to save it; in various incarnations.
Without you my Lord! I am nothing
in this universe, nothing can happen.
O my Lord! O my Krishna!
Hare Krishna! Hare Krishna!
poem by S.D. Tiwari
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Turn Of The Century
Realising a form out of stone.
Set hands moving.
Roan shaped his heart
Thru his working hands.
Work to mold his passion into clay, like the sun.
In his room, his lady
She would dance and sing so completely.
So be still he now cries
I have time, oh let clay transform thee so.
In the deep cold of night
Winter calls, he cries dont deny me!
For his lady, deep her illness.
Time has caught her
And will for all reasons take her.
In the still light of dawn, she dies.
Helpless hands soul revealing.
Like leaves we touch we learn.
We once knew the story.
As winter calls he will starve.
All but to see the stone be life
Now roan, no more tears.
Set to work his strength.
So transformed him
Realising a form out of stone. his work
So absorbed him.
Could she hear him?
Could she see him?
All aglow was his room dazed in this light.
He would touch her
He would hold her.
Laughing as they danced.
Highest colors touching others.
Did her eyes at the turn of the century
Tell me plainly
When we meet, how well love, oh let life so transform me.
Like leaves we touched we danced.
We once knew the story.
As autumn called and we both
Remembered all those many years ago.
Im sure we know.
Was the sign with a touch
As I kiss your fingers.
We walk hands in the sun.
Memories when were young.
Love lingers so.
Was it sun through the haze
That made all your looks
As warm as moonlight?
As a pearl deep in your eyes,
Tears have flown away,
All the same light.
Did her eyes at the turn of the century
Tell me plainly
When we meet how well look
As we smile time will leave me clearly.
Like leaves we touch, we see.
We will know the story.
As autumn calls well both remember
All those many years ago.
song performed by by Yes
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Turn Of The Century
Realising a form out of stone.
Set hands moving.
Roan shaped his heart
Thru his working hands.
Work to mold his passion into clay, like the sun.
In his room, his lady
She would dance and sing so completely.
So be still he now cries
I have time, oh let clay transform thee so.
In the deep cold of night
Winter calls, he cries dont deny me!
For his lady, deep her illness.
Time has caught her
And will for all reasons take her.
In the still light of dawn, she dies.
Helpless hands soul revealing.
Like leaves we touch we learn.
We once knew the story.
As winter calls he will starve.
All but to see the stone be life
Now roan, no more tears.
Set to work his strength.
So transformed him
Realising a form out of stone. his work
So absorbed him.
Could she hear him?
Could she see him?
All aglow was his room dazed in this light.
He would touch her
He would hold her.
Laughing as they danced.
Highest colors touching others.
Did her eyes at the turn of the century
Tell me plainly
When we meet, how well love, oh let life so transform me.
Like leaves we touched we danced.
We once knew the story.
As autumn called and we both
Remembered all those many years ago.
Im sure we know.
Was the sign with a touch
As I kiss your fingers.
We walk hands in the sun.
Memories when were young.
Love lingers so.
Was it sun through the haze
That made all your looks
As warm as moonlight?
As a pearl deep in your eyes,
Tears have flown away,
All the same light.
Did her eyes at the turn of the century
Tell me plainly
When we meet how well look
As we smile time will leave me clearly.
Like leaves we touch, we see.
We will know the story.
As autumn calls well both remember
All those many years ago.
song performed by by Yes
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Somethings Burning
You lie in gentle sleep beside me
I hear your warm and rhythmic breathing
I take your hand and hold it tightly
Listen, can you not hear our young hearts beating
Chorus:
I kiss the sleep from your eyes
Your smile is sweeter than the morning
And here it comes, cant you feel it, baby
Cant you feel it, here it comes
Feel it, feel it, fire, fire
Somethings burning, somethings burning
Somethings burning, and I think its love
And now the sun is burning brightly
We lie in love so close together
And I get the feeling deep inside me
My love for you will burn forever
2nd chorus:
I cup my hands to touch your face
Once again I feel your fire
And here it comes, cant you feel it, baby
Cant you feel it, here it comes
Feel it, feel it, fire, fire
Somethings burning, somethings burning
Somethings burning, and I think its love
I think its love, I think its love
I think its love, I think its love
Cant you feel, the fire keeps burning
Cant you feel, the fire keeps burning
Cant you feel, the fire keeps burning love
song performed by by Dolly Parton
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Dead!
Hush! or you'll wake her. Softly tread!
She slumbers in her little bed.
What do I see? A coffin! Dead?
Yes, dead at break of morning.
No, no, it cannot, cannot be!
I know that I can wake her. See!
She only plays at sleep. Ma mie,
Kiss me, for it is morning.
Look, pretty, look! Within, without,
Snowdrops and hyacinths lie about.
Why don't you clutch them with a shout
Blither than birds of morning?
You used to clap your hands with glee,
When I brought flowers. ``Are these for me?''
Now, now, you neither scent nor see
These incense-buds of morning.
Do you not know me, pet? Speak! speak!
There is no answer in her cheek.
To find her now where shall I seek?-
Seek in the vanished morning!
What can I do to make her heed?
I am crying, love; I am indeed.
Open your eyes and see. What need
To tease me all the morning?
Look! We will sally forth and play;
Ramble, and never ask our way,
Lessons and tasks all put away,
As though it were not morning.
We will do all that you desire,
And I will never, never tire
Of romping with you by the fire,
When 'tis no longer morning.
Your favourite tales, oft told before,
I'll tell you, darling, o'er and o'er;
It never shall be bedtime more,
Will you but wake this morning.
I will not ask you to sit still;
You shall be naughty when you will;
Shall spill my ink and spoil my quill,
And squander all my morning.
Alas! Alas! it is no cheat!
Quiet she lies from face to feet!
No smile, no sigh, no hue, no heat,
No earnest of the morning.
Draw high the sheet above her head.
She liked it, so. Dead? No, not dead.
The angels, hovering round her bed,
Will greet her in the morning.
poem by Alfred Austin
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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She Touches A Sad String Of Soft Recall
Return, return! all night my lamp is burning,
All night, like it, my wide eyes watch and burn;
Like it, I fade and pale, when day returning
Bears witness that the absent can return,
Return, return.
Like it, I lessen with a lengthening sadness,
Like it, I burn to waste and waste to burn,
Like it, I spend the golden oil of gladness
To feed the sorrowy signal for return,
Return, return.
Like it, like it, whene'er the east wind sings,
I bend and shake; like it, I quake and yearn,
When Hope's late butterflies, with whispering wings,
Fly in out of the dark, to fall and burn-
Burn in the watchfire of return,
Return, return.
Like it, the very flame whereby I pine
Consumes me to its nature. While I mourn
My soul becomes a better soul than mine,
And from its brightening beacon I discern
My starry love go forth from me, and shine
Across the seas a path for thy return,
Return, return.
Return, return! all night I see it burn,
All night it prays like me, and lifts a twin
Of palmèd praying hands that meet and yearn-
Yearn to the impleaded skies for thy return.
Day, like a golden fetter, locks them in,
And wans the light that withers, tho' it burn
As warmly still for thy return;
Still thro' the splendid load uplifts the thin
Pale, paler, palest patience that can learn
Nought but that votive sign for thy return-
That single suppliant sign for thy return,
Return, return.
Return, return! lest haply, love, or e'er
Thou touch the lamp the light have ceased to burn,
And thou, who thro' the window didst discern
The wonted flame, shalt reach the topmost stair
To find no wide eyes watching there,
No withered welcome waiting thy return!
A passing ghost, a smoke-wreath in the air,
The flameless ashes, and the soulless urn,
Warm with the famished fire that lived to burn-
Burn out its lingering life for thy return,
Its last of lingering life for thy return,
Its last of lingering life to light thy late return,
Return, return.
poem by Sydney Thompson Dobell
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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