What might the great Walt Whitman have said about what's going on in Florida?

To One Shortly to Die

From all the rest I single out you, having a message for you:
You are to die—Let others tell you what they please, I cannot prevaricate,
I am exact and merciless, but I love you—There is no escape for you.

Softly I lay my right hand upon you—you just feel it,
I do not argue—I bend my head close, and half envelope it,
I sit quietly by—I remain faithful,
I am more than nurse, more than parent or neighbor,
I absolve you from all except yourself, spiritual, bodily—that is eternal—you yourself will surely escape,
The corpse you will leave will be but excrementitious.

The sun bursts through in unlooked-for directions!
Strong thoughts fill you, and confidence—you smile!
You forget you are sick, as I forget you are sick,
You do not see the medicines—you do not mind the weeping friends—I am with you,
I exclude others from you—there is nothing to be commiserated,
I do not commiserate—I congratulate you.

Posted by: annika at 10:09 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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Elizabeth Bishop is one of America's best loved poets. i think her work is like a watercolor painting: simple, easy, but so deceptively intricate. The closer you look, the more her genius reveals itself.

Since everybody's grumbling these days about gas prices, i thought i'd select a nostalgic poem that takes us back to the days when gas was cheap, Exxon was Esso, and full service was the rule.

Filling Station

Oh, but it is dirty!
--this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!

Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it's a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly dirty.

Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a dirty dog, quite comfy.

Some comic books provide
the only note of color--
of certain color. They lie
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.

Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
and heavy with gray crochet.)

Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
ESSO--SO--SO--SO

to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all.

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The Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad (1933-1967) wrote about freedom using the imagery of erotic love. Although she died in a car accident before the Islamic Revolution, she still lived in a society where women's roles were strictly defined. Her poetry, after being banned for many years, is enjoying huge popularity these days in Iran.

Farrokhzad was a rebel who challenged cultural and political absolutism in her all-too-brief, 15-year literary career. She was a daring explorer of a public language of intimacy and transgression. The epitome of what the Islamic Republic wanted to eradicate, Farrokhzad is now the Iranian equivalent of a rock star. . . .

Her popularity is one of the many dizzying paradoxes any casual visitor encounters in Iran 25 years after the Islamic revolution. Iranian women can drive cars but cannot ride bicycles. They are on the world stage as Nobel Peace laureates, human rights activists, best-selling authors, prize-winning film directors and Oscar nominees -- yet they cannot leave the country without the written permission of their husbands. They are some of the most fashionable women in the world but must observe an obligatory dress code in Iran.

From The Washington Post

I Sinned

Beside a body, tremulous and dazed
I sinned, I voluptuously sinned.
O God! How could I know what I did
in that dark retreat of silence?

In that dark retreat of silence
I looked into his mysterious eyes
my heart trembled restlessly
at the pleading in his eyes.

In that dark retreat of silence
I sat, disheveled, beside him
passion poured from his lips into mine
saved I was from the a agony of a foolish heart.

I whispered the tale of love in his ears:
I want you, 0 sweetheart of mine
I want you, 0 life-giving bosom
I want you, 0 mad lover of mine.

Passion struck a flame in his eyes
the red wine danced in the glass
in the soft bed, my body
shivered drunk on his breast.

I sinned, I voluptuously sinned
in arms hot and fiery
I sinned in his arms
iron-strong, hot, and avenging.

Our world under the mullahs' rule was shaped by the colorless lenses of the blind censor. [Afisi notes that the chief censor, up until 1994, actually was blind.] Not just our reality but also our fiction had taken on this curious coloration in a world where the censor was the poet's rival in rearranging and reshaping reality, where we simultaneously invented ourselves and were figments of someone else's imagination.

. . .

In the course of nearly two decades, the streets have been turned into a war zone, where young women who disobey the rules are hurled into patrol cars, taken to jail, flogged, fined, forced to wash the toilets and humiliated, and as soon as they leave, they go back and do the same thing. . . . [H]ow vulnerable the Revolutionary Guards are who for over eighteen years have patrolled the streets of Tehran and have had to endure young women . . . walking, talking, showing a strand of hair just to remind them that they have not converted.

Born Again

The clock flew away
The curtain went away with the wind
I had squeezed him
In the halo of fire
I wanted to speak
But, ohh!
His dense shady eyelashes
Like the fringes of a silk curtain
Flowed from the depth of darkness
Along the quiver, that deadly quivers,
Down the lost end of mine

I felt I was being freed,
I felt I was being freed,

I felt my skin burst in the expansion of love
I felt my fiery mass melt slowly,
And then it trickled
Trickled,
Trickled
Down into the moon, the sunken, agitated dark moon

[Technorati Tag: poetry]

Posted by: annika at 06:59 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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There's a fun poem, "The Discovery of Sex" by Debra Spencer, at today's Writer's Almanac.

Garrison Keillor also reminds us that today is Douglas Adams' birthday.

Posted by: annika at 09:39 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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i ask you. When i did the KISS Haiku Contest about a month ago, was i anything but respectful to KISS or their fans?

Either of them?

Sure i was a little tongue-in-cheek at times, but nothing that Gene Simmons himself wouldn't have appreciated.

So i got this comment today from some dude with sense of humor issues.

Name: Iggy
Email Address: iggy@kissrocks.com

Comments:

Kiss Rules-Fuck you and your site!! BIATCH!!!

And you wonder why i drink so much.

Posted by: annika at 06:57 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Paul suggested Raymond Carver, and i thought, great idea, everybody loves Raymond, right? i swear i've heard that name before, too. So i checked my extensive poetry library (um, shelf) and would you believe it? Not a single Ramond Carver piece in any of the various anthologies i have.

Okay, to the web. Raymond Carver is described thusly at Writer's Calendar:

American short-story writer and poet, a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s. Carver's reputation continued to grow after his death at the age of fifty.

. . .

Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, a mill town on the Columbia River in Oregon. His father, a sawmill worker, was an alcoholic. At home he used to tell him stories about his own hunting and fishing exploits, and about his grandfather, who had fought in the Civil War, for both sides.

Carver published his . . . first poem, 'The Brass Ring,' in Targets, which also had a poem by Charles Bukowski. During these years of working in different jobs, rising kids, and trying to write, Carver started to drink. 'Alcohol became a problem. I more or less gave up, threw in the towel, and took to full-time drinking as a serious pursuit.'

Cheers

Vodka chased with coffee. Each morning
I hang the sign on the door:

OUT TO LUNCH

But no one pays attention; my friends
look at the sign and
sometimes leave little notes,
or else they call - Come out and play,
Ray - mond.

Once my son, that bastard,
slipped in and left me a colored egg
and a walking stick.
I think he drank some of my vodka.
And last week my wife dropped by
with a can of beef soup
and a carton of tears.
She drank some of my vodka, too, I think,
then left hurriedly in a strange car
with a man I'd never seen before.
They don't understand; I'm fine,
just fine where I am, for any day now
I shall be, I shall be, I shall be . . .

I intend to take all the time in this world,
consider everything, even miracles,
yet remain on guard, ever
more careful, more watchful,
against those who would sin against me,
against those who would steal vodka,
against those who would do me harm.

On June 2, 1977 Carver stopped drinking with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous. After this 'line of demarcation' his stories became increasingly more expansive. In 1982 Carver divorced Maryann. From 1979 Carver had lived with the poet Tess Gallagher (b.1943), they had met at a writers' conference in Dallas. They married in 1988. The wedding took place in Reno. Two months later, on August 2, 1988, the author died of lung cancer. . . . After writing [the] story, 'Errand,' about Chekhov's death, Carver learned that he had cancer.

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The Roman poet Ovidius, who was Jesus' contemporary, knew a little bit about the ladies. As a public service for my male visitors, whether single and looking or happily married, i have selected the following excerpt from Ovid's The Art of Love. Ovid's poetry is always fun, despite the fact that he was a lawyer. It's amazing how timeless his advice can be.

Book I Part XIV

DonÂ’t delight in curling your hair with tongs,
donÂ’t smooth your legs with sharp pumice stone.
Leave that to those who celebrate Cybele the Mother,
howling wildly in the Phrygian manner.
Male beautyÂ’s better for neglect: Theseus
carried off Ariadne, without a single pin in his hair.
Phaedra loved Hippolytus: he was unsophisticated:
Adonis was dear to the goddess, and fit for the woods.
Neatness pleases, a body tanned from exercise:
a well fitting and spotless togaÂ’s good:
no stiff shoe-thongs, your buckles free of rust,
no sloppy feet for you, swimming in loose hide:
donÂ’t mar your neat hair with an evil haircut:
let an expert hand trim your head and beard.
And no long nails, and make sure theyÂ’re dirt-free:
and no hairs please, sprouting from your nostrils.
No bad breath exhaled from unwholesome mouth:
donÂ’t offend the nose like a herdsman or his flock.
Leave the rest for impudent women to do,
or whoeverÂ’s the sort of man who needs a man.

In other words, don't stink, brush your teeth once in a while, keep yourself clean, but not too neat. Some muscles and a nice tan are always a plus. Chicks still dig a manly man, so please don't shave your legs and it's time to stop getting free haircuts from mom. Spend the money on a good stylist, but don't overdo it. You don't wanna look like a chick, and you definitely don't wanna look gay.

A lumberjack style plaid toga might have been a good choice when cruising the forum for babes, i would imagine.

Posted by: annika at 10:40 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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