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Showing posts from 2011

Allen for all to see (and see all)!

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Allen, Phil (standing) and Wm Burroughs Peter and Allen in Paris Peter and Allen, well, au natural With You +1'd this publicly. Undo Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and friends Oh, Allen did love getting naked. I wish I could discipher what is written on his modesty thing-a-ding. Handsome man! At the Triest, on Grant in North Beach. Listening. I guess that he could really listen too. America's poet? I'd vote yeah. Getting naked all around the world!

Father Death Blues

(Don't Grow Old, Part V) by Allen Ginsberg Hey Father Death, I'm flying home Hey poor man, you're all alone Hey old daddy, I know where I'm going Father Death, Don't cry any more Mama's there, underneath the floor Brother Death, please mind the store Old Aunty Death Don't hide your bones Old Uncle Death I hear your groans O Sister Death how sweet your moans O Children Deaths go breathe your breaths Sobbing breasts'll ease your Deaths Pain is gone, tears take the rest Genius Death your art is done Lover Death your body's gone Father Death I'm coming home Guru Death your words are true Teacher Death I do thank you For inspiring me to sing this Blues Buddha Death, I wake with you Dharma Death, your mind is new Sangha Death, we'll work it through Suffering is what was born Ignorance made me forlorn Tearful truths I cannot scorn Father Breath once more farewell Birth you gave was no thing ill My heart is stil

Homework

by Allen Ginsberg Homage Kenneth Koch If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my dirty Iran I'd throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap, scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in the jungle, I'd wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico, Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska, Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos, Flush that sparkly Cesium out of Love Canal Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain the Sludge out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again, Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little Clouds so snow return white as snow, Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie Then I'd throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood & Agent Orange, Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out the tattletail Gray of U.S. Central American poli

A Supermarket in California

by Allen Ginsberg What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations! What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons? I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys. I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel? I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective. We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, pos

An Eastern Ballad

by Allen Ginsberg I speak of love that comes to mind: The moon is faithful, although blind; She moves in thought she cannot speak. Perfect care has made her bleak. I never dreamed the sea so deep, The earth so dark; so long my sleep, I have become another child. I wake to see the world go wild.

The Lion For Real

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by Allen Ginsberg "Soyez muette pour moi, Idole contemplative..." I came home and found a lion in my living room Rushed out on the fire escape screaming Lion! Lion! Two stenographers pulled their brunnette hair and banged the window shut I hurried home to Patterson and stayed two days Called up old Reichian analyst who'd kicked me out of therapy for smoking marijuana 'It's happened' I panted 'There's a Lion in my living room' 'I'm afraid any discussion would have no value' he hung up I went to my old boyfriend we got drunk with his girlfriend I kissed him and announced I had a lion with a mad gleam in my eye We wound up fighting on the floor I bit his eyebrow he kicked me out I ended up masturbating in his jeep parked in the street moaning 'Lion.' Found Joey my novelist friend and roared at him 'Lion!' He looked at me interested and read me his spontaneous ignu high poetries I listened for lions al

Chinatown

by Yosha Bourgea An overcast San Francisco afternoon. Chinatown. Pulling me by the arm, my mother walks quickly past the sidewalk markets where they sell old soft oranges, cabbages, bad radios, cheap shoes. I have a cold. My head is full of dreams and I cannot keep up. I dream a saucer-eyed dragon grinning with long, lolling tongue, breathing white porcelain clouds across the sky. They drift, aimless boats, sticks flagged with leaves and set upon the river. Old man in a jacket tosses me a good luck orange, but I miss. It bobs along the curb, then goes under. Again I let go of her hand. Like a leaf floating on water I lose myself quickly in the rush of coats. Where am I going? I am the drowning boy. Nothing to look for now, not abandoned mother, not lost luck. The current closes my eyes. -

The Gift Outright

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The End Of Science Fiction

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by Lisel Mueller This is not fantasy, this is our life. We are the characters who have invaded the moon, who cannot stop their computers. We are the gods who can unmake the world in seven days. Both hands are stopped at noon. We are beginning to live forever, in lightweight, aluminum bodies with numbers stamped on our backs. We dial our words like Muzak. We hear each other through water. The genre is dead. Invent something new. Invent a man and a woman naked in a garden, invent a child that will save the world, a man who carries his father out of a burning city. Invent a spool of thread that leads a hero to safety, invent an island on which he abandons the woman who saved his life with no loss of sleep over his betrayal. Invent us as we were before our bodies glittered and we stopped bleeding: invent a shepherd who kills a giant, a girl who grows into a tree, a woman who refuses to turn her back on the past and is changed to salt, a boy who steals his brother’s birthright and becomes

Let Us Meditate the Virtue

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by Donald Hall Let us meditate the virtue of slogans. Let us declare onomastic* solutions to difficulties largely unnameable, and by the mottoes of euphemism contract verbal righteousness. Let's indite bulletins to tell everyone the Jargon of Things, to name Lifestyles, to learn the Tongue of High Coy: Do you desire to purchase a beverage? We thank you for not smoking. Have a nice day. May we share these suggestions with you? Let us praise exultation, never calling a route salesman a milkman, nor an officer of the law a cop, nor a senior citizen old, nor a starving freezing bagwoman poor. When we can't alter ills that upset us, we will change their names to prevent compassion from disturbing our ungulate composure: words to deny worlds. Vocabulary voids original sin; cavalry of the lie reaches Calvary just in time--to bugle Christ down from the cross. But: no nails, no Christ. Jean Jouvenet "Descent From The Cross"

The Windhover

by Gerard Manley Hopkins To Christ our Lord I caught this morning morning's minion, king- dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dáwn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rólling level úndernéath him steady áir, & stríding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl & gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird, -- the achieve of, the mastery of the thing! Brute beauty & valour & act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, o my chevalier! No wónder of it: shéer plód makes plóugh down síllion Shine, & blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gáll themsélves, & gásh góld-vermílion.

Just Now

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by W.S. Merwin In the morning as the storm begins to blow away the clear sky appears for a moment and it seems to me that there has been something simpler than I could ever believe simpler than I could have begun to find words for not patient not even waiting no more hidden than the air itself that became part of me for a while with every breath and remained with me unnoticed something that was here unnamed unknown in the days and the nights not separate from them not separate from them as they came and were gone it must have been here neither early nor late then by what name can I address it now holding out my thanks

Grace

by Rafael Jesus Gonzalez Thanks & blessings be to the Sun & the Earth for this bread & this wine, this fruit, this meat, this salt, this food; thanks be & blessing to them who prepare it, who serve it; thanks & blessings to them who share it (& also the absent & the dead). Thanks & Blessing to them who bring it (may they not want), to them who plant & tend it, harvest & gather it (may they not want); thanks & blessing to them who work & blessing to them who cannot; may they not want - for their hunger sours the wine & robs the taste from the salt. Thanks be for the sustenance & strength for our dance & work of justice, of peace.

Arms Full

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by Rebecca del Rio Gratitude means showing up on life’s doorstep, love’s threshold, dressed in a clown suit, rubber-nosed, gunboat shoes flapping. Gratitude shows up with arms full of wildflowers, reciting McKuen or the worst of Neruda. To talk of gratitude is to be the fool in a cynic’s world. Gratitude is pride’s nightmare, the admission of humility before something given without expectation or attachment. Gratitude tears open the shirt of self importance, scatters buttons across the polished floors of feigned indifference, ignores the obvious and laughs out loud. Even more, gratitude bears her breasts, rips open her ribs to show the naked heart, the holy heart. What if that sacred heart is not, after all, about sacrifice? Imagine it is about joy, barefoot and foolhardy, something unasked for, something unearned. What if the beat we hear, when we are finally quiet is simply this: Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you, Rebecca!

Cult of the Warrior

by Al Markowitz originally published on November 12, 2007 On Memorial Day, for all the Veterans who marched against the War in Iraq and were jeered. Keep the faith! A palpable silence of reverence where “soldier” is synonymous with hero revered. Where service in battle is holy and mysterious dark foreigners feared. We venerate our soldiers’ presence on the always far front and with heads bowed in adoration try to show off our symbols of public support – as long as they shut up and die. contact: Partisan Press P.O. 11417 Norfolk, VA 23517