The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Fri 12/23/05)

[RetroLounge]

A Song of Despair

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the dwarves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.

Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

How terrible and brief my desire was to you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.

And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.

This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!

Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!

From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.

You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.

Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!

Pablo Neruda

*******************************

RL

[wildhorses]

1. Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

love that line

[threehensandacow]

2. short but kind of ok

Memory

Memory is not in the head
only. It's midnight,
you existed once, you exist

again, my skin
sensitive as an eye

imprint of you
glowing against me,
burnt-out match in a dark room.

margaret atwood


here's to another day of creating memories. to another day closer to death. oh, happy friday, you surprise me with your ability to free and bind me. i think it's time for another cigarette.

[RetroLounge]

8. .

:hug:

RL

[threehensandacow]

18. .

some simic prose for you:

They wheeled out the ash blonde who believes herself already dead into the spike-fenced garden of the hospital for the insane. Her name was Amy or Ann, but she didn't answer to either one. She kept her eyes tightly shut. She was pushed by a nurse in white
Some of it was told to me by a shivering yound man who insisted that it's been raining for years, even indoors. "Coming down real hard," he said.

-from The World Doesn't End

it's coming down real hard. even indoors. yeah, i think i know that feeling.

[RetroLounge]

19. and some Rilke in return

"...to be patient in all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

-from Letters to a Young Poet

I wish I had answers and could live in them now...

RL

[threehensandacow]

20. wish that helped

but there's so much rain i think i'm drowning. oh, good, a friend has just thrown me a life preserver. i get to go watch her eat.

[RetroLounge]

21. It Can't Rain All the Time

It Can't Rain All the Time - Jane Siberry

We walked the narrow path,
beneath the smoking skies.
Sometimes you can barely tell the difference
between darkness and light.
Do you have faith
in what we believe?
The truest test is when we cannot,
when we cannot see.

I hear pounding feet in the,
in the streets below, and the,
and the women crying and the,
and the children know that there,
that there's something wrong,
and it's hard to belive that love will prevail.

Oh it won't rain all the time.
The sky won't fall forever.
And though the night seems long,
your tears won't fall forever.

Oh, when I'm lonely,
I lie awake at night
and I wish you were here.
I miss you.
Can you tell me
is there something more to belive in?
Or is this all there is?

In the pounding feet, in the,
In the streets below, and the,
And the window breaks and,
And a woman falls, there's,
There's something wrong, it's,
It's so hard to belive that love will prevail.

Oh it won't rain all the time.
The sky won't fall forever.
And though the night seems long,
your tears won't fall, your tears won't fall, your tears won't fall
forever.

Last night I had a dream.
You came into my room,
you took me into your arms.
Whispering and kissing me,
and telling me to still belive.
But then the emptiness of a burning sea against which we see
our darkest of sadness.

Until I felt safe and warm.
I fell asleep in your arms.
When I awoke I cried again for you were gone.
Oh, can you hear me?

It won't rain all the time.
The sky won't fall forever.
And though the night seems long,
your tears won't fall forever.
It won't rain all the time
The sky won't fall forever.
And though the night seems long,
your tears won't fall, your tears won't fall,
your tears won't fall
forever.

RL

[threehensandacow]

23. jane siberry

is one of my favorites. thank you. i think this helps. but it's still raining and i hope i'm able to sit back and curl up on my couch and listen to the pounding and know that i'm safe. and if there are any leaks, that i'd be able to find a bucket big enough to catch it all. i guess i just have to have that good ol' faith thing. tough when it feels like the walls are shaking and the roof is going to cave in under the tons of rain that doesn't seem to cease. jane siberry, she's made me happy so many times. thank you for another smile. brief though it might be.

[wildhorses]

22. me too

so many questions and now seems so far away....

[miss_american_pie]

3. Wow

That's quite powerful. Here's another for you:

the way it is now

I'll tell you
I've lived with some gorgeous women
and I was so bewitched by those
beautiful creatures that
my eyebrows twitched.

but I'd rather drive to New York
backwards
than to live with any of them
again.

the next classic stupidity
will be the history
of those fellows
who inherit my female
legacies.

in their case
as in mine
they will find
that madness
is caused by not
being often enough
alone.


--Charles Bukowski

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

4. This and the OP both strike me

Sometimes someone else can sum up our sentiments better than we can.

[RetroLounge]

9. Can't go wrong with Bukowski...

:hi:

RL

[LaraMN]

5. From some odd reason, this reminds me of:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

T.S. Eliot

[RevCheesehead]

6. something a bit different:

Long enough, GOD -
you've ignored me long enough.
I've looked at the back of your head
long enough. Long enough
I've carried this ton of trouble,
lived with a stomach full of pain.
Long enough my arrogant enemies
have looked down their noses at me.

Take a good look at me, GOD, my God;
I want to look life in the eye,
So no enemy can get the best of me
or laugh when I fall on my face.

I've thrown myself headlong into your arms -
I'm celebrating your rescue.
I'm singing at the top of my lungs,
I'm so full of answered prayers.

~Eugene Peterson

[RetroLounge]

10. Hmm, very nice, concept reminds me of something else...

"Made a decision to turn our will and our lives our to the care of God as we understood Him."

:hi:

RL

[RevCheesehead]

12. ok, now I'll confess...

Eugene Peterson has written an entire paraphrase of the Bible in contemporary language. This is a paraphrase of Psalm 13.
(yeah, the Bible. Go figure.)

:hug:

[RetroLounge]

14. He did it very well...

Not that it needs re-writing, but why not...

You've read the Bible? No way! :rofl:

:hi:

RL

[RevCheesehead]

15. I've been known to dabble in it.

You've survived yesterday. A :toast: to you (with rootbeer, of course)

[RetroLounge]

16. Thanks!

Got through it with lots of help...

:toast:

RL

[CaliforniaPeggy]

7. Complex, beautiful, wonderful, awesome, sad......

Thank you as always, my dear RetroLounge.....

It speaks to me and to my loss as well........

:hug:

[XemaSab]

11. I'm familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda

n/t

[RetroLounge]

17. They are wonderful, no?

RL

[XemaSab]

13. Reminds me a bit of "Sandhill People"

by Carl Sandburg