E.E. Cummings: making poetry popular culture

a clown's smirk in the skull of a baboon

a clown's smirk in the skull of a baboon (where once good lips stalked or eyes firmly stirred) my mirror gives me,on this afternoon; i am a shape that can but eat and turd ere with the dirt death shall him vastly gird, a coward waiting clumsily to cease whom every perfect thing meanwhile doth miss; a hand's impression in an empty glove, a soon forgotten tune,a house for lease. I have never loved you dear as now i love behold this fool who,in the month of June, having certain stars and planets heard, rose very slowly in a tight balloon until the smallening world became absurd; him did an archer spy(whose aim had erred never)and by that little trick or this he shot the aeronaut down,into the abyss -and wonderfully i fell through the green groove of twilight,striking into many a piece. I have never loved you dear as now i love god's terrible face,brighter than a spoon, collects the image of one fatal word; so that my life(which liked the sun and the moon) resembles something that has not occurred: i am a birdcage without any bird, a collar looking for a dog,a kiss without lips;a prayer lacking any knees but something beats within my shirt to prove he is undead who,living,noone is. I have never loved you dear as now i love. Hell(by most humble me which shall increase) open thy fire!for i have had some bliss of one small lady upon earth above; to whom i cry,remembering her face, i have never loved you dear as now i love

The Art of Spillage

Underfull - the tablecloth that turns spilling into poetry from Kristine Bjaadal on Vimeo.

Dance Figure by Ezra Pound

Dark-eyed, O woman of my dreams, Ivory sandalled, There is none like thee among the dancers, None with swift feet. I have not found thee in the tents, In the broken darkness. I have not found thee at the well-head Among the women with pitchers. Thine arms are as a young sapling under the bark; Thy face as a river with lights. White as an almond are thy shoulders; As new almonds stripped from the husk. They guard thee not with eunuchs; Not with bars of copper. Gilt turquoise and silver are in the place of thy rest. A brown robe, with threads of gold woven in patterns, hast thou gathered about thee, O Nathat-Ikanaie, 'Tree-at-the-river'. As a rillet among the sedge are thy hands upon me; Thy fingers a frosted stream. Thy maidens are white like pebbles; Their music about thee! There is none like thee among the dancers; None with swift feet. I love Ezra Pound's modernist approach to poetry because it's refreshing and thought provoking. And the imagery is mind blowingly beautiful . I LOVE IT!

Donald Hall's Collection of Everyday Poetry

I guess poetry( i know alot of people think it's just emotional bullshit expressed through winding words. Screw them then. They don't LIVE) is like an anchor that pulls down to earth all the fuzzy, vague, beginnings of thoughts that cannot be expressed through solid information, and binds them in a universal tongue: feelings and relativity.

I was reading this collection of poems by Donald Hall( a famous American poet) who scourged all the hidden gems from across the country by fishing through magazines and what not.

I extracted some parts from pieces that I really really liked. Here they are:

From Voyage by Suzanne Gardinier

"...I aimed the vessel's battered chin into the fists of green waves without number and did not let the emptiness encumber my loneliness's efforts at creation."

" Of course I'd killed nothing but as i stood barefoot in my own blood, awed,I could not escape the shamed pride of a butcher: smeared withh death,alive, exultant, sure beyond words...

that murder and nourishment are fierce comrades"

From Movie By Patricia Storace

" These dreams framed in the metal of what's real

a silence perfected by voices,

the smoky erotic twilight when the house lights dim

And the world emerges en neglige

And as it moves toward us through gauzy blue,

We glimpse its nudity in the form of stories,

When we live here, everything we want to happen, does

without becoming history."

" To be adult and still unborn is one kind of ideal

Here attention's prenatal, velvet, wall-to-wall

And life's doubled, flesh is flesh's symbol,

A jewel worn on the wrist and in the eye,

Diamond in the day, diamond again in a dream,

The best thing yet we've fashioned from the dark,

these angels of our thought on screen.

We watch them raptly as we watch our dead,

the little candles of remembered gestures lit,

loved features we live by, again and again.

Again.Again."

The Greatest Play on Earth

Pull back the curtains

The stage is set

Hearts aflame, passions conflagrant

We're all unwilling players

Like pawns and kings and queens in a bloody

game of minds

Straws pulled in a preamble

to the greatest play on earth: Life itself

You're either a hero, the villain or the dead

You'll be lucky if you survive with your head

Surely love lost and gone

And starcrossed lovers spangled across

History's fabric would swear

That throbbing pulse on your sleeve it'd tear

Time and time again the same ghostly acts play out

With different actors and props

It fools you into thinking they're different

When underneath all the musk of sophistication and newness

It is dank and rank and mundane

Love is for some people, not so for others

Look at it from outside the blown glass pavillion

A mimicry of utopia played out in a pantomime

The jester who thinks mockery is flirtation

I belong to no one and yet yearn to find

that nook id call my own

Wandering Star

Ok holidays don't sit well with me. I have a moth to the flame complex that gets under my skin. It's like kerosene and spice bubbling under it. Yuck not nice but had to deliver the metaphor. During exams i knowingly confuse wishing for them to be over with wanting holidays. And once Dear Old Hols come i get sick of it within 2 days and want out. Talk about self imposed paradoxes. Haha.

Anyways to kill the honey thick slow passing of time I'm going to post some "Blogart"( as i call 'em). Enjoy :)

Ginger smeared city life

This world is twisted.
Filth,scum,black scum squeamishly
squelching out of its heaving pores
gasping for breath it never seems to get enough
of oh city life, urban times
night life flashes neon and dry blinding ur eyes
tall skyscrapers never fail to mesmerize
stress in thick cups of coffee strewn over the garbage bin
filled to the brim with its kindred
newspapers deplore injustice, condemns the wrong
when just next door past repeats itself
another homeless person, innocent of sins
kicked out on the porch by cigar wielding demon in smart suit,
moustache bristling... yelling " Vermin, filth!"
absently wiping his big brass knuckled Gucci shoes on the carpet,
soot and flour never mixed and so did class.

Heart of Glass

You give me hopes...lilting,subtle tinkling ones
that steal into my mind and surprise
Like a lost lover closing your eyes from behind
Smiling and warm until...
I see you transform at midnight's toll
into a snarling monster
You rip me into shreds and leave me to die
Caesar bleeding in the market square
Friends merging into foes dipping greedy hands in blood
That pool in a sad little crook
Of the starcrossed building

I thought you were my friend
The first of your kind
How could you hurt me so?
Did you not see my secret fears?
Do you think I'm a masquerade waiting to have her mask ripped open
to reveal what's underneath...broken, fragile thing it is...

Heart of glass,wrapped shyly in purple ribbons
Flowers twining around its throbbing crystal veins
Cupped in hesitant hands that tremble
An overt act of offering to a deity
Just to have it smashed on the dirty sidewalk
Frowned and spat at in scorn and
Worse still the ghastly indifference

If you hated me it would be bearable I'd say
Because people say " Hate is just love that's lost its way"
Maybe intuition and destiny might buoy it back to the surface
That elusive sparkling surface of rose tinted Love
Nothing hurts more than your cold indifference
Of being nothing more than a speck
A trinket of no consequence and utter insignificance
How could you treat me so?
Me who's who begging to have you hold my hand
so that you may melt my frozen fingers
And I can be whole again...

by Su Kyaw( 19/1/09)

The Fates and the Pied Piper

Mockery and derision go hand in hand
People u thought u knew dissolve like a mirage
Promises of things to be forming like larks in ur mind that disappear with the setting sun
Cruel irony it is...the honest stranger shot to death by a dazzle of arrows
Honest words, kind compliments, sincere unrolling of the heart's map kicked aside
whilst the mean hearted hypocrite arches her back,
Basking in the glory of her slap dash reign on servitude
Mesmerized the unthinking horde follow her
The pied piper of Decay...all wanting to wash their hands in Caesar's blood
A well keeled word from the damnable piper can mean the difference between
climbing the shining rungs of high society,
or grovelling forever beneath the stampede of hastily polished boots
Your destiny like a warped thread between Atropos fatal blades
Koltho would wince at the way her whimsical weaving was handled
With disdain and foppery by the Pied piper who claimed to know everything and nothing at once
Lakhesis her lithe brows crinkled in consternation...
would ponder why nimble measurements were swayed off course by the devious Piper
Threads fall silently to the cold floor, offered up in sacrifice to the Piper under
guise of good tidings
that would never come to be.
A distant cry in the horizon, the fleeting thump of wings on a hummingbird's back.
Then all is quiet, the world settled with dew, cool dawn and crisp green foliage.
Why do we go after things that break us?

Bubbles and cyanide: a paradox?

I wish to go back to the days when a bubble blown with care free thoughts glistened in the sun and made my day. I yearn for the days when I never failed to be enraptured by the dewy beauty of roses. I envision past days of listless lying on the sofa and thinking how big everything around me is. And being excited when a familiar, beloved face made loving noises and coo-ed my name...I wish i was a child again. No one can ever perceive the world through a child's eyes. It strips the hypocrisy, pain, falsehoods, dogma and unnecessary complexities...it lays the world bare, an artist's impression of the reality as it is without prejudice-true to its primal existence.

This bareness is exhilarating, breath taking,like shards of truth slicing hard into flesh yet the child's dimensions allow only receptory sensations akin to the soft purr of velvet against skin. Truth and clarity are fresh faced visitors welcomed with tiny embracing arms smudged with crayons and mud. Peace is a permanent resident, requiring no visas, taxes or any of those tiresome government documents to verify it's content lodging in the sunny dell of mirth. Curiosity is at its peak;it fledges its magnificent wings and is soon airborne amidst fluffy white clouds and a slowly shuffling seascape of cotton waves and silver sand dunes. Nothing ever lost its spark, a frog pond, a ribbon wrapped over an ancestor's memorabilia of love gone but not lost, a brown paper bag with a bulging peanut butter and jelly sandwich sealed off with mom's kisses. It does not feel the pain so addictive in the adult's world where narcissism and self hate go hand in hand, justified into daily human norm by Freud and others.

The harsh ambiance of the stark adult's world has no time or patience for the child's world. If the child's world and the adult's world were to collide, the adult's world would shrink in hostility into a brooding black hole, a cornered mangy dog starved of love, beaten and trampled on to fulfill the manifestation of its name. Yet it would remain, a gaping wound on the gradients of innocence and happiness yet to be tainted with materialism. I can imagine the wound throbbing and thrashing like a speared eel awaiting its sombre death on a spit fire. Soon the mists of confusion would seep out, a cyanide genocide of every child's Once-upon-a-time....