So that each
is its own, now–each has fallen, blond stillness.
Closer, above them,
the damselflies pass as they would over water,
if the fruit were water,
or as bees would, if they weren’t
somewhere else, had the fruit found
already a point more steep
in rot, as soon it must, if
none shall lift it from the grass whose damp only
softens further those parts where flesh
goes soft.
There are those
whom no amount of patience looks likely
to improve ever, I always said, meaning
gift is random,
assigned here,
here withheld–almost always
correctly
as it’s turned out: how your hands clear
easily the wreckage;
how you stand–like a building for a time condemned,
then deemed historic. Yes. You
will be saved.
(Read Carl Phillips’ bio and more poems here.)
Category Archives: Great Poems Online
Lenten Sonnets and Reflections from Touchstone Magazine
Anthony Esolen at Mere Comments, the blog of Touchstone Magazine, offers these moving reflections on the particularity of love, human and divine:
The gentle souled Albert Einstein, possessed of a devout spirit, once said that he believed in God, but God as conceived by the philosopher Spinoza, Deus sive natura — God, or nature, or the laws of physics. When Planck set forth his theory of quantum mechanics, Einstein at first rejected it, tartly asserting that “God does not play dice with the universe.” Something about the particularity of Planck’s theory offended him, was a mote to trouble the mind’s eye. I wonder if it is the same tiny but scandalous mote that troubles the minds of men who cannot see love at the heart of the universe. A law is abstract and general; if I step off the limb of a tree, gravity doesn’t care who I am or what I desire; I fall. But love is particular, and the dark history of man is studded with moments of love, when nothing in the world matters but this single being I love, for whom I would give life itself.Dr. Esolen’s post is one of a series reprinting and commenting on sonnets by Fr. Donaghy, S.J., about the Stations of the Cross. Read the first entry here.
It is the stunning claim of Christianity and Judaism that this world is not a vast machine but a story, with startling turns, moments of truth, and characters unique and unrepeatable.
Gabriel Welsch: “Pressing Business”
Trees leaf out—roses and lilacs
sequin with buds. Smooth tense skins
tighten like a promise. We’ll break them down.
We’ll press them, force them flat
for a record. Press them within the pages
of an unabridged dictionary, the RHS
encyclopedia of gardening. Let them feel
the weight of the language we have heaped
upon them. The weight is heavy indeed:
philosophy, the bible, a dictionary,
a Rookwood pot—terra cotta, urn-shaped,
paperbacks stuffed inside, the weight
of more learning and cultural import
to crush the color of a tulip flat, a tulip
that had come a long time down to this,
pushed in a towel in a dictionary under a pot,
this blossom of Dutch monarchs, this Mercedes
of mercantilism, this blossom to kill a king for, this
delicate gem of no facets. We write the tags,
take their names and learn them,
speak them in our home, teach their curves
to our tongue and teeth, feel
language work even here, simply by its
accumulated weight. In this way,
syllables blossom, the names lose
their context of weeds, keep the color
slipped from the sun.
Read more poems from Welsch’s book Dirt and All Its Dense Labor (WordTech Editions, 2006) here.
Marjorie Maddox: “How to Fit God into a Poem”
Part I
Read him.
Break him into stanzas.
Give him a pet albatross
and a bon voyage party.
Glue archetypes on his wings with Elmers,
or watch as he soars past the Slough of Despond
in a DC-10.
Draw wrinkles on his brow with eyeliner
until his beard turns as white as forgiven sin.
Explicate him.
Call him “Love.”
Translate him into Norwegian.
Examine original manuscripts
for proof of his kinship to Shakespeare.
Make him rhyme,
Cram him into iambic pentameter.
Let him read War and Peace ten times
and give a book report to third graders.
Edit out references to sin
and insert miracles.
Award him a Nobel Prize.
Then, after you’ve published him annually
in The New Yorker for thirty years,
crucify him. Proclaim it a suicide.
Part II
Let him whirl through your veins
like a hurricane
until your cells gyrate,
until you salivate at the sound of his breath.
Let him bristle your nerves like cat hairs
and laminate your limbs.
On All Saints’ Day, meditate
and wait patiently.
Then, he will come,
then, he will twist your tongue,
pucker your skin,
spew out his life on the page.
Read more selections from Maddox’s collection Weeknights at the Cathedral (WordTech Editions, 2006) here. Read a review in Arabesques Press here.
Helen Bar-Lev & Johnmichael Simon: Poems and Paintings about the Land of Israel
Israeli poets Helen Bar-Lev and Johnmichael Simon’s new book of poetry, Cyclamens and Swords, is now available from Ibbetson Press. This collection is beautifully illustrated with Helen’s watercolor paintings of Jerusalem and the Israeli countryside. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in the culture and landscape of the Holy Land, as well as poetry fans generally.
You can purchase your copy by emailing hbarlev@netvision.net.il or j_simon@netvision.net.il . Prices are 65 NIS (including postage to
The achingly beautiful cover of timeless trees, earth, flowers and rock, is redolent of Israel’s destiny. This little land, so hallowed in human history, seems the literary and spiritual core of existence to most of humanity. If strife is ever present here, how can there ever be the peace of ancient promise? This land seems to symbolize the eternal quest for harmony where forces of turmoil march ceaselessly. Bar-Lev and Simon explore this theme for us. Cyclamens and Swords will become a treasured classic, echoing as it does so fluently, the longing, fearing and questing that marks these troubled times. Helen Bar-Lev’s poem Beauty sums up the reader’s feelings as we reluctantly finish this special book: “and I,/the ingrate,/ever insatiable,/implore you,/please,/ show/ me/more.”
–Katherine L. Gordon
Author, Editor, Publisher, Judge and Reviewer, Resident Columnist for Ancient Heart Magazine
Bar-Lev and Simon open the reader’s eyes and hearts to Israel as a land of dazzling, sometimes tragic juxtapositions. The timeless tranquility of Bar-Lev’s unpopulated landscape paintings gains poignancy alongside poems that show an equally ancient violence alwayslooming on the border. This elegantly designed book shines with love and gratitude for the small miracles of natural beauty and human kindness that flourish even in a war zone.
–Jendi Reiter, editor of www.winningWriters.com and author of A Talent for Sadness
There is a point where art transcends our daily lives and past experiences to touch deep the old stories from where all of humanity arose. In this volume Helen Bar-Lev and Johnmichael Simon have drunk deep from the wellhead of this locus to combine poetry and visual art into a Jungian statement that illustrates how, when portrayed at its artistic essence, the story of one place becomes a story of us all.
–Roger Humes, Director of The Other Voices International Project, Author of There Sings No Bird
Helen Bar-Lev and Johnmichael Simon bring the beauty of Israel to life in Helen’s lush watercolors and evocative monochrome paintings and in the sensitive poems they both write. Their verbal and visual depictions of the breathtaking scenery, flowers, birds, fish, deer and ants, testify to Israel’s magnificent natural environment. But like an undertow in a dazzling ocean, the ongoing undercurrent of conflict tries to steal the serenity of the scenery. Their book is simultaneously exhilarating and jarring. They reveal the beauty and the pain which live side by side in the compelling, complex reality that is Israel. One shares their hope that serenity will triumph.
–Rabbi Wayne Franklin, Providence, R.I.
****
A selection from Cyclamens and Swords:
Waters of Gaza
by Johnmichael Simon
They moved out of Gaza
not without protest, not without prayer
feeling like ivy ripped off the walls
like irrigation pipes torn from the soil
they moved out on unwilling legs
on buses to nowhere
fathers, mothers, children
and children without fathers
without mothers
They moved into Gaza
not without covet, not without envy
feeling like water released from a dam
bursting into surrendering fields
carrying all before it, trees, houses
places of prayer, fences, gardens
waves breaking over alien temples
again and again till water covered all
After the water came briny hatred
lusting for a redder liquid
and the skies darkened again
lightning and thunder returned to Gaza
rained on this thin strip of unhappiness
writhing between the wrath of history
and the dark depths of the sea
****
Cyclamens and Swords
by Helen Bar-Lev
Life should be sunflowers and poetry
symphonies and four o’clock tea
instead it’s entangled
like necklaces in a drawer
when you reach in for cyclamens
you pull out swords
This is a country
which devours its inhabitants,
spits them out hollow like the shells of
seeds,
defies them to survive
despite the peacelessness,
promises them cyclamens
but rewards them with swords
It is here we live with
symphonies and sunflowers,
poetry and four o’clock tea,
enmeshed in an absurd passion for this land
entangled as we are in its history,
like butterflies in a net
or sheep in a barbed wire fence
Where it is forbidden
to pick cyclamens
but necessary
to brandish swords
Prison Poet “Conway” Inspired by Blake
Some more excerpts from my correspondence with “Conway”, a prisoner at a supermax facility in central California who’s serving 25-to-life under the state’s three-strikes law for receiving stolen goods. For Christmas, I sent him some books he’d requested (Kipling, Thoreau, Blake), and he responded in January with this poem that was inspired by Plate 3 from William Blake’s The Book of Thel:
Bring Me CloudsConway sent me some more poems last month:
The clouds were dancing, playing
disappearing games in the sky
as they softly windswept flew
out of the corner of my eye
I had no recollection of their worth
when they quietly faded away
I wonder do they have a voice
if so, what do they say?
A lonesome tuft of pillowy white
against that bright blue field
floated a vale of powder across the sun
and turned into a shield
This shadow calm and quick did pass
in only but a moment’s time
when the sun peeked back his head
across his golden climb
Twas then I recognoticed [sic]
their silent voices dancing in my brain
though they were absent from my ears
sweet tears are singing inside the rain
hovering flittering without care
Till pregnant there, a storm does bring
a shower on the newborn spring
Those clouds make birds-n-flowers sing
so, you see it’s all by choice
all this is part of the clouds voice…
********
Lasher
This inhumane endeavor
inside the ashes of an expired world
dread realm of desired breath
The indignence of exile sucks
what’s right from our hungry sight
swallowing the souls last gasp
into the abyss drawing night
causing the wickedness in the world
to mix, blend and stir together
creating a forever decomposing maze,
cracked walls, sidewalks and
heavy unscribed tombstones
sucking at the soles every step
resenting every place ever known
bringing glory to the keeper
without rules except action
violent ruthless distraction
ruling without conscience.
I would rather be me
with empty cup
Than the whip lasher dead
from the shoulders up…
********
Ruin
You can see the polished trails, and spots
where human feet, hands have longingly lingered, or
heads have rubbed, tossing-n-turning in exhaustion.
That rough concrete smoothed and shiny, reflects
those souls lost in this bitter maze.
Wandering, forever herded like cattle prodded
along in chains, jingling like slave bangles.
As this wretched machine clinks and clanks, devouring
with steel doors chomping down bite after vicious bite.
From the inside consummated, slowly
we view our digestion, realizing this concrete and steel
nightmare’s no deal.
Dead are they, who observe this torment
unmoved from a far away place, with unspoken breath.
What really is Death, if not dull
like the gray ashes dust, lifted and blown about
nakedly exposed inside a Sun’Ray dancing, for
only a moment away specs performing, reflected
with a stars bright sparkle.
Those spectacles were once a wall, or being
about this tall, escorted chained, down to that
loathsome execution hall.
Truly now, they live and play gay in a way,
face the day uninhibited.
Unlike this steel door, or cold cracked
concrete floor, sucking hard on the lonesome footsteps
of a condemned creation’s last march to ruin…
Alegria Imperial: “Love-Lettered”
Another week slips into
the inevitable: the end of
a string of days. What is to
unravel or recall determines the
weight of this week’s end.
To your first week end
evening, dusk I hope
descended grace on its brow
instead of thorns on its
fingers as it props you up
struggling to haul your fatigue
onto a train.
Where is your stop, Caro?
Is if to the waiting
‘muneca’? Her seas tonight
I hope had ceased roiling and
holds a quiet bed of words
she wreaths you with, scented
lily-calm or cherry silken-ed
What awaits you bounding
on Madrid streets, love
in your instep to
her door I hope not sour drops
littered behind the door-click, mouth-
hurting pebbles that her thoughts
had become when thinking of
you ‘living your life as your life’
not ‘life with her as your life’.
Loving and un-loving
that have for fifteen moons
tossed and battered you–
even if at times washed you
kissed and brilliant in suns,
interminable moving suns, that
dip and set then rise
ir-recognizable even to you who
has a sun for a heart—I wish
soon ends this ‘fin de semaine’. A
new moon rising unseen as yet
I wish grips the seesaw lever
and balancing you on pole-ends
pulls you upright from the
ribs, coaxes a deep breath,
gifts you a glass-clear sense
not so much to know what’s right
but what you want from loving
or un-loving.
The fruit not the tree, you say,
Caro, seems to rot in your hands when it
finally falls. I say, it does, if your
desire ends in your hands—in it
a fruit unmasked shows hairs, dimples
or scars. Its essence is in its fruit—ness
not in that weight on your hands. A
woman like a fruit has her essence
hidden. More than a fruit, a woman
rots not. To want to hold her it is her
spirit you must bridle and if you could
you must sip and swallow or if not,
sip and spew. One other
secret: you have to let her imbibe
your spirit as you do hers. If to this
you demure, then turn away
for ends of weeks may not
turn around and loving will
remain un-loving.
Louis MacNeice: “Wolves”
I do not want to be reflective any more
Envying and despising unreflective things
Finding pathos in dogs and undeveloped
handwriting
And young girls doing their hair and all the castles
of sand
Flushed by the children’s bedtime, level with
the shore.
The tide comes in and goes out again, I do not
want
To be always stressing either its flux or its
permanence,
I do not want to be a tragic or philosophic chorus
But to keep my eye only on the nearer future
And after that let the sea flow over us.
Come then all of you, come closer, form a circle,
Join hands and make believe that joined
Hands will keep away the wolves of water
Who howl along our coast. And be it assumed
That no one hears them among the talk and
laughter.
Poet “Conway” Reflects on Isolation and Fellowship in Prison
Here are some more excerpts from my recent correspondence with “Conway”, a prisoner at a supermax facility in central California who’s serving 25-to-life under the state’s three-strikes law for receiving stolen goods.
Dec. 7, 2006
This young black man down the tier. He’s been ostracized by his folk, has been asking me for help in his songs he’s been writing, and a story — it’s very ghetto murder rampage story gangsters in the hood and what not but his songs have some serious merit — he sang two of them to me in the cages, I’m not the one to judge but I see the talent in his words, so I gave him my opinion and offered a direction. He said it helped him take it into another direction he hadn’t realized.
Isn’t it funny how talking with another creative person can give you a new perspective on your own creativity?
The odd thing is in here we are totally segregated and then separated by cages (dog kennels) but I get a chance to converse with characters I would never even speak to on the mainline or in society, it is such a severe microcosm of the world and we’re all out there in our boxers + shirts and state issued tennis shoes, no pretentious clothes or jewelry just personality, and everyone is in search of conversation respectfully. Oh there are the few that are forever hateful, or just broken husks of humanity, but the cops don’t allow them out too often to disrupt the congeniality of the cages if that sounds absurd, it probably would to the outside observer, but I’m starting to enjoy freezin in my boxers in the rain and meeting all these crooks 🙂
The cold thing is I’m not sure if they are aware of the monsters they are creating in these dungeons. It’s hard to watch a man you’ve conversed with and related with, all of a sudden break down, and it reminds me of a scenario, of a scene I saw on TV.
These guys were trying to let this leopard out of a cage it was in the back of a truck they apparently took it on this journey to set it loose after capture. They pulled a string from inside the cab of the truck and it opened the cage the cat leapt out and jumped into the cab with the driver and attacked him. At first you think how ungrateful this belligerent cat is trying to maul his savior. And then you got to realize that cat has probably sat behind those steel bars, or mesh seething, wishing it could lash out at this miserable person who kept it trapped, and when the time comes for its freedom its only thought is revenge, before it even thinks to run, get away from this place.
It’s kind of like that with these guys, they keep them locked in cages, constantly pestering, belittling, making these madmen, and their parole date comes they open the gate and say Go! but they are still behind the fence, so the only ones to lash out at are the unexpecting, unprepared sheep wending their way home after a day’s work in the office, factory or whatever job they use to survive. “The vicious circle” and then the cops point and say See! You need me! Perpetual perpetrators….
Any rage I told you about the “poop stain” [guy] they sprayed him out of his cell with pepper spray after he threw his feces/urine concoction on cops then gave him a tune up in the rotunda, and disappeared. Now they got a guy who kicks his door or did kick his door till he got the “tension cage”. He’s quiet now (somewhat) — he keeps trying to talk to us in the cages they took his shoes so he’s barefoot on the cold concrete. I know he’s suffering but man he tortured us for weeks & weeks before they extracted him I still despise him for putting me throughthat but he tries to catch my eye and it seems he’s pleading with his eyes for someone anyone to talk to him. I know I’m probably out of line to ignore him but we all have decided he’s on the shine for a while — I know I’m probably going to have to be the one to break it down and give him some conversation but not yet, I guess I’m not as compassionate as I’d like to be….
OK now as for you sending books yes please it would be greatly appreciated they allow me to receive 5 books per month….The guy I traded the drawing for Anna Karenina got it from amazon.com — oh you won’t believe this but I just traded that book for Inferno by Dante Alegheri very good book. That guy I traded just ordered The Count of Monte Christo and Cyrano de Bergerac”. I can’t wait to read those when he’s done 🙂 The only thing is we have to tear the books only 50 pages at a time go under the door so we can fish them to each other with lines we spin out of boxer waist band threat so the books even though the binding is ruined then are cherished (if that makes sense at all).
Conway enclosed some poems in this letter, from which I’ve selected the ones below:
Shadow
Artificial lights create shadows
as the sun’s jealous presence beckons
lingering with dark fingers
into the cracks of Hell.
Fire flickers and peeks for intruders
leading even blindness to warmth
see everything must feed
death be the need for life.
Flame needs fuel, “destruction”
another tool of life’s construction
cast about on the silhouettes
of our passing desire to breathe.
Whether we acknowledge complicity
our signature still lingers
regardless acceptance
the dying is buying all.
(No matter how big or small.)
So this flickering flame burns brightly
as the moon turns tightly
around earth’s wrist, giving a twist
on the sun’s revolution.
How long till tension becomes too tight
and space reverses in flight
taking back terrific energy spent
while we all went about our way.
Tomorrow or today it must happen
we all become the shadow
darkness wins from the sins of living
how long will your shadow last?
********
Kicker
The sonic boom reverberating
in the dayroom echoed in my head
as he kicked the door.
Oh how I wanted to take off his foot
stop his complaining
one day it’s this, the next it’s that
constantly wanting more.
We all were filled with rage
as he stormed about his cage
making a scene, it was his usual routine
until the day they finally got sore.
They came for him that day
filled his cell with pepper spray
good riddance for that I thought,
I smiled as he choked and coughed
wishing him gone
I despised him to the very core.
They dragged him out limp
chained behind his back
trailing the triangle
held by a dozen green suited goons
the ones we all abhor.
They pushed him into the cage
in the dayroom on center stage
and hung the chain from the top
He was begging for them to stop
but it was too late now
This time he’d learn his lesson
His arms were lifted chained
behind his back as he complained
The sight was sorry to be sure.
He couldn’t sit he couldn’t stand
His position was bent over
it was called the tension cage
He cried within moments, I laughed
you see he wasn’t kicking anymore.
After the first hour there
I then became aware
he was sobbing, but repressed
trying to hold it in I guessed
I started to identify
with the plight he had in store.
They left him there till morning
after breakfast and I felt dread
he wasn’t even fed
or, curled up on his concrete bed
Just sagging on the chain crimp
in the dayroom sobbing softly limp
it was pitiful and mean
The worst treatment I’d ever seen
just because he kicked the stupid steel door.
Finally they came in
unchained him from the bars within
as his arms came down he cried
They walked him back to his cell bent over and tied
as he sobbed for he couldn’t stand
but they pulled his purple hand and arms
backward to be uncuffed
and stuffed them through the trayslot in the door.
We all watched and listened
till we all felt a little sickened
what a nasty trick to pull
they hurt that sorry fool
more than I could ever want
it was such a wretched stunt
I wake at night sometimes
and wonder how it could be
what if they did that to me
could I take the pain
or would they break my brain
and then one day it happened
as I looked out my window
out the back of my prison cell
I thought oh they can all go to hell
I ran as hard as I could
But before I reached my destination
I stuck out my foot in desperation
I kicked the door…
Jeff Walt: “The Life You Want”
Everywhere you look you see it:
running by each morning in Spandex,
resting in a hammock sipping tea
most afternoons. From chic magazines,
you cut a Humvee, a log cabin in Montana,
and a sleek, bronzed body.
Your sorrows grow faster than your garden.
The peonies understand serenity better—
you resent their beauty, their quiet knowledge.
Anxiety a dog that always needs walking.
Envy builds a hive in your head. So you read
self-help books, repeat the angelic affirmations.
Then forget it all
standing in line at Wal-Mart, wanting to kill the clerk
because she’s slow, hating the guy in front of you
for buying so much stuff, pissed
because they haven’t discovered a way
to squeeze enlightenment into your shampoo;
because you can’t order it off a drive-thru menu,
get it SuperSized. You’ve seen the life you want pulling fruit
from its orchard, losing weight and making friends,
humming sweetly on the other side of the hedge—
giving freely what you can’t understand. How?
and Why not me? rotting like bruised apples inside your head.
Visit Jeff’s blog here for more great poems and literary links.