Frog Moon
March 16, 2006
Whispers...
Have you noticed a change in the night?
It’s no longer only the singing of the cedar trees I hear but now a chorus of frogs has started their mating songs. I had heard the morning robins but somehow I had missed them. We all do that; hear something without really hearing it. But there they were under the full moon, crooning away.
Then there is the scent of the rain. Distinctive west coast spring. Smelling of green and dirt. Of pine trees and wet pavement.
I may have to go hunting spring down. Pin her to the pages of this cyber world to share with those who have not yet smelled the trail of her perfume.
G.
It’s no longer only the singing of the cedar trees I hear but now a chorus of frogs has started their mating songs. I had heard the morning robins but somehow I had missed them. We all do that; hear something without really hearing it. But there they were under the full moon, crooning away.
Then there is the scent of the rain. Distinctive west coast spring. Smelling of green and dirt. Of pine trees and wet pavement.
I may have to go hunting spring down. Pin her to the pages of this cyber world to share with those who have not yet smelled the trail of her perfume.
G.
March 02, 2006
Other Windows...
How to Speak Poetry~by Leonard Cohen
Take the word butterfly. To use this word it is not necessary to make the voice weigh less than an ounce or equip it with small dusty wings. It is not necessary to invent a sunny day or a field of daffodils. It is not necessary to be in love, or to be in love with butterflies. The word butterfly is not a real butterfly. There is the word and there is the butterfly. If you confuse these two items people have the right to laugh at you. Do not make so much of the word. Are you trying to suggest that you love butterflies more perfectly than anyone else, or really understand their nature? The word butterfly is merely data. It is not an opportunity for you tohover, soar, befriend flowers, symbolize beauty and frailty, or in any way impersonate a butterfly.
Do not act out words. Never act out words. Never try to leave the floor when you talk about flying. Never close your eyes and jerk your head to one side when you talk about death. Do not fix your burning eyes on me when you speak about love.
If you want to impress me when you speak about love put your hand in your pocket or under your dress and play with yourself. If ambition and the hunger for applause have driven you to speak about love you should learn how to do it without disgracing yourself or the material.
What is the expression which the age demands? The age demands no expression whatever. We have seen photographs of bereaved Asian mothers. We are not interested in the agony of your fumbled organs. There is nothing you can show on your face that can match the horror of this time. Do not even try. You will only hold yourself up to the scorn of those who have felt things deeply.
We have seen newsreels of humans in the extremities of pain and dislocation. Everyone knows you are eating well and are even being paid to stand up there. You are playing to people who have experienced a catastrophe. This should make you very quiet.
Speak the words, convey the data, step aside. Everyone knows you are in pain. You cannot tell the audience everything you know about love in every line of love you speak. Step aside and they will know what you know because you know it already. You have nothing to teach them. You are not more beautiful than they are. You are not wiser. Do not shout at them. Do not force a dry entry. That is bad sex. If you show the lines of your genitals, then deliverwhat you promise. And remember that people do not really want an acrobat in bed.
What is our need? To be close to the natural man, to be close to the natural woman. Do not pretend that you are a beloved singer with a vast loyal audience which has followed the ups and downs of your life to this very moment. The bombs, flame-throwers, and all the shit habe destroyed more than just the trees and villages. They have also destroyed the stage. Did you think that your profession would escape the general destruction? There is no more stage. There are no more footlights.
You are among the people. Then be modest. Speak the words, convey the data, step aside. Be by yourself. Be in your own room. Do not put yourself on.
This is an interior landscape. It is inside. It is private. Respect the privacy of the material. These pieces were written in silence. The courage of the play is to speak them. The discipline of the play is not to violate them. Let the audience feel your love of privacy even though there is no privacy. Be good whores.
The poem is not a slogan. It cannot advertise you. It cannot promote your reputation for sensitivity. You are not a stud. You are not a killer lady. All this junk about the gangsters of love. You are students of discipline. Do not act out the words. The words die when you act them out, they wither, and we are left with nothing but your ambition.
Speak the words with the exact precision with which you would check out a laundry list. Do not become emotional about the lace blouse. Do not get a hard-on when you say panties. Do not get all shivery just because of the towel. The sheets should not provoke a dreamy expression about the eyes. There is no need to weep into the handkerchief. The socks are not there to remind you of strange and distant voyages. It is just your laundry. It is just your clothes. Don't peep through them. Just wear them.
The poem is nothing but information. It is the Consitution of the inner country. If you declaim it and blow it up with noble intentions then you are no better than the politicians whom you despise. You are just someone waving a flag and making the cheapest kind of appeal to a kind of emotional patriotism. Think of the words as science, not as art. They are a report. You are speaking before a meeting of the Explorers' Club of the National Geographic Society. These people know all the risks of mountain climbing. They honour you by taking this for granted. If you rub their faces in it that is an insult to their hospitality. Tell them about the height of the mountain, the equipment you used, be specific about the surfaces and the time it took to scale it. Do not work the audience for gasps and sighs. If you are worthy of gasps and sighs it will not be from your appreciation of the event but from theirs. It will be in the statistics and not the trembling of the voice or the cutting of the air with your hands. It will be in the data and the quiet organization of your presence.
Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you're tired. You look like you could go on forever.
Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty
Take the word butterfly. To use this word it is not necessary to make the voice weigh less than an ounce or equip it with small dusty wings. It is not necessary to invent a sunny day or a field of daffodils. It is not necessary to be in love, or to be in love with butterflies. The word butterfly is not a real butterfly. There is the word and there is the butterfly. If you confuse these two items people have the right to laugh at you. Do not make so much of the word. Are you trying to suggest that you love butterflies more perfectly than anyone else, or really understand their nature? The word butterfly is merely data. It is not an opportunity for you tohover, soar, befriend flowers, symbolize beauty and frailty, or in any way impersonate a butterfly.
Do not act out words. Never act out words. Never try to leave the floor when you talk about flying. Never close your eyes and jerk your head to one side when you talk about death. Do not fix your burning eyes on me when you speak about love.
If you want to impress me when you speak about love put your hand in your pocket or under your dress and play with yourself. If ambition and the hunger for applause have driven you to speak about love you should learn how to do it without disgracing yourself or the material.
What is the expression which the age demands? The age demands no expression whatever. We have seen photographs of bereaved Asian mothers. We are not interested in the agony of your fumbled organs. There is nothing you can show on your face that can match the horror of this time. Do not even try. You will only hold yourself up to the scorn of those who have felt things deeply.
We have seen newsreels of humans in the extremities of pain and dislocation. Everyone knows you are eating well and are even being paid to stand up there. You are playing to people who have experienced a catastrophe. This should make you very quiet.
Speak the words, convey the data, step aside. Everyone knows you are in pain. You cannot tell the audience everything you know about love in every line of love you speak. Step aside and they will know what you know because you know it already. You have nothing to teach them. You are not more beautiful than they are. You are not wiser. Do not shout at them. Do not force a dry entry. That is bad sex. If you show the lines of your genitals, then deliverwhat you promise. And remember that people do not really want an acrobat in bed.
What is our need? To be close to the natural man, to be close to the natural woman. Do not pretend that you are a beloved singer with a vast loyal audience which has followed the ups and downs of your life to this very moment. The bombs, flame-throwers, and all the shit habe destroyed more than just the trees and villages. They have also destroyed the stage. Did you think that your profession would escape the general destruction? There is no more stage. There are no more footlights.
You are among the people. Then be modest. Speak the words, convey the data, step aside. Be by yourself. Be in your own room. Do not put yourself on.
This is an interior landscape. It is inside. It is private. Respect the privacy of the material. These pieces were written in silence. The courage of the play is to speak them. The discipline of the play is not to violate them. Let the audience feel your love of privacy even though there is no privacy. Be good whores.
The poem is not a slogan. It cannot advertise you. It cannot promote your reputation for sensitivity. You are not a stud. You are not a killer lady. All this junk about the gangsters of love. You are students of discipline. Do not act out the words. The words die when you act them out, they wither, and we are left with nothing but your ambition.
Speak the words with the exact precision with which you would check out a laundry list. Do not become emotional about the lace blouse. Do not get a hard-on when you say panties. Do not get all shivery just because of the towel. The sheets should not provoke a dreamy expression about the eyes. There is no need to weep into the handkerchief. The socks are not there to remind you of strange and distant voyages. It is just your laundry. It is just your clothes. Don't peep through them. Just wear them.
The poem is nothing but information. It is the Consitution of the inner country. If you declaim it and blow it up with noble intentions then you are no better than the politicians whom you despise. You are just someone waving a flag and making the cheapest kind of appeal to a kind of emotional patriotism. Think of the words as science, not as art. They are a report. You are speaking before a meeting of the Explorers' Club of the National Geographic Society. These people know all the risks of mountain climbing. They honour you by taking this for granted. If you rub their faces in it that is an insult to their hospitality. Tell them about the height of the mountain, the equipment you used, be specific about the surfaces and the time it took to scale it. Do not work the audience for gasps and sighs. If you are worthy of gasps and sighs it will not be from your appreciation of the event but from theirs. It will be in the statistics and not the trembling of the voice or the cutting of the air with your hands. It will be in the data and the quiet organization of your presence.
Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you're tired. You look like you could go on forever.
Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty
February 22, 2006
February 20, 2006
Other Windows
I Love It When - Sharon Olds
I love it when you roll over
and lie on me in the night, your weight
steady on me as tons of water, my
lungs like a little, shut box,
the firm, haired surface of your legs
opening my legs, my heart swells
to a taut purple boxing glove and then
sometimes I love to lie there doing
nothing, my powerful arms thrown down,
bolts of muslin rippling from the selvage,
your pubic bone a pyramid set
point down on the point of another
-- glistening fulcrum. Then, in the stillness,
I love to feel your grow and grow be-
tween my legs like a plant in fast motion
the way, in the auditorium, in the
dark, near the beginning of our lives,
above us, the enormous stems and flowers
unfold in silence.
I love it when you roll over
and lie on me in the night, your weight
steady on me as tons of water, my
lungs like a little, shut box,
the firm, haired surface of your legs
opening my legs, my heart swells
to a taut purple boxing glove and then
sometimes I love to lie there doing
nothing, my powerful arms thrown down,
bolts of muslin rippling from the selvage,
your pubic bone a pyramid set
point down on the point of another
-- glistening fulcrum. Then, in the stillness,
I love to feel your grow and grow be-
tween my legs like a plant in fast motion
the way, in the auditorium, in the
dark, near the beginning of our lives,
above us, the enormous stems and flowers
unfold in silence.
February 19, 2006
February 11, 2006
Hear the City Burn?
Gabrielle on the Dark Water ~ By Nero (2003)
It was in that ship that Gabrielle would sometimes
talk to me on the lonely star watch, asking above the
music of the bugling night, the waves roaring with
thousands of lonely voices, perhaps voices of all
who had ever drowned, all who had ever died.
“Is it a Star?” Gabrielle asked. “Is it a spark?
Where do the waves’ motions take up? Is that a
dolphin’s shining back or an island? Will the tide draw
us shoreward, but who draws the shore, and do the
hills and valleys move like waves, swelling and
breaking into the trees of foam, human faces?”
“Tell me, “ Gabrielle said, “where is the shore, and
is there no shore, no shore of light or darkness? What
are those foundations of light breaking upon the waves
and the clouds, stars like fires upon the
waters of the darkness – Arcturus, Andromeda, rainy
Haydes? Is there no shore but the argosy of the moving
stars, or are the stars like watchmen’s lamps put
out, or are they the eyes of a peacock? Is it
winter-rimed Orion or the eye of a bird?”
“What birds do you see,” Gabrielle asked me, “and are
they drifting leeward like the stars?”
It was in that ship that Gabrielle would sometimes
talk to me on the lonely star watch, asking above the
music of the bugling night, the waves roaring with
thousands of lonely voices, perhaps voices of all
who had ever drowned, all who had ever died.
“Is it a Star?” Gabrielle asked. “Is it a spark?
Where do the waves’ motions take up? Is that a
dolphin’s shining back or an island? Will the tide draw
us shoreward, but who draws the shore, and do the
hills and valleys move like waves, swelling and
breaking into the trees of foam, human faces?”
“Tell me, “ Gabrielle said, “where is the shore, and
is there no shore, no shore of light or darkness? What
are those foundations of light breaking upon the waves
and the clouds, stars like fires upon the
waters of the darkness – Arcturus, Andromeda, rainy
Haydes? Is there no shore but the argosy of the moving
stars, or are the stars like watchmen’s lamps put
out, or are they the eyes of a peacock? Is it
winter-rimed Orion or the eye of a bird?”
“What birds do you see,” Gabrielle asked me, “and are
they drifting leeward like the stars?”
February 08, 2006
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