Blasted

Without and with inward crashing, toast me to the devil’s mattbone, I salute sweltering sun, always brining away at me to rise up this courage, make life what in tricky tree truth it is/never has been/always could be...ah, if we were starving I’d feed you blood from my wrists, let you drink in my life, as you, lost in worldstance and genuflect confusion, your communion makes me radiant, grow in fire, emerge from that old convict feeling and tremble forward, head hitting floor a tumble thousand times till I have that mark of humble devotion (an ideal),,,but, ah, I’m lazy and I have no children yet, and my wrists are brimming with blood, as I am definitively not starving and I work no fields and my fight for justice right now seems to take place only on my inside, and rating sunsets doesn’t get a guy to heaven, though ratifying them...no robots to simplify battles, drones from on high coming in to blast me as I dodge sideways, thisaway/thataway, hurl my last fuel-filled dynowhateverpod at encroaching robot star-invasion ships, thus saving all from sure destruction...but it didn’t happen, I was home writing, and someone else nabbed glory, and me, me was merely winking at them starships, thinking what kind of poems they must be writing, with all that time to cross the galaxy, damn...

Coded Language

Written and Performed by Saul Williams

A lo mejor, soy otro...

por Cesar Vallejo

A lo mejor, soy otro; andando, al alba, otro que marcha
en torno a un disco largo, a un disco elástico:
mortal, figurativo, audaz diafragma.
A lo mejor, recuerdo al esperar, anoto mármoles
donde índice escarlata, y donde catre de bronce,
un zorro ausente, espúreo, enojadísimo.
A lo mejor, hombre al fin,
las espaldas ungidas de añil misericordia,
a lo mejor, me digo, más allá no hay nada.

Me da la mar el disco, refiriéndolo,
con cierto margen seco, a mi garganta;
¡nada en verdad, más ácido, más dulce, más kanteano!

Pero sudor ajeno, pero suero
o tempestad de mansedumbre,
decayendo o subiendo, ¡eso, jamás!

Echado, fino, exhúmome,
tumefacta la mezcla en que entro a golpes,
sin piernas, sin adulto barro, ni armas,
una aguja prendida en el gran átomo...
¡No! ¡Nunca! ¡Nunca ayer! ¡Nunca después!

Y de ahí este tubérculo satánico,
esta muela moral de plesiosaurio
y estas sospechas póstumas,
este índice, esta cama, estos boletos.

Bella

por Pablo Neruda

Bella,
como en la piedra fresca
del manantial, el agua
abre un ancho relámpago de espuma,
así es la sonrisa en tu rostro,
bella.

Bella,
de finas manos y delgados pies
como un caballito de plata,
andando, flor del mundo,
así te veo,
bella.

Bella,
con un nido de cobre enmarañado
en tu cabeza, un nido
color de miel sombría
donde mi corazón arde y reposa,
bella.

Bella,
no te caben los ojos en la cara,
no te caben los ojos en la tierra.
Hay países, hay ríos,
en tus ojos,
mi patria está en tus ojos,
yo camino por ellos,
ellos dan luz al mundo
por donde yo camino,
bella.

Bella,
tus senos son como dos panes hechos
de tierra cereal y luna de oro,
bella.

Bella,
tu cintura
la hizo mi brazo como un río cuando
pasó mil años por tu dulce cuerpo,
bella.

Bella,
no hay nada como tus caderas,
tal vez la tierra tiene
en algún sitio oculto
la curva y el aroma de tu cuerpo,
tal vez en algún sitio,
bella.

Bella, mi bella,
tu voz, tu piel, tus uñas,
bella, mi bella,
tu ser, tu luz, tu sombra,
bella,
todo eso es mío, bella,
todo eso es mío, mía,
cuando andas o reposas,
cuando cantas o duermes,
cuando sufres o sueñas,
siempre,
cuando estás cerca o lejos,
siempre,
eres mía, mi bella,
siempre.

Landscape with Boat

by Wallace Stevens

An anti-master floribund ascetic.

He brushed away the thunder, then the clouds,
Then the colossal illusion of heaven. Yet still
The sky was blue. He wanted imperceptible air.
He wanted to see. He wanted the eye to see
And not be touched by blue. He wanted to know,
A naked man who regarded himself in the glass
Of air, who looked for the world beneath the blue,
Without blue, without any turqouise hint or phase,
Any azure under-side or after-color. Nabob
Of bones, he rejected, he denied, to arrive
At the neutral center, the omnious element,
The single colored, colorless, primitive.

It was not as if the truth lay where he thought,
Like a phantom, in an uncreated night.
It was easier to think it lay there. If
It was nowhere else, it was there and because
It was nowhere else, its place had to be supposed,
Itself had to be supposed, a thing supposed
In a place supposed, a thing he reached
In a place that he reached, by rejecting what he saw
And denying what he heard. He would arrive.
He had only not to live, to walk in the dark,
To be projected by one void into
Another.

It was his nature to suppose
To receive what others had supposed, without
Accepting. He received what he denied.
But as truth to be accepted, he supposed
A truth beyond all truths.

He never supposed
That he might be truth, himself, or part of it,
That the things that he rejected might be part
And the irregular turquoise part, the perceptible blue
Grown dense, part, the eye so touched, so played
Upon by clouds, the ear so magnified
By thunder, parts, and all these things together,
Parts, and more things, parts. He never supposed divine
Things might not look divine, nor that if nothing
Was divine then all things were, the world itself,
And that if nothing was the the truth, then all
Things were the truth, the world itself was the truth.

Had he been better able to suppose:
He might sit on a sofa on a balcony
Above the Mediterranean, emerald
Becoming emeralds. He might watch the palms
Flap green ears in the heat. He might observe
A yellow wine and follow a steamer's track
And say, "The thing I hum appears to be
The rhythm of this celestrial pantomime"

"...like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

Prospero, from Shakespeare's The Tempest (Act 4, Scene 1, lines 140-48)

High Flight

by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds -- and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of -- Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.


John Gillespie McGee, Jr. (1922 - 1941) was an American/British fighter pilot. He flew with the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II, came to Britain, flew in a Spitfire squadron, and was killed at age 19 on December 11, 1941, during a training flight from the airfield near Scopwick, Lincolnshire. The poem was written on the back of a letter to his parents which stated, "I am enclosing a verse I wrote the other day. It started at 30,000 feet, and was finished soon after I landed."

A mi musa

Yo, con mis ojos de puro otoño,
Yo soy el código
Que usa el mar
Para hablar con la orilla.
Y tú, con tus labios crecientes,
Tú eres la gravitación
Que usa la luna
Para levantar lenguas
Desde las olas...
Desde mis olas que,
Cuando pasas encima de mis crestas,
Deleitan ahogar en tu pecho de puro cielo,
En tus ojos de marga, primavera,
Y lentejuelas celestes del polvo lunar.

¡óigalo!

Flare Guns In Winter

Someone up in the wings
Is calling for a story about the future,
Which is simply someone else’s past.
You can’t consider doing death
Unless you consider doing it
With fireworks and flame retardant suits.
I’m whispering in everybody’s ear:
Shining faces can’t win me back.

Flare guns in winter,
And mind all over the skies.

Chondra Ippermistrum

Swirlick mockjools,
Pappist snabgrackals chanking furrust oper Chondra,
Hent charhicking snoward
Finto snaygeen.

Pand sim san sim gand pand.
Sidder fo myne,
Sidder fo chyle,
Cappin yep shee fowt.

Bin doods marping oper neem,
Porsik sazzle nometure,
Jin sif epper kweel.
Grack gartick mot sim, sooz jin.

Peen sershglit,
Vang bax im hora fass,
Fiss marn kay yoon sarper kay,
Goud kown haymick fing.

Gell, nee hyte sak pell,
Hin sot mim im sweaming zim,
Bimperled zochound,
Gree fayle sim.

Montray,
Voe doogit troat,
Ep zoon, ep zoon,
Ippermistrum. Ippermistrum. Ippermistrum.

Mad Ballad Of Mad Change, Watching The World Above The World

I crank my hankering, tonk me toon, plunk past isthmus of fantasy disaster, turn all my keys, patience and collision with hearty earth, explosions of sun and mindless hole in my wild center, shot. I toss in pure gorgeous matte black of full space, ache in wild muscle-strain abandon and press mouth to dirt, fly fast-free in the world above the world. I once thought of a world beneath the world, made of thistles and bitter roots, cringing under frozen earth. Now I think of the world above the world, high-kicking all the rooms apart, flamenco-colored, spinning, spangles on wrists, bordered with love and faith and gem-studded lights. The world above the world is made of translucent pavement, amethyst, spiny shards of half-tilted trees, covered in ice and suns. The world above the world hovers over my head, a field of impossibly too-streaming flowers, with minarets! It hangs in the sky, looks down at me with a smile that stretches past all worlds, above and below and inside me, across wide swaths of silver river. I cry out(!) from pain of all this beauty, turning in a honey colored glow that comes out from in me. I maybe could be a solar system. I maybe could be a trillion voices, a quintillion arms to hold the world above, a duovigintillion hearts, each one bigger, by planet sizes, than the next, crashing into and through all the life. I’m emptying of fear. I’m not empty of longing, not yet. But the love that rains down on me from the world above the world is cleansing me of fear. Imagine that...me, a spinning celestial ting.

Playing with the children, by Zen Master Ryokan

trans. by Ryūichi Abé and Peter Haskel in Great Fool.

Early spring
The landscape is tinged with the first fresh hints of green
Now I take my wooden begging bowl
And wander carefree through town
The moment the children see me
They scamper off gleefully to bring their friends
They're waiting for me at the temple gate
Tugging from all sides so I can barely walk
I leave my bowl on a white rock
Hang my pilgrim's bag on a pine tree branch
First we duel with blades of grass
Then we play ball
While I bounce the ball, they sing the song
Then I sing the song and they bounce the ball
Caught up in the excitement of the game
We forget completely about the time
Passersby turn and question me:
"Why are you carrying on like this?"
I just shake my head without answering
Even if I were able to say something how could I explain?
Do you really want to know the meaning of it all?
This is it! This is it!

No poetry today--
just happy to be
in and out of the rain.

Song of the Yodo River by Yosa Buson

trans. by Robert Hass in The Essential Haiku

She speaks (in Chinese verse):

Plum blossoms float by on the spring water,
flowing south where the Uji meets the Yodo.
Don't cut the mooring rope.
Your boat will be lightning in the rapids.

Where the Uji joins the Yodo,
and they flow together as one body,
I want to lie down in the boat with you,
and when i grow old be with you in Naniwa.

He speaks (in a Chinese quatrain composed in Japanese):

You are plum blossoms on the water,
petals floating by till they pass out of sight.
I am a willow growing by the stream.
My shadow is sunk in it, and I cannot follow.

World's One Inch Punch

,,,knock goes the world, knock goes me in it, plunk goes you, halloo goes the trick, el radiant ludicrous truth, city of dreams all up in my sky, cloud of unknowing that takes me, spins me, shows me my hands, my human humming tree, thought buried under treasure of all running, we’re a never-wheeled wing in highlight orange marker across the land, I could sleep on stones with you, be the last man alive in the world, sing opera loud at my all-open lungs to empty windows, play golf in hospitals, swim in fountains, rob pens from banks, whisper my financial secrets to statues, rappel into prisons and let out all the ants, hold you with my just-strong/never-scary arms, repaint the continental divide, manifest the thinking thing while asking what thought is about, ask Shih Wu, dude, “Do those who look for mind with mind ever get a river to jump into twice?” “Nah, man,” says brother Marley, “we don’ need no more trouble,” then Bruce Lee leaps in, does a mean John Lennon impression, “peace to all the people,” sayeth the famous One Inch Puncher, he’s man incarnate, a model for making worlds work when we’re in them, I’m him, your Mister in the mystery world of feeling, I’m your date on the day the world marries itself, the moon has something to tell you if you listen loud enough, it hears, too, if you quiet your cortex and watch the way the stars reel their jig in your holy earth eyes, I am with you in noisy silence,,,

Hon jyst i mewn! (5)

Swing to the loop and mosh pit.

in milk/ in sky

am i crazzy
am i crashing
am i wonderpuppy
am i prayer
in night
in trembling night
waiting for collapse
and expand
wound for all time
in milk
in sky
open
it wants
to absorb
everything
there is
no exception

Ablutions flub Krakatoa

Ablutions flub ten
extra world, Krakatoa
end estimate halloo.
Hoth stick up
swearing dolphin nonce
fly a pie.
Tow day rumble
flair gunny sack
meander absinthe tokay.
Swan wick dawdle
em dexterous clothes,
margarine finish shine
operate high job.
Knock theater womb
treacle flush tangent
Electra Mortimer Hungary.
Moms tom tattoo
rebel limbo tea
neck aerator return
tryst race mansion
block or block.
Morse horse declension
equine numbers gallant
incunabulum gong daytrip.