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oldviolin

oldviolin Avatar

Location: esse quam videri
Gender: Male


Posted: Oct 1, 2024 - 9:04pm



Candle Hat

In most self-portraits it is the face that dominates:
Cezanne is a pair of eyes swimming in brushstrokes,
Van Gogh stares out of a halo of swirling darkness,
Rembrant looks relieved as if he were taking a breather
from painting The Blinding of Sampson.

But in this one Goya stands well back from the mirror
and is seen posed in the clutter of his studio
addressing a canvas tilted back on a tall easel.

He appears to be smiling out at us as if he knew
we would be amused by the extraordinary hat on his head
which is fitted around the brim with candle holders,
a device that allowed him to work into the night.

You can only wonder what it would be like
to be wearing such a chandelier on your head
as if you were a walking dining room or concert hall.

But once you see this hat there is no need to read
any biography of Goya or to memorize his dates.

To understand Goya you only have to imagine him
lighting the candles one by one, then placing
the hat on his head, ready for a night of work.

Imagine him surprising his wife with his new invention,
the laughing like a birthday cake when she saw the glow.

Imagine him flickering through the rooms of his house
with all the shadows flying across the walls.

Imagine a lost traveler knocking on his door
one dark night in the hill country of Spain.
"Come in, " he would say, "I was just painting myself,"
as he stood in the doorway holding up the wand of a brush,
illuminated in the blaze of his famous candle hat.



Billy Collins


Antigone

Antigone Avatar

Location: A house, in a Virginian Valley
Gender: Female


Posted: Oct 1, 2024 - 4:36pm

A Brief for the Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.

We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.

If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

-Jack Gilbert, from his book "Refusing Heaven"


oldviolin

oldviolin Avatar

Location: esse quam videri
Gender: Male


Posted: Sep 28, 2024 - 3:12pm

 Isabeau wrote:

   



indeed
Isabeau

Isabeau Avatar

Location: sou' tex
Gender: Female


Posted: Sep 28, 2024 - 3:06pm

 Antigone wrote:
The thing is

   
oldviolin

oldviolin Avatar

Location: esse quam videri
Gender: Male


Posted: Sep 28, 2024 - 2:57pm

 Manbird wrote:
Easter If this were a man
if this man were poisoned
if phosgene invades
the man inhales
the phonograph issues
broken
sanded
washed
if this were a man
and his photogravure
his image
etched
scratched
came to my life
representing life
coloured
measuring light
walked and spoke
eyes shining and alive
I was convinced
if a man came buckling
up from the hide
seasoned
cured
had rotted in his blanket
at night
if my man had steamed
like Jesus
in a cave
delivered
a man a philosophy
a phobia
a blue knuckling voice
sang and cried
warbling
bloody if this man died
in 1914
in a war he inhaled
and he curdled
down into himself
resurrected his death
flocked
his tall tall tree
his reverse breath
dimpled his reverse breath
his cheeks collapsed
livid
purple
as his eight day rock
and his sap let loose
if this man had sap
he was then wrapped loosely
and tied whitely
if this were a man
his burning watermark remains
his bearded water stamp
remains

- Rob Diebold
 20181225_145546
oldviolin

oldviolin Avatar

Location: esse quam videri
Gender: Male


Posted: Sep 27, 2024 - 8:20am


oldviolin

oldviolin Avatar

Location: esse quam videri
Gender: Male


Posted: Sep 21, 2024 - 8:07am



Here rise to life again, dead poetry!
Let it, O holy Muses, for I am yours,
And here Calliope, strike a higher key,
Accompanying my song with that sweet air
which made the wretched Magpies feel a blow
that turned all hope of pardon to despair

— Dante, "Purgatorio", Canto I, lines 7 to 12


Antigone

Antigone Avatar

Location: A house, in a Virginian Valley
Gender: Female


Posted: Sep 6, 2024 - 3:36pm

Got this in a card from my first boss and his wife, in response to my card about my upcoming retirement.
 
Untitled

oldviolin

oldviolin Avatar

Location: esse quam videri
Gender: Male


Posted: Sep 4, 2024 - 2:26pm


buddy

buddy Avatar

Location: Rocky Mountains
Gender: Male


Posted: Aug 27, 2024 - 2:52pm

Seven In The Woods
~ Jim Harrison

Am I as old as I am?

Maybe not. Time is a mystery

that can tip us upside down.

Yesterday I was seven in the woods,

a bandage covering my blind eye,

in a bedroll Mother made me

so I could sleep out in the woods

far from people. A garter snake glided by

without noticing me. A chickadee

landed on my bare toe, so light

she wasn't believable. The night

had been long and the treetops

thick with a trillion stars. Who

was I, half-blind on the forest floor

who was I at age seven? Sixty-eight

years later I can still inhabit that boy's

body without thinking of the time between.

It is the burden of life to be many ages

without seeing the end of time.


ScottN

ScottN Avatar

Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary
Gender: Male


Posted: Aug 27, 2024 - 12:02pm



Quite Frankly

by Mark Halliday

They got old, they got old and died. But first—
okay but first they composed plangent depictions
of how much they lost and how much cared about losing.
Meantime their hair got thin and more thin
as their shoulders went slumpy. Okay but

not before the photo albums got arranged by them,
arranged with a niftiness, not just two or three
but eighteen photo albums, yes eighteen eventually,
eighteen albums proving the beauty of them (and not someone else),
them and their relations and friends, incontrovertible

playing croquet in that Bloomington yard,
floating on those comic inflatables at Dow Lake,
giggling at the Dairy Queen, waltzing at the wedding,
building a Lego palace on the porch,
holding the baby beside the rental truck,
leaning on the Hemingway statue at Pamplona,
discussing the eternity of art in that Sardinian restaurant.

Yes! And so, quite frankly—at the end of the day—
they got old and died okay sure but quite frankly
how much does that matter in view of
the eighteen photo albums, big ones
thirteen inches by twelve inches each
full of such undeniable beauty?





Antigone

Antigone Avatar

Location: A house, in a Virginian Valley
Gender: Female


Posted: Jul 27, 2024 - 11:03am

The thing is
Isabeau

Isabeau Avatar

Location: sou' tex
Gender: Female


Posted: Jul 23, 2024 - 8:18am

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:

NoEnzLefttoSplit

NoEnzLefttoSplit Avatar

Gender: Male


Posted: Jul 23, 2024 - 7:57am

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:
 
{#Lol}  been there
ScottFromWyoming

ScottFromWyoming Avatar

Location: Powell
Gender: Male


Posted: Jul 23, 2024 - 7:50am


oldviolin

oldviolin Avatar

Location: esse quam videri
Gender: Male


Posted: Jul 18, 2024 - 8:40pm


Manbird

Manbird Avatar

Location: La Villa Toscana
Gender: Male


Posted: May 27, 2024 - 7:20pm

Easter

If this were a man
if this man were poisoned
if phosgene invades
the man inhales
the phonograph issues
broken
sanded
washed
if this were a man
and his photogravure
his image
etched
scratched
came to my life
representing life
coloured
measuring light
walked and spoke
eyes shining and alive
I was convinced
if a man came buckling
up from the hide
seasoned
cured
had rotted in his blanket
at night
if my man had steamed
like Jesus
in a cave
delivered
a man a philosophy
a phobia
a blue knuckling voice
sang and cried
warbling
bloody

if this man died
in 1914
in a war he inhaled
and he curdled
down into himself
resurrected his death
flocked
his tall tall tree
his reverse breath
dimpled his reverse breath
his cheeks collapsed
livid
purple
as his eight day rock
and his sap let loose
if this man had sap
he was then wrapped loosely
and tied whitely
if this were a man
his burning watermark remains
his bearded water stamp
remains

- Rob Diebold
oldviolin

oldviolin Avatar

Location: esse quam videri
Gender: Male


Posted: May 27, 2024 - 11:16am

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow;
I am the diamond glints on the snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain;
I am the gentle autumn's rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft star that shines at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there; I did not die.

author is somewhat disputed
ScottN

ScottN Avatar

Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary
Gender: Male


Posted: May 12, 2024 - 6:32am

The Republic of Motherhood

I crossed the border into the Republic of Motherhood
and found it a queendom, a wild queendom.
I handed over my clothes and took its uniform,
its dressing gown and undergarments, a cardigan
soft as a creature, smelling of birth and milk,
and I lay down in Motherhood's bed, the bed I had made
but could not sleep in, for I was called at once to work
in the factory of Motherhood. The owl shift,
the graveyard shift. Feeding cleaning loving f eeding.
I walked home, heartsore, through pale streets,
the coins of Motherhood singing in my pockets.
Then I soaked my spindled bones
in the chill municipal baths of Motherhood,
watching strands of my hair float from my fingers.
Each day I pushed my pram through freeze and blossom
down the wide boulevards of Motherhood
where poplars bent their branches to stroke my brow.
I stood with my sisters in the queues of Motherhood –
the weighing clinic, the supermarket – waiting
for its bureaucracies to open their doors.
As required, I stood beneath the flag of Motherhood
and opened my mouth although I did not know the anthem.
When darkness fell I pushed my pram home again,
by lamp-light wrote urgent letters of complaint
to the Department of Motherhood but received no response.
I grew sick and was healed in the hospitals of Motherhood
with their long-closed isolation wards
and narrow beds watched over by a fat moon.
The doctors were slender and efficient
and when I was well they gave me my pram again
so I could stare at the daffodils in the parks of Motherhood
while winds pierced my breasts like silver arrows.
In snowfall, I haunted Motherhood's cemeteries,
the sweet fallen beneath my feet –
Our Lady of the Birth Trauma, Our Lady of Psychosis.
I wanted to speak to them, tell them I understood,
but the words came out scrambled, so I knelt instead
and prayed in the chapel of Motherhood, prayed
for that whole wild fucking queendom,
its sorrow, its unbearable skinless beauty,
and all the souls that were in it. I prayed and prayed
until my voice was a night cry,
sunlight pixellating my face like a kaleidoscope.
oldviolin

oldviolin Avatar

Location: esse quam videri
Gender: Male


Posted: May 3, 2024 - 9:46am

WORM WOODSTOCK

The worms have been up all night writing long lines
of crazy, unintelligible poetry in the street.
Drunk on spring, they dry out in the sun.

Mike Hazard

scan0012RPF

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