IT'S WEDNESDAY, NOT THURSDAY
so I move the cans out to the front
even though it's pouring. Back in,
make extra strong coffee,
read the story in the paper
about the 400-pound bear they
captured in La Crescenta, he strolled down
the mountain, lured by the scent
of meatballs from Costco,
made several trips sensing the danger
but those of us who've had them can agree
those meatballs from Costco are worth
getting pierced by tranquilizer darts.
"Like moving a water bed without a frame,”
claimed the State Fish and Game officials
who loaded him into the truck.
I hope a princess kisses him, he wakes up
human, marries, lives happily ever after
in a home at the edge of a forest
where a bear will stray from the mountain,
raid his garbage, and the ex-bear, father of two,
will keep buckets of chilled meatballs in every room
of his sprawling ranch-style home.

 oldviolin wrote:

...I grow old… I grow old…
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Last lines of
The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock
T.S. Eliot

 ScottN wrote:


 hey now...

All goes back to the earth,
and so I do not desire
pride of excess or power,
but the contentments made
by men who have had little:
the fisherman's silence
receiving the river's grace,
the gardner's musing on rows.

I lack the peace of simple things.
I am never wholly in place.
I find no peace or grace.
We sell the world to buy fire,
our way lighted by burning men,
and that has bent my mind
and made me think of darkness
and wish for the dumb life of roots.

WENDELL BERRY

 

HAMLET

To die, to sleep—
No more—and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep—
To sleep—perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub!
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause—there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of disprized love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death
The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

WS

 Steely_D wrote: 
you mean it gritters your getters?

 oldviolin wrote:

When people say "glitters" it really grinds my gears.

All that glisters is not gold—
Often have you heard that told.
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold.
Gilded tombs do worms enfold.
Had you been as wise as bold,
Young in limbs, in judgment old,
Your answer had not been inscrolled
Fare you well. Your suit is cold—

 oldviolin wrote:

Love his fiction. Lovely wordsmith.

 Antigone wrote: 
He is woefully underappreciated IMO.
He and his wife Susan are super nice people.

 oldviolin wrote:


Fred is one of my favorites. 

 

Epitaph- The Poet

I never truckled.
I never pandered.
I was born
To be remaindered.

Fred Chappell

The Second Coming
by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

 Manbird wrote: 

Agua y Tiempo

nothing speaks
of the water
of the time
of the candles
I who asks nothing
with voice of water
no song of time
pay I the lemons with lime
that uncoloring of essence
of the yellowed maps
light candles for scent
in the carved bowls
of hawthorn wood
bowl of breath
of the time
collected and saved for I
the driftwood
the photographs
fixed next to letters
candles of the cirrus
of the citric fruit
of the time
the water sanctified
of the time
chinese and aztec
of the symbols
of lemongrass
of the bitter orange
of the containers of tin
oiled by the fingers from the past
ruined with bones and teeth
they do not reveal
in darkness of unreach
nothing dispersed by the
gathered wind
identified and altered
I with no fingerprint
of the time
this wax of bees
wax of the cedar
bees of the desert
I of the water
the rosewood boxes
the tobacco rubbed
by I with tea fingers
stones rolled above
within the walls of the earth
gathered in jars

Within I nothing
speaks colors of rose
of silence of mandarin
of the water found
in the sea
the aroma of the salt
salt in the sea
the almonds grow
the fruit accumulation
measures I with time
of the unread memories
and to record in wood
the books never inked
the soldiers of the metal called lead
who die within prayer
yellowed of leather
unspoken for one decade
current of time
black angelica upon I
wormwood and blood oranges
I for more water
washing the time
of the copper icons
of the flowering of jazmín
and the star of the evening
the medals received
for the war never battled
of time
of the water
breathe I inside me

by Rob Diebold

COMFORT OF THE RESURRECTION
by Kim Addonizio

One day everything that’s over or dead
will come back, oil painting & God,
chivalry & the kings (even the mad
old rotters, why not, while the heads
of the plotters are removed
from their iron spikes & carefully glued
on again)— why not believe in the miracle— plaid
has already come back so why not the starved
& flooded corpses, why not fresh bread
from charred toast, aren’t the grubbers in the cupboard
constantly churning up from the charnel the old
ingredients, holy seed, holy blood,
nothing is ever destroyed,
but tell that to Marianna whose child
lived for three days brainless & blind
close by cheap factories on the filthy Rio Grande,
tell it to all the ruined & annulled
residents of the earth, everything
& everyone will be restored
& immortal diamonds will soon be yours.