Posted on 11/24/2003 9:52:48 AM PST by January24th
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Thanks, bf. However, I get no points for being subtle.
:O)
Reacting against the deliberately smooth and sweet tones of much 16th-century verse, the metaphysical poets adopted a style that is energetic, uneven, and rigorous. (Johnson decried its roughness and violation of decorum, the deliberate mixture of different styles.) It has also been labelled the 'poetry of strong lines'. In his important essay, 'The Metaphysical Poets' (1921), which helped bring the poetry of Donne and his contemporaries back into favour, T. S. ELIOT argued that their work fuses reason with passion; it shows a unification of thought and feeling which later became separated into a 'dissociation of sensibility'.”
Text excerpted from:
The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. Ian Ousby, Ed.
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998. 623.
aviso
She took the prescriptions
of the metaphysicians
which threatened to imperil
the natural order of her lady mind
Though they seemed
to ail what was good for her
she didn’t notice the alert
not to operate heavy ideas
under the influence
of strange conceits
which left her to contemplate
an alien universe
in which disaster
was a failure of accident.
Live fast, die young….
The marquee
hasn’t been torn down
its now dark face
a relic of the old days
that remains to remind us
of the announcements
of the last movie
which were painstakingly
hooked into place
by some guy on the ground
with a job in show business.
everyone got to pant
against the soundtrack of the stars
in low light black and white
good and plenty, buttressed
structures in deco delight
with good bones and smooth lines
checking the timex by the flame
of the bic, flipped just so.
the title of the last offering
before the cinema closed
can still be discerned
if you are of the mind
to buy a vowel, and can
surmise what confession
is the price of admission now
the ticket real cheap since
everything here is free
and abandoned,
though not quite like before.
But the air inside still pulses
with juicy double, fruity minted
gum, stuck to the undersides
of seats in this palace named
Orpheum or Odeon
that didn’t get cleaned before
the handyman was let go,
as if he was really going
to look for something extra to do,
since the writing was on the wall.
Morning has broken
My cat is like the dawn
which refuses to heed
its own red warning
and splashes the walls
with exuberance
leaving the celadon
vase shivering
in its unaccustomed
scarlet robe
threatening
to fall upon
the un-promised
mercy of fair notice.
simplification
In the camera obscura
the walls reel
with the admission
price of reality
made concise
In the skies
Orion rises
chasing Taurus
to his demise
getting to belt him at last,
you just can’t
keep a good man down,
in the midnight city
the traffic signals
flash caution all around
while the beltway ever flows
beneath the haze of its own light
obscuring the stars,
that look to themselves.
You really, really should copyright this phrase.
I want it on a t-shirt! LOL!! Thanks for that.
someone
she didn't know
smiled hello
on a quiet night
when she was
ready
chick singer
tuesday morning
beer buzz
the fuzz
missed my
parking luck
what the
anyway
what's
a car wash
but an observation
platform
the last great pope died
requiem for tomorrow
black smoke clouds the dawn
sinister
isn't
a religion
blue tone
saxaphone
i fed
my black cat
and settled
in a red chair
affair
awaiting
the white noise
to end
tonight
santana
so smooth
work out clothes(perspective)
A woman needs
the heavy keel
of irony when she
masts her own tall ship
and rigs spandex sails that billow
for a fair stretch towards
horizons expanding
even as they hold everything in
its about knowing
where to draw the line,
the point being not
to vanish.
the point being
not to be ignored...
the ultimate vanishing cypher-
yet it remains
a treacherous rounding
of the good hopes
hoping not for irony
but a happiness undeserved
a visible essence
a tangible, winsome wind
of favor without merit
a love bound only
by expansive sails
and fair horizons
what can I say
about planning
a wedding
that I hope
comes off
without a hitch?
The long and short of it
Chick poetry,
Mapquest directions
making sure
he doesn’t miss
any turns
taking the long
way home …..
of course it also
takes a while to get
to desolation row,
Bird booking
We talked into the evening,
about her birding adventures
and I told her I had heard
just this morning
a Chuck will’s widow,
calling the dark home,
And how its song
seemed to wrap the quiet
last suspiration of night
with its haunting echo
of something like
a dream not quite
remembered when
daybreak demands
we make up the bed
and place the unfinished
narrative, a memory
under the feather pillow,
hoping to coax back
its elusive images
to book later.
On the other hand
On ink splashed
words, and shapes
we disagreed
about the value
of negative space,
I said (for example)
that the lace
was defined by threads
that wove a grand design
and you declared that the universe
was more or less about the isn’t
of what was there,
Of course it seems
two appositive truths
can occupy the same meaning
like you and I, good friends,
could interpret ourselves
by the shapes of our differences
and rorschach at the same alter
of desire but still not see
each other at all.
poise
her face was haloed
in silver a placid disk
above her bugle beaded
midnight blue heavenly bosom,
where the sparkling constellations
scattered in a charge
against her applied
indifference.
keeping
her good side
towards the cameras,
she circled the room,
universally sardonically
interpreting the response
she rolled a slow smile,
smoked them with her eyes’
blink, flash
image
neumenon
the nannies are walking
side by side, wheeling
other peoples children thru
the neighbourhood pushing
the strollers ahead while they talk
into cell phones not
to each other, in the soft
syllables ayequelindo lindolindo
of their own language,
on the farm a foal
wins his first race by a nose,
shakes off the caul ,
hauls ass rises to the mares,
insistent whicker, whicker nudge,
flanks life, pushes, suckles.
in the grocery store
two girls laugh
in the identifiable way
of women pushing
another to the edge
of the social circle
sheshesheshe-said
rumouring spring storms
in girl giggles
‘reputation cleanup in aisle four’
a little brown bird turns
her eggs beneath her
breast of down calls
morning up , morning up
pushes her charges into place
turns one out rearranges
accepts an offering from
her mate, and waits
everywhere, colour claps
its appreciation
as life pushes its luck.
beneath the gathering canopies
the blooms race hard to complete their
performance before time shakes
them down and shade crowns
hallelujah, hallelujah,
summer’s new installation.
Jeopardy
“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in” From "Anthem" by Leonard Cohen
Alex you are such a card
in your perfect suit of perfect questions
without context or discussion
I must wonder why you are not
a category for selection.
And if you expand as you will
with your careful little codicils,
to offer background
beyond The Question
I must remind you of the rules
the question is WHO ASKED YOU?
The riddling is the answer
and the answering is the question
Alex just one time I’d like
for the sake of argument
to pick “the hot seat for 500”
and ask you if you sweat.
Don’t you ever think it neat
to be geniused with a cheat sheet
with all the questions you might need
when its time for final jeopardy
and the final round depends
on whether you won just enough to wager
or whether you wagered just enough to win.
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