“mariam on horseback” ZJC (2010)
I have been working on my tale of Mariam for almost a year. I am not Armenian and yet the tale starts like many Armenian tales do, “Linum e, chi linum; There was and there was not.” Except I have only glimpses of what I am suppose to say. It is […]
spirit soon
I shall wander these
winter fields.
– lines written in 1995
My poor, poor city. There is not a day that goes by your touch on me is not felt. I have been gone for over twelve years and still you remain deeply alive.
HATIS Armenia’s women
basketball team
It’s good to have heroes and here are some of mine. This morning I was greeted with the news that the Armenian women basketball team, HATIS, beat their Turkish rivals, BESHIKTASH, 87-64. In an interview, team captain Bojana Vulic talks about the difficulties of getting to Istanbul simply to compete, having […]
In less than a year I will be 40 years old and this morning I sat in my doctor’s office waiting for my physical (I appear in perfectly good health despite my best efforts) reading a fascinating article by Freeman Dyson, When Science & Poetry Were Friends (The New York Review of Books, August 13, […]
Let me sneak you a peek into the amazement and excitement I felt when I discovered the work of Art Smith earlier today. I had been thinking about the best way to make a necklace, a poetry necklace, and looked at several websites to see what others have done in the hand-made, on-a-budget category. […]
fizzle gaily, dire
reed answering cackling grass
flower shattered ears
When I returned from Armenia in the mid-1990s I brought with me a duduk (Դուդուկ in Armenian), a droning double reed woodwind I am immensely fond of though I am a poor, poor player. I bring all this up because I have been experimenting of late with […]
Her Kind [joe louis fist in face mix]
Under the idea there is a niche for everything, someone from Detroit has put several Anne Sexton poems to dance tracks. The group CH3MICAL R3NT BOY has a profile on Myspace, though I can’t find anything else on the Internet about them, except they apparently use the […]
Often it is difficult to measure success as an artist — if one is happy and satisfied with one’s own work does recognition from the outer world matter? And if so, what sort of recognition? I know people who argue that art should be a purely ego-less activity, that fame at any level is […]
sesame street’s rrrrrr
I am not sure if Քնջութի Փողոց translates faithfully into Sesame Street, another television childhood favorite, but it is the closest I can get (ah, the electric babysitter). There isn’t a Հայ-language version of Sesame Street, though there is a Ulitsa Sezam (Russian), Iftah Ya Simsim (Arabic), Rechov Sumsum (Israel), Shara’a Simsim […]
charles mingus sextet, take the a-train
If you miss the A Train
You’ll find you’ve missed the quickest way to Harlem — Joya Sherrill
William Blake’s poem London has the great line, “The mind-forged manacles I hear.” I am not sure how one can hear a manacle but it still rocks my socks. It has […]
“Did you, too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for elections, for politics, and for a party name? I say democracy is only of use there that it may pass on and come to its flower and fruit in manners, in the highest forms of interaction between [people], and their beliefs — in religion, literature, […]
“pro-choice sonnet monger & i vote!”
Tomorrow history will be made; here are the national and local Michigan politicians who are Pro-Choice. Candidates marked with an * have been endorsed by NARAL Pro-Choice America PAC for the 2008 cycle. Vote well! Good luck everyone!
President
Sen. Barack Obama *
U.S. Senate
Sen. Carl Levin
U.S. House of Representatives
State Sen. Mark Schauer, […]
Lawrence Lessig explains why voting no on Proposition 8 in California is not just a civil rights + liberties issue but a deeply moral one as well.
“Venus and the Three Graces” ZJC (2008)
Not yet. Not yet. Not this waking; that world
or this – they are the same. And yet. And yet.
Not this blessing, yet. This blessing; the curled
lip, the spiked dog collar, the ripped fishnet
stockings. No. My body is not my own.
Not yet. And yet? […]
“the ghost girl that said no” ZJC (2007)
Now the dead avoid me. How miserable.
Language irks me. I wish it gone. I wish
all that binds me, gone. Schoolchild kisses, fuel
for the hungry ghosts, the livings’ fetish
with its own wretchedness, all this barley
and blood, all this tea and bile we anguish
over, […]
“I love gentle things and I love warm things, that is why I love humans!” cries the little swallow spirit in the anime Natsume Yuujinchou. I love the bittersweet in stories; that which reminds us that being alive and human is not a curse but rather a reason to celebrate and yet we should […]
My friend, the Yakutsk poet and scholar Ekaterina Evseyeva, is part of a project to save the Siberian river Lena. She recently sent me a link to her website, Уважаемые гости сайта!/ Save Lena!, and I am passing this onto you to support the effort to stop big oil companies from despoiling this […]
I wrote this sonnet two years ago for my padre on Father’s Day. And now Gepetto’s Despair just appeared in this edition of The New Formalist. Oh happy days!
My favorite band in all their splendor … if only I had a pretzel tree!
There is a fantastic story here, but I am not telling it; the story I am going to tell is a work of fiction. My story comes third-hand, from my poor attempts at translating Japanese, from snippets I’ve seen in non-translated Japanese action adventure movies, from my own imagination.
It is hard for me to […]
Usually one should save bragging for standing around the watercooler; but since there are no watercoolers to be seen I’ll just tell you that The Smoking Poet, an on-line magazine that not only deals with poetry but cigar reviews no less, has published The Octopus and the Sea in their latest edition! Oh happy […]
For about two weeks I have listened to nothing else than “Red Lamb” by The Monolators. I simply will not let this song escape from my head. In an interesting side note, up-and-coming British blog, The Devil Has the Best Tuna, recently proclaimed their song “Red Lamb” as the best song of […]
“Aretha Franklin” ZJC (2008)
Nessun dorma! Nessun dorma!
Tu pure, o, Principessa,
nella tua fredda stanza,
guardi le stelle
che tremano d’amore
e di speranza.
Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me,
il nome mio nessun saprà!
No, no, sulla tua bocca lo dirò
quando la luce splenderà!
Ed il mio bacio scioglierà il silenzio
che ti fa mia!
(Il nome suo nessun saprà!…
e noi dovrem, ahime, […]
It is not often I am able to get my poetry published. A little while ago, out of the blue, a gentleman by the name of Maurice contacted me and imagine my delight when The Concelebratory Shoehorn Review agreed to publish not one sonnet, but four! I can think of no better word […]
We must tell the truth about evil conditions to those for whom the conditions are worst, and we must also learn the truth from them. We must address not only people who hold certain views, but people who, because of their situation, should hold these views. — Bertolt Brecht.
After I wrote about the Chinese poet […]
“mahmud darwish”
Alone, we are alone as far down as the sediment/ Were it not for the visits of the rainbows … MD
We have passed yet another anniversary marker of the beginning of my country’s occupation of Iraq and while I do enjoy many of the poems I discover in Poets Against War, I have been […]
“wayfaring” ZJC (2007)
Tuesday, March 6, will be Robert Busby’s funeral. March 10 will be my 37th birthday. A lot is going on this week. It is also a chance to take a Spring Break from my biology class for a couple of days. Where would one go on Spring Break with […]
Tales of fortunate and misfortunate love between the living and spirit world fascinates me. In Japan there are stories concerning “Yuki-onna, the Snow Woman … [whose] custom is to appear in snowstorms … [she] is young and has an extremely beautiful body and a seemingly gentle disposition” (Piggott, 69) though taking a Snow Woman […]
Eli and Mary, of The Monolators fame, were in Lansing, MI, over the holiday season and I had the honor of tagging along to their latest jam-practice session in Detroit. Those of you who are not familiar with their music, they describe themselves as:
… a husband-and-wife rock duo from Los Angeles. Originally a trio, […]
“spirit of the high desert” ZJC (2006)
“… I was Brando — I was Dean.
Blaspheming blue-jeaned booted baby boy –
Oh, how I made them turn their heads!”
– from In Delaware, Loudon Wainright III
Of late, there have been certain people who have exhausted me. It takes a lot of energy to be friends with those who […]
“ghost girl: yukiko hears the shamisen and remembers” ZJC (2006)
Tonight Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera is on. There is an instrument in the background I cannot identify. It sounds like a Japanese shamisen; that three-stringed guitar you always see courtesans play in samurai films. I have listened to the CD several times already. […]
“congo in oils,” ZJC (2006)
Congo Art and Jewelry, at Gone Wired Café on Michigan Avenue, Lansing, MI, helps support orphans in Kinshasa, D.R. Cong. They don’t have a website yet but there are some amazing news articles explaining what they are trying to do. I am posting this anyway in the chance you […]
“in praise of the ghost witch,” ZJC (2006)
I have always rooted for the villain in fairy tales. They were always so much more interesting than the hero or heroine, who usually appear humdrum, obsequious and tiresome in comparison. Take the rebel angel Lucifer, the Morning Star, in Paradise Lost. Why does Milton give […]
“the ghost witch,” ZJC (2006)
Vagina Dentata, or the myth of the Toothed Vagina, is age old and goes back farther than you or me. Of all the sites on the Internet concerning this myth (and there are a few) I was bemused with rotten.com It dealt with the subject humorously, but I thought, […]
“souls of the drowned return home,” ZJC (2006)
Dylan Thomas, “When the salt sheet broke in a storm of singing/ The voices of all the drowned swam on the wind.”
Howard Moss, “The senseless drowned/ Have faces nobody would care to see,/ But water loves those gradual erasures/ Of flesh and shoreline, greenery and glass … Grown […]
“prisoners at sachsenhausen awaiting execution: and where were you my fine poet?” ZJC (2006)
A friend of mine recently posted this question on her Poetrywithmeaning blog and it got me thinking about the age old debate of the poet in society:
There was a time when poets used to be sought after, to be a poet was […]
“the bullgod as icarus,” ZJC (2006)
To be fascinated with the myth of Icarus is to be fascinated with executions. Perhaps your mythology text book does not call it such but that is what it is. An execution. The myth goes like this:
Icarus was imprisoned, with his father, in a tower on Crete, […]
“fear of the bullgod,” ZJC (2006)
So …
… you like new things, I like new things, let us make some new things, lettuce. But where to start? The French Decedent poet Arthur Rimbaud wrote in his letter to Georges Izambard, “je est un autre,” “I is another.” I is an/other, somebody else. […]
“the bullgod,” ZJC (2006)
So …
… yesterday I did something rather interesting. I wrote down bad information and gave a definition to an art movement as I hoped it would be rather than what it really was. When I wrote that Art Brute or “Raw Art” 1 sought to “seek for images and words […]
The Monolators from L.A. released a new video for their single, We Fell Dead. Ever wondered what Eli and Mary look like as a dictators in snazzy uniforms? Check it out and find out!
Maybe because my diet is mainly cheese and more cheese food does not play very highly into my poetry. I know some poets who write whole books about food; odes to soups and ham and eggs and whatnot. This is a photo of my kitchen. What’s wrong with it?
No cheese in sight! […]
life is so short and poetry so long … london underground graffiti, 1992.
And I am so glad there is so much poetry in the world! They say Romantic poetry is cliche in this post-post-post-modern world but I am all for it. When will schools start to teach Lord Byron again? And everything Langston […]
I have said bad things about Billy Collins in the past and I need to stop. Actually, I need to apologize to Mr. Collins (at times I wonder if my blog is carefully screened by the Poetry Snark Police, sending whole paragraphs of glib criticism to the respected email addresses of various poets) having […]
“Rock and roll the way God intended”
– Warren Ellis (diepunyhumans.com)
My brother Eli and his wife Mary make up L.A.’s greatest, the Monolators, next to Hang On The Box, my favorite band in the world.
Back in April I sent Eli a Detroit garage band CD I discovered. This week Eli wrote about […]
Alfonsina took a train to Mar del
Plata. That much is true. She took a train
and walked into the sea. The rest? I tell
you I was not there, I don’t know. Complain
all you want. Argentina is not Spain
and your lousy geography does not
make it so, ever. Please try and […]
X — Wheel of Fortune/ Migration
The destiny of the ocean’s creatures are wrapped up in their seasonal migrations in much the same way that our fortunes and successes are shaped by the visible and invisible patterns we create in our daily lives. In the Rider-Waite deck the Wheel of Fortune has more to do […]
When the Priest of Isis at the Egyptian Lighthouse of Alexandria appears in your readings, a word of caution.1 Ask yourself why are you following the path you are on? What is your goal and who will it help?
Unlike the Rider-Waite card where an old man leans upon his staff and holds a lantern […]
Martin Luther King, Jr. said: Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
My friend Dian sent me this email today and I am sharing it with you:
Since 2003, thousands of girls and women have been raped and subjected to other forms of sexual violence in the Darfur region […]
Strength
… mastery of bravura … command of laughter …
In the Rider-Waite deck a fertility goddess, an archetype of the merry fields, clasps together the jaws a beast of power, a golden lion. Flowers are in her hair and she wears the symbol for eternity, the number 8 on its side, like a crown. […]
The Chariot
… control of the Ego over destination … command of spirit over outcome …
In the Rider-Waite deck a sovereign lord is pulled in a chariot by a pair of black and white sphinxes. A mighty city rises up behind them. The sphinx, in mythology, was a creature with the head of a […]
The Lovers
… the friendship of the sea and the earth …
I find the Lovers utterly fascinating, not because of the potential the card could have but the dullness, uniformity, reiteration most decks ascribe to it. There seem to be only two different motifs that are ever used. The first, such as […]
The Hierophant
… keeper of our sacred knowledge … go-between to the gods …
If the High Priestess was at one time La Papesse, the Female Pope, then the Hierophant is simply the male side of that equation, Le Pape. And as the head of the papal state, he represents our metaphysical discourse, our religious […]
The Monolators recently played in my old town of Las Vegas at the Divebar. It was part of their West Coast tour promoting their new CD, Our Tears Have Wings. Someone told me that tracks from their last album, Rejection Set Me Free, received radio play on KCRW’s Weekend Becomes Eclectic, KXLU, and […]
The Emperor
… the divine artisan combined … duende personified …
Few people seem to go beyond viewing the Emperor as some sort of Masculine Essence; an overwhelming male ego on two legs, the personification of an angry overlord in their life. Combine this with one view of the Empress as the Female Essence, a divine […]
The Empress
… the might of an empire … primal creativity … the combination of divine law and inspiration …
There are several ways of looking at this card. A popular view holds that she is the consort of the Emperor. Here she plays the role of the Other Half of the Male Principal and […]
The High Priestess
… the embodiment of gnosis … the combination of the human and divine … our own powers of intuition …
I agree with many critics of the Tarot who tend to attribute to this card in the Rider-Waite deck the concept that the High Priestess represents the extremity of human knowledge. In other […]
1 — Magician
…. humility and skill in the face of the gods …
It is said that the veil between the worlds, that is this world of the organic and material and that world of the otherworldly and spiritual, is thin in certain places and for certain people. These people act as radio transmitters; having […]
0 - The Fool
… at the End, at the Center, at the Beginning, so we begin … again
Traditional Tarot decks picture the Fool as the mystic, the wanderer or traveler, the dreamer inside all of us. A Tarot deck contains, normally, 22 Major Arcana cards and 56 Minor Arcana ones. We begin with […]
I love sharks. Sadly, there are not that many in Michigan … or so I thought. For Father’s Day we drove to Canton’s new Ikea store. Ikea, Sweden’s answer to Mecca for consumers, “affordable solutions for better living,” a Scandinavian Zion. We wandered from one showroom featuring a large, mindbogglingly […]
“Your way was through the sea; your paths through the great waters. Your footsteps were not known.” — Psalm 77:19, World English Bible.
You would think with a reference like that found in Psalms Christians would put more fuss and importance about our destruction of these “sweetwater seas.” After all, it is not everyone who […]
Having pneumonia is a strange thing. It attacks the lungs and fills them with fluid. You’d thing someone as interested in the mythic qualities of water as I am would welcome flood-like lungs, but no. I lay in bed with a fever and then chills. Everything aches. I have a […]
This will be my last entry for a week or so. I am bound on a hyperborean wind, off to Canada. Toronto waits somewhere near where the sun rises in the morning fog, if only the udder-heavy rain clouds did not obscure the sun so much. But what am I complaining about? […]
I was reading a Spring 2003 issue of the Scandinavian Review and there was an article on the Swedish poet Göran Sonnevi’s1 book length poem Mozarts Tredje Hjärna or Mozart’s Third Brain (pages 63 - 68). It had been translated by Rika Lesser,2 but apparently the book has yet to make an appearance on […]
I have been working on Charles Baudelaire’s “Don Juan aux enfers,” Don Juan in Hell.” I do not know if you are familiar with the story of the famous libertine? (speaking of libertines, have you seen the new Johnny Depp movie, The Libertine? It hasn’t come out in the theaters yet here) … […]
Shelby and I just came back from a wonderful student production of Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. Offenbach, known as “the thinnest man in Paris,” in his day, composed lovely Romantic music, some of which I had actually heard prior to showing up at the 3 pm show.
The set pieces were great, with […]
One of the curious things about Allan Ginsberg wasn’t just his ability to write poetry but his nearly obsessive gift of self-promotion. The story I was told was that he always kept copies of his books with him at all times just in case someone wanted to buy one while he was out and […]
I have just updated the submissions page on this website. To my horror I realized I had not touched it for two long months, and most of the deadlines read January 31.
I took down my list of personal submissions because, frankly, it was far too depressing to keep writing “rejection” after everything […]
Here is a photo I took, peering at myself in the mirror of my bathroom. I think it is appropriate for turning 36, don’t you? I mean, it looks like I am thinking, “who are you, strange person in the mirror?”
Or maybe I am just wondering how I will shave that […]
The stereo is on. I found this wonderful CD at the library called something like “Torch Song Divas.” I always thought if I could spend the day as someone else, it would be a diva. I don’t mean a squeamish prima donna, someone who throws rages temper tantrums, but an old school […]
Today I had the honor of working with Mr. Charles Thornton at Whitehills Elementary. Mr. Thorton is a professional story teller, cowboy and narrator for The Professors of Jazz at Michigan State University. I wrote to a friend the following sum up:
I just finished speaking to a crowded auditorium of 4 th and […]
Ah, Detroit, Motorcity, you still surprise me after all these years. I hope I will be able to see Margaret Garner this spring. I only live next door to the Detroit Opera House (well, in a manner of speaking); but who I really want to see perform is baritone Gregg Baker.
He will appear […]
O, to have some way of being out diving on the Gold Coast at this moment. Headlines cry: “More than 100 sharks spotted near Gold Coast shore.” But of course I must only read about it from afar.
BRISBANE, Australia - Several tourist beaches along Australia’s popular Gold Coast were closed again Sunday because […]
BBC News reported earlier today that Friedan passed away today. When I was an undergraduate in college I took part in many NOW marches and demonstrations on campus. It was the right thing to do. It still is, even though the face of American feminism has changed.
Thank you, Betty Friedan.
Betty Friedan … […]
I had this brilliant idea yesterday of writing a series of poems (one for each day of February) with a schemey theme tying everything together. February being the “Month of Love” (Hallmark would pick the bleakest, nastiest month of the year for love, wouldn’t they?) I thought I could write something about that. […]
Q: What does Eva Cassidy, Nellie Lutcher, Diana Ross, Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald, Etta Jones, Deborah Coleman, Erskine Hawkins, Gene Ammons, Terence Blanchard, Carmen McRae, Topsy Chapman, Patty Waters, Mary Stallings, Ranee Lee, Carrie Smith, Lezlie Anders, Sonji Kimmons, Clark Terry, Ruth Brown, Tom Skinner, Roy Rubenstein, The Brooklyn Repertory Ensemble, Clarence Lofton, Miss Henry, […]
What are you listening to as you read this? Music? Screaming? The silence of an empty apartment? My friend Katya wrote to me asking if I could find a jazz cover of Dream a Little Dream (of me) for her. I was only familiar with Mama Cass’ version from The […]
The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Time Out is on the stereo and all is well in the world. What with Valentine’s Day fast approaching, you are probably thinking that you need to get your paramour a little something. Maybe even a little something-something.1 So why not write a love poem for him/her/it? […]
Was anyone at the Rapp Saloon in the Hostelling International Building in Santa Monica on 1/20/06, which I believe was last Friday? How did the open mic go? Did you see Inspirachel?
I ask because, what was it, three years ago? Four? I cannot remember the date but at some point in […]
What: The NuPoet Collective invites poets, musicians, performers and just those who want to hear something different to share with us. THERE WILL BE OPEN MIC FOR ALL.
WHEN: January 17, 2006, Tuesday. Doors open at 7:30. 21+ after 9:00 pm.
WHERE: Gregory’s Ice and Smoke, 2150 N. Martin Luther King Jr. […]
I am so happy Jane Glover is alive and well and hasn’t left Chicago yet. Jane Glover is wooooooooonderful! Did I mention she’s still in Chicago?
Last year Shelby and I went and saw her’s (conductor) and Diane Paulus’ (director) fantastic Le nozze di Figaro with dreamy Sandra Piques Eddy and a […]
You might note some changes on this website. Now I can at least post without fear. That is good. I hope soon I will be able to relocate all the photos that I doted my old blog with. That would be even better.Today I have been thinking about the term las lavanderas, the washerwomen of […]
Several friends have e-mailed me wondering if I have taken down my blog or gotten rid of my comments or done some other wonky thing to my computer. I still blog; but something has gone wrong with WordPress and before I commit to posting more work I need to figure out what is happening.
Sorry, everyone, […]
I discovered the Cuban poet Dulce María Loynaz while reading Marjorie Agosín’s wonderful These Are Not Sweet Girls: Latin American women poets (Fredonia, NY: White Pine Press, 1994) a few weeks ago. Anyone who wants a introduction to the shakers and movers of modern poets making a name for themselves should not only buy […]
I have an hour or so left of 2005, which wasn’t so bad as years go, I suppose. Rue, Sam, Bob and I published a book. Shelby and I were able to celebrate my grandparent’s anniversary one last time in California. We saw a smashing version of the opera The Marriage of […]
Anxiety, dejection, depression, indifference, melancholia, twitching, withdrawal; call it what you may, I suffer from it. For far too many countless days I have sent my body out under this cursed ashen sky only on autopilot. In these plaguing moods I spend all my waking energies just trying to stay level and balanced. […]
It probably happens to everyone at some point. I’ve seen responses to it that were down right vile and knee jerkily reactionary. I admit I am on doddering grounds here, went in with apprehension about my own skills and talents and last night finally got a response that said, in effect, “Yes, you […]
Are there any poets in Belize? My research to date has turned up very little. There are Garifuna/ Garinagu musicians galore, but Garifunas poets?
Someone, somewhere, might be sitting in Jake’s Purple Space Monkey Internet Cafe, in the village of Placencia, composing a sonnet about tubing down the river in Cockscomb Basin […]
It is indeed the case that the high literary level of a given statement can afford it protection. Often, however, it also arouses suspicion. In such case it may be necessary to lower it deliberately … Propaganda that stimulates thinking, in no matter what field, is useful to the cause of the oppressed. — Bertolt […]
We must tell the truth about evil conditions to those for whom the conditions are worst, and we must also learn the truth from them. We must address not only people who hold certain views, but people who, because of their situation, should hold these views. — Bertolt Brecht.
I do not think it was a […]
I am not sure who Lawrence Cosentino, of City Pulse fame, was in the audience last Wednesday night at our reading, but I am glad he liked the show. I rarely read reviews of poetry readings in mainstream press, let alone a review that takes you from A to Z through the thesaurus with […]
Oda a la sal
Pablo Neruda
Ode to Salt
translated by ZJC
Esta sal
del salero
yo la vi en los salares,
sé que
no van a creerme,
pero canta,
canta la sal, la piel
de los salares,
canta
con una boca ahogada
por la tierra.
Me estremecí en aquellas
soledades
cuando escuché
la voz
de la sal
en el desierto.
Cerca de Antofagasta
toda
la pampa salitrosa
suena:
es una
voz
quebrada,
un lastimero
canto.
Luego en sus cavidades
la sal gema, montaña
de una luz […]
Shelby (who seems to have much more poetry information at her fingertips than I do, odd) just sent me this NPR link, concerning a story, in short, about The Poetry Archive, a hothouse for poetry recordings. Lynn Neary’s article looks a little like this:
The newest addition to poetry sites on the Web has the […]
My friend, yesterday I asked: Where can we take our poetry? Who can we sing for? Where can we go? Who can we be? By that, I suppose, I meant: who is your community? Who do you write for and why?
I also asked us to think beyond socialism. That is, while I […]
Perhaps I am too placid and young. Perhaps I am too simple and naive but I feel I must be cautious here. Perhaps I need to slow down a little in my approach to Brecht’s essay, Writing the Truth: the 5 Difficulties. You see, I am not a socialist and in this […]
Apparently I scowl when I think. I have been told this by numerous people. When at rest, when thinking on far away topics, when walking the corridors of my rest home between call lights, I wear a scowl. What a terrible way to present oneself! My aunt Lisa once told me […]
“It takes little courage to mutter a general complaint, in a part of the world where complaining is still permitted, about the wickedness of the world and the triumph of barbarism …”
– Bertolt Brecht (1934)
There is a tired, bone weary humor here. I am chuckling, the way you might too when you are […]
El hombre invisible
Pablo Neruda
The Invisible Man
translated by ZJC
Yo me río,
me sonrío
de los viejos poetas,
yo adoro toda
la poesía escrita,
todo el rocío,
luna, diamante, gota
de plata sumergida,
que fue mi antiguo hermano,
agregando a la rosa, pero
me sonrío,
siempre dicen “yo,”
a cada paso
les sucede algo,
es siempre “yo,”
por las calles
sólo ellos andan
o la dulce que aman,
nadie más,
no pasan pescadores,
ni libreros,
no pasan albañiles,
nadie […]