moved house

to

here

same blog basically. i just like LJ sooooo much better.
so i decided to revamp the LJ i've been using since high school into the new home for this little project/experiment/puttering around of mine.

hope u like it.

:]

就算沒有人會永遠在一起

loving this album.



even with all the corny lyrics...e.g. the lyrics of the title song, "没有人比我更爱你":

從愛上你的一瞬間
我終於明白了孤單
是否愛只是片段
彷彿夢境的片段
隕落中的幸福用心碎來還
若不是眼淚落下來
我不知如何這明白
情話若只是
偶爾兌現的謊言
我寧願選擇沈默來表白

沒有人會比我更愛你
為你放棄自己也願意
沒有人能比我更愛你
就算一天我們注定會分離
沒有人會比我更愛你
為你付出生命也願意
沒有人能比我更愛你
就算沒有人會永遠在一起

從愛上你的一瞬間
我終於明白了孤單
是否愛只是片段
彷彿夢境的片段
隕落中的幸福用心碎來還
轉載來自
若不是眼淚落下來
我不知如何這明白
情話若只是
偶爾兌現的謊言
我寧願選擇沈默來表白

沒有人會比我更愛你
為你放棄自己也願意
沒有人能比我更愛你
就算一天我們注定會分離
沒有人會比我更愛你
為你付出生命也願意
沒有人能比我更愛你
就算沒有人會永遠在一起

沒有人會比我更愛你
為你放棄自己也願意
沒有人能比我更愛你
就算一天我們注定會分離
沒有人會比我更愛你
為你付出生命也願意
沒有人能比我更愛你
就算沒有人會永遠在一起
沒有人會比我更愛你
我多想永遠和你在一起

-found here. unfortunately the site only seems to have the lyrics in traditional characters. hmm. well anyway, the chorus of this song basically goes,

there is no one who will love you more than i do
for you i give up myself and willingly
there is no one who can love you more than i do
even if we are doomed to one day separate

there is no one who will love you more than i do
for you i give my life and willingly
there is no one who can love you more than i do
even if there is no one who can stay together forever



somehow the song just doesn't sound so corny in chinese; it just feels very emotional and real.



**

watched Knowing yesterday with r.b. and r.b. is right; nicholas cage is a horrible actor. well i did like how this movie didn't have the typical "and then we were all saved" ending that many mainstream sci-fi movies have. the plot? nicholas cage has to save the earth (or just himself, really) from getting fried by a superhot solar flare, using the aid of a 50yr old prophecy a disturbed little girl named luncinda wrote. in lexington, MA! um.

well here's a poem. about the end of the world. involving the incineration by the sun? perhaps?

Kiss of the Sun

If, as they say, poetry is a sign of something
among people, then let this be prearranged now,
between us, while we are still peoples: that
at the end of time, which is also the end of poetry
(and wheat and evil and insects and love),
when the entire human race gathers in the flesh,
reconstituted down to the infant's tiniest fold
and littlest nail, I will be standing at the edge
of that fathomless crown with an orange for you,
reconstituted down to its innermost seed protected
by white thread, in case you are thirsty, which
does not at this time seem like such a wild guess,
and though there will be no poetry between us then,
at the end of time, the geese all gone with the seas,
I hope you will take it, and remember on earth
I did not know how to touch it it was all so raw,
as if by chance there is no edge to the crowd
or anything else so that I am of it,
I will take the orange and toss it as high as I can.

-from mary ruefle's brilliantly titled collection, Indeed I Was Pleased With the World


yesterday afternoon the sun did look close/red-lipped enough to kiss.

~
一寸相思一寸灰

That is why I read: I want everything to be okay

Aubade

There was one summer
that returned many times over
there was one flower unfurling
taking many forms

Crimson of the monarda, pale gold of the late roses

There was one love
There was one love, there were many nights

Smell of the mock orange tree
Corridors of jasmine and lilies
Still the wind blew

There were many winters but I closed my eyes
The cold air white with dissolved wings

There was one garden when the snow melted
Azure and white; I couldn't tell
my solitude from love

There was one love; he had many voices
There was one dawn; sometimes
we watched it together

I was here
I was here

There was one summer returning over
and over
there was one dawn
I grew old watching

-from louise glück's The Seven Ages


**

Did I mention supreme joy? That is why I read: I want everything to be okay. That's why I read when I was a lonely kid and that's why I read now that I'm a scared adult. It's a sincere desire, but a sincere desire always complicates things--the universe has a peculiar reaction to our sincere desires.

-from this essay by mary ruefle.

some distinction after all

well it's tuesday. um. here. catch? hold? breathe in and slowly asphyxiate?

The Queen of Carthage

Brutal to love,

more brutal to die.

And brutal beyond the reaches of justice

to die of love.

In the end, Dido

summoned her ladies in waiting

that they might see

the harsh destiny inscribed for her by the Fates.

She said, “Aeneas

came to me over the shimmering water;

I asked the Fates

to permit him to return my passion,

even for a short time. What difference

between that and a lifetime: in truth, in such moments,

they are the same, they are both eternity.

I was given a great gift

which I attempted to increase, to prolong.

Aeneas came to me over the water: the beginning

blinded me.

Now the Queen of Carthage

will accept suffering as she accepted favor:

to be noticed by the Fates

is some distinction after all.

Or should one say, to have honored hunger,

since the Fates go by that name also.”

*

plz listen to portishead's Third if u haven't already. im not sure why the following album art i googled is from a site called terrorism.com. this i do not know. nope.



go watch the rip. idk if ive seen the video for this song. i like the song. im not terribly big on music videos. if u are the same, u could just close yr eyes and listen? or simply download the mp3? u have free will i guess so its up to u. me, im just getting lazier with my punctuation and shit.

the lyrics on "we carry on" are prob my favorite on the album, btw:

The taste of life I can't describe
It's choking on my mind
Reaching out I can't believe
Faith it can't decide

On and on I carry on
But underneath my mind
And on and on I tell myself
It's this I can't disguise

Oh can't you see
Holding on to my heart
I bleed the taste of life

The pace, the time, I can't survive
It's grinding down the view
Breaking out which way to choose
A choice I can't renew

Holding on I carry on
But underneath my mind
And on and on I tell myself
It's this I can't disguise

Oh can't you see
Holding on to my heart
I bleed, no place is safe
Can't you see the taste of life

~
一寸相思一寸灰

off the balcony all the same

thought i'd been through this in 1919

counting the tears of ten thousand men
and gathered them all
but my feet are slipping
there's something we left on the windowsill
there's something we left yes

we'll see how brave you are
we'll see how fast you'll be running
we'll see how brave you are
yes, anastasia



i'm not a huge tori amos fan but i guess she is #5 on my last.fm profile for some reason. i say i'm not a huge fan tho bc till tonight i had never heard 2 of her best/most beloved albums (i.e. under the pink + boys for pele) in their entirety. i only had a few songs from each of those albums, including some great live performances (instead of the studio ones, in fact), thanks to friends putting them on mixes for me. that's how i got into tori to begin with, and idk...i guess i don't feel very "well-versed" in her stuff.

i haven't been to a single one of her concerts (i don't usually "follow" artists that way anyhow), i don't buy her merch, i think i've only seen like 2 of her music videos. and i don't feel like i fall into any sort of camp, one that likes only her earlier stuff or one that prefers her later work. i like to judge each album on its own. i started off with a later one, scarlet's walk, and i quite like a bunch of songs from the beekeeper. her 2 latest efforts (american doll posse + abnormally attracted to sin) sort of bore me for the most part, tho there're still individual songs i like. in general i'm pretty open when it comes to music. yet i always get kinda weirded out when i meet other ppl who are not just fans, but true fanatics. ppl who think she's some kind of genius/goddess. O.o

well. i am glad i finally listened to boys for pele bc now "caught a lite sneeze" is one of my all time favs...i really like the lyrics for some reason. not sure why.


caught a lite sneeze
caught a lite breeze
caught a lightweight lightningseed
boys on my left side
boys on my right side
boys in the middle
and you're not here
i need a big loan
from the girl zone

building
tumbling down
didn't know our love was so small
couldn't stand at all
mr. st. john just bring your son

the spire is hot
and my cells can't feed
and you still got that belle
dragging your foots
i'm hiding it well sister ernestine
but i still got that belle
dragging my foots

right on time you get closer
and closer
called my name
but there's no way in
use that fame
rent your wife and kids today
maybe she will
maybe she will caught a lite sneeze
dreamed a little dream
made my own pretty hate machine
boys on my left side

boys on my right side
boys in the middle
and you're not here
boys in their dresses
and you're not here
i need a big loan
from the girl zone


**

tori's music kinda puts me in the mood for mary ruefle's poetry...maybe bc they both seem to write in a very emotional quirkiness/absurdism? shrugshrug. also they both have red hair. tho tori, lately, has developed a penchant for wigs in a variety of bright and unbecoming colors. i suppose the key difference between these two, for me, is that i like ruefle a good deal more. maybe bc music fans are so often dicks. tho poetry "fans" can be dicks too. or maybe i'm the real pompous dick for hating the whole concept of "fandom." here's a ruefle poem i love:

The Pedant's Discourse

Ladies, life is no dream; Gentlemen,
it's a brief folly: you wouldn't know
death's flaschcard if you saw it.
First the factories close, then the mills,
then all of the sooty towns
shrivel up and fall off from the navel.
And how should I know, just because my gramma
died in one? I was four hundred miles away,
shopping. I bought a pair of black breasts
with elastic straps that slip over the shoulder.
I'm always afraid I might die at any moment.
That night I heard a man in a movie say
I have no memories and presumably he meant it.
But surely it was an act. I remember my gramma's
housedress was covered with roses. And she
remembered it too. How many times she turned
to her lap and saw the machines: the deep folds
of red shirts endlessly unfolding while they dried.
Whose flashcard is that? So, ladies and gentlemen,
the truth distorts the truth and we are in it up
to our eyebrows. I stand here before you tonight,
old and wise: cured of vain dreams, debauched,
wayward and haggard. The mind's a killjoy, if
I may say so myself, and the sun's a star,
the red dwarf of which will finally consume us.


+2 more! (all from Apparition Hill)

Arturo's Song

No sparkles in the brain-pan.
I shall be a dazing one
all of my days.

After the olives ripen in Tuscany
there is no second sorrow.

When I am sad I have nothing to say
and when I am happy speak freely
of my sorrow.


The Queen of Constriction

"I am as lonely as...as Franz Kafka."
-Franz Kafka

Leafy outside the window. A little bird with
a mermaidish figure flies down to the rain-polished
branch and shakes. A man brings me something to eat
without disturbing me. It is a dream scene. On
Thursdays I mop. I swing the thing. Black water
results. A vile thing with far too many legs
must be escorted out. I too am removable,
especially the head parts. But who would know?
All those lashy legs chachacha across the spatula.
I might as well be in China. Where I am.
With concrete here and concrete there, here
a block, there a block, everywhere a block
block. I look at Miss Legs: poesy in the year
2000 will have offpsring like this. Oh my!
I'll chuck it off the balcony all the same:
which is what I do now and watch her fall
seven stories to the court below
where she lands without a shake and goes
on her many ways. Crackers cum laude for lunch.
Why I never shall marry is plain:
an act of constriction is needed
during these long and dumbfounded days.

也许你会陪我 看细水长流

張國榮 (leslie cheung) covering the chinese song 鄧麗君 (teresa teng) first made famous, 《月亮代表我的心》。notice how he mentions a certain "mr. tong"（唐鶴德），his "greatest friend." of course, that would be none other than his dear bf of many years, 呵呵~ hm, i wonder if this was one of his last big concerts, his 1997 one, before he committed suicide in 2003. *cries*　．．．man does he look good in a suit.



你问我爱你有多深
我爱你有几分
我的情也真 我的爱也真
月亮代表我的心

你问我爱你有多深
我爱你有几分
我的情不移 我的爱不变
月亮代表我的心

轻轻的一个吻
已经打动我的心
深深的一段情
教我思念到如今

你问我爱你有多深
我爱你有几分
你去想一想 你去看一看
月亮代表我的心


plus:
here's a great site, with teresa teng's performance, and a bunch of other covers. +pinyin & english translation if you're so inclined. let's do our own covers!　:P


**

and here's 王菲's 《红豆》, which has become quite the classic as well, though i don't think nearly as many ppl have covered this as they have the above piece. still, i love this song, and i think its lyrics are more sophisticated. haha. sweet + tender all the same, tho. just posted this on my fbook page as well, but here i'm including lyrics ♥



还没好好的感受 雪花绽放的气候
我们一起颤抖 会更明白 甚么是温柔
还没跟你牵着手 走过荒芜的沙丘
转 可能从此以后 学会珍惜 天长和地久

有时候 有时候 我会相信一切有尽头
相聚离开 都有时候 没有甚么会永垂不朽
可是我 有时候 宁愿选择留恋不放手
等到风景都看透 也许你会陪我 看细水长流

还没为你把红豆 熬成缠绵的伤口
然后一起分享 会更明白 相思的哀愁
还没好好的感受 醒着亲吻的温柔
可能在我左右 你才追求 孤独的自由


&　here's a decent line-by-line translation/interpretation. it's using the traditional character set, tho. hm. for some reason i really like writing the singers' names in traditional characters but everything else in simplified. names are kinda different, i guess. also a lot of these (somewhat) older singers didn't grow up/have their heyday when simplified characters were in vogue. also a lot of them were from taiwan or hong kong, where traditional characters are still used more frequently (well in taiwan i think that's still the standard, actually). hm. i mean i think leslie cheung might've preferred his english name; he chose it for its unisex-ness--and indeed i find that it fits him better than his chinese name. anyway. i just loooooove these lyrics (to 红豆) in chinese. so beautiful. they make me cry.

请用凉凉的雪水

i didn't know henri cole had his own website. but he does. maybe he got bored. idk how i feel about poets having their own websites. like, named after themselves. with big ass pics of themselves on the front page. or sometimes, on every page in somewhat smaller ass sizes. i think i don't like this too much. but maybe it will happen to me one day. maybe i will need something like that to promote myself/my work (not the same thing, but a lot of ppl conflate the two). or maybe i'll want something like that. because i am bored. and vain.

in any case, i really like henri cole's most recent collection, Blackbird and Wolf. i like coldfrontmag's review of the book. it's so intimate, complex yet totally direct, beautifully to the point. cole just says what he really needs to say.

e.g.

Birthday

When I was a boy, we called it punishment

to be locked up in a room. God's apparent

abdication from the affairs of the world

seemed unforgivable. This morning

climbing five stories to my apartment,

I remember my father's angry voice

mixed with anxiety and love. As always,

the possibilities of home--at best an ideal--

remains illusory, so I read Plato, for whom love

has not been punctured. I sprawl on the carpet,

like a worm composting, understanding things

about which I have no empirical knowledge.

Though the door is locked, I am free.

Like an outdated map, my borders are changing.


Self Portrait With Hornets

Hornets, two hornets, buzz over my head;

I'm napping and cannot keep my eyes open.

"Do you come from far away?" I ask, dozing off.

My gums are dry when I wake. A morning breeze

rakes the treetops. I can smell the earth.

The two hornets are puzzling over

something sticky on my night table,

wiping their gold heads with their arms.

Ordinary things are like symbols. My eyes are watery

and blurred. Then I lose myself again.

I'm walking slowly in a heat haze,

my vision contracting to a tiny porthole,

drawing me to it, like flourishing palms.

I can feel blood draining out of my face.


I can feel my heart beating inside my heart,

the self receding from the center of the picture.

I can taste sugar under my tongue.

All the usual human plots of ascent

and triumph appear disrupted.

Crossing my ankles, I watch the day

vibrate around me, watch the geraniums

climb toward the distant mountains

where I was born, watch the black worm

wiggling out of the window box,

hiding its head from the pale sun

that lies down on everything,

purifying it. Lord, teach me to live.

Teach me to love. Lie down on me.


**

more robert hass, from Time and Materials:

After Trakl

October night, the sun going down,
Evening with its brown and blue
(Music from another room),
Evening with its blue and brown.
October night, the sun going down.


A Supple Wreath of Myrtle

Poor Nietzsche in Turin, eating sausage his mother
Mails to him from Basel. A rented room.
A small square window framing August clouds
Above the mountain. Brooding on the form
Of things: the dangling spur
Of an Alpine columbine, winter-tortured trunks
Of cedar in the summer sun, the warp in the aspen's trunk
Where it torqued up through the snowpack.

"Everywhere the wasteland grows; woe
To him whose wasteland is within."

Dying of syphilis. Trimming a luxuriant mustache.
In love with the opera of Bizet.


Futures in Lilacs

"Tender little Buddha," she said
Of my least Buddha-like member.
She was probably quoting Allen Ginsberg,
Who was probably paraphrasing Walt Whitman.
After the Civil War, after the death of Lincoln,
That was a good time to own railroad stocks.
But Whitman was in the Library of Congress,
Researching alternative Americas,
Reading up on the curiosities of Hindoo philosophy,
Studying the etchings of stone carvings
Of strange couplings in a book.

She was taking off a blouse,
Almost transparent, the color of a silky tangerine.
From Capitol Hill Walt Whitman must have been able to see
Willows gathering the river haze
In the cooling and still-humid twilight.
He was in love with a trolley conductor
In the summer of--what was it?--1867? 1868?


Three Dawn Songs in Summer

1.

The first long shadows in the fields
Are like mortal difficulty.
The first birdsong is not like that at all.

2.

The light in summer is very young and wholly unsupervised.
No one has made it sit down to breakfast.
It's the first one up, the first one out.

3.

Because he has opened his eyes, he must be light
And she, sleeping beside him, must be the visible,
One ringlet of hair curled about her ear.
Into which he whispers, "Wake up!"
"Wake up!" he whispers.


**

z.h. lent me Nameless Flowers: Selected Poems of Gu Cheng (顾城). unfortunately this edition does not have chinese/english side-by-side, as i would like. but...just found some of 顾城's poetry online, in the original chinese/translated into english by aaron crippen: rite here. i quite like the 1st one there, esp the 2nd stanza:

from "回归 （一）"...

请用凉凉的雪水
把地址写在手上
或是靠着我的肩膀
度过朦胧的晨光

and i quite like mr. crippen's translation:

write the address
in snowmelt on your hand
or lean on my shoulder
as we pass the hazy morning

i like how he turns what's literally "cool cool snow water" into "snowmelt," although i think something is also lost there, as "snowmelt" seems somewhat more sophisticated and clever, whereas "cool cool snow water" has this wonderful childlike/dreamlike quality to it. mr. crippen dropped the "请" at the beginning of the stanza, too. i'm not sure why he made this choice. "请" often translates to "please" in imperative statements, and it has a pleasant, inviting/welcoming feeling to it. and 凉凉的雪水, being longer, has more of a cadence to it..."please use cool cool snow water." the line in chinese is kind of funny, and sweet--feelings that i think aren't conveyed in "write the address/in snowmelt..." at the same time, i do like the swift directness in mr. crippen's interpretation; there's more of an urgency in his lines.

apparently 顾城 had an interesting life, and a controversial death. he was cute, too~





呵呵 :P

i think i articulated this better somewhere else on the internet

my 4th of july was pretty okay. i watched some pretty fireworks and do not feel any more or less "american." i quite like the word "pretty" sometimes, btw. came across the following poem in a blog with beautiful men on it, can't find it on there again because it updates too often, and many of the beautiful men are very distracting. but um, here it is from this somewhat informative site:

Pretty

Why is the word pretty so underrated?
In November the leaf is pretty when it falls
The stream grows deep in the woods after rain
And in the pretty pool the pike stalks.

He stalks his prey, and this is pretty too,
The prey escapes with an underwater flash
But not for long, the great fish has him now
The pike is a fish who always has his prey,

And this is pretty. The water rat is pretty
His paws are not webbed, he cannot shut his nostrils
As the otter can and the beaver, he is torn between
The land and water. Not ‘torn’, he does not mind.

The owl hunts in the evening and it is pretty
The lake water below him rustles with ice
There is frost coming from the ground, in the air mist
All this is pretty, it could not be prettier.

Yes, it could always be prettier, the eye abashes,
It is becoming an eye that cannot see enough,
Out of the wood the eye climbs. This is prettier
A field in the evening, tilting up.

The field tilts to the sky. Though it is late
The sky is lighter than the hill field
All this looks easy but really it is extraordinary
Well, it is extraordinary to be so pretty,

And it is careless, and that is always pretty
This field, this owl, this pike, this pool are careless
As Nature is always careless and indifferent
Who sees, who steps means nothing, and this is pretty.

So a person can come along like a thief – pretty! –
Stealing a look, pinching the sound and feel,
Lick the icicle broken from the bank
And still say nothing at all, only cry pretty.

Cry pretty, pretty, pretty and you’ll be able
Very soon not even to cry pretty
And so be delivered entirely from humanity,
This is prettiest of all, it is very pretty.

-Stevie Smith


**


i like some of what tao lin says about his own writing and other people's writing and something one might call the "writing process" for lack of a better term (but i don't like most of what tao lin actually writes). here is something he says in an interview at Cruelest Month.

TL: I don't feel excited or good or amused or anything when hearing interpretations of my poetry. Because when I read the poems myself I don't interpret them, I just read them and feel emotions. When I read other people's poems I don't interpret them. If I read a poem and it says, "the sky was orange with satellites. / And satellites know everything," (Matthew Rohrer) I don't think, "What does orange symbolize? What does that line mean? What does it mean that satellites know everything? Is he talking about God?" I just read the words and then feel amused or a little excited. Then I use that excitement to go answer an email that I haven't felt like answering for a while, due to feeling unexcited about life or something, or I go do something for someone, or I go write something, or I go outside and look at a tree. I do something in concrete reality.

But if I thought, "The satellite symbolizes God because God sees everything and people think he is in the sky like satellites are in the sky but you can't see them," I do not feel excitement. I feel bored. I feel inhuman, because I am using my time and energy not to do things in concrete reality that have to do with other human beings, or trees, but to do things having to do with abstractions and concepts, which do not exist in concrete reality but in a metaphysical place, or something. That is not life-affirming, it is the opposite. It is denying that conscious beings feel emotions, denying that pain and suffering exists, and focusing on things that do not exist in concrete reality and that do not therefore feel pain and suffering. I could only do that sarcastically I think. I feel very bored and very unexcited when I hear or read people "interpreting" fiction or poetry in a non-sarcastic way. I feel nervous about this paragraph. I hope it makes sense. I think I articulated this better somewhere else on the internet.

i also like this bit on aesthetic affinities/choices from an essay he did in promotion of his book, Bed, on largeheartedboy:

While writing these stories I studied stories by Lorrie Moore and Joy Williams. I created charts for some of these stories. I made charts. I stared at the charts. I printed the stories in single-spaced, size-6 font to "gain perspective." I wrote notes on the paper. I wrote things like, "Insert something for flow," "Make this a lot tighter," "Edit this part tonight you piece of shit," or "Terrible shit [arrows pointing at circled parts]." I submitted these stories to undergraduate writing workshops at New York University. I like writing workshops. Whenever a person criticized my stories I lectured them until they stopped talking. In one class someone attacked me for being "postmodern." I just stared at my computer screen for about 3 minutes trying to remember another instance of someone "attacking" me in workshop but could not think of anything. I don't remember specifics. I almost never criticized anyone else's stories. I always found something I liked in every story. I am nice. I worked many hours on the stories in Bed. Maybe an average of 175 hours per story. That is how many hours it takes me to write a professional, 20-page short story with themes on the language level. Lorrie Moore is the only writer I have read that is consistently "thematic" on the language level. I don't know what that means. I think it means she repeats the same words or images or ideas or else variations of those words or images or ideas throughout the story. Yes. That is what it means. I think I lectured people in class about that. I wanted them to understand that Lorrie Moore is the only writer I have read that is consistently "thematic" on the language level. I am impressed by stories that are "thematic on the language level." When I lectured my classmates they listened politely then talked about something else.

**

i've re-listened to the 2nd cut copy album (i.e. In Ghost Colours) again. i do this fairly regularly. it's such a good album. it just makes me feel so nice inside. it makes me feel like i'm made of the perfectly delicious, perfectly aesthetically pleasing combination of blue and pink cotton candy. it makes me feel like cotton candy and i want to eat myself and i want to get fat and take myself out on a date to an excessively fancy pizza hut in china and really treat myself and feel just 110% great about that.

the 2nd track on the album, "out there on the ice" probably has some of my favorite lyrics ever. they're so simple. direct. sweet. and sad.

Out There On the Ice

yes, no, maybe is all i need to hear from you
if things go crazy, she's lost herself and lost to you
now that nothings spoken, she's out there on the ice again
she's breaking down slowly, colliding as she holds your hand

you don't know what to do
there's a guy you know, who'll be there for you
you don't know what to do
there's a guy you know, who'll be there for you

yes, no, maybe is all i need to hear from you
if things go crazy, she's lost herself and lost to you
now that nothings spoken, she's out there on the ice again
she's take me down slowly, she's holding on to what she can

you don't know what to do
there's a guy you know, who'll be there for you
you don't know what to do
there's a guy you know, who'll be there for you
you don't know what to do
there's a guy you know, who'll be there for you
you don't know what to do
there's a guy you know, who'll be there for you

if thats what it takes, then don't let it tear us apart
even if it breaks your heart
if thats what it takes, then don't let it tear us apart
even if it breaks your heart

even if it breaks your heart
even if it breaks your heart


**

i like this picture of bat for lashes (just came across it on last.fm). i like her new album a lot. i like telescopes.



Telescope

There is a moment after you move your eye away
when you forget where you are
because you've been living, it seems,
somewhere else, in the silence of the night sky.

You've stopped being here in the world.
You're in a different place,
a place where human life has no meaning.

You're not a creature in a body.
You exist as the stars exist,
participating in their stillness, their immensity.

Then you're in the world again.
At night, on a cold hill,
taking the telescope apart.

You realize afterward
not that the image is false
but the relation is false.

You see again how far away
each thing is from every other thing.

-Louise Glück


**

starting to read frank bidart's new collection, Watching the Spring Festival...

Valentine

How those now dead used the word love bewildered
and disgusted the boy who resolved he

would not reassure the world he felt
love until he understood love

Resolve that too soon crumbled when he found
within his chest

something intolerable for which the word
because no other word was right

must be love
must be love

Love craved and despised and necessary
the Great American Songbook said explained our fate

my bereft grandmother bereft
father bereft mother their wild regret

How those now dead used love to explain
wild regret


~
一寸相思一寸灰

out to the end of the rope

rereading robert hass bc z.h. reminded me of the following poem by him (from Sun Under Wood). yep.

Dragonflies Mating

1.

The people who lived here before us
also loved these high mountain meadows on summer mornings.
They made their way up here in easy stages
when heat began to dry the valleys out,
following the berry harvest probably and the pine buds:
climbing and making camp and gathering,
then breaking camp and climbing and making camp and gathering.
A few miles a day. They sent out the children
to dig up bulbs of the mariposa lilies that they liked to roast
at night by the fire where they sat talking about how this year
was different from last year. Told stories,
knew where they were on earth from the names,
owl moon, bear moon, gooseberry moon.

2.

Jaime de Angulo (1934) was talking to a Channel Island Indian
in a Santa Barbara bar. You tell me how your people said
the world was made. Well, the guy said, Coyote was on the mountain
and he had to pee. Wait a minute, Jaime said,
I was talking to a Pomo the other day and he said
Red Fox made the world. They say Red Fox, the guy shrugged,
we say Coyote. So, he had to pee
and he didn't want to drown anybody so he turned toward the place
where the ocean would be. Wait a minute, Jaime said,
if there were no people yet, how could he drown anybody?
The Channelleño got a funny look on his face. You know,
he said, when I was a kid, I wondered about that,
and I asked my father. We were living up toward Santa Ynez.
He was sitting on a bench in the yard shaving down fence posts
with an ax, and I said, how come Coyote was worried about people
when he had to pee and there were no people? The guy laughed.
And my old man looked up at me with this funny smile
and said, You know, when I was a kid, I wondered about that.

3.

Thinking about that story just now, early morning heat,
first day in the mountains, I remembered stories about sick Indians
and--in the same thought--standing on the free throw line.

St. Raphael's parish, where the northern-most of the missions
had been, was founded as a hospital, was named for the angel
in the scriptures who healed the blind man with a fish

he laid across his eyes.--I wouldn't mind being that age again,
hearing those stories, eyes turned upward toward the young nun
in her white, fresh-smelling, immaculately laundered robes.--

The Franciscan priests who brought their faith in God
across the Atlantic, brought with the baroque statues and metalwork crosses
and elaborately embroidered cloaks, influenza and syphilis and the coughing disease.

Which is why we settled an almost empty California.
There were drawings in the mission museum of the long, dark wards
full of small brown people, wasted, coughing into blankets,

the saintly Franciscan fathers moving patiently among them.
It would, Sister Marietta said, have broken your hearts to see it.
They meant so well, she said, and such a terrible thing

came here with their love. And I remembered how I hated it
after school--because I loved basketball practice more than anything
on earth--that I never knew if my mother was going to show up

well into one of those weeks of drinking she disappeared into,
and humiliate me in front of my classmates with her bright, confident eyes
and slurred, though carefully pronounced words, and the appalling

impromptu sets of mismatched clothes she was given to
when she had the dim idea of making a good impression in that state.
Sometimes from he gym floor with its sweet, heady smell of varnish

I'd see her in the entryway looking for me, and I'd bounce
the ball two or three times, study the orange rim as if it were,
which it was, the true level of the world, the one sure thing

the power in my hands could summon. I'd bounce the ball
once more, feel the grain of the leather in my fingertips and shoot.
It was a perfect thing; it was almost like killing her.

4.

When we say "mother" in poems,
we usually mean some woman in her late twenties
or early thirties trying to raise a child.

We use this particular noun
to secure the pathos of the child's point of view
and to hold her responsible.

5.

If you're afraid now?
Fear is a teacher.
Sometimes you thought that
Nothing could reach her,
Nothing can reach you.
Wouldn't you rather
Sit by the river, sit
On the dead bank,
Deader than winter,
Where all the roots gape?

6.

This morning in the early sun,
steam rising from the pond the color of smoky topaz,
a pair of delicate, copper-red, needle-fine insects
are mating in the unopened crown of a Shasta daisy
just outside your door. The green flowerheads look like wombs
or the upright, supplicant bulbs of a vegetal pre-erection.
The insect lovers seem to be transferring the cosmos into each other
by attaching at the tail, holding utterly still, and quivering intently.

I think (on what evidence?) that they are different from us.
That they mate and are done with mating.
They don't carry all this half-mated longing up out of childhood
and then go looking for it everywhere.
And so, I think, they can't wound each other the way we do.
They don't go through life dizzy or groggy with their hunger,
kill with it, smear it on everything, though it is perhaps also true
that nothing happens to them quite like what happens to us
when the blue-backed swallow dips swiftly toward the green pond
and the pond's green-and-blue reflected swallow marries it a moment
in the reflected sky and the heart goes out to the end of the rope
it has been throwing into abyss after abyss, and a singing shimmers
from every color the morning has risen into.

My insect instructors have stilled, they are probably stuck together
in some bliss and minute pulse of after-longing
evolution worked out to suck the last juice of the world
into the receiver body. They can't separate probably
until it is done.


*

and here's an older oldie (from Praise)...

(couldn't get the line breaks/indentations on this exactly right--sorry!)

Weed

Horse is Lorca's word, fierce as wind,
or melancholy, gorgeous, Andalusian:
white horse grazing near the river dust;
and parsnip is hopeless,
second cousin to the rhubarb
which is already second cousin
to an apple pie. Marrying the words
to the coarse white umbels sprouting
on the first of May is history
but conveys nothing; it is not the veined
body of Queen Anne's lace
I found, bored, in a spring classroom
from which I walked hands tingling
for the breasts that are meadows in New Jersey
in 1933; it is thick, shaggier, and the name
is absurd. It speaks of durable
unimaginable pleasures: reading Balzac,
fixing the window sash, rising
to a clean kitchen, the fact
that the car starts & driving to work
through hills where the roadside thickens
with the green ungainly stalks,
the bracts and bright white flowerets
of horse-parsnips.


*

& a poem from his latest collection, Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005. on the fear of losing inspiration/not being up to snuff + carrying mulch, as one summer job z.h. was telling me about goes...

Envy of Other People's Poems

In one version of the legend the sirens couldn't sing.
It was only a sailor's story that they could.
So Odysseus, lashed to the mast, was harrowed
By a music that he didn't hear--plungings of sea,
Wind-sheer, the off-shore hunger of the birds--
And the mute women gathering kelp for garden mulch,
Seeing him strain against the cordage, seeing
The awful longing in his eyes, are changed forever
On their rocky waste of island by their imagination
Of his imagination of the song they didn't sing.

**

got a bunch of books today at the library with z.h.
need to check that summer reading list i made not too long ago.
hm.


**
一
寸
相
思
一
寸
灰