justine

have been reading 'justine', the first of the alexandria quartet by lawrence durrell. it is a Great book. the imagery and stream of consciousness style reminds me of michael ondaatje's 'the english patient', my favorite novel. this box set is the same one my dad has. inarguably the most pleasing in design.




"'It will puzzle you when I tell you that I thought Justine great, in a sort of way. There are forms of greatness, you know, which when not applied in art or religion make havoc of ordinary life. Her gift was misapplied in being directed towards love. Certainly she was bad in many ways, but they were all small ways. Nor can I say she harmed nobody. But those she harmed most she made fruitful. She expelled people from their old selves. It was bound to hurt, and many mistook the nature she inflicted. Not I.' And smiling his well-known smile, in which sweetness was mixed with an inexpressible bitterness, he repeated softly under his breath the words: 'Not I.'"

Might Be Pure

Bleeding fingers picking limes
from the pliant green boughs of the tree

We have spent so many hours filling the
divide, ocean-wide, with words

Rain tumbled into the fountain, I said
I would dip my feet in it so your dreams

Might be pure, and I merely slept
but it was as if it were

And there is something -- something
which I cradle like grapes in my hand

Something which I carry
like a child on my back

Indefatigable baby boy,
in lieu of leisure, faced with facts

And all of the pleasure which rendered me
static and slack

Is part now of the soundless
choreography of the past

Nothing evades me
my truth simply does not contain that

Simplicity. My body contemplates,
bleeding fingers offer palms and ask

If we have faith
in faith this time or ever

in fact

I wonder if it will always be such a struggle for me,
to understand the nature of love

Its pear-shaped progression, starting gentle and slim
and confounding us when we see

That it has swollen as we slept into a globe
more whole than we perceive, a world of its own

That though inept,
we cannot truly call ourselves alone

Accepting a mantle of freedom which is not ours in fact
Every Movement of our hand touches someone

EXHAUSTED POEME

My senses attempt to coexist
they throw themselves impassioned into the melee
at once the ceramic lamp the book unfolded like a tulip
the sweet cold drink of juice in its glass (she says
the sugar will help) and

Your piano song but before that the recorded
scuff of the bench being pulled beneath you
you sit at the piano and play  the song with its
one beautiful false note at the end which makes me
laugh as I cry

I told you that I might dissolve
into a heap of salt and meant truly that
the fabric of me that incorporeal stuff of me
is exhausted darling and I do contemplate
a piece of peace

A heap of salt an old grey silk
shirt will be left rainwet and flapping
feebling in the March-wind respectively
we could simply lay as I now lay and be
in the same room

And the burden of what I must tell them
makes other things seem easy
(to tell my old lover that I will no longer
be his lover that my touch is gone
as leaves in a breeze)

The burden of what I now know
lends a marked clarity to the scene and its absurdities
what vehement gestures my hands have made
over bodies threaded with
loveless veins

Now exhausted I struggled for strength
against a named nemesis
the heap of salt will be borne aloft
like the notes of your piano by the March-wind
we could simply lay as I now lay





thanks for listening guys

March 15th, 2011

"She's got everything she needs. She's an artist. She don't look back."


The new sheets are on my bed, they were
gifts of love and so are blessed and so
they fortify me as I sleep

I listen to his piano song and I
weep but not because I achy yearn
simply because I see

Who I have been these last
years who lived within
my body

I know now that I am
as they say
reborn

Something residing inside me
has seen this day
before

Something inside me knew
that this would
be

Not because it is easy
but because it is
who I've become

torch it move along

i think it's a weeping willow
outside my window

beyond the kimono
the wind shakes slumped limbs

save guilt for the guilty
i'm not a plaything

all that i've done is been
square nail strong

flick a match torch it
move along

head full of snow parts I and II

original post 6/19/09

head full of snow

head full of snow

'When the wind blows and the rain feels cold 
with a head full of snow 
In the window there's a face you know 
Don't the night pass slow? 

Sound of strangers sending nothing to my mind 
Just another mad, mad day on the road
I am just living to be lying by your side 
But I'm just about a moonlight mile on down the road 

Made a rag pile of my shiny clothes 
Gonna warm my bones, 
I got silence on my radio 
Let the air waves flow, 
For I am sleeping under strange strange skies 
Just another mad, mad day on the road 
My dreams is fading down the railway line 
I'm just about a moonlight mile down the road'

the rolling stones

the leaves of the trees in your yard screech low like cellos; it is too dark to know where the narrow path leads, creeping as it does to the right and then out of sight, but that's where you go

a head full of snow: have you a head full of snow? is this the origin of your ghostly glow, your emaciated smile ?

your hands are warm anyway

a head full of snow. it's a feeling i've known (we were all clean and young before we were grown but the nights are cold, and through the smoke we only seek the heat

that we need for our own)

your face in the half-light, the shadow of your collarbone

of course i can only close my eyes,
remember a song

stirring up the stations of the radio. my vision adjusts to find you moving slow, your eyes ignited by a lighter's adjustable flame, beautiful mouth, a perfect bow, and

a head full of snow

i shall lay back on this table and watch the stars explode. and i shall not cry because i am too high to remember how.

i have a glass of wine a cigarette and the rolling stones
and i peer through frozen eyes, hear through a wall of snow

(as do we all, i know, because we all have felt the pull. along the narrow path, that's where you go)


to calm a feeling that is stronger than your bones, that threatens to grow darker than your immeasurable black pupils know

a piece of carnelian, cellos, a head full of snow

head full of snow pt II

we love it still but it is not the same, we simply can remember, can remember the narrow path, can remember

 

nights of blameless-- grainy, greedy desire, the night so black, your hands slack on my thigh, and you were afraid, i was afraid, you were on drugs, i was on drugs, i was waiting for something, and i was the most glamorous girl in the backyard, dainty stepping over the glass shards, conjuring vapor from your sulphur eyes and pulling in into my mouth

yes i was stealing your soul, i know you knew it, and we let it, let it be that way. 

today a cup of smoke poured from my mouth and i listened to the old song, heads full of snow and sleeping under strange skies, i recalled those sulphur eyes, my lungs constricted, i did not rise, i lay and let myself feel the 

old cigarettes in their sage-green box, the pipe and the lighter in each of my hands, the bottle of red wine staining my lips, the derailing desire for your fingertips, derailing desire for your mouth full of 

smoke, your head full of snow, the way you snarled and spat when provoked, you thought everything was meant to be mean as your own thoughts, and you were wrong

we were so young, the dam broke, so young we all got soaked, young enough to explode like astronomical bodies in the night

things i understand

Things I understand include 

That where I ought to be 

Is not among the places where

Some wish to find me waiting

Not the mountains as when 

I was twelve and loved for the 

First time, or the old mission 

Where the pond is choked with weeds like twine

And placid though in its uncharted

Depths there are those that are alive.

Not in the dark and mirrored bedroom of a jaundiced 

Mind or in a sparse and greying shower counting tiles

Things I understand include 

The straining lung of lust

The disappointment of the miscarried

Love that was never meant to live

The divide as palpable as 

Thick wool felt --one can feel

The disparity-- unrolled between

Eyes that cannot care

And the eyes that do see

And once or twice I've known 

A day 

When all seemed new to me

Held in the hand of

Things I understand

Simple painful and 

Sweet

dvf fall 11