In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest
where no-one sees you,
but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art.
-Rumi
2 Aug: "Bridegroom, dear to my heart..." by Shu-Sin
The World's Oldest Love Poem
The following translation of The Love Song of Shu-Sin is from Samuel Noah Kramer's work History Begins at Sumer, pp 246-247:
Reference:
https://www.ancient.eu/article/750/the-worlds-oldest-love-poem/
The following translation of The Love Song of Shu-Sin is from Samuel Noah Kramer's work History Begins at Sumer, pp 246-247:
Bridegroom, dear to my heart,
Goodly is your beauty, honeysweet,
Lion, dear to my heart,
Goodly is your beauty, honeysweet.
You have captivated me, let me stand tremblingly before you.
Bridegroom, I would be taken by you to the bedchamber,
You have captivated me, let me stand tremblingly before you.
Lion, I would be taken by you to the bedchamber.
Bridegroom, let me caress you,
My precious caress is more savory than honey,
In the bedchamber, honey-filled,
Let me enjoy your goodly beauty,
Lion, let me caress you,
My precious caress is more savory than honey.
Bridegroom, you have taken your pleasure of me,
Tell my mother, she will give you delicacies,
My father, he will give you gifts.
Your spirit, I know where to cheer your spirit,
Bridegroom, sleep in our house until dawn,
Your heart, I know where to gladden your heart,
Lion, sleep in our house until dawn.
You, because you love me,
Give me pray of your caresses,
My lord god, my lord protector,
My Shu-Sin, who gladdens Enlil’s heart,
Give my pray of your caresses.
Your place goodly as honey, pray lay your hand on it,
Bring your hand over like a gishban-garment,
Cup your hand over it like a gishban-sikin-garment
It is a balbale-song of Inanna.
Reference:
https://www.ancient.eu/article/750/the-worlds-oldest-love-poem/
1 Aug: "To my quick ear..." by Emily Dickinson
31 Jul: On Shakespeare.1630 By John Milton
What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,
The labor of an age in pilèd stones,
Or that his hallowed relics should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?
Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame,
What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a live-long monument.
For whilst to th’ shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;
And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
27 Jul: "Go, Ghost, Go" by Sherman Alexie
Go, Ghost, Go
At this university upon a hill,
I meet a tenured professor
Who's strangely thrilled
To list all of the oppressors --
Past, present, and future -- who have killed.
Are killing, and will kill the indigenous.
O, he names the standard suspects --
Rich, white, and unjust --
And I, a red man, think he's correct,
But why does he have to be so humorless?
And how can he, a white man, fondly speak
Of the Ghost Dance, the strange and cruel
Ceremony
That, if performed well, would have doomed
All white men to hell, destroyed their colonies,
And brought back every dead Indian to life?
The professor says, "Brown people
From all brown tribes
Will burn skyscrapers and steeples.
They'll speak Spanish and carry guns and knives.
Sherman, can't you see that immigration
Is the new and improved Ghost Dance?"
All I can do is laugh and laugh
And say, "Damn, you've got some imagination.
You should write a screenplay about this shit --
About some fictional city,
Grown fat and pale and pretty,
That's destroyed by a Chicano apocalypse."
The professor doesn't speak. He shakes his head
And assaults me with his pity.
I wonder how he can believe
In a ceremony that requires his death.
I think that he thinks he's the new Jesus.
He's eager to get on that cross
And pay the ultimate cost
Because he's addicted to the indigenous.
At this university upon a hill,
I meet a tenured professor
Who's strangely thrilled
To list all of the oppressors --
Past, present, and future -- who have killed.
Are killing, and will kill the indigenous.
O, he names the standard suspects --
Rich, white, and unjust --
And I, a red man, think he's correct,
But why does he have to be so humorless?
And how can he, a white man, fondly speak
Of the Ghost Dance, the strange and cruel
Ceremony
That, if performed well, would have doomed
All white men to hell, destroyed their colonies,
And brought back every dead Indian to life?
The professor says, "Brown people
From all brown tribes
Will burn skyscrapers and steeples.
They'll speak Spanish and carry guns and knives.
Sherman, can't you see that immigration
Is the new and improved Ghost Dance?"
All I can do is laugh and laugh
And say, "Damn, you've got some imagination.
You should write a screenplay about this shit --
About some fictional city,
Grown fat and pale and pretty,
That's destroyed by a Chicano apocalypse."
The professor doesn't speak. He shakes his head
And assaults me with his pity.
I wonder how he can believe
In a ceremony that requires his death.
I think that he thinks he's the new Jesus.
He's eager to get on that cross
And pay the ultimate cost
Because he's addicted to the indigenous.
26 Jul: "The Limited" by Sherman Alexie
I saw a man swerve his car
And try to hit a stray dog,
But the quick mutt dodged
Between two parked cars
And made his escape.
God, I thought, did I just see
What I think I saw?
At the next red light,
I pulled up beside the man
And stared hard at him.
He knew that I’d seen
His murder attempt,
But he didn’t care.
He smiled and yelled loud
Enough for me to hear him
Through our closed windows:
“Don’t give me that face
Unless you’re going to do
Something about it.
Come on tough guy,
What are you going to do?”
I didn’t do anything.
I turned right on the green.
He turned left against traffic.
I don’t know what happened
To that man or the dog,
But I drove home
And wrote this poem.
Why do poets think
They can change the world?
The only life I can save
Is my own.
25 Jul: "One need not be a chamber" by Emily Dickinson
ONE need not be a chamber to be haunted,
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.
Far safer, of a midnight meeting 5
External ghost,
Than an interior confronting
That whiter host.
Far safer through an Abbey gallop,
The stones achase, 10
Than, moonless, one’s own self encounter
In lonesome place.
Ourself, behind ourself concealed,
Should startle most;
Assassin, hid in our apartment, 15
Be horror’s least.
The prudent carries a revolver,
He bolts the door,
O’erlooking a superior spectre
More near.
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.
Far safer, of a midnight meeting 5
External ghost,
Than an interior confronting
That whiter host.
Far safer through an Abbey gallop,
The stones achase, 10
Than, moonless, one’s own self encounter
In lonesome place.
Ourself, behind ourself concealed,
Should startle most;
Assassin, hid in our apartment, 15
Be horror’s least.
The prudent carries a revolver,
He bolts the door,
O’erlooking a superior spectre
More near.
24 Jul: "Grace Marks" by Susanna Moodie
"I dare not think--I cannot pray;
To name the name of God were sin:
No grief of mine can wash away
The consciousness of guilt within.
The stain of blood is on my hand,
The curse of Cain is on my brow;--
I see that ghastly phantom stand
Between me and the sunshine now!
That mocking face still haunts my dreams,
That blood-shot eye that never sleeps,
In night and darkness--oh, it gleams,
Like red-hot steel--but never weeps!
And still it bends its burning gaze
On mine, till drops of terror start
From my hot brow, and hell's fierce blaze
Is kindled in my brain and heart.
I long for death, yet dare not die,
Though life is now a weary curse;
But oh, that dread eternity
May bring a punishment far worse!"
21 Jul: “Cream of the Crop” by Jimmy Nameles
“Cream of the Crop”
People are homogenized,
Spun around an axis,
Skimmed, acidified, separated,
Turned non-soluble liquid,
Reduced in size, and
Distributed by grade.
The cream rises to the top.
They are the buttermilk,
Dense,
Attributing their success to hard work,
Smart choices, and
Focus.
Focus.
They call the skim milk
Lazy and worthless,
And even worse
Deservent.
19 Jul: "Twelve" by Lynn Melnick
When I was your age I went to a banquet.
When I was your age I went to a barroom
and bought cigarettes with quarters
lifted from the laundry money. Last night
I did all your laundry. I don’t know why
I thought this love could be pure. It’s enough
that it’s infinite. I kiss your cheek when you sleep
and wonder if you feel it.
It’s the same cheek I’ve kissed from the beginning.
You don’t have to like me.
You just have to let me
keep your body yours. It’s mine.
When I was your age I went to a banquet
and a man in a tux pinched my cheeks.
When I was your age I went to a barroom
and a man in a band shirt pinched my ass.
There is so much I don’t know about you.
Last night I skipped a banquet
so I could stay home and do your laundry
and drink wine from my grandmother’s glass.
When I was your age boys traded quarters
for a claw at my carcass on a pleather bench
while I missed the first few seconds of a song
I’d hoped to record on my backseat boombox.
When I was your age I enjoyed a hook.
You think I know nothing of metamorphosis
but when I was your age I invented a key change.
You don’t have to know what I know.
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