Raizan

***

Women planting rice...

Ugly every bit

About them...

But their ancient song

***

Wynn Walent - If You Fall I Fall Too

Etsujin

***

An autumn eve;

She comes and asks,

"Shall I light the lamp?"

***

Jane Weaver - Heart of Gold

Tairo

***

My good father raged

when I snapped

the peony...

Precious memory !

***

Robert Ellis - Bamboo

Abdulah Sidran

Why Venice Is Sinking

***

I look at the sky over Venice.

Nothing’s changed for the last seven billion years.

God’s up there. He created the universe and then

the seven billion worlds in it and in every world innumerable nations,

a babel of tongues, but only one Venice.

He made each nation different, whispering: “Now get acquainted.”

He gave them foreign language to get better acquainted with,

making them all, by this means, richer and better.

He made Venice the way he did birds and fish,

just like that, so people and nations would come to believe in him,

being, of course, thunderstruck by what he could do.

I look at the sky over Venice. Up there and everywhere – is God.

The only one. He created the universe,

seven billion worlds in the universe, and every world

filled with people and languages, to which he added

a single Venice. And in one world, upon a landmass known

as Europe, among the tribe of the southern Slavs, he placed

a small addenda. This is the border. Bosnia.

Bosnia, Bosnia. And here the Eastern cross and the Western cross,

formed of one cross, met and went to war.

But the Bosnians, being meek, took a third faith

and hewed to the unique God, the only One,

neither begotten, nor himself begetter,

Lord of the world, the Master of the Judgement Day.

I look at the sky over Venice. Worldly rulers

have decided that Bosnians should be – nowhere.

Venice is sinking. Europe is sinking. The cradle is sinking.

Roses in Murano glass vases are sinking. Murano

is sinking. Hotel rooms are sinking and

the Dead Poets Society is sinking. Why doesn’t the world need

Bosnians? Amongst colours – one colour less?

Amongst scents – one scent less? Why doesn’t the world need

Venice? Amongst wonders – one wonder less?

I look at the sky over this earthly world.

In a long arc, a single star is breaking up, right down through

the bottomless universe, falling, it seems, right into the Grand Canal.

This ordinary world, among seven billion celestial worlds,

is about to become poorer by a whole people.

Its worldly rulers appear to have so decided.

In the universe, therefore, a single falling star.

And Venice is sinking. The universe will be poorer by a whole world.

That is the will of the Lord of the worlds,

the will of the Master of Judgement Day.

***

Glen Campbell - Sadly Beautiful

Abdulah Sidran

A Blind Man Sings To His City

***

The rain stops. Now from the drains,
From the attics, from under the floorboards
Of the shattered homes in the suburbs
Oozes the stench of the corpses
Of mice. I walk seeking
No special meaning in this. A blind man,
To whom it has been given to see
Only what others don't. This
Makes up for my deprivation: in the south wind
That touches me I recognise the voices
Of those who left this city. As if they were crying.
There, scent of the linden trees, close.
I know
The bridge is near, where my step and my stick
Will ring differently - more light
In the sound.There, now, right by my ear
Two flies mate in the air.
It will be scorching hot again
Bodies
Brush past me,hot
Smelling of bed, smelling of lust. I walk muttering
To God, as if He were beside me:
'Surely nobody in this city
Better than me - better than me, God,
To whom you have given never to see
The face he loves.'

***

Laura Veirs - Shadow Blues / Paintings by Dina Meštrović

Edith Sitwell

Poetry

***

Ennobles the heart and the eyes,
and unveils the meaning of all things
upon which the heart and the eyes dwell.
It discovers the secret rays of the universe,
and restores to us forgotten paradises.

***

Ruarri Joseph - Faces, Movements and Cheats

Michael Ondaatje

The Cinnanon Peeler

***

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
And leave the yellow bark dust
On your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
You could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbour to you hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
--your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...

When we swam once
I touched you in the water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
you climbed the bank and said

this is how you touch other women
the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume

and knew

what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in the act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
Peeler's wife. Smell me.

***

Doug Paisley - Out on the Weekend

Michael Ondaatje

To A Sad Daughter

***

All night long the hockey pictures
gaze down at you
sleeping in your tracksuit.
Belligerent goalies are your ideal.
Threats of being traded
cuts and wounds
--all this pleases you.
O my god! you say at breakfast
reading the sports page over the Alpen
as another player breaks his ankle
or assaults the coach.

When I thought of daughters
I wasn't expecting this
but I like this more.
I like all your faults
even your purple moods
when you retreat from everyone
to sit in bed under a quilt.
And when I say 'like'
I mean of course 'love'
but that embarrasses you.
You who feel superior to black and white movies
(coaxed for hours to see Casablanca)
though you were moved
by Creature from the Black Lagoon.

One day I'll come swimming
beside your ship or someone will
and if you hear the siren
listen to it. For if you close your ears
only nothing happens. You will never change.

I don't care if you risk
your life to angry goalies
creatures with webbed feet.
You can enter their caves and castles
their glass laboratories. Just
don't be fooled by anyone but yourself.

This is the first lecture I've given you.
You're 'sweet sixteen' you said.
I'd rather be your closest friend
than your father. I'm not good at advice
you know that, but ride
the ceremonies
until they grow dark.

Sometimes you are so busy
discovering your friends
I ache with loss
--but that is greed.
And sometimes I've gone
into my purple world
and lost you.

One afternoon I stepped
into your room. You were sitting
at the desk where I now write this.
Forsythia outside the window
and sun spilled over you
like a thick yellow miracle
as if another planet
was coaxing you out of the house
--all those possible worlds!--
and you, meanwhile, busy with mathematics.

I cannot look at forsythia now
without loss, or joy for you.
You step delicately
into the wild world
and your real prize will be
the frantic search.
Want everything. If you break
break going out not in.
How you live your life I don't care
but I'll sell my arms for you,
hold your secrets forever.

If I speak of death
which you fear now, greatly,
it is without answers.
except that each
one we know is
in our blood.
Don't recall graves.
Memory is permanent.
Remember the afternoon's
yellow suburban annunciation.
Your goalie
in his frightening mask
dreams perhaps
of gentleness.

***

Wilco - Jesus, etc.

Vladimir Nabokov

Softest of Tongues

***

To many things I've said the word that cheats
the lips and leaves them parted (thus: prash-chai
which means "good-bye") -- to furnished flats, to streets,
to milk-white letters melting in the sky;
to drab designs that habit seldom sees,
to novels interrupted by the din
of tunnels, annotated by quick trees,
abandoned with a squashed banana skin;
to a dim waiter in a dimmer town,
to cuts that healed and to a thumbless glove;
also to things of lyrical renown
perhaps more universal, such as love.
Thus life has been an endless line of land
receding endlessly.... And so that's that,
you say under your breath, and wave your hand,
and then your handkerchief, and then your hat.
To all these things I've said the fatal word,
using a tongue I had so tuned and tamed
that -- like some ancient sonneteer -- I heard
its echoes by posterity acclaimed.
But now thou too must go; just here we part,
softest of tongues, my true one, all my own....
And I am left to grope for heart and art
and start anew with clumsy tools of stone.

***

Chip Taylor - Words (Between The Lines Of Age)

Frank O'Hara

Poem

***

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up

***

Vesper Stamper & Sufjan Stevens - Up On The Housetop