Poetry

[barton]

Shaking out the sheets
she flings the cat from the bed,

he lands nearby and considers the insult
of this impromptu catapult. 

[madupont]

Not mine, she'd lash out. She's been around awhile and is hip to the demotion process involved in long-term relationships.

[madupont]

"The poet Laurie Sheck recently published a work that is perhaps not exactly poetry, but is not a straight novel either—A Monster's Notes is a genre-defying book reimagining the life of Mary Shelley's monster. In Sheck's version, the monster is a figure Mary met as a young girl while visiting her mother's grave, a strange being both mesmerizing and terrifying to her, whom she later wrote into her novel as Victor Frankenstein's creation. Sheck gives us the monster in his own words, still alive in the twenty-first century, reflecting on the bizarre race of humans that made him and shuns him; he ponders the tragic tale of the Shelleys, including Percy Bysshe Shelley's famous drowning and the devastating story of Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont, who had a child as a result of her affair with Lord Byron and was made to give her up. Throughout the book, the monster (and the reader) can clairvoyantly "see" letters penned by the Shelleys, including those excerpted below, from Mary to Claire, when she finally shares with her sister the story of the monster and how he first came to her. Mary also refers in these letters to her half-sister Fanny, and to their mother Mary Wollstonecraft, who is considered a founder of modern feminism. "


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Claire,

I sat there in St. Pancras graveyard. The end of summer. The River Fleet moving sluggishly nearby.

I don't understand stillness, I was thinking—I remember this clearly— thinking, what could be odder than stillness though it's everywhere? Rock. Bone. Knife. Death. Table. My brain ached as I thought this . . . I was 8 . . .

He moved very slowly, his chin pressed down and inward where it met his left shoulder.

This is the cemetery of St. Pancras, I said to myself, and St. Pancras is the Patron Saint of Children, but he couldn't be St. Pancras, his head's still attached, and he's too old. Yet he didn't seem like other humans.

Black lips and yellow eyes. Long black hair.

For weeks he came to me. Mostly he stayed hidden in the bushes, would speak almost nothing of himself. Not even when I asked. Read to me from books. Seemed to know who I was.

It's the ordinary that frightens—water, rock, stillness, absence, faces. Thriving gardens. Anchors. Skin.

For weeks I listened as he read.

*

Claire,

Remember when we kept our journals?—

"Tuesday 8th Letter from Fanny—drawing lesson—walk out with Shelley to the south parade. Read Clarendon and draw—in the evening work & S reads Don Quixote aloud."

That was October, 1816. Fanny died the next day. What was I doing when she died?—reading the memoirs of Princesse de Barreith? Drawing? Walking alone or with Shelley? Such ordinary things—

"Wednesday 23rd Walk before breakfast. Afterwards write and read Clarendon. Shelley writes & reads Montaigne—In the evening read Curt. & work—Shelley reads Don Quixote aloud." Days like that. Remember? But not a scrap of writing survives from the years I was a child. So much I didn't tell you. Yet I criticized you for being melodramatic, for your "Clairmont Style"— your conviction that some unworldly being was moving through your room disarranging things. And all the time I kept from you what I'd seen when I was 8. . .

He stepped out of the bushes, partly shielding his face with his hand. He seemed a hurt presence. A presence somehow ashamed.

It's the ordinary that frightens: a plain white envelope, a sunny day in the mountains, reading, thinking, looking at a newborn's skin. The words: "infant," "Monday," "Leghorn," "July," frighten me.

When I was 8: stillness, trust, my own bed, thinking, frightened me.

I felt no need to turn from him.

I asked his name. "I don't have one," he said.

That seemed to me an extraordinary thing. I couldn't decide if it was wonderful or horrible, to have no name like that, yet to be a creature of language, a creature using words.

Why had no one named him? And un- named like that, did he know an aloneness much worse than my own?

He held a book in his hands. I could tell he didn't want me to look into his face. How does one calm another's shame? Then he stepped back into the bushes, head still deeply bowed, and started in a gravelly, hushed voice, to read.

*

Claire,

One day he read to me from my mother's letters. But how could he have seen her letters? They were to the American, Imlay, Fanny's father. From before we were born.

She wrote of his "barrier- face," and called the child "our barrier- child." "You are mistaken if you think me cold," she said. "I am determined to earn money for myself—the little girl and I will live without your assistance—." Wrote, "You don't love me, I know."

I turned the pebbles over in my hands as he read. Years later, at Lerici, I'd hear in the sound of the sea his gravelly voice, though I tried not to hear it. How many years since Fanny died? No one ever claimed the body. That day I bought mourning clothes, standing in that awful shop I felt her beside me one last time.

Then a pained silence came into me.

*

Claire,
I kept imagining that he and I were the only ones left alive. His gravelly voice a spider's web which instead of viciously entrapping created against the air a refuge of intersecting lines, a kind of dwelling. I lived within that voice, its stories. And still I couldn't stand the thought of being left with him. Sometimes I imagined hurting him, seeing him cry. Imagined telling him I hated his voice, his yellow eyes, that he was a disgusting aberration of nature, nothing anyone could ever love. I'd picture his shoulders heaving as he sobbed. Imagined throwing a stick at him or stones. For a while this comforted me. But why would the thought of hurting him comfort me? I waited each day for him to come—

Beneath the threatening thoughts a calm so pure nothing could rip it.

* * *
 

[madupont]

"What if Mary Shelley had not invented Frankenstein’s monster but had met him when she was a girl of eight, sitting by her mother’s grave, and he came to her unbidden? What if their secret bond left her forever changed, obsessed with the strange being whom she had discovered at a time of need? What if he were still alive in the twenty-first century?

This bold, genre-defying book brings us the “monster” in his own words. He recalls how he was “made” and how Victor Frankenstein abandoned him. He ponders the tragic tale of the Shelleys and the intertwining of his life with that of Mary (whose fictionalized letters salt the narrative, along with those of her nineteenth-century intimates) in this riveting mix of fact and poetic license. He takes notes on all aspects of human striving—from the music of John Cage to robotics to the Northern explorers whose lonely quest mirrors his own—as he tries to understand the strange race that made yet shuns him, and to find his own freedom of mind.

In the course of the monster’s musings, we also see Mary Shelley’s life from her childhood through her elopement with Percy Bysshe Shelley, her writing of Frankenstein, the births and deaths of her children, Shelley’s famous drowning, her widowhood, her subsequent travels and life’s work, and finally her death from a brain tumor at age fifty-four. The monster’s fierce bond with Mary and the tale of how he ended up in her fiction is a haunted, intense love story, a story of two beings who can never forget each other.

A Monster’s Notes is Sheck’s most thrilling work to date, a luminous meditation on creativity and technology, on alienation and otherness, on ugliness and beauty, and on our need to be understood."
 

Her book came out about a year ago this coming June.

Published by Knopf.

[FlyingVProd]

This is long, but it is very beautiful, and it is about love. It is from the Bible.


Song of Solomon, chapter 1
     1: The song of songs, which is Solomon's.
2: Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.
3: Because of the savour of thy good ointments thy name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love thee.
4: Draw me, we will run after thee: the king hath brought me into his chambers: we will be glad and rejoice in thee, we will remember thy love more than wine: the upright love thee.
5: I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.
6: Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother's children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.
7: Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon: for why should I be as one that turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions?
8: If thou know not, O thou fairest among women, go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock, and feed thy kids beside the shepherds' tents.
9: I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots.
10: Thy cheeks are comely with rows of jewels, thy neck with chains of gold.
11: We will make thee borders of gold with studs of silver.
12: While the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof.
13: A bundle of myrrh is my wellbeloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.
14: My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of En-gedi.
15: Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes.
16: Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant: also our bed is green.
17: The beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir.

Song of Solomon, chapter 2

    1: I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.
2: As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.
3: As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
4: He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.
5: Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.
6: His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me.
7: I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.
8: The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.
9: My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice.
10: My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
11: For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
12: The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
13: The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
14: O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely.
15: Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.
16: My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies.
17: Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether.

Song of Solomon, chapter 3
    1: By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.
2: I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.
3: The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth?
4: It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother's house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me.
5: I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.
6: Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all powders of the merchant?
7: Behold his bed, which is Solomon's; threescore valiant men are about it, of the valiant of Israel.
8: They all hold swords, being expert in war: every man hath his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night.
9: King Solomon made himself a chariot of the wood of Lebanon.
10: He made the pillars thereof of silver, the bottom thereof of gold, the covering of it of purple, the midst thereof being paved with love, for the daughters of Jerusalem.
11: Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion, and behold king Solomon with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart.

 

Song of Solomon, chapter 4
     1: Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount Gilead.
2: Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from the washing; whereof every one bear twins, and none is barren among them.
3: Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely: thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate within thy locks.
4: Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men.
5: Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.
6: Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense.
7: Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.
8: Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from Lebanon: look from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards.
9: Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck.
10: How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! how much better is thy love than wine! and the smell of thine ointments than all spices!
11: Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon.
12: A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.
13: Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard,
14: Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices:
15: A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon.
16: Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.

Song of Solomon, chapter 5
  1: I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.
2: I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.
3: I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?
4: My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him.
5: I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock.
6: I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer.
7: The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me.
8: I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him, that I am sick of love.
9: What is thy beloved more than another beloved, O thou fairest among women? what is thy beloved more than another beloved, that thou dost so charge us?
10: My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand.
11: His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy, and black as a raven.
12: His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly set.
13: His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers: his lips like lilies, dropping sweet smelling myrrh.
14: His hands are as gold rings set with the beryl: his belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires.
15: His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold: his countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars.
16: His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.


Song of Solomon, chapter 6
     1: Whither is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest among women? whither is thy beloved turned aside? that we may seek him with thee.
2: My beloved is gone down into his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies.
3: I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine: he feedeth among the lilies.
4: Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners.
5: Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me: thy hair is as a flock of goats that appear from Gilead.
6: Thy teeth are as a flock of sheep which go up from the washing, whereof every one beareth twins, and there is not one barren among them.
7: As a piece of a pomegranate are thy temples within thy locks.
8: There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number.
9: My dove, my undefiled is but one; she is the only one of her mother, she is the choice one of her that bare her. The daughters saw her, and blessed her; yea, the queens and the concubines, and they praised her.
10: Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?
11: I went down into the garden of nuts to see the fruits of the valley, and to see whether the vine flourished, and the pomegranates budded.
12: Or ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Amminadib.
13: Return, return, O Shulamite; return, return, that we may look upon thee. What will ye see in the Shulamite? As it were the company of two armies.

Song of Solomon, chapter 7

    1: How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman.
2: Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies.
3: Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins.
4: Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim: thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus.
5: Thine head upon thee is like Carmel, and the hair of thine head like purple; the king is held in the galleries.
6: How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!
7: This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes.
8: I said, I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of the boughs thereof: now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine, and the smell of thy nose like apples;
9: And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine for my beloved, that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak.
10: I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me.
11: Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages.
12: Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth: there will I give thee my loves.
13: The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved.

Song of Solomon, chapter 8
   1: O that thou wert as my brother, that sucked the breasts of my mother! when I should find thee without, I would kiss thee; yea, I should not be despised.
2: I would lead thee, and bring thee into my mother's house, who would instruct me: I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate.
3: His left hand should be under my head, and his right hand should embrace me.
4: I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, until he please.
5: Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved? I raised thee up under the apple tree: there thy mother brought thee forth: there she brought thee forth that bare thee.
6: Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.
7: Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.
8: We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts: what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for?
9: If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver: and if she be a door, we will inclose her with boards of cedar.
10: I am a wall, and my breasts like towers: then was I in his eyes as one that found favour.
11: Solomon had a vineyard at Baal-hamon; he let out the vineyard unto keepers; every one for the fruit thereof was to bring a thousand pieces of silver.
12: My vineyard, which is mine, is before me: thou, O Solomon, must have a thousand, and those that keep the fruit thereof two hundred.
13: Thou that dwellest in the gardens, the companions hearken to thy voice: cause me to hear it.
14: Make haste, my beloved, and be thou like to a roe or to a young hart upon the mountains of spices.

 

http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/KjvCant.html

[pugetopolis]

The 3:10 To Yuma
—for Kaneko Mitsuharu
(1895-1975)

We’re not allowed to look too deep—
Into the depths of the Gulf of Mexico
Swarming with black gooey crud…

On the Gulf coast  sticky as jelly—
Floats BP petroleum shit and
Valdez old used rubbers…

An immense Halliburton Hell—
Oil burning into the Gulf sky
Its fumes will burn your eyes out…

Up from the depths comes—
Our apocalypse appointment with the
Last train, the “3:10 To Yuma...”

One single Wyoming Warlord—
Sitting on the Tokugawa Throne
Flushing us all down the shitter…

[pugetopolis]

The Old Grey Lady

“Spontaneous overflows
of powerful feeling:
Wet dreams, wet dreams,
in libraries congealing.”
—Thom Gunn, “Barren Leaves,”
Selected Poems (2009)

[pugetopolis]

Carol Polk

Poor Carol Polk.
Poking around Melba.
With her nose up her ass.

Poor Carol Polk.
With her lousy 62 posts.
All them boring & bourgeois.

Poor Carol Polk.
Her poor pouty pussy.
Her knickers in a twist.

Poor Carol Polk.
Poking and moping.
Bored with her life.

[pugetopolis]

Furphy

Furphy be earthy—
Smooth and never jerky
So svelte and not girthy

Earthy, mirthy Furphy—
So literate and worthy
Of being tres smirky

When she was Chartres—
You could hear the harps
In the Parisian parks

When she was Madame Merle—
She be a sequestered Pearl
Portrait of a Lady witty girl

[pugetopolis]

Galactababe

In the beginning—
There was lotsa wiggling
Simply oodles of squiggling

Lotsa vicious flame wars—
Memorable trolls and whores
And tons of simply awful bores

Then it got down & dirty—
Wilsonsnookmawr so wordy
Poet so very hurdy-gurdy

Each NYTimes forum—
With little or no decorum
Our little college bachelorum

The shrugs and soirees—
The fucks and cheap lays
On Rexroth’s library floors

Whiskeypriest so demure—
Galactababe so very pure
Her huge jugs a real allure

Mostbigger, G.Jones, Jabel—
Quite a smart gang from hell
Alinsky radicals but don’t tell

[pugetopolis]

...if you don't like us, why are you hanging out here....

I think it’s obvious, Bart….

I’ve got the hots for you & Foxy Knoxie…

 

[pugetopolis]

PALE FIRE

“a discreet ephebe in tights…”
                           —John Francis Shade

CANTO ONE

I was shadowing the cute waxwing boy—
In love with the false azure of his eyes.
He was always fainting in my arms—
During my Wordsmith College office hours.

The innocence of a hot young freshman—
How I selfishly robbed that cradle blind.  
The manuscripts for my next novel scattered—
All over the desk and over the floor.
Poor tragic Professor Humbert Humbert—
But meanwhile I had my own problems.         10
Vladimir my cute Zemblan Boyfriend—
My exquisite young Vlad Shadow.

Vlad wasn’t the bashful type, my dear—
When he lost it on my desk just for me.
Awkward yet streamlined at the same time—
His legs tight around my cormorant neck.
No matter how many times he said no—
His Mother Nature’s endowment always won.
So full of surging young male hormones—
His physique growing fast in all directions.         20
From his long distended nozzola—
To his abnormally large Adam’s apple.

But mostly I remember his pale thighs—
Paler than snow in the New Wye moonlight.
Nude by the window those cold winter nights—
Letting his adolescent beauty destroy me.
How shame turned his head in the pillow—
So he wouldn’t see the look on my face.
How he blushed deeper than ruby red—
When I squeezed his trigger.            30
Shooting me between the eyes—
With his smooth pearl-handled pistol.

[pugetopolis]

Victor Victor
—for Vladimir Nabokov

Victor Victor—
Light of my life
Your father the wind
Your mother my ex-wife

Victor mon amour—
Pnin’s paramour
Pale grey slate eyes
Boy from Porlock I adore

Victor Victor—
I’m lost in Cremona
Spawn of The New Yorker
You gimme a bigga bona!

Cinderella teen—
Shade of Lolita
Wax-wing slain youth
My little belochka…

Victor Victor—
Like Hurbert Van Eyck’s
Canon van der Paele
Martyr for your kicks.

Timofey Timofey—
I’m Liza’s chaste Pnin
Kinbote’s pale double
Shadow-tail of sin…

Victor Victor—
Mira Belochkin’s child
Juvenile delinquent
Adolescent so wild.

Poor Professor Pnin—
Caught up in perfidious
Strange seizures & shadows
Oh that gnostic animus!

Victor Victor—
Ace of Spades boytoy
Hear that phone ringing
Nabokov’s noir envoy?

Signs & symbols—
Silentology of silence
Sorry Wrong Number
Metafictictional license.

Victor Victor—
Vladimir drives me crazy
Patterns in the wallpaper
The Prince so evil & lazy.

Poor Pnin’s full of pain—
Crab apple evil parodies
Little moves on a chessboard
No endgame clarities

Victor Victor—
Trick of gnostic turpitude
Reminding me of your mother
Liz standing in the nude.

Invitation to Beheadings—
They can be such a heavy load
Pnin’s lovely campus home
Here on 999 Todd Road.

Victor Victor—
Devils & demiurges
Playing ping-pong lewd
Zembla kid surges.

Professor Botkin’s boyfriend—
Kinbote’s cute kept man
Shade’s chiaroscuro love
Humbert Humbert’s big fan.

[bambu]

Old Man Platypus
                                -'Banjo' Paterson

Far from the trouble and toil of town,
Where the reed beds sweep and shiver,
Look at a fragment of velvet brown --
Old Man Platypus drifting down,
Drifting along the river.

And he plays and dives in the river bends
In a style that is most elusive;
With few relations and fewer friends,
For Old Man Platypus descends
From a family most exclusive.

He shares his burrow beneath the bank
With his wife and his son and daughter
At the roots of the reeds and the grasses rank;
And the bubbles show where our hero sank
To its entrance under water.

Safe in their burrow below the falls
They live in a world of wonder,
Where no one visits and no one calls,
They sleep like little brown billiard balls
With their beaks tucked neatly under.

And he talks in a deep unfriendly growl
As he goes on his journey lonely;
For he's no relation to fish nor fowl,
Nor to bird nor beast, nor to horned owl;
In fact, he's the one and only!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXUk67UekJ4&feature=related

[pugetopolis]

 

The Real Last Letter

“I would have
turned from your
locked red door
that nobody
would open.”
—Ted Hughes,
“Last Letter”

Except that I had the key—
That opened the locked red door
That nobody else could open.

What happened that night?
Your final night? Only I know—
Because I was the one there.

A couple of hickies—
Still on my jowls to honor
Assia Wevill, my lover.

Tiny delicate—
Tattoo reminders of what
A Spiv I really was

Then like an undertaker—
For the Rich and Famous
From the Land of the Dead

I sewed on a grin to match—
My crummy crocodile tears
Stitched with a weaselly smirk

I added some Penguin Boy
Flippers—to my Circus Act
To make me more famous

I gave myself a pierced heart—
That only a fake Valentino knows
To help me along—my ambitious

Path to being Poet Laureate—
The Queen’s Kept Man of the Moors
Mytholmroyd Meathead Hood

*Exclusive: Ted Hughes’s poem on the night Sylvia Plath died, New Statesman, http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/cultural-capital/2010/10/hughes-poem-poet-publish#reader-comments