extemporally

This one is stolen from laiqualaurelote.

Ghazal of Winter

for C

Outside the homeless ask our help in all their languages;
The words disperse like witches' ashes.

Your nights are filled with arsonists and lonely politicians,
Charred cities drowned in posters like curling skin.

What will survive of this is words and stardust.
At customs they found nothing hidden in the bronze god.

Six seeds can trap the underworld's season.
Ignorant of spring, the snowflakes kiss and pass.

Each morning brings two sets of dreams, the summoned and the lost.
Every other space I learn to halve with you

As days slide away like streetcars
Along steel networks planned by neither of us.

- Teng Qianxi

have not posted anywhere near enough poetry. But have this one:

Who Said It Was Simple

There are so many roots to the tree of anger
that sometimes the branches shatter
before they bear.
Sitting in Nedicks
the women rally before they march
discussing the problematic girls
they hire to make them free.
An almost white counterman passes
a waiting brother to serve them first
and the ladies neither notice nor reject
the slighter pleasures of their slavery.
But I who am bound by my mirror
as well as my bed
see causes in color
as well as sex

and sit here wondering
which me will survive
all these liberations.

- Audre Lorde

or a reason why I haven't been posting for Poetry Month, snap!

Transformation

I haven’t written a single poem
in months.
I’ve lived humbly, reading the paper,
pondering the riddle of power
and the reasons for obedience.
I’ve watched sunsets
(crimson, anxious),
I’ve heard the birds grow quiet
… and night’s muteness.
I’ve seen sunflowers dangling
their heads at dusk, as if a careless hangman
had gone strolling through the gardens.
September’s sweet dust gathered
on the windowsill and lizards
hid in the bends of walls.
I’ve taken long walks,
craving one thing only:
lightning,
transformation,
you.

- Adam Zagajewski

Boston

I’ve been meaning to tell
you how the sky is pink
here sometimes like the roof
of a mouth that’s about to chomp
down on the crooked steel teeth
of the city,

I remember the desperate
things we did
and that I stumble
down sidewalks listening
to the buzz of street lamps
at dusk and the crush
of leaves on the pavement,

Without you here I’m viciously lonely

and I can’t remember
the last time I felt holy,
the last time I offered
myself as sanctuary

*

I watched two men
press hard into
each other, their bodies
caught in the club’s
bass drum swell,
and I couldn’t remember
when I knew I’d never
be beautiful, but it must
have been quick
and subtle, the way
the holy ghost can pass
in and out of a room.
I want so desperately
to be finished with desire,
the rushing wind, the still
small voice.

- Aaron Smith

Sonnet 73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

- William Shakespeare

The Colonel

What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go f--- themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.

- Carolyn Forche

I truly thought yesterday's post was going to be the last of my series of Chinese poetry posts, but exceptindreams posted this some days ago (I saw it only yesterday) and it was so amazing I have no choice but to c&p:

(The text within the brackets is not part of the poem. Also, the poem was written in Chinese, but the presentation here with the English translation alternating with the Chinese is so that you can see the characters discussed.)

"龍的文本(以及它的四種變體)"
向陽

"The Original Version of Dragon (And Its Four Permutations)"
Xiang Yang

[Each of the characters from 1~4 have the base radical of "dragon" and an additional radical that completely changes the meaning. All five characters are pronounced the same, however.]

0.龍

帶麟　帶角　帶鬚
從雷　從雲　從雨
上天　下海　入地
一脈　相承
綿延　不息

有　傳說
無　傳人
幸好　它不是
瀕臨滅絕動物

可複製可仿冒可隨意使用
不怕三○一


0. Dragon

With scales - with horns - with whiskers
From thunder - from clouds - from rain
Up in the sky - down in the sea - into the ground
One pulse - shared
Continuous - neverceasing

Have - legends
But no - descendants
Good thing - it is not
A species on the brink of extinction

Able to be copied, faked, used at will
Without fear of 301

[301 refers to the Special 301 List that the U.S. Trade Representative Office publishes each year, listing all the economies that don't provide strong intellectual property protection. It's divided into multiple categories like Watch List, Priority Watch List, etc. and Taiwan has been on the Priority Watch List for the past few years because its intellectual property protection is practically nonexistent.]

( Read more... )

1999

We were driving to your funeral
& our father was not crying
because he has a way
of tying ribbons around grief.
It was the year we learned
the piercing that prefaces the blood
holds the most delicate of darknesses.
Then it was the year we opened
all our faucets & waited for the sea
to bleed to death. Then it was the year
we set fire to your mitt. Then, suddenly
the year we started to believe
every thorn was just a bridge.
Then the year all we talked about
was boxing. Then the year
my stomach hurt all year, & then
the year no one spoke of you.

If there were an antonym for suicide
we could all choose when to be born.
I would have been born after that day
so I could not remember you.
So my fingers would stop pointing
at all the things that aren't there.

- Kevin A. Gonzalez

静夜思
《李白》

床 前 明 月 光，
疑 是 地 上 霜。
举 头 望 明 月，
低 头 思 故 乡。

( translations (including mine!) )