Abandoned Railroad (Eliot Cardinaux)

  Abandoned Railroad

When puffs of smoke
moving handworn
music of a moment
is unlocked, and sound
placed upon an open chamber
finds its rattle –
in blessèd heed,
find the abandoned railroad
in the self-less figure
where began to separate
and look upon
no person but
a frame in which
cool water often waited,
there is strength
to be spoken.
by another,
whom that figure
in the autumn
            only color –




                        December 31^st, ’10

Two Pastorals and a Pastoral Song - (Jim Krull)

 (These three come from "Old Poems", and were written perhaps '07)

First Pastoral

                                    Quietly rolling along

                                    still there

                                    between a finished hose, and side t'bear

                                    Our distant portals wait beside creeping

                                    white line, pretty aside, how

                                    hollow and so missed

                                    Fixed through raining slides near

                                    seven, and be fenced, in

                                    considering where on the hill put denied,

                                    we're place yellows, whites, pinks are listless

                                    Frayed I can see moving about

                                    along quietly.

Second Pastoral

                                    From separate segmentations

                                    Open hatch-costs, thread

                                    Symbol lovely luc

                                    Calls,    thundering glass

                                            a thundering glass over on camille

                                            or ale comme, or sandy heel

                                            yeswhes yes, to the left

                                            alas fashion bikini, last

                                            left, the rack slirr life for nice,

                                            play, alittle dance to entertain

                                            wildlife

Pastoral Song

                                   

                                    We'll no more for are full

                                    besides their preparation, for are opposite

                                    place-absent, of so it is

                                    When the dust came up,

                                    Poured on them

                        Reprise:                        Have both graze won the bank

                                                            Eating-hinges black white and

                                    What would it (laugh) be for

                                    (inside in outside, on the side-mount)

                                    Now and newly painted sheets

                                    Flash constant moving convert

                                    from point to spoken play

                                    on the shore of yellow open sounds.

                                                In victim pointing on a flash

through single movement and around

we shall be sour to lay.

                       

                        Have both graze won the bank

                        Eating hinges black white and

Les Dryades (Eliot Cardinaux)

   Les Dryades

Je vous vois

frisonner parmi les ombres

là où la brise

se donne au fond.

Je vous vois

Chanter parmi les ârbres

Où visiblement clair

Le bruit se plonge en bas.

Les bras

De vos corps subtiles

se donnent au ciel,

ô prisonnières de bois,

si fluide comme un songe

parfait, sensiblement

j’vous derange

de dormir, si lointaines, si long.

J'ecouterai (Eliot Cardinaux)

  J’ecouterai

J’ecouterai dans ton âme
quel inquietude;
            (sonner le cloches
parmi ces ârbres!)  Le fôret dont
il donne son soif aux pierres,

qui ne chante pas

avec toi – Ah, ’l n’y a personne
qui chante là, ni de rien
parmi ces arbres, ni feuilles
sur les branches, cher
                                   
compagnie.



  I’ll listen

I’ll hear, in your soul,

what disquietude;

            (sound the bells

among these trees!)  The forest where

he gives his thirst to stones,

                        who sings not

with you – Ah, no one here sings

nor of anything,

amidst these trees, nor are there leaves

on the branches, dear

company.

                 Written and translated by E. Cardinaux

Etranger, (Eliot Cardinaux)

  Etranger,

Que j’ai tant entendu son cri

dans l’abysse de m0n âme!

Ni fuit; à la mer sur l’horizon,

les choses fantastiques couchant

aux coraux.

Et qu’il lui fait aucun soif,

aux choses parfaites, le bruit du vent

retournait pas à la mer.

Mais la blessée mit au coin;

d’autres figures dans les tenèbres

attendent par la fissure,

lui laissent autant

qu’il ecoute

la chanson du soleil,

clarté inconu des jours!

  Stranger,

O, that I’ve heard his cry

so long, in the abyss of my soul!

Nor flown; at the sea, on the horizon,

fantastic things laying down

in the coral –

And that it gives him no thirst,

of things perfect, the sound of the wind

returned not to the sea.

But her, injured, somehow cornered;

other figures in the shadows

wait by the fissure,

leave him so that

he hears

the song of the sun,

            clarity unknown of days!


                 Also written, translated, by Eliot C.

A Fragment - (Jim Krull)

How'd if inscribed incorrectly   ,   (oh there

                    Is never enough, A Payer pays

                    Again   , to the salmon-fish go up   ,

        Though in the toe of the water   ,

        On the river Industry               for symbols (un-)leading   ,

                    In a part-fool's rhyme, that if

                    Had (that)) aggain   , (haven't  ,  how easily

Forgotten (after, should it not be obvious enough)  , though she

(Not any of that portions previous were her portions   )

                                                        Be in a line   )

                                                        I may.

                                                                        121710

A translation from Le Marteau sans mâitre (The Hammer without a master) - René Char

  La Rose Violente

Oeil en transe miroir muet

Comme je m’approche je m’éloigne

Bouée au créneau

Tête contre tête tout oublier

Jusqu’au coup d’épaul en plein coeur

La rose violente

Des amants nulls et transcendants.

  The Violent Rose

Eye in a trance, mirror mute,

As I approach I withdraw, 
Bouy on the battlement;

Head against head, all to forget,

'Til the shoulder blow upon the heart,

The violent rose

Of null and transcendent lovers.

René Char, from Le Marteau sans mâitre,

                           (The Hammer without a master)

Translated by Eliot Cardinaux 12/19, ’10

Turtle and Outcast (Eliot Cardinaux)

Nature is a rock that can be entered
through an outcast’s crop of ragweed.
Already he has found the substance to be chilled. 
And in the cup the smoke has turned
30 years, 40 years, 50 years back
to where the tree made its root,
and bird-song has reached across the universe
into the outcast’s ear and through his garden.

Let’s leave this place, it’s dull,
cries the outcast into the black hole.
And he and the turtle he had known all along
started off for that long forsaken home.


                        December 15^th, ’10

Also (Mark Ge)

Also

My good friend came by today

I was tired out of my mind, back home from holiday shopping

the mall filled to the brim with horny women and their male friends

that's when I noticed your back at the check out counter

could it be?

Oh it is you

my once upon a time lover

with my mother in line

what to do...

oh how awkward, I have to use the restroom

no we shall wait

oh and there are several other cashier clerks

but we get you

you played it real cool

acted like you didn't know me

haven't seen me before

but what to do now?

As I walked around the mall smiling all day

thinking it was you that I held in my arms

embracing our naked bodies in my cramped ghetto apartment

should I message you on your iPhone?

To say that I liked seeing you today

though not necessarily in the same context

even though I love mom

and my good friend

who has just left

who I've also been to bed with

Brazilian Boy (Mark Ge)

Brazilian Boy

Brazilian boy

with existential eyes

dancing on the pole

next to black dancers

Brazilian boy looks at me from across the room

the disco lights light up making for a fountain of illumination

I drift towards him

my Brazilian boy

he and I talk while he whips it out

a tiny dancer

in nowhere land

skinny, tan, and waiting to be picked up by someone rich

unlikely he'll give a call

unlikely he'll write

the only chance you can see my Brazilian boy

is if you go to the clubs

and sift through the smoke

with drinks in the air

the jukebox on all night

thumping, grinding, on the pole

he'll only be interested if you bite

Poem II from "Poems and Songs", First Part - (Jim Krull)‏

There is a shade past the veil

That covers the moving limbs

With the grass carries the wind as a sail.

Many images fill the simulation

Of what you may do near the lake,

As a secretly lost criminal

Evades impressions for the sake

Of a wholly owned idea ;

She was very close, past the stake,

Too distant for a plea

Of where she had come from

And turned to, return(ed) to the seal

Of her natural heir's dominion

Bubbles with the matting entwined

Through a foreign location,

(For she walking with her dogged

Expression,) up the hill

Now carrying hidden what was mined?

Look by the ray still

Comes though the low sheet

This is now the time to will

And now grace an attempt to meet.

Queenie (Mark Ge)

Queenie

I need out
to further Russia, enveloped
holed up and sober
I always miss the train, blame it on mother
whose sober abuse reeks like wet horses
and I miss you
even though you have not left
and I'd be your most tenderest gift in the world
if only third world drag queens made me, me
but I'm ok in this body
this language
however unrefined

Love Poem (Sean Ali)

Love Poem

If my love were hot asphalt,

            I’d tar and feather you.

If my kisses were little holes,

            I’d polka dot you,

                        All over.

If my embrace was a corset,

            I’d pull the strings

                        Tight around your waist.

If my tongue were a paintbrush,

            I’d make a mural of your body.

If my words were truly honey,

I’d have a beehive for a mouth.

If my fingertips were little seafarers,

            I’d circumnavigate your globe,

                        North to south.          

If my love was sticks and mud,

            I’d build a dam against the flow of time.

If my love were a thief in the night,

            I’d be the perpetrator of a crime.

Santa Maria Maggiore, p. 92 - (Jim Krull)‏

(after an illustration in "Grieben Bildband 202 a  ROM")

Populated rooves of angels       men,

Above the convexed scene is plain

       Unadorned spaces-between and windows,

Curve after dot, thin and fat

       The color some is light and others darker,

Largest sign and symbol in contrasts;

       Of the right-most light shines through.

                                         110910

A Translation from Les Fleurs du Mal (Eliot Cardinaux)

  La Beauté  (Beauty) 

          Charles Beaudelaire

I am beautiful, o mortals! Like a dream of stone,

And my breast, where each one bruises himself in turn,

Is made to inspire love, in the poet,

Eternal and mute as matter.

I am throned in the azure like a sphinx, misunderstood;

I level the heart of snow with the whiteness of swans;

hate the movement which displaces lines,

And I never cry, I never laugh.

The poets, before my grand attitudes,

Borrowed from the proudest monuments,

Consume their days in studious austerity;

Since I have, to fascinate these docile lovers,

Pure mirrors that make all things more beautiful:

My eyes, my large eyes of eternal clarity!

                                                        Translated by EC

Variation on “Wilted Rose” (Sean Ali)

Burgeoning bud,
            the fleshy hand
Clean of the mud,
            clean of the sand
No form, no shape,
            No wine of the grape
A brewing storm
            from touch of the nape
In sand we sift,
            with fleshy hand
                        for gold
                                    we grip

The burgeoning bud
            is laughing a laugh
                        while the shepherd holds
                                    his rickety staff

How art thou staid,
            O soul of mine?
When the body is frayed
            by ravaging time
Without the shape, without the form
            it stood erect
                        although forlorn
Without the shape, without the form
            it stood still
                        amidst the storm

How art thou staid,
            O, soul of mine?
Whither hast flown
            this vanishing line?

A Fragment from "The Aim", Pt. 3; l. 60-125 - (Jim Krull)

He who merits whatever                                                                    60

            "And this, writes Jeremiah, is the answer

he received: 'Say not, I am a child :

for thou shalt go to all that I shall

send thee, and whatsoever I command

thee thou shalt speak."

All goes quiet, for alien is not around

Nor monsters from the deep sewer,

Marine entering

              lower of the first levels; Each

              has more than enough to pile                                               70

              most of the scaly enemy.

Tell me how to put this tower of sand

          as neatly all completed rows

Seed the errand of comparison

          filled by drops and the crook'd line crown

                                    Out of the window-draws

                                    feet,                                                            80

                                    inaudible and green ---

                     Blindless, cloth-less  ---

The repetition seen naked in the night against

                     shows a costume-less dance.

Each of these could bind the tear and tide.

Round and from afar

(with the urged eye)

                     placed into words                                                        90

from actions, then back (in)to words

the one section does not nullify

One error in set

Makes the others forfeit.

only makes the first (action-image) stronger.

In the present circumstances

refrain encourages farther distances,

the numbers...1,3,1...are forward;                                                      100

Bonds are once mechanically altered,

The filed extension of the - closest - tower

Hooks and gone-lid signs

are the game of bird's

quick playful movement

Everyone marked

this song-lit thread                                                                            110

joined parts far motion,

the water comes upward to the sound.

The approach of something new

...of the newly visioned

Where in lacking strength of sight

Show of visible process

Where the before unseen hue

Without long roar-less night.

                                                                                                       120

Those who rest in the deepened

Whole halls of memory, that after spring

                 It is heavy, gives weight impression

to the hands, the floating spectre

intention fools miss.

Invocation (Sean Ali)

Invocation

Walking mistrust
The knife in the heart
The smart kiss lust
Persuasion her art
You,
            my angel,
                        pure light
            and devoid of will
While that one with fall
Knocked from a great height
Laps up the metallic blood spill
Makes the promise of death to forestall

Sauntering disinterest
And a trust that’s been missed
Your trust has been placed in the mist
And you dead ones
            lying under faded stone:

What wine have you tasted?
On what crags were you tossed and left alone?
What women have you kissed?
What tryst of dawn left you afire in ossified bone?
From what perils have you hasted,
Where the heart as a sculpture stood
When all the rest had abandoned the good?
What end did you meet in that shadow of a standstill?
By what mysterious force, what unknowable will?

Two New Poems For Today from Mark Ge

Cocktail

Counterfeit or real?

Like simulated isolation

a quarter, fifty cents for say half an hour

shredding coffee beans in the mid morning

just having gotten out of bed

the break ins unbearable

all the smoke in the air

the television sound on in the other room

as incense flows

terracotta buildings

puddles of water

an ice cream cone

and then the memories fade

and I'm still here in Massachusetts

...without a dime

Medicine Transcripts

My old movies unreturned, weeks late

banana peels on my table

medicine before defecation in the morning

makes me wonder if I am doing it right

like drinking coffee while pissing

Walked to the store today

to listen to the traffic

Two unrelated poems (Jim Krull)

Gather behind some Philosophers

            to defend yourself

If guilty is part of

            the metaphysical regimen

He had "moved to a level"

           (To among the best)

That is all that can be said

            of Earth's religion.

                               112310

            First Love Poem

I am sitting in the square

Of a great English leader and heir

To ruling, his globen arrow

Masses the continent's sorrow.

Here is my bird, my bush and faun

Having prayer near my lawn,

Red night oh quickly be done

So tomorrow soon will bring

The next beaten tone

Precisely you song (or whisp'ring).

                             (from "Old Poems")

Yuki

Yuki

I only eat and drink domino's pizza and diet coke

and only communicate through advertisements

yours and mine on a dilapidated television

I tap into the waters

crystal clear, waters

like a John Denver song

mixed with angel's toe nails

people say that one third of the population is gay

I am like a fluffy pillow

we have our hearts on our faces

I like candy

I like it

I like it

I like it

I like it too much

-Mark Ge

Dove (Eliot Cardinaux)

Road from my pen,
it's a road nonetheless,
night on the inside
catching birds.

Warm-lit rooms,
the sounds of cars,
I tell myself, "stop,
and go further from the road."

There's a garden.
And an Olive tree from Syria,
where a dove has learned to fly each day 
from the wounds love left in the land.

Fly dove, from this stone building.

Fly to my sleeping love like two moons in a water jar.
Carry your message toward two prayers without reason,
and the flames in your body to no destination
so an angel's psalm can continue in the oranges on the table.

Hold his embroidery to the light
when two churches spend their nights far above the cemetery,
and fly to the sun, dove, scattering leaves
about you like the ashes of three shepherds.

And descend on extended wings, dove of america,
dove of Wallace Stevens, poet who died peacefully.

                        November 24^th-December 1^st, '10

IV, From "Animal Dreams" (2010) - (Sean Ali)

IV

And sulfur rose
             from the sacrifice
             smoldering slowly
             and split his skull
                            twice
              with madness
                                                And clay pots
                                                        house the tears
                                                        of our forgotten dead
                                                Whose ghosts sway
                                                         with the shadows
                                                                       of all objects
                                                                                             Shadows
                                                                                                in endless prostration
                                                                                                    to god
                                                                                                      who created them
And blood has stained
                  the grassy blades
And now the deer
                  do not eat of it
Nor do cattle graze
                                                  And running streams
                                                              cannot cleanse the earth
                                                   Fish jump not from
                                                               these streams
                                                                                              Birds bathe not
                                                                                                     in our fountains
                                                                                              For no bird bathes
                                                                                                         on surface
                                                                                                              of dry stone
And there the flame
                 will flicker
                         for a while
Fighting the steady wind
                                                  And the old women
                                                                will wail
                                                                        with grief
                                                  To the night
                                                                polluted with history
                                                   Beat their chests
                                                                and fall silent
                                                                                                And the silence
                                                                                                     will be sanctuary
                                                                                                             to the echo

Another body,
              bloated with ambition
has turned up dead
              in the morning frost
The stars’ iridescence
                 will burn you red
                                                      And your lips
                                                              will dry and crack
                                                      Your eyes bleary
                                                               and stinging
                                                       Your lungs coarse
                                                                and rasping
                                                                                        Claim defeat
                                                                                           with tragedy and reserve
                                                                                        Claim your final breath
                                                                                                            with serenity
And the night
              will blaze
Thunder
The rent earth
The soil baked
              with summer
                      locust heat
                                                     And fire burns in Babylon
                                                     Fire burns in Jerusalem 
                                                     Fire burns in Alexandria
                                                     And fire burns in Jericho
                                                     Burns in Constantinople
                                                                In Athens,
                                                                In Rome.
                                                                                          We reach for the sun
                                                                                          And you split the earth
                                                                                          We clamor to heaven
                                                                                          While you close the gate