Category: Poetry

“30 Beliefs and Techniques for Prose and Life” by Jack Kerouac

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry1 Comment
  1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
  2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
  3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
  4. Be in love with yr life
  5. Something that you feel will find its own form
  6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
  7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
  8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
  9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
  10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
  11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
  12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
  13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
  14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
  15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
  16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
  17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
  18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
  19. Accept loss forever
  20. Believe in the holy contour of life
  21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
  22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
  23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
  24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
  25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
  26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
  27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
  28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
  29. You’re a Genius all the time
  30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

~ Jack Kerouac

Via BrainPickings.org

  
Photo via: Changing Footsteps 

“Any prince to any princess” by Adrian Henri

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry1 Comment

August is coming
and the goose, I’m afraid,
is getting fat.
There have been
no golden eggs for some months now.
Straw has fallen well below market price
despite my frantic spinning
and the sedge is,
as you rightly point out,
withered.

I can’t imagine how the pea
got under your mattress. I apologize
humbly. The chambermaid has, of course,
been sacked. As has the frog footman.
I understand that, during my recent fact-finding tour of the
Golden River,
despite your nightly unavailing efforts,
he remained obstinately
froggish.

I hope that the Three Wishes granted by the General
Assembly
will go some way towards redressing
this unfortunate recent sequence of events.
The fall in output from the shoe-factory, for example:
no one could have foreseen the work-to-rule
by the National Union of Elves. Not to mention the fact
that the court has been fast asleep
for the last six and a half years.

The matter of the poisoned apple has been taken up
by the Board of Trade: I think I can assure you
the incident will not be
repeated.

I can quite understand, in the circumstances,
your reluctance to let down
your golden tresses. However
I feel I must point out
that the weather isn’t getting any better
and I already have a nasty chill
from waiting at the base
of the White Tower. You must see
the absurdity of the
situation.
Some of the courtiers are beginning to talk,
not to mention the humble villagers.
It’s been three weeks now, and not even
a word.

Princess,
a cold, black wind
howls through our empty palace.
Dead leaves litter the bedchamber;
the mirror on the wall hasn’t said a thing
since you left. I can only ask,
bearing all this in mind,
that you think again,

let down your hair,

reconsider.

 

“Any prince to any princess,” by Adrian Henri from The Loveless Motel (Jonathan Cape).

 

“Riddles” by Caitlyn Siehl

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

If the battle is over but everyone is
dead, how do you know it’s over?
Who decides?
What came first, humans or despair?
Did it crawl inside of us or did
we crawl inside of it?
It’s warm where the flesh,
which is yours, meets
the mistake, which is an open mouth
on the bed in your dorm room,
tongue like a serpent,
like something lost and frantic.
If you keep going, will it settle down?
These are the hard questions.
What do you call a punchline
when there isn’t a joke for it?
Why did the chicken cross the road
and why didn’t you?
How many licks does it take
to get to the center of the loneliness?
Yes, the tree still makes a sound,
and yes, you will still want to
disappear even if no one is around to
snap you out of it.
Listen to all the cars screeching
to a halt outside of your window.
Listen to the engines rumbling softly.
Listen to how they are all saying
“Get through this. Get through this.”
When does being brave not look like being brave?
When is the princess not a princess?
When is the hero not a hero?
Who cares. Save yourself.
Fuck the story.

– Caitlyn Siehl, Riddles

Caitlyn Siehl is the author of What We Buried.

“A Love Song” by William Carlos Williams

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

What have I to say to you
When we shall meet?
Yet—
I lie here thinking of you.

The stain of love
Is upon the world.
Yellow, yellow, yellow,
It eats into the leaves,
Smears with saffron
The horned branches that lean
Heavily
Against a smooth purple sky.

There is no light—
Only a honey-thick stain
That drips from leaf to leaf
And limb to limb
Spoiling the colours
Of the whole world.

I am alone.
The weight of love
Has buoyed me up
Till my head
Knocks against the sky.

See me!
My hair is dripping with nectar—
Starlings carry it
On their black wings.
See, at last
My arms and my hands
Are lying idle.

How can I tell
If I shall ever love you again
As I do now?

 

 

“Escape” by Linda Whittenberg

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry
Every once in a while one of the neighbors
comes by, rope in hand, looking for horses
that got out. Predictably, ours go for the hay
in Lisa’s barn.
There are few hazards nearby, so, mostly,
no harm is done, but I did have to replace
a cranky lady’s birdfeeder after Doc
went after the millet.
No halter, no bit, no restraints, unfenced
space to explore, smorgasbord of green delights
to cruise—sometimes we hate to round them up
from enjoying the sweet taste of freedom.
The thing is, we can imagine such freedom
for ourselves—no bank account to keep filled,
no day-timer, no obligations—only an open gate,
time and space waiting for us.
Who knows, we might go around the world
or at least to Africa or India or take
a coast-to-coast road trip, or go live
on the Cook Islands for a while.
But, I suspect, we’d miss the familiar,
behave like our mule, who,
after he’s shown he can outsmart us if he wants,
enters the open barn door on his own.

 

—Linda Whittenberg, from Rattle #45, Fall 2014
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