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Pir
Zia Inayat-Khan &
Peter Lamborn Wilson
GHAZAL
FROM THE
DIVAN-I GHALIB
1
Surely not every lovely
face has been revealed
in
tulip or rose. There must
be at least a few still sealed
in
dust.
3
The Daughters of Atlas
modestly veil themselves all day
their
nakedness hid by light:
so whence this lewd display
by
night?
12
If I approach her door,
then how could I retort
to
the insults she'll unleash? -
my prayers all spent on the porter
as
bakhsheesh!
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Walter
Franceschi
Little
Satori
CHINA IN THE EARLY
MORNING
I have just been in China
for a space of time as long
as it has taken two Chinese
girls to walk past me.
LITTLE
SATORI
Beauty
is a sudden
thing.
GREAT
BRITAIN IN FLORENCE AFTER A RAINY DAY
on a damp sidewalk
in the process of drying
a
Great-Britain-shaped spot
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Bob
Arnold
Dream Come True
CONTAGIOUS
Just the way your loose
Hair sweeps your cheek
Loosens me
SUNLIGHT
Doesn't it feel like it is
There for you when you
Sit in the room with it
NOTORIOUS
He's the town crazy
And we've been in town only five seconds
And he's found us
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Three
Spanish Poets
Marcos Canteli Carlos Pardo Elena Medel
Translated
by Forrest Gander
Elena
Medel ~ from
Tara
The Kids
Who Die
The kids who die
can choose between jumping during the day on lovely
concrete
beds or eating the sheets really slowly
with
their eyes closed, blissful.
The privilege of flannel. Two hundredth parts of fear
for
letting go of their hand: along the avenue they clutch
for the tips of my fingers, nipping at me, Mama.
Already my legs are shot and I sing in an undertone, looking
for
a
place near my father, so they fall together with me
before
entering the house.
What a blast in the vestibule: I'm so mellow, I couldn't die.
I have friends without dreams or pajamas. They smell the coming
festival and convert their thermometers
into a good night song, and they've died and nevertheless,
they put equal faith in January and in the windows, in the voice
of
snow.
Life's like that for kids who die. Cushy. Pretty
sweet.
Such a pleasure, extinguishing childhood
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Hoa
Nguyen
What Have You
THE
PROBLEM
The problem with the
lights and the
smell of apples rotting
sliced apples
I put into the lights
cleaning them out
in order to see better not
a good spot
for apples
I talked to the invasive
tree
how to replace China Berry Poison
ivy
Running bamboo humans Literally
knocking it over crack
the big limb
how to restore as
in the children's book
looking for the ordinary snortle pig
plants animals
and homes equally numbered
Peed in the backyard long
black skirt
to mark this mine
I talked to the tree pee
smell
for raccoons and possum natives
Death is the return to
the mother
return to the wet place
Our local creek: Boggy
my fear of it stagnant
smell trash
and rats nesting
lesser herons rocks
and
bottle tops
Water sample August 4,
2006
North Boggy Creek at Airport Blvd.
Nitrate 2.08 BAD
Phosphate .07 POOR
Sinking reading
of massive phyto-plankton
& algae bloom
Hypoxic zone Gulf
of Mexico dead zone
Sized larger than New Jersey
August Perseids seen
from the stoop
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Mark
Terrill
Superabundance
A POEM
FOR THE REAR GUARD
Along about the time
freedom
became a product
and
war
the currency with which
that product could
allegedly
be
purchased
the gypsies
packed up their things
and
hit the road
and the dust
kicked up by their horses
slowly
settled
on the tables outside
the Café des Despotes
where this poem
was
found
scrawled on a
wine-stained tablecloth
in the crepuscular evening
of one of the last days
on
earth.
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Nicolas
Born
The Bill for Room
11
Translated
from the German by Mark Terrill
Landscape
with Large Car
With such a large car
we have to get through
dead or
alive
in back of the neck music
which
never stops
sweet air of Montana bitter air of Missouri
our
coats flap as though we were on the run
we tank up
dogcatchers
roam about
us in the side glances of the cowboys
us in the generous shadow of an airplane
us outside the line of fire in Chicago
we
shake William Fulbright's hand
we
ghost through Arkansas
we visit the grave of a poet during our lifetime
green all around with just a tinge of yellow
the demonstration runs in the flames of Phoenix
we are a point which moves itself westwards
we are not Americans
but
belong to them
a sheriff forces us to stop
no we haven't picked up any black hitchhiker
we are not horse thieves albeit Germans
our politeness is the politeness of foreigners
we're
moving faster
we mean we're roaring
wrapped
up in sweet air
and in a music that never stops
we
get old very slowly
many thanks Pentagon
for this statistical delay-effect
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Dale
Smith
Wild
Chickens
Such
a Blue
Branches break the sky
with pagan stillness.
Sap
moves. The wood's
nodes
will spread
into
summer mulberry.
There are so many things
alive
right now
in
the ancient sunlight.
Listen to grackles.
Listen to song birds
and
their sudden shifts
of attention.
Such
a blue goes far
beyond
their limbs.
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Anne
Waldman
Mammalian
the tree is the
repository
its aspen leaves turn yellow
the tray is the mesa
civilization
is laceration
the hurricane is relentless
the masters are exposed
the light is
your discourse
the globe will be ablaze
the horizon travels
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Han Shan ~ My Home's A Hole
Translations
by J. P. Seaton
I
My father and mother
were thrifty, hard workers.
The grain fields, the vegetable plots they left me,
are good as any man's.
My wife keeps the loom click-clacking,
My boy can goo-goo with the best.
I can clap the time for the flowers to dance to,
or just sit and listen to the birds when they sing.
And who should come by from time to time
to sigh their admiration?
The woodcutters do!
~ This poem gets a little extra buzz
from the fact that the woodcutter was a heroic legendary figure
among Taoists and other romantic folks seeking the joys of rural
retirement, maybe because he is free, self employed as a provider
of a renewable resource that everyone always needs (for cooking,
heating, tool making and building). The new farmer Han Shan proudly
claims a place in their company here. Pretty soon we'll watch
Han Shan the Romantic back to the earther discover that farming
involves a lot of hard work and a whole lot more good luck than
woodcutting. Maybe the farmer Han Shan knew all this, and his
persona here is meant to set us up to suffer the inevitable hard
times that will soon come hangin' 'round his cabin door.
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Simon
Pettet
FEAST
OR FAMINE
A Spectre
for Brenda Coultas
My dear,
It's lovely to linger near
the scenes of the earth,
to be near,
to hear
what you have to say,
what pours forth ceaselessly
from your garrulous mouth(s)
in these latter days
(which we won't call these latter days!),
to scrutinize and survey
your glossolalia,
to see you
to see what you do
I'm here.
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Cid
Corman
KARMAL FUDGE OR
JUST PLAIN SLUDGE
4.
Do your damnedest
you aint done nothin' yet.
10.
Poet - let
the words you have lived
give life to others
and you will have lived
beyond all other
poetry.
14.
Fools and sages
learn to put up
with each other
best silently.
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