Nothing here to fear I'm just sitting around being foolish when there is work to be done.

Right from Wrong

To reach across the sheets to touch you in your sleep They tell me
This is wrong, is wrong Or when you speak to me out of your dream
And I break into pieces like bread They tell me this is
Wrong Or when I lean forward to catch your heartbeat on my lips
This is wrong Or when you respond to my touch and wake
And your light goes up like a shout Wrong And when I read
The radiant poetry of your skin by our mutual light That's
Wrong But they tell me death is right, they invented death. And blood,
Yes, blood is right, and bones, bones feel good to them, and silence
The silence they impose at the center of our cells, yes, they
Love that And violence, yes, the clenched fist But mostly death
They watch me now as I escape across the border into the special
Country of your body, mind and spirit I know right from wrong.

-- John Gilgun

For those of you smitten with Pixeleen (though she's no Babylon Sister)...

The Electric Muse

She is the binary pulse of a carbon form
slightly smudged
the rivulet of electric relief you seek
at speeds so close to light
She is the child who knows
what the fathers have forgotten
or never had the patience to learn
She can teach you too
She'll don the mesozoic remnants of your vestigial fins
and waft you in cobalt waters
towards an evolutionary incline
For herself
she would not alter a follicle of your design
And that splinter shard from the treasure you hoard?
She'll work her way beneath your skin to find it
Hone its barb
For she can be a tool for you
balanced perfectly to fit the heft
of your soft palmed hand
She bears a new gold nib
for your favorite pen
She is the scent of you new born
The skin you shed to stand here on the hottest rock
In the midst of so much heat
she is the promise of another winter stillness
freon cold against your cheek
She is the dream that slips away into the ether
when sheets fall to the floor and you wake, naked
sooner than you might have wished
She is dancing in a gauze skirt
She flashes a thigh
She winks a slate blue eye
She is a synapse dance of wet wired release
your newly baudable bride

-- Jennifer Ley

I am at work and I wish to be elsewhere.

At the Seminar

I

An electronic blip from house-martins as they pass
an open window at the conference centre; frantic birds,
on errands of mercy, transporting relief supplies to tricorn beaks.
We sneak a glance at our mobiles for text messages.

Crawling across the hotel lawn, sun puts mist in the shade:
a transparent morning now, our vision unhindered for miles.
A golfing party, armed with a quiver of clubs, aims
for the bull's-eye of the first hole; others, near a pool
blue as our EU flag with its water sparkle of stars, dry off:
shrink-wrapped in towels, they sink back into resort chairs.

II

For serious objective reasons, we are informed, our keynote
speaker is delayed; the Chairman's interpreted words
are relayed simultaneously through headphones:
In order to proceed to a profitable guidance for our work
which will be carried out with a feature of continuity and priority . . .

I see the lake basking in its own reflected glory, self-absorbed,
imagine turquoise dragonflies, wings wide as wedding hats,
fish with scarlet fins, water-walking insects.

I intervene. I associate myself with the previous speaker's views.
Discussions go on in all our languages at once, as we unscrew
still mineral water, bottled at some local beauty spot.
Certain administrations suffered cuts as they weren't entrusted
with new attributions likely to fill in the logistical gap
resulting from the inference of the frontierless economic area . . .

In two hours (less, if with luck that stupid clock has stopped)
our final workshops will convene in the break-out rooms.
Then it will be time to draw conclusions at the plenary,
to score evaluation forms, return to our respective floors
to dress down for the bus tour of the Old Town.

III

Now the rapporteurs start synopsising
the workshop findings on felt-tip flip-charts.
The Chairman is summing up: New challenges
overlook the world scenery in our global stance . . .

Lily pads strut across the lake like stepping stones;
fish risk an upward plunge; martins plucking
sustenance from thick air lunge at their mud nests.
Hold the world right there. Don't move a single thing.

-- Dennis O'Driscoll

*

Coffee Science

The scientific principle on which coffee works is thus:
People like to feel the blood crank.
To wheel and carp.
Speed up time.
Whirl veins.
Even the richest man enjoys
a golden goose, dangling coins, pulling the
slot machine amphetamine
handle of wealth.
The sweet brown juice of Buddha.
The hot cup of Jesus Joe.
The Java, Java witch hunt of the Catholic
sugar and cream.
Coffee if it were a drug, golden eggs would only purchase.
A demi cup, a piccolo, a pinch of crystal grounds.
Coffee was a drug, before drugs, were drugs.
So Mama please do not let your babies grow up to drink tea.
She has coffee breath, we kiss, I taste the bohemian
splendor of her Borneo, Kona blend.
Hold on to your berets, my goatee is on fire.
I'm captain cappuccino. I'm speaking espresso Esperanto.
Drink, drink, drink, maties. Starbuck started out with
Ahab in the search for the white leviathan now
He is a meager-chain of coffee klatches encircling the globe.
World domination? No, world caffination.
That's the secret, speed up the neurotransmitters,
Racing through the synapse like a loose fright train,
Release some endorphins, that's the magic
In the test tube, the reason you reach for the
Black hole, cupa, cupa, cupa Tesla's coil.
Who put the fee in coffee?
Who put the EE in we?
Who put this tea in front of me?
I prefer the ear in beer, are you listening?
I drink it to forget all the bad coffee in the world.

-- Gary Mex Glazner

*

Poem written half-asleep in an office meeting

The guys up on the beams
make
rain

i see them from my
office
window

welding metal into
place

sparks
falling

like blinking
embers
in a forest

The buildings
stand like
trees

they too, fall with
the passing of
time

The rain makers
wear metal
hats

and the soup boils
in the kitchen

and the wives
cry

and the sun
falls over the
moon

The rain
makers

rise

and fall

again

-- Tony Robles

yo existo diferente de cualquier otro ser

Billy B. is ADDICTED TO CAPS which are of course GOOD FOR EMPHASIS, you dig?

...
Tiempo Tiempo.

Mediodia estancado entre relentes.
Bomba aburrida del cuartel achica
tiempo tiempo tiempo tiempo.

Era Era.

Gallos cancionan escarbando en vano.
Boca del claro dia que conjuga
era era era era.

Manana Manana.

El reposo caliente aun de ser.
Piensa el presente guardame para
manana manana manana manana.

Nombre Nombre.

?Qué se llama cuanto heriza nos?
Se llama Lomismo que padece
nombre nombre nombre nombre.

-- César Vallejo

For my brother, who is feeling old and decrepit; the weight of his almost-sixteen years bearing down on his back...

Sonnet LX

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
Crooked elipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

Falling in love is like owning a dog

First of all, it's a big responsibility,
especially in a city like New York.
So think long and hard before deciding on love.
On the other hand, love gives you a sense of security:
when you're walking down the street late at night
and you have a leash on love
ain't no one going to mess with you.
Because crooks and muggers think love is unpredictable.
Who knows what love could do in its own defense?

On cold winter nights, love is warm.
It lies between you and lives and breaths
and makes funny noises.
Love wakes you up all hours of the night with its needs.
It needs to be fed so it will grow and stay healthy.

Love doesn't like being left alone for long.
But come home and love is always happy to see you.
It may break a few things accidentally in its passion for life,
but you can never be mad at love for long.

Is love good all the time? No! No!
Love can be bad. Bad, love, bad! Very bad love.

Love makes messes.
Love leaves you little surprises here and there.
Love needs lots of cleaning up after.
Somethimes you just want to get love fixed.
Sometimes you want to roll up a piece of newspaper
and swat love on the nose,
not so much to cause pain,
just to let love know Don't you ever do that again!

Sometimes love just wants to go for a nice long walk.
Because love loves exercise.
It runs you around the block and leaves you panting.
It pulls you in several different directions at once,
or winds around and around you
until you're all wound up and can't move.

But love makes you meet people wherever you go.
People who have nothing in common but love
stop and talk to each other on the street.

Throw things away and love will bring them back,
again, and again, and again.
But most of all, love needs love, lots of it.
And in return, love loves you and never stops.

-- an epithalamion by Taylor Mali

"I have a love in my life, and it makes me stronger than you could possibly imagine." (PDL)

"To E."

I have remembered beauty in the night,
Against black silences I waked to see
A shower of sunlight over Italy
And green Ravello dreaming on her height;
I have remembered music in the dark,
The clean swift brightness of a fugue of Bach's,
And running water singing on the rocks
When once in English woods I heard a lark.

But all remembered beauty is no more
Than a vague prelude to the thought of you --
You are the rarest soul I ever knew,
Lover of beauty, knightliest and best;
My thoughts seek you as waves that seek the shore,
And when I think of you, I am at rest.

-- Sara Teasdale

bird in flight.

Small Comfort

Coffee and cigarettes in a clean cafe,
forsythia lit like a damp match against
a thundery sky drunk on its own ozone,

the laundry cool and crisp and folded away
again in the lavender closet-too late to find
comfort enough in such small daily moments

of beauty, renewal, calm, too late to imagine
people would rather be happy than suffering
and inflicting suffering. We're near the end,

but O before the end, as the sparrows wing
each night to their secret nests in the elm's green dome
O let the last bus bring

love to lover, let the starveling
dog turn the corner and lope suddenly
miraculously, down its own street, home.

-- Katha Pollitt

Heaven
I'm in heaven
And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak
And I seem to find the happiness I seek
When we're out together dancing cheek to cheek.

Happy birthday, Ginger.

Before we begin:
Today's prayer comes courtesy of Kansas and my mother.

from notebook up late reading books that ought to be packed or given away
(or,
I will never box these all up successfully.)

It probably sounds funny to some of you and grotesque to the rest of you, but I'll tell you something, my friend: weird love's better than no love at all.
-- Stephen King, The Green Mile
*
"It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer."
-- EB White, Charlotte's Web (oh-hush.)
*
"What do you hate most?" he asks.
"A lie. And you?"
"Ownership," he says. "When you leave me, forget me."
..
We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, character we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on my body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience. All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.
-- Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
*
"You shouldn't lie till ten. There's the very prime of the morning gone long before that time."
-- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
*
The morning stretches on; merciful time. A lace-edged deadline.

[completely aside: because some of you get discouraged and cliches are good medicine]

MC-Hammer wannabe propagandizes - at great length - about p2p piracy:
Don't copy that floppy! (c)1992.
Among those thanked:
America Online
Broderbund Software
Adobe
Pixar

This should really be resurrected for the RIAA.

VII


Inclinado en las tardes tiro mis tristes redes
a tus ojos oceánicos.

Allí se estira y arde en la más alta hoguera
mi soledad que da vueltas los brazos como un náufrago.

Hago rojas señales sobre tus ojos ausentes
que olean como el mar a la orilla de un faro.

sólo guardas tinieblas, hembra distante y mía,
de tu mirada emerge a veces la costa del espanto.

Inclinado en las tardes echo mis tristes redes
a ese mar que sacude tus ojos oceánicos.

Los pájaros nocturnos picotean las primeras estrellas
que centellean como mi alma cuando te amo.

Galopa la noche en su yegua sombría
desparramando espigas azules sobre el campo.

Pat Robertson has very bad gas.



And launches into 21 day prayer vigil for God to remove 3 Supreme Court Justices.
stolen from burkean
...



Threat rating: High. The Bush administration is
concerned that it may not get a second term.
Therefore, we are going to change the rules so
that each Democrat vote only counts as 0.2
votes because Democrat is a shorter word than
Republican


What threat to the Bush administration are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

much she
knows how much for a show in
the Congress of flesh and
claptrap of the best

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 branched the 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 colors
of the whole world—

you far off there under
the wine-red selvage of the west!

-- W. "the Conqueror" Carlos W.

What a beautiful morning.

.

Sojourns in the Parallel World

We live our lives of human passions,
cruelties, dreams, concepts,
crimes and the exercise of virtue
in and beside a world devoid
of our preoccupations, free
from apprehension--though affected,
certainly, by our actions. A world
parallel to our own though overlapping.
We call it "Nature"; only reluctantly
admitting ourselves to be "Nature" too.
Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,
our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,
an hour even, of pure (almost pure)
response to that insouciant life:
cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing
pilgrimage of water, vast stillness
of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,
animal voices, mineral hum, wind
conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering
of fire to coal--then something tethered
in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch
of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.
No one discovers
just where we've been, when we're caught up again
into our own sphere (where we must
return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)
- but we have changed, a little.

-- Denise Levertov

a tiny violetflavoured nuisance

So that when I hear love I am not sure it is love, and when I hear gaiety I am not sure it is gaiety, and when I have eaten and loved and I am all warm from wine, I am not sure it is either love or food or wine, but a strange trick being played on me, and illusion, slippery and baffling and malicious, and a magician hangs behind me watching the ecstacy I feel at the things which happen so that I know deep down it is all fluid and escaping and may vanish at any moment. Don't forget to write me a letter and tell me I was here, and I saw you, and loved you, and ate with you.

-- Anias Nin

Via Rob's Amazing Poem Generator:

the old bluegirl

wind sand... leave me
if canEdit[93] document.write [
edit] ; From where you I
playing games with A long AND Intimates
1932 posted by blue girl at 11:
15:PM if
canEdit[23]
IF canEdit[
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10:15:PM if
I never fully conscious.
Eventually rape. mood swings,
suicide and caffeine
and come and
no intention of warm and
a funny that I could either
sleep Nightmares .

the new post-matchgirl
(content: last week's posts)

When alone, Take a winter noon Like a
pool
among the jagged range
in silk stockings the
far hence,
friend to Emerson.
What do you
properly.You know
that is no Shoplifted:
No
Dyed your Dream
Wedding: Five exclamation points
and he sticks the one Name: Stella Harold
sound of spring over
the one Bringing rain Then
spoke the scarlet hussy of
clothing: ... Best
first date
Who wrote this you want
as like # d
high in the
blond was right.Say
that But be her
five exclamation points and thunder of the world beyond
a scribbler, I
told
upon the shoes you want
to beOld and drink Sweat
is dry bones in the
shadow under
eaves.

...
Silliness.
Don't confuse this for ease.
Using all cylinders to spin in place.

earthshine:

Or
TIA, the &#sky threatened, but
when
we
were the wealth because
her her owne: Yet were
together. The cause was supplied free time?
Click here Do in the quiet
falling of the
recording by Jhary at 10:
26 AM | drunk
without a bit. last weekend, 8217;s still
felt a saint.

To anyone expecting email etc., I have you saved listed tucked away and up on the empty shelf so as not to pack you in a box between photos and dresses; am slowly writing letters and returning phone calls. It's just that this move has been long coming but still unexpected and it has caught me unprepared and emotional so please, and thank you, be patient.

Treatise

Much of our time
     has been spent in this way.
Paging through old notebooks.
Pacing endlessly.
Crying on each others' shoulders.
Singing in the bathtub.
Looking for stores that are not there.
Making faces at the camera,
     and singing each other to sleep

-- Matt Krefting

x

I did find time to go see Pirates of the Caribbean.
Review:
Rent and watch Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Find pirate hat and boots. And eyeliner.
See Raoul Duke lurch about with accent, lingeringly caressing ship while showing no interest whatsoever in breasts.