Five Branch Tree
2024-04-26
2024-04-24
--e.e. cummingsspring!may--everywhere's here(with a low high lowand the bird on the bough)how?why--we never we know(so kiss me)shy sweet eagerly mymost dear(die!live)the new is the trueand to lose is to have--we never we know--brave!brave(the earth and the skyare one today)my very so gayyoung lovewhy?how--we never we know(with a high low highin the may in the spring)live!die(forever is now)and dance you suddenly blossoming tree--i'll sing
2024-04-22
--e.e. cummingsi thank You God for most this amazingday:for the leaping greenly spirits of treesand a blue true dream of sky; and for everythingwhich is natural which is infinite which is yes(i who have died am alive again today,and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birthday of life and of love and wings: and of the gaygreat happening illimitably earth)how should tasting touching hearing seeingbreathing any–lifted from the noof all nothing–human merely beingdoubt unimaginable You?(now the ears of my ears awake andnow the eyes of my eyes are opened)
2024-04-20
--e.e. cummingsi am a little church(no great cathedral)far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying– i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,i am not sorry when sun and rain make aprilmy life is the life of the reaper and the sower;my prayers are prayers of earth’s own clumsily striving(finding and losing and laughing and crying)childrenwhose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladnessaround me surges a miracle of unceasingbirth and glory and death and resurrection:over my sleeping self float flaming symbolsof hope, and i wake to a perfect patience of mountainsi am a little church(far from the franticworld with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature– i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;i am not sorry when silence becomes singingwinter by spring, i lift my diminutive spire tomerciful Him Whose only now is forever:standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)
2024-04-16
--Donald JusticeR. B. VAUGHN speaks:“After so many years of pursuing the idealI came home. But I had caught sight of it.You see it sometimes in the blue-silver wakeOf island schooners, bound for Anegada, say.And it takes other forms. I saw it flickering onceIn torches by the railroad tracks in Medellín.When I was very young I thought that love would comeAnd seize and take me south and I would see the rose;And that all ambiguities we knew would mergeLike orchids on a word. Say this:I sought the immortal word.”So saying he went onTo join those who preceded him;and there were those that followed.
2024-04-14
--Donald JusticeThis poem is not addressed to you.You may come into it briefly,But no one will find you here, no one.You will have changed before the poem will.Even while you sit there, unmovable,You have begun to vanish. And it does not matter.The poem will go on without you.It has the spurious glamor of certain voids.It is not sad, really, only empty.Once perhaps it was sad, no one knows why.It prefers to remember nothing.Nostalgias were peeled from it long ago.Your type of beauty has no place here.Night is the sky over this poem.It is too black for stars.And do not look for any illumination.You neither can nor should understand what it means.Listen, it comes without guitar,Neither in rags nor any purple fashion.And there is nothing in it to comfort you.Close your eyes, yawn. It will be over soon.You will forget the poem, but not beforeIt has forgotten you. And it does not matter.It has been most beautiful in its erasures.O bleached mirrors! Oceans of the drowned!Nor is one silence equal to another.And it does not matter what you think.This poem is not addressed to you.
2024-04-12
--Donald JusticeIt's not a landscape from too near.Like sorrows, they are require some distanceNot to bulk larger than they are.The risk is, backing off too far.But finger trees are hand from here,The wounds of mines, the growth of pinesBoth appear and disappear.There's but a shagginess remains,An olive or a purple haze,The nice unshaven atmosphereOf average faces, average hills.Whatever goats are dancing there,Being all invisible,Animate objects of a willContemplative without desire,Suffer no vertigo at allBut dance until our spirits tire,Or dine forever, or untilThe speculative garbage fail--Tin cans and comic books-- which smallImaginary campers thereForgot against this very hour.
2024-04-10
2024-04-08
--Rae GouirandIn the dream, matter was mine.The muscle, the teeth, the breath rushingout of burned throat and throughthose teeth into air, where it becameindistinguishable. On my legs, I raced,the machinery of my animal syncinglift and drop between front and back,the pairs oddly right, as thoughI've had them in waking, as though I'veknown a horse's run from inside.But that wasn't the plot. Justas I knew I was that, just as I couldhold it in my mind at the same timeI could simultaneously expressI was born to move like this,I felt concrete beneathmy landings, and the approachingvibration of metal wheels fasterthan I could make my mindmy legs, and those, those red roadsunder me, those fine bones underthe balance of my animal, enteredthe field of what could undo them,were subject to what could undo them ,and their running turned—andthere was my heart, racing forthe red cave where I had lived,no longer a place I could restmy word for myself. There aretwo ways a horse can run: fromaccord, and from will. One isthe way a living thing runs.
2024-04-06
--Rae GouirandNow where are all my new recipes?Now where is my smoother leather?Now where is my little breeze? I havebeen keeping these straps up far too long.Time to upright the shelvesof references. I'll hide the remains.I'll fling open this window & wavegeraniums above the avenue. Set my eyeson the night & get caught up in it.Reminder of the stitches to be removed.Reminders of devotions. Let's not neglectthe long dusty lines settled into the carpets. Let'spretend to be putting it all backwhere it came from. I'll be signingmy name at the bottom of these letters.Doyenne of a mind. Surrounded on all sides.
2024-04-04
--Rae Gouirand
What if: stone is what
you get. A gun of stone. What if
the table beneath it were:
& the walls catching the sound. What
if no one knew: you were
around. If people came: from stone
& found only that.
What if stones were: deaf & mute
& cold. What could be
warmed. What word would you hurl.
At what would you point
your blood. Of what is a stone:
composed: what holds what
to itself. What is there to break it
& why when it goes does it
go only: to smaller ones. A stone
has no center but itself. It only
breaks; it does not change. It only
goes from one to many. Stones
always exist. Stones always exist.
Stones always exist. Stones
always exist. There is no way out of this.
2024-04-02
2024-03-31
2024-03-29
2024-03-27
2024-03-25
2024-03-23
--John BrehmSo sexy to slide under-neath a river,to sit inside thissnakelike sub-marine-likesubway car andfreely imaginethe world above—the BrooklynBridge invisiblytrembling with theweight of itsown beauty,the East Riverstill guided bythe groovesWalt Whitman'seyes wore in it,the bulldog tug-boats pushing thepassively impressivebroad-bottomedbarges around,and the double-decker orangeand black StatenIsland Ferries,with their auraof overworkedpack-mulemournfulness,and beyond themthe Atlantic Oceanwhich I lately learnedwas brought hereby ice-comets threebillion years ago,which explainsa few things, likewhy everybodyfeels so alienated,and of coursethe thoughts beingthought by everyperson in NewYork City atthis moment—vast schools ofundulating fishcurving and risingin the cloud-swirlingwind-waved sky,surrounded bythe vaster emptinessof nonthoughtwhich holds themand which they trynot to thinkabout and youlying in bed inyour sixth-floorwalk-up subleton St. Mark's Place—such a breath-taking ascension!imagining merising now to meet you.
2024-03-21
--John BrehmThere's something to be saidfor having nothing to say,though I don't know whatthat is, or isn't, just asthere's something to beknown about not-knowing,which I would tell youif I could. There must besomething to be gainedby losing, a seed of victoryburied in every failure,else I would not be here.Clearly, there's somethingto be desired about beingbeyond desire, as the sagesnever tire of telling us,and nothing more fulfillingthan emptying yourself out—no ground beneath your feet,nothing to hold onto, no handrail,no belief, only this bright self-sustaining air, and a fallingthat feels like floating.
2024-03-19
--John BrehmMostly they live in the darkunderwater weed-slitheringcurrents and worry aboutbeing swallowed up by theirmore furious brethren.Some of them have eyesperched atop long thin stemslike flowers. And somehave forty or fifty armspocked with suction cupsto help them stick to thingsand will squirt blackclouds of ink to keepthemselves concealed. Othersresemble subtropicaldottybacks or scaleless deepseagulper eels, with theirvelvety bodies, zipper teeth,and whip-like tails. The fearsomedragonfish—likewise theviperfish, hatchetfish,and bristlemouth—all find theircorollaries in the Red Seaof my heart. Eventhe phantom glass catfish,entirely translucent exceptfor its intestines,is no stranger to my feelings.The unforthcoming among thembehave just like shovelnosestingrays who flop right downin the bottom-ooze and flickthe muck up over them.But some of them, when theyswim too near the surface,find themselves suddenlyexalted, lifted and flyingthrough the air, wind-filled,sunlight-sharpened skyexpanding around them, highabove their proper element—
birdclaws sunk into their backs.
2024-03-17
2024-03-15
--Robert Duncan
I know a little language of my cat, though Dante says
that animals have no need of speech and Nature
abhors the superfluous. My cat is fluent. He
converses when he wants with me. To speak
is natural. And whales and wolves I’ve heard
in choral soundings of the sea and air
know harmony and have an eloquence that stirs
my mind and heart—they touch the soul. Here
Dante’s religion that would set Man apart
damns the effluence of our life from us
to build therein its powerhouse.
It’s in his animal communication Man is
true, immediate, and
in immediacy, Man is all animal.
His senses quicken in the thick of the symphony,
old circuits of animal rapture and alarm,
attentions and arousals in which an identity rearrives.
He hears
particular voices among
the concert, the slightest
rustle in the undertones,
rehearsing a nervous aptitude
yet to prove his. He sees the flick
of significant red within the rushing mass
of ruddy wilderness and catches the glow
of a green shirt
to delite him in a glowing field of green
—it speaks to him—
and in the arc of the spectrum color
speaks to color.
The rainbow articulates
a promise he remembers
he but imitates
in noises that he makes,
this speech in every sense
the world surrounding him.
He picks up on the fugitive tang of mace
amidst the savory mass,
and taste in evolution is an everlasting key.
There is a pun of scents in what makes sense.
Myrrh it may have been,
the odor of the announcement that filld the house.
He wakes from deepest sleep
upon a distant signal and waits
as if crouching, springs
to life.
2024-03-13
--Emily Lee Luan
is the bleat of the sandhill crane
is the hush of the autonomous mind of the flame above the canyon
is the cow drinking water from mud is the cow and the word cow
is the deckled face in the overhang of stone
is the bone weathered into wood
is the wood weathered to stone
is the sentence
is the moment that longs to be the sentence hidden in a sentence
is the legislated road is the grass is the grass
is the nerve that runs from socket to wrist
is the common knowledge of aperture and speed
is the hole to be yawned into its origin the stone that says
the impulse of water is the moss against
is the growing in spite of
2024-03-11
--Jay Wright
The pentatonic spring washes its winter clothes.
Five is a difficult color—
not this green of reflected sky, nor the red
clamor of midnight riding by on a church bell.
Think of the Greek of it,
an Egyptian river,
the dry desert voice you hear in the cleansing.
All before this moment found its own measure,
an ingenious inganno, a blessure
occasioned by a consonant's turmoil,
a Germanic algebra brightly a-boil
through all the strings, a fortspinning always pure,
always a public shrine to a wood secure
in its origin.
White is a difficult
sound in the edowa above the tumult
fastened to the soul of widows, magnitude
that arms the darkest nebula. The rude
dead awaken to another baptism.
2024-03-09
2024-03-03
2024-02-29
Delimitation
How was it? And how is it? The perpetual birthday of one
that is personally yours and yours to have as needed.
As many as you might like to fully arrive back to the brand new.
A clearing after replacing and forever losing the birthday
never asked for, the one that was the year's or theirs
and not to be much more, back when you were young but once.
Which is now gone. And now the choice to be old again,
again and again. What follows, what's held off, and waits
for experience to reveal those extended ages and then
the light that arrives as your air takes to breathe in the barren,
so you can say this is okay, while you walk in the midst of waking
through the no longer not too far off distance of evening, that arises
after the new year is never ever new but always instead, anew--
as lone wind is understood, when finally here as you always were.
2024-02-27
2024-02-25
--Chelsea WoodardWide-lobed threes of trillium leaves tapedand labeled, trifoliate veins, wrinkles driedand finite as her penciled marks beneath.My hands are attuned to the weight of pages pressedlong on such fragile anatomies—pistils of lilies,cowslip petals, delphinium halos and bright spikesof iris, ovaries and ovules tenderly picked,patterned and splayed. I know the bodyof desire could fill a book and still spillout. It isn't a question of will, or killingfor pleasure, for beauty that's flattened and lasts pastthe end of one season, where we've lived in bloomand hate to leave. Late February castsits defeatist light and I quit this reliquary now, this room.
2024-02-23
ENVOIIn the world of dreams I have chosen my part,To sleep for a season and hear no wordOf true love’s truth or of light love’s art,Only the song of a secret bird.--from 'A Ballad of Dreamland'; Algernon Charles Swinburne
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