Friday, March 14, 2014

SHAZAAM!

As to not deprive my massive readership any longer I figured I'd post some examples of what I'm reading since I'm not posting about what I've read.

The General Law of Oblivion

Mr. Proust called it: the beloved gone so long
you forget what he/she looks like,
no matter portraits, photos, or memory,
which is the best tool for forgetting.
Though one cannot deny
its genius, Mr Proust's prose
kills me, it loops
me over and out.  Is it just French novelist
who don't know how to end
a sentence and so love the semicolon ("the period
that leaks") they can't write two lines
without one?  And I am so godamned tired
of hearing about that cookie!
As if he were the first (first fish were!) to notice
the powers of the olfactory!  But
about the General Law of Oblivion
he had it zeroed: "It breaks my heart
that I am going to forget you," he said
in a last letter to a friend.
The length and music of that sentence
is perfect, in English or in French.

#
Put the Bandage on the Sword and Not the Wound

It must hurt, too, the sword, heated to red (exactly: burnt
orange) hot, beaten and beaten, hard,
by a strong arm
and a hammer
up and down its long body, plunged
in icy water,
then beaten again
and the grinding, the awful grinding
of stone on steel
before the thick and bitter taste of blood
on its lip.

#
Midmorning,

accompanied by bees
banging the screen,
blind to it between them
and the blooms
on the sill, I turn pages,
just as desperate as they
to get where I am going.
Earlier, I tried to summon
my nervous friend,
a hummingbird, with sugar
water.  The ants go there first.
Now, one shrill bird
makes its noise too often,
too close: ch-pecha, ch-pecha-pecha.
If he'd eat the caterpillars
)in sizes S to XXL!) eating my tomatoes,
we could live as neighbors, but
why can't he keep quiet
like the spiders and snakes?
I spoke to an exterminator
once who said he'd poison
birds but he didn't want me
to write about it.  I have not
until now, and now starts up
that black genius, the crow,
who is answered by the blue
bully, the ubiquitous, the utterly
American, jay.

#
Three poems from Thomas Lux's (did I do that right?  The 'x' apostrophe thing looks odd and even sounds funny.) God Particles.

You're welcome.  :)

(Three poems and a smiley face?!  Wow, I'm being super generous today.)

4 comments:

Wallflower said...

There are some letters that never look right next to each other in English, and for me X and S are two of them even with an apostrophe.

I love the sword one! I've been browsing William Carlos Williams lately and the third one reminds me of him.

Chad Hull said...

Glad you like them! I'll have to look into this double Williams person. I'm such a nooB when it comes to poetry.

Wallflower said...

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

There's one. It's almost a haiku.

Chad Hull said...

I like that.