Faded uni on
The son's light can't pierce the wall
Go back in service

My first haiku/Poem it's about being an EMT

Beautiful stuff

.

I just learned that I was 50 percent Irish. Not a poem but the ending to The Dead by Joyce is lyrical enough to count as a poem in my eyes.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

Paul Celan and Rilke

Entered the National Poetry Competition please bear in mind this is 2024’s winner:
poetrysociety.org.uk/news/fiona-larkin-wins-the-national-poetry-competition
Poem: poetrysociety.org.uk/poems/absence-has-a-grammar

The context is important to the poem

my body isn’t mines
but i'll cede it to you
granted you handle me
in ways that elude my cognitive jaw
i’ll pinch my nose & hold my breath
if it means my self effacing labor will sate you
i’ll martial my masochistic death drive
& offer myself with devotion
if you promise to subsume me
~ your mimosa pudica

Thought I’d post here

on.soundcloud.com/v6j9NdewPYUtjbzMzk

I started as a righteous kid,
The writings on the wall, every step the less I have to give
It’s a grift if you spoke short of bluntly
I’m done a***yzing the form without the function
Is this a piece to subdue me or persuade an assumption
What gets carved into the linoleum,
Shouted from the roof tops til their swollen lungs
Regret, despair and sorrow
It gets better when you realize this time is all borrowed
I see the plaques with figures sculpted, ask them what they fought for
But I see it now, the spine remains hollow
Ulterior motives sell until you’re in a holding cell
Easy to say, when we still wait to see the day
Klonopin induced rent delays,
Heavy on the head
Hesitant like I can’t say what I gotta do

My cellular data dropped along with my fears
Mirrors images encrypted, lost in the cloud when connection is missing
How many refreshes til the smoke clears
And I realize I’m still living

This is a sphere in the hands, I’m aware
Of the pearls in this tasbi
My mother knows I’ll find peace, but the prayer just might rush me
All the layers, but I felt the warmth knowing what this love means

Need to really flesh this one out

Dreams of Neo Tokyo
Athens, Ohio
Nineteen ninety-nine

Konnichiwa
Arigatou
Sumimasen

A hot pixel
In yellow polycarbonate
And silver nylon

At the Dairy Queen
By the Safeway
And the Exxon

Dreading sweat pants
And trade school
And double wides

Dreams of sagaribana
In Okinawa
Pearlescent light

Mow the lawn
Play your Walkman
Hold the line

Love this one! It's these really bittersweet melancholic memory fragments. Quite emotional.

@Fredward

Threadsuns
above the grayblack wastes.
A tree-
high thought
grasps the light-tone: there are
still songs to sing beyond
mankind.

• Celan

Celan is incredibly difficult, I'm not going to pretend to understand everything. However, the equivocal and difficult nature of his poems is almost a methodology. It may be the case that all great poetry and all great art can never be fully grasped, perhaps even by the author themselves. T.S. Eliot wrote, "we should have to understand things even Shakespeare did not understand himself"

Both of these poems are incredibly severe and heart wrenching. I think Celan believed that after Auschwitz, the God of scripture could no longer be spoken without distortion. But there is (maybe?) a suggestion of hope, survival, self regeneration...

Psalm

No one kneads us again out of earth and clay,
no one incants our dust.
No one.

Blessèd art thou, No One.
In thy sight would
we bloom.
In thy
spite.

A Nothing
we were, are now, and ever
shall be, blooming:
the Nothing-, the
No-One's-Rose.

With
our pistil soul-bright,
our stamen heaven-waste,
our crown red
from the purpleword we sang
over, O over
the thorn.

Todesfuge (Death Fugue)

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at dusk
we drink it at noon in mornings we drink it at night
we drink and we drink
we dig a grave in the sky there is plenty of room
A man lives in the house he plays with his snakes he writes
he writes when it darkens in Deutschland your golden hair Margarete
he writes it and steps outside of the house and the strike of the stars he whistles his hounds
he whistles his Jews dig a grave in the ground
he commands us strike up for the dance

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you in mornings and midday we drink you at dusk
we drink and we drink
A man lives in the house he plays with his snakes he writes
he writes when it darkens in Deutschland your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Sulamith we dig a grave in the sky there is plenty of room

He shouts you there dig deeper the rest of you sing you others play on
he raises the rod from his belt his eyes are blue
drive the spade deeper the rest of you sing you others play on for the dance

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday and mornings we drink you at dusk
we drink and we drink
a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Sulamith he plays with his snakes

He shouts make death sound sweeter death is a Master from Deutschland
he shouts strike the violin darker then rise as smoke in the air
then a grave in the clouds there is so much more room

Black milk of mornings we drink you at night
we drink you at midday death is a Master from Deutschland
we drink you at dusk in mornings we drink and drink
death is a Master from Deutschland his eye is blue
his lead bullets strike you his aim is true
a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete
he whistles his hounds he grants us graves in the sky
he plays with his snakes and he dreams death is a Master aus Deutschland

your golden hair Magarete
your ashen hair Sulamith

Death came smiling
on the black and white
collecting ceramic clowns
and dust

A living room
above an unfinished basement
hearing footsteps
looking up

can we get this going again???