Wikileaks and Poetry

[SilkRoad]

In the olden days they would deliver a fresh poem with the milk every day. Then they stopped delivering the milk and the poems dried up as well. Until the Oz Branch of Wikileaks, Poetry Section, started delivering a fresh poem every day to Typology Central, Arts and Entertainment forum, Wikileaks and Poetry thread.

Our motto is 'put on a fresh face every day', for we have noticed that if we go for two days without reading a poem, it shows on our face. So put on a new face every day in the Wikileaks and Poetry thread.

Hang on - I thought you thought that poetry was meaningless? Is that not essentially what you said in the recent poetry thread?

 

[Mole]

Hang on - I thought you thought that poetry was meaningless? Is that not essentially what you said in the recent poetry thread?

Perhaps you have caught me out, dear Silkroad - you have caught me in my own contradictions - you have succeeded in embarrassing me in public.

My feeling is that you are acting out your animus towards me. And I think your animus is more interesting than my contradictions or even my embarrassement. But that leaves the question - why do you want to embarrass me in public?

Is it because I have embarrassed you? Or is it that I have hurt you emotionally? Or is it just that I remind you of someone you hate?

Can we dig down a bit to find your passionate desire to hurt me?

And perhaps we might explore whether you have a passionate desire to hurt others as well.

And I can only conclude you desire to hurt others because you have been hurt yourself.

In fact your desire to hurt is an inchoate cry from part of yourself that has remain hidden from others and even from yourself.

So perhaps now is the time to bring your hurt out into the open at Central.

 

[Mole]

Hacked on Sunday and released on Monday by the Oz Branch of Wikileaks, Poetry Section -

The Poor

The poor are many
and so—
impossible to forget.

No doubt,
as day breaks,
they see the buildings
where they wish
they could live with their children.

They
can steady the coffin
of a constellation on their shoulders.
They can wreck
the air like furious birds,
blocking out the sun.

But not knowing these gifts,
they enter and exit through mirrors of blood,
walking and dying slowly.

And so,
one cannot forget them.

- Roberto Sosa
translated from the Spanish by Spencer Reece.

 

[Mole]

If you would like to see Spencer Reece, click on - http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/spencer-reece

No wonder he is translating the Spanish.

 

[Mole]

Sent in by anonymous last night from Echelon (Signals Intelligence), redacted early this morning, and revealed today -

Sahar al-Beitounia

She lives in Beitounia
And her name is Sahar
Her name is the hour
Between sunrise and morning.

Her bougainvillea
Overlooks Beitounia
Where a mango-bright bedspread
Hangs over the railing
Lit by first light
That reflects from a wall.

Not the wall of a house
Or her family's orchard.
She can see the graffiti
Ich bin ein Berliner

Marwân had orchards
Al-zaytûn wa-l-'inab
Olive trees, grapevines,
Where they went out to work
Between sunrise and morning.

She is bint Marwân
(and also bint Su'âd).
She is ukht Târiq,
Ukht Mahmûd, ukht Asmâ.

When jeeps and bulldozers
Converged on Beitounia
A hundred and twenty
All walked out at midday
Were chased back with tear gas
And rubberized bullets.

Seventeen thousand dunnams
Of orchards and wheatfields
With a wall thrust between them
And the doors of Beitounia.

Her name is Sahar
At dawn in Beitounia
Where the first light reflects
On the wall of a prison.

Ismuhâ Sahar
Bayn al-fajr wa-l-subh
—her name is Sahar
between sunrise and morning.

- Marilyn Hacker.

 

[Mole]

If we like the poem, "Sahar al-Beitounia", by Marilyn Hacker, we can hear her voice by clicking on - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3hGOw4ho2A

 

[Mole]

Lodged by anonynous from Langley last night, and released today -

Nulla Dies Sine Linea
On my birthday

A crow guffaws, dirty man throwing the punch of his
one joke. And now, nearer, a murder

answers, chortling from the pale hill's brow.
From under my lashes' wings they stretch

clawed feet. There the unflappable years
perch and stare. When I squint, when I

grin, my new old face nearly hops
off my old new face. Considering what's flown,

what might yet fly, I lean my chin
on the palm where my half-cashed fortune lies.

- V. Penelope Pelizzon.

 

[Mole]

If you like the poem, "Nulla Dies Sine Linea", (Not a Day Without a Line) and would like to see and hear the poet, V. Penelope Pelizzon, you might click on - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7EbLHdEx0A

 

[Mole]

Sent by anonymous and released today -

Apples

Grey branches, dull thuds.
Apples falling in late November, and we
gather them with frozen hands.

Am I wrong?

or did you say something,
not tearing your eyes from the ground?

Something like "evil will triumph,"
you said quietly.
As if the tundra's beyond us. As if we're gathering stones in our skirts.

- Anzhelina Polonskaya,
translated from the Russian by Andrew Wachtel.

 

[Mole]

Purloined last night and released today -

X

straight lines only
no curve or arc
to double back

no circle in sight
from which silence might slip
like the strap of a dress
off a shoulder
one summer field

a shape
signifying nothing
but a puzzle of itself
made in the box of morning
untangled over years

from each and every corner of which
is visible white space
as if here and now
were equal lines
fused the way lovers are fused
for as long as it takes
to pass through the eye of love
to recover, to egress.

Brushstroked husband
and brushstroked wife
finding in skewered union
a defence of loneliness

sectioning in four equal parts,
as if it were a family,
that safe place
once being
full of itself
now cornered, quartered, hinged

on a mark that closes on
common darkness
the heart of which is silence, certainly,
a need expressed in what distends
beyond what will not be
acknowledged
what will not be
allowed

the length and breadth of days
that bleed into other days

on which occurs
an ardent solitude—

windows opening and closing the one sky.

I may begin to fold myself
along four even lines
into the centre of those days

to learn how a life may come to rest
on the absence of a life

as crosshairs train on a blank page

as arrows turn in on themselves

as the blades of a bedroom ceiling fan
come to

a perfectly obvious stop.

- Vona Groarke.

 

[Mole]

If you liked the poem, X, you might like to see a picture of the poet, Vona Groarke , and hear the sound of her voice by clicking on - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUxNIhmUIaw

 

[Mole]

Lodged by our mole last night and published today -

Everything Lush I Know

I do not know the names of things
but I have lived on figs and grapes
smell of dirt under moon
and moon under threat of rain
everything lush I know
an orchard becoming all orchards
flowers here and here
the earth I have left
every brief home-making
the lot of God blooming into vines
right now then and always

- Kimberly Burwick.

 

[Mole]

If you liked the poem, "Everything Lush I Know", you might like to see the poet, Kimberly Burwick, by clicking on - http://www2.uclaextension.edu/writers/instructors.php?recordID=301

 

[Mole]

Posted anonymously to the Oz Branch of Wikileaks, Poetry Section, and published today -

Come Trembling

In the country where believers eat the bodies
of the gods, we meet a priest who pulls a rope
of thorns through his tongue to make his mind

pure enough for a vision. He dances to music
we can't hear and waits to come trembling
into knowledge. We don't recognize ourselves

in his radiance, but we do in his suffering.
He passes through pain and into healing
without seeing the holy rendered visible.

He tells us the oracle died when she refused
to divine the future, but we find her tangled
in her own hair wearing a garland of burrs,

manacled to the bed. We ask for a better world
to die in, but she says, Submit to your freedom.
We tie new knots in her hair and swim

into the belly of a shark to retrieve the book
of signs. Rumors say the secret of life is sewn
into a dead man's coat, but when we unearth him,

all we find in his sleeves are his fractured arms.
We want to believe, to split open the myth
and lie in it, return to original dark and be changed,

but the bones won't yield to us, pages are missing
from the book, the gods remain so quiet
we hear water speaking between the stones.

- Traci Brimhall.

 

[Mole]

If you would like to see Traci Brimhall, you might click on - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRQbR_dUWgA

 

[Mole]

Sent by anonymous and posted today -

Wells

In Bushnell Park there are only a couple
of statues & while I knew
who Minerva was I wasn't sure
about Horace Wells & I wanted
to know because the plaque underneath
him says The Discoverer of
something I couldn't see & I didn't
think anyone in Hartford
had ever discovered anything except
for guns & drugs & when I looked
him up I found out I was
right because the thing Horace Wells
discovered was anesthesia at some
kind of show where
a bunch of people inhaled nitrous
on stage & then ran around like idiots
& when one of them hurt his leg
he kept running & seemed to feel
nothing & Wells who was a dentist
thought maybe he could use this
so he got some nitrous & put himself
under & had a tooth pulled without
any pain, which he thought
would make him famous so he went
to Boston to put on an exhibition
& called someone out
of the crowd to go under but
the man didn't breathe from the bag
long enough & felt
Wells pull & screamed & everyone
heard it & no one else would volunteer
& no one wanted to believe
Wells except for William Morton
who stole the idea using ether instead
of nitrous & got patients
& patents & a job at Harvard & maybe
Wells never knew it but credit in the books
goes to Morton or maybe he did
know it because Wells sold his practice
& left his wife & went to New York
where he went mad & went to jail
for throwing sulfuric acid at prostitutes
& in his cell inhaled chloroform from
a rag & cut open his groin vein
& died & the only people now who think
he discovered anything are some people
in Hartford who can't read
the sign & probably don't care what it is.

- Samuel Amadon.

 

[Mole]

If you liked the poem, "Wells", or even if you didn't, you might like to see and hear the poet, Sam Amadon, by clicking on - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0URkk6z4Dco

 

[Mole]

Sent in last night and released today -

Herb Parker Feels Like Dancing
—Richland, 1949

Mr. Parker's Sunbeam is shiny as an atom.
He pulls up, alights with grace
and makes his dance hall entrance.
Perhaps you sense his English accent
and pocket square. Women shy
like ponies to one corner. He corrals one
and trots her around the dance floor.

Herb Parker rides a shapely 4/4.
"That Old Black Magic,"
"Baby, It's Cold Outside."
Maybe it is, or maybe it's blazing,
unsafe to breathe tonight.

Her earrings are zircon daisies.
A silver belt rings her slim waist.
Herb Parker steers her toward
his dark place. "Mr. Parker?"
he hears somebody ask, like a tremble
on a seismograph, but you can't blame
Herbert Parker for his appetites.

He palms the tender center of
her back. "Mr. Parker?" again.
Perhaps it's her voice, or her husband's,
or one of the voices in his head. He's
a Dutch master with his finger in the dike,
a valvular, crepuscular figure.

"Look out the window at that storm ... "
He takes the government's calls
and negotiates those devil's bargains,
how much of their order can he fill?
You understand they say "product"
and mean plutonium, they mean
how many bombs can you afford to fuel?
"Darling, down and down I go,

round and round I go in a spin" ...
the river, and its sediments,
the air, capricious with winds,
the soil column, the ground water,
the vase of wildflowers on Deputy Chief
Gamertsfelder's desk! Native species
sprouting in Richland yards.
The mosquitoes, for pity's sake,
the farm animals, the farmers living
off the land, the water birds and the
duck hunters, the bottom fish and
the fishermen on Richland dock.
Everything he thinks to test ... good god,

the entire food chain contaminated.
He's basically a shy man with
immeasurable power. A sultan
coaxing his courtesan's smile.
She only shakes a little now.
Don't you understand? Someone
must step forward and play God.
How much better that the man
can lead? hold you tight
in his very good hands, and spin.

- Kathleen Flenniken.

 

[Mole]

If you liked the poem, "Herb Parker Feels Like Dancing", you might like to meet the poet, Kathleen Flenniken, by clicking on - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iSaR9mfeeM

 

[Mole]

It's true, the noosphere is right here, we are sitting in it. And the 'noosphere' comes all the way from the Ancient Greeks to describe the internet today, and even the poets can't resist the sound of the noosphere -

Noosphere

At your center:
spectacles to sharpen sight,
wake of two white birds’ liftoff,
two wide thoughts, compassed round:
Teilhard de Chardin’s priest-scientist mess—
“if only Rome would start to doubt
herself at last, a little . . . ”
Herself beloved and busy arranging
Sacred & Precious,
Blood & Heart
in combos for good
institutions and export.
Those o’s, if excised, leave
a sound like innisphere,
like Innisfree, Lake Isle of,
where he’d be free
to love God & Rome
microbe & bone shard . . .
Splice the o’s back
and there’s Noah’s fear—
a fear Rome wakes to
each October, perfect light,
the air so sweet and God, now what
if it’s all so fresh,
and not spheres away.
But right here.

- Lia Purpura.