Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts

Monday, May 26, 2008

Blissful Sunday


Today was blissful. I woke up tired and groggy, drank bitter coffee on the couch with my incredible lover, had brunch with an old Chicago friend who introduced me to the mystic poet Hafiz of Shiraz, received life advice from Hafiz, spent the afternoon reading sex books, talking to my house-mate Nia, going with Jessi to a delicious desert oriented dinner at Mac, Chad and Chris' unknown named house, studied words, ate nachos, and slept again. Before the dinner I sat on the porch with Graves and talked about her trip to Chiapas to the Zapatista language school. There, the anti-capitalist movement seems unencumbered by the sectarianism and compromises of the U.S. Left. I spoke to my friend Lorraine who told me my friend Stacy was getting married in July. I spoke to Stacy and she confirmed the details. She called me later and said how important I am in her life. She can barely imagine how important she is in mine. We are close friends who have seen each other in almost every conceivable type of situation.

I love my friends, poetry, and possibility. A day as blissful and insightful as today comes rarely in this grotesque world. Crimson roses bloom. Furry babies pop off our peach tree. The world is incredible and well worth saving.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

My Dreamy Night Reading Martín Espada


After a delicious meal at my roommate Nia's side of our duplex (chickpea fritters and lentil soup), my roommate Jessi and I sat out on the porch in the warm spring night, sipped wine, and read aloud Imagine the Angels of Bread, an incredible volume of poetry by Martín Espada. Espada's poems combine humor and horror examining racism, domestic violence, and class divisions through an extraordinary personal lens. Well worth checking out! He also appears to be doing readings all over the country so you should go!

Monday, April 14, 2008

The Visionary Life: A Reflection on James Broughton


As I was preparing to leave work today, I came across the following lines in James Broughton's poem, Coming in for a Landing.

At birth I swore allegiance to the visionary life
because it required neither logic nor geometry
so I live with ample rhyme but very little reason.
Though unscientific and financially unsound
I'm fitter than most old fiddles you can play with.

I live in Ambivalence a mixed community
over the hills beyond the opposites
where all the streets run in both directions.
Loyal I am to the government of Imagination
and long live in the service of Eros and Psyche.

The poem concludes with the following lines:

Till the Captain brings me down and turns off my motor
I will cling to the banqueting wings of desire
.

What a poem...what an expression of the quest for pleasure, eros, and experience. How moving to think of clinging to the banqueting wings of desire. Let's abandon geometry, science, and reason. Let's cling!