Another Year

How time sneaks us by

As we navigate on life's choppy waters.

Too much on the next colliding wave

And too little on the journey.

Today's a good day;

Unlade your cargo and sieve

Blessings from misfortunes

Of the year gone past.

The chaotic world pauses

In the calm habour,

So relax your well-worn

Soul and celebrate your spirit.

Slow down and find this day

A familiar smile that never left

My lips, just for you.

Just as it'll always be

Another year.

Caught out in daylight, a rabbit's
transparent pallor, the moon
is paired with cloud of equal weight:
the heavenly congruence startles.

For what is the moon, that it haunts us,
this imprudent companion immigrated
from the system's less fortunate margins,
the realm of dust collected in orbs?

We grow up as children with it, a nursemaid
of bonneted sort, round-faced and kind,
not burning too close like parents, or too far
to spare even a glance, like movie stars.

No star but in the zodiac of stars,
stranger there, too big, it begs for love
(the man in it) and yet is diaphanous,
its thereness as mysterious as ours.

- John Updike

Written by a man, plagued by illness, but struggled to carry on his life in his last dying days.

I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you.
But more importantly, I'm back home.

xoxo,
Gie

Rudely woken up,
By rumbling of morning traffic, smog and all
Fruitless attempts to muffle out the annoying sounds of life
I slumped myself next to the coffee machine,

Two sips but no solace found
I tiptoed back to bed, found you
lying quietly under the duvet
Still asleep, still unfallen

Steadying my breath
with yours - a sedation of sorts
I lay beside you again
Under the aegis of your embrace
Not knowing where else I'd have been.

[Image from film - Alfie]

You swear to catch me if I fall
but never sure I'll do the same.
Just once I say
For better or worse richer or poorer
The rain can fall and I won't care.

[Image via serendipity corner]

Where did my baby go?
I wonder where she ran off to
I miss my baby so
I'm calling but I can't get through
Please tell that girl if you meet her
That someone's longing to see her
Where did my baby go?
I wish that she would get back soon (get back soon)

I'm searching for the lover I knew
Have you seen her?
Where did she go?
Feels like I've just lost my only friend
Flames subsided, colors faded
Love just got so complicated
Wish that I could see her smile again
So if you see her out there, tell her I'm still here
Waiting for the day when she will reappear

Where did my baby go?
I wonder where she ran off to
I miss my baby so
I'm calling but I can't get through
Please tell that girl if you meet her
That someone's longing to see her
Where did my baby go?
I wish that she would get back soon (get back soon)

Maybe I was wrong and I
Ignored her for too long and I
Didn't even notice when she slipped away
Maybe while I lay fast asleep then
Out into the night she creeps
I'll leave the light on, so she'll come back someday
So if you see her out there, tell her it's not fair
That life's just not the same when she's not here

Where did my baby go?
I wonder where she ran off to
I miss my baby so
Just what am I supposed to do?
Please tell that girl if you meet her
That someone's longing to see her
Where did my baby go?
I wish that she would get back soon (get back soon)

- John Legend, 'Where Did My Baby Go?'

We hardly ever see the moon any more
so no wonder
it's so beautiful when we look up suddenly
and there it is gliding broken-faced over the bridges
brilliantly coursing, soft, and a cool wind fans
your hair over your forehead and your memories
of Red Grooms' locomotive landscape
I want some bourbon/you want some oranges/I love the leather
jacket Norman gave me
and the corduroy coat David
gave you, it is more mysterious than spring, the El Greco
heavens breaking open and then reassembling like lions
in a vast tragic veldt
that is far from our small selves and our temporally united
passions in the cathedral of Januaries


everything is too comprehensible
these are my delicate and caressing poems
I suppose there will be more of those others to come, as in the past
so many!
but for now the moon is revealing itself like a pearl
to my equally naked heart

- Frank O'Hara

It turned out he wasn’t in love with me like I thought. What I’m trying to say is, I understand feeling as small and insignificant as humanly possible and how it can ache in places you didn’t know you had inside you. And it doesn’t matter how many new haircuts you get, or gyms you join or glasses of champagne you drink with your girlfriends, you still go to bed every night going over every detail and wonder what you did wrong, or how you could’ve misunderstood and how in the hell for that brief moment you could think that you were that happy. And sometimes you can even convince yourself that he’ll see the light and show up at your door and after all that however long all that may be, you’ll go somewhere new and you’ll meet people who make you feel worthwhile again and it’ll be as though your soul will finally come back and all that fuzzy stuff, those years of your life that you wasted that will eventually begin to fade.

[Drawing: doodlepipski]











WALKING TO WORK

It’s going to be the sunny side
from now
on. Get out, all of you.

The trouble with poetry, I realised
as I walked along the beach one night-
cold Florida sand uner my bare feet,
a show of stars in the sky-

the trouble with poetry is
that is encourages the writing of more poetry,
more guppies crowding the fish tank,
more baby rabbits
hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass.

And how will it ever end?
unless the day finally arrives
when we have compared everything in the world
to everything else in the world,

and there is nothing left to do
but quietly close our notebooks
and sit with our hands folded on our desks.

Poetry fills me with joy
and I rise like a feather in the wind.
Poetry fills me with sorrow
and I sink like a chain flung from a bridge.

But mostly poetry fills me
with the urge to write poetry,
to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame
to appear at the tip of my pencil.

And along with that, the longing to steal,
to break into the poems of others
with a flashlight and a ski mask.

And what an unmerry band of thieves we are,
cut-purses, common shoplifters,
I thought to myself
as a cold wave swirled around my feet
and the lighthouse moved its megaphone over the sea,
which is an image I stole directly
from Lawrence Ferlinghetti-
to be perfectly honest for a moment-

the bicycling poet of San Francisco
whose little amusement park of a book
I carried in a side pocket of my uniform
up and down the treacherous halls of high school.

- Billy Collins

As if Father Christmas has answered my secret desires early, there is actually a group of poetry enthusiasts who would type you a poem on vintage typewriters.

The Proletariat Poetry Factory offers a novel service which works in simple steps:

1. Throw them a word or two for inspiration.
2. Leave your name behind.
3. Go have a beer. Yes, you.
4. Enjoy a quiet moment to savour the poem written just for you.
5. Pay any amount you want for the service.

How wickedly refreshing! It's like these people have been reading my mind! Poems and vintage typewriters - two of my greatest loves (among other things heh).

The group will 'perform' at Substation this coming Saturday, 5 July from 12-8pm.

Awww... I can't go... I had to oversee the setup of an lighting & technology exhibition. This is so frustrating... =(

If she puts honey in her tea
and praises prudence in the stirring up
She drinks, finally,
a drop of perfect sweetness
hot at the bottom of the cup

There will be
pleasures more complex than it
(pleasures exchanged were infinite)
but none so cheap
more neat or definite

- Marie Ponsot

An unlikely place I spotted a shooting star,
never seen one in my life but I am damn sure of what I saw.

Not a splendid display of flying lights,
but a quiet telling of one fallen rock.

Old wives' tale of a fallen star,
I made a wish not out of it,
but a silent prayer I weaved moments before.

I laid my confused mind on the dewy grass,
then my eyes fooled me not, for I am damn sure of what I saw.

A sign I cannot deny,
its meaning I cannot discern.

I swirled my scarlet juice in its Bordeaux glass,
and uttered a simple cuss.

Why bother with the syntax of things,
for I am damn sure of what I've saw.

--- Angie, 13 April 2008

Away from the bustling traffic, I like to make this playground my secret haven.
Hidden behind the shadows of the swaying trees, not even the naughtiest kid has ventured here.

My ivory tower, here I swing my troubles away.
Eyes close and lips curl, I hum a little sad song.

I grimace, as I tighten my grip on the cold metal reins,
I glimpse, as the tip of my naked toes reach higher and higher for the leaves of trees above,
Ah the ecstasy.

But left behind when the pendulum stops swinging,
is my broken heart, pounding madly against its own wall.

SINCE FEELING IS FIRST

since feeling is first
who pays attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kiss are a far better fate
than
wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
-- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other:
then laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

----- E.E. Cummings

Oh, I can smile for you, and tilt my head,
And drink your rushing words with eager lips,
And paint my mouth for you a fragrant red,
And trace your brows with tutored finger-tips.

When you rehearse your list of loves to me,
Oh, I can laugh and marvel, rapturous-eyed.
And you laugh back, nor can you ever see
The thousand little deaths my heart has died.

And you believe, so well I know my part,
That I am gay as morning, light as snow,
And all the straining things within my heart
You'll never know.

Oh, I can laugh and listen, when we meet,
And you bring tales of fresh adventurings, --
Of ladies delicately indiscreet,
Of lingering hands, and gently whispered things.

And you are pleased with me, and strive anew
To sing me sagas of your late delights.
Thus do you want me -- marveling, gay, and true,
Nor do you see my staring eyes of nights.

And when, in search of novelty, you stray,
Oh, I can kiss you blithely as you go ....
And what goes on, my love, while you're away,
You'll never know.

---- Dorothy Parker

I simply love her poems, distinctive of twisted ends.