TOUCH THE SOURCE USE YOUR SUBSTANCE: Unlock Poetry

I must search my own way through empty cups and alleys in body rain love or plant new peonies 13 They close their eyes or shut them with rupees matters little but I worry when with sight in their hands they free shadows of legless men who denude files in sun and smell a beast freedom to act means freedom to harm as silence stinks louder than protest noises lumped in chaos or monologue quickened for a quid? I cough wordless plaints 16 The hot humid morning like the night constricts breathing pipe: I must wander into your body's forays before I drift down into the slums of sleep 22 Anxious about the next morning's soothing sun, security and peace when I fail to sleep I seek solace in her soft moist thighs and pray to God to bless my passion for a moment let me forget the cares of a crazy world 23 Rains revive memories shattering emotions in solitude I stick my neck out but the oracle is immune the shell no longer saves 24 How soon the rain loses exuberance leaving the walls damp and faces sullen aches of all sorts and onset of asthma allergies that make moments miserable in Sawan furious changes occur each year I wonder it's degeneration or burial of warmth in watery smell?

I couldn't even sleep 39 In the art of living let's not look for perfection but give wildness a chance for the garden to be: Self-pity is no wisdom when I yield to pressure and visit places I hate I'm sorry my goddess and I stare in two directions: I see milky blood dripping down their nails there is nothing save the spirals of smoke midst the swelling dreams rocked by waltzing sun my thirst for sleep and rest is reduced to orgiastic pain melting down into the sea of barren academics I search the red tears shed on the Cross and face a mirage of abject helplessness as truth carved out of myths between dream and day 46 How long shall I seek freedom in the myths we unmake licking hairy darkness or feeling sweetness of hips through untamable wildness of the heart chase images that abide circles of paroxysm ascending from the mist and raw voices staring spume in the faces as each star twinkles uncertainty crossing the moon what is left to slice out of the passage through red light except old sorrows ready to leap to the bone?

I seek the ancient hands that shape eternity in new forms and renew the ever alive in me 48 We would be better beings if we could understand the worst in us not to evade or hide ourselves from others' gaze but to remake words to probe reality get close to others and know roots don't grow in cosmetic void or cries in melody they need nursing clear contact like child and mother communing reason and vision like dream and action 49 Is it the fear of dying penting up, don't know I can't resist restlessness of moth at light is me: God dropped in his mind enlarging moments of happiness into life I know a fire burns the thumb-sized flame beyond the heart restlessly I seek light in shadow forget the sun I feel its heat and see the light by light itself In the mirror strange eyes meet mine as if probing the progress of my wrinkling heart: I don't know how to bear wounds of curiosity 10 Seeking fire in the furnace of delight I fail to weld my fragments into one lasting love: I act delusive orgasm to get out of myself tear dreams in holes live bit by bit, in pieces restive as ever 11 The games I couldn't play the adversaries I made unliving the sun in field undoing the dense air with spray prove I'm obsolete in a land of scams God seems irrelevant and altruism is preposterous kind of naivety or doubletalk they think right poets are good but foolish 12 I'm dying to connect myself to your navel love and feel your heart beat inside your breast space cared by blood at your altar sip life in your flame 13 You were so near yet I couldn't reach your body: I've used it to the core the raiment is tattered now even ghosts despise it 18 After the night's rumblings prayers add wings to breezes morning's serene calmness 19 Again the stone-cool city frightens the oval existence downward in black moment swamps of labour will vanish in fume I see no prayers: I keep no accounts and no bars 23 In the name of faith and God politics fuels bigotry strips the prophets corrupts clarity reasoning ceases when mind purveys prejudice: August's damp eyes gaze down the walls that clamp breathing on bended knees I wonder if each day must be wintered for the sin of surviving 41 'Amidst so much grief and helplessness love is God's grace to hope and live' 'Alright, I can forget gaudy icons, pervert godheads and crudities in hills even suffer rebirth if you can ensure a decent death' 42 I am a stranger to things so familiar: I am no heir to their kindness nor can live their faith through cracks skillfully made for immortality they may know me well when the sky clears after the rains 43 Pseudos, shams, crooks and politicians pervert: I thought the dews were tears fallen before mourning 83 Falling leaves like hair from my head and chest don't hide strains of memory shrinking, melting flesh swelling voids efflux ageing earliness missing 84 When she stretches her legs for me to shave the pubic hair we hit the hay together remembering the first night I gave her nothing in my hurry to see her nude 85 She props the stooping lemons with stake but avoids bending close to me: I die to draw the blossom in my twining arms but she likes the other scent 86 Stones carved to dance and music come alive figures ever sensuous pride in what we hide our cultural memory they excelled revealing 87 I seek in sex freedom of nature metaphor of veils that hide body spirit as two and celebrate pristine purity of Prakriti reach ecstasy 88 After a hurried love making we drift to sleep: I don't need my neighbour's wings to vindicate my flight Silence is mantra in action beginning divinity's descent and change in inner being enkindling love hope and faith 7.

I must find my way asking strangers in strange places sensing soul, using insight The blank space between words is the burnt skin of time I couldn't paint: I'm no god or godfather to sacrifice sun, spring, moon, morning breeze or rain nor any gods of love visit my house but it grieves to see so many martyrs awaiting resurrection the short way 13 The city shouts at anonymous strangers seeking sojourn against puzzling hedgehog and expectant past sticking future with choked geniuses unable to flush their own muck but embarrassed by lunar dust fallen from nowhere stories prop to trigger riots all around known and unknown faces bleed alike and they bury histories or blame informers hired to spread myths for non-payment cause shame to their own kins and their own land turn epiphytic 14 The morning in Banaras along the Ganges is no longer fresh: I see the colour change to cover to make distances from the moral remains and shadows of lowing cows in dried pasture mate with throbbing dreams that look for space in the eyes 50 I kept waiting for some stranger to come and execute one last miracle my hair grayed but no one came I couldn't push time locked in my room 51 A fear always lurks shapes into nightmares through sleeplessness image loss of love haunting since birth shadows chase featureless but squeamish now hard to make out watery squiggles swimming across the shore 52 I don't like to get lost in the crowd or remain a non-entity feeling low in my own eyes even if my host is too high to shake hands with I know he won't remember my name or face after reception he'll go west and I'll turn homeward with numb feet in shame perhaps cursing myself for smallness or shrunk before fawning connections and banal shows 53 Life doesn't end with joys of a day or two: I wasted my life weaving it into hopes that could never become love or faith: I couldn't find a charismatic guru so made the idol one and looked at the red face any time I needed help and guidance in the silence of my restless mind searched for love and life's purpose my ersatz faith couldn't give: How long can I grow without roots or make way for what is approaching in digital noises I can't be inheritor of arrant cowards smelling the arse on their fingers nor can I be the priest checking the burnt tongues to test criminals stiff with cold I'm tired of animal struggle for survival and last rites in candle light digging cursed treasure for night songs others croon I can't decipher names in smoke nor forget the faces emerging from the matrix of tremors that are islands to shackle feet in silence close the cycle of the waters that feed the sea I feel the lumps hinder and pain now it's time to break off and bury the ash in the earth and plant afresh foliage for rains or sun to nurse a destiny I could take pride in My years upon me keep me from finding myself in joys of love-making under a grove of trees or walking down to the stream for a swim together: I want to burn the fallen leaves but fear the flame will hurt the trees I can't stand the stench rains bring the backyard is too big to clean I can't rescue my habitat nor trim the trees for better light this all reflects the shambles made for disco of convenience why regret burial by taunting helplessness now?

The earth won't wait for my dust nor the sky hold rains till I descend and someone places a stone to remind how I couldn't live my wild ambition and destiny couldn't leap to being I was not I wish I had the freedom to breathe a moment more or less but I live my ignorance each moment challenging myself it's no spiritual claptrap but a blind can't lead the blinds: I watch a poem of silence in stone her dignity preserved like the eternal Taj I remember the white tomb of love I stood before and prayed for his grace when aloneness pierced the soul in search of mate intricate patterns appear and fade challenging mind we need a new key to the myth not spoken but felt in moments flapping between the hearts I seek images for my wordless experiences in loneliness commune for meaning in the world lessen lonesomeness for a moment and again suffer the same angst and frustration of failure in haiku silence The poet doesn't know when words become poetry or what he intends to say he just says what he says knitting together thoughts ideas, feelings and memories into a form which looks good at the first glance creating more meanings in readers' consciousness that each one sees different sense denying complete absorption yet thrilling the spirit so much that they read it again and again and be one with the poet Frazzled at the day's end when I smell her flesh she curses my knots and the two decades of living the same routine in kitchen and bed and nowhere to go in shameless convenience I release my tensions: What is this world with PCs, internet, e-com robots and cloning the moon and mars remain lifeless as here without roads, power and house they dream I T satellites, aerospace and silence cries for water honest bread and peace the hungry billions seek no hi-tech slavery the global cheats promote liberal economy stealthily purvey rights and environment with politics of control doom the future They die of mother's milk and passions that flow in post- modernist exterior it's the same nature in a handsomer disguise the unchanging inside: Her site spurts changes hands plead for a little more space to feel presence map out the concealed parts rehearse performances again and again Raising each child— a test of patience, learning each day to live and smile her innocence through aching arms and shoulders 8.

SEXLESS SOLITUDE It's all linked but I don't understand or don't want to understand because I am too much with me and worry about her dying libido and my own shrinking sex amidst salsa chill Bihu fever, Vishu rituals ringing emptiness day and night shake the age- wrapped youth for single-edge play in forked flame carve image of heaven to challenge the jealous God undo sins of races flowing in my blood: I love Him through the bodies He made but they don't understand redemption in churning and parting of the sea they don't rejoice the flames of henna on her palms nor let the lily bloom in the valleys use the clefts and cliffs to deface beauty and spike voices don't condemn me if I am not white the water still flows in my river My window opens to the back of a garage where guards make water at times show their dick to the maid in my kitchen: They are distanced by a barbed wire fence Goes awry the electrical circuit in the brain cells in my drugged sleep I utter expletives unmindful of the victims: I can't help my sensory overload Sweating desire inhales new sketches with mind's pen on the pillow image by image night passes not knowing how a hazy sun rose from the sea Unlinked to the trees he doesn't know his family stands aloof, questions ancestors don't change the mood of the weather: I can't turn my inside out nor know life's weight when lifeless between earth and sky it disappears one with elements quiet there's no way to know the thread or its mechanism that binds secures life now or beyond what if I can't feel the weight of the colour on the leaves on tree maybe shrinking into itself 20 Walking down a long corridor a beam of light beckons from a distant window up ahead a figure gently motions me to move further along the passage a large oak door appears etched in the stone on the wall beside the door odd-looking symbols from unknown alphabets I try to push the gold latch on the handle but it doesn't open a golden key in the hand shines brightly in the dark I step out from inside the window opens to the sea an enormous yacht slowly moving towards a mansion kings occupied with rare riches and power: I am promised a new sun 21 Living among the sick and the sickening what else shall I carry except germs and allergens that keep me tossing and turning from 10 p.

I re-live bliss through death 52 Her guru reminds he knows her inside out: I love the light after birth the eden on the earth I may not know where I go after living the hard life but I know the freedom — get back to what God gave us in love let life shape anew from the nude origin 70 Where will we reach sailing in a coffin or dreaming to anchor off the rainbow arch the gold and purple ashes won't revive the phoenixes lost in myths and stories: Their petty politics defies silence 77 I don't endorse their pact to squeeze adulation and control faith of the masses to shed blood and spread darkness: I'm diseased in soul before the devil reappears I must commit the act or suffer the bull for castrating in the dried canal where some fishy cousins waylay cowmen with their upthrust bosoms and make noise too in the half dark seizing and unseizing slowly all dreams get buried in sand and grass now I don't bother the sweetness of papaya growing taller between the fence and the drain or the urchins stealing the fruit there's no fun in romance with the moon or flowers at night smells and sounds of the weather smack of allergies that cripple the andropausal day and ice all the gelled machismo too many are the grudges and I can't remedy my mind or body with mystical bids: The roof and base tell of the wild growth, the expanding peepals snakes, scorpions, lizards have free time round the year it's the deserted look an extension of my existence without repair or maintenance for decades their apathy disturbs sleep I suffer scars and sparks, burn my skin measure my shadow at different hours yet I couldn't become the skeleton I watch the earthworms on the corpses that swell stomach of headless mummies or lie dormant to kill the spirit the elements, ochre moon, sun, tongues — the Buddha's fan fails to renew faith I can't redeem my karmic credit Dusk is doomed when I shovel light in darkness fail to live the intensity of prayer moistened eyes draw me near divine for a while soul is light and flowers and wings furl in moon but soon pain overwhelms my space and tears swell fingers feel decaying fireflies in lamplight voice turns blue I scare my vision there's no grace It doesn't end even if I abandon desire: I was dependent on my father a self-made man against the currents I couldn't read the sky and its stronghold the prints of the Ganga's sand have faded like the rainbow in a spray of years that prick like pebbles now the caries, cavities cyst and myopia haunt and sexual anxieties disturb sleep and dreamless nights the hairs on my balding head mirror the laughter I have ceased to take note of I have ceased to peel the ugly shapes, the cunning and treacherous I work with resent my identity and the future I fail spinning influences yet I'm sure when I stopped it won't be all that bad: She hears the voice of unrealized bliss in the coos of koel at the window sill this evening rains love and delight His message to meet at moonrise among the flowers sparkles a secret on her smiling face passion glows with charming fervour She is no moon yet she drifts like the moon, takes care of him from the sky — meets him for a short, waxing leaves him for a long, waning Before going to bed she looks too sad to have any sweet dream: She senses all things changing as she passes through the city again: At the river she folds her arms and legs resting her head upon the knees and sits as an island Is it her quietus that she roars in herself like a sea waves upon waves leaps upon herself?

The wind lifts her curved nudity hidden in the water curtain: I touch the strings that whisper love in each falling drop Gods couldn't change the rhythm of the body and its needs: When the sun is erotic and the moon lyric the winds turn tempestuous in the orbit of love legs slide by calls of nature You and I alive in cold winter night feeling warmth of your body through erect nipples after days of abstinence Before the foamy water could sting her vulva a jelly fish passed through the crotch making her shy- the sea whispered a new song Swirling spiral of her skirt spills tides of dream and memory: I breathe fire in the dance forgetting bends and twists When I wanted to change seats my friend said she can only if the door's locked the light out and her mom in another city Life limits between whence the sun rises and where it goes to relax: When I have no home I seek refuge in the cage of your heart and close my eyes to see with your nipples the tree that cared to save from sun The smile you weave splits the sun I lose my direction in clouds that cover the banks darkening the white of the lake moon kissed Drinking evening star blue green patterns before eyes no meditation no god visits to forgive the sinning soul in solitude Exhausted she sleeps unaware of my presence this warm night carefree I croon my spring song alone and fill the void with new dreams As I repose in the wrinkles of her face I feel her crimson glow in my eyes her holy scent inside a sea of peace The room has her presence every minute I feel she speaks in my deep silently Love is the efflux from her body spreading parabolic hue — enlightens the self I merge in her glowing presence Looking at her face for the glint of her nose-pin or rise of renku they couldn't finish but form in their eyes together Your vacant eyes reveal this city: Living in dust smoke and white darkness I know I just flicker — stand alone like a lighthouse lost in the fog of seashore Afternoon dancing on the waves — receding sea then a lashing roaring wall of water, returning sea What should I do about the mornings that couldn't be: Breathing pipe choked with coloured dust celebrate spring in coalfield: The chilly wind blows to freeze my feet and fingers tonight I can't rise and silence the whisperings storming the vacant room A moment of love and long silence for years: I lost my sleep over a thought I could not make my own: Watching the waves with him she makes an angle in contemplation: Crazy these people don't know how to go down with the swirl and up with the whirl but play in the raging water They couldn't hide the moon in water or boat but now fish moonlight from sky: I watch their wisdom and smile why I lent my rod and bait A cloud-eagle curves to the haze in the west skimming the sail on soundless sea Digging sand with her little toes the toddler in thin sun awaits her mom from the sea I thought I'd exchange my anxieties for a bit of peace but thinking was easier than happening: I couldn't even sleep Standing at the edge I long to float with waves and wave with instant wind: My hand held out in the dark remained empty: The thought is sin she thinks and denies me sex to protest against my mind in the gutter that breeds erotics in verse The truth of our togetherness is more real when we lie filling our body with each other silencing sensation I fear the demons rising from my body at midnight crowding the mind and leading the soul to deeper darkness Sleeps the night with desires wrapped in blanket — spring in the eyes gods couldn't change the rhythm of the body and its needs Awake in dream time he looks for the candle — love's invitation lighting up in the dark and sings the body's song Whirling and giggling with livelier partners in the pool breathless I can't keep pace with her swim my way to the bank The sleep is buried in sex for diversion yoga or prayers: An insomniac weak with desires and prayers hears the heartbeats rising fast with dark hours survives one more nightmare The chilly twilight- tossing leaves and branches tell of the wind before sunrise she and I cross-legged, cling to each other He watches the mound of dead leaves in the backyard to grow dreams after the end of summer and drought: Muttering Tablet of Ahmad in TV noise he lies on the sofa by window seeking post-lunch nap for change Bored with politics and news of falling sensex he folds the paper and flips through the old PLAYBOYs to see the nudes seen in youth She receives my call complaining why I didn't go to see my father while he says it's alright only gums bleed and joints ache Gentle like a dove love was graceful a night away on the white wave it's a sea searching ways leaps to eternity tonight The bamboo garden we picnicked and made love in is now all concrete — managing environment and pollution control The power goes off suddenly summer heat chokes in bed sleepless she turns undoing a hook or two of her tight bra Wish I could kiss her for letting me hear the angels' whispering new moon rises in Libra promising love and money Greeting the first rains after months of soaring heat the lone rose flutters little petals to the ground echoing our first embrace After days of rain it seems summer again sweating all day now without light at night many thoughts drift like clouds Shining on rose leaves silken layer of dew drops: Roses await sun and wind to clear the baleful fog: I fear she'll say no to my love again I'm no romantic turning sufferings to bliss and delude in heavenly meeting with god or life's grandeur and greatness I'm human and feel their meanness every moment get angry and lose my sleep as the earth writhes in the pain butcher's knives inflict There's little save poetry and prayer to put up with rising darkness in and out and god too is silent Couldn't be happy with my present nor could realize any dreams all these years — there's nothing to look back to say I lived my life well The chart predicts I must keep the company of the righteous but how to find one among the wicked that write our fate Psalms or no psalms workers of iniquity shoot their arrows with praising lips and god flees to see their shrewd schemes Hiding or waiting it raises its head when least expected, a snake glitters in the eyes, looks for the moment to reveal fangs Crudity of the stone conceals grace of nudity the image of Kali reveals to her devotee The sun on a mountain grave illumines the path to divinity unrealized in soul With steel flow the rolling water pierces the rocks shapes them into stars turned into river's song She visits a beauty parlour to erase wrinkles and returns with the same wintry darkness Hanging pictures in bedroom and living room the young couple please each other's eyes leaving box of books for downstairs den The lips in her eyes and long hours in the mouth- no moist secret between us to reveal: All her predictions could come true had I paid her the fees for her writing psychic reflections on dreams I failed to realize in life Wrinkles on the skin remind me of time's passage year by year traveled long distances renewing spirit and waving good bye At the river-front in-drawn with Buddha's image in padmasana eyes half -closed, meditating his eyes not yet opened Stray fungi grow on the broken window frames beside my bed watery smell swells as if a corpse in the river Feeling the difference between a tin house and a weather proof tent: His first winter — recalls swirling snowflakes at Chaluka inside the fibrehut warmth of blue waves surging With black and white marks and nest of ants on its skin the tree grows taller shining through the geometry of sun, moon and halogen My voice brown like autumn crushed in noises I can't understand days pass in colours buried The sea smells from far off leaps to the sky I drive through the maze of returning folks with fresh catch on their head The sun couldn't help nor fish protest: I couldn't understand what's Hindu about having fish and onion after prayers by the river in the temple courtyard Fears to see his own image in her eyes so avoids seeing her again betrays his cowardice They watch her bare back to feel the body through crotch thank engraving pen she loves the etching on skin to enhance nudity Peeling the orange with manicured fingers she slits the rind from top to bottom, separates each section with artistry Dancing on the car top a girl holds the mike to express her love twists the audience Slung-jawed awake two grinning skeletons sit bolt upright in bed hear the shrieks next door but too scared to call the police The nightly ghosts crowd my mind's passage to forge gods' names in disguise I fail to scan the face of thought and life in the dark The chill outside deprives me of the bright moon I breathe in my fears: Night's prisoned friends keep me awake with planes flying over the ashram every now and then I watch the directions matter Unmindful of her body's joy the ascetic absorbed in vision or communion with muse I feel the ripples of fire One thousand miles travelling together in tense silence he and she contemplate the next round of duel I can't cement cracks nor save the frames from collapse: The yellowing patch on the lawn won't green with pesticides — the water infects the roots even if I am drying up here Each night speaks to me in flatulence, wheezing and pain in the legs: With years of rubbish he reeks of aborted dreams lives a stagnant pool cut off from the running source rots in the marsh like a frog They own little earth and seek to auction the sky: Lying all day with pain in the heels and sinking heart I read tanka and wait for miracle to sleep Burning without warmth one more hot and sweaty spell of summer, restless down with stroke, without light, fan exhausted, alone in bed Ageing he thinks of the ashes and the long trip ahead in spirit feels the earth he would become celebrating life New leaves welcome his shadow near the window the telephone rings perhaps to greet Naw Ruz: I didn't pray or keep the fast Like tramps and dogs they piss and shit I see I'm sucked in my own cracks: With moral twists name of god or religion they fly planes to bomb sheep of his pasture and expect grace for humankind Preaching peace explode 'plane bomb, car bomb human bomb and bluff the living corpses with politics of terror They claim to kill satan mass murder innocents and blow themselves up: I wonder how god condones vague prophets and their cult From the border rings he's stationed dangerously: No cakes or cookies to celebrate my birthday this New Year's eve lunar eclipse and blue moon cheer the cup in foggy chill Vibration of thought with their venom in groups my spirit disturbed I lose desire to live here conceal my angst in tanka Their loose tattle or loitering on the street changes nothing not even the hand they wave to penetrate the body Surging like a wave they image in the air and end up wriggling worms hiding through the thick hedges digging the dark undergrowth Is it the water or sweat flowing from the cleft they queue up to drink?

The sun of knowledge shining through the beer bottle under the neem tree: He takes out the letter and writes a poem on its back recalling the last words winds whispered through the stars that still shine in the sky Waving arms of trees conspire with overcast day to drench again the two of us look for shade under leaking umbrella Over the dried moss rains have grown new layers making the path more slippery for all of us falling is a postscript now Laden with new shoots the trees promise mangoes to celebrate summer: Waiting for the remains of sacrifice vultures on the temple tree stink with humans and goddess on the river's bank Awaiting the wave that'll wash away empty hours and endless longing in this dead silence at sea I pull down chunks of sky Two moons so far away yet so near like rain landing gently on my open arms Unknowable the soul's pursuit hidden by its own works: Conveying the inexpressible her lines and curves: Brooding condemning things not done and unable to undo he prays ceaselessly fails to stop now compelled to make a choice Try to sense her in a moment that she's never been I walk with light in hand how will she know it's me?

My legs heavy with pain don't move: When I roll within veins crackle like dried wood breathing is oppressed I can't leave the four walls to survive midnight attack Leisurely the birds keep talking beyond midnight hot humid summer keeps me sleepless too It is for their love of God they play loud music or chant His name on loudspeakers but it kills my peace the whole night I can't sleep Couldn't sleep all night darkness of thought spread over the mind with closed eyes I negotiate fear of missing the train and loss She is so upset with my repressed anger she doesn't sleep with me and questions too why I take alprax when it doesn't suit me An insomniac meditates at night and says: Short nights and long days sleep loss rustles a friction echoing in bed the cycle of cravings over and over again In his ochre robe the rebel sanyasin says he'll drop his ego like the skin's layers torn off and starts peeling an orange Did I kill a snake or do I pass forked urine the astrologer asks to calculate my future I tell him no and yes Unable to see beyond the nose he says he meditates and sees vision of Buddha weeping for us Resting his chin on the back of his palms he stands at the dusted railing to watch the planes roar and take off Silence of birds and moon so miserly I feel homesick: On the roof top she waits for her man with moon cake and lantern: Rises with the lingering shadow of the dream: Pie-eyed from the back door enters concealing smell from his sweetheart The maid fans burnt coal and dried twigs fire to make tea for her hubby lying in sun and shouting Filled with worries all her dreams in one basket- runs to catch the train sand and mud dried on hands ghost fish biting the lungs Burns spiders' net with incense stick in the alcove paper deity unmoved by prayers for safe sojourn in the new city In their drunken chant lurks divinity, the joy let loose in rhythm roses colour the spirit drowsily lost and regained It's prayer to sink into her flesh and bury myself in her breast to escape the faithless hands that never became mother Seeks music in love's masturbating keys at his bed's foot the breath of God lies forked like a tongue of briars The cocktail of drink drug and meditation- nightly yelps tease unshared guilt the hell of silence Transparent in a one-piece dress she tiptoes waving from the window not seeing him leave I love her undress the light with eyes that spring passion with kisses she leaves her name again for my breath to pass through It's not ageing but eternal delight: The beads of sweat on her breasts do not touch her years or face in candle light her shadow is more restrained than my thought A mist covers the valley of her body leaves memories like the shiver of cherry in dreamy January Watching the moon in the western horizon two haiku poets scratch each other's back and mock the rest as neophytes Once so intimate now uncomfortable strangers smile at each other in the party no one says my name even once At the crowded window implores the clerk to process his papers but he ignores, irritates at the end, abuses A black dog moves freely among reporters lying on the ground to shoot militants in Taj resisting the commandos Amidst trees without fruits and the rising jungle flowers a seasonal grace in colours coexist with disfiguring autumn Whatever the rut they mate without the season ejaculating hatred from their mouths and stink- their cum doesn't turn me on Covering with soil their ill will excreted from the anus at my gate in the morning even sun despises villainy Love runs awry in the name of Holi yields to revelry of colour and sex: Delayed monsoon may now come early and quench earth's thirst with respite from heat and power cut: I smell wetness in the air Fear of rain and driver's non-arrival at night spoils the cool drizzle this evening can't relish even the drink No one gives him what he needs after a day's hard work in lab — a lover, a good night's sleep and it passes again, waiting Eternity too short to quench love He walks down the aisle looking for the nave to kneel and slide out After prolonged heat wave sky watery explosion earth lovely doom Seasonal change viral suffering, realignment with doctor's bill Each morning the sun shines through window panes, revives the dream for verses Smell of kamini in front of my house excites: Each stone, drop, pebble waste of life in worldly self: In the darkness of backyard he searches his shadow: I stir the water to pierce clouds in it: He has no wind-rope to tie waves in the net: She reads my age in the synthetic dark of moustache and whitening chest Willow summer-sways its bough half-rests on the pole light goes off again Silence is sound in the blank of unthinking mind poetry is peace The child lost in letters and numbers spins new designs She waves a quick smile from her new Maruti— tyres screech The sun vanished in the blue morning couldn't last the flower's smile He sees the ape in the glass self-satisfied his own image The blue white dapples on the canvas seeing the eye of silence Sipping gin he says he loves sex each night but hates the smell They are skinny but skilful, can't be swatted: He sweeps yellow leaves or gathers years in a heap burns to merge with dust After hours of power-cut cobwebs in the room swing in thanks My bedroom a maze of cobweb spiders breed The red light is on: In nightly silence glides the airbus through the clouds trail of white smoke After sleepless night a drowsy sun tears the morning sky A lamp floating on river breast in bridal grace waves in the gloaming Looking for Taj in grains through sand storm find history trapped between toes Shining from the blade of grass a drop on earth's breast: I know waves that roar I live through silence of shore: I felt her fingers the strings of my son's guitar unplayed for a long time After hurried lovemaking we drift to sleep: Flickers of peace hide god in heart like running brook love in nudity Monsoon shower after a long heat wave monotony breaks Ripe on the branches mangoes fall one by one end of the season Coal grows golden each moment in quiet corners raw wind singes It hangs like a drop any moment evaporates love is gullible Morning mist rests on a swathe of pond lone fish looks for sun The moon glows and heat wave all through night scalds leaves kills butterflies The mynahs herald the day clamouring for moths Vacating the house he leaves four decades no thanks to any Not age but years of worries — his furrowed face The leaves sway to fly like birds free in the sky Long forgotten the beginning and the end: He closes the eyes expanding inner space a short-cut tour Looking lovingly she bends his head down to hers twines like a creeper Unable to change time my watch doesn't move moment at will The rains wash the paints that hide the face The frog in mirror slips by damp towel cold sets in slippy hands Half -fleshed faces track from behind the windows rawness of journey Falling chalk over head clouds understanding: Rains leave soil soft — seeds sprout with first sun pearly dawns Frosted faces dissolve in stale rain clutching female body We lie together filling our body with each other's sensation Celebrating forgettable memories at public expense A star shines bright beside the crescent moon: Shaking hands couldn't part with the henna on her palms Reluctant to climb the spiral staircase- bathing in kitchen Measures loneliness sip by sip at dining table From the alcove removes faded flowers and kills black ants 8.

Thick dust on leaves unwashed by rains for days- stagnant time Oleander and hibiscus blaze with passion- making love in sun Two wolves smell the carcass in field heat wave chills Dust storm this evening- end of the mango season without tasting fruit Throwing stones at unripe mangoes- two urchins Couldn't keep freshness of leaf in water The first rains coming back from the desert home- plateau souvenir One more empty day but in the mailbox a hint of hope tomorrow Where shall I keep the thirty years junk if I go elsewhere?

A sad soul under the mango— my husband Ending the night's long journey her short story Patterns of hair block the flow: Cooking smoke waves to the afternoon sun: Chilly night no soul on the road guard at gate Welcoming the sun dew drops on dry leaves-- an epitaph After the walk two women relax on bench exchanging tensions After cleaning the maid leaves behind an oily smell A tiny spider on the marigold sucking its golden hue Seeking its roots around oleander leaves custard-apple A Christ crucified with the violence of music in the hall After the party empty chairs in the lawn new moon and I A dead voice calling up at dawn: Such a wild change in the mirror beside her- I look a stranger Stoops to set pleats of her saree mid-August Meeting her once and so much love in one night to last the whole life Each sun aggravates sadness moment by moment: Narrowly escape the midair web of spider perched on hibiscus After extraction he gives me my old tooth list of drugs and new bill Collecting fallen twigs on road half -clad women Palms waving to greet the first rain of the season: I wait in the room Craving for a lick of the salt on her skin to become one with her Desire for diamond dies with price I can't afford: Wish I could be part of the quietude this morning: Between virgin curves he deep-breathes evening mist rests in the hollow A load of wood on her frail back autumn evening Their shadows dissolve and reappear walking along the river On a cycle he sells bouquets and roses peddling dreams A watchman gazes the stars on her body elements clack Alone on the platform wait for the train swatting mosquitoes Scars of existence- wintry sun and chilly night crouching on footpath A dead man couldn't keep standing- lies in dust Knocking emptiness I cross the valleys within now stand at stone gate Love's beauty happening in the soul God presence Silence of class test occasion for haiku thoughts lost in lecture To give voice to stone he chisels the soul-image Krishna plays the flute A lamp on the river— the breast in bridal grace waving in the gloaming In the spring sun the lone pomegranate tree smiling with buds The blue-white dapples on the canvass seeing the eye of silence The mirror is so small I can't see the ocean beyond my own look Silent Ram sheds tears over the bodies burnt in temple's name Violence breeders climb power ladder- peace stings Tears invisible on his water face Buddha meditates Through long shadows in the morning remembering gradual death After the 'plane bomb stuck between concrete rubbles a mother and child In the naked grave some flesh still clings to the bones: Lost in black box he searches love to live- smoulders in ash They still bomb lands for peace repeat August 6 They kill and hide in mosques pray, in fear kill more, and flee To hunt the hunters flames mate with flames- touch the sky Her presence- alien sensation in my veins In my courtyard swoop neem, peepal, cheeku leaves: Between her fingers and lips swaying some puffed rice Still fresh in the hanky's fold- jasmine Soft footsteps of students bunking class test Her smile arrival of spring at the bower A butterfly restless over the other trying to console Though clouds environ now, And gladness hides her face in scorn, Put thou the shadow from thy brow, — No night but hath its morn.

Where'er thy bark is driven, — The calm's disport, the tempest's mirth, — Know this: God rules the hosts of heaven, The habitants of earth. Not love alone for one, But men, as man, thy brothers call; And scatter, like the circling sun, Thy charities on all. Thus grave these lessons on thy soul, — Hope, Faith, and Love, — and thou shalt find Strength when life's surges rudest roll, Light when thou else wert blind. Far above the golden clouds, the darkness vibrates. The earth is blue. And everything about it is a love song.

Before our lives divide for ever, While time is with us and hands are free , Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea I will say no word that a man might say Whose whole life's love goes down in a day; For this could never have been; and never, Though the gods and the years relent, shall be. Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour, To think of things that are well outworn? Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower, The dream foregone and the deed forborne?

Though joy be done with and grief be vain, Time shall not sever us wholly in twain; Earth is not spoilt for a single shower; But the rain has ruined the ungrown corn. I had grown pure as the dawn and the dew, You had grown strong as the sun or the sea. But none shall triumph a whole life through: For death is one, and the fates are three. At the door of life, by the gate of breath, There are worse things waiting for men than death; Death could not sever my soul and you, As these have severed your soul from me.

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You have chosen and clung to the chance they sent you, Life sweet as perfume and pure as prayer. But will it not one day in heaven repent you? Will they solace you wholly, the days that were? Will you lift up your eyes between sadness and bliss, Meet mine, and see where the great love is, And tremble and turn and be changed?

Content you; The gate is strait; I shall not be there. The pulse of war and passion of wonder, The heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine, The stars that sing and the loves that thunder, The music burning at heart like wine, An armed archangel whose hands raise up All senses mixed in the spirit's cup Till flesh and spirit are molten in sunder — These things are over, and no more mine. These were a part of the playing I heard Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife; Love that sings and hath wings as a bird, Balm of the wound and heft of the knife.

Fairer than earth is the sea, and sleep Than overwatching of eyes that weep, Now time has done with his one sweet word, The wine and leaven of lovely life. Sweet is true love though given in vain , in vain; And sweet is death who puts an end to pain: I know not which is sweeter, no, not I. Love, art thou sweet? Love, thou art bitter; sweet is death to me. O Love, if death be sweeter, let me die.

1. Breath of Life (Danna Faulds)?
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3. Mindfulness Poetry for Transformation!

Here her hand Grasped, made her vail her eyes: O shut me round with narrowing nunnery-walls, Meek maidens, from the voices crying 'shame. I must not scorn myself: Let no one dream but that he loves me still. Love lifts us up where we belong Far from the world we know Up where the clear winds blow. A song fluttered down in the form of a dove, And it bore me a message, the one word—Love! I thought of being fearless and reckless and so full of ideas.

Translating these poems is an act of archaeology. I work with co-translators, unearthing with raw strikes of the shovel until I can see the lines of the poem and switch to gentle brushes. When I first saw the shape of this poem, the shape of its idea, my mind began to echo with its nothingness.

Troy, Michig an is a collection of sonnets inspired by the city map of my hometown—I wanted to represent the rectangle shapes repeated throughout of the city plan. I chose the sonnet form because younger writers often use it when they attempt to become a poet. Even though I no longer qualify as a younger poet, this book was also about bringing to life a version of myself from the past to try to make sense of the landscape that had shaped my understanding of both safety and danger.

All of the poems posit and argue the main questions in the piece, i. The main "drama" is the dialogue—between what we call the humanities and what we call science, and the inconclusive answers provided from both disciplines. I started writing this poem on a Columbus Day. At the time, I was working for the federal government as a contractor. I had the day off because Columbus Day is a federal holiday and our building was closed, but I didn't get paid because the contractor did not recognize that holiday.

It's a screwed up situation. In "The Trees at Lystra," the opening story in his collection, Eclogues , Davenport recasts from a Greek adolescent's perspective the New Testament story in the Book of Acts in which Paul and his companion come portentously to the lively village to inveigh against polytheism and are mistaken ironically for Zeus and Hermes. The poem is what I call a "transliteration" —a meaningful sound-alike—of William Blake's classic poem, "The Tyger. Many of them are also transliterations, or are other kinds of odd translations.

Aside from this poem having the most boring title ever, I've grown increasingly fond of this quiet, formally simple poem after sharing it aloud at recent poetry readings. As it took shape, I was seeking some kind of employment; teaching jobs were impossible to come by and I eventually took a position as an administrator for a financial services company on Water Street, very close to the bottommost point on the island of Manhattan. I had a small portrait of T. Eliot smoking a cigarette on my desk, framed in mauve, taken when he was with Lloyds Bank and doing the most important writing of his life.

A lot of the brokers thought this 80 year old photograph was actually me, or my father. I don't think that I will ever get over the feeling of looking out the window of a flying airplane. It isn't so much that it's shocking—which of course it is, if you think about it. Part ant colony, part lit-up window of a stranger's house, the earth, arrayed and displayed 30, feet below, scintillates.

It also examines the absurdity of our daily lives, the excitement that we can reap from the weirdest cultural prizes Three strikes! After my previous books, featuring poems that included everything even one kitchen sink , I'd been trying to write shorter, slightly more focused if still meditative, poems. However, what I'd come up with—poems I thought of as "single-gestured," most of which were under fifteen lines long—seemed too tidy, at best, and in any case unsatisfying. She worked as an editor and then a civil servant for the Beijing tax bureau until she quit the job in Liu Xia started writing poetry in and has continued to this day.

She met Liu Xiaobo in the s at a literary gathering and married him when he was imprisoned in so that she could visit him in prison legally as she explained. He was detained without trial from May to February , then sentenced to three-year imprisonment from October to October , and finally given an eleven-year term in December Liu Xia herself has been under house arrest since Probably "Single page drawing" began in , when an acquaintance introduced me to Cy Twombly's paintings and prints.

Not that I began writing the poem then. But every time since then when I have stood in a room with Cy Twombly's work, I have felt two impulses: I began to draft this poem when I lived in New York, after one of many times someone stopped me and asked for directions. The draft began as a conversation between me and an "offstage" character. Almost a monologue, but not quite. What drove me to the page is that I felt helplessly pleasant when asked for assistance. The sensation was awful on some level.

I look like a nice, unthreatening person. Yet something about that is slightly intolerable. I kept writing to try to understand why. It has to do with power—power is at play in this poem. I am far from being a power-hungry person, but where is the line between helpfulness and manipulation? That question seemed the burning center of the writing. At the same time I learned gray foxes sleep in trees, in dens as much as 30 feet from the ground. Motherhood created an urgent narrative situation in me: I had to write about my life. I wrote fast—it felt fast—and under the ardent sign of motherhood I chased subjects I'd glossed or abstracted or left out of previous poems.

My sentence was the sizzling rope connected to the stick of dynamite under the door in a cartoon—out of time, out of time. My dad is not a poetry reader. He reads nonfiction mostly. He's a Timothy Egan and Malcolm Gladwell fan, to name two. When I was an adolescent, I wanted to become a ballerina. I practiced with more dedication than I knew I possessed. Some nights I dream I can still dance the way I could at my best. I did "come upon the body of a whale" on a trip to Block Island off the coast of Rhode Island in the middle of winter.

There is nothing I love more than an island in winter. It is the only time you can have a whole beach to yourself. To me it is heaven. I grew up on an island, so perhaps that is why I feel so strongly about this. I got obsessed with China. I used to live in Beijing, population 21 million. When I arrived I didn't speak Chinese, didn't understand it, and the city was alarmingly, indigestibly verbal. If not for a small group of expats who welcomed me into their world and gave me some sense of regularity I wouldn't have lasted long.

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I work at a big state university: Near campus there's a bubble tea place run by a friendly Asian couple. One day someone taped a piece of college-ruled paper to the wall with the question, "How Do You Feel? When I think of this poem, I think of Math. I wrote this poem after reading it. I wrote "[taking away taking everything away]" in response to an assignment I gave my graduate students at NYU. I was teaching a course I called "Terms of Engagement. The first mode we considered was ekphrastic.

It is used in Japan to refer to the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I began this series of poems later into my writing of this collection, which centers around J. Robert Oppenheimer, known as the father of the atomic bomb. A translation, whatever else it might be, is an attempt to recreate an experience. The tricky question is, whose experience? Do you try to make Rilke sound slightly archaic to reproduce the experience that a modern German might have of the original, or do you try to find an equivalent for the experience that a German-speaking contemporary of Rilke might have had?

I wrote "The Descent of Man" after a long layoff from writing—or, to be more accurate, from trying to write, which is largely what I do. Poems written after a long layoff in my case usually turn out baroque, or more baroque than ones that are the result of working habitually. Not writing can be writing, too, but if it isn't the internal pressure that builds up in a real layoff, the fancy ideas that come from reading too much, and the overreaching resulting from all the built-up energies spilling over can create artifacts that are supersaturated, conceptually overdetermined.

Our primary aim was to create translations that sound like his poems—that bring his music into harmony with the 21st century. My childhood was built atop an apple orchard. Or rather, my childhood home was constructed on what used to be a former orchard. A single crab apple tree in our backyard remains. My friend Katie and I both of us six years old were digging in the backyard when we discovered a buried trash heap that must have been quite old.

I wrote the first draft of this poem in a third floor studio apartment in Mexico City. An aging architect owned the building, and his office stood adjacent to the three-story home, an office comprised of glass.



His own Philip Johnson's glass house. This poem contains one of my favorite ways to think and talk about poetry: In the summer of , when I wrote this poem, I had moved across the country to Western Massachusetts for poetry school. My friend was at work when a visitor to the building began to cough up blood. Usually it goes like this: We recognize these poems and we feel bad. We have been reading these poems since the Bible. It has gotten a little ridiculous, lately, with poems that use amputation as metaphor for Fragmentation or the Dead Father or Pick-Your-Sadness.

At readings, I usually introduce this poem as 'my love letter to New York City. I think both represent the broad catalogue of emotions one can tangle with during a simple stroll in New York City on any given afternoon. My mother died on Easter morning of when I was years-old.

I spent the summer in Omaha, Nebraska cleaning out our family's house, which felt like closing a wound that kept reopening. Many nights I'd end up sitting on a closet floor reading her books, trying on her jewelry, or just living in the smell her clothes. Ultimately, I ended up donating almost everything. Born in Mexico City in , Santiago came of age during a period of acute political repression, artistic censorship, and violations of academic autonomy that culminated in the Tlatelolco Massacre, in which hundreds of student protesters and bystanders were killed and injured, and over a thousand were arrested.

The literary society Santiago encountered when he began writing poems in was stultifying and conservative. They appear this way because they are all a part of a quasi-linear thought process, or thought movement, with a focused concern on physical and emotional orientation, the way the body and mind moves through the world and how it relates or doesn't to its surrounding.

We're in my parents' living room, the day after my poetry reading at the University of Cincinnati. The same poem can serve several purposes. At my most single-minded, I began to understand this, against my will, in the years after my mother left the earth on May 22 nd , For a time and I'm not sure whether this time has actually ended, or will ever end everything that felt like poetry also naturally resembled mourning.

Written long hand in a Xanax-and-alcohol stupor on a plane that seemed to be slowly crashing toward Memphis. This poem began with its title, which emerged for me in the last few moments of a dream. The whole sentence surfaced at once, like a seashell revealed at low tide. My dream, as I remember, was an anxious one. I had to assemble an object composed of tiny, elaborate parts—screws and gaskets, a loose pile of flat washers that, maliciously, began to disappear when I grasped them. Had you driven over the bridge that night, you would not have seen the body in the bed.

You would have seen the lighthouse. You may have seen the beacon flash. You may have, because it was late, seen the lighthouse as more of a shadow than a white, peaked structure. It would have been surrounded by snow. Like Auden, I believe a poem should be more interesting than anything that might be said about it. His skill in the ring and personality out of it were so outsized that almost anything he claimed seemed possible. When he said he hoboed from Galveston to New York City alone at age 12, everyone believed him. When he said he fought a foot shark with nothing but his fists, no one questioned it.

The nuts that make up this poem were what I wrote on postcards to my friend the poet Genine Lentine. For a few years, I've been writing poems in which I use the natural environment as a force field and I try to receive frequencies, intuitions, from natural beauty to fuel and form a poem, in the same way radio waves and microwaves and light waves in the atmosphere carry content and meaning. He lives in Los Angeles and invited me to join him and a group of his friends, most of whom I didn't know, to celebrate his birthday.

Comedians do more than make us laugh; they woo crowds into the world of a joke. With facial tics and anaphora and alligator shoes, they often sit us down in neighborhoods we distrust or are not privy to. They make us feel safe, activate the car alarm then crowbar the window for the knock off satchel sunning in the passenger seat. Without any money, lonely and out of my depth, whatever that could have been, I spent most of my time digging around for books of poetry to read in the dark innards of Columbia University's Butler Library.

I'd studied Spanish in high school, and was on the prowl. He composed this poem and recited it to Kharms in January This poem is one of the oldest in the collection I wrote it seven years ago. I included it because I thought it set up some of the book's concerns, and as such, it feels like the grandparent to others. I found myself writing "The Contagious Knives" in a fury of contagion; a corrosive tide of rage and frustration at the state of the world, its steady state of exploitation, coercion, misery, metals, charisma.

This is why the language of this play as in life! As a poet I've become increasingly interested in sound: I've become more and more involved in music, blues in particular, over the past several years, so I think that informs my poetry. When I was in high school men started hitting on me and I wasn't sure what to do. Most of my life I'd been trying to be a less assertive presence in the world the general opinion of my elders and peers was that I needed to exercise humility, be less bossy, be less of a know-it-all, start fewer fights.

It has no epigraph, but if it did, it would have one of the following:. Some research recently revealed that it is not too much information that is stressful or overwhelming, it's too much information that seems to be meaningful. For example a walk in the woods is full of enormous input: It is the only poem that uses the sentence as unit of composition, hence its title—so, in that way it certainly works within a different cadence, a different logic from the other poems. The poem also marks a shift in the book—away from the dreamy renderings of place in the sequence that it concludes and into the more concrete spatiality of the Kansas plains.

The truth is I had gotten obsessed with Laura Ingalls Wilder books. Why are these considered girls' books? People are building log cabins! They're getting chased by panthers and dying of starvation and eating the curliest part of the pig, the tail! They're sucking horehound, the most lawless candy! Territories are declaring statehood. People are waking up in the Dakotas at last.

I don't remember exactly how I wrote this poem. I remember that it occurred quickly and required only a little revision. It is my personal favorite poem in a collection I wrote called Hider Roser , but I'm not sure why. I like reading it aloud and always include it in my set list when reading to an audience. Belgium, Flanders, Benelux, Low Country—so many words associated with this tiny and stunningly gifted land. It speaks Dutch, French, German, and its own dialects.

Dutch is not my mother tongue, but it is my mother's tongue. Though my brother and I were not raised bilingually, we've heard it all our lives.

Self-Observation Without Judgment (Danna Faulds)

The sound of the language first and always precedes its meanings to me Frost's "the sound of sense". In the past two years, I have been studying a small group of Dutch poets and writers, mostly reading them aloud. It's not a proper study, and the list is eclectic, guided by other people's bookshelves. I'm disappointed when writers, in discussing their work, interpret it for their readership.

This seems a violation of the literary contract between author and reader. That in mind, here I'll lay bare the ideas that undergird "Violet for Your Furs" without doing you the disservice of deciphering individual images. Cataloguing these ideas will require some name-dropping.

The poems of John Keats

Bear with and forgive me. This line poem is a work of immense cultural significance and beauty. When I was finishing up my book, my editor suggested I write a few new poems for the final section, poems that would perhaps move closer toward the idea of hope that sits in the book's title. This is one of three poems I wrote in that frenzied couple of weeks I've never written so quickly in my life! When I was young, the penis crop was plentiful. Every year, a bountiful harvest. Then came hot flashes, mood swings, sleeplessness, and a long—very long—penis famine.

Thus the first two sentences, which floated into my head one day. I remember being immediately pleased with my simile. Sebald for Vertigo , so that intellectual inquiry and creative inquiry inform one another, so that I find myself in the magnetic field of someone else's range and diction, so that I am moved out beyond mere self-reflection.

I should say, first, that this "The landscape" poem is one of a series of eight all titled "The landscape. I began work on "The Maud Poems" several years before my mother died. She was an older mother for the time, she'd grown up in Topeka, Kansas, after the first world war; her father had left, her mother Olive ran a boarding house, and her uncle Meldrum owned a funeral parlor. This earlier version of the poem had the same basic stanzaic shape, action, and deployment of images as "Mappa Mundi" does now but its tempo and temperament were much different: This poem originally stood on its own under the title "Collapse.

I was intent on writing seriously about death. The Iraq war was just beginning and was very much on my mind. I was thinking about my own lack of power and courage in that context. It's funny how poems tend to get generated in my mind. They never begin with what, in my teaching days, students called "ideas. This can be the sound, say, of a certain woodpecker on a very still spring morning; a snatch from an old Monk tune; or, as in this case, a small chunk of conversation that has lodged itself in mind, whether or not I knew it had.

The map is channeled by other people's voices. Once you have the map you get to keep it, but only if you share it with others.

When I was younger I was really into horror movies. I found it at this local hole in the wall video store Video Village , long since closed where tapes were fifty cents to rent for five days. Mostly, for me, writing is a feral act. Xi Chuan pronounced Sshee Chwahn, not to be confused with Sichuan, the province , one of contemporary China's most celebrated poets, was born in Jiangsu in with the name Liu Jun, which means "army," reflecting the ethos of the era.

I also actually did have a vase of flowers before me when I wrote the first draft, and I couldn't tell if the flowers were dead or alive—but there they were, nonetheless, upright. Now approaching ninety, Yves Bonnefoy is often acclaimed as France's greatest contemporary author. For a number of years—and I suppose still—I've felt somewhat helplessly concerned with the figure of the Greek Chorus. I'd written a number of poems revolving around the Chorus before this one: I almost never write a poem with a sense of what it will be about.

I don't use preexisting forms traditional or otherwise , writing exercises, or poetic formal devices to generate material. At this point in my writing life, I do tend to think about a whole manuscript while I'm composing individual poems, so I might begin a poem in relation to a manuscript with the thought that it should be a longer poem, or a shorter one, or perhaps lighter in tone, or maybe more fierce.

But overall, I prefer to keep the parameters loose. The world of this poem grew from a simple wish to play on the word "felt. Also, at the time I wrote the poem, I was very interested in Joseph Beuys's work and was learning about his symbolic interest in materials like felt and wax. My husband was teaching law, and I was tending to our two young sons. My first-grader was in the American school, which abuts the university campus; I was able to see a fragment of it from my balcony.

The idea was we'd each write a poem every day for a month, and we'd take turns giving writing prompts. To say that I wrote it is less an offense than to say I translated it. Though it has everything to do with its correspondent text, the purpose of writing through "Zone" was not to reproduce it but to create an original work—the only real impediments put on the piece being its influences, which are many. As a child, I remember painting in the art room, my favorite room at my elementary school. When my son went to kindergarten and we were given a tour of the art room all those memories of art class came forth.

I was both compelled and terrified. What would I produce?

Mindfulness Poetry for Transformation | Mindful Living Programs

This poem was written over the course of several months, during which fear vied with hope and the idea of "trying" anything at all became almost laughably fraught. The poem became, in a sense, a meditation on effort, in which the suspension of effort was the aim of my efforts. This is the first poem in Mean Free Path. I wanted the dedication to be integral to the book, not something set apart on a prefatory page. Because the poems are largely concerned with the possibility of writing and being for , with finding a mode of address capable of something other than ironic detachment or expressing prefabricated structures of feeling, it seemed like cheating to have a prose dedication external to the poems and their pressures resolving all of these issues as if by fiat.

In the summer of the year , the Author, then in ill health, had retired to Berlin, where, in consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in Grammar, Gesture, and Meaning in American Sign Language: It comes out of a trip I took in the summer of when I went to Lebanon and Syria to do some journalism about Palestinian refugee camps, and the aftermath of the Lebanese Israeli War.

I arrived just at the moment that the worst internal violence since the Lebanese War broke out. This poem was one of 32 "recipes" commissioned from various writers by the visual artist Suzanne Bocanegra the project was published in the June issue of Esopus magazine. There was a small neighborhood park in Carroll Gardens where I would sit almost every day after the weather turned warm.

Most of the people who stopped in the park were there to simply be: I came to love this place. This poem is a direct response to the introduction of Coleridge's "Xanadu-Kubla Khan" in which he explains thata most unwelcome visitor from Porlock disturbed his "anodyne" vision and ruined his inspiration for his poem. I was always fascinated with this poem: What business was Coleridge called to? How did I come to write this poem? Well the oddest thing started me off.

A friend told me that when she was in Chennai in the summer she had trouble with her computer. I had never heard of such a thing before but later, asking around I did hear similar stories from others. In any case what my friend told me stayed in my head. At first the poem "The Cup" came in response to an assignment I gave myself: Obviously I didn't make it! But focusing on the cup let me channel the narrative drive of the poem.

Originally it was only about how the cup smashed, the pieces of the event all squashed into 14 lines. I wrote "Lunaria" almost by accident, while working on another poem, which was about Judas and was not going well. Everyone knew Jesus had to die, including Jesus himself. My Judas was like a character in a novel, who appears to be free, although in reality the writer controls him completely, only the Judas of my poem had the consciousness of a real person, and was completely bewildered to find himself standing on the street with that bag of money in his hand. Actually, I have alternatives! My poem grew out of my thinking about a new dishwashing soap that I had discovered in a supermarket, a nicely colored liquid in a curvy bottle with an unusually abstract name—Method—which I associated with Descartes' Discourse on Method.

The book, as well as this poem particularly, tracks a continuum along what traditionally you might style transcendence and what we've today come to call celebrity culture. This poem arose from a coincidence: I wrote this poem as part of a collaboration I did in spring of with the painter Chris Uphues. Chris and I met at a bar after a reading I had given, and he told me he was a painter. I had a feeling he would be good.

He sent me photos of ten paintings via email and I was blown away by his work, so I took his titles and wrote ten corresponding poems. It is something to be believed only by those who wish to believe. Yet the conventional wisdom must be tackled on its own terrain. Intemporal comparisons of an individual's state of mind do rest on technically vulnerable ground. Who can say for sure that the deprivation which afflicts him with hunger is more painful than the deprivation which afflicts him with envy of his neighbor's new car?

In the time that has passed since he was poor, his soul may have become subject to a new and deeper searing. In Their Own Words. Black Poets Speak Out. Pulitzer Centennial Poetry Celebration. Yet Do I Marvel. Features In Their Own Words. Tishani Doshi on "A Fable for the 21st Century" I'd been thinking about the idea of knowledge versus information for some years.

I sat alone in the kitchen while my wife was at work Read Article. Jeffrey Yang on "Circle" Although camels originated in the New World millions of years ago, they eventually evolved, diverged, disappeared, and moved on to the Old World where they multiplied. Hey, Marfa Graywolf, Monica Ferrell on "Oh You Absolute Darling" Ten years ago, I dated a man who said to me many curious and indeed bizarre things over the course of the nine months we spent together.

Aaron Coleman on "On Disembodiment" A few years ago, this question popped into my mind: Adam Giannelli on "Stutter" I've stuttered since childhood, but "Stutter" is the first time I ever wrote about it. Jennifer Hayashida on "Chronology" There is a story from when I was a small child and lived in Oakland, California, the city where I was born. Drew Gardner on "Raised by Wolves" This is poem on a mythological theme: Romulus and Remus are abandoned and left to float down a river Read Article.

Kerri Webster on "Vanitas" A vanitas isn't a vanitas if it's just the skull; it's the juxtaposition of bone and beauty, often ruinous beauty, that creates the discourse. John Myers on an untitled poem from Smudgy and Lossy Or be reminded. Jordan Davis on "Shell Game" A guy I knew in college began a story with the line, "It begins 'in medias res,' which is Latin for 'not very good. Nicole Cooley on "Marriage, the Franklin Mineral Museum" This poem was first sparked by a lunch in Atlanta with a beloved poet friend years ago, when my first book came out.

John Deming on "Headline News" I'm interested in the relationship that anxiety and depression and have with addiction, media consumption, and substance abuse. Aditi Machado on "Archaic" According to my notes, the first draft was composed on the third of August Jones on "What It Means To Say Sally Hemings" It's interesting to talk about the genesis of this poem, because its current place in my life is what I think about more than how it began.

Catherine Blauvelt on "Leg Me. Pimone Triplett on "Spieden Island, San Juans Boat Tour, Washington" "Spieden Island…" was more of a collective gathering on my part inspired by overhearing many different speech acts—the naturalist guide who asks questions, provides information, voices aspirations, the father prompts thinking towards the end, and then the approximations, or half translations, of the imagined inner thoughts of the sheep.

Diana Khoi Nguyen on "I Keep Getting Things Wrong" In the messy aftermath of a death in the family all life is an aftermath , it took me two years to access and gain entrance into my grief. Aimee Nezhukumatathil on "In Praise of My Manicure" I probably need tell no one that growing up in predominantly white towns, the first day of classes was always a source of strife for me when I anticipated my last name called out. Alicia Mountain on "Drive Thru" "Drive Thru" snuck up on me the way lust and hunger often sneak up on me.

Justin Phillip Reed on "Consent" Many times I've arrived at the moment of a man entering me and found there two truths: Luljeta Lleshanaku and Ani Gjika on "Negative Space" One of the most resistant images from my childhood, which comes to me from time to time, is the damp school corridor and the cleaning ladies who warn in a threatening tone: Samuel Solomon on "Feelings" What happens when the feeling's gone? Elizabeth Scanlon on "The Brain Is Not the United States" This is a poem that began from a passing remark that struck me as simultaneously comforting and mystifying.

Emily Skillings on "Matron of No" I wrote this poem on my phone in someone else's house. Alissa Valles on Ryszard Krynicki Like many of Ryszard Krynicki's poems, "What Luck" exists in several versions, and before I came to translate this one, I read the later version in which Nineveh and Pompeii are replaced with 'Warsaw' and 'the Betar movement', bringing the poem unambiguously into the 20th century Poland. Philip Schaefer on "[Yesterday I found myself awake]" "[Yesterday I found myself awake]" isn't the best poem in the book, or even a personal favorite, but it's one of the most important moments I've had while writing.

Geoffrey Hilsabeck on "Riddle 6" This poem began as I assume all poems do: Early Hour Copper Canyon Press, Ewing on "what I mean when I say I'm sharpening my oyster knife" Zora Neale Hurston is such a fascinating and wondrous character to me. Brittany Perham on "DP. Erica Wright on "Lola and the Apocalypse" You may remember the rapture of Gabriel Jesiolowski on "entry for the median strip" I write things down that are occasionally transactional and most always interested in relation. Elisa Gabbert on "Jack always feels like someone is watching. Douglas Crase on "True Solar Holiday" The trouble with talking about a poem is that what you say will repeat or replace or wreck the poem, when the reason you wrote it in the first place was that prose doesn't go far enough.

Lindsay Illich on "Snowbound: An American Idyll" A lot of my work deals with the mind or maybe memory, our access to it and how poetry as a medium can show us the ways our mind collapses periodicity, so sometimes like in a poem we are remembering everything all at once. Clint Smith on "what is left" I have always valued what it means to write across different genres.

Adrienne Raphel Photo Credit: Dameron on "Cartographer" I am obsessed with maps. Dameron Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Some Bunnies by Amy Jean Porter I live in Connecticut and saw an eastern cottontail crossing the road in the very early spring. Chen Chen on "The Cuckoo Cry" I forget how sad some of my poems are because people tend to point out the humor.

Grace Bonner on "Stopping on Delos" This poem's origins go back to April , when I was living in Paros, Greece, and had the privilege of being an artist-in-residence with a travel stipend at the Aegean Center for Fine Arts. Cortney Lamar Charleston on "The Hood" As a quintessential 90's kid, born roughly in the middle of the first year of the decade, I spent my formative years in some of the blackest times meaning a preeminence of Black people America has had on record: Hossannah Asuncion on "26 Monroe Street, Buzzer 6" These are natural exchanges in New York places, the currency we use to be ways unregular in our lives: That's where all poetry should come from—the discovery of treasure and desire to share it Read Article.

Jane Wong on "Twenty-Four" I began writing a series of poems in my mother's voice, during that year of her life. Jos Charles on "Seagull, Tiny" Just as a documentarian hasn't effaced a viewpoint just by having a pretense to "fly-on-the-wall" observation, so the poet hasn't effaced an "I," even if it never shows up in a poem. Dana Levin on "Fortune Cookie" I'm about to devote a host of words to this two-year old prismatic scrap—it's Nov.

Beth Bachmann on "wild" "Wild" began with two deer fighting to breed. Joshua Corey on "Trying to Translate Ponge" My Ponge translation project began as it were inadvertently, on social media, where very occasionally an ephemeral suggestion sticks around long enough to become compost and feed something green. Ishion Hutchinson on "Station" In the classical tradition, there is no more moving evidence of that than the three times Aeneas tries to hug his father's shade on a green bank in Hades. Ishion Hutchinson Photo by Joel Golombeck.

Schweig On "Contingencies" Iris, my asthmatic, elderly landlady, was standing crouched over in the doorway of the apartment I was living in when she said this. Tommy Pico Photo credit: Montana Ray on " soulville " And do you hear my prayer, Lord? Thomas Dooley on "St.

Chloe Garcia Roberts on Li Shangyin One of my ongoing projects has been the work of the late-Tang era Chinese poet Li Shangyin, and during this time I came upon a cache of poems by him on the subject of writing, of which the above are two. Anselm Berrigan on " Kathleen Rooney Photo credit: Nina Puro on "Prescription" For me, "writing" is mostly scowling at what'll be left on the threshing-room floor: Douglas Crase on the poems of Donald Britton The appearance in print of the selected poems of Donald Britton is an affront to cynicism and a triumph over fate. Tess Taylor on "Field Report: Leora Fridman on "Grown to Covet" In this political climate, I've notice how easy it is to define oneself in opposition to another, and "Grown to Covet," dips into my ambivalence toward the relationship between politics and ego.