Writ on the Eve of My 32nd Birthday by Gregory Corso

a slow thoughtful spontaneous poem

I am 32 years old
and finally I look my age, if not more.

Is it a good face what’s no more a boy’s face?
It seems fatter. And my hair,
it’s stopped being curly. Is my nose big?
The lips are the same.
And the eyes, ah the eyes get better all the time.
32 and no wife, no baby; no baby hurts,
but there’s lots of time.
I don’t act silly any more.
And because of it I have to hear from so-called friends:
“You’ve changed. You used to be so crazy so great.”
They are not comfortable with me when I’m serious.
Let them go to the Radio City Music Hall.
32; saw all of Europe, met millions of people;
was great for some, terrible for others.
I remember my 31st year when I cried:
“To think I may have to go another 31 years!”
I don’t feel that way this birthday.
I feel I want to be wise with white hair in a tall library
in a deep chair by a fireplace.
Another year in which I stole nothing.
8 years now and haven’t stole a thing!
I stopped stealing!
But I still lie at times,
and still am shameless yet ashamed when it comes
to asking for money.
32 years old and four hard real funny sad bad wonderful
books of poetry
—the world owes me a million dollars.
I think I had a pretty weird 32 years.
And it weren’t up to me, none of it.
No choice of two roads; if there were,
I don’t doubt I’d have chosen both.
I like to think chance had it I play the bell.
The clue, perhaps, is in my unabashed declaration:
“I’m good example there’s such a thing as called soul.”
I love poetry because it makes me love
and presents me life.
And of all the fires that die in me,
there’s one burns like the sun;
it might not make day my personal life,
my association with people,
or my behavior toward society,
but it does tell me my soul has a shadow.


© 1962 by New Directions Publishing Corporation

Turtle, Swan by Mark Doty

(Note: This is one of my favorite poems ever. Mark Doty is a personal hero of mine, and the beauty, the naked honesty, the luminous force of this poem is a perfect example why. Enjoy.)

Because the road to our house
is a back road, meadowlands punctuated
by gravel quarry and lumberyard,
there are unexpected travelers
some nights on our way home from work.
Once, on the lawn of the Tool

and Die Company, a swan;
the word doesn't convey the shock
of the thing, white architecture
rippling like a pond's rain-pocked skin,
beak lifting to hiss at my approach.
Magisterial, set down in elegant authority,

he let us know exactly how close we might come.
After a week of long rains
that filled the marsh until it poured
across the road to make in low woods
a new heaven for toads,
a snapping turtle lumbered down the center

of the asphalt like an ambulatory helmet.
His long tail dragged, blunt head jutting out
of the lapidary prehistoric sleep of shell.
We'd have lifted him from the road
but thought he might bend his long neck back
to snap. I tried herding him; he rushed,

though we didn't think those blocky legs
could hurry -- then ambled back
to the center of the road, a target
for kids who'd delight in the crush
of something slow with the look
of primeval invulnerability. He turned

the blunt spear point of his jaws,
puffing his undermouth like a bullfrog,
and snapped at your shoe,
vising a beakful of -- thank God --
leather. You had to shake him loose. We left him
to his own devices, talked on the way home

of what must lead him to new marsh
or old home ground. The next day you saw,
one town over, remains of shell
in front of the little liquor store. I argued
it was too far from where we'd seen him,
too small to be his...though who could tell

what the day's heat might have taken
from his body. For days he became a stain,
a blotch that could have been merely
oil. I did not want to believe that
was what we saw alive in the firm center
of his authority and right

to walk the center of the road,
head up like a missionary moving certainly
into the country of his hopes.
In the movies in this small town
I stopped for popcorn while you went ahead
to claim seats. When I entered the cool dark

I saw straight couples everywhere,
no single silhouette who might be you.
I walked those two aisles too small
to lose anyone and thought of a book
I read in seventh grade, "Stranger Than Science,"
in which a man simply walked away,

at a picnic, and was,
in the act of striding forward
to examine a flower, gone.
By the time the previews ended
I was nearly in tears -- then realized
the head of one-half the couple in the first row

was only your leather jacket propped in the seat
that would be mine. I don't think I remember
anything of the first half of the movie.
I don't know what happened to the swan. I read
every week of some man's lover showing
the first symptoms, the night sweat

or casual flu, and then the wasting begins
and the disappearance a day at a time.
I don't know what happened to the swan;
I don't know if the stain on the street
was our turtle or some other. I don't know
where these things we meet and know briefly,

as well as we can or they will let us,
go. I only know that I do not want you
-- you with your white and muscular wings
that rise and ripple beneath or above me,
your magnificent neck, eyes the deep mottled autumnal colors
of polished tortoise -- I do not want you ever to die.

© Mark Doty

China's gay penguins get hitched!

Click here to read the story.

The penguins are also adoptive parents, and zookeepers say they are the best parents in the zoo. Here is an older photo of the happy couple. They are the two behind the fence, in conversation with their next door neighbor.

John Updike, 1932-2009

"Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them."

-John Updike

Click here for Updike's obituary in The New York Times.

Soren Kierkegaard

"Once you label me, you negate me."

-Soren Kierkegaard

Slow Dance by Matthew Dickman

More than putting another man on the moon,
more than a New Year’s resolution of yogurt and yoga,
we need the opportunity to dance
with really exquisite strangers. A slow dance
between the couch and dining room table, at the end
of the party, while the person we love has gone
to bring the car around
because it’s begun to rain and would break their heart
if any part of us got wet. A slow dance
to bring the evening home. Two people
rocking back and forth like a buoy. Nothing extravagant.
A little music. An empty bottle of whiskey.
It’s a little like cheating. Your head resting
on his shoulder, your breath moving up his neck.
Your hands along her spine. Her hips
unfolding like a cotton napkin
and you begin to think about
how all the stars in the sky are dead. The my body
is talking to your body slow dance. The Unchained Melody,
Stairway to Heaven, power-chord slow dance. All my life
I’ve made mistakes. Small
and cruel. I made my plans.
I never arrived. I ate my food. I drank my wine.
The slow dance doesn’t care. It’s all kindness like children
before they turn four. Like being held in the arms
of my brother. The slow dance of siblings.
Two men in the middle of the room. When I dance with him,
one of my great loves, he is absolutely human,
and when he turns to dip me
or I step on his foot because we are both leading,
I know that one of us will die first and the other will suffer.
The slow dance of what’s to come
and the slow dance of insomnia
pouring across the floor like bath water.
When the woman I’m sleeping with
stands naked in the bathroom,
brushing her teeth, the slow dance of ritual is being spit
into the sink. There is no one to save us
because there is no need to be saved.
I’ve hurt you. I’ve loved you. I’ve mowed
the front yard. When the stranger wearing a sheer white dress
covered in a million beads
slinks toward me like an over-sexed chandelier suddenly come to life,
I take her hand in mine. I spin her out
and bring her in. This is the almond grove
in the dark slow dance.
It is what we should be doing right now. Scraping
for joy. The haiku and honey. The orange and orangutan slow dance.


© Matthew Dickman

Our President

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

...For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

-Barack Obama, from his inaugural address

New England Winter by Erica Jong

Testing the soul's mettle,
the frost heaves
holes in the roads
to the heart,
the glass forest
raises up its branches
to praise all things
that catch the light
then melt.
The forest floor is white,
but here & there a boulder rises
with its glacial arrogance
& brooks that bubble
under the sheets of ice
remind us that the tundra of the soul
will soften
just a little
towards the spring.

© Erica Mann Jong

Image: Garden Under Snow, 1879 by Paul Gauguin

Andrew Wyeth, 1917-2009

Christina Olson - 1947

Click here for Wyeth's obituary in The New York Times.

"Hudson River, January 15, 2009, 3:30 p.m." by Donn Saylor

And from gelid iron skies, the pearly
insistence of the Airbus 320 glided
(there’s no other word for it), creamily,
into the boreal Hudson:
archangel banished on an augustly controlled
descent.
Just after takeoff, the pilot – Svengali in
the clouds, no doubt, all but seducing the
coy strati, plump, today, with new snow –
reported a “double bird strike”; then,
moments later, to the souls onboard who were,
this January afternoon, masquerading as
people: “Brace for
impact.”
The impact, as it turned out, was a soft
settling onto a watery tarmac: shallow,
icy, but a great pair of steely arms for a
wayward plane to find its peace after such
bedlam.
And it is the thought of such bedlam – so
adamant, so absolute – that brings me a gutful
of forked-tongued terror whenever I fly. There
has always seemed, to me, something
not right
about a mighty, mighty manmade flying machine
that can be disquieted so easily by “choppy air”,
that can be victim to any number of altitudinous
Armageddons,
that can be felled by a flock of turned-around
sparrows. My fourth grade history teacher once
recounted the story of a race between the then-new
steam engine and the seemingly archaic horse. The horse,
as we all know, won the race.
And sometimes, birds
can be horses too.

© 2008 by Donn Saylor

Oscar Wilde

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."   

-Oscar Wilde

Two Poems by Claudia Emerson

Aftermath

I think by now it is time for the second cutting.
I imagine the field, the one above the last

house we rented, has lain in convalescence
long enough. The hawk has taken back the air

above new grass, and the doe again can hide
her young. I can tell you now I crossed

that field, weeks before the first pass of the blade,
through grass and briars, fog — the night itself

to my thighs, my skirt pulled up that high.
I came to what had been our house and stood outside.

I saw her in it. She reminded me of me —
with her hair black and long as mine had been —

as she moved in and then away from the sharp
frame the window made of the darkness.

I confess that last house was the coldest
I kept. In it, I became formless as fog, crossing

the walls, formless as your breath as it rose
from your mouth to disappear in the air above you.

You see, aftermath is easier, opening
again the wound along its numb scar; it is the sentence

spoken the second time — truer, perhaps,
with the blunt edge of a practiced tongue.



The Spanish Lover

There were warnings: he had, at forty, never
married; he was too close to his mother,
calling her by her given name, Manuela,
ah, Manuela — like a lover; even her face

had bled, even the walls, giving birth to him;
she still had saved all of his baby teeth
except the one he had yet to lose, a small
eyetooth embedded, stubborn in the gum.

I would eat an artichoke down to its heart,
then feed the heart to him. It was enough
that he was not you — and utterly foreign,
related to no one. So it was not love.

So it ended badly, but to some relief.
I was again alone in my bed, but not
invisible as I had been to you —
and I had learned that when I drank sherry

I was drinking a chalk-white landscape, a distant
poor soil; that such vines have to suffer; and that
champagne can be kept effervescent by putting
a knife in the open mouth of the bottle.



© 2005 by Claudia Emerson

The Afternoon Sun by C.P. Cavafy

This room, how well I know it.
Now they’re renting it, and the one next to it,
as offices. The whole house has become
an office building for agents, businessmen, companies.

This room, how familiar it is.

The couch was here, near the door,
a Turkish carpet in front of it.
Close by, the shelf with two yellow vases.
On the right—no, opposite—a wardrobe with a mirror.
In the middle the table where he wrote,
and the three big wicker chairs.
Beside the window the bed
where we made love so many times.

They must still be around somewhere, those old things.

Beside the window the bed;
the afternoon sun used to touch half of it.

. . . One afternoon at four o’clock we separated
for a week only. . . And then—
that week became forever.


Translated By Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

Herman Hesse

"If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us."  

-Herman Hesse

Rare Anne Sexton Clips

The drama, the madness, and the genius of Anne Sexton...

If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda

I want you to know

one thing.

You know how this is:

if I look

at the crystal moon, at the red branch

of the slow autumn at my window,

if I touch

near the fire

the impalpable ash

or the wrinkled body of the log,

everything carries me to you,

as if everything that exists,

aromas, light, metals,

were little boats

that sail

toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,

if little by little you stop loving me

I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly

you forget me

do not look for me,

for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,

the wind of banners

that passes through my life,

and you decide

to leave me at the shore

of the heart where I have roots,

remember

that on that day,

at that hour,

I shall lift my arms

and my roots will set off

to seek another land.

But

if each day,

each hour,

you feel that you are destined for me

with implacable sweetness,

if each day a flower

climbs up to your lips to seek me,

ah my love, ah my own,

in me all that fire is repeated,

in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,

my love feeds on your love, beloved,

and as long as you live it will be in your arms

without leaving mine.

Translated by Donald S. Walsh

Milan Kundera

"All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual."  -Milan Kundera

An Amazing Recipe

My mother-in-law made this dish for John and I at Christmas, and we both fell madly in love with it. I prepared it the other night, and not only is it one of the best meals ever, but it's insanely simple. If you're a curry fan, give this one a shot; you won't be disappointed. Also, don't skip the fennel seeds -- they are the secret to the Awesome.

Curried Carrots & Lentils

1/2 cup dried red lentils 

1 1/2 cups water 

3 carrots, cut into 2 inch pieces 

1/2 cup chopped onion 

1/4 cup golden raisins 

2 tablespoons olive oil 

1 teaspoon salt 

3/4 teaspoon curry powder 

1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds 

black pepper, to taste 

1. Combine the lentils and 1/2 cup of the water in a 2-quart microwave-safe casserole. Cover, and cook at full power for 5 minutes. (If the water foams and spills over, which mine did, replace it with 1 or 2 tablespoons more water.)

2. Stir in the carrots and another 1/2 cup of the water. Cover, and cook 5 minutes.

3. Stir in the remaining 1/2 cup water and all the other ingredients. Cover, and cook 5 minutes.

4. Serve immediately.

*Note that cooking times will vary with the power of your microwave. Mine took considerably longer than the recipe states; on the last cook (step 3), I had to microwave it for 15 minutes total, checking it every 5 minutes and giving it a little stir. So just keep an eye on it. Trust me, it's worth the vigilance.

Source: New Basics Cookbook

Archaic Torso of Apollo by Rainer Maria Rilke

We cannot know his legendary head

with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso

is still suffused with brilliance from inside,

like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise

that curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could

a smile run through the placid hips and thighs

to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced

beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders

and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,

burst like a star: for here there is no place

that does not see you. You must change your life.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Program...

So I know I said I was going to take some time off from blogging, but I've changed my mind. I'm going to continue with a slightly altered approach and just focus on the little items that stick in my mind. Pretty pictures. Good poetry. Amazing quotes. Maybe a commentary or two.

In short, all the things that comprise this monkey mind.