Moving Water, Rumi

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river
moving in you, a joy.

When actions come from another section, the feeling
disappears.

Don't let others lead you. They may be blind or, worse, vultures.

Reach for the rope of God. And what is that? Putting aside self-will.

Because of willfulness people sit in jail, the trapped bird's wings are tied,
fish sizzle in the skillet.

The anger of police is willfulness. You've seen a magistrate
inflict visible punishment.

Now see the invisible. If you could leave your selfishness, you
would see how you've been torturing your soul. We are born and live inside black water in a well.

How could we know what an open field of sunlight is?

Don't insist on going where you think you want to go. Ask the way to the spring. Your living pieces will form a harmony.

There is a moving palace that floats in the air with balconies and clear water flowing through, infinity everywhere, yet contained under a single tent.

  --  Rumi, Moving Water

Negotiations, by Rae Armantrout

      1

The best part
is when we’re tired
of it all
in the same degree,

a fatigue we imagine
to be temporary,
and we lie near each other,
toes touching.

What’s done is done,
we don’t say,
to begin our transaction,

each letting go of something
without really
bringing it to mind

until we’re lighter,
sicker,
older

and a current
runs between us
where our toes touch.

It feels unconditional.

      2

Remember this, we don’t say:

The Little Mermaid
was able to absorb
her tail,

refashion it
to form legs.

This meant that
everything’s negotiable

and that everything is played out
in advance

in secret.

  -- Rae Armantrout, Negotiations

The Burial of the Dead, from The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
        Frisch weht der Wind
        Der Heimat zu,
        Mein Irisch Kind,
        Wo weilest du?
“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
They called me the hyacinth girl.”
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Öd’ und leer das Meer.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying “Stetson!
You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”

  -- T.S. Eliot, from The Waste Land

Excerpts from Girl in a Band, Kim Gordon

"People pay money to see others believe in themselves." Meaning, the higher the chance you can fall down in public, the more value the culture places on what you do.

...

I've always felt there's something genetically instilled and inbred in Californians -- that California is a place of death, a place people are drawn to because they don't realize deep down they're actually afraid of what they want. It's new, and they're escaping their histories while at the same time moving headlong toward their own extinctions. Desire and death are all mixed up with the thrill and the risk of the unknown. It's a variation of what Freud called the "death instinct."

...

...I've always believed -- still do -- that the radical is far more interesting when it looks benign and ordinary on the outside.

...

The most heightened state of being female is watching people watch you.... Loud dissonance and blurred melody create their own ambiguity -- are we really that violent? -- a context that allows me to be anonymous. For many purposes, being obsessed with boys playing guitars, being as ordinary as possible, being a girl bass player is ideal, because the swirl of Sonic Youth music makes me forget about being a girl. I like being in a weak position and making it strong.
  -- Kim Gordon, Girl in a Band

Poem Not Written in Catalan by Eric Gamalinda

Of all the things that are not eternal
I deny the patience of water, the divinity of salt, and the
persistence of the spider

I would like to write a suicide note in three and a half languages
and travel south on a Thursday towards
some form of life outside of earth

And although people will think I'm no longer there
I will live in geodesic domes
and count only in numbers below zero

Sometimes when I walk past trees in the city I hear them denying me
Normally this doesn't bother me but today
I'm not going to take any conspiracies

I deny bodies of water smaller than the Great Lakes
I deny any planet larger than America

I deny the fact that when I kill time, time is actually killing me
I am air, light, sound, all of which I deny
I deny the Buddha, I do not deny the Buddha

An exact copy of my life is being lived three million light years
away
If there's a way to prove it
If mathematics were the only religion

We are passing an era of turbulence
make sure your seats are in the uptight position

"When we come close to another a certain light ignites"

Love like an arsonist
steals into my life and burns down all my tenements

(In a court of law, love will deny me
and I can't prove a thing)

  -- Eric Gamalinda, "Poem Not Written in Catalan"

sexy balaclava, Daphne Gottleib

I tried to rent the movie
about the protest,
but the store didn't have it.
In the film, the underdog wins.
That's how you know
it's a movie.
They are passing a law here
to keep people from sitting
on the sidewalk. Poverty
is still a crime in America
and I am looking more and more
criminal, by which I mean
broke, by which
I mean beautiful.
Holy. Revolution
is not pretty,
but it can be
beautiful, I'm told.
The protest was dull.
There was no tear gas
and there were no riot cops.
Nothing got broken
and nothing got gassed
and nothing got smashed.
There was no blood
and the world was not saved
so we went to the movies.
In the film,
people kissed
at the end.
The underdog won.
That's how we knew
it was a movie,
a pretty lie.
Revolution
is not pretty
but I don't care
about looks.
Set the dumpster
on fire. Break
the windows.
Don't kiss me
like they do
in the movies.
Kiss me
like they do
on the emergency
broadcast news.

  -- Daphne Gottleib,  "sexy balaclava"

"In Defense of Marriage" by Stephen S. Mills

There's no security in two men together,

no guaranteed payment, no signatures,
no witnesses besides the lady next door
who suspects our apartment is a one bed-

room like hers. We buy a dog for insurance,
have one bank account, and our initials
carved in the back of the TV stand: S hearts D
and D hearts S. I insisted it be mutual.

Tonight we fight, slam doors on each other
in our best imitation of love. I drive our car
in circles, discovering I am my father.
Your parents hope I won't return

and you'll settle for an Indiana girl
with big hips, low self-esteem,
maybe even children, but this isn't 1945
and you didn't just step off a boat fighting

a war people actually believed in, and I
was never your secret cabin boy,
all stars and stripes. In the morning we'll fuck
without condoms, and hold each other in spoons,

believing that security is the possibility of disease.

  -- Stephen S. Mills, "In Defense of Marriage"