Remember, remember the Fifth of November...

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, 'twas his intent
To blow up the King and Parli'ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England's overthrow;
By God's providence [or By God's mercy] he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Hulloa boys, Hulloa boys, let the bells ring.
Hulloa boys, hulloa boys, God save the King!

There is also a second verse, though it may not be considered politically correct, that completes the poem which is:

A penny loaf to feed the Pope.
A farthing o' cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A faggot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head.
Then we'll say ol' Pope is dead.
Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah!


Happy Guy Fawkes Night, where ever you are.

How To Be Alone.

This video was made to the poem, How to be Alone, by Tanya Davis (2009).

Lovely.

Fernando Pessoa - Before I Had You

One of Fernando Pessoa's masterful love poems, written by his persona Alberto Caeiro, recommended by my dear friend Ivanna.

Before I Had You

Before I had you
I loved Nature as a calm monk loves Christ.
Now I love Nature
As a calm monk loves the Virgin Mary,
Religiously (in my manner), like before,
But in a more heartfelt and intimate way.
I see the rivers better when I walk with you
Through the fields to the rivers' banks.
When I sit next to you and watch the clouds
I see them much more clearly.
You haven't taken Nature from me,
You haven't changed Nature.
You've brought Nature closer.
Because you exist I see it better, though the same as before.
Because you love me I love it in the same way, but more.
Because you chose me to have you and love you
My eyes gaze at it
More than at anything.

I don't regret what I was before,
For I am still what I was.
I only regret not having loved you before. 

What I'm Reading

A Glimpse of the Eternal

Just now,

a sparrow lighted

on a pine bough

right outside

my bedroom window

and a puff of yellow pollen

flew away.

After Years

Today, from a distance, I saw you

walking away, and without a sound

the glittering face of a glacier

slid into the sea. An ancient oak

fell in the Cumberlands, holding only

a handful of leaves, and an old woman

scattering corn to her chickens looked up

for an instant. At the other side

of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times

the size of our own sun exploded

and vanished, leaving a small green spot

on the astronomer's retina

as he stood in the great open dome

of my heart with no one to tell.

From the delightful collection of poetry by US Poet Laureate - Ted Kooser

徒然草 (Tsurezuregusa)

ふたつ文字
牛の角文字
直ぐな文字
歪み文字
とぞ君は覚ゆる

-- 徒然草　第六十二段 - 徒然草 (吉田兼好著・吾妻利秋訳)

The letter in two strokes,

The letter like an ox's horns,

The straight letter,

And the crooked letter too

All spell my love for you.

-- Princess Ensei (1229 - 1332)

Hugh MacDonald

"Likely though,
should we awake
we would find ourselves
ruefully alone
our passage spent
our vessels burned
longing still for
that other ending
lonely islands
whose yearning
loops the generations
locked in purblind
hearts and minds
thoughts and
dreams of thought
- nothing more."

--- "Lonely Island", from Cold Against The Heart

Ophélie

C’est que la voix des mers folles, immense râle,
Brisait ton sein d’enfant, trop humain et trop doux;
C’est qu’un matin d’avril, un beau cavalier pâle,
Un pauvre fou, s’assit muet à tes genoux!
Ciel! Amour! Liberté! Quel rêve, ô pauvre Folle!
Tu te fondais à lui comme une neige au feu:
Tes grandes visions étranglaient ta parole
––Et l’Infini terrible effara ton œil bleu!


––Et le Poète dit qu’aux rayons des étoiles
Tu viens chercher, la nuit, les fleurs que tu cueillis,
Et qu’il a vu sur l’eau, couchée en ses longs voiles,
La blanche Ophélia flotter, comme un grand lys.




---- 'Ophélie', from ARTHUR RIMBAUD Collected Poems

The Brain to the Heart

Stars tied to breath

don't have to be there

when you look.

No more than drops

of blood on ginkgo

leaves & inconsequential

eggs & frog spittle

clinging to damp grass.

Sure, I've seen doubts

clustered like peacock

eyes flash green fire.

So what?

When days are strung together,

the hourglass fills

with worm's dirt.

What do you take

the brain for? I know

how hard you work

in that dark place, but

I can't be tied down

to shadows of men

in trenches you won't

forget. You look at

a mulberry leaf

like a silkworm does, with all your insides,

but please don't ask me to be responsible

-- Yusef Komunyakaa, Neon Vernacular

(click on cover to be directed to amazon page)

Maya Angelou.

Okay. This took me by surprise.



Right, the first thing that hits your lips when you think of Maya Angelou is that she’s “Miss Calypso.” In her early days, the prophet poetess was an oiled-up chanteuse in a slinky red dress back-bending under the limbo bar. This Liberty LP was recorded at The Keyboard club in Hollywood in 1956.

Angelou’s Afro-Cuban-Blues-Jazz songs included “Scandal In the Family”, “Mambo In Africa”, “Donkey City” and “Stone Cold Dead In The Market”, the first two of which she wrote herself, and which undoubtedly tweaked her mind to be able to turn out the voluminous amount of socially-significant material that later tweaked so much of American and world culture.

The Worst Celebrity Product Licenses of All Time, Part 2 | Monkey Goggles

Ode to Mix Tapes.

If someone wants to make a letterpress print of this in a really nice typeface, then give it away, I'll take it.

ODE TO MIX TAPES
by Sherman Alexie

These days, it's too easy to make mix tapes.
CD burners, iPods, and iTunes
Have taken the place
Of vinyl and cassette. And, soon
Enough, clever introverts will create
Quicker point-and-click ways to declare
One's love, lust, friendship, and favor.
But I miss the labor
Of making old school mix tapes-- the mid air

Acrobatics of recording one song
At a time. It sometimes took days
To play, choose, pause,
Ponder, record, replay, erase,
And replace. But there was no magic wand.
It was blue-collar work. A great mix tape
Was sculpture designed to seduce
And let the hounds loose.
A great mix tape was a three-chord parade

Led by the first song, something bold and brave,
A heat-seeker like Prince with "Cream,"
Or "Let's Get It on," by Marvin Gaye.
The next song was always Patsy Cline's "Sweet Dreams,"
or something by Hank. But O, the last track
Was the vessel that contained
The most devotion and pain
And made promises that you couldn't take back.


Art Beat | Weekly Poem: Ode to Mix Tapes | Online NewsHour | PBS

Photo credit: Erica Marshall of muddyboots.org (via flickr)

Billy Collins : Action Poetry

I'm a big fan of Billy Collins, so this site blows me away. Wow.


------ billy collins--action poetry ------

(via Chris Glass. Dude. You rock. This is SO good.)

Poetry & beautiful letterpress type.

The Nobel-prize winning poet Wislawa Szymborska's whimsical poem "Pi" juxtaposes the finite, impermanent world with the familiar never-ending 3.1415... This book's structure and typography echo the poem, juxtaposing the discrete stanzas with the numerical sequence, which starts on the cover and dances across the pages, oblivious to the words, continuing on the back cover, and finally slipping off the edge.

You can read the poem here: http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=9170

Etsy :: Pi (Letterpress Printed Artists Book)

(again, via Design*Sponge)

A little poem for Thursday.

RAIN

when nothing else is going on
rain is a big event but when some event
is happening
rain becomes background
some remember it, some don’t
years later, when everything’s in the past
the rain comes back to us once more
pattering as it falls
nothing happening

© 2007, Han Dong

Poem: Poetry International Web
Photo: 梅雨 on Flickr