Friday, February 27, 2015

Goodbye Mr. Spock

Leonard Nimoy died today at 83.
Although he was a writer, director, photographer, and poet- he will always be known as Spock.
He will be missed.

To all my fellow Trekkies: Dif-tor heh smusma.

Saturday, February 21, 2015

Sometimes I Forget Completely

Sometimes I forget Completely
what companionship is.
Unconscious and insane, I spill sad
energy everywhere. My story
gets told in various ways: a romance,
a dirty joke, a war, a vacancy.


Divide up my forgetfulness to any number,
it will go around.
These dark suggestions that I follow,
are they part of some plan?
Friends, be careful. Don't come near me
out of curiosity, or sympathy.


Rumi
The Essential Rumi Translations by Coleman Barks with John Moyne


To E. wherever you are. An explanation, and apology, of sorts.


The Solitary Person

Among so many people cozy in their homes,
I am like a man who explores far-off oceans.
Days with full stomachs stand on their tables;
I see a distant land full of images.


I sense another world close to me,
perhaps no more lived in than the moon;
they, however, never let a feeling alone,
and all the words they use are so worn.


The living things I brought back with me
hardly peep out, compared with all they own.
In their native country they were wild;
here they hold their breath from shame.


Rainer Maria Rilke
from Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke Robert Bly translator, editor


I don't know if there is a better description of the artist's place in society. Solitary.

Thursday, February 19, 2015

The Lake Isle Of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.


And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.


I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.


William Butler Yeats