On the Rooftops of Iran

by Affonso Romano de Sant'Anna
translated from the Portuguese by Lloyd Schwartz, with Rogério Zola Santiago

Over the starlit rooftops, in Iran,
echoes the agonized voice
of those who only want
to say something.

Not the litany of the muezzins
and their monotonous prayers,

asking no questions, insisting on the same answers.

It's the green song tearing
off the black cloth of the ayatollahs
as if from high above the houses
it would be possible to anticipate
the birth of light
that bloodies the dawn.

By Victoria Chang

From Poetry Daily

Dear P., IV

Five seconds to open a parachute, one
that smells like terror. I am a river and
you a body. When your body fell into
the river, you informed it, ignored it.
I handled you as a half-masted plank or
wooden vessel. When I received you, it was
night. The constellations broke their
vertebrae arching to see you. I stumbled
over myself to key you into my folds, river
of error, river of dirty whiteness. Now I know.
If I press hard enough on my eyeballs, I see
geometric shapes and stars. My love for you
is something like this. It is there like
the stars but nothing I can grab or free.

Dear P., XIII

Someone says it is difficult to write poems
that are both domestic and ambitious. If
your small round head is my earth, if I have
concerns only for the internal affairs of your
body, then how am I too not mining waves
of concentric circles outward? Our home has
more than four sides. There are wars in rooms,
furniture in formation. If I am your domestic
servant, why is it assumed we are domestic?
That we are small and petty, that we are
controllable, unwild. You betray me over and
over. I play you and prey on you. This is not
domestic. There is no plaid sofa here, no
salad plate, no bingo hall, just falling bodies.

Victoria Chang

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

Just so no one thinks I forgot about this place. Enjoy

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

tba

While I still may not have anything to say, I do have a lot of stuff to show. My college semester has begun so my lax updates will be even.....laxer. Doesn't mean I'll abandon this blog. It just means I'll be busier.

As another tribute to Senator Kennedy, here is an article done about him and his love of poetry. He was reading for The Academy of American Poets at Poetry & the Creative Mind, which is an annual fundraising benefit for the Academy of American Poets in 2004. The transcript of here can be found here.

Below is one of the poems senator Kennedy speaks fondly of. Its called "The gift outright" by Robert Frost.

~ The Gift Outright ~

The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia.
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak.
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

~ Robert Frost; 1874-1963 ~

Presenting Nero's haikus

I decided to start a project that involves the online social phenomenon twitter. For those who don’t know, twitter is a micro blogging service that allows users to send “tweets” that are no more than 140 characters. The only rule of this project will follow the only rule of twitter, which is to fit everything into 140 characters or less. I choose the form of haiku because they’re the easiest form of poems to fit into a twitter message, and thus follow the one hundred forty rule this project is based on.

In the future I would like to have everything cataloged and eventually published. I don’t know how many tweets could fill a book, but for now I’m only focusing on the writing part of the project.

I don't know if anyone else has done this already (I don't think I'm the only one who's doing this), but in the future I would like to collaborate with other twitter poets and have some sort of publication released based on this. Of course assuming that this is as widespread that I think it is.

Note: While the project is titled “Nero's haiku,” not all of these poems are true haiku's or haiku's at all. Some of the “haiku” are missing a syllable or has a syllable too many, and some are just based off the idea of a haiku. Also, the plural for "haiku" is actually "haiku." If it sounds weird blame the Japanese.

Here is where the project is: http://twitter.com/nero86
If anyone wants to subscribe please feel free to do so.

These are some extra haiku's Ive been working with. Mind you, this is all just for fun, so don't get offended by them. And again, not all of these are text book haiku's.

If I could write one thing
It would be a tale no one has heard of
It would be about me.

The noise of TV
Drowns out my thoughts
I don’t feel like turning it off.
I just turned it down.

An epic poem
Want to write a sestina
Because I’m so bored

Haikus about nothing
On electronic ink
Inspired by Jack Kerouac

A self indulgent
Anti altruistic man
Sits in his bedroom

And make you read it
For you are his twitter
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha

Oh, and the current listen can be found on Yu0tube: Jet-Look What You've done

A dedication to Elliot Smith.....

.....Happy Birthday.

The sound of a strange parallel emanates,
from the basement in the hill.
As the tune of a blackbird lingers
in the collective mind within.

The waltz demands you the soul of an angel,
ignorant of the devils script,
while the heart of tangent beats,
with the candle that flickers in twilight.

Stupidity tries to hold you down,
but your distorted reality shows the way.
As guilt disappears between the bars,
you find some beautiful place to get lost

A fond farewell greets the last hymn,
played to the tune of figure 8.
The virgin in white disappears into that good night,
and your song rises with a New Moon.

Some sports photos and a poem

Note: This was suppose to be published last night, but a late assignment for my internship precluded that from happening.

The Spring Campaigns

Other men remember the false gardens
of love, and the days they were in love
or thought they were in love, and others
the books they read as children, books that marked
their lives forever, though they couldn't know
in those days how the real world operates.
And all of them take comfort in this way
and even grow enthusiastic when
they realize that memory can shape
itself at will and provide the things
that love and books and gardens can't provide.
I remember what I didn't undertake:
more than anything, the spring campaigns.

Julio Martínez Mesanza

All from a recent SI Yankees/Cyclones game.
Note: For legal purposes these pictures may not be reuse or redistributed UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE. If I find them anywhere else on the internet without my permission I will sue! Only me, the Yankees franchise and the Mets franchise have rights to these photos.

More here....

The Damned, from Poetry Daily

Kitten curious, or roaring down drinks
in Soho sumps, small hours tour buses,
satellite station green rooms, or conked

out in the bathtubs of motorway hotels,
there you were, with muckabout kisses,
sharking for the snappers, before hell

opened up for you and the weepy sores
of after-fame appeared, the haphazardry
and dwindling after three limelit years,

recognised with catcalls, wads of spit,
a nightclub fist, the scant camaraderie
melts fast, like your flat on Air Street,

the lhasa apso pups, the wraps and lines
of chang, the poster pull-outs, spray tan
smiles. It's paunch and palimony time

on Lucifer's leash. But for a madcap few
who cling, thin soup, one pillow Britain
is simmering with hatred, just for you.

Roddy Lumsden

Poetry Daily

Nondenominational Update

The Isley Brothers-Ohio/Machine Gun

Also, the first published poem of mine for the summer. Called "Ode to Madness." Naturally I have to post the entire poem in another place. Why? For money of course. Either way, support the slacker and enjoy the poem.

The piercing sound fades into the abyss,
where the cul-de-sac of an illusion
Meets the transepts of life.....

More Here