the necropolis sprawls across the desert -- desolate... to us
Necropolis [Haiku]
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Category Archives: Death
Bardo Mind [Free Verse]
lost in a disembodied Bardo state fantastical happenings mainlined into consciousness with a side of swirling phantasm and all the angry demons and all the faceless gods churn around the periphery
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The War Mangled [Free Verse]
I heard the dead children, their voices lilting on the wind. The war-torn twice born came crawling in under the wire, bloody and shell-shocked, but among the living, but the rest floated away: their words becoming both milder & more raucous, never fully drowned out by bombs or crossfire chaos.
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Suicide Slide [Free Verse]
One burning moment -- taffy-stretched to the edge of reason: stretched so broadly that one can't fathom escape - like Monkey on the Buddha's palm One burning idea -- cloned, and then carved to make infinite variants, and painted infinite shades: the dark tone of each darker than the last Burning ideas populating the vast expanse of a burning moment, until the urge to escape insists that one carve a hatch into living tissue But what is it that does the stretching of the burning moment & the cloning of the burning idea? Can't that stretcher and cloner be wound back, scaling all to proper proportions? And can't it be done before that terminal instant is carved in jagged stone?
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Midnight Circus [Free Verse]
The Midnight Circus was not as it seemed. It was bright colors: motion-blurred. It was the tinny monotony of music box-style tinkling tunes & organ tones. One could even make out the scent of fried foods and cotton candy, among the many other [uncircus-like] odors. But there was also the story a mind wrote to dance sensory facts into sensory fictions; that was where the falsity lie. If one opened one's eyes, letting them focus: there'd be sparking wires, & flames licking ever closer. The shrill organ tones would become screams. The summer night's humid heat would become third degree burns. The circus smells would become dust and death and acrid burnt combustibles. So, he didn't open his eyes to war or his impending demise, but let his mind march into that big musty, canvas tent, surrendering to its irreality.
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DAILY PHOTO: Mausoleums, Atlanta
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Cemetery Walk [Free Verse]
And in the end, the dead are still and the graveyard's quiet is not so bad. The monuments weather; in due time, letters become less crisp & dates become debatable. A clean read means there maybe someone left to mourn. And fresh flowers mean that someone has tracked their melancholy through the place, and the air feels heavier, and my mind feels heavier. And I read names: familiar & not, popular & not. I read names to distract me from thoughts of my own dead -- to avoid tracking my own melancholy through the place. For, you see, I've brought no flowers.
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Jacob’s Ladder [Free Verse]
I'm dripping into midnight -- my world has disappeared. My eyes crack to light and life, but I forgot to hear -- remembering, the silence is broken & I hear a rhythmic clack. But I can't help but wonder, where it is that I'm at? I'm at the bottom of a wooden staircase, too steep to be sound, looking up until perspective makes the case vanishingly thin. Should I climb the staircase? What else can I do? Will I wake half way up, and find myself in the blue? The laws of dreams force my hand, I can't stand paralyzed, and I'm halfway to infinity by means that I know not. And I'm thinking of the line from that children's prayer: "If I should die before I 'wake," and I think: "What the hell is wrong with parents?" that's the thought upon which you're going to leave with your child to "go to sleep?" And you're wondering why the kid is up all night? Because dying in one's sleep doesn't start to seem like a fine prospect until one is an octogenarian. And so I sleep...
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Quick to Dead [Couplets]
I gasp in my last minute living loud, I'd dreamt of being carried on a cloud. But, My body 's too heavy, my mind too light, and nothing remains once I'm failed by sight. Just a pile of death stacked before the door, as carrion feeders squawk out for more. In eternal darkness, that endless void, I was once created, & now once destroyed.
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BOOK REVIEW: Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke [Trans. Vita & Edward Sackville-West]
Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria RilkeMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
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Out: February 22, 2022 [In some markets it may be out already.]
This is a reissue of the original English translation of Rilke’s elegies composed on the karst cliffs of northeast Italy in the early 1920’s. The book consists of ten medium-length, angel-laden elegiac poems. [Yes, dude was just that into angels.] The translator’s notes are posted as an epilogue and the volume has a new preface. It should be noted that the translators suggest one think of it as one long elegy in ten parts.
I’m far from qualified to comment on the skill of translation from the perspective of how well it catches the meaning and nuance of the original poems. However, the Sackville-Wests’ words are evocative and impactful in their own right, and I enjoyed and was moved by this collection of poems. [In their notes, the translators say they decided it was most productive to try to artfully paraphrase rather than getting too caught up in strict literal translation.] I’d highly recommend this book for poetry readers.
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the !n(tro)verted yogi 