SAPPHO’S FLIGHT
(a cheeky chant for zombies)
Nobody uses the stropha Sapphica any more,
not even Jacek Dehnel or Różycki,
why do they choose sonnets, when the Sapphic
stanza is sexy?
Top hat, bowler, have more grace?
A pointless hard-on, needless fart and cock in hand
belonging to a dull classicist in the 20th century
and the first, if you like.
Sooner the avant-garde will retrieve the crushed
remains of Sappho from her resting rocks,
dear artistes! Dress the bells,
perhaps you’ll get it up!
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RECORD
I dream of the city and of friends considering
suicide. And my grandmother, in good
shape, centuries younger, saying
she’s moving in with me. (Do I have somewhere
to move out to?). And I’m haunted by the dead,
who I would never dream of doing such things.
They have no answers, but they do know
that soon I will be asking for trouble. For if tenses,
past and future, don’t exist, then I keep sinning
in the same body and spirit. Read the rest of this entry »
A MAGIC TRICK
for Marek Sz.
with that sorry shorter leg of his
so proud of himself,
when he made the jump
he shouted: look, a magic trick!
and then it was necessary to
move into the copper cauldron,
hey, let’s pretend it’s washday!
hide! a magic trick
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NUSCH
Your eyes, in which I journey away
Paul Éluard
Nusch,
who, if not you,
not sight of you,
will let me understand
that the greatest happiness is happiness in the midst of misery?
Who do you think I think of along the streets, in offices, schools
among the pompous, the plain, the unavailable?
Of who in hospital,
among the broken, the sick, the humbled,
where time flowed like tears of piss
into the catheter?
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CRACKS
Silence. The focus was to be sharp, but the boys ran out of shot.
Waging wars against milk and cats, late already.
Let them be, the set empty but for knives and trainers tossed in the grass.
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PLASTIC TOYS
It’s winter 1988. The first time I’m home alone
and scared of answering the phone. The model Spitfire
is still drying, its badly set undercarriage
doing the sideways splits. Outside the window, a snowy monument
– night, the lady of both tides. The silence
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With Down
The Western wind stroked
the horizon, our village suddenly Siberian.
Wires moaning, hair stiffening, extinguished.
I only hope I don’t go the way of the neighbour’s veiltail,
which dissolved in its icy bowl
like a speck of bubbling aspirin.
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SPARROW
Catullus loved you, shameless bird,
You were his lady’s pet.
You heard her dainty breathing, perched
Beside her when she slept;
Catullus
That Catallus sparrow grew into a right little shit.
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LULLABY
“be still be calm be quiet now my precious boy
don’t struggle like that or I will only love you more”
the light bulb like a giant sac
swelling for ages has
broken and spilled all over the walls
its impossibly yellow innards
all is sticky with ease
draws in and unsettles
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Thursday 4 March, 6-9pm
Ben Pimlot Lecture Theatre
Goldsmiths, University of London
Lewisham Way, New Cross,
London SE14 6NW
The book Bombing of Poems over Warsaw documents a public intervention during which 80 poems by contemporary Polish and Chilean poets were dropped from a helicopter over the Castle Square and The Old Town.
Warsaw is the fourth city after Santiago de Chile, Dubrovnik and Guernica where The Bombing of Poems has taken place. Professor John Hutnyk and Cristóbal Bianchi on behalf of Casagrande will introduce the book. The event will also feature the screening of a film documenting the intervention in Warsaw.
Drinks will be served.
NOW THE OLD TIMES
And so, what you really want to tell me
is that I am now the old times. Yes,
the present does not correspond to the past,
or, what’s worse, does not let itself be invited
for coffee and cultured conversation.
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ON TELLING THE TRUTH
Motto:
“Don’t hold it against me, for I must tell the truth about the dead even,
to make the living fall in love with the real dead…”
Juliusz Slowacki, Letter to mother, Paris 1845
1
I don’t know who told him to stand
and wait, holding a swath of red and a brush of rabbit fur
[rabbi forgive, I will wipe your face clean].
certainly not he, who was here before me and dug in the rain.
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She is saying less and less
you said: “the winter is drawing in, give me your coat, it can be
the leather one, i’ll return it someday, when the thaws come. now give
me your hand and i will lead you to the land of the graves. all covered
in autumn leaves although each is saying something, listen to this” – and i listen Read the rest of this entry »
A Varsovian etching
along the Barbican as if knight-errants
we seek glimpses of bygone
men in bowler hats
ladies with umbrellas telling of trends
in the fashion house on Freta
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THE END TASTE OF STRAWBERRIES
“You have endless ways you can commit suicide without ‘dying’ dying.”
Chuck Palahniuk, Diary
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In sex do you seek form or content?
For P.O.
It’s salty and bitter, everything sticky
like Post-its of the subconscious, I was here,
my club is to score 4 x one more
goal. It is reached from within, softening
the essence. The final whistle, then trams
besieged with hands, no scheduled stops,
this is no Way of the Cross, no one here will put a finger
inside your wound.
And as the drama begins, who will cover
the rest? No small change, only big
fish, this is post-
modernism after all – technologies and theories, requiring
zero thought? Are you not satisfied with
the route from the stadium home,
back to where you live? Your preferences are for stripped
staircases, dungeons, your sense of balance disturbed yet again?
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Frankfurt, Flughafen
I
The restaurant is rather empty. The blank tables, their very centres, set with salt and pepper. White Chinese women, with the air of porcelain dolls, help themselves to heaped plates of colourful food from the buffet.
II
White sausage-shaped planes are laid out in even rows, each one labelled with a brightly coloured rudder. Those waiting in the departure lounge from time to time cast hungry looks their way.
Poems
The writing of a poem is the shielding of uttered words (words with simple meanings) with additional dependencies: phonetic links, semantic relativities, visual connections – we protect them, make access more difficult, in the understanding that we are no longer in Eden, and therefore words should not go naked either. Not to write poetry means: to behave as if one were still in Eden.
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Christopher Reid wins Costa book prize and picks up £30,000 prize
and huge increase in readership for A Scattering –
which has sold less than 1,000 copies
courtesy of The Guardian
Suicide Song
call me, we’ll talk
Wisława Szymborska
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