Antony and the Johnsons, Fistful of Love, beginning narration by Lou Reed.
We don’t let vultures at the dead/ We bury our bodies/ And with the burial/ acknowledgement of our knowing perfectly well/ That it is in our nature/ To cover lukewarm flesh/ to let bones be// Which is how I know/ That we are the kind/ Who can still breathe in an otherwise suffocating kiss/ Can survive a game of hide and seek with sleep, or dreams, rather// And this is why I believe/ we can truly understand/ Just what it means / To destroy an Olive Tree
Innate Morality
He’s been taught very well how to say “Goodbye”// But see how he crushes petals/ To achieve the dusts for his picture// Red as your mouth tasted when you used to lose teeth/ Just as metal, and as warm/ Blue/ With the runny ink of your eyes when the jellyfish stung/ Blue, more/ Of veins that protrude like roadmaps on your hands/ Greens, of bruises from mouths that kissed to hard/ Pinks from affections too soft/ Purples of organs discarded and ugly on hospital tables/ Oranges of decay and stained teeth/ And suddenly,/ Yellow/ From the stars you wrongfully thought were pointed, perfect/ And truthfully golden// Almost finished, the monk gathers breath in his colorless lungs/ And blows the image off the page// Now, complete/ His picture is a beautiful thing// The monk knows very well how to say/ “Hello”
They Say the Monk is Out of Touch
Poem 1: I flicked my cigarette butt//It killed a bee Poem 2: People who smoke//Don’t whistle
Tiny Poem Concert
I think it was because remembering what your bathroom doorknob looked like is important. And how the spices were not arranged, or the exact latitude/longitude of where your shoes fell the one night where the night kind of mattered The precise measurements of your scar before it shrunk and the details of the dents on the oven door and of the marking on the walls I used to touch everything. The backside of an abandoned basement refridgerator. The furthest point of a deep closet’s corner. I’d run back if I remebered a lonely-looking chair that needed to be pressed by my small finger This affirmation of or gratitude towards the inanimate hard things that subtly touched life back just by virtue of their third dimension was strange, no doubt, but I was constantly overcome with the desire to not ignore anything…
In Response to Ai Weiwei: New York Photographs 1983–1993
We walk bent/ Gazing down at the ground/ But not because we are searching for leftover needles// This walk is the unique sorrow of the elderly/ Who seem mindless/ Like stones// On our hunched shoulders/ sits the knowledge of,/ “Even rings on our fingers we will have to leave behind!”// In our tired mouths/ Waits silence/ Quiet as weeds torn from the ground
Parting
Tongue heavy/ Night thick, with history/ In any case, I have wept// Too bright for rest/ Too dark to read/ There is only linguistic poverty// Suddenly, there is the myrtle man/ Two bunches of myrtle/ “One is for ‘remember’ and one is for ‘keep’”
Shamor ve Zachor
On another note. Jasmine Mans, long live English majors.
See this week’s New Yorker featuring LC’s poem, “Going Home”, set to music on his newest album, Old Ideas which comes out on the 31st of this month. If you’ve heard “Show Me the Place” (released on his websitewww.leonardcohen.com, the best damn site on the internet), and “Darkness”, it is hard not to put the three together and feel you are walking down a long aisle where something that is still, awaits. Inevitably, because it is coming from me, the aisle leads to Shabbat. Not necessarily the one that comes at the end of the week, but the one that comes at any time you accidentally stumble upon something that leaves you feeling naked by choice.
To me, it feels like this: When I didn’t have to give in to anything, when the thing that was about to overcome me was so massive I didn’t think for a second that the absence of sunlight was anything but a short blanketing by clouds. The elevation into something that feels better confronts me, shocks me, and suddenly I am left feeling that me, with my stupid dangling limbs, blabbering lips, am worth my battles, and it is fucking awesome that I am in one piece, thinking, touching.
Acknowledging of this place where we both see better and can’t see at all comes shattering upon us with a bitter acceptance of this moment’s sweetness, and helping us to remember it. This album promises to take us to where for ten tracks we are utterly suffocated by the thick hold of the above-described command. For several years now, I haven’t been able to get Leonard Cohen to loosen his grip on my wrist, my throat. This album is a a new lease on my chained servitude. Leonard Cohen, how I love you.
I’m clearly nothing like Humbert Humbert. I would never have confused Hummingbirds and Hobknobs (?)
This is my mom..
Chopin, sea of sighs, of tears, of sobs By Marcel Proust
That a flight of butterflies crosses without posing
Playing above sadness or dancing on the waves.
Dream, love, suffer, scream, charm or lull,
You are always jogging between every pain
The dizzy and soft oblivion of your whim
Like butterflies flying flower to flower;
From your grief then your joy is abettor:
The whirlwind’s ardor deluding the sobs’ thirst.
Sweet comrade of the pale moon and the rain,
Prince of despair or betrayed high lord,
You excite yourself still, most beautiful pale being,
The sun flooding your sickroom
That cries for your smile and suffers from the sight.
Smile of regret and tears of Hope!
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