The Lighthouse Coffee Shop

[danlo]

ULALUME: — A BALLAD, E. A. Poe
The skies were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere —
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year ;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir —
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul[[-]]haunted woodland of Weir.
Here once, through an alley Titanic,
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul —
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
There were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that roll —
As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole —
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole.

Our talk had been serious and sober,
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere —
Our memories were treacherous and sere —
For we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year —
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)
We noted not the dim lake of Auber —
(Though once we had journeyed down here) —
Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

And now, as the night was senescent
As star-dials pointed to morn —
And the star-dials hinted of morn —
At the end of our path a liquescent
And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
Arose with a duplicate horn —
Astarte's bediamonded crescent
Distinct with its duplicate horn.

And I said — "She is warmer than Dian :
She rolls through an ether of sighs —
She revels in a region of sighs :
She has seen that the tears are not dry on
These cheeks, where the worm never dies,
And has come past the stars of the Lion
To point us the path to the skies —
To the Lethean peace of the skies —
Come up, in despite of the Lion,
To shine on us with her bright eyes —
Come up through the lair of the Lion,
With Love in her luminous eyes."

But Psyche, uplifted her finger,
Said — "Sadly this star I mistrust —
Her pallor I strangely mistrust: —
Oh, hasten! — oh, let us not linger!
Oh, fly! — let us fly! — for we must."
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Plumes till they trailed in the dust —
In agony sobbed, letting sink her
Wings till they trailed in the dust —
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.

I replied — "This is nothing but dreaming :
Let us on by this tremulous light !
Let us bathe in this crystalline light !
Its Sybilic splendor is beaming
With Hope and in Beauty to-night: —
See! — it flickers up the sky through the night !
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,
And be sure it will lead us aright —
We safely may trust to a gleaming
That cannot but guide us aright,
Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
And tempted her out of her gloom —
And conquered her scruples and gloom ;
And we passed to the end of the vista,
But we stopped by the door of a tomb —
By the door of a legended tomb ;
And I said — "What is written, sweet sister,
On the door of this legended tomb?"
She replied — "Ulalume — Ulalume —
'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
As the leaves that were crisped and sere —
As the leaves that were withering and sere,
And I cried — "It was surely October
On this very night of last year
That I journeyed — I journeyed down here —
That I brought a dread burden down here —
On this night of all nights in the year,
Oh, what demon has tempted me here?
Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber —
This misty mid region of Weir —
Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,
This ghoul[[-]]haunted woodland of Weir."

[duchess of malfi]

Warning by Jenny Joseph


When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandles, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

[Avatar]

I've always loved that one. My GF says that's the way she's gonna be too.

--A

[duchess of malfi]

Follower
by Seamus Heaney

My father worked with a horse plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horses strained at his clicking tongue.

An expert. He would set the wing
And fit the bright-pointed sock.
The sod rolled over without breaking.
At the headrig, with a single pluck

Of reins, the sweating team turned round
And back into the land. His eye
Narrowed and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly.

I stumbled in his hobnailed wake,
Fell sometimes on the polished sod;
Sometimes he rode me on his back
Dipping and rising to his plod.

I wanted to grow up and plough,
To close one eye, stiffen my arm.
All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow around the farm.

I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always. But today
It is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away.

[duchess of malfi]

Adrienne Rich - Diving into the Wreck

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

[Worm of Despite]

The Planet On The Table, by Wallace Stevens

Ariel was glad he had written his poems.
They were of a remembered time
Or of something seen that he liked.

Other makings of the sun
Were waste and welter
And the ripe shrub writhed.

His self and the sun were one
And his poems, although makings of his self,
Were no less makings of the sun.

It was not important that they survive.
What mattered was that they should bear
Some lineament or character,

Some affluence, if only half-perceived,
In the poverty of their words,
Of the planet of which they were part.

The Snow Man, by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

[sgt.null]

good choices Foul. and here is one every New Hampshire kid learned in school.

Robert Frost: Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
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.

[lucimay]

Beauty and the Shoe Sluts

Mother kneels at her closet of dancing shoes
to see which ones I fit--sherbet green
taffeta and crimson crocodile, pumps

in Easter pink, plus a dozen black heels
with bows or aglisten with rhinestones,
all wicked run down. Likewise,

she's gnarled as a tree root, her spine's
warped her shorter than me, over whom
she once towered with red hair

brushed back into flame points.
Seeing her handle those scarred leather hides, I quote
the maenads' sad lament from The Bacchae.

After they've chased down
the fleeing god, fucked him dead, sucked
all flesh from his bones, dawn spills light

on their blood-sticky mouths,
and it's like every party you ever stayed
too late at. In chorus they sing and grieve:

"Will they come to me ever again,
the long, long dances?"
And Mother holding a black patent ankle strap

like a shackle on a spike heel
(it must have been teetering hell to wear) glances
sidewise from her cloudy hazel eyes and says "No,

praise God and menopause, they won't."

Mary Karr
from Viper Rum, 1998

[sgt.null]

Robert Frost

DUST OF SNOW
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

Fragmentary Blue

Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?

Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)--
Though some savants make earth include the sky;
And blue so far above us comes so high,
It only gives our wish for blue a whet.

[lucimay]

Rowing
(from The Awful Rowing Toward God)
Anne Sexton

A story, a story!
(Let it go. Let it come.)
I was stamped out like a Plymouth fender
into this world.
First came the crib
with its glacial bars.
Then dolls
and the devotion to their plastic mouths.
Then there was school,
the little straight rows of chairs,
blotting my name over and over,
but undersea all the time,
a stranger whose elbows wouldn't work.
Then there was life
with its cruel houses
and people who seldom touched-
though touch is all-
but I grew,
like a pig in a trenchcoat I grew,
and then there were many strange apparitions,
the nagging rain, the sun turning into poison
and all of that, saws working through my heart,
but I grew, I grew,
and God was there like an island I had not rowed to,
still ignorant of Him, my arms, and my legs worked,
and I grew, I grew,
I wore rubies and bought tomatoes
and now, in my middle age,
about nineteen in the head I'd say,
I am rowing, I am rowing
though the oarlocks stick and are rusty
and the sea blinks and rolls
like a worried eyeball,
but I am rowing, I am rowing,
though the wind pushes me back
and I know that that island will not be perfect,
it will have the flaws of life,
the absurdities of the dinner table,
but there will be a door
and I will open it
and I will get rid of the rat inside me,
the gnawing pestilential rat.
God will take it with his two hands
and embrace it.

As the African says:
This is my tale which I have told,
if it be sweet, if it be not sweet,
take somewhere else and let some return to me.
This story ends with me still rowing.

[Dervorin]

Her window looks upon the lane.
From it, anonymous and shy,
Twice daily she can see him plain,
Wheeling heroic by.
She droops her cheek against the pane
And gives a little sigh.

Above him maples at their bloom
shake April pollen down like stars
while those whistling past her room
to word unimagined wars,
tennis Pfizer for his bloom,
scornful handlebars.

And, counting over in the mine
this favours, clean light windfall fruit
(a morning when he spoke a kind,
and after-school salute,
a number that she had confined,
one destroys little room),

Sadly she twists a stubby raid
and closer to the Casement leans-
a wistful and Lily made
in mocassins and jeans,
despairing from the seventh grade
to match his lordly teens.

And so she grieves in Astolat
(where other girls have believed grieved the same)
for being year-round and therefore not
sufficient to his fame-
who will by summer and forgot
three grief, April, and his name.

- Phyllis McGinley

[Dervorin]

Since I've been in love with this poem ever since I read it...

Spring and Fall - to a young child.

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no, nor mind expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

- Gerald Manley Hopkins

[Worm of Despite]

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through -

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum -
Kept beating - beating - till I thought
My mind was going numb -

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space - began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here -

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then -

-- Emily Dickinson

[sgt.null]

Unlike, For Example, The Sound Of A Riptooth Saw

gnawing through a shinbone, a high howl
inside of which a bloody, slashed-by-growls note
is heard, unlike that
sound, and instead, its opposite: a barely sounded
sound (put your nuclear ears
on for it, your giant hearing horn, its cornucopia mouth
wide) -- a slippery whoosh of rain
sliding down a mirror
leaned against a windfallen tree stump, the sound
a child's head makes
falling against his mother's breast,
or the sound, from a mile away, as the town undertaker
lets Grammy's wrist
slip from his grip
and fall to the shiny table. And, if you turn
your head just right
and open all your ears,
you might hear
this finest sound, this lost sound: a plow's silvery prow
cleaving the earth (your finger
dragging through milk, a razor
cutting silk) like a clipper ship cuts the sea.
If you do hear this sound,
then follow it with your ear and also your eye
as it and the tractor that pulls it
disappear over a hill
until it is no sound at all,
until it comes back over the hill again,
again dragging its furrow,
its ground-rhythm, its wide open throat, behind it.

Thomas Lux

[lucimay]

nice pieces, one and all! from the McGinley all the way through the Lux!! great choices guys!!!


The Worm-Farmer's Lament

If you git work, write,
That's what they shouted after your great
and no-so great whomevers,
who trudged away down wagon ruts walking
so as not to piss off the mule, away
from Bumfuck, Georgia, Flathead, Tennessee,
the iron skillets strapped to their backs
receding into dots on the map,
while those remaining took up
pickaxes or lit candles
over their foreheads then descended
to various infernos.
The travelers had it no better:
bandits slit their throats; their oxen
fell sick and slobbered; their babies' faces
were masked in lengths of calico
they'd crimped to buy.

And still, they bore it,
being washed forward like so much
gorgeous debris, ferried by will
and the dumb hope that by grunting up
the next hill, one could reach a clearing
gold with sunflowers and there
burdens could be unstrapped, boots
unlaced, and everyone could sink
knee-deep in a humming splendor.

That's wrong, of course.
History proves it.
Once you reach the final point
of all those roads cut by granite-faced
ancestors and even your own
forgettable efforts, then the spirit
is so stalled by arrival
that the long grasses become a cage,
the long fields blank

linoleum in a gleaming kitchen,
where you wonder how the chairs stand
so empty, and on certain nights,
with your full belly leaned into the sink
and cool water piped over your wrist,
you suddenly long to shove your arm
down the disposal or rest your head
in the trash compactor or just
climb in your not-quite-paid for wagon
to breathe clouds till you can stop
breathing, stop sitting there and start

worm-farming, that thankless trade
no one wrote back about,
the quiet work for which you were born.

Mary Karr,
The Devil's Tour

[duchess of malfi]

A Man Adrift On A Slim Spar
by
Stephen Crane


A man adrift on a slim spar

A horizon smaller than the rim of a bottle

Tented waves rearing lashy dark points

The near whine of froth in circles.

God is cold.



The incessant raise and swing of the sea

And growl after growl of crest

The sinkings, green, seething, endless

The upheaval half-completed.

God is cold.



The seas are in the hollow of The Hand;

Oceans may be turned to a spray

Raining down through the stars

Because of a gesture of pity toward a babe.

Oceans may become gray ashes,

Die with a long moan and a roar

Amid the tumult of the fishes

And the cries of the ships,

Because The Hand beckons the mice.



A horizon smaller than a doomed assassin's cap,

Inky, surging tumults

A reeling, drunken sky and no sky

A pale hand sliding from a polished spar.

God is cold.



The puff of a coat imprisoning air:

A face kissing the water-death

A weary slow sway of a lost hand

And the sea, the moving sea, the sea.

God is cold.

[Chassit]

Hey, nice coffee house you have here!

Here's my contribution...

8/25/92 "IT WAS ME"

I have somehow become that
Which I had always feared.
I saw them living their lives
In a state of perpetual upset
A fog of expectation hanging vaguely
Over all our heads.
I knew they wanted something
But what? And how?

They patted my hand;
When you're there, you'll understand.
When you're grown, you'll know.
When you're older, you'll see.
Then they turned back to "Green Acres"
Newspaper in one hand, cigarette in the other
Still waiting for the if.

NO! cried a distant voice, GOD, NO!
And dead dreams echoed beyond the words.
Who is that?, asked the little voice.

It was me, calling back in time to myself.

[lucimay]

SAN FRANCISCO

This poem was found written on a paper bag
by Richard Brautigan in a laundromat in San
Francisco. The author is unknown.

By accident, you put
Your money in my
Machine (#4)
By accident, I put
My money in another
Machine (#6)
On purpose, I put
Your clothes in the
Empty machine full
Of water and no
Clothes

It was lonely.


(from The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster)

[Wyldewode]

Love Poem

My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases,
At whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring,
Whose palms are bulls in china, burrs in linen,
And have no cunning with any soft thing

Except all ill-at-ease fidgeting people:
The refugee uncertain at the door
You make at home; deftly you steady
The drunk clambering on his undulant floor.

Unpredictable dear, the taxi drivers' terror,
Shrinking from far headlights pale as a dime
Yet leaping before apopleptic streetcars—
Misfit in any space. And never on time.

A wrench in clocks and the solar system. Only
With words and people and love you move at ease;
In traffic of wit expertly maneuver
And keep us, all devotion, at your knees.

Forgetting your coffee spreading on our flannel,
Your lipstick grinning on our coat,
So gaily in love's unbreakable heaven
Our souls on glory of spilt bourbon float.

Be with me, darling, early and late. Smash glasses—
I will study wry music for your sake.
For should your hands drop white and empty
All the toys of the world would break.

John Frederick Nims

[lucimay]

niiiice Aelyria!

i'll just post an excerpt of my favorite Walt.


Out of the Cradle Endlessyly Rocking

1
OUT of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond, where the child, leaving his bed, wander’d alone, bare-headed, barefoot,
Down from the shower’d halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows, twining and twisting as if they were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
From your memories, sad brother—from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,
From under that yellow half-moon, late-risen, and swollen as if with tears,
From those beginning notes of sickness and love, there in the transparent mist,
From the thousand responses of my heart, never to cease,
From the myriad thence-arous’d words,
From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
From such, as now they start, the scene revisiting,
As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,
Borne hither—ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
A man—yet by these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
Taking all hints to use them—but swiftly leaping beyond them,
A reminiscence sing.