Revision of Poem in Iambic Pentameter ("The More You Leave")

The more you leave, the more I want you back.
When you return, our love life seems to lack.
Believing you are unassailable
I yearn for you to be available.
And then you come; I cannot be more bored:
I like your leave, but not your coming toward.
Your distance charms, disarms my eager heart.
But close, I wish we were again apart.
Do stay away, and I'm forever rapt,
but close, you leave me empty, dull, and sapped.
So go away; I'll love you as before.
Love's ebb and flow is tricky as a whore.

A poem in dactyllic hexameter ("This is the rupture of heart . . . "):

This is the rupture of heart; love's sharp scalpel will cut mine apart.
Only a surgeon could see how to operate so well on me.
This is the intricate pain, come dissecting my frog hurt again
Eros is clinically bold, and a professional, totally cold.

Aleksandr Blok (November 28, 1880 – August 7, 1921), the great Symbolist poet of Russia's Silver Age ("Night, avenue . . .")

Night, avenue, street lamp, the drug store,
Irrational and dusky light;
Live another decade, two more—
It stays the same; there's no way out.

You'll die, then start again, beginning
And everything repeats as planned:
Night, the cold canal's icy ripple,
The drug store, avenue, and lamp.
Tr. L. Shmailo

Ночь, улица, фонарь, аптека,
Бессмысленный и тусклый свет.
Живи еще хоть четверть века -
Все будет так. Исхода нет.

Умрешь - начнешь опять сначала
И повторится все, как встарь:
Ночь, ледяная рябь канала,
Аптека, улица, фонарь.

METRICAL EXERCISE: IAMBIC PENTAMETER ("The More You Leave")

The more you leave, the more I want you back.
And then you come and only give me flack.
Believing you will never come again
I pine and yearn, and prize you above men.
And then you come; I cannot be more bored:
I like your leave, but not your coming toward.
The dance of love taps fire when you're away,
and trips and falls when you return to stay.
Do stay away, and I'm forever rapt,
but close, you leave me empty, dull, and sapped.
So go away; I'll love you all the more;
Love's ebb and flow is tricky as a whore.

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin (June 6, 1799 – February 10, 1837): I loved you once . . .

I loved you once, and this love still, it may be,
Is not extinguished fully in my soul;
But let’s no longer have this love dismay you:
To trouble you is not my wish at all.
I loved you once quite wordlessly, without hope,
Tortured shyness, jealous rage I bore.
I loved you once so gently and sincerely:
God grant you to be loved this way once more.

Tr. L. Shmailo

Я вас любил: любовь еще, быть может,
В душе моей угасла не совсем;
Но пусть она вас больше не тревожит;
Я не хочу печалить вас ничем.
Я вас любил безмолвно, безнадежно,
То робостью, то ревностью томим;
Я вас любил так искренно, так нежно,
Как дай вам бог любимой быть другим.

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin
(1829)

Vladimir Mayakovsky's Last Poem

Vladimir Mayakovsky's (July 19,1893 – April 14, 1930) final poem before his suicide. The Oka mentioned is a tributary of the Volga.

It's after one. You've likely gone to sleep.
The Milky Way streams silver, an Oka through the night.
I don't hurry, I don't need to wake you
Or bother you with lightning telegrams.
Like they say, the incident is closed.
Love's little boat has crashed on daily life.
We're even, you and I. No need to account
For mutual sorrows, mutual pains and wrongs.
Look: How quiet the world is.
Night cloaks the sky with the tribute of the stars.
At times like these, you can rise, stand, and speak
To history, eternity, and all creation.

Tr. L. Shmailo

***

Уже второй. Должно быть, ты легла.
В ночи Млечпуть серебряной Окою.
Я не спешу, и молниями телеграмм
мне незачем тебя будить и беспокоить.
Как говорят, инцидент исперчен.
Любовная лодка разбилась о быт.
С тобой мы в расчете. И не к чему перечень
взаимных болей, бед и обид.
Ты посмотри, какая в мире тишь.
Ночь обложила небо звездной данью.
В такие вот часы встаешь и говоришь
векам, истории и мирозданью.

Formal Exercise: Sestina: Live, Not Die; Live Not, Die

Sestina words: monkey, parenthesis, punctuated, question, Shakespeare's, angels

Now, how shall it continue, bright primate? How shall this be punctuated?
An Oxfordian series, cursive, moving ever on, entailing every monkey,
all keyboards in existence, black and white, and all of Shakespeare's
work? Therein lies a tail. Is my silly, hoping life, then, the parentheses
in the mind of a savage, loving god, or a twitching, rapid question
in the tick-tock of the void? Comma or coma? Which is it to be? Angels,

you decide. Faster: My hope today, a ferocious hankering monkey,
wrestles with Thanatos in my psyche's mud, a bout observed by angels,
and, truly, always about you; my demons, who intone Shakespeare's
verse like a Polonius behind a curtain, his platitudes punctuated
by doubt, growing like a semicolon in my gut, close these parentheses
without fortitude or Fortinbras, a Hamlet dangling on his question.

Come, ask me if I dare, beloved, before I go, to ask the question:
Would you say, turning me aside, as an afterthought, in parentheses,
"That is not what I meant at all," leaving me, a grinning, groping monkey,
to chase distant mermaids in the sea spray, those soggy singing angels
who sing to drowning women like me? I am not brave, not Shakespeare's
heroine, and will not declaim mercy for men in a speech punctuated

by all wisdom, warm, maternal, eternal, I am, rather, a rattled, tangled monkey,
fur matted, teeth sharp, staring down my death in a showdown punctuated
by words, words, words, words, words, words; and those in parentheses
whisper with epithets of my end; here I sit, periodic, asking the angels,
how long a sentence I will have, and will I ever write one as good as Shakespeare's?
"Two bees, and not two bees, and they're soon extinct, too;" begging the question,

petitio principii: assuming the initial point, how shall I get to the final, punctuated
by logical fallacies, tautologies, circular, as raw as the tail ass of a monkey;
me, to persuade you, had we words enough for time, there could be no question,
no crime, in assuming infinity, in basking in eternity like seraphim, bright angels
whose divine lust could last a trillion biers and years, through a million Shakespeare's
lines; but our lives are slashed by a Ginzo knife through the tail, trapped in parentheses.

To the period's point now, signaled by a capital flourish and punctuated
with the Oxfordian serial clause (I should have been a pair of claws instead of monkey
balls): given infinity, when my molecules scatter, on some infinite star populated by angels,
might they not reassemble as me, my primate self, with you, a man as fine as Shakespeare's
best, again, to dance together, coupled, contained in divine parentheses)?
For the thought of you, whom I love, I trouble the divine to ask this question.

My monkey question is not eloquent, nor metaphysical as angels:
It stands in parentheses, rolls not from the tongue as Shakespeare's,
but loves you, period, whichever is punctuated, in eternity or extinction.

Metrical exercise: Anapest: Waiting for MRI poem #3

'Twas the night before brain scan; my dear Facebook friends
share their love and their kind thoughts in notes that they send.
I am touched, truly moved by this loving support;
May God bless you, dear creatures, you mad, rad cohort.

Hospital

Jaded and exhausted nurses walk the wards
repeating curses; dying patients call for mother,
crying for a glass of water. Greedy doctors
buy stock options, sell us meds containing toxins;
leeches would be more effective than these MDs'
best directives. People tired and sick, emergent,
can't get help though help is urgent. Here a man is
screaming, bleeding, here a woman's life's receding .
Richer folk may think they’re served well, wind up
in the same prescribed hell. Hear me, patients, for
your welfare, this is not the place for healthcare

Metrical Exercise: Trochaic Tetrameter (Waiting for MRI poem series)

MRI won't be till Thursday;
waiting is a practiced sense;
anyone can face life's dangers—
takes the strong to bear suspense.

MRI with contrast or not,
little magnets map the brain.
Soon I'll feel my body changing,
entering another plane.

All I am is quarks and gluons,
energy and impulse-filled;
There is no material realm here,
and these quanta can't be killed.

So I wait without much straining;
courage comes from quanta, too.
I'm the field of every being;
parts of me are parts of you.

Don't look toward a grave to see me;
my old soul has other plans;
All of me will dance with helium,
I'll be sun, and leaves, and grass.

BETWEEN ECLIPSES*

A razor cuts your wrists, but
what cut you off from me?
Is true love quart'red below?

When (blew) an azure sky
separates the chambered clouds,
which Earth will you then save,
which elements recycle?

These eclipses should portend,
but I would always be
the bastard that I am,
had the maidlienest, brightest star
eclipsed upon this gesture.

Fin.

* To Harrow Marrow: Whatever these eclipses portend, what saves you is not salvation with its grace, but the grace of no salvation.

I AM NOT YOUR INSECT

Your underfoot, your exterminated, your bug. My unabashedly hairy legs, whose gymnopèdes twitch like a chorus for a fatal Sharon Stone, delight in ces mouvements qui déplace les lignes, in the motion, the quiver, le mort, the catch. Mother Kali, you have made me what I am: feminine, brilliant, entirely without fear. Like my mother, I watch and pray for prey—that it be there, that it give gore, that I feel it die, that there be more.

I have lost your fingers

You are as thick as molasses, brown as oak, and your ears are crêpes suzettes; your cheerful legs are also thick. The pupils of your eyes are small bridges to disaster (after). Your cheekbones cut the cumulus clouds, and your toes are decimal wonders; your pancreas is a mighty fortress to our God. I remember your kidneys, plumlike, and shaped like violas. All your orifices tell of wonders; surely your ass is a wiry insect that I feel but cannot see (woe is me). Your breasts dance; your aureoles are gazelles that sleep in meadows more blue than green. Your vulva is an apple already peeled, as wet as fresh moraine, alive as snow.

I have lost your fingers and must find them again.

I am the new poetry editor for MadHat Annual!

Dear friends, I am pleased to be joining the MadHat team as poetry editor for the amazing MadHat Annual. Thanks to editor-in-chief Marc Vincenz and team MadHat Alex Cigale, Jonathan Penton, and Clare L. Martin. More anon!

Happy Bloomsday!

Last year, I erased Ulysses to create 18 found poems, one for each episode. Here is "Calypso:"

Thick giblet soup, fried hencod's roes,
grilled mutton kidneys, a fine
tang of urine.

Gelid light and air in the kitchen;
out of doors gentle summer morning
everywhere.

The coals reddening.
A slice of bread and butter
Cup of tea.

O-Cat-Mkgnao!
Warmbubbled milk on a
saucer.
Gurgh.

Ham and eggs, no.
Better a pork kidney.
Still perhaps: once.

Her prime sausages.
To catch up and walk
behind her, behind
her moving hams.

Bread and butter,
sugar, spoon,
her cream
Yes.

Daddy's Elusive Love

I spent my whole life seeking it,
wrecking, reeking, eking it,
in hydra-headed phalluses;
in aliases & pal-louses;
in papapapapaMedusas;
in mirrors & seducers.

I looked for it in boxers,
in the dumps of ten detoxes,
in the roll of rundown rockers,
in anal & banal boys.

I slept with legions
in every single region;
I made love to none;
loved only one.

But it all goes back to Daddy:
Daddy, I'm your caddy;
I know you wanted a laddy;
sorry I wasn't a lady.

Family history
is largely hysterical mystery.
This old cold sold hold blow on me
is moldy geneaology.

Mersad Mostaghimi's Translation of "Your Probability Amplitude" into Farsi

I am delighted that Mersad Mostaghimi, a physics student, has translated my poem "Your Probability Amplitude" into Persian for his Iranian classmates. My gratitude also to Mohammad Mostaghimi, who has translated so many of my poems into Farsi for his blog.

(این هم یک ترجمه از خودم از این شعر که البته نمیدونم با سواد اندک من هم از زبان انگلیسی و هم از شعر و ادبیات فارسی آیا ترجمه خوبی هست یا خیر امید که بپسندید.)

دامنه احتمال تو

من به اوج میرسم
و بوزونی که میدرخشد در دیدگان.


آن سان که یک نیروی ضعیف در واپاشی رادیویی.

جاذبه موقعیتی

مغناطشی:

من مشاهده میکنم و حواس من باز میگردانند ذرات را به نیرو ره میگیرند در رد پایشان هوا و هوس درون امواج را

Your Probability Amplitude

I glance and
a boson blinks
into view.

A strong interaction
beckons

even as
a weak force
radios decay.

The gravity
of the situation

the magnetism:

I observe and
my attention

turns particles into power
tracks into trails
whims into waves.

Your Probability Amplitude

I glance and
a boson blinks
into view.

A strong interaction
beckons

even as
a weak force
radios decay.

The gravity
of the situation

the magnetism:

I observe and
my attention

turns particles into power
tracks into trails
whims into waves.

Mikhail Niziaev's beautiful Russian translation of my poem "Mapping":

Here is Mikhail Niziaev's (Низяев Михаил) beautiful Russian translation of my poem "Mapping":

Голуби летят в скорописи стаи, изящные дуги,
Кроме этого, шедшие впереди или позади, в срочном самостоятельный полет.
Ниже ивы наклоняется, тонкие и редкие, глядя на искры,
Как наркоман в утренней торговли людьми улице.
Такой человек, как вы, протягивает мне мочи кубок, и спит.

Я вам уже говорил, здесь, в дверях тыс.
Несчастная домов: есть нечто большее место
Чем время и пространство в одиночестве.
Приходите, неохотно тратить
День: посмотрите на несвязанных звезды, несобранные огни
Без имени или дома или в созвездии свои собственные,
И представьте себе использовать со мной, все, что не поместилось.

Mapping

The pigeons fly in cursive flocks, graceful arcs,
Except this one, gone ahead or left behind, in urgent solo flight.
Below a willow leans, thin and sparse, looking for sparks,
Like an addict in the morning’s trafficked street.
A man like you hands me a urine cup, and sleeps.

I have told you before, here at the doorway of a thousand
Unhappy homes: there is something more of place
Than time or space in loneliness. Come, reluctantly spend
The day: Look at the unconnected stars, the uncollected lights
Without name or home or constellation of their own,
And imagine a use with me for all that doesn’t fit.

Mapping

The pigeons fly in cursive flocks, graceful arcs,
Except this one, gone ahead or left behind, in urgent solo flight.
Below a willow leans, thin and sparse, looking for sparks,
Like an addict in the morning’s trafficked street.
A man like you hands me a urine cup, and sleeps.

I have told you before, here at the doorway of a thousand
Unhappy homes: there is something more of place
Than time or space in loneliness. Come, reluctantly spend
The day: Look at the unconnected stars, the uncollected lights
Without name or home or constellation of their own,
And imagine a use with me for all that doesn’t fit.