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Poetry
Poems I've written or am writing
READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
Dream is not a revelation. If a dream affords the dreamer some light on himself, it is not the person with closed eyes who makes the discovery but the person with open eyes lucid enough to fit thoughts together. Dream — a scintillating mirage surrounded by shadows — is essentially poetry.
El sueño no es revelación. Si al soñador un sueño lo permiterÃa ahorrar algún luz sobre si mismo, no realice ese descubrimiento la persona de ojos cerrados sino la de ojos abiertos y lúcidos suficientamente para los pensamientos juntos a unirse. El sueño —entre las sombras chispea el miraje— en su esencia es poesÃa.
The dead of 9/11
are photographed
and silent
and the crater they fell into long since filled
with detritus of 21st C. dreams in America
and ragged strips of newsprint
without any columns of ink,
they're blank and they're torn. and the
names of the dead
scroll by beneath the image
of America.
(Note I posted a revision in comments that I think is a much better poem)
by Jeremy Osner
Think of time as a river of events
think of time simply as a river: Events the features
of the landscape the river flows through.
The river erodes the landscape. The landscape
is formed, created, given shape
by the river. Analogies for time.
Time shapes you but does not abide, abiding
that's an action to be taken. Swim upstream.
The analogy here is imperfect. Swim
upstream/ float/ swim downstream/ bob
in the current.
The surface of the river.
The landscape here is reality
in its spacial dimensions
as they may appertain
picking a scab
Reality cannot be---
analogized because the analogy chosen
must of necessity itself be a part of reality
cannot get a foothold, perspective
outside it
Picturing reality
mapping reality
Map is analogy
Cartographer/ poet. Poems, their varying
degrees of realism, they blossom forth:
construct a universe immaculate in conception corrupt in execution
a map
which deconstructs/ creates the world
around you reader, "pulls you in",
so to speak. You scratch your head
and look up at the clock,
your eye zooms in
on a fly that's buzzing around the 7.
It's half past 8 and down the street a dog is barking.
posted morning of September 21st, 2013: 3 responses
Jugador, son tus apuestas
el casino y nada más;
Jugador, no hay casino,
se hace casino al apostar.
Al apostar se hace el casino,
y al lanzar las fichas en el fieltro
se oÃa el dinero que nunca
se va a poder recuperar.
Jugador no hay casino
sino monedas en la mar.
That's odd -- I can hardly remember the last time I knew where you were
or had any contact
and yet
I feel your far-off presence by my side
a chuckle when I make a joke
that doesn't quite come off
and glad to
listen to the twisted theories
and share a pipe
and grin
and I remember
when we used to talk about
what would come
and little did we know of course
I hear your name sometimes
and wonder
what's become.
It doesn't need to be that long,
a few choice phrases will suffice;
just plainly tell them why you've come
and what you need to bring back home,
and quietly get it and excuse yourself.
You don't need to go very far,
a few blocks or leagues should be enough;
enough to get a new perspective
and to understand more fully the dilemma
in which you find yourself.
And please don't stay too long on stage,
just sing a few sweet verses and be silent.
Personal density is directly proportional to temporal bandwidth.
So: I have gone ahead and self-published a chapbook of my poetry. I am ambivalent (have been ambivalent all along) about vanity publication: but have decided that what I really want is for my work to be out there where people can read it and I don't have the time or energy needed to figure out how to get published. So here we are -- I hope friends and others get a chance to read. I think it is very readable -- pretty cerebral but not in a bad way. Not dry.
So here's the deal: the book is on Amazon for a nominal fee if you'd like to drop a Tommy J. and read it on your kindle. For that you should click on the Kindle Store; if you prefer to read on the computer or print it out (30 pp), you can download the pdf of it for free by clicking Analogies for Time.
posted afternoon of October 10th, 2013: 2 responses
This is what my next book is going to look like. It consists of poetry prompted by images in Mute Unfolding; the first poem is called "Beginnings" and consists of first lines. These lines are the first lines of the poems in the remainder of the book; and the last poem, "Endings," consists entirely of the last lines of the interior poems strung together.
se forma la palabra. Se concibe
(Note I posted a 
