I am merely sleeping
when I wake
I will see Jerusalem rise from the mist.
All the poets gathered there
will curse me for what I have done;
for leaving Babylon.
I interrupt the feast
their bouts of Holy Writ.
The babes that trail behind me
have no home
and suffer from the cold.
Mother insists we reserve the injections
for the old, the mad and the depressed,
the executioner’s diamond brooch
is concealed by his flowing gray beard,
the buttons on his red coat
are fashioned to resembled gold roses
highlighted by scarlet,
there are three upon the sleeves
which end in white gloves,
he wears high boots
and white trousers;
the candidates for his service are translucent
the mist is casual, licking at the mud streets.
Father likens it to a tragedy
haughty to some degree
he says that the extras are hangers-on
cheap dates for luminaries
that are reflections in the pale sun.
that is,
the condemned, sunning themselves
into dim spirits
with roasted flesh, Ex spiritu sancto,
creating paeans for the dead.
In a list
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Comments
1 - 6 of 6
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Clairey is given to hyperbole, isn't she? Your work as a Sistine Chapel ceiling over a bunch of portaloos? Hmmmm. Perhaps more like one of a couple of nearly usable portaloos surrounded by several really disgusting ones at a rock festival.
"Ex" governs the ablative, you know. Ex spiritu sancto. Of course this doesn't rhyme, but "spiritus" is a fourth declension and "sanctus" is a second, you see.
This is a bit baffling, to be honest. Like a lot of Cohen's that play on Babylon and the New Jerusalem, this seems to be metaphorical. Perhaps a World Gone Wrong type ballad. Perhaps deciphering every apocalyptic image would not be fruitful anyway.
Three gloves? Oh, anybody's guess. Oops, sorry: three roses on each sleeve.
Sorry, my wormish decoding ability is rusty this evening. Hey, at least I am useful for correcting Latin. That, and cleaning toilets. -
Some poems are discouraging, but this poem makes me want to write. This poems makes me think I can, maybe because I can get inside it, I don't know. You make it look easy, which is kind of a hallmark of art, yes?
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A good read requiring the reader to think as well as feel his way through the words. You paint a picture with words that bring your memories alive in the reader's mind, and we too can appreciate your world as you see it. Very imaginative use of words and skillfully constructed. It is well written with powerful imagery that liberate their presents from the page and enter our minds with ease of skill.
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Great work!
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Merely Baudelaire. Super poem title, I'm stealing it.
In the wake of this potential name-dropping scandal, Got Blake?
"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."
Struggling with what Is about what we can't possibly Know is a difficult job. Poets been doing it for eons though.
Poet.
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Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh MERELY
I fink I've got personal issues with the word merely. I always think people are taking the piss when they say merely. Imagine if Beatles done:
Please, don't spoil my day, I'm miles away
And after all I'm merely sleeping
Merely. I don't know about merely - however ever ever I am a huge nasty prejudiced bastard towards lots of words and I suppose it has just as much rights as other words to exist. I don't like merely sleeping at all but I think the rest of the plume's stunning -
I never knows if Lute pooms is archaic and dusty or new and fresh, I never ever know.
Blimey the bit about the executioner's brooch. So good. So good. Your poems have this wonderful way of flipping through wide wide landscape and sweeping themes then telescoping right right in on minute, intricate detail. bigsmallsmallbig they are. You seem to use detail to analogise the big fat wide themes and then big fat wide things to spin out the details so the little is in the massive the massive is in the tiny - everything squashed - everything stretched. All at the same time.
Hey maybe merely is okay if haughty's there too? Merely and haughty are words running down the same vein I reckon. Sounds satirical. "Merely" is very haughty. Me and Worm use merely when we are being vile snobs. The smuggest sound in the universe is when dat Worm says "merely" - it is the snidest, haughtiest, smuggest sound ever ever. He stretches the earrrrrrr sound painfully. It's disgusting. Lucky he is only taking the piss. Can anyone use merely seriously? I dunno. Oh oh oh who dat American poot who wrote "the pleasures of merely circulating"???????????? Lovely poom - yukky title. Scull secrets and clouds and stuff. Do you think we should use words in poems if we don't use them at least once a month in speech? Someone asked me that the other day. I didn't know at all.
What I don't get and I'm sure I've said this to you before and I worry it sounds bitchy but it must not because I mean it adoringly and respectfully right - (not talking about this poem really, just kind of talking about my overall thoughts on the lots of poems you wrotted and I have readen)
I hate name dropping,
I hate "look at me I have read these french writers with tricky names and I know about Greek myth and art with a capital A" type poems - (all literature, all art, all life is tangled together - nobody should need to write the name Baudelaire in a poem. I think name dropping can alienate the reader. Allusions to other writers and other writing should and will occur naturally, quietly, magically - it doesn't matter whether we know which bits of the Wasteland are lifted from the Tempest - what matters is the Wasteland is beautiful in isolation - it doesn't matter if we know Shakespeare or not right? - everything Eliot steals becomes his own, everything he uses melds, blends together - it is a new thing, it is a mutation of older literature. It's a beautiful evolution.)
I hate contemporary writers using archaic language - I generally dislike abstracts,
I hate poems which kind of seem highflown and pretentious and I hate poetry where you feel each line needs researching and deep intertextual attention
Capitalising something like Joy or Desire or Soul in order to throne it up is just gross.
I dislike the majority of writing about writing - I definitely dislike poetry which elevates the idea of the poet and infers a poet is something raised, something important - I can't believe that - I don't think "poets" are anything special -
Most of all I hate exclamation marks but you don't really flounce them about no and phew because I don't think I'll ever ever love an exclamation mark
and and and you kind of do some of them things in my hate rampage list but I love most your poetry. How does that work?
I don't get it.
Some of the things your poems do really annoy me but then I love them and that's just stupid.
"their bouts of Holy Writ" - I should completely hate that. But I don't.
When I read a poem and it flouces about a name like Rimbaud or Ionesco or whatever - my first reaction is sometimes "yeah I bet you hardly read either of them you Spiv, you show off - I don't care if you've read everything Proust ever wrote and IF you have I certainly don't think you'd be so eager to inform your reader who you should love and not puff up in front of" or or or it is like when someone says DARLING WHAT A BEAUTIFUL DRESS WHAT BEAUTIFUL SHOES - only idiots reply "why yes they're VERSACE or Chanel."Horribleeee horrible name dropping it makes me want to vom. I hate the idea of beautiful writers being turned into product placements in other people's poems. Of course other writers are in other people's poems but it's just nothing to shout about, we like your shoes because they are the same green as the person we are really in love withs' eyes not because Louboutin made them and we like this or that poem because it is beautiful, beautiful if we had never read another poem it would stand for all writing we do not love this or that poem just because the poet name drops Flaubert or Euripides or whoeverever. Erghhhh it is like people who tell you which specific hotel they stayed in and how expensive it was instead of saying how they felt in the country.
I say all that then know some writers have done it well. Of course they have. You have to be truly masterful to write love letters explicitly to great writers, to use their names and quote them I think - but you have to be just normal and human to realise everything you have read and seen is inside everything you write - we can never write a complete bibliography for what has influenced our own writing unless we reference everything we've ever set eyes on.
I've moved way away from this poem which is lovely and doesn't go near my silly pet hates but lots of your poems are my silly pet hates and all I am trying to say is I think it's weird I love them.
I look forward to your usual cryptic IM which tells me rightly how wrong I am about everything.
licking at the mud streets is about 13949495959 billions times more wonderful than "Lorca licking at the mud streets" or "Middleton licking at the mud streets" isn't it? Lets be honest.
You're a very wonderful writer and your poems appearing in a dump like allpoetry is a bit like the Sistine Chapel's ceiling being used to roof a bunch of portaloos.
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