R.M. Engelhardt's Blog: Burn Brightly, page 35

THE LAST UNDERGROUND POEM

 

So when the day finally comes

I will probably have already

Checked out of the room,

Tired, so tired after years of words

And poems and voices and far too

Old to care anymore

About the nightly news.

And yet?

From somewhere six

Feet underground I will still be able to

Hear the wind, and like a flower

My body or what’s

Left of it will briefly rise and stir

As if in interest of even more of history’s

Passing events, and I, being merely a corpse

Will concede to write in the remaining fragments of

My mind and soul

A poem, and this poem

Will be my best poem

Heard by no one but my friends

Like Mrs. Applebee, who is in the lot

Next to me, who in life hated poetry

And who died at 83, or by the young

And newly dead Mr. Hastings who

Was is in love with Penelope and who was

In love with catastrophe and who dared

The poor young Mr. Hastings to

Have some quick sex sitting upon

Her balcony just outside

Her window ledge

Oh.

So Yes

Sorry, I’m still here

Ever so briefly.

As it seems that

Life is always presenting us

With it’s own stories

Of death and romance

Honor and bravery

And love and war

And in this epic poem from

The great beyond I shall go on

To tell all of you, dear humanity about

How cold the earth can be and

How comic and how tragic it all is in the end

To finally realize what all the final answers

Are to the universe and what all the how’s & all

The why’s and etc.(s) mean and to be able to

Tell no one.

Note:

So OK,

Doug was right

(The Answer? It’s 42)

But please wait, please listen

For I am now merely a voice

Upon the wind and

I’m forgetting something important

As my dead memory is

Fading, the poem in my head,

My soul slowly decomposing

And the world, planet earth

Is finally ending and turning into

Just fire and ashes from above

So I’ll recite it

As quickly as I can

Here’s the poem

The last poem

And it goes something

Like this :

So here’s the poem

The last poem

And it goes something

Like this

So here’s the poem

The last poem

And it goes something

Like this

So here’s the poem

The last poem

And it goes something

Like this

Like this

Like this

Like … This:

It’s … This.

Don’t worry.

Stop worrying

And live

Because everything

Is beautiful

And the poem

The story,

Repeats

Everything is beautiful

And the poem,

The story repeats

Everything is beautiful

Everything is beautiful

Every … Thing    is

Every … Thing  is   is   is   is

IS

“Beautiful”

“Beautiful”

“Beau…tif…ful”

_____________

R.M. ENGELHARDT

I imagine the gods saying, We willmake it u...

 

 

 

 

 

 

I imagine the gods saying, We will

make it up to you. We will give you

three wishes, they say. Let me see

the squirrels again, I tell them.

Let me eat some of the great hog

stuffed and roasted on its giant spit

and put out, steaming, into the winter

of my neighborhood when I was usually

too broke to afford even the hundred grams

I ate so happily walking up the cobbles,

past the Street of the Moon

and the Street of the Birdcage-Makers,

the Street of Silence and the Street

of the Little Pissing. We can give you

wisdom, they say in their rich voices.

Let me go at last to Hugette, I say,

the Algerian student with her huge eyes

who timidly invited me to her room

when I was too young and bewildered

that first year in Paris.

Let me at least fail at my life.

Think, they say patiently, we could

make you famous again. Let me fall

in love one last time, I beg them.

Teach me mortality, frighten me

into the present. Help me to find

the heft of these days. That the nights

will be full enough and my heart feral.

~ Jack Gilbert

PATTI SMITH ON WRITING

What Exactly Is "The New Verse Movement?"

Reblogged from THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT, ALBANY NY:

History :

The New Verse Movement of the 1910s was to make poetry relevant again by immersing it into the spaces, technologies, and social dynamics of the modern city.

And Now In The Present And Future :

The New Verse Movement of the 21st Century follows these same beliefs. To somehow ignite the spark and to help make poetry relevant again in a new age of technologies (The Internet) and to support new & experimental as well as older poetic forms.

Read more… 36 more words

People Have Been Asking Me What The "New Verse Movement" Is.

Here is The Answer: www.newversemovement.com

You Are …

 

“In the beat of a heart, the suck of a breath, you are the universe.”

~ The  Egyptian Book of the Dead

Among other things, you’ll find that you’re ...

 

 

Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them — if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. Its a beautiful, reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.

~ J. D. Salinger

Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you r...

 

Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don’t complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don’t bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality.

Wake Up and Live!

~ Bob Marley

And Death Shall Have No Dominion

 

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.



~ Dylan Thomas

A smoke, a book, a cup of coffee.These are the little th...

A smoke, a book, a cup of coffee.

These are the little things that get us through this sometimes weary world and all the rainy days.”

 R.M. Engelhardt, The Resurrection Waltz Poems R.M. Engelhardt

Some things will never change. Some things will always be the same

 

Some things will never change. Some things will always be the same. Lean down your ear upon the earth and listen.

The voice of forest water in the night, a woman’s laughter in the dark, the clean, hard rattle of raked gravel, the cricketing stitch of midday in hot meadows, the delicate web of children’s voices in bright air — these things will never change.

The glitter of sunlight on roughened water, the glory of the stars, the innocence of morning, the smell of the sea in harbors, the feathery blur and smoky buddings of young boughs, and something there that comes and goes and never can be captured, the thorn of spring, the sharp and tongueless cry — these things will always be the same.

All things belonging to the earth will never change — the leaf, the blade, the flower, the wind that cries and sleeps and wakes again, the trees whose stiff arms clash and tremble in the dark, and the dust of lovers long since buried in the earth — all things proceeding from the earth to seasons, all things that lapse and change and come again upon the earth — these things will always be the same, for they come up from the earth that never changes, they go back into the earth that lasts forever. Only the earth endures, but it endures forever.

The tarantula, the adder, and the asp will also never change. Pain and death will always be the same. But under the pavements trembling like a pulse, under the buildings trembling like a cry, under the waste of time, under the hoof of the beast above the broken bones of cities, there will be something growing like a flower, something bursting from the earth again, forever deathless, faithful, coming into life again like April.

 

 

~ Thomas Wolfe ~  You Can’t Go Home Again