by Ben Lerner

For the distances collapsed.
For the figure
failed to humanize
the scale. For the work,
the work did nothing but invite us
to relate it to
the wall.
For I was a shopper in a dark
aisle.

[oh, this is good, read on, read on ...] Continue reading »

Inside this temple are mountains and rivers
there are forests of oak, mountain lions and moss

Seismic shifts and lightening bolts are inside
enervating every silent thought

All the dancing impulses of nature are here
laughter, grief, hunger swirling
in the winds and time

There is ecstatic music, echoing through these chambers
and starlight – all the infinite stars

Ruminations of the cosmos are within
the poet
says
inside this temple, is the one I love

- Anton10

bird song
in the city
false dawn

Oh great goddess,
mother of creation,
this earth

What silent hunger
causes big breasted women
to wander in my dreams.

Oh happy happy death – this fool
asphyxiated in the heaving depths
of the cleavage of the beloved.

- Anton10

“The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.” - George Santayana

Lewis drives us to a deserted beach just outside of town
There’s a tranquil, silky ocean. It’s silent but for a rushing
over the distant reef, and Lewis talking shit
A lone seagull stands on one leg feigning interest.

I’m just not in the mood – it’s cloudy
He strips of his shirt and performs yoga
There’s a significant paunch, a few old tattoos and
we sit there in the white sand, ignoring him politely but
he returns from the shore and talks
myopically and with too much enthusiasm.

Mirra is hungry for company – my sister is lonely too. It is a soulless city.
So we all end up on this desolate beach with a fool in thick glasses.
But, how did I get here really? Did I miss a turn?

I remember, as a kid, stabbing at my heart with painful thoughts,
probing for feeling. But at some point it had all become too much
and I cut myself off. Now here I am fumbling down a blind alley,
in the broad daylight of my life
while the one I’m trying to love
is far away.

I know in the deepest place of me, there is a love
and the truth of my feet rooted in the earth
that is so great, I’m afraid to let it rip through
and I hold on as tight as I can
to the little prison of my self
afraid if I let love in it’ll break me,
like it did in the beginning.

If I can forgive myself and all these innocent people
I might just find my way home…

- Anton10

I telegraph my better half
By Morse or by Marconi
But when in need of greater speed I send an abalone.

George Sterling / The Abalone Song

(from A Book for the Hours of Prayer)

I live my life in growing orbits
which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years,
and I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm,
or a great song.

- Raine Maria Rilke

The road from intensity to greatness passes thro sacrifice — Kassner

For a long time he attained it in looking.
Stars would fall to their knees
beneath his compelling vision.
Or as he looked on, kneeling,
his urgency’s fragrance
tired out a god until
it smiled at him in its sleep.

Towers he would gaze at so
that they were terrified:
building them up again, suddenly, in an instant!
But how often the landscape,
overburdened by day,
came to rest in his silent awareness, at nightfall.

Animals trusted him, stepped
into his open look, grazing,
and the imprisoned lions
stared in as if into an incomprehensible freedom;
birds, as it felt them, flew headlong
thro it; and flowers, as enormous
as they are to children, gazed back
into it, on and on.
And the rumour that there was someone
who knew how to look,
stirred those less
visible creatures:
stirred the women.

Looking how long?
For how long now, deeply deprived,
beseeching in the depths of his glance?

When he, whose vocation was Waiting, sat far from home-
the hotel’s distracted unnoticing bedroom
moody around him, and in the avoided mirror
once more the room, and later
from the tormenting bed
once more:
then in the air the voices
discussed, beyond comprehension,
his heart, which could still be felt;
debated what thro the painfully buried body
could somehow be felt – his heart;
debated and passed their judgement:
that it did not have love.

(And denied him further communions.)

For there is a boundary to looking.
And the world that is looked at so deeply
wants to flourish in love.

Work of the eyes is done, now
go and do heart-work
on all the images imprisoned within you; for you
overpowered them: but even now you don’t know them.
Learn, inner man, to look on your inner woman,
the one attained from a thousand
natures, the merely attained but
not yet beloved form.

[tr. stephen mitchell]

Yes, yes, it is Robbie Burns night – and here’s one for him
Little Flo

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

When your eyes are tired the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb tonight.

The night will give you a horizon further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

by David Whyte