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“Your words are spirit
and life.
Only say one
and he will be healed.”
― Walking to Martha's Vineyard: Poems
and life.
Only say one
and he will be healed.”
― Walking to Martha's Vineyard: Poems
“You must strive to find your own voice, boys, and the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all.”
― Dead Poets Society
― Dead Poets Society
“Everyone agrees.
The dead singers have the best voices.
At four o'clock in the morning
the dead singers have the best voices.”
―
The dead singers have the best voices.
At four o'clock in the morning
the dead singers have the best voices.”
―
“What is today’s date?
Who is the President?
How great a danger do you pose, on a scale of one to ten?
What does “people who live in glass houses” mean?
Every symphony is a suicide postponed, true or false?
Should each individual snowflake be held accountable for the avalanche?
Name five rivers.
What do you see yourself doing in ten minutes?
How about some lovely soft Thorazine music?
If you could have half an hour with your father, what would you say to him?
What should you do if I fall asleep?
Are you still following in his mastodon footsteps?
What is the moral of “Mary Had a Little Lamb”?
What about his Everest shadow?
Would you compare your education to a disease so rare no one else has ever had it, or the
deliberate extermination of indigenous populations?
Which is more puzzling, the existence of suffering or its frequent absence?
Should an odd number be sacrificed to the gods of the sky, and an even to those of the
underworld, or vice versa?
Would you visit a country where nobody talks?
What would you have done differently?
Why are you here?”
― Wheeling Motel
Who is the President?
How great a danger do you pose, on a scale of one to ten?
What does “people who live in glass houses” mean?
Every symphony is a suicide postponed, true or false?
Should each individual snowflake be held accountable for the avalanche?
Name five rivers.
What do you see yourself doing in ten minutes?
How about some lovely soft Thorazine music?
If you could have half an hour with your father, what would you say to him?
What should you do if I fall asleep?
Are you still following in his mastodon footsteps?
What is the moral of “Mary Had a Little Lamb”?
What about his Everest shadow?
Would you compare your education to a disease so rare no one else has ever had it, or the
deliberate extermination of indigenous populations?
Which is more puzzling, the existence of suffering or its frequent absence?
Should an odd number be sacrificed to the gods of the sky, and an even to those of the
underworld, or vice versa?
Would you visit a country where nobody talks?
What would you have done differently?
Why are you here?”
― Wheeling Motel
“Seven Versions"
1. The Kiss
Massive languor, languor hammered;
Sentient languor, languor dissected;
Languor deserted, reignite your sidereal fires;
Holier languor, arise from love.
The wood’s owl has come home.
2. Beyond Sunlight
I can’t shakle one of your ankles
as if you were a falcon, but
nothing can prevent me
from following, no matter how far, even
beyond sunlight where Jesus becomes visible:
I’ll follow, I will wait, I will never give up
until I understand
why you are going away from me.
3. A Man Wound His Watch
In the darkness the man wound his watch before secreting it under his pillow. Then he went to
sleep. Outside, the wind was blowing. You who comprehend the repercussions of the faintest
gesture—you will understand. A man, his watch, the wind. What else is there?
4. For Which There Is No Name
Let me have what the tree has
and what it can never lose,
let me have it
and lose it again,
blurred lines the wind draws with the darkness
it gets from summer nights, formless
indescribable darkness. Either
give me back my gladness, or
the courage to think about how it was lost to me.
Give me back, not what I see, but my sight.
Let me meet you again owning nothing
but what is in the past. Let me inherit
the very thing I am forbidden.
And let me continue to seek,
though I know it is futile, the only heaven
that I could endure:
unhurting you.
5. The Composer
People said he was overly fond of the good life and ate like a pig. Yet the servant who brought
him his chocolate in bed would sometimes find him weeping quietly, both plump pink hands
raised slightly and conducting, evidently, in small brief genuflective feints. He experienced the
reality of death as music.
6. Detoxification
And I refuse to repent of my drug use. It gave me my finest and happiest hours.
And I have been wondering: will I use drugs again?
I will if my work wants me to. And if drugs want me to.
7. And Suddenlty It’s Night
You stand there alone, like everyone else, the center of the world’s
attention,
a ray of sunlight passing through you.
And suddenly it’s night.
Franz Wright, iO: A Journal of New American Poetry, Vol I Issue I . (May 15th, 2011)
The individual sections of “Seven Versions” ia based, loosely—some very loosely—on poems by Rene Char, Rumi, Yannis Ritsos, Natan Zach, Günther Eich, Jean Cocteau, and Salvatore Quasimodo.”
―
1. The Kiss
Massive languor, languor hammered;
Sentient languor, languor dissected;
Languor deserted, reignite your sidereal fires;
Holier languor, arise from love.
The wood’s owl has come home.
2. Beyond Sunlight
I can’t shakle one of your ankles
as if you were a falcon, but
nothing can prevent me
from following, no matter how far, even
beyond sunlight where Jesus becomes visible:
I’ll follow, I will wait, I will never give up
until I understand
why you are going away from me.
3. A Man Wound His Watch
In the darkness the man wound his watch before secreting it under his pillow. Then he went to
sleep. Outside, the wind was blowing. You who comprehend the repercussions of the faintest
gesture—you will understand. A man, his watch, the wind. What else is there?
4. For Which There Is No Name
Let me have what the tree has
and what it can never lose,
let me have it
and lose it again,
blurred lines the wind draws with the darkness
it gets from summer nights, formless
indescribable darkness. Either
give me back my gladness, or
the courage to think about how it was lost to me.
Give me back, not what I see, but my sight.
Let me meet you again owning nothing
but what is in the past. Let me inherit
the very thing I am forbidden.
And let me continue to seek,
though I know it is futile, the only heaven
that I could endure:
unhurting you.
5. The Composer
People said he was overly fond of the good life and ate like a pig. Yet the servant who brought
him his chocolate in bed would sometimes find him weeping quietly, both plump pink hands
raised slightly and conducting, evidently, in small brief genuflective feints. He experienced the
reality of death as music.
6. Detoxification
And I refuse to repent of my drug use. It gave me my finest and happiest hours.
And I have been wondering: will I use drugs again?
I will if my work wants me to. And if drugs want me to.
7. And Suddenlty It’s Night
You stand there alone, like everyone else, the center of the world’s
attention,
a ray of sunlight passing through you.
And suddenly it’s night.
Franz Wright, iO: A Journal of New American Poetry, Vol I Issue I . (May 15th, 2011)
The individual sections of “Seven Versions” ia based, loosely—some very loosely—on poems by Rene Char, Rumi, Yannis Ritsos, Natan Zach, Günther Eich, Jean Cocteau, and Salvatore Quasimodo.”
―
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