Friday, January 28, 2011

poem: the down and simple

fashion me your shining blade:
kiss-off, kiss and tell,

kismet down

your shining alleys,

integers of the eternal

bloom, faces

of the tumbling mannequins,

pleasure in the fields,

gathering the custom wires,

the nethering gates,

the jasmine confederacies,

the down and simple

fragrance that grabs you

by the neck, whispers

now
,
excites pandemonium

in even the bleakest times:

ask at the quarry,

steal the watchman's attention,

gamble with the takings:

i confess the idea not mine,

in the farthest seams the scarves

are with me, shining

the foolish sensibilities,

the sideways costume changes,

the withering glances,

confined in your seeming

the lord god's bellows

desires that cave the senses,

shadows that know the certainty

of your every move.

bless us, quiet Mara,

still the quandaries,

exact in due time,

never leave me to

the facts that cherish

you home.


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8 Comments:

Blogger Dee Martin said...

we can't escape our fate, I wonder? Such a visual of the tumbling mannequin faces, jasmine exciting pandemonium (love that word...)

Mara - death? Beauty? I love never being left to the facts...they just get in the way of poetry. Someone at AllPoetry wrote a poem from a scrap of paper that was in her shopping cart at the grocery store. It contained just three words...People who sit. Joni says so much more.

9:37 AM  
Blogger anno said...


loved the kiss off/ kiss and tell/kismet, the tumbling/gathering/nethering,
all the desires that cave the senses
maybe most of all
all the facts that cherish
you home
not to mention
that beautiful picture
beautiful music
that frames it all

1:28 PM  
Blogger murat11 said...

Dee: Mara: didn't quite want to go full-blown Marian on the poem, but some feminine Other was calling out. I love your "I love never being left to the facts." You nail poetry with that very statement (at least my poetics): poetry starts when we leave the facts behind . . .

5:08 PM  
Blogger murat11 said...

Anno: Love your harvesting of the poem. Always.

5:10 PM  
Blogger Teresa said...

I read this yesterday and got too many goose bumps to comment. Read it again today, and it still gives me shivers. I like "the down and simple fragrance that grabs you by the neck," and "the sideways costume changes." I was wondering if you were putting on a passion play or a school drama, but then there were the religious connotations. So perhaps a mystery play in the market square of a village lost in time warps.

11:19 AM  
Blogger murat11 said...

Teresa: What a wonderful tesserine translation. I'll definitely want you on the job when I have the Collected Works translated into Icelandic.

I'm not sure what spurred this one on: my dismay, I think, with the pathetic film version of The Time Traveler's Wife, for one: I felt a need to clear out the vapidity on display, something just needed to burst through: the kiss me chorus just started running in my head, and then I sat down to write.

I'm now reading TTTW, and enjoying it, quite charmed by it, in fact. The film adaptation completely loses the complexity, and more importantly, the narrative voices are also lost.

Glad for the shivers . . .

3:34 PM  
Blogger Devil Mood said...

The scarves shining sensibilites reminded me of ME. I have a bunch of sparkly scarves to offload. ;)

5:13 PM  
Blogger murat11 said...

DM: Of course the scarves reminded you of you: they ARE you. :-D

Good to hear from you.

8:51 PM  

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