Sunday, June 8, 2008

Hot Sunday

Lots of time spent the last few days spent working on Jesse's room, cleaning it out, organizing so much of it. He completely re-did the walls, filled with lots of his artwork (some very large and impressive paintings, as well as some very interesting smaller ones. There are portraits, self-portraits, abstract work, a giant piece that is really something, life-size white on black of of a woman in motion). He hopes to get these on a web-site soon. It will be something to see.

For me, the real work of the summer, I think, begins tomorrow. I'm waiting on an inter-library loan on the Hinojosa but have already started on the twenty or so I already have. Plus work on the two new manuscripts should move forward, one is the random poems of the last year and the other is the poems for Mark Statman: An Anti-Memoir. As these become revised, I'll start posting.

But here is something from Celia Cruz

from the dead

an inconclusive silence
the tyranny of uncertainty
we live with the knowledge
of our knowledgelessness
and so we place flowers and keepsakes and stones
on graves, at candles, at trees
thin clichés take over thought:
the horseless rider
the sword and outworn sheath
belief and hope
that on the wind will come these voices
which call us to light, a beckoning
the termination of suffering into void
thin
the pause in cycles
the dead waiting in Homeric clusters
for their chance
to drink from Lethe
into forgetfulness
and toward their chosen new life
I wish them not to be reborn
I wish for better than that
some final party
at the end of grief
Hey, says a soul you know
have a drink.
Someone else tells a joke
an old one you’ve always known
and it’s funnier than ever
laughter fills us
an old joke and laughing for eternity
sometimes life was like this
but enough?
over here
another old friend
shows photos
remember this?
you do
an album full
of everything you ever did
that made you happy

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