February 2012
17 posts
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Fall forward as if dizziness overcome you don’t reach out to break what, don’t mind the creak or crick of it, let air wash cold through all gravity and have its way Fall as if falling is good.
Februrary 24, 2012
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On Having Misidentified A Wild Flower -Richard...
A thrush, because I’d been wrong, Burst rightly into song In a world not vague, not lonely, Not governed by me only.
via Oddity and Light
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The Evening by Georg Trakl
With the ghostly shapes of dead heroes Moon, you fill The growing silence of the forest, Sickle-moon— With the gentle embraces Of lovers, And with ghosts of famous ages All around the crumbling rocks; The moon shines with such blue light Upon the city, Where a decaying generation Lives, cold and evil— A dark future prepared For the pale grandchild. You shadows swallowed by the moon ...
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The ducks fly funny Swirling even noises They quack above Then shift their voices To little chipping sounds Dots like love notes Spread in lines across the sky. LynnChakoian February 15, 2012 Minneapolis
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valentine
How is it Love
you so
invade my heart
LynnChakoian
Gradh Liom-- Love be with me →
Gràdh Liom
Gràdh liom ag èirigh Gràdh liom anns gach ràth soluis Is gun mi ràth son as aonais Gun aon ràth as aonais Gun aon ràth as aonais
Tlus liom a cadal Tlus liom a dùsgadh Tlus liom a caithris Gach là agus oidhche Gach là is oidhche
Gràdh liom a còmhnadh Sìochaint liom a riaghladh Foighidinn liom a treòradh Gu soir agus sìorruidh Soir agus sìorruidh, cridhe nan cridhe Soir agus sìorruidh,...
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Evening Muse by Georg Trakl
Again at the blooming window the church tower’s shadow And golden shape return. The hot forehead burns down in rest and silence. A fountain falls in the darkness of chestnut branches - There you feel: it is good! in painful exhaustion. The market is empty of summer fruits and garlands. Harmoniously the gates’ blackish pageantry attunes. In a garden the tones of soft play sound Where...
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A Woman
Her arms like sticks washed up this way and that elbow a hidden lever uncoiling coolly light, air of a bird wing enclosed by checked cloth with scars of tumbled time. Here, now, it is all out of place floaters in eyes take us some distance away to address the how of it. The why of some gambit providing fodder for others’ wars leads to dilemmas, irrelevance a woman out of time. LynnChakoian...
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Window
The lamp casts a shadow a neck like a woman covered by triangular dark on the light colored wall. And the trees wiggle in greys even without any leaves through this low winter dusk. Then lays the lamp half light half dark in the still inside window full of movement not even dust falling. Without a word or clue a regal bearing reigns while all shuffles round the sunset in wind.
LynnChakoian,...
One morning—and so soon!—the first flower has opened when you wake. Or you catch it poised in a single, brief moment of hesitation. Next day, another, shy at first like a foal, even a third, a fourth, carried triumphantly at the summit of those strong columns, and each a Juno, calm in brilliance, a maiden giantess in modest splendor. If humans could be that intensely whole, undistracted,...
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He pushes a metal shopping cart It must help him walk, it stands empty And his happy grin, sets minds to wondering In a quiet way along that busy street Overflowing signal lights, city beats Curious as he is and we all seem to be.
LynnChakoian, Minneapolis, January 30, 2012
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January 2012
14 posts
5 tags
On Prayer
You ask me how to pray to someone who is not. All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard, Above landscapes the color of ripe gold Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun. That Bridge leads to the shore of Reversal Where everything is just the opposite and the word ‘is’ Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned. Notice: I say we; there,...
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action holds the indictment… jottings of a poem, hardly of this world immeasurable, without censor, an unexplained gesture these words on a page we like one and not the other …actions create infirmity.
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somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if your...
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Snowfall creates a quiet Even road noise damped, But sound travels slower Than light, by about half a sky. Dog’s by the door, It’s cold out here you know, Even he wonders about me Sometimes.
LynnChakoian January 17, 2012
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Watchhypocrite-lecteur:
Zbyněk Baladrán, “Letter from Nowhere”
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The force of a paperwhite’s Fragile pale flower Alone, imperial stalk And sadness so sour In this solitary stance With control thrown afar Or merely, a stiffness In the chilly wind.
It too has its arms Of green that embrace A sameness of form In a mirror displaced, As if the one can be all And the flower pronounce Every truth that will call An end to it.
When the season turns And the green...
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Christmas eve
Clouds reflecting light indistinct from the setting sun or rising moon cannot be said and if memory serves (not usually the case) there is no internal source in that wispy heaven. And God posed with chalice on some high-off place, a throne or golden chariot that fires like blossoms as daylight breaks, a show, in mime, where humility is placed. Time counted in the falling of the star as arbitrary...
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via: journalofanobody:
It’s dark. You exhale a fist of memory. I love you like weathering wood in a room of empty pianos. When you return to something you love, it’s already beyond repair. You wear it broken.
James L. White, from “Lying in Sadness” in The Salt Ecstasies (via proustitute)
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The pen falls from my hand writing interrupted by its flight to paper, a leaf, shred of something hardly able to read, those tears full like crying, but not really by any definition.
They drop like the pen, without rhyme or reason, no heavy drive one way or another, just drops, simply falling a clockwork of down and picking up.
LynnChakoian January 1, 2012
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Towards the Splendid City, Pablo Neruda
higher-than-the-soul-can-hope:
“During this long journey I found the necessary components for the making of the poem. There I received contributions from the earth and from the soul. And I believe that poetry is an action, ephemeral or solemn, in which there enter as equal partners solitude and solidarity, emotion and action, the nearness to oneself, the nearness to mankind and to the secret...
December 2011
23 posts
4 tags
Love at First Sight, by Wislawa Szymborska
Both are convinced that a sudden surge of emotion bound them together. Beautiful is such a certainty, but uncertainty is more beautiful.
Because they didn’t know each other earlier, they suppose that nothing was happening between them. What of the streets, stairways and corridors where they could have passed each other long ago?
I’d like to ask them whether they remember— perhaps in a...
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My Mayakovsky A hooligan promoter of the new One ill equipped to deal with life Its multiply-layered needs, betrayals A cloud in trousers A gentle soul that might For me forgive and lay beside. LynnChakoian December 28, 2011
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Past one o'clock by V. Mayakovsky
Past one o’clock. You must have gone to bed. The Milky Way streams silver through the night. I’m in no hurry; with lightning telegrams I have no cause to wake or trouble you. And, as they say, the incident is closed. Love’s boat has smashed against the daily grind. Now you and I are quits. Why bother then To balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts. Behold what quiet settles on the world. ...
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It’s as if a painter started with eyes, the lines along a rim and irises aglow, to determine how the rest of the face fell onto the canvas or scrap that follow from brush to palette mixing the shades and hues in a fine gloss on flat surface. Then like life, by some jump, fingertips scratched into focus, fondling or feelings, then an ear comes round in sympathy for the difficulties life presents...
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You Learn, by Jorge Luis Borges
higher-than-the-soul-can-hope:
After a while you learn the subtle difference Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning And company doesn’t mean security.
And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts And presents aren’t promises,
And you begin to accept your defeats With your head up and your eyes open With the grace of a woman, not the...
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Amidst Worlds - by Innokenty Annensky
Amidst worlds, and radiant star A lustrous light, I murmur Her name and sigh… Not because She was mine to love afar, But merely because I suffer those drawn nigh. And if my anguished doubts remain, I wish to divine Her answer on this night, Not because the light She sheds will sustain, Only because with Her I need no light.
translation by LynnChakoian and S. Albertoff
January 2011 - August 2011
...
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Blasphemers Ahasuerus - Herodias
Another century dawning With moonlit precision A landscape illumined In a wash of white And long trailing footpaths Trodden down, worn By the endlessness of his travail. Above the mist, her outline mirrors Dusk of centuries and millennia, A play, a circuitous ramble, Never-ending dancers of time. Now the wanderer turns, And she looks again At the lonely road before her. Unable to shield...
“I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I...”
– Arthur Rimbaud (via seabois)
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as only one
Warp board laced taut, so long ago dust defines it cobwebs of ghostly fingers a fabric without color. Idle loom stands a potential to raise rattling wire heddles weft pushed and shuttled bright, but left alone as only one.
LynnChakoian December 7, 2011
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Window Seat
The orange horizon reflects On the wing edge a cryptic Telling source of the sunset’s Anthem and song, yet no lyric. Pinpoints of light warn of how high We have come, and still waters below Speak, “you are mine” In a voice, welcome and slow.
LynnChakoian November 20, 2011
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