Posted by trouble on March 15, 2002, at 3:00:37
In reply to another poem A SECRET HISTORY OF PRAYER AND SONG, posted by kid_A on March 14, 2002, at 19:27:39
>
Kid_A,
I imagine you in a poetry reading, the room growing deadly quiet and staying that way long afterwards, and when you return to your seat your friends are silent, embarrassed by their awe and loss of anything to say, ever again.
This IMHO is what makes the whole damn thing worthwhile.I just don't know what to say about your poems, I fantasize about having discussions someday w/ T.S. Eliot and Rimbaud, I know exactly what I'd ask them, meanwhile there you are, living and breathing and I don't know what to say for fear I'll reveal my ignorance and prove myself unworthy of consideration. You may be kinder than some, but so many of the greats were notoriously picky picky picky about who they'd discuss their works with, and kept everyone on perpetual probation, I'm thinking now of Nabakov and Robert Lowell, who dismissed the poetry of Sylvia Plath as "facile." Ouch. And she was his student!
Anyway, I know you've given me the go-ahead to ask you about your work before, but the timidity persists b/c I feel I'm *supposed* to be able to get it, and when I do get one of your references I'm in awe, enamored, non-plussed, humbled and oddly enervated, but in a good way, still, there are some stanzas I don't understand, and I know they are there for a reason, and if I'm going to get everything out of the poem it intends to offer, I need to know. But since the very purpose of allegory, oxymoron, metonymy and all figurative speech is to involve the reader in the poem, given its interpretative process, we readers have to do our part to complete the work. Asking for help defeats the point, including the purpose of all the poet's hard work. I take that seriously, which is why I hesitate to pull on your coat, since that could reasonabley be taken as an offense.
I haven't spent any time yet w/ A Secret History of Prayer and Song, so have nothing to say about it, except it strikes me as YOUR EPIC, but there are a couple others I've looked at enough to know what I want to ask, if you've a mind to go over them in more detail as you see fit.
thanks,
trouble
A SECRET HISTORY OF PRAYER AND SONG
>
>
> prologue, a prayer for no one
>
> this is a prayer for no one
> a song for no one - a song
> long forgotten, a prayer
> left unanswered
>
> what caused the lepers of 5th ave- to jump to
> their feet cursing the leprosarium
> blessing a NASDAQ cool that choked
> a purple sky bending under jupiter and
> Wall
>
> some awesome prayer, sung silently sung
> infinitely that leveled disbeliveers
> to their knees who crawled teary-eyed into
> Starbucks screaming for their liberties
>
> to a beautiful miniscule prayer sung like a
> whisper, "shhhh... i am your king,
> but eight years of age today, bring
> me the heads of your filthiest harlots"
>
> who rocked on radio kaos that they might
> burn the future of cry when their
> sleepmates left home- sick from
> war with the heartbreak
>
> who raptured all the dumb and all the dead
> and just anyone who might listen,
> if only for a while
>
> who stole fire for vegas stole fire for kasas city
> stole for reno, and cursed those vectors that
> tore at their livers for want of a
> little meat
>
> who self destructed, three times allready
> burst into tears/flames, consumed (again)
> by fear of telephone ring
>
> who leered at passers by under the arcing
> halos of streetlamp and october,
> muttering a litany of complaints on
> ailing justice and empty promise
>
> and mothers who had drowned their young
> resplendent starving babes, kicking
> and screaming in the river surf
>
> and for aaron of the moors, patron saint of
> senseless violence, let not your sorrow
> die, though we are dead
>
> and for dawsons and for wards
> and for jacksons and for carvers
> and for astons of the new york
>
> and for garrets and for daltons
> and for vanderbilts, and for carters
> and for morrises of the morrisania
>
> and for skull and for bones
>
> and for
>
> hyper genome
>
> and for bold
>
> and for beautiful
>
> and for
>
> restless
>
> and for
>
> young.
>
>
>
>
> a prayer for the beautific
>
> oh beautiful siren oh beautiful and unsteady
> pulse beat oh unholy the city of
> imaculate subway halelujah
>
> oh metal and parking lot oh flowers and
> hope oh police and city of
> spectre industry and unatainable
> whores
>
> oh darkness and light oh capitol and rape
> oh blessed broken monolith
>
> they are dreaming of you - lest you forget
> they know that you steal from them
>
> they are shaping words in cool glass like
> dale - can you believe that?
>
> they are blessing the sacrament through
> blood and maybe some psychiatry
>
> they are bored of morocco and life and lansky
> blessed bentley blessed aston
> blessed martin
>
> they are alive through heartbeat channel no 5
> china chow paper magazine blast furnace
>
> they drug themselves up from mud into mud and
> beyond mud to form ceramic phallus like
> yeah, beyond that - into silicone
>
> they are in congress with azrael under law
> under mammon under the holy babel under
> the magnificent lust of holy sodom
>
> they are baring their breasts into ashes and
> into dust and into klonopin, percodan and
> halcion into wiccan rites of the samhain
> into the tai chi
>
> they choose what and who and when and where they
> are blessed by genome to have choice
>
> they are silent soul under moonlight into
> winter under moonlight sunkiss under
> moonlight never to be spoken of again
>
> they are stealing hearts like candy
> under the covers of darkness
> under failing stars
>
> they are cutting deep cuts into glass into fbi
> delorean dreamgirl fuck into cosa nostra
>
> they waiting for the welcome message
> they waiting for hale-bopp
>
> they are broken ideas and telephone horror
> silent machinery perpetual motion
> money under moonlight
>
> they dive through strip-mined streets at
> midnite dashing through their doorboys
> sniffling and laughing - ha!
>
> they are the rivers of silver the department
> of treasury hampton and vale and
> unlimited dollars
>
> they are locking themselves into iron maidens
> and fingering their loveworn
> belts of broken chastity
>
> they are vast and vissioned and uniform highways
> they got unlimited clock
>
> they are a crown of antlers and teenaged
> death squads siphilus and rockets
> pornographic hope so fleeting it
> holds no comfort
>
> they are inside the moment under moonlight
> giving it away because its not there
> and its gone before you got it
> (into empty space)
>
> they are destroying art they are fucking
> on NEA grants for arts sakes god damn
> them and that's okay by me
>
> they are what you couldn't be and for you if
> you could be it and what we would be
> if we could aww fuck it
>
> they are timeless inside of time and under
> archon they rose bloodless and skyclad
> to devour their daughters whole
> like prostitute
>
> they are iron and copper and metallic thunder they
> hiawatha captor they chief thunderbird
> castrator
>
> they[re] will never be another one like you
> they[re] will never be another one who
> does the things you do
>
> they are sucking up poetry like lightning they are
> killing the word before you knew it
> was word they are destructing
> all consciousness
>
> they frenchkiss electric they telepathic romance
> they make light inside of darkness
>
> they blood like money and faces like dollars
> they are all holy amongst the blessed
> ivanka - i christen thee, pocahontas
> of the americas
>
> they are the oh (open) and the m (closure)
>
> they are the space between the words
>
> they are the first, and they are the last
> and they are the always
>
> radiant solar stormgods
>
> radiant super nova
>
> they are breaking the boundaries of
> time and space
>
>
>
> epilogue, a prayer for the damned
>
> what were we given? spit and blood and asphalt
> some tyre yard of broken horses for girls
>
> what nightmares and ignorance, what maniac
> terror, what televised breakdown, what
> choking colonial timebomb apartheid
>
> what demonic army, what halting cruelty,
> what slow drunk death by isolation
>
> we can jam the fuck pch, we can get it live on
> rock box, we can do it rock shock
>
> we burn like joan of ark, dirty little secrets
> and atomic bomb
>
> we cold yeah - tired hungry lonely niggers
>
> we starving, maniac basehead manic
> yeah we wild in the streets
>
> we are cool and we seek heat
>
> we the unseen danger, unknown danger, monster
> limitless danger, danger blankeyed
> danger incomplete
>
> we stuck with arrows we drawn and quartered
> we eaten whole like christians
>
> we make zombie television
> we give radio exorcist
>
> we hunt alleyway and redlight
> looking for big bang who gave
> up with a whimper
>
> we make war for the massachusets we
> draw blood for the new york we
> suffer the connecticut
>
> we huddle en masse and fuck like rabbits
> we keep warm like cuban ex-
> patriots
>
> we got stuck in naked rooms for heresy,
> blasphemies for Hadrian - who made
> us strip (even though we longed
> to strip) -to burn ourselves
> for fun
>
> we call this, rape fantasy
>
> we junk punk, we rock robot, we nurture nature
> disaster- sobbing deep and empty
> sobs- we reach beyond our grasp
>
> we were looking for lost continent but found only
> atlantis, er, jericho, some shoddy, sullen
> oasis of cheerless sand
>
> and public execution, and military police,
> and limitless heartbreak and
> a promise derailed
>
> and grocery horror, and arrested
> rebirth, and words changing
> nothing
>
> and minds are changing
>
> and wouldn't it be nice if we were older?
>
> and dance with me and remember me and speak
> softly of me in careful whisper
>
> and didn't we almost have it all?
>
> we sabotaged the homeless, we killed radio
> telescope, we stayed up late
> to watch for falling planets
>
> we contemplated gravity, quantum, and the
> steady state, we crawled on floors
> we threw up blood
>
> and drowned in false sense of security,
> daybreak, and what a loss, what
> a great artist the world has
> lost
>
> and then, like wolves, they were upon us!
>
> we drowned on slave ships from the durban,
> upper volta, and katanga, we
> swallowed lucious gulps of
> the salty sea air
>
> and meditated through the window of our skin
> and fell through cadillacs down
> into city, into subway, and
> fell through light, into Shiva
>
> we died in plastic prison dragging feet,
> screaming in awful shame
>
> we blighted crops and poisoned wells,
> we stole your slumbered babes
>
> we swallowed pride, and electric shock,
> we swallowed timeless hospital
>
> and meaningless verse
>
> and disco destruction
>
> and prayers tiredly spoken
>
>
>
> and pointless obsession
>
> and persistence of memory
>
> and empty medieval manhattan
>
>
>
> and new radiant scorpio
>
> and holographic japan
>
> and endless
> yin
>
>
> and
>
> this is a laugh
>
>
> and
>
> this is a drag
>
>
> and
>
> these are just words
>
>
> and
>
> these are the last words,
> we will ever say.
>
>
> january 12th, 2000
poster:trouble
thread:19863
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20020314/msgs/19877.html