Whistling for Moonbeams: This little banquet

Monday, April 2, 2012

This little banquet

"It struck her... that here was spring, and the whole year to be lived through, once more."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay

My current fixations:

milk tea, scented oils, tea light candles.

After a long day at work, and a drawn-out week crunching away at data, daylight, and anxiety, there's nothing like a large cup of cool milk tea, or the sustained whiff of fragrant oil kindling mildly over the soft flicker of a tea light candle.

The milk tea invigorates, the scents bring pleasure to the tired mind, the sight of the candle's softly quivering flame subdues the cares and the distress... ah, but life seems kinder when the air is filled with strawberries, or apples, or amber, or vanilla-and-cinnamon-flavored donuts...

And outside, flits a lone moth and nine fireflies, a breeze lingers just a bit longer, trees breathe over weary pavements, moonlight slants, invisible, on the surfaces of things.

The daily grind is sapping enough, so sip away and take it easy.
Have some tea and candlelight today.

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THE WILD IRIS (by Louise Gluck)

At the end of my suffering
there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:

from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure sea water.

Luis Katigbak, On Music

You find your music like you find anything you love for a lifetime: through head-spinningly intense first impressions, deepened by increments, by glances and tastes, flashes of bliss, the slow rush, the terrifying exhilaration of knowing and being known, and finally: hands and heart clasped in commitment, days and years sealed against decay. The beauty of a cascading guitar line, of a voice in flight singing words that mean something to you--these are permanent and ephemeral, as are everything that matters, and when you first fall for your music you almost never appreciate the paradox.

from "The Dawn: Everything that Matters",by Luis Katigbak,PULP, March 2005

SPECK OF RAIN ROARING by Edith Tiempo

Ich bin eine Saite Uber rauschende breite Resonanzen gespannt. -Rilke-

Did she borrow her stillness from the chair, from the book, her drink, the cigarette? So quiet, You'd think the other way around, that it was her self-possession settled the chair she sat in, enfolded and completed it with her legs and torso, gouging a shape that little by little became permanent. For she belonged wherever she was, or rather, wherever she was belonged to her, green calyx around its burden. The olive nested in her glass. Even when later he told her: Go, And do not come back, It was the capacity to contain herself, (Atlas, maybe, or Sisyphus) To hold that rolling rock frozen at every locus on that fickle hill; to locate herself Pinpoint or Dust Mote, and the whole globe the footstool; Even when later she dropped the round tear that spilled and spilled inside of him, sweat in his pores, rheum in his eyeballs, blood in his eardrums, speck of tear or rain roaring, to swell the water floods, Even then, when it was his rage that gnashed and cut his own thick tongue.

MIND (by Jorie Graham)

The slow overture of rain,

each drop breaking 
without breaking into
the next, describes
the unrelenting, syncopated
mind. Not unlike
the hummingbirds
imagining their wings 
to be their heart, and swallows
believing the horizon
to be a line they lift
and drop. What is it 
they cast for? The poplars, 
advancing or retreating, 
lose their stature 
equally, and yet stand firm, 
making arrangements 
in order to become
imaginary. The city
draws the mind in streets, 
and streets compel it
from their intersections 
where a little
belongs to no one. It is 
what is driven through
all stationary portions 
of the world, gravity's
stake in things, the leaves,
pressed against the dank 
window of November 
soil, remain unwelcome
till transformed, parts 
of a puzzle unsolvable
till the edges give a bit
and soften. See how 
then the picture becomes clear, 
the mind entering the ground 
more easily in pieces, 
and all the richer for it.

Short Story on a Painting of Gustav Klimt

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

They are kneeling upright on a flowered bed He has just caught her there and holds her still Her gown has slipped down off her shoulder He has an urgent hunger His dark head bends to hers hungrily And the woman the woman turns her tangerine lips from his one hand like the head of a dead swan draped down over his heavy neck the fingers strangely crimped tightly together her other arm doubled up against her tight breast her hand a languid claw clutching his hand which would turn her mouth to his her long dress made of multicolored blossoms quilted on gold her Titian hair with blues stars in it And his gold harlequin robe checkered with dark squares Gold garlands stream down over her bare calves & tensed feet Nearby there must be a jeweled tree with glass leaves aglitter in the gold air It must be morning in a faraway place somewhere They are slient together as in a flowered field upon the summer couch which must be hers And he holds her still so passionately holds her head to his so gently so insistently to make her turn her lips to his Her eyes are closed like folded petals She will not open He is not the One