The Aviary

I have a poetry book from the library that I have to return today and have thus been typing up some poems in order to keep them. Therefore, I thought I would share one that I particularly like.
( As You Know, by Nick Lantz )

Here it is, the last poem of poetry month. Of course, it is Richard Siken. 8) I've really enjoyed doing this - I hope that some of you have enjoyed it too.

This is the first Richard Siken poem I ever read, in fact.


Scheherazade, by Richard Siken

Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake
and dress them in warm clothes again.
How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running
until they forget that they are horses.
It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
it's more like a song on a policeman's radio,
how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple
to slice into pieces.
Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon, that means
we're inconsolable.
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it.

Chinese Folk Song, by an anonymous poet
translated by Cecilia Liang

Black ravens squawking in the nest.
Everybody says I have too many sisters.
Ten aren't many.
First sister marries a carpenter.
Wooden beams hold up the roof.
Second marries a bamboo cutter.
Our wet clothes dry on poles.
Third sister marries a fisherman.
Fish, shrimp and crabs go in the soup.
Fourth sister marries a weaver.
We're wearing silk and satin.
Fifth one marries a beancake man.
Starch the clothes in soybean milk.
Sixth sister marries a butcher.
Bean paste fries in lard.
Seventh marries a painter.
The table's painted, the bed's red.
Eighth sister marries a watchman.
Every night he drums you to bed.
Ninth sister marries a tailor.
Measures us for a dress.
Tenth sister marries a farmer.
Piles of rice,
piles of wood,
piles of husks.

How Language Works, by Albert Goldbarth

One night near the end, I sang his name.
Barely a moon, and nearly no stars – it was something
like giving a signature back to its ink.
I don't know why I did it: nothing
was going to change, it was never going to be a world
where a leaf or a woman's exploring hand or a carburetor
would know him, ever again. But sing his name
I did, in a voice as broken – as spidered – as paint
on a fifteenth century altar panel,
sepia and holy and starting to loosen.
It wasn't dramatic: I wasn't wandering in a storm.
Although it seemed the darkness might have been a way
the sky decided to kneel. Then I went back inside,
the chair was the same, the sloppy pile of books was the same,
and I continued to say his name, even then,
in a singsong. I might just as well have sung out
for the fourteen horses dead near here last year
when the stables caught fire – two escaped
their stalls and panicked down the road
with jockeys of flame on their backs. Or for
the worms in their carcasses. For any of us.
But it was his name that I sang, his name
that carried the others – his name, now,
was the horse. His name was the altar panel
in which we all took our stilted positions.
And frankly. . .why is this special?
It isn't. "Chair."
"Storm." "Leaf." "Books." "Woman's hand."
Every word is an elegy
– at the least, a commemoration.

Let Me Die a Youngman's Death, by Roger McGough

Let me die a youngman's death
not a clean and inbetween
the sheets holywater death
not a famous-last-words
peaceful out of breath death

When I'm 73
and in constant good tumour
may I be mown down at dawn
by a bright red sports car
on my way home
from an allnight party

Or when I'm 91
with silver hair
and sitting in a barber's chair
may rival gangsters
with hamfisted tommyguns burst in
and give me a short back and insides

Or when I'm 104
and banned from the Cavern
may my mistress
catching me in bed with her daughter
and fearing for her son
cut me up into little pieces
and throw away every piece but one

Let me die a youngman's death
not a free from sin tiptoe in
candle wax and waning death
not a curtains drawn by angels borne
'what a nice way to go' death

Elegy for My Father, Who Is Not Dead, by Andrew Hudgins

One day I’ll lift the telephone
and be told my father’s dead. He’s ready.
In the sureness of his faith, he talks
about the world beyond this world
as though his reservations have
been made. I think he wants to go,
a little bit—a new desire
to travel building up, an itch
to see fresh worlds. Or older ones.
He thinks that when I follow him
he’ll wrap me in his arms and laugh,
the way he did when I arrived
on earth. I do not think he’s right.
He’s ready. I am not. I can’t
just say good-bye as cheerfully
as if he were embarking on a trip
to make my later trip go well.
I see myself on deck, convinced
his ship’s gone down, while he’s convinced
I’ll see him standing on the dock
and waving, shouting, Welcome back.

What I Learned From the Incredible Hulk, by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

When it comes to clothes, make
an allowance for the unexpected.
Be sure the spare in the trunk
of your station wagon with wood paneling

isn't in need of repair. A simple jean jacket
says Hey, if you aren't trying to smuggle
rare Incan coins through this peaceful
little town and kidnap the local orphan,

I can be one heck of a mellow kinda guy.
But no matter how angry a man gets, a smile
and a soft stroke on his bicep can work
wonders. I learned that male chests

also have nipples, warm and established--
green doesn't always mean envy.
It's the meadows full of clover
and chicory the Hulk seeks for rest, a return

to normal. And sometimes, a woman
gets to go with him, her tiny hands
correcting his rumpled hair, the cuts
in his hand. Green is the space between

water and sun, cover for a quiet man,
each rib shuttling drops of liquid light.



I have no Marvel comics icons. DC characters will have to do.

My concert is tonight, so I thought I'd post a poem that we're singing. You can click the link to hear it. (I think it kinda works better sung, myself.)


Choose Something Like a Star, by Robert Frost

O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud -
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.

Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says "I burn."
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.

It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keat's Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.



( cut for religion )


(Bonus poem/choral video - The Sounding Sea, composed by Eric Barnum, which is a setting of the poem by George William Curtis. This is my favorite thing we're sining this session.)

Attack of the Crab Monsters, by Lawrence Raab

Even from the beach I could sense it—
lack of welcome, lack of abiding life,
like something in the air, a certain
lack of sound. Yesterday
there was a mountain out there.
Now it’s gone. And look

at this radio, each tube neatly
sliced in half. Blow the place up!
That was my advice.
But after the storm and the earthquake,
after the tactic of the exploding plane
and the strategy of the sinking boat, it looked

like fate and I wanted to say, “Don’t you see?
So what if you’re a famous biochemist!
Lost with all hands is an old story.”
Sure, we’re on the edge
of an important breakthrough, everyone
hearing voices, everyone falling

into caves, and you’re out
wandering through the jungle
in the middle of the night in your negligee.
Yes, we’re way out there
on the edge of science, while the rest
of the island continues to disappear until

nothing’s left except this
cliff in the middle of the ocean,
and you, in your bathing suit,
crouched behind the scuba tanks.
I’d like to tell you
not to be afraid, but I’ve lost

my voice. I’m not used to all these
legs, these claws, these feelers.
It’s the old story, predictable
as fallout—the rearrangement of molecules.
And everyone is surprised
and no one understands

why each man tries to kill
the thing he loves, when the change
comes over him. So now you know
what I never found the time to say.
Sweetheart, put down your flamethrower.
You know I always loved you.

I'd also like to include a link to the site where I first found this poem. And You Call Yourself a Scientist is probably my favorite movie website. Ms Kingsley's reviews are always informative and entertaining, and Attack of the Crab Monsters is no exception.

A Martian Sends a Postcard Home, by Craig Raine

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings -

they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.

I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.

Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:

then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.

( Rain is when the earth is television )

I Foresee the Breaking of All That is Breakable, by John Estes

Perhaps, after all, it is merely a desire
to use the word thanatopsical -
but if you can wash or handle
artifacts like this blue
tea mug, carried from Crete as a gift
from a friend, or this nacreous
orange bowl,
a honeymoon souvenir
bought in a now-defunct artists'
shop in Colorado, or
this antique Chinese mudman
carrying his sponges
and fish from a day at the pier,
without a pathological
fixation on the day you will stumble
and drop it, or smack it
against the sink divider or brush
it with a hand reaching
for the letter opener, you are junzi:
a superior person, as Confucius had it.
You probably make love
to your spouse without imagining
betrayal and pay taxes
without complaint
because you think nothing
in truth belongs to you.

They invented the earth for people
like you, and then salted it.

Sonnet XVII, by Pablo Neruda

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flower;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Death of the Loch Ness Monster, by Gwendolyn MacEwan

Consider that the thing has died before we proved it ever lived 
and that it died of loneliness, dark lord of the loch, 
fathomless Worm, great Orm, this last of our mysteries - 
'haifend ane meikill fin on ilk syde 
with ane taill and ane terribill heid' - 
and that it had no tales to tell us, only that it lived there, 
lake-locked, lost in its own coils, 
waiting to be found; in the black light of midnight 
surfacing, its whole elastic length unwound, 
and the sound it made as it broke the water 
was the single plucked string of a harp - 
this newt or salamander, graceful as a swan, 
this water-snake, this water-horse, this water-dancer. 

( Consider him tired of pondering the possible existence of man )


You didn't think there wouldn't be monster poetry, did you?