it was hard to resist the poetry of the possibility
it was a communion he occasionally felt
(ZS)
Jean Price-Mars et la Révolution haïtienne : Entre héroïsme collectif et complexité historique, Virginie Belony. La Nouvelle Ronde: A Haitian History Blog.
Boy Harsher, Come Closer
In a whisper he began begging for – and, as the sun set, received – the concession people always beg for: a little more time. (ZS)
Blue Note. Donald Byrd’s 1973 live recording release in 2022.
We take from life one little share,
And say that this shall be
A space, redeemed from toil and care,
From tears and sadness free.
And, haply, Death unstrings his bow,
And Sorrow stands apart,
And, for a little while, we know
The sunshine of the heart.
Existence seems a summer eve,
Warm, soft, and full of peace;
Our free, unfettered feelings give
The soul its full release.
A moment, then, it takes the power
To call up thoughts that throw
Around that charmed and hallowed hour,
This life’s divinest glow.
But Time, though viewlessly it flies,
And slowly, will not stay;
Alike, through clear and clouded skies,
It cleaves its silent way.
Alike the bitter cup of grief,
Alike the draught of bliss,
Its progress leaves but moment brief
For baffled lips to kiss.
The sparkling draught is dried away,
The hour of rest is gone,
And urgent voices, round us, say,
“Ho, lingerer, hasten on!”
And has the soul, then, only gained,
From this brief time of ease,
A moment’s rest, when overstrained,
One hurried glimpse of peace?
No; while the sun shone kindly o’er us,
And flowers bloomed round our feet, —
While many a bud of joy before us
Unclosed its petals sweet, —
An unseen work within was plying;
Like honey-seeking bee,
From flower to flower, unwearied, flying,
Laboured one faculty, —
Thoughtful for Winter’s future sorrow,
Its gloom and scarcity;
Prescient to-day of want to-morrow,
Toiled quiet Memory.
’Tis she that from each transient pleasure
Extracts a lasting good;
’Tis she that finds, in summer, treasure
To serve for winter’s food.
And when Youth’s summer day is vanished,
And Age brings winter’s stress,
Her stores, with hoarded sweets replenished,
Life’s evening hours will bless.
Winter Stores, Charlotte Brontë
What I’m looking for
is an unmarked door
we’ll walk through
and there: whatever
we’d wished for
beyond the door.
What I’m looking for
is a golden bowl
carefully repaired
a complete world sealed
along cracked lines.
What I’m looking for
may not be there.
What you’re looking for
may or may not
be me. I’m listening for
the return of that sound
I heard in the woods
just now, that silvery sound
that seemed to call
not only to me.
What I’m Looking For, Maureen N. McLane
They were not kidding
when they said they were blinded
by a vision of love.
It was not just a manner
of speaking or feeling
though it’s hard to say
how the dead
really felt harder
even than knowing the living.
You are so opaque
to me your brief moments
of apparent transparency
seem fraudulent windows
in a Brutalist structure
everyone admires.
The effort your life
requires exhausts me.
I am not kidding.
They Were Not Kidding in the Fourteenth Century, Maureen N. McLane
Black Doves, 2024. Netflix.
Raye, Bang Bang. Not release yet. A snippet is below.
Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down), 1966.
as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,
that is not mine, but is a made place,that is mine, it is so near to the heart,
Robert Duncan, Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow
an eternal pasture folded in all thought
“The word “poet” derives from the ancient Greek ??????? (poietes) which translates simply enough as “a maker.” The word ???? (phren) can be translated as either “heart” or “mind.” The ancient Greeks thought the heart might be filled with the phantasms of all that we love, a kind of breath or pneuma, in Greek, that moves through the senses and embeds the image in the heart—a kind of pasture where we learn to think, learn to feel. We can imagine the poem as a fold in that eternal, internal pasture—a place that voice forms.”
Dan Beachy-Quick in Poetry.
Kendrick Lamar, wacced out murals