Not Heaving from My Ribb’d Breast Only (by Walt Whitman)

Not Heaving from My Ribb’d Breast Only
by Walt Whitman
from “Calamus” in Leaves of Grass, 1867

Not heaving from my ribb’d breast only,
Not in sighs at night in rage dissatisfied with myself,
Not in those long-drawn, ill-supprest sighs,
Not in many an oath and promise broken,
Not in my wilful and savage soul’s volition,
Not in the subtle nourishment of the air,
Not in this beating and pounding at my temples and wrists,
Not in the curious systole and diastole within which will one day cease,
Not in many a hungry wish told to the skies only,
Not in cries, laughter, defiances, thrown from me when alone far in the wilds,
Not in husky pantings through clinch’d teeth,
Not in sounded and resounded words, chattering words, echoes, dead words,
Not in the murmurs of my dreams while I sleep,
Nor the other murmurs of these incredible dreams of every day,
Nor in the limbs and senses of my body that take you and dismiss you
continually–not there,
Not in any or all of them O adhesiveness! O pulse of my life!
Need I that you exist and show yourself any more than in these songs.

* * *

To read other Whitman selections in the Crisis Chronicles Online Library, click here.

 

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Ford at Cascade Park (by Alex Gildzen)

Ford at Cascade Park
by Alex Gildzen

Dad’s old Chevy
wd slow   burp   stop
then the magic

that car wd seem
to float thru the water
to the other side

in my middle years
I’d cross the ford again
in my mind

boy’s trip forward
becomes
man’s journey back

just as the river
never stops
I’m always crossing


* * * * *

“Ford at Cascade Park” comes from Alex Gildzen’s chapbook Elyria: Point A in Ohio Triangle, published as CC#4 in 2009 by Crisis Chronicles Press.  For a copy of the chapbook, send $5 to Crisis Chronicles Press, 420 Cleveland Street, Elyria, Ohio 44035. Or use PayPal:

Other recommended Gildzen books include The Arrow That Is Hollywood Pierces The Soul That Is Me (2011, Otoliths), Outlaw Dreams (2008, Green Panda Press) and The Avalanche of Time: Selected Poems 1964-1984 (1986, North Atlantic Books).

You may also visit Gildzen’s blog: http://arroyochamisa.blogspot.com
read his biography: http://internet.cybermesa.com/~takis/AGBio.htm
peruse his papers: http://speccoll.library.kent.edu/faculty/gildzen.html
and view several more of his videos: http://youtube.com/user/gildzen

To a Wealthy Man who Promised a Second Subscription to the Dublin Municipal Gallery If It Were Proved the People Wanted Pictures (by W.B. Yeats)

Yeats [by George Charles Beresford, 1911]

To a Wealthy Man who Promised a Second Subscription to the Dublin
Municipal Gallery If It Were Proved the People Wanted Pictures
by William Butler Yeats
from Responsibilities [1914]

You gave, but will not give again
Until enough of Paudeen’s pence
By Biddy’s halfpennies have lain
To be “some sort of evidence,”
Before you’ll put your guineas down,
That things it were a pride to give
Are what the blind and ignorant town
Imagines best to make it thrive.
What cared Duke Ercole, that bid
His mummers to the market-place,
What th’ onion-sellers thought or did
So that his Plautus set the pace
For the Italian comedies?
And Guidobaldo, when he made
That grammar school of courtesies
Where wit and beauty learned their trade
Upon Urbino’s windy hill,
Had sent no runners to and fro
That he might learn the shepherds’ will.
And when they drove out Cosimo,
Indifferent how the rancour ran,
He gave the hours they had set free
To Michelozzo’s latest plan
For the San Marco Library,
Whence turbulent Italy should draw
Delight in Art whose end is peace,
In logic and in natural law
By sucking at the dugs of Greece.

Your open hand but shows our loss,
For he knew better how to live.
Let Paudeens play at pitch and toss,
Look up in the sun’s eye and give
What the exultant heart calls good
That some new day may breed the best
Because you gave, not what they would
But the right twigs for an eagle’s nest!

          December 1912

 

* * * * *

To read more Yeats in the Online Library, please click here.

Lotus (by Heather Ann Schmidt)

 

Lotus

by Heather Ann Schmidt

Grey aging kitten

wrapped in a question mark

slumbering while I sing,

please open your eyes

so I can see what you are dreaming…   

 

* * * * *
Heather Ann Schmidt has taught writing and more for several institutions of higher learning in Michigan and online. Her most recent poetry books are The Bat’s Love Song: American Haiku (2009, Crisis Chronicles), On Recalling Life Through the Eye of the Needle [2011, Village Green], Transient Angels [2011, Crisis Chronicles] and Batik [2012, NightBallet]. She is also the founding editor and publisher for Recycled Karma Press.  Heather’s forthcoming collections include Red Hibiscus and Field Notes.  Find more at http://heatherannschmidt.yolasite.com.

For E. McC. (by Ezra Pound)

For E. McC.
by Ezra Pound
from A Lume Spento (1908, A, Antonini)

     That was my counter-blade under Leonardo Terrone, Master of Fence

Gone while your tastes were keen to you,
Gone where the grey winds call to you,
     By that high fencer, even Death,
Struck of the blade that no man parrieth;
Such is your fence, one saith,
     One that hath known you.
Drew you your sword most gallantly
Made you your pass most valiantly
     ‘Gainst that grey fencer, even Death.

Gone as a gust of breath
Faith! no man tarrieth,
“Se il cor ti manca,” but it failed thee not!
“Non ti fidar,” it is the sword that speaks
“In me.” *

Thou trusted’st in thyself and met the blade
‘Thout mask or gauntlet, and art laid
As memorable broken blades that be
Kept as bold trophies of old pageantry.
As old Toledos past their days of war
Are kept mnemonic of the strokes they bore,
So art thou with us, being good to keep
In our heart’s sword-rack, though thy sword-arm sleep.

                    ENVOI
Struck of the blade that no man parrieth
Pierced of the point that toucheth lastly all,
‘Gainst that grey fencer, even Death,
Behold the shield! He shall not take thee all.


*Sword-rune: “If thy heart fail thee trust not in me.”

 

* * * * *

     

Met a Mat, a Door I Didn’t Like (by John B. Burroughs)

Met a Mat, a Door I Didn’t Like
by John B.Burroughs
from 6/9: Improvisations in Dependence [2009, Crisis Chronicles Press]

Scribbling
Scrambling
Random ramblings
Run dumb and smart
Numb and smarting
Smarmy
Flush with art and artless
Like farting in calligraphy

Gas rhymes with ass
And no class
And yes
Class
Dismissed rhymes with pissed
And missed and nearly amiss and remiss
Even this

I’m rambling
Randomly scrambling
The few semi worthwhile thoughts I can
Muster with my ass on the toilet
Abdominal cramps
Faux leather journal resting on my write knee
Foster’s beer in one hand and
A wine blood red broken but
Functional mechanical pencil in the other

I’m a man
Who doesn’t feel like much of one
Not a woman
Though I suppose I feel like most of them

Trying to find myself in
Random scrambling
Rambling
Ambling through a know moon
New moan darkness
Though it’s nowhere near midnight yet
And this is one of the year’s longest days

Longest daze I’ve been in for a while
Or so it seems when I’m in it
Trying to bear it
Bare and grin it
Maybe even win it
Or feel like a winner
Instead of a wiener
A whiner or a ham burgher
Though I know I shouldn’t treat
This like a competition
Or a smorgasbord

I want to say
What do you know?
But come to think of it
What do I know?
Even my best attempt at avoiding any gimmick
Makes me feel like another dull mimic
Every stab I make at originality
Smells of another stale gimmick
And sometimes my every scribble
Seems to rhyme
With fibble
But in two words
Fib
Bull
And I’m losing any inclination
To play anything other than
Matador



John wrote and posted  “Met a Mat, a Door I Didn’t Like” on his Tao of Jesus Crisis blog June 22nd 2009.  Shortly thereafter, he selected his favorite blog ramblings from that month and published them on July 4th 2009 as a chapbook entitled 6/9: Improvisations in Dependence (CC#3).

To order a signed copy, please send five US dollars (shipping included) to John B. Burroughs c/o Crisis Chronicles Press, 420 Cleveland Street, Elyria, Ohio 44035 — or use the Buy Now button below to order online via PayPal.

Praise of Ysolt (by Ezra Pound)

Praise of Ysolt
by Ezra Pound
from Personae (1909)

In vain have I striven,
     to teach my heart to bow;
In vain have I said to him
“There be many singers greater than thou.”

But his answer cometh, as winds and as lutany,
As a vague crying upon the night
That leaveth me no rest, saying ever,
                              “Song, a song.”

Their echoes play upon each other in the twilight
Seeking ever a song.
Lo, I am worn with travail
And the wandering of many roads hath made my eyes
As dark red circles filled with dust.
Yet there is a trembling upon me in the twilight,
     And little red elf words crying “A song,”
     Little grey elf words crying for a song,
     Little brown leaf words crying “A song,”
     Little green leaf words crying for a song.
The words are as leaves, old brown leaves in the spring time
Blowing they know not whither, seeking a song.

White words as snow flakes but they are cold,
Moss words, lip words, words of slow streams.

In vain have I striven
     to teach my soul to bow,
In vain have I pled with him:
     “There be greater souls than thou.”

For in the morn of my years there came a woman
As moonlight calling,
As the moon calleth the tides,
                              “Song, a song.”
Wherefore I made her a song and she went from me
As the moon doth from the sea,
But still came the leaf words, little brown elf words
Saying “The soul sendeth us.”
                              “A song, a song!”
And in vain I cried unto them “I have no song
For she I sang of hath gone from me.”

But my soul sent a woman, a woman of the wonderfolk,
A woman as fire upon the pine woods
     crying “Song, a song.”
As the flame crieth unto the sap.
My song was ablaze with her and she went from me
As flame leaveth the embers so went she unto new forests
And the words were with me
     crying ever “Song, a song.”

And I “I have no song,”
Till my soul sent a woman as the sun:
Yea as the sun calleth to the seed,
As the spring upon the bough
So is she that cometh, the mother of songs,
She that holdeth the wonder words within her eyes
The words, little elf words
     that call ever unto me,
                              “Song, a song.”

In vain have I striven with my soul
     to teach my soul to bow.
What soul boweth
     while in his heart art thou? 

 

* * * * *


     

Blue Moon (by Dianne Borsenik)

 

Blue Moon
by Dianne Borsenik
[from HardDrive/SoftWear (2009, Crisis Chronicles Press)]

lunar fingers
elongated
bone-white
penetrate
cloud curtain
slip through
crawl across
scarred wax
frozen landscape
slient night

mocking
star-lacquered
pickpocket
fingers dip
into cracks
raise gooseflesh
trail snail
slime shadows
diaphanous
lunatic fringe

forever dead
fingers draw
chalk outlines
steal passage
on blackwater
broadcast
syllables
of lust
naked longing
high tide

 

Dianne Borsenik is active in the northeast Ohio poetry scene, and is founder/editor of NightBallet Press. She also co-founded the legendary Lix and Kix Poetry Extravaganza and Snoetry: A Winter Wordfest.  Her poems have appeared in Slipstream, Rosebud, Nerve Cowboy, The Magnetic Poetry Book of Poetry, and Haiku World: An International Poetry Almanac, among others. Her most recent chapbooks are Braless (Blasted Press) and Blue Graffiti (Crisis Chronicles Press). She also has chapbooks forthcoming from Recycled Karma Press and Kattywompus Press.  You can find Dianne on Facebook, at www.nightballet.com, or at www.dianneborsenik.com.

“Blue Moon” originally appeared in Dianne Borsenik’s 2009 Crisis Chronicles Press chapbook HardDrive/SoftWear. To order a signed copy, please send $9.99 to Crisis Chronicles Press, 3344 W. 105th Street #4, Cleveland, Ohio 44111.

These I Singing in Spring (by Walt Whitman)

These I Singing in Spring
by Walt Whitman
from “Calamus” in Leaves of Grass, 1867

These I singing in spring collect for lovers,
(For who but I should understand lovers and all their sorrow and joy?
And who but I should be the poet of comrades?)
Collecting, I traverse the garden, the world—but soon I pass the gates,
Now along the pond-side—now wading in a little, fearing not the wet,
Now by the post-and-rail fences, where the old stones thrown there, pick’d from the fields,
     have accumulated,
(Wild-flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones, and partly cover them, beyond
     these I pass,)
Far, far in the forest, or sauntering later in summer, before I think where I go,
Solitary, smelling the earthy smell, stopping now and then in the silence,
Alone I had thought, yet soon a silent troop gathers around me,
Some walk by my side, and some behind, and some embrace my arms or neck,
They, the spirits of friends, dead or alive, thicker they come, a great crowd, and I in the middle,
Collecting, dispensing, singing in spring, there I wander with them,
Plucking something for tokens, tossing toward whoever is near me,
Here! lilac, with a branch of pine,
Here out of my pocket, some moss which I pull’d off a live-oak in Florida, as it hung trailing down,
Here, some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage,
And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the pond-side,
(O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me, and returns again, never to separate from me, 
And this, O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades, this calamus-root shall,
Interchange it youths with each other! let none render it back!)
And twigs of maple and a bunch of wild orange and chestnut,
And stems of currants and plum-blows, and the aromatic cedar,
These I compass’d around by a thick cloud of spirits,
Wandering, point to or touch as I pass, or throw them loosely from me,
Indicating to each one what he shall have, giving something to each;
But what I drew from the water by the pond-side, that I reserve,
I will give of it, but only to them that love as I myself am capable of loving.

* * *

To read other Whitman selections in the Crisis Chronicles Online Library, click here.

 

Allen Ginsberg Wants You (by John B. Burroughs)

John Burroughs recites his poem “Allen Ginsberg Wants You” on 7 January 2011
at Pumpkin Hollow Antiques & Cafe in Bellville, Ohio (recorded by Dianne Borsenik)

John began writing “Allen Ginsberg Wants You” in May 1997 (despite what he says in the video), then dug it out of an old journal and finished it in May 2008.  It was published in his first chapbook, Bloggerel.

To order a signed copy, please send five US dollars (shipping included) to John B. Burroughs c/o Crisis Chronicles Press, 420 Cleveland Street, Elyria, Ohio 44035 — or use the Buy Now button below to order online via PayPal.