The Three Hermits (by William Butler Yeats)

Yeats [by George Charles Beresford, 1911]

The Three Hermits
by William Butler Yeats
from Responsibilities [1914]

Three old hermits took the air
By a cold and desolate sea,
First was muttering a prayer,
Second rummaged for a flea;
On a windy stone, the third,
Giddy with his hundredth year,
Sang unnoticed like a bird.
“Though the Door of Death is near
And what waits behind the door,
Three times in a single day
I, though upright on the shore,
Fall asleep when I should pray.”
So the first but now the second,
“We’re but given what we have earned
When all thoughts and deeds are reckoned,
So it’s plain to be discerned
That the shades of holy men,
Who have failed being weak of will,
Pass the Door of Birth again,
And are plagued by crowds, until
They’ve the passion to escape.”
Moaned the other, “They are thrown
Into some most fearful shape.”
But the second mocked his moan:
“They are not changed to anything,
Having loved God once, but maybe,
To a poet or a king
Or a witty lovely lady.”
While he’d rummaged rags and hair,
Caught and cracked his flea, the third,
Giddy with his hundredth year
Sang unnoticed like a bird. 
 


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

Joshua Clover – Poetry In The Continental Review – video

http://youtu.be/VF9oBgueA2Y

Video courtesy of Metaphysics24 and The Continental Review.

Poet Joshua Clover is the author of The Totality For Kids (University of California Press, 2006), The Matrix (2005) and Madonna Anno Domini (1997). He is Associate Professor of Poetry and Poetics at the University of California, Davis, and contributes to the Village Voice and The New York Times. This is his first appearance — recorded in July, 2007 in Paris, France — in The Continental Review.

Streets of the Pan Americano Nightmare III (by Frankie Metro)

cover image: a Steven Smith foto, detail of Mother Dwarf Smith’s Gotcha

 

Streets of the Pan Americano Nightmare

     III. downtown to 19th & sunny

 
In a beach bar downtown/ anarcho-judeo christian stereotypes are being poured into the neck of a Corona bottle/ & shot to the back of a closed throat/ with lightning speed/ PowerAde is soon marketed as/ “LIQUID POLITICAL STRATEGY”/ & sales shoot through the roof of sanity/ while the freaks run for cover inside bodegas & communes/ Jameson whiskey tanks when the tools join the Independent party/ & elect Sarah Palin’s unkempt embryonic sac as their delegate for the next presidential election/ which has been postponed until the real New Year Baby breeches/

 

Back at the bar/ they’ve started to wisen up to the “dealings and the stealings hermano…”/ “Tu estás living far beyond your means”/

 

one says to me/ & does a complete & sober swan-dive into himself/ immediately violating the new ordinance in due process/ El Jefe is asking an adopted citizen to sign on the dotted line between freedom & personal gain/ It has a stuffy one bedroom over a hole in the wall down by the docks/ where it keeps the thrills of an unchecked aggression tied in the closet/ on a vintage murder dog collar/ Sometimes you can swear it’s one of those gimmick invisible collars available for purchase at the shop on 19th & Sunny/ Somewhere, a rogue spirit/ a wild ace tucked too far back in the sleeve of things/ is sitting in a quiet room/ with crumpled jeans & old lighters/ mismatched shoes, fading time, faulty sockets, measuring tape, a badge, old beaten leather computer chairs & only three wheels/

 

Stale smoke from a filled ashtray/ open poetry books & old boxers/ antibiotic cream, broadsides & toy six shooters with no ammunition/ preparing to go off into the mundane/

 

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Frankie Metro is the Head Non-Fiction and Associate Fiction editor at Red Fez Publications, where his column “The Left Handed Smoker” runs monthy. He is also The Chemist at the online lit journal The Meth Lab and holds no affiliation with Black Bloc Anarchists.

“Streets of the Pan Americano Nightmare III” comes from The Anarchist’s Blac Book of Poetry by Frankie Metro, published 6/12/2012 by Crisis Chronicles Press. To order, send $7 US to 3344 W. 105th Street #4, Cleveland, OH 44111.

Frankie Metro — photo courtesy of FM

Apples and Bread (by Christian O’Keeffe) – video

http://youtu.be/TsxB-P9OeTw
video courtesy of lunanegramag

“Apples and Bread” written and performed by Christian O’Keeffe of Kent, Ohio. Some of his influences have included the river, Jim Carroll, Maj Ragain, Jack Micheline, Bob Kaufman, moths, deer, blue heron, Kurt Cobain, Arthur Rimbaud, and that ecstatic act of walking. Christian died on 27 May 2012 at age 20.

This is one of 14 videos being featured in Luna Negra‘s Spring 2012 print issue using an upcoming technology that bridges the gap between the printed medium and multimedia. Until now, audio and video have never been an integral part of the printed medium, but with Aurasma Lite, a free app available on smartphones and tablets, Luna Negra invites you to not only read the magazine, but to engage with it.  For more, visit www.lunanegramag.com.