Koi Polloi

I sometimes post on Goodreads, which I recommend if you're bookish or like people who are.

Some ladies concluded that the fear of death being less than seductive, Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" might be poetical, but to them was unappealing. One thing led to another, and I dropped the following into the tank:

Had we but tank enough, and slime,
This koi-ness, lady, were no crime.
We would swim ‘round and think which way
To flit, and pass our long love's day;
Thou in the filter’s flow
Shouldst sweet flakes find; I in the glow
Of the heater would eat grain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
To be gefilted for the Jews.
My algaeical love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy tail-fins gaze;
Two hundred to adore each gill,
But thirty thousand for my fill;
An age at least to every fin,
And the last age should your heart I’d win.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's drift net fishers hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
The fish-knives of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall one day be filetted,
And in some fish store rudely billeted,
And then you’re gone; a corn-meal batter,
Your streamlined form shall flatter,
Or your lithe form shall one day fill,
Some suburbanite’s new grill.
The grave is fine for poet’s flesh,
But fishes seldom there do rest.

Now therefore, while multicolored scales
Sit on thy back, some bright, some pale,
And while we indulge our feeding frenzy,
With energy that bards must envy,
Now let us batten while we may
On food men sprinkle every day,
Rather at once it all devour,
Be fattened by its nutrients’ power,
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
Leave your caviar with rough strife,
And I’ll swim by and give it life.
I know we cannot make our sun
Stand still, but they say the two-legs have more fun.

Bailout Haiku

Government, they said--
A problem, not solution.
Now they lick its shoes.

Man from Goldman Sachs
Says he can cure the crisis
He's rich from causing.

Give away the store
Investment bankers care less
If your children starve.

The Republic's dead.
Laugh, then set yourself ablaze;
Nothing left to do.

Poem

This woman started writing poetry when she was 73!

Strange Patterns

Carrie Allen McCray

When I was a young child
in Lynchburg, Virginia
I could not ride the
trolley car sitting next
to our white neighbor
But could sit, nestled
close to her
under her grape arbor
swinging my feet
eating her scuppernongs
and drinking tall, cold
glasses of lemonade
she offered us on
hot, dry summer days

When I was a young child
moving to Montclair, New Jersey
I could now ride the
trolley car sitting next
to our white neighbor
but did not dare
cross the bitter line
that separated our house
from hers
and she never offered us
tall, cold glasses of lemonade
on hot, dry summer days

pome

as the country clatters down the mineshaft railway to hell illuminated by the glittering invective of posttrostskyist psychotics and the noncrip adjusts his flourescent postglobal warming halo and the cuckolded wellesley wife natters incessantly the hypnotic wonkish warble pursued by armies of her livingdead betrayed friends while zionists wail that the mulatto messiah does not love their suburbs erected on bulldozed olive groves and their clusterbomb democracy enough and the exprisoner fails to point out there was no astroturf on his pickup even when he was younger and could cut the mustard heterosexual angels weep for the republic as the decider awards independence to the whiteslave and drug capital of the balkans and his troll puppetmaster juggles bunkerbusters to distract from the shredding of commercial paper and jihadi youthgangs lionize their offended prophet by burning bimmers on the streets of the little mermaid and what about the polar bears and the forklifted downer cattle and the worshipers of the real american idols are the streets still negro or are they aftricanamerican now let us diversely gambol down the mulatto streets at noon looking for the heavenly prozac ritalin methlab of freedom from politics the media big oil but not big pharma and there is noone to rescue the poor singed little mermaid ah fuggedabadit ill buyya a maltliquor and we can take a leak off the parapet onto the gamboling cartoon animals of our playedout imaginations

Prognosis

The poet Louis MacNeice is not so well known as his buddy Auden, which is a shame. A propos of New Years' Day, here is MacNeice's "Prognosis":

Goodbye, Winter,
The days are getting longer,
The tea-leaf in the teacup
Is herald of a stranger.

Will he bring me business
Or will he bring me gladness
Or will he come for cure
Of his own sickness?

With a pedlar's burden
Walking up the garden
Will he come to beg
Or will he come to bargain?

Will he come to pester,
To cringe or to bluster,
A promise in his palm
Or a gun in his holster?

Will his name be John
Or will his name be Jonah
Crying to repent
On the Island of Iona?

Will his name be Jason
Looking for a seaman
Or a mad crusader
Without rhyme or reason?

What will be his message--
War or work or marriage?
News as new as dawn
Or an old adage?

Will he give a champion
Answer to my question
Or will his words be dark
And his ways evasion?

Will his name be Love
And all his talk be crazy?
Or will his name be Death
And his message easy?

Talk amongst yourselves.

An Adoptee's Poem

Scattered Among Many

Two silhouettes linger in a narrow hallway
the crisp tie rested on his chest and
her delicate smile seemed at ease.
walking the clanking path my eyes
were slanted sharply escaping the
foreign faces
the rubber soles grazed against
the floor
I remember the precise moment

Still of all the visions that enthralled my eyes
The one repeating continuously
Like a broken tape player spitting out
The same verse
My hands clutched the side of the bag
As I proceeded further
Towards the two strangers
Perplexed with out thought I waited
To exhale
a drop of tear glided on my cheek
my eyes slant once more
staring at the pale window
children’s voices echoed like a hymn
Then a grip clasped my hands
Sweeping me from a place
Once forgotten but
Rests within the memories
Scattered among many

The NY Times is running a blog of personal writings about adoption. The above poem is by a girl, now a teenager, who was adopted from an orphanage in Vietnam, remembering the precise moment she first saw her adoptive parents.

I will let the poem speak for itself.

Vegetable Love

Rick Lee has been posting vegetable pics from his Thursday night shopping trips forever and a day.

As Andrew Marvell wrote:

Our vegetable love shall grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.

A Colonial Gentleman From Guatemala

Vestíase a las seis de la mañana, iba a misa, tomaba chocolate, asomábase un rato a la ventana, rezaba el Pueri Dominum laudate, sentábase a comer con buena gana, fumaba su cigarro por remate, dormía siesta, y cuando no dormía la cabeza sin falta le dolía. Por la tarde a Nuestro Amo visitaba después del chocolate de ordenanza, y como la mañana, se pasaba todo el resto rascándose la panza.

He got dressed at six in the morning, Went to mass, drank chocolate, Looked out the window for a while Prayed the "Praises Be", Sat down to eat with a good appetite, Smoked one for dessert, Took a nap, and when he couldn't sleep Invariably his head ached. In the afternoon Our Master went visiting After his wake-up chocolate, And as in the morning, the rest Of the day he spent scratching his belly.

--José Batres Montúfar

Source: Popul Vuh Museum.