Renee Marie

Today is a good day

nobody@vox.com(Renee) — Thu, 15 May 2008 07:54:41 -0700

Today is a good day

Hoa Nguyen

HORSE HERB

Horse herb legs around

and a fungus

rots the remains of elm root

Our native meadow "lost

to the plow" You devour

habitat are the brown-

headed cow bird

Heather wants bracted twisted flowers

wants me to twist T shirts

and dip them into dye

Instead

I smear the stove with avocado

Now Lady Elms arrives

in the kitchen long blonde hair

lean body leaves

She shows me a profile and a letter

Everyone is a sexual being

from FENCe

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Archaic Torso of Apollo by Rilke

nobody@vox.com(Renee) — Wed, 14 May 2008 09:51:57 -0700

Apollo de Belvedere

                                           Archaic Torso of Apollo

                                           We cannot know his inscrutable head
                                           in which the pupils dilated. However
                                           his torso still glows like a candelabra
                                           in which are his displays, though infrequent

                                           stopping and shining. Otherwise the bow
                                           of his breast could not dazzle, and
                                           in quiet turns of his loins, a quiver
                                           could not go to every bliss-bearing center.

                                           Otherwise this statue passed time distorted
                                           and shortly, under the weight of a fall, glistened
                                           not unlike the fur of a wild beast

                                           and did not break out of his boundaries
                                           like a star: because there is no place
                                           that does not see you. You must
                                           change your life.

                                                            --Translated by Renee Zepeda

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Epic composed of lines from About Now: Collected Poems of Joanne Kyger

nobody@vox.com(Renee) — Sun, 11 May 2008 21:20:32 -0700

Yabyum

                                                                    A superabundance

                                                                                  May it shower down

                                                                                                     upon us
                                                                    like
                                                                           baby
                                                                                  peony
                                                                                           petals.

I am brave
I tell him the truth.
I need:

Replacement Buddhas...
The secret of the spoon...

which although they do not exist in reality
seem to do so.

                            --I thought I could be his nurse
                              & heart & soul
                              and I see he is the leader
                              I look at him emotionally
                              sexually...

                             Deer Lady
       is dressed in human clothes
Someone wants to make love to her.
She kisses him
                                   In the dark
the spotlight shows the passionate couple
in a yabyum embrace. She is the rustle of
the top most branches and the sigh of
new green grasses.
                     His eyes they are the same
he has been here for three
thousand years.

"I see the unicorn before me"
thinks she

an excitement
from the position of his body

he is poised as if to make
balance
in the universe.

           For how long we sit
                                      in quiet
                                               no speech
                                    creates a
                                                tie
                                 between us
                                                for I am young & yet
                I know what I am doing.

(His world is slippery to hold on to)

Heaven
explodes the walls
against the pattern of fleur-de
-lis and marigolds

And seasons spring
and fall.

                               Soft as
           a throw of silk
           she said, perhaps
           I dreamed it all.

           the length & breadth
           of all that chasing
                     &
           how Homer dislikes Paris
           sneaking through his home
           He has              little rival
           and lets no one know.

The real earth
                    moves and falls away into pieces
                                                                   in the north.

I am mortal.

                                                      You dream of me

                  a deeper forest I came from

running for

                      the center where           you look too.

A jeweled tree poet's tree

I look around at the                                         shimmering
                                      energy

                                                  from things that seem as symbols.
I am curious

                      for what you can bring
                                                          from the tree.

You called to the words
and the waters went up in mist
then the soft earth came to sight.
We shall circle here
singing for the evening star.

"O what can a poor boy do"

BE AS FIRM AND RESOLUTE
IN ACTION AS ABLE.

The action by which s/he sustains creation
is the same as that by which s/he originally created.

Tho
one cannot so well learn a thing
when it has been learned from others
as when one has discovered it himself.

Time is moving out from under us

Who are we
                          Who are we

                 violet of memory's flat plain

we embrace, swallow the sea

walk, past centuries into poetry

form pleasant contemplation of innocence

in lucid suspension sing.

Monkey man is leading me by the hand
past lovers so entwined
I levitated
in the most elevated
State of the Union.

And back to the body
where I was born:

                        pink tips that are fingers
                        eyes sparkling
                        heart-shaped bottom...

            I love her
            and him.
                         I invoke the moon;
                         it's the best I can find.

Can you see you're it
Oh Moon

              he makes love to you
              a life time.              Plays
              to as many people as he can...

Who am, was, I?
All of it, all of it.

I am here at 3
now it seems I lead.

A lady in white
bathed by my own silver light.

FATHER TIME
& MOTHER EARTH

thought about all of you last night
and a great blue heron came up
and the other animals came close
all gods in the human breast.

O don't let me swoon

You intercepted my vibes.
that's fine.
Now you have a sweet tone.
tree holes.
boobies.
smooth countenance mind transmission.

                  I am a writer.
                  I will not dwell
                  on the question
                  of why.

Psyche is not a personal
but a world experience.

                  I am in a bed in a hotel
                  having a talk with consciousness.
                  OK, I am actually in bed with _____.

                  I exist outside time &
                  this world I called my own
                  opens out.

Sometimes I lay in the bathtub chanting OM

I know I don't suffer more than anyone

I read Cixous, Jung

The feminine spirit infuses these words.

I sing:
          You showed me the meadow
          and milkwood and silkwood
          and you would if I would
          because threads that are golden
          don't break easily.

Joanne sings:
                      Me is memory
                                          take me out

                      May your flowery face
                                                      bow

                      In the teeny
                                       trembling world.

I am that which god wants
brilliant quince in bloom
we meet once again, friend.

                     Electric enlightenment
                                 is in
                     your   sexy   heaven

which I am inventing

O My Big One

(we make it up as we go along)

(& aren't you glad I don't write Cock Poems?
as suggested
by Robert Duncan)

Come back!

Your presence is an aphrodisiac.

I know this is a detective story
of passions, blood stuff
around which our lives crank
in a friendly sinuous manner
sultry as a New York poetry trip
where we danced all night under
electric candlelight. Worthy
to uncover the hidden home
of the Dakini, wash, bathe, lay
papers with meaning aside.
Not yet tho. The
rare jewel, the rare jewel
caught in the net invisible.
I must be transplanting thoughtforms,
like transplanting poppies,
I am noting your strong ripply
vibration aura
and making you a new flower
from my inner world.

--Ann Arbor to Pennsylvania
May 11, 2008

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Notes from Ann Arbor

nobody@vox.com(Renee) — Sat, 10 May 2008 07:42:47 -0700

Redbud

There were:

luques grilled shrimp manchego cheese

poetry Riesling The Kinks

couscous Absinthe* Beethoven

art by Joe Brainard yellow tulips tiny purple flowers

trees in blossom scent of ginger, scent of purple tiny portrait of Jim Carroll

Extraordinary Machine omelets fresh parsley, oregano

Red Renunculous Redbud, Crabapple, Dogwood Spider Chrysanthemum

Arvo Part "In the Sprintime of His Voodoo" peppermint & lavender soaps

Oysters! Pelegrino blackberries, passionfruit tiny photo of an angel

"love the one you're with" earrings made of crushed Roman glass

"you go back Jack/ do it again/ we're turning round and round..."

people of all nationalities many flashing cameras (Andrea's med-school graduation)

and finally there was Rilke:

XXI

Spring is back. The earth

is like a child, the poem white

much, o much.....for the trouble

of long learning, she wins the prize.

Her teacher was strict. We liked

the white in the beard of the old man.

Now, when we ask what the green

and the blue mean, she knows, she knows!

Earth, you lucky one, play

with the children. We want to

catch you, happy earth.

The happiest succeeds.

O, what her teacher taught her

and what stands in roots and

long difficult stems: she sings it, she sings!

*Absinthe is now legal in two places in the United States: Ann Arbor and California.

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Ted Berrigan

nobody@vox.com(Renee) — Sat, 03 May 2008 13:32:46 -0700

Ted Berrigan by Alex Katz

Words for Love

Winter crisp and the brittleness of snow
as like make me tired as not. I go my
myriad ways blundering, bombastic, dragged
by a self that can never be still, pushed
by my surging blood, my reasoning mind.

I am in love with poetry. Every way I turn
this, my weakness, smites me. A glass
of chocolate milk, head of lettuce, dark-
ness of clouds at one o'clock obsess me.
I weep for all of these or laugh.

By day I sleep, an obscurantist, lost
in dreams of lists, compiled by my self
for reassurance. Jackson Pollock René
Rilke Benedict Arnold I watch
my psyche, smile, dream wet dreams, and sigh.

At night, awake, high on poems, or pills
or simple awe that loveliness exists, my lists
flow differently. Of words bright red
and black, and blue. Bosky. Oubliette. Dis-
severed. And O, alas

Time disturbs me. Always minute detail
fills me up. It is 12:10 in New York. In Houston
it is 2 pm. It is time to steal books. It's
time to go mad. It is the day of the apocalpyse
the year of parrot fever! What am I saying?

Only this. My poems do contain
wilde beestes. I write for my Lady
of the Lake. My god is immense, and lonely
but uncowed. I trust my sanity, and I am proud. If
I sometimes grow weary, and seem still, nevertheless

my heart still loves, will break.

--Ted Berrigan

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Concentric Circles

nobody@vox.com(Renee) — Thu, 01 May 2008 09:30:57 -0700

Allen Shelton

May 1, 2008

Little boy comes up:

"Can I be teacher?"

"No."

Great blue eyes like wheels.

Today: ecology, biology,

botany.

Last night: Erika.

"Leute, gehen wir tanzen?"

(People, are we going dancing?)

The wish to dance: honor that.

Remember Joanne Kyger?

Mahalia Jackson swinging it.

(Man get relaxed

Woman get permanent)

Back in classroom.

Little boy looks blank.

Can't think what to write.

He's new, doesn't like science,

I sympathize.

"Which of the following

is not the main function

of roots?"

sea urchins.

Cross-pollination:

braincandy transfer.

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Allowishes/Ariel's speech

nobody@vox.com(Renee) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:59:31 -0700

Allowishes Dalloway wunderkind

Dalhousie aluminum dactyl

synergy Sisyphus sizzle

chlorine Chamomile candyass

candyass Michaelmas mercurial

druid deliberate delineate

circuitry clearcut cumpassionate

tertiary tenuous telepath

Now my charms are all o'erthrown

and what strength I have's mine own

which is most faint, tis true

I must be here confined by you

or sent to Naples

Let me not, since I have my queendom got

and pardoned the deceiver, dwell

on this bare island by your spell

but release me from my bands

with the help of your good hands

Gentle breath of yours my sails must fill

Or else my project fails, which was to please

Now I want art to enforce and spirits to enchant

and my ending is despair

unless I be relieved by prayer

which pierces so that it assaults mercy itself

and clears all faults

As you from crimes would pardoned be

Let your indulgence set me free.

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