What is our life? A play of passion,
Our mirth the music of division,
Our mother’s wombs the tiring-houses be,
Where we are dressed for this short comedy.
Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is,
That sits and marks still who doth act amiss.
Our graves that hide us from the setting sun
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus march we, playing, to our latest rest,
Only we die in earnest, that’s no jest.

Sir Walter Raleigh

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Mother Witch fed her three sons potions
mixed with prayers and herbs that were
collected from the forest of her childhood in Oz

Her son Scarecrow hung for all to see
Mother witches pride turned into crows that picked his brain away
Oz is where Scarecrow lives to follow Dorothy down the yellow brick road
There is no spell in Mother witches book to give scarecrow back his brain

Her son Tin-man was locked in time
Mother witches hope birthed many voices that crushed his heart
Oz is where Tin-man escaped from by following the munch-kin truth
There is no spell in Mother witches book that can give Tin-man back his heart

Her son Lion is hiding in the forest of Oz
Mother witches wisdom became a tornado that scared him to run in fear
Oz is where Lion holds onto his beautiful tail because it is real and he thinks his roar is invisible
There is no spell in Mother witches book that can give lion back his courage

Mother witch melted away by her tears flowing down her face and over her body
leaving only her bones to remind her sons what her sin had taken
Oz is where mother witch left her sons with dreams and prayers to watch over them

Written By: (Teri Dorsey) www.teriswavelength.com

Teris Wavelength on facebook

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A gift for you, by Rumi

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Jorge Luis Borges, in “A New Refutation of Time” (1946)

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The 31st World Congress of Poets, a gathering of world poets to promote world peace, will be taking place in Kenosha, Wisconsin between August 28th – 31st, 2011.

The World Congress of Poets was started in 1969 in Manila. In 2010, they met in Taiwan. The Congress of Poets has been held all over the world, and has even been hosted three times in the USA in the past.

31st World Congress Of Poetry Kenosha WI logo

The mission of this meeting of poets: Peace. Poetical readings and cultural exchanges will take place all over Kenosha including Carthage College, Kenosha Public Museum, Kemper, the Historic Lighthouse, and Pennoyer Park Bandshell among others.

find out more, visit their site at: http://xxxiworldcongressofpoets.com/

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Flow Lion by Matei Apostolescu aka Beaucoupzero

“Soyez muette pour moi, Idole contemplative …”
I came home and found a lion in my living room
Rushed out on the fire escape screaming Lion! Lion!
Two stenographers pulled their brunette hair and banged the window shut
I hurried home to Paterson and stayed two days.

Called up my old Reichian analyst
who’d kicked me out of therapy for smoking marijuana
‘It’s happened’ I panted ‘There’s a Lion in my room’
‘I’m afraid any discussion would have no value’ he hung up.

I went to my old boyfriend we got drunk with his girlfriend
I kissed him and announced I had a lion with a mad gleam in my eye
We wound up fighting on the floor I bit his eyebrow & he kicked me out
I ended masturbating in his jeep parked in the street moaning ‘Lion.’

Found Joey my novelist friend and roared at him ‘Lion!’
He looked at me interested and read me his spontaneous ignu high poetries
I listened for lions all I heard was Elephant Tiglon Hippogriff Unicorn Ants
But figured he really understood me when we made it in Ignaz Wisdom’s bathroom.

But next day he sent me a leaf from his Smoky Mountain retreat
‘I love you little Bo-Bo with your delicate golden lions
But there being no Self and No Bars therefore the Zoo of your dear Father hath no Lion
You said your mother was mad don’t expect me to produce the Monster for your Bridegroom.’

Confused dazed and exalted bethought me of real lion starved in his stink in Harlem
Opened the door the room was filled with the bomb blast of his anger
He roaring hungrily at the plaster walls but nobody could hear him outside thru the window
My eye caught the edge of the red neighbor apartment building standing in deafening stillness

We gazed at each other his implacable yellow eye in the red halo of fur
Waxed rheumy on my own but he stopped roaring and bared a fang greeting.
I turned my back and cooked broccoli for supper on an iron gas stove
boilt water and took a hot bath in the old tub under the sink board.

He didn’t eat me, tho I regretted him starving in my presence.
Next week he wasted away a sick rug full of bones wheaten hair falling out
enraged and reddening eye as he lay aching huge hairy head on his paws
by the egg-crate bookcase filled up with thin volumes of Plato, & Buddha.

Sat by his side every night averting my eyes from his hungry motheaten face
stopped eating myself he got weaker and roared at night while I had nightmares
Eaten by lion in bookstore on Cosmic Campus, a lion myself starved by Professor Kandisky, dying in a lion’s flophouse circus,
I woke up mornings the lion still added dying on the floor—‘Terrible Presence!’ I cried ‘Eat me or die!’

It got up that afternoon—walked to the door with its paw on the wall to steady its trembling body
Let out a soul-rending creak from the bottomless roof of his mouth
thundering from my floor to heaven heavier than a volcano at night in Mexico
Pushed the door open and said in a gravelly voice “Not this time Baby—but I will be back again.”

Lion that eats my mind now for a decade knowing only your hunger
Not the bliss of your satisfaction O roar of the Universe how am I chosen
In this life I have heard your promise I am ready to die I have served
Your starved and ancient Presence O Lord I wait in my room at your Mercy.

Paris, March 1958

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“I want To do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”

― Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

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Going to Him! Happy letter!
Tell Him –
Tell Him the page I didn’t write –
Tell Him — I only said the Syntax –
And left the Verb and the pronoun out –
Tell Him just how the fingers hurried –
Then — how they waded — slow — slow –
And then you wished you had eyes in your pages –
So you could see what moved them so –

Tell Him — it wasn’t a Practised Writer –
You guessed — from the way the sentence toiled –
You could hear the Bodice tug, behind you –
As if it held but the might of a child –
You almost pitied it — you — it worked so –
Tell Him — no — you may quibble there –
For it would split His Heart, to know it –
And then you and I, were silenter.

Tell Him — Night finished — before we finished –
And the Old Clock kept neighing “Day”!
And you — got sleepy — and begged to be ended –
What could it hinder so — to say?
Tell Him — just how she sealed you — Cautious!
But — if He ask where you are hid
Until tomorrow — Happy letter!
Gesture Coquette — and shake your Head!

Emily Dickinson – Going to Him! Happy letter!

==

Personally, I think this poem is about writing a letter that you never send, and momentarily indulging the thought of actually sending it, but knowing that when you wake up, you will know better. Still, you can’t help but pretend for just that little while that there is a tiny chance you might send it…

Tell Him — no — you may quibble there –
For it would split His Heart, to know it –
And then you and I, were silenter.

However, I have also read interpretations where the reader thought that she intended to wake up and send the letter, and await a reply. And given Emily’s penchant for letter writing, that may well be.

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If late at night, when watching the moon, you still
sometimes get vertigo, it’s understandable
that you wish suddenly and hard for fences, for someone
to marry you. Desiring a working knowledge,
needing to know some context by heart, you might
accept anything: the room without windows,
the far and frozen North, or the prairie, the prairie
even, if it means that.

The long wide space and cold dirt that will not
be seduced into hills, and the dust, that even after
you have kicked and wept and fallen on it pounding,
will not produce a tree. It will allow you
to rise with certainty and move with the relief
of necessary things to the wash on the line,
to the small maple you brought here that must be tied
for the winter or die.

Even the prairie night, blind with snow,
when no one comes, and you no longer look
to the mirror but force your fingers to the stitching
and produce a child to help with the lambing
and the carrying of water. Although it might be years
before you turn and stop, startled
by the sweet and sudden smell of sheets snapping
in the sun, and the drunken lilac, prairie purple,
blooming by the doorway, because you planted it.

—Marie Howe

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Hope is a subtle Glutton –
He feeds upon the Fair –
And yet — inspected closely
What Abstinence is there –

His is the Halcyon Table –
That never seats but One –
And whatsoever is consumed
The same amount remain –

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