sábado, 31 de julio de 2010

Bob Holman, poems.



Bob Holman, Esteban Moore, 2010.


3 Ideas
I want to put flowers all over your bed.

Then I want you to get in bed.

Then I want to put flowers all over you.

This can be opened
Cannot weld lid back
I know all about nails
Piercing the bottom comes
Out like a sieve
Life is canned, what next
Productifiers you ass turkeys
My youth on the battle lines
Now parsed as a sermon
Meet me at Ye Olde Sundial
I have been influenced
Born and reborn and
I have Death sorrow
How come all I talk
About is “fun”?
Mention my wife I’ll cry
It’s right here, the surface,
Folks. It’s a can o’ life, a
Bottle of ash, a trunk full
Of squalling heteronyms
Drop narrative tone on toes
Dig grave with light
Ease into the bucket seat
Dangle breath over heart fire
My children are my poems
Last tomorrow moon
A flimsy song’s cardboard
Spine spires, no wheel
Can’t get to the begin
Can’t even end even

This is a day for a walk
To walk me by the river
To find an outdoor laundromat
And do our clothes
To have some cereals, different
Ones, with yogurt, fruited
Some juice, strong black cafe

To walk talking of nothing
To watch our feet conversing
Children yawning, the wind
At a cafe an omelet
Remembering cigarettes

As the sun slowly goes down
Our hands find each other
Sex is stirring, but distant yet
The nudges of breath and eyes
When you are shy I like it
The way night is suddenly here
And we walk home to continue


All new emptiness drained pained insaned
I need to run to you I am running towards you there
Is towards everywhere there is “to” nowhere
I am going direct to nowhere
It is huge empty blue zoo
Everyone used to be here now they’ve all gone “to”
Not even Twilight Zone I am crying so what
Everyone walking crying
Maybe you don’t believe me grieve sieve
I am sorry I can’t hear you through constant tears

By Popo Dada/translated version by Bob Holman

Not sure what I’m doing here in a tropical forest, in this canoe,
I seem to be moving in tiny increments, all around
trees sounds and flights, rustles, screeches and blips…
The fact is I’m asleep. The truth is I’m lost.
My memory is full of last night’s poems, right here
amidst the crackles and howls and trills and banshee wails.
Like the one about the crocodiles that were living in an underwater house
where we were drinking rum, some of the guys
smoking to frighten the mosquitoes,
and believe me it’s hard to smoke underwater.
So then they started in on the poems,
poems of distant lands, countries at war, green
as Ireland, cold as Argentina, hot as Baghdada,
as Cairo, “It’s quite warm here,” the Irish poet noted.
“In fact the heat makes it impossible to move, thus
(poets actually say “thus”) I drink the day away
in this chair.” “That’s not so much,” the Cuban poet
was heard to mutter. And nobody knows what happened later,
where the poets went. All I do is sit in this canoe as it swishes
round the darkness at 3 a.m…. No one is paddling
I have no paddle. Maybe I’m a part of the poem
the Irish guy is still writing, having a beer,
trying to bear up in the tropical sun.
A poem that will be read to us very soon,
but that he does not stop writing.

I will never forget it
The photos of photos of photos of etc
A barking dog under yr uniform & brownish
Snakes with rudimentary arms flying
Spikes out of nectar (fill ‘er up, as
you would say). The editor from Prairie
Schooner drops a library by. We inhale:
Helen Adam’s ballads. It’s all ruse,
all time. The movers are here, they
want to take the sun out of the kitchen.
Real jobs, they give crust, take a minute
Here to discuss “Poetry as Prayer.”