WE ARE HARD ON EACH OTHER | Margaret Atwood

i.
We are hard on each other
and call it honesty,
choosing our jagged truths
with care and aiming them across
the neutral table.

The things we say are
true; it is our crooked
aims, our choices
turn them criminal.

ii.
Of course your lies
are more amusing:
you make them new each time.

Your truths, painful and boring
repeat themselves over & over
perhaps because you own
so few of them.

iii.
A truth should exist,
it should not be used
like this. If I love you

is that a fact or a weapon?


...Somewhere in this poem, there is an Eames/Arthur story desperately crying out to be written.

Before we get to the sex, I have a funny story to tell you guys. I think I first encountered fanpoetry about spring of 2008. Needless to say, I was completely blown away that someone - more than one person! - had the talent to actually write fanfiction in poetic form. Wouldn't that be cool if I could do that? I wondered, and then immediately thought: oh, don't be stupid. That'll never happen.

It's a good thing no one in authority listens to my predictions, that's for sure.

So: Supernatural free verse of the Dean/Castiel variety and a very definite R-rating. And yes, the title does refer to the sexual position. In fact... sex, death, eating, orgasm, implosion, possession, language, sixty-nineing - I think I hit them all. But non-squicking, unless you're freaked out by blowjobs.

Somewhat related but not addressed in the poem - as far as death goes, Cas is in a pretty unique place, isn't he? Because angels are (barring being murdered) immortal, and so I would think death would be an incredibly foreign concept to them - not just foreign, but weird, in a way that human death... isn't, as much as we'd like to think so. But Castiel died (and was then brought back); I wonder if this affected his perceptions of humans any? In many ways - powers, relationships, dying - I feel as if he's becoming more and more Anna's obverse, alike and yet not. But maybe that's just me.


69

( Love is the natural oblivion for us, not death: / the finality of utter consumption, as planets / are eaten by their suns, a tongue transposed by fire / into a thousand-part harmony of gravity and rock. )

ICE BOUND
Walter Bergen

Sky's gray sheet spreads icy rain.
Through the night we heard the branches cracking.
Now the bend with the bowed ache of apostrophes.
Backs to the window, sitting on the couch, we listen
as the radio announces the list of schools closed.

An hour earlier I inched my way along
the road, tires spinning toward the ditch.
Now I read aloud to a teenage daughter,
who tolerates my foolishness, my claim
that Lao Tzu traversed a more slippery world.

With two books open on my lap, one in my hand,
two on the floor, I'm surrounded by imperfect
translations: a gathering chaos; something
mysteriously formed; without beginning,
without end; formless and perfect.

She responds, Sure,
I knew that, so what? I persist:
that existed before the heavens and the earth;
before the universe was born. She's ready to go
upstairs and listen to the radio. I ask,

What was her face before her parents were born?
she answers, Nothing. I ask again.
She says it again. Where are the angels,
nights on humble knees, the psalms of faith,
the saints of daylight? She walks out of the room.

I'm surrounded by thin books.
How pointless to go anywhere on this day,
or maybe any other, but then
the time comes when there is
no other way but to stand firm on ice.

This isgetting freaky, my friends.

In other news, Yusef Komunkayaa - HAHA YES I SPELLED HIS NAME RIGHT FOR THE FIRST TIME IN WEEKS - rules my soul, especially with the advent of his most recent volume, Warhorses. Like his earlier Talking Dirty to the Gods - which dealt with divinity and spirituality - this themed collection deals with war, both Komunkayaa's own experiences in Vietnam and the more eternal archetypes, the outer war and the inner. I do not often say this about war poetry, but here is a collection that is utterly gorgeous, and it is raw, and primal. So many interesting thoughts here about violence, struggle, love, passion, fury, intensity, conflict - the list goes on and on. It's magnificent; I can't recommend it highly enough. It's got guts, ya'll. All of Warhorses is hot with blood.

( 'One worked his fingers into the black soil / & could feel a wing easing out of his scapula.' One of my favorites. Jacob and the angel. )

( 'Sweetheart, was I talking war in my sleep again?' The language of conflict. )

( 'Like a captivity story / that circles back, corralled / inside the brain - Indian braves / riding ponies into the sunset / with a white woman.' Race, war, Iraq, and why you need to think about these things. )

Unlike short stories - with which I have severe problems with too little length - I have problems keeping poetry short. It's difficult, you know? On the one hand, I feel like there's more to what I want to say, or even when there isn't, that people won't get it, and on the other hand, I don't want to clutter. I want to write, as Hemingway said, one true sentence, over and over, but damn it, sometimes that one true sentence is just one. I don't know. I think it's perfect, and then I blink and it looks like a great start but just that, a prequel.

And yes, this was inspired by Supernatural, which - despite all the skeevy gender issues which I am not even TOUCHING right now, because, well, AGH - is really fascinating and addictive and not nearly as scary as I'd thought. I still can't watch the haunted house episode, though. Or the more recent one with the dead schoolboys. Apparently I am severely creeped out by pale children.



GOOD NEWS

"ויהי אור," said God,
and as it was written,
so it occurred.

fin.

...But I was wrong! Grievously so! To wit: this hilarious Ovid poem, as (rather liberally) translated by Peter Green.

The Amores: Book One, Poem Three

Fair's fair now, Venus. This girl's got me hooked. All I'm asking from her
Is love - or at least some future hope for my own
Eternal devotion. No, even that's too much - hell, just let me love her!
(Listen, Venus: I've asked you so often now.)
Say yes, pet. I'd be your slave for years, for a lifetime.
Say yes - unswerving fidelity's my strong suit.
I may not have top-drawer connections, I can't produce blue-blooded
Ancestors to impress you, my father's plain middle-class,
And there aren't any squads of ploughmen to deal with my broad acres -
My parents are both pretty thrifty, and need to be.
What have I got on my side, then? Poetic genius, sweetheart,
Divine inspiration. And love. I'm yours to command -
Unswerving faithfulness, morals above suspicion
Naked simplicity, a born-to-the-purple blush.
I don't chase thousands of girls, I'm no sexual circus-rider;
Honestly, all I want is to look after you
Till death do us part, have the two of us living together
All my time, and know you'll cry for me when I'm gone.
Besides, when you give me yourself, what you'll be providing
Is creative material. My art will rise to the theme
And immortalise you. Look, why do you think we remember
The swan-upping of Leda, or Io's life as a cow,
Or poor virgin Europa whisked off overseas, clutching
That so-called bull by the - horn? Through poems, of course.
So you and I, love, will enjoy that same world-wide publicity,
And our names will be linked, forever, with the gods.


While I understand that the more academic translation is perhaps not quite as ribald, I quite prefer this one. People don't seem to understand poems in a historical context - witness the Canterbury Tales. It's hard to remember that most of the Classical poems we read today were written in a different language and then translated, into a language that barely resembles what we speak today; that the formality we associate with epic poems and "thee" and "thou" wasn't, at the time, particularly formal at all. I suppose I like this version of the Ovid poem because, had I been around in 20 or so BCE, this is pretty much how I would have understood it to be: a funny, light-hearted, occasionally rude ode to love, certainly not worth the pompousness it's given today.