:up:

Alliteration and rhyming skills still very limited, I've never found ways to express transformation that iterates over the words, I can only use them to suture components together.

The rhythm works better for me at the start than towards to the end. But I'm mostly impressed with some of the imagery like the photograph/pictogram bit, which I find provocative, and the experiment with format, which type of thing I find difficult and usually just end up disregarding as a layer.

The rhythm works better for me at the start than towards to the end. — Baden

That makes sense. The first two lines came naturally to me, the other pairs aped their structure to make progressive components. The format was supposed to convey something like a recursive function iterating cyclically over the progression of the internal components (edit: which have structural symmetry to show that they're playing the same 'role' but in different parts of the progression, like phases of life).

I didn't get the intent of the format but it struck me as 'right' anyhow. And as I said I find that difficult. For example, I have a written version of the below (the first part of a longer poem) for which I've tried various formats none of which seem to work as well as just going at it verbally.

I didn't get the intent of the format but it struck me as 'right' anyhow. And as I said I find that difficult. For example, I have a written version of the below (the first part of a longer poem) for which I've tried various formats none of which seem to work as well as just going at it verbally. — Baden

Can you post the written version please?

Yes, sure:

Whale burps noisily along, patter of footsteps and the stink of his brain, unhappy alliance…

…Take me down to the underground…

An old song, memory’s reject, the underground, wisp of bounce, uncoiled spring crawls up leg, welcome thought, welcome thought, freshening of the grey.

Slide in an’ out, hedge-baked souls, a dark plethora, a fixed movement to every step, first this way and then that, as if in a dream predicted and the whole lot rearranging forms, human mud through which he must glide. Dance, dance and through. The mud must not stick, the soul a-sheen working its way through, shining soul a-bounce with the glow of otherness.

To the underground where none but the living be!

Now Whale was fresh with the bargy see? Had spent a month out at sea, so to speak, a clearing of the waves, and when all had settled a zeroing in, the streets parted afore, every bric-a-brac knick knack flotsam and jetsam form motionless in his sights, enough to shift, he might have been a gymnast, off the floor, but you wouldn’t know it, looking at him now coming towards, another shape shadow early evening glowed, stop a minute though.

Stop here and watch and there’s something strange, in the slow glitter of his step, a coordination of all from top to toe, if you could see his eyes you’d know. But you can’t with that hood up and head down it’s a wonder he can see at all and what’s he looking at anyway? Picking his way along the path, avoiding the cracks, what?

The air’s a warm mull, a slow ablution, if you’re the air you can be inside out. But you’re out and he’s in and as he passes you now like the warm drag of a cig there’s a whoosh through your lungs and a heady feeling that must be just the time of day, move on, the clock has spoken, he’s gone and up there on the bright screen above the square your attention caught, the colors and the clock, get along, get along, home, home, the fires of the warm screen bray.

What’s home for Whale? Well where he’s going in the mulled warm air, wine to his cosy heart, the future’s a drink that makes the present sweet, hoe and hoe, step by step.

That's cool. The development of the theme (well, more a superposition of themes with overlapping content as in train of thought) is pretty clear over the paragraphs. Will study it for devices.

Picking his way along the path, avoiding the cracks, what? — Baden

That is amazing. Reading it is a performance which demonstrates that 'what?' interrupts the flow and is a 'crack' analogically.

And then the person in Whale 5 is 'Crackshanks'!??!, awesome.

Oh cheers, it's as much poetic prose/thinly disguised slice of autobiography as poem. A lot of wordplay and fun with sounds. :smile:

It's like Ulysses with finer thematic units. Finer as in the elements of significance for interpretation are more densely distributed over the words within text units (that don't have definite boundary...). It'll take some effort to decode the relational poetic devices over the text units. Conceptual poly-rhythms on all scales.

Really appreciate your interest. You would probably see more than I consciously intended. It came out in bursts and seemed right and I'm aware of certain connections and meanings and it was kind of cathartic. Anyway, glad you got something from it.

Really appreciate your interest. You would probably see more than I consciously intended. It came out in bursts and seemed right and I'm aware of certain connections and meanings and it was kind of cathartic. Anyway, glad you got something from it. — Baden

Meaning slides (and transforms) over the analogue but sticks to the signposts (which contrast) in the discrete. That distinction between transformation and contrast is something I need to learn to use, so that my writing isn't limited by composition of distinct topics. Edit: I don't want to peddle representations poetically, I want to be able to do alchemy with them.

I don't want to peddle representations poetically, I want to be able to do alchemy with them. — fdrake

Yes. This.

Feel free to run anything you want by me btw (either here or by PM) for an opinion FWIW. I don't often read poems I see here more then once but I've read yours several times so there's some there there for me.

In the quiet valley where rocks do not stand in the way of the windstorm
In such places that no one got there or will get again
There joyfully lived a happy mountain echo
It answered the cry of mankind - yes it answered the cry of the man.

When loneliness comes up to throat as if with a stone
And moan once suppressed falls into the crevasse in the land
The echo would take up this cry that comes out of the throat
Augment manifold and then gently lift up in its hand.

Perhaps it was people, made drunk on a horrible potion
In order that no one would hear their stomping and shouts
Came over to kill, to make soundless the mountain valley
And they tied the echo and they placed a gag in its mouth.

All night they continued the bloody and cruel amusement
And nobody heard but a sound as on it people walked
In morning they shot in the face the quiescent mountain echo
And stones just like teardrops burst from the wounded rock.

By Vladimir Vysotsky
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat

To speak a butterfly is to reap the whirlwind

The stories in the paper
Are the stories in the street
Not welcome in the news
Makes each person that you meet
Pave the ground with eggshells
That bloody up your feet

Each rat in the gutter
Deserves their place in hell
We warned you this was coming
And dwelled in what befell
A wife, a mum, a lover
Another bugger’s kill

A lament and an edict
Juxtaposed through black and white
Mindful concierges need it
To follow might with write
Kids learn to speak that language
Before they learn to right
Follow on from follow on
Hopscotch cite to slight.

I'm in the light, open to every eye -
I do as I do often; like an icon
I come up to a microphone; today
It's more like I'm approaching a cannon.

And I will not rub against the microphone
Yes, my voice is loathsome to any
Yes, I know, if a lie comes on
It will augment it surely without pity.

Rays beneath the lamp on ribs assail me
Lamps shimmer into the face unkindly
And from every side projectors beat
And the heat! The heat! The heat!

Today I rant again without control,
But in the tone I don't risk making change -
For if I make a turn inside the soul
It will correct the curve with rage.

It's thinner than a blade of knife, this beast,
The flawless hearing, it hears lies till the iota -
It does not care I don't fit in the beat
But that I more completely sing the notes!

Rays beneath the lamp on ribs assail me
Lamps shimmer into the face unkindly
And from every side projectors beat
And the heat! The heat! The heat!

Upon the supple neck this microphone
Is rolling with its snake head;
If I get silent - it will sting
I have to sing - till stupor, till the end.

Don't move, don't touch, don't dare!
I saw the sting - you are a snake, I know!
And I am like a charmer of a snake
Not singing, putting spell upon a cobra!

Rays beneath the lamp on ribs assail me
Lamps shimmer into the face unkindly
And from every side projectors beat
And the heat! The heat! The heat!

It wants to eat, and with a birdling's greed
It takes the sounds out of the mouth,
In forehead it will put nine grams of lead
I won't raise the hands - the guitar binds them!

Again it will not reach the end!
What is this microphone - who will respond!
Today it is like lamp against the face,
But I'm not holy, and there's no light from the microphone.

My melodies are simpler than the scales
But barely beating from a sure tone -
I am sickly beaten on the face
By an immobile shade of microphone

Rays beneath the lamp on ribs assail me
Lamps shimmer into the face unkindly
And from every side projectors beat
And the heat! The heat! The heat!

By Vladimir Vysotsky
Translated by Ilya Shambat

To what shall I compare you, my sweet love?
How, having known you, can I face the crowd?
You take my heart out with a velvet glove
And then establish it inside a cloud.

Your precious beauty and your tender heart,
The incandescent passion of your spirit -
However many miles we be apart,
You bring me to adore and to revere it.

Your elegance of motion and of dress,
Your gentle smile and your infectious laughter,
Your fierce resolve and will that seeks no less
Than knowing and attaining Hereafter -

The eyes that, like volcanic crater lakes,
Reflect the sky toward which you are so close -
That for the truth's and for the beauty's sakes
Dissolve the elements that from the earth arose -

Your playful, delicate and resurrecting mind
That weaves the pain and knowledge into sweetness -
The thoughts and feelings that are intertwined
And from their synthesis creates completeness -

Your intuition, powerful and true,
And genius producing divine splendor -
Not only do I say that I love you,
But to what made you, darling, I surrender -

However I compare you, my delight,
You're always something more and something greater,
And like a mountain climber in the night
I cannot see and fall into your crater.

"march"

darkness
whispers
the unexpected
master your fears
use them

love your comrades
but not for their sake
love without pity
for our sake
which is also yours

there is no hope of victory
it will always be
it is unending
it is paradise

Mene: Numbered.

The number of my loves was few but each brought me to heaven.

A gentle spirit with a beautiful mind and an elegant body, now a yoga teacher imparting her inner magnificence to world.

A sexy little creature, exciting, misanthropic and brimming with insight.

A tortured soul with dozens of faces and personalities, introspective and poetic and now dead at 25.

And two luminous spirits, hearts full of light and creative passion, producing beautiful artwork and enriching the lives around them with their resplendor.

Tekel: Weighed.

My heart has been weighed and found heavy with memories.

When Michelle and I ran at 5 in the morning through the woods to the riverside, and I held her topless on a rock outcropping as we watched the sun rise.

When Layo sang "can't bring me down" and danced up and down and I kissed her all over her face.

When Michele undressed on the side of the lake and I penetrated her, and her skin had marks of pine needles when she stood up.

When Lisbeth missed her meetings at work so that we could climb trees and jump over streams and play with the clouds.

When Julia swam behind me and let me lean back into her and said "Let me be your ocean" and I asked if I could marry her and she said "Maybe," then swam away and came back and said, "I mean yes."

Uparsin: Divided.

I am divided among my loves and have given all of them pieces of me while retaining inside me their residue.

It is said that people keep objects of their loved ones to keep a memory of them alive.

I keep pieces of my loves - they live in me and I live in them, an interlocking hyperdimensional union that resembles the Holy Trinity and interconnectivity of Buddha and the Universe.

And I in them, them in me, create a unity that is divided so that it can be reuinited; weighed so that it be rendered weightless; and numbered so that through it infinity can be achieved.

The numbering, weighing, and dividing of my heart was done for the sake of achieving Heaven, that it could live through me and with my blood write its message - mene, mene, tekel, uparsin - upon the wall.

Teasing and tempting and playing
We loved like children, us both
But somebody, hiding a smile,
Set up the ungentle nets -
And here we are at the harbor,
Not seeing the wished-for abodes,
But knowing that I will be yours
In the heart, without words, until death.

You told me of all things - so early!
I guessed them so late! In our hearts
A wound is eternal, a silent
Question exists in our eyes,
The desert on earth is so endless,
The heaven, so high, has no stars,
Revealed is the tender secret,
And frost rules for centuries.

I will talk to shades! O my dear,
To forget you I do not have might,
Your visage can't move under shadow
Of eyelids gone over my eyes...
It's darkening... Shutters have closed,
On all things descending is night...
I love you, one ghostly-eternal,
And only you - and always!

By Marina Tsvetayeva
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat

numinous luminosities!
homes of the heart and mind!
gentleness, generosity,
genuineness in you hide!

in Bodhi tree's embodiments
battle the balms and banes;
solitude of ensoulment
twists their insides insane.

mandibles of mendacity
manacles of mankind
vehicles of veracity
violently divide.

throats tatter with timidity;
tenderness told to hide;
humorless honed humility
in a hex holds mankind.

bane of the banal barbarism -
bludgeoning blindness bland -
trite trickle-down terrorism -
chokes hope in churlish hand.

ambiance of ambivalence -
embers embroiled in brine -
malleable malevolence -
mangles, commands man's mind.

unbearable forebearances
tattered with trial and toil!
with an intense irreverence
bring bones to a boil!

coffee cups of cupidity!
seemingness without seam!
swing to the side similitude!
scream the exquisite scream!

through violent vivaciousness
shimmering sparkles, shine!
with soulful solaciousness
scatter the stain of time -

into sublime subliminally
sublimating the soul!
to the divine definitevely
delegating control!

inspired insane intelligence!
spring into mind and soul!
glimpse the magnetic galaxies!
glare into grail of all!

hopes hobbled with oblivion!
valiance wound in vain!
drink delights of delirium!
daringly dreams attain!

in an insane intensity -
inspired and immense -
attained to endless density -
spirits, spring into sense!

dilly-dally in delicacy!
shatter the habit's curse!
scatter cerebral celebacy!
bloom in the blood's rebirth!

in indigent indignity
inspire insight inside!
aim to attain infinity!
mentor and mend the minds!

incorporeal realities!
don't dare to be undone!
tell of untamed totality!
with oneness be made one!

sad tales and true atrocities
scatter and make untrue!
luminous numinosities!
live and let live - through you!

"corn"

My father is planting after dark.
Far from the lights of town
the bare earth under white halogens
could be the surface of the moon.

We pop the tops of the implement's boxes
I pour designer seed from a bag on my shoulder
like a voodoo aquarius
flooding the world with civilization

the diesel engine, idling
reflects upon it's lineage
it mutters an oracle:
"all machinery is organized violence"

One tyrant day, mid-July
I looked out at the uniform rows of corn
and saw soldiers
marching to the world's rim

:strong: great.

Find the words
To perturb
The dark unheard
A shared absurd
From here to there
And there to now
To wow and hide
When fear alights
He stares ashamed
then leper brained
He dozes down
Around the town
A fumbled frown
Paints the rose
Of midnight red
In the unsaid

He returns
And body burns
And buddy sighs
a sign on screen
laments the times
what could have been
apart from bliss
and failing this
he should’ve should
and would’ve could
to stitch the world
a fabric girl
to needle right
and hope the words
alone suffice

No Clement Nomenclature

The vernacular is spectacular
in its lexical motions
the cogs spin and teeth grind
masticating meaning.
The colloquial is filial
to the parental parse,
technical and artful; a mouthful!
Jarring forms of jargon
rub up against each other
confused daimons escaping
from the genie lamps of our minds.
Pharoahs shudder as glyphs turn muddier,
Socrates sips hemlock to beckon the flock,
Odin cajoles Bragi to be his lyrical lackey;
to Gods we're blinded, binded and mummified
not dumb, but spouting ignorance
a cataracts to pall our eyes
- hope envisioned within a rainbow.
What shall we wish for? For what shall we wish?

Like liquid glass, waters of sea,
Made of the tinted-bottle color,
Was pouring softly, heavily -
The appelation of this: summer.

And ships, appearing like white dots,
Forming the distance with their presence.
They went somewhere to end of earth -
The appelation of this: heaven.

*****

Like in childhood, I am walking barefot
With my feet feeling the trail.
For long time I did not walk like this.
For long time I was not this way.

Balmy breeze in my face is blowing.
I forgot how old I've become
And perhaps it's the joy of living
Wafting at me from the ground.

It's the day, it's the path, it's the summer...
Every blade of grass, dear to me...
And my bare-footed childhood
Smiling, is looking at me.

*****

From the bluish distance blown,
Wind, arrives on a spring day.
Arms and elbows smell of orange,
Air is full of jasmin smell.

Not agreeing with my years
My soul sings and sings and sings:
And the leaves' rustle makes clear
Something tender's whisperings.

*****

I live in condition
Of mood schizophrenia:
As if there's no distance
Between Russia and Israel.

I live in two mentalities
In two different spaces and times.
In two "hard" realities,
In noise of different tribes.

In news political
(From darkness where I can't see)
About both Russia and Israel
I say the word "We."

And I watch TV programs
Like fog that is full of blood:
All is woeful and horrible
Both here and there it's bad

Like in a monster fairy tale,
Like in a tale of horror -
The Arabian terrorism
And the Chechnya war

And I live in condition
Of split apart soul -
As if there is no distance
Between the two countries I know.

*****

Again - a cricket, or else maybe a cicada
Again - the moon and palms above my head...
And in my dream, blockade of Leningrad, and
The icy chill is blowing from the street.

Though life has not been smooth in any manner,
And flow of time has changed so much, I know,
WIthin my soul - I'm still a Leningrader,
And... cricket seems just like the Metronome.

By Ella Odeyash
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat

Like seaweed, like branches of willows
Of Malmazonia are your limbs,
Thus you did lie in sprays of sea foam
And absent-mindedly transfixed

Upon the sweet light-golden melons
Of diamond and aquamarine
The eyes forever semi-open
So blue-and-grayish, bluish-green.

The waves are just like rabid lions,
The arrows of the sun did fly.
And from intolerable blueness
Too whitish, you did there lie.

Behind the back, the desert, somewhere
The station Djankoi had to be,
And underneath your arm stretched out
Melon grew golden quietly.

Thus, calm and precious, you lie there,
Don't give a glance and do not see,
But look - and waves will heave with power,
And mountains will be moved to sea.

And new moons will in sky be burning,
And joyful lions will lie down
Under the single downward leaning
Of your head beautiful and young.

By Marina Tsvetayeva
Translated by Ilya Shambat

1
A ghostlike scene is glimmering
Weak choirs of shades remain
With silk has draped Melpomene
Her temple's windowpanes
Frost crunches in the yard
Black chariots stand in row
People and objects are disheveled
Street crackles with hot snow.
2
Bit by bit the servants pick apart
The abandoned heap of bear furs
A butterfly flies over and departs,
And rose plants are draped in furs.
Gnats and boxes fashionably shimmer
From the theater light sweat moves in streams
On the street the flat lamps glimmer
And like clouds arises heavy steam.
3
Coachmen have grown tired of their voices
And the night is black as if with coal.
Do not worry, darling Eurydice,
That our winter is unearthly cold.
Sweeter than the song of the Italians
Is the sound of Russian tongue to me,
For the sounds of harps from foreign countries
Clamor in it with great mystery.
4
Smell of smoke rises from lean mutton
With the mounds of snow the street is ringed
From a blissful songlike semitone
Flying at us is immortal spring,
That this aria will sound forever:
"To green meadows you will return"
And to our feet falls a living sparrow
On the snow that is so hot, it burns.

By Osip Mandelshtam
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat

When I am thinking deeply
I see the world in brown:
The colors mix completely
And in each other drown

Creating a commingling
Expressing every view
Through merger and intriguing
Revealing what is true -

When I am looking death-ward
I see the world in black
Where the ungentle shepherd
Leads toward a wayward track,

Where millions of creatures
Feed on the human ghosts
And lawyers, dressed as preachers,
Proclaim the heaven lost.

When I look at the clouds
I see the world in gray:
The hopes and the doubts
In them together play

And through their interaction -
All facets merged in one -
Bring lightning and refraction
Of rays of setting sun.

When I am with my loved one
I see the world in pink
The spirit-cloud above me
Reshaping all I think

Feeling my essence nurtured
And brought into sweet love -
Her heart, like gentle orchid,
Enfolds me in a glove.

When I burn with desire
I see the world in red:
My heart becomes a pyre
Inside which burns my head

And as it turns to embers
Where all things fleshly die,
My spirit soars and clambers
And falls into the sky.

When I am being rained on
The world is orange-clad,
The conic and Ukrainian
Combine inside my head

To manifest in eros
That courses through all life
And, through the trials and errors,
At consciousness arrives.

When I am full of glamor
The world is yellow, and
It turns into a lemon
And into shifting sand

From which, with just some patience,
I make a lemonade
That feeds the respiration
And all of me pervades.

When I am feeling open
I see the world in green
In which I feel and hope and
Know goodliness and sin

And, seeing the whole landscape
From elevated view
Conquer the inner wasteland
And make it bloom anew.

When I am full of willpower
I see the world in blue
And, certain, build a tower
That seeks attainment to

The transcendental wisdom
Of sky and ocean waves
Which holds the truth and freedom
And love that goodness saves.

When I am full of soul
In indigo am I
Feeling the cosmic whole
Expressed within the sky

That reaches earth with wisdom
Of millions of stars
And nurtures me, assisting
The healing of the scars.

When I am in a prayer
I feel the violet light
Reaching my spirit, where
It casts the lies aside -

Burning into the essence
With penetrating rays
And teaching many lessons,
From gratitude to praise -

And after darkest hour
Of darkest of the night
I'm happy as a flower
To see the world in white.

Rather than be a vandal and bandit,
I'd like to apply to be antisemite,
On their side, though laws are missing,
Is support and fervor of millions of people.

I've chosen, and that means to beat up somebody,
But I need to know who are all these semites,
And maybe they are after all decent humans,
And maybe from them I can get something useful.

But teacher and friend, alcoholic and grocer,
Has said that semites are Jews, nothing more, and
It is such a great luck, brothers dear,
I am now calm, there is nothing to fear.

I've kept myself strong, and with high admiration
I have in my life viewed Albert Einstein,
People will forgive, but I ask, unwilling,
How am I to view Abraham Lincoln.

Among them is Capler, whom Stalin made suffer,
Among them is Chaplin, respected by me,
My friend Rabinovich and victims of Nazism,
And even the very founder of Marxism.

But alkie told me after this conversation
That they drink the blood of the Christian babies,
And then at the pub the fellows told
That they crucified God a long time ago.

They suck people's blood, and not parking their truck
They tortured, damn creeps, elephant in the park,
And I know, they stole from the people
Bread crop from the last year completely.

And alongside the Russian railroads
They've built houses and live there like gods.
I'm ready for violence, and in righteous passion
I'm beating up kikes and am saving Russia.


By Vladimir Vysotsky
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat