PAGE F THE MNTH

July 2010

The terror of error
The error of terror
The terror of seeing
The error of being

 

Every day I write down at least one poem or idea:
a complaint somewhere between a runny nose and diarrhœa.

 

 

 

SIX POEMS INSPIRED BY

ORHAN VELI

by

Anthony Weir

 

SUPERLATIVE

I love thin hairy bearded men,
I also love hunky working men
and sexy men on the dole
(I'd make the latter piles of toast)
- but I love thin, hunky, working-but-
unemployed, bearded men the most.

 

 

SUICIDE

I know
it isn't easy to live.
I know very well
that living isn't easy
especially if you
(think you) have to shave.
But dying's no doddle either,
guys.

To leave this world
when you decide you've
had enough
is not the easy option
that you think it is.
Let me tell you
it's only for the bravest
of the brave.

 

 

BEAUTY

How beautiful the colour
of fresh green tea
is
in the morning
in the fresh air.
How beautiful
the fresh air
is.
How beautiful that tree.
How handsome and how
venerable the waiter
is.
How beautiful the tea.

 

 

PRO PATRIA

Many died
Many more were maimed
Some gave speeches
None spoke out

 

SEXINESS

Where
where is my sexiness ?

One of Satan's minions took it,
couldn't sell it,
couldn't even give it away -
so he threw it away.

O where O where
is my sexiness ?

 

 

TRAVELLING

I have no intention of travelling.
I am happy in these gorgeous gorges
of the Aveyron.
But if I were to travel
I wouldn't go to Beijing,
La Paz or Mafeking.
One day you might think
you've seen me making
taking magic potions
somewhere beyond the seven oceans,
farther from here than eerie Pyongyang...

but I told you:
I have no intention of travelling.

 

 

>> Six translations of a poem by Rilke >>

 

HAIKU

by

David Burleigh

Flowers in the dark:
the absence of colour is
a kind of wonder.

 

 

 

 

BEWARE A POET BEARING WITNESS

by

Anthony Weir

To bear witness is to wade against
the filthy flow of smug hypocrisy,
greed, conformity and callousness.

Poetry is the wealth between words.

Where is the poetry of witness
in the English-speaking lands ?

I hear only muzak:
the dreadful drone of solipsistic wordsmiths
sitting on their hands.

 

 

a note on love

 

 

In Memoriam Kurt Schwitters

 

 

Life is too short

to worry about
life being short.

 

 

DOGS & HEAVEN

 

 

JULY'S MAXIM

Art, I suppose, is only for beginners, or else for those resolute dead-enders, who have made up their minds to be content with the ersatz of Suchness, with symbols rather than with what they signify, with the elegantly composed recipe in lieu of actual dinner.

- Aldous Huxley

 

SOME PREVIOUS MAXIMS:

 

Man is the deranged animal, the laughing animal, the aggrieved animal,
the complaining animal, the vengeful animal,
the weeping animal, the jeering animal,
the unhappy animal, the destroying animal
the life-denying animal.

 

A mind enclosed by language is in prison.
- Simone Weil

Consistency is the curse of understanding.

 

Quietude, which some men cannot abide because it reveals
their inward poverty, is as a palace of cedar to the wise.
- Charles H. Spurgeon (English Christian preacher, 1834-1892)

 

It seems to me that nearly 99% of poetry is false.
But maybe high-falutin falsehood is the point of poetry ?

 

To want friendship is a great fault.
Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy,
like the joys afforded by art or life.
- Simone Weil

 

I'd rather be Ireland's unknown McGonagall
than that island's latest Nobel laureate.

 

The world is getting to be such a dangerous place,
a man is lucky to get out of it alive.
- W.C. Fields

 

Opprobrium is more trustworthy than praise.

 

To get power over a living creature is to defile.
To possess is to defile.
- Simone Weil

 

The quickest of us walk about
with well-wadded stupidity.
- George Eliot

 

more recent Maxims and Aphorisms can be read on the
weBlog

 

 

try a page at random

click for selections from
PREVIOUS PAGES OF THE MONTH >>

 

 

making coffee

 

poetic work in progress >