Poems for the Day

Today is Poem in Your Pocket Day in New York, which is probably the best-intentioned bit of goofery the city has come up with yet. If I had less to do around the house I’d head out to the Museum of Modern Art, which lets you in today for the price of a poem.

In the spirit of, then, we offer you two Poems on the Blog.

All of the Above

These things start in dice cups
Roll out onto baize
And sooner or later
Pull the stars around
In rings and rings and rings.

The phone has been silent
Since you turned the corner,
Has been present since you went away.
The fond heart at the window
Watching night sky.

                              Linus Gelber - 4/21/2003

Just Add Water

Ingredients:

     1 mountain (large)
     1 ocean (immense)
     2 lovers (uncertain)

Combine elements in prepared basin.
Mix until smooth.
Season to taste.

When the mountain refluxes
And only sand remains
Remove lovers.

Serving size: 2

                              Linus Gelber - 11/18/2002

About Linus

The man behind the curtain. But couldn't we get a nicer curtain?
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6 Responses to Poems for the Day

  1. Harvey says:

    Didn’t Led Zeppelin do a song very similar to that
    second one?

    (in terms of imagery, not specific form of presentation)

  2. Linus says:

    I think you mentioned that when you lifted it (with credit, of course) for your Romantic Moment entry one day. Dice, mountains, time, sand, stars; we can’t escape these, really. I wouldn’t have thought of Led Zep particularly — and didn’t — but it’s a valid call.

    Once I wrote a piece called The 59th Fold, which I think might be permanently lost these days. I certainly haven’t seen it in years. The 59th Fold was a five-part poem. I did a lot of those back then and sometimes still do; fives are evocative, somehow.

    Anyway, each of the five parts was titled in Italian, because I was living in Italy when I started it. It was a long disquieted love piece about a woman named Carole, who was marginally married to a guy I vaguely knew. Think Béatrice Dalle and you won’t be far off. I got the title because I had read somewhere an odd study that said the human hand could take 58 distinct positions — ludicrous, but whatever — and thus the 59th fold would be the one that requires another hand. You see.

    So the editors at this magazine at school that published some of my stuff got absolutely thrilled about it, and someone wrote a piece about how I had cleverly and invisibly tied Dante’s cantos and Pound’s cantos together in missing-link fashion, using free verse and textual references to their poetic forms (rather than using the forms themselves) to create a transcendent piece that balanced lightly on the obscure nuances of classicism, while keeping a steady modern tone, unpretentious and direct.

    I nodded sagely and said thank you, thinking to myself that one of these days I was going to have to read Pound. I had read a bit of Dante by then, but not much. For that matter I still haven’t read much Dante, come-come-commala.

    So you take from these things a lot of what you bring to them. Between you and me and the wall, I don’t know Led Zep that well either.

  3. Harvey says:

    “So you take from these things a lot of what you bring to them.”

    No argument here. A poem is just a mirror that reflects the reader’s soul :-)

  4. Pingback: Bad Example

  5. Gloria Stitz says:

    Esteemed folks of the web. I only came her because the term “Pepper of the Earth” leapt to my mind as I played with my food…

  6. Gloria Stitz says:

    Merde! Je voulais dire: I only came “HERE”…blahblahblah.
    Vous savez, je joue trop trop trop avec mes ingredients….le poivre me fascine a cause de son feu, ses couleurs, et bien sur son saveur.
    C’etait tout a fait chouette de lire les poemes de M. Linus…

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