Insomniac – Sylvia Plath – Nathan Valkanis

The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole . . .
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon’s rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments–the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue . . .
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.

His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.

Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.

Romantic rubber

Romantic Rubber There is elastic between us;
it pulls and relaxes.
Pulls and relaxes.
I am your body.
My chest rises with your breaths.
My feet ache when you tire.
I sleep in your pupil-less oceans–
Play on the ladder of your ribs–
Hide in my secret cave
between your nose and left eye.
My palm maps out our future.
Fate is our elastic;
it pulls and relaxes.
Pulls and relaxes.Alexandra Wilson

Peter Nifakos

The Triantiwontigongolope

There’s a very funny insect that you do not often spy,
And it isn’t quite a spider, and it isn’t quite a fly;
It is something like a beetle, and a little like a bee,
But nothing like a wooly grub that climbs upon a tree.
Its name is quite a hard one, but you’ll learn it soon, I hope.
So try:
Tri-
Tri-anti-wonti-
Triantiwontigongolope.

It lives on weeds and wattle-gum, and has a funny face;
Its appetite is hearty, and its manners a disgrace.
When first you come upon it, it will give you quite a scare,
But when you look for it again, you find it isn’t there.
And unless you call it softly it will stay away and mope.
So try:
Tri-
Tri-anti-wonti-
Triantiwontigongolope.

It trembles if you tickle it or tread upon its toes;
It is not an early riser, but it has a snubbish nose.
If you snear at it, or scold it, it will scuttle off in shame,
But it purrs and purrs quite proudly if you call it by its name,
And offer it some sandwiches of sealing-wax and soap.
So try:
Tri-
Tri-anti-wonti-
Triantiwontigongolope .

But of course you haven’t seen it; and I truthfully confess
That I haven’t seen it either, and I don’t know its address.
For there isn’t such an insect, though there really might have been
If the trees and grass were purple, and the sky was bottle green.
It’s just a little joke of mine, which you’ll forgive, I hope.
Oh, try!
Tri-
Tri-anti-wonti-
Triantiwontigongolope.

C Micheal James Dennis

by Shakespeare

A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted

Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;

A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted

With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion;

An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,

Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;

A man in hue, all ‘hues’ in his controlling,

Much steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.

And for a woman wert thou first created;

Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,

And by addition me of thee defeated,

By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.

     

Long Ago

 This is by: Eugene Field

I once knew all the birds that came
    And nestled in our churchyard trees.
For every flower I had a name.
    My friends were woodchucks, toads, and bees.
I knew where thrived in yonder glen
    What plants would soothe a stone-bruised toe —
Oh, I was very learnéd then,
    But that was very long ago. I knew the spot upon the hill
    Where checkerberries could be found.
I knew the rushes near the mill
    Where pickerel lay that weighed a pound!
I knew the wood — the very tree
    Where lived the poaching, saucy crow,
And all the woods and crows knew me —
    But that was very long ago. And pining for the joys of youth,
    I tread the old familiar spot,
Only to learn this solemn truth:
    I have forgotten, am forgot.
Yet here’s this youngster at my knee,
    Knows all the things I used to know.
To think I once was wise as he! —
    But that was very long ago.

I know it’s folly to complain
    Of whatsoe’er the fates decree,
Yet, were not wishes all in vain,
    I tell you what my wish should be:
I’d wish to be a boy again,
    Back with the friends I used to know.
For I was, oh, so happy then —
    But that was very long ago!

Don’t Quit

Don’t Quit - Unknown

When things go wrong as they sometimes will;
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill;
When the funds are low, and the debts are high;
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh;
When care is pressing you down a bit
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.

Success is failure turned inside out;
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt;
And you can never tell how close you are;
It may be near when it seems afar.
So, stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit -
It’s when things go wrong that you mustn’t quit.