occupational hazards

Butcher
If I want to go to pieces
I can do that. When I try
to pull myself together
I get sausage.

Bakers
Can't be choosers. Rising
from a white bed, from dreams
of kings, bright cities, buttocks,
to see the moon by daylight.

Tailor
It's not the way the needle
drags the poor thread around.
It's sewing the monster together,
my misshapen son.

Gravediggers
To be the baker's dark opposite,
to dig the anti-cake, to stow
the sinking loaves in the unoven-
then to be dancing on the job!

Woodcutter
Deep in my hands
as far as I can go
the fallen trees
keep ringing.

David Young's Occupational Hazards

Reflecting on my work week, I was reminded of this poem. Such a life requires fortitude...

Image via

My parents have come home laughing

From the feast for Robert Burns, late, on foot;
They have leaned against graveyard walls,
Have bent double in the glittering frost,
Their bladders heavy with tea and ginger.
Burns, suspended in a drop, is flicked away
As they wipe their eyes, and is not offended.

What could offend him? Not the squeaking bagpipe
Nor the haggis which, when it was sliced, collapsed
In a meal of blood and oats
Nor the man who read a poem by Scott
As the audience hissed embarrassment
Nor the principal speaker whose topic,
"Burns' View of Crop Rotation," was intended
For farmers, who were not present,
Nor his attempt to cover this error, reciting
The only Burns poem all evening,
"Nine Inch Will Please a Lady," to thickening silence.

They drop their coats in the hall,
Mother first to the toilet, then Father,
And then stand giggling at the phone,
Debating a call to the States, decide no,
And the strength to keep laughing breaks
In a sigh. I hear, as their tired ribs
Press together, their bedroom door not close
And hear also a weeping from both of them
That seems not to be pain, and it comforts me.

-Mark Jarman "My parents have come home laughing"
Image via

moreover, the moon

Face of the skies
preside
over our wonder.

Fluorescent
truant of heaven
draw us under.

Silver, circular corpse
your decease
infects us with unendurable ease,

touching nerve-terminals
to thermal icicles

Coercive as coma, frail as bloom
innuendoes of your inverse dawn
suffuse the self;
our every corpuscle become an elf.

Mina Loy
Image via

we will lie under different stars

So you'd sing a lullaby to get me to sleep
So it's no surprise my eyes are never heavy
For i've not seen you in the flesh for so long
That i'm not sure we would know each other at all

Oh the weight it must be light wherever you are
And i know you don't think twice wherever you are
Oh the weight it must be light wherever you are
And i know you don't think twice wherever you are

So i will hum alone, too far from you
All that i say now is nothing to you
We will lie under different stars
I am where i am and you're where you are, you're where you are.

Oh the weight it must be light wherever you are
And i know you don't think twice wherever you are
And i'd ask if you're all right wherever you are
And do you think of me, you might, wherever you are.

-Different Stars Trespassers Williams

what might have been and what has been

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

-Burnt Norton T.S. Eliot from Four Quartets


In the mornings I've been listening to Ralph Fiennes reading the Four Quartets. Utterly beautiful.

Image via

rickshaw

I have never seen a group of people denied a rickshaw ride just because of their numbers.

image via

test pony

I am given a pony for my birthday, but it is the wrong kind of pony. It is the kind of pony that won’t listen. It is testy. When I ask it to go left, it goes right. When I ask it to run, it sleeps on its side in the tall grass. So when I ask it to jump us over the river into the field I have never before been, I have every reason to believe it will fail, that we will be swept down the river to our deaths. It is a fate for which I am prepared. The blame of our death will rest with the testy pony, and with that, I will be remembered with reverence, and the pony will be remembered with great anger. But with me on its back, the testy pony rears and approaches the river with unfettered bravery. Its leap is glorious. It clears the river with ease, not even getting its pony hooves wet. And then there we are on the other side of the river, the sun going down, the pony circling, looking for something to eat in the dirt. Real trust is to do so in the face of clear doubt, and to trust is to love. This is my failure, and for that I cannot be forgiven.

Test Pony by Zachary Schomburg

long hair

When I was twelve years old, I wore my hair in two long braids that swished through the air around me like whips. These I used indiscriminately as ribbons to make the cat play, brushes to be dipped in paint, or as ropes from which to hang things. I would get up extra early each morning while my mother brushed and combed my nodding head. From these morning I date my current reservations about long hair. Long hair, barbaric accessory, hair that one cherishes in secret for secret purposes, that one displays twisted or braided and conceals when it is disheveled. Unbound it irritates sensitive skin, confuses a wandering hand.

There is just one moment, in the evening, when the pins are withdrawn and the shy face shines out for an instant from between the tangled waves; and there is a similar moment in the early morning. And because of these two moments everything I have just written against long hair counts for nothing at all.

Image via