Found Poetry No. 2

Say the word swimming.

Now say it without the ing.

Excellent.

You're up. Spell the word growing.

If you take off ing, what do you have left?

Where is grow? Which one? Which one's o?

How do you spell it at the end? Good.

Uh oh, tell me the sounds?

We don't say, graw. Never.

Do you need this? There's grow.

There's your ing. Perfect.

What's that word? Good.

Can you spell it in the air?

Uh oh. Try again. Slide forward.

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in the smiling eyes of death we find comedy

in the unthinkable flatness of dust we discover photography

we are our grains and height

awake late, again, 

someone warm loving you 

in a dream

in the other room

a truck full of swimming boys

swerves hysterically on route 17

commerce passing by in streaks unnoticed

in the absence of true friendship we find poetry

in the darkness of faith we trace our hands like children.

formless [fragment]

it was a quarter past two in the morning and she knocked on the cold, hand-painted door three times.

she often went for a 5-mile run in the never-silent urban night; interrupting the halogen darkness, ambulance calls were foremost, then police sirens, then the dual blast of fire alarms.

he answered the door almost immediately. inside, turning the door knob, he was as asleep as she was iced in sweat. their eyes met and a each exchanged a sweet quarter smile. she placed her fingertips on the small of his back and guided him back to the bedroom, toward the bed.

she watched him, rough and childlike, throw the duvet covers aside, climb in with his knees, rip the blankets back over his small body. he was asleep, again. 

Found Poetry No. 1

mystery of the ghost
bloodthirsty massacre, dark water

have you seen the legendary
Chi Xu Cliff mermaids?
the Soviet Union harvest
rival week wins a distress message:

"save me, lady in the water
in the door to the scene
Zhou Sheng had died."

mobile phone lover Luo
spent SMS pop-up
long a certain death:

"i am the lady in the water"

this is a brutal revenge
this is a premeditated killing

beautiful police officer leaves competition
involved in the investigation
a strange supernatural evidence

"but have to point to the Su Feng, Su Feng
serve the suspect — nixe — the event"

another detonated mysterious jade
wake the sleeping years memory
the truth is beginning to emerge.

The horrors of the legend of the lady in the water
Chi Xu Cliff is forbidden: deep caves, terrible secret
many to students, many to die
Sex and the City
the unthinkable occurred everywhere
perhaps, the devil behind you!

the beauty of failing is the beauty of death

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Thumb jammed deep into her eye

Bedclothes stain with blindness

She’s over the pain with the snap of a finger

You open your eyes, you've inflicted love 

She shows a glimmer of affection

She is tired, you are tired

You’re permitted beside

In darkness the wound inflicts a wound

In your mind you are kind.




[original] [revision no. 1]

[notes for a longer work]

decay
dental caries
demineralization
enamel, dentin, cementum
production of acid by hydrolysis of food debris
Streptococcus mutans and Lactobacillus

Cariology is the study of dental caries.

the air cracks
like dry timber

It was there that, in 1939, his son Antonietto died as a result of a badly performed appendectomy.
The same year, he was made a Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Rome.

If left untreated, a severe tooth abscess may become large enough to perforate bone and extend into the soft tissue eventually becoming osteomyelitis and cellulitis respectively.

The rod of Asclepius, a snake-entwined staff, remains a symbol of medicine today

NEVER USE THE WORD CAVITY

He was the son of Apollo and Coronis. His mother was killed for being unfaithful to Apollo and was laid out on a funeral pyre to be consumed, but the unborn child was rescued from her womb. ... From this he received the name Asklepios "to cut open".

Openings in the tooth enamel allow bacteria to infect the center of the tooth (the pulp). Infection may spread out from the root of the tooth and to the bones supporting the tooth.

Apollo carried the baby to the centaur Chiron who raised Asclepius and instructed him in the art of medicine.

Infection results in a collection of pus (dead tissue, live and dead bacteria, white blood cells) and swelling of the tissues within the tooth. This causes a painful toothache. If the pulp of the tooth dies, the toothache may stop, unless an abscess develops.

Ophiuchus is located between Aquila, Serpens and Hercules, northwest of the center of the Milky Way. The southern part lies between Scorpius to the west and Sagittarius to the east. In the northern hemisphere, it is best visible in summer. It is located opposite Orion in the sky. Ophiuchus is depicted as a man grasping a serpent; the interposition of his body divides the snake constellation Serpens into two parts, Serpens Caput and Serpens Cauda, which are nonetheless counted as one constellation.

The main symptom is a severe toothache. The pain is continuous and may be described as gnawing, sharp, shooting, or throbbing.

Other symptoms may include:
Bitter taste in the mouth
Breath odor
General discomfort, uneasiness, or ill feeling
Fever
Pain when chewing
Sensitivity of the teeth to hot or cold
Swollen glands of the neck
Swollen area of the upper or lower jaw -- a very serious symptom


"""
L'IMPIETRITO E IL VELLUTO

Ho scoperto le barche che molleggiano
Sole, e le osservo non so dove, solo.

Non accadrà le accosti anima viva.

Impalpabile dito di macigno
Ne mostra di nascosto al sorteggiato
Gli scabri messi emersi dall'abisso
Che recano, dondolo nel vuoto,

Verso l'alambiccare
Del vecchissimo ossesso
La eco di strazio dello spento flutto
Durato appena un attimo
Sparito con le sue sinistre barche.

Mentre si avvicendavano
L'uno sull'altro addosso
I branchi annichiliti
Dei cavalloni del nitrire ignari,

Il velluto croato
Dello sguardo di Dunja,
Che sa come arretrarla di millenni,
Come assentarla, pietra
Dopo l'aggirarsi solito
Da uno smarrirsi all'altro,
Zingara in tenda di Asie,

Il velluto dello sguardo di Dunja
Fulmineo torna presente pietà.

Roma, notte del 31 dicembre 1969 - mattina del 1° gennaio 1970
"""

Other People's Poetry: Guiseppe Ungaretti's "End of Chronos" translated by Andrew Frisardi

End of Chronos (1915)
by Guiseppe Ungaretti 

The strange and frightened moment
Wanders in the lap
Of the firmament.

A lilac-tinted smudge
Crowns the mountains,

The last outcry to stray.

Countless Penelopes, stars

The Lord embraces you again!

(Ah, blindness!
Cave-in of nights . . . )

And offers back Olympus,
Eternal flower of sleep.


translated by Andrew Frisardi 
in Selected Poems: A Bilingual Edition

sketch: the drunkard writes!

at the end of each short line lies a grass button
beneath its roots the poet finds small protein deposits
crepuscular veins wring cracks and splinter every syllable

wriggling muscular worms, armored rolly polys
crumpled pages of the wasteland like garland strung
and every now and then a rock.

"We need to eat," the mirror answers back.
but we are tired of singing birds and skinny trees
these hallow bones and rows of teeth

we bow beneath the weight of discourse, present company excepted

"We need to eat," repeats the mirror wearily.
should the reader choose to push that button
a boiled ham will appear in the arms of
the cushion-plant: "Mount Herron is our home!"

mirrors fear vanity's drought
with a single soft finger
the poet buries a blade of grass
a short & modest line
a buttered nub of italian bread.

once touched

"having a harsh, disagreeably acrid taste, 

like that of aspirin, quinine, wormwood,
or aloes; hard to bear; grievous;
distressful; causing pain; piercing; stinging;
characterized by intense antagonism or hostility"

Millsis Adoma,

she said it to me in bed ""
but, it can't be lifted
you were a manacle, like speaking
in code: Adoma Millsis

one_

touched.

the memories you placed before me
laughed out onto the table, antiques
appraised, then returned to collection

in code, of course.

in code, you were strong: unfragile: harkness
hung from the stable. but now i am here, decoding.
legs beneath my writing desk: worrying: eroding.

in code: the stable.

you're both here, cutting, crashing, set upon the beach
for the first time: miraculously: miserably: confused
hand-in-hand, our mouth cast out over the pacific
i cut, you crash, we're all watching for this
purple sunset.

in code: misery stretched out over the ocean
like a tightrope: hung from the stable.

don't close you eyes: sleeplessness is a gift
accept your giftlessness, sleep: in code: she said it to me

here i am again, beside her
lifting the language, exposing
the bleak, black experience
of,

two_

we're here beside bibles
dread thesaurus, rhyming dispair
pitter plots of rotten condensation

like

dry sharp tip of a knife, blood
bitter bite of a page-thin blade
played to lip and jaw and

like

mentally there is no weight to curl, it's all power
perceived through a prism; when you move your hand slow
across the patients' covers it trembles, imperceptibility
a cheap parlor trick. like, the fear is in your know.

like

we're here among the bibles, our teachers' patient parlors
and we're like waiting, clock watching, tossing knives
into the softwhite up above.

three_

like speaking in code: i've stopped thinking about myself
just long enough to address you. once i'd known
apelike kings and a snakelike pig; we knew each other.

she said it to me in bed ""
but, it cannot be lifted
your manacle is speaking
in code: Adoma Millsis, once touched.