the year of living dangerously

photography, poetry, music

[aprilkoester]

Salute by James Schuyler

Past is past, and if one remembers what one meant to do and never did, is not to have thought to do enough? Like that gather- ing of one of each I planned, to gather one of each kind of clover, daisy, paintbrush that grew in that field the cabin stood in and study them one afternoon before they wilted. Past is past. I salute that various field.

[aprilkoester]

“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.” ― Erich Fromm

[aprilkoester]

Francine Mangoes on Newkirk Ave

[aprilkoester]

[aprilkoester]

don't waste your talent

[aprilkoester]

[aprilkoester]

coming up shadows

[aprilkoester]

ON THE MELTING LAKE

I dreamt of walking on icy waves. I dreamt of the shut-in blue. Shall we go?

A tin can with an icy tongue inside, A tin can rolled on the crackling white: Here I threw out a broken cadence.

The shimmering sun mingled Its heat with the snow. You told me, "It is not a long blue snake, But the sign of a melting lake. Soon we will hear its cracking."

-CHUNG LING

[aprilkoester]

Sunset

We can see the coastline now The sunset was extraordinary In the flaming evening Enormous clouds perpendicular and insanely tall Chimeras griffins and a big winged victory stayed all night just above the horizon At daybreak the whole flock found itself reunited pink and yellow over Bahia laid out like a checkerboard

Blaise Cendrars - Travel Notes

[aprilkoester]

FILL AND ILLUMINED

God created his image I love him like the door. Speak to me now. Without god there is no god. Forget everything! Lie down and be circumscribed and circumcised. Yet there is no pain. Yet there is no joy.

From The Green Lake Is Awake by Joseph Ceravolo

[aprilkoester]

XV. Sonnets from the Portuguese

Accuse me not, beseech thee, that I wear Too calm and sad a face in front of thine; For we look two ways, and cannot shine With the same sunlight on our brow and hair. On me thou lookest with no doubting care, As on a bee shut in a crystalline, Since sorrow has shut me safe in love’s divine, And to spread wing and fly in the outer air Were most impossible failure, if I strove To fail so. But I look on thee—-on thee—- Beholding, besides love, the end of love, Hearing oblivion beyond memory; As one who sits and gazes from above, Over the rivers to the bitter sea.

[aprilkoester]

This is not exactly what I mean Any more than the sun is the sun. But how to mean more closely If the sun shines but approximately? What a world of awkwardness! What hostile implements of sense! Perhaps this is as close a meaning As perhaps becomes such knowing. Else I think the world and I Must live together as strangers and die-- A sour love, each doubtful whether Was ever a thing to love the other. No, better for both to be nearly sure Each of each--exactly where Exactly I and exactly the world Fail to meet by a moment, and a word.

Laura Riding, "The World and I"

[aprilkoester]

INTERIOR (WITH JANE)

The eagerness of objects to be what we are afraid to do

cannot help but move us   Is this willingness to be a motive

in us what we reject?    The really stupid things, I mean

a can of coffee, a 35 cent ear ring, a handful of hair, what

do these things do to us?   We come into the room, the windows

are empty, the sun is weak and slippery on the ice   And a

sob comes, simply because it is coldest of the things we know

~ Frank O' Hara The Collected Poems Of

[aprilkoester]

Reality of Shadows

In this strange suburb in the middle of town where the most obscure work is done, no one has ever come to see. Alone in the night, in the mud where red and green lights shimmer, certain people live. I understand the tiredness of these feet harnessed to gain, to existence.

In the shadow, a manlike shape or a woman of no particuliar age is looking, and, without ones' being able to know what for, fills the basket.

But another, dressed up and in high heels, prefers the halo of the streetlamps and makes herself worth something. Sometimes when passing by, these two graze on another, with no bad feelings, because it's their lives they're both looking for on this same sidewalk.

-Pierre Reverdy Prose Poems

[aprilkoester]

I know What evening means, and doves, and I have seen What other men sometimes have thought they’ve seen.

Rimbaud via Ted Berrigan the sonnets

[aprilkoester]

NEW YORK

More sirens here, day and night. The cars are faster, the advertisements more aggressive. This is wall-to-wall prostitution. And total electric light too. And the game - all games - gets more intense. It's always like this when you're getting near the centre of the world.

- Jean Baudrillard America

[aprilkoester]

PASTRY.

Cutting shade, cool spades and little last beds, make violet, violet when.

-Gertrude Stein Tender Buttons