#laura jensen

[meusgrifos]

The days come and go like waves on pebbles. She the sea will not wear the coat made from flame, made from the flag of combustion. She will not dress herself in fire. Nor can she wear the galloping world she dreams of. The days do not touch her, she has the shell of a snail. She cannot see clearly the way her wounds are shaped. She will not dress herself, she will not dream. She cannot see her way clearly over the cold cinders. To sleep she ventures out under a rowboat to a ship at sea. The nights come and go in the waves beneath the ship, she will not wear the canvas sails, she will not dress herself in salt. The nights do not touch the sea. The sea touches night in her rest.

— "She will not dress herself", from Laura Jensen.

[poem-today]

A poem by Laura Jensen

The Red Dog

You know that he is going to die as soon as I tell you he is standing beside me his hair in spikes and dripping from his body. He turns his head. Canadian geese all of them floating along the shore. The red dog is swimming for them only his head shows now they flap into a curve and move farther along the bay. You know that he is going to die this is the time for it this is the best time for it while there is a way to vanish while the geese are moving off to be their hard sounds as their bodies leave the water.

Laura Jensen

[themadscene]

To Have You Hear by Laura Jensen

two sounds at once, walking and not walking, I stop in the parking lot gravel. There is a fire back of the log, a sandy beach, behind trees big with summer. Two big umbrella butterflies (like Haiku elephants) flutter one by one among the leaves, their shadows, and the air. On the green slopes the sprinklers turn like maypoles. It has been summer for weeks now, and you refuse to talk about it.

[poem-today]

A poem by Laura Jensen

Memory

The falcon is directed by an arm, flies into the sky and does not return. The falconer stands astonished, dangling the leather hood. A little wine, some mild laughing, and the king forgets, but the falconer lies in bed staring at the ceiling or the plate of stars at the bare window.

Then in the dark there is a sound, and the bird has returned to him, knowing the way by night, flying in to the falconer's chamber. Proud as a cat it drops the prey: a debt. It looks at the man with one eye, speaks in one of the falcon dialects, unable to express where it has been as it toured the sky. Did it follow above the lake, the village, forest and mountain? Does it recall?

By night a forgotten name will rise to the unfortunate who stood there silent and foolish by day. The falcon knows the falconer with both its eyes. Like memory, it returned when it was unexpected. Like memory it is a weight on the arm, missed sorely when it is missing.

Laura Jensen

[mikanandpotato]

If evil why sexy?

[honestlyautomaticchaos]

You guys remember how, before fighting Sucheon, Laura gave her glasses to Jean? ...Do you guys think she did that before going to fight that member of Frame, too?

[jshoulson]

Today’s Poem

Heavy Snowfall in a Year Gone Past --Laura Jensen

Heavy snowfall in a year gone past hammered the sudden edge of the house foundations to a rounder world a whiter light after the end of day. My favorite coat, lush sable in color, a petty fake that warmed me to the ears hangs after the seasons a beaten animal grinning buttons. It became quite real to me and now is matted on a hook. How far away what mattered has flourished without me, along the tasty road in the wood:

clark, clark, the hidden birds call or do wrong, do wrong, someone do wrong, snapping apples from out in the woodside, telling their fathers names, pie cannonrude barkwithfist brendanbe with cherries.

It is a vast field where snow will fall again. Is the vast field ownership or a presence of mind?

While they are young the old provide the moon gets full and looks down judging not the maze of anger but the fury at the wasted years, at the waste of the tender snow. Wasted, wasted, the birds crackle, wasted on you.

[jeffalessandrelli]

In the War with Death--Laura Jensen

In the War with Death

 In the war with death

I watch in the night.

I am bitterly sorry.

 Hands reach a cold hearth

where the cold air is cold

in the war with death.

  With the flowers I carry,

with a blunt voice I say

I am bitterly sorry.

 Tears do their best.

Death has no reason.

It is war with death.

  I walk. I worry.

I wake in the night

and am bitterly sorry

  and stop for breath—

and the end of breath.

In the war with death

I am bitterly sorry.