Le Réflexe De Poésie

We are all poets

[thepoetryreflex]

[thepoetryreflex]

We are speaking different languages, as always

[thepoetryreflex]

The Tree

At once he knew it was the right thing to fight for life. Yet simultaneously and persistently he questioned why? Initially, this question lived within him as a single seed in the vast land around it. Daily emotions were the winds that swept and swayed him. Nonetheless he could not shake that curious question which grew in him, from a seed, to a plantling and eventually into an old, great tree. On both hot and cold days without sensitivity, the great tree’s branches shaded him from the warmth of the sun. At times this made him shiver with discomfort. At other times, the shade cooled his hot, dry skin.

AL

[thepoetryreflex]

Drinking water from a glass

In the midst of uncertainty By a lamp's tungsten wire warmth Adonis sweats as Venus wipes her face Life is fragile

A profile of red plump Soft brown dots on beige An air of music and fast clouds A stomach full from the boulangerie and with anxiety A ride on the Moroccan metro Balzac the consumer People walk below him in the shade of his belly 

A mind’s maze: The symphony of chaos and hierarchy   

Work’s pain sets one free To suck sweet juices from the fruits of the trees And breath the air from their leaves AL

[thepoetryreflex]

Obsessions

Your eyebrows Take lift by frontalis An open mouth Wet from parotid

Current flows So too the blood of the bull Its hooves kick up dust As the hammer nails The strings of expression A piano’s sound The air’s vibration

Matador Not once Over and over Your lumbricals and interossei play their song A gift of translation Seemingly stochastic  The rise and fall of the ocean Or a drink of sweet wine

Phrenic innervation, excitation, inhalation Dizzily high from the spin of a waltz The euphoria of touch, oxytocin and silk

AL

A tribute to Frédéric François Chopin’s Polonaise in A-flat major, Op. 53

[thepoetryreflex]

COLOUR

[thepoetryreflex]

I only wanted one time to see you laughing

Prince

[thepoetryreflex]

Give a man a mask and he will show his true face

Oscar Wilde

[thepoetryreflex]

I am tired. I am weary. I can sleep for a thousand years. A thousand dreams, that would awake me.

Lou Reed

[thepoetryreflex]

Excerpt - The Master and Margarita

I started being afraid of the dark

It seemed to me, especially when I was going to sleep

That some octopus, with supple and cold tentacles was stealing up to me coming straight for my heart

I woke up, with the feeling that the octopus was nearby

[thepoetryreflex]

Piet Mondrian - Mill in Sunlight 1908 

[thepoetryreflex]

Part I ‘Manifesto’ by DH Lawrence. Emotive, textured and human. Peaceful yet powerful. 

[thepoetryreflex]

’The city with all its squalor and inequalities, the pressures of time and mortality’ 

24. Plans

Paris Spleen

The romantic prose, ‘Plans’ by Baudelaire incites within me the lighter joys of life and the excitement of a playful mind, leaving the rest for another time. 

[thepoetryreflex]

24. Plans Paris Spleen As he walked through a large, deserted park, he mused: “How beautiful she’d be in a sumptuous, intricate gown on a soft evening, descending a palace’s marble stairs opposite great lawns and ornamental lakes! Because she is by nature a princess.” Later, he stopped outside an engraver’s and, finding a print of a tropical landscape, thought: ”No, I don’t want to confine such a lovely life to a palace. It wouldn’t be a home. And what’s more, the inlaid gold on the walls wouldn't leave room for her portrait. In those solemn galleries there’d be no private corners. No question, there is where we should be, cultivating my life’s dream.” And as he analysed the engraving, his thoughts developed: ”On the seashore, a lovely wooden shack ringed by strange, glossy trees whose names I’ve forgotten... in the air an elusive, heady perfume... in the shack the strong scent of roses and musk... somewhere behind our small domain, masts riding the swell... around us, beyond the bedroom washed in rosy light filtered through blinds, adorned with fresh mats and strong-scented flowers, strewn with Portuguese rococo seats of dark, heavy wood (on which she’d recline, at ease in the cool air, smoking tobacco mixed with a  little opium), beyong the veranda the noise of birds drunk on light, and the chatter of small black girls... at night, accompaniment to my dream, the lament of music trees, of sad casuarinas. Yes, that is the true décor I was seeking. What would I want with a palace? And farther on, down a broad avenue, he noticed a charming hostelry; two laughing heads were at a window adorned with cheerful, patterned curtains. His instant reaction was: “What a vagabond soul I have, scouring the world for what is here beside me. Joy and happiness, there, in the first inn encountered, the inn of chance, a pleasure ground. A roaring fire, bright crockery, a half-decent supper, rough wine, a huge bed, sheets coarse but clean. What could be better?” And back indoors, alone, when Wise Counsels are no longer choked by the turbulent world, he thought: ‘Today, I’ve dreamt up three homes affording equal pleasure. So why force my body to new places when my soul can travel so effortlessly? And why bother to see plans through, when the plan itself is pleasure enough?” 1857, 1861, 1864, 1864 Charles Baudelaire Martin Sorrell

[thepoetryreflex]

Poor Rimbaud drowning in the beauty of life 

[thepoetryreflex]

Venus Anadyomène Comme d’un cercueil vert en fer blanc, une tête De femme à cheveux bruns fortement pommadés D’une vieille baignoire émerge, lente et bête, Avec des déficits assez mal ravaudés; Puis le col gras et gris, les larges omoplates Qui saillent; le dos court qui rentre et qui ressort; Puis les rondeurs des reins semblent prendre l’essor; La graisse sous la peau paraît en feuilles plates: L’échine est un peu rouge, et le tout sent un goût Horrible étrangement; on remarque surtout Des singularités qu’il faut voir à la loupe… Les reins portent deux mots gravés: CLARA VENUS; —Et tout ce corps remue et tend sa large croupe Belle hideusement d’un ulcère à l’anus. Venus Anadyomene As from a green zinc coffin, a woman’s Head with brown hair heavily pomaded Emerges slowly and stupidly from an old bathtub, With bald patches rather badly hidden; Then the fat gray neck, broad shoulder-blades Sticking out; a short back which curves in and bulges; Then the roundness of the buttocks seems to take off; The fat under the skin appears in slabs: The spine is a bit red; and the whole thing has a smell Strangely horrible; you notice especially Odd details you’d have to see with a magnifying glass… The buttocks bear two engraved words: CLARA VENUS; —And that whole body moves and extends its broad rump Hideously beautiful with an ulcer on the anus.

Arthur Rimbaud 1870

[thepoetryreflex]

‘Ruth’ by Wordsworth

A simple and playful ‘six stanza, tail rhyming’ metre contrasts the visceral narrative of the verse, Ruth is a romantically structured warning against romanticism.  Ruth is a poem about a woman’s upbringing, her phenomenological and emotional experience falling in love, her life and her death.  It’s about isolation, desire and the natural instinct. It leads me to believe Wordsworth was a cynic and a realist, however not entirely, and if I were to interpret his poem in one sentence, it would be this:          Young lady please take from this adventurous, British-American man not his hand in marriage, but his courage and his stupid joy in life.