We shall not escape Hell

We shall not escape Hell, my passionate
sisters, we shall drink black resins––
we who sang our praises to the Lord
with every one of our sinews, even the finest,

we did not lean over cradles or
spinning wheels at night, and now we are
carried off by an unsteady boat
under the skirts of a sleeveless cloak,

we dressed every morning in
fine Chinese silk, and we would
sing our paradisal songs at
the fire of the robbers'camp,

slovenly needlewomen, (all
our sewing came apart), dancers,
players upon pipes: we have been
the queens of the whole world!

first scarcely covered by rags,
then with constellations in our hair, in
gaol and at feasts we have
bartered away heaven,

in starry nights, in the apple
orchards of Paradise
––Gentle girls, my beloved sisters,
we shall certainly find ourselves in Hell!


––Marina Tsvetaeva (1915)

Sinead O'Connor - The Emperor's New Clothes

Sinead O'Connor - Just like you said it would be - live

Great Project Zero Study Featured in Boston Globe

Because art teaches you how to look. Because art gives purpose for looking: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/09/02/art_for_our_sake?mode=PF

Bette Davis Eyes

Song for R. (The Be Good Tanyas)

You see people coming from all sides
With their broken hearts and hollow eyes
And you try to love but it's easier to hate
When the seed that was planted was watered too late
Oooh oh child
Oooh oh child
Your roots stretch down to grow up wild
Roots stretch down to grow up wild
It was late last night when the doorbell rang
My brother in some trouble
He stood shaking on the doorstep in the rain
With a freight train pounding in his veins
And I took him in and cleaned him up
Gave him some water and I put him to bed
Then I cried for the sadness of his life
And his lonely struggle with addiction
Friends say oh what a shame
Mum says no one but himself to blame
But I don't want to play that game
'cos I know the truth is not so plain
Call it a hard life or a lack of love
Call it passed down from his father
Call it lack of faith in god above
There are no easy answers
He is just a child
He is just a child
Arms stretched out for love
Arms stretched out for love
Arms stretched out for love

ACDC - Back In Black

AWE on Kickingwind

My book, AWE, is up on Kickingwind today. Check it out: http://www.kickingwind.com/

The Chinese Restaurant

They sat in the Chinese restaurant
With the sun lit outside, but there was no sun in there.

There was a green scorpion to the right of her on the wall.
A gold plant did not bloom on the baseboard.

The people came out with plates of meat and rice
And she gingerly fed her friend with her fingers.

They both had gotten the same letter the other day.
One with gold writing from the 14th century.

It told of a man with many properties
And these things were for them now.

“Shall we buy a truck?” she asked and her friend stared blankly.

His eyes completely like the sky and in him
Silent bugs that are even silent with themselves.

He took her hand and they slow danced
Over the baseboards, careful not to hit the empty tables.

The people clapped, everyone around them was good
And they had cut flowers for such a love.

The flowers scattered themselves everywhere
And then crawled and scurried into wreaths.

He took two wreaths and put them on their heads.
And an old king came out from the wall and blessed them.

And the cook came out from the kitchen and splashed them with holy water.

And the cook took out two syringes and did a medical procedure.
And their blood was swapped with rosewater.

And sweetly they laid down in front of everyone on a golden bed.

Kissing and caressing the bodies they had once hid from themselves.

Then the thief came in and stole their bodies forever,
But of course their spirits are still there

Playing hide and seek under the tables, and that sort of thing.

Catullus #5

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love
And value at one cent
The talk of lousy old men.
Suns will fix themselves and rise.
For us, when the brief light has fixed forever
There remains only the sleep of one unending night.
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,
Then another thousand, then a second hundred,
Then even another thousand, and then a hundred.
Then, when we have done a many thousand kisses
We will lose our counting, and will not know it.
Nor will any evil person look at us with disapproval
When he sees our kisses number in such neverending ways.

The Cure - Lovesong

Diamonds and the Earth

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/08/23/earth.diamonds.reut/index.html

New websites for readings

Please check out my new website www.birdinsnow.com for all kinds of information regarding my Fall 2007 Tiny Tour for my new book, AWE.

Also, check out www.dorothealaskyreadings.blogspot.com for other upcoming readings.

Some friends, The Quinz and Ohio, really like my new book, AWE

Pomposity versus Arrogance

Laura and I were talking tonight and she told me about a Harvey Danger song that goes "Pomposity is when you always think you are right and arrogance is when you know you know." Anyway, she and I decided we are arrogant, not pompous and I think arrogance is better. No, I know arrogance is better. Arrogance, not pomposity, is what we should be supporting in schools, as this is the kind of way of being that makes people strong enough to learn what they are supposed to learn.

Also, I have decided that I think (no I know!) that all good poetry is confessional poetry. The problem with the way some people think about confessional poetry is that they think of it as a style of oftentimes contrived vulnerability. But any good poem makes itself (and sometimes its author) authentically vulnerable and is likewise confessional. Confessional is not so much a style as a state of poetry that is good.

I know it isn't supposed to be right to talk about things in such absolutes, but I don't think these absolutes to be true, I know them to be. That makes it ok, right?

Anyway, Nelly Furtado says it better than I ever could in her joint song with Timbaland and Justin Timberlake, "Give It To Me":

I'm the type of girl to look you dead in the eye-eye
I'm real as it come if you don't know why I'm fly
Seen you tryna switch it up but girl you ain't that dope
I'm a Wonder Woman, let me go get my rope
I'm a supermodel and mami, si mami
Amnesty International got Bangkok to Montauk on lock
Love my ass and my abs in the video called "Promiscuous"
My style is ri-dic-dic-diculous, 'diculous, 'diculous

The Way I Am-Eminem

Nellie McKay

Spoon, "Underdog"

Picture yourself in the living room
your pipe and slippers set out for you
I know you think that it ain't too far

But I hear the call of a lifetime ring
felt the need to get up for it
And cut out the middleman
get free from the middleman

You got no time for the messenger,
got no regard for the thing that you don't understand,
you got no fear of the underdog,
that's why you will not survive!

I want to forget how convention fits
but can I get out from under it?
Can I gut it out of me?
It can't all be wedding cake
It can't all be boiled away
I try but I can't let go of it
Can't let go of it

Cause you don't talk to the water boy
and there's so much you could learn but you don't want to know,
You will not back up an inch ever,
that's why you will not survive!

The thing that I tell you now
It may not go over well
And it may not be Photo-Op
in the way that I spell it out

But you won't hear from the messenger,
don't wanna know bout something that you don't understand,
You got no fear of the underdog,
that's why you will not survive! 

Spoon - Underdog

Complex systems

Laura Branigan - Gloria

Patti Smith - Gloria

"Everything is fine when you listening to the d-o-g
I got the cultivating music that be captivating he
Who listens, to the words that I speak
As I take me a drink to the middle of the street"

-Snoop Dogg, "Gin & Juice"

Tori Amos Putting the Damage on

River in Spate

The river falls and over the walls the coffins of cold funerals
Slide deep and sleep there in the close tomb of the pool,
And yellow waters lave the grave and pebbles pave its mortuary
And the river horses vault and plunge with their assault and battery,
And helter-skelter the coffins come and the drums beat and the waters flow,
And the panther horses lift their hooves and paw and shift and draw the bier,
The corpses blink in the rush of the river, and out of the water their chins they tip
And quaff the gush and lip the draught and crook their heads and crow,
Drowned and drunk with the cataract that carries them and buries them
And silts them over and covers them and lilts and chuckles over their bones;
The organ-tones that the winds raise will never pierce the water ways,
So all they will hear is the fall of hooves and the distant shake of harness,
And the beat of the bells on the horses' heads and the undertaker's laughter,
And the murmur that will lose its strength and blur at length to quietness,
And afterwards the minute heard descending, never ending heard,
And then the minute after and the minute after the minute after.

--Louis Macneice

"You can live through anything if Magic made it" --Kanye West

Kanye West - Can't Tell Me Nothing

"Birthdays were the worst days now we sip champagne when we're thirsty." --Biggie

The Police - Walking on the Moon

GOLD PANTS LULLABY

The Orb House

I want to live in this Orb House: http://www.theorb.biz/holidayParkHome/theOrb.asp.

Here is more information about it: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/07/the_orb_has_lan.php

2001 A Space Odyssey Ending

Bird in snow

Páll Óskar

Allt fyrir ástina Páll Óskar Paul Oscar

The enormously intelligent Michael Carr edited a notebook by John Wieners (written in 1971 and later found) called The Book of Prophesies and I think everyone should buy it immediately:
http://www.spdbooks.org/SearchResults.asp?Title=a+book+of+prophecies&Author=&Subtitle=&submit=Search

"Ladies is pimps too, go and brush your shoulders off"
--Jay Z

"Faith without works is dead"
--James 2:26

Bhanu Kapil

I went running through the 97 degree heat yesterday in Philadelphia and by minute 45, I was close to what seemed my last breath. I had downloaded a reading by Bhanu Kapil from Penn Sound (http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Kapil.html) onto my ipod per Eric Baus's zealous recommendation earlier in the Spring and had loved it. But even then my love was not a save-you-from-the-97-degree-heat kind of love. But yesterday, I found that kind of love for Kapil's poems and found out how the excessive heat can cause you too to realize that "there is no such thing as skin" as she writes in her Autobiography of a Cyborg. I urge you to listen to the reading on the Penn Sound site and also buy her books, which can be bought here http://www.durationpress.com/leroy/cyborg.htm and here http://www.spdbooks.org/SearchResults.asp?Title=&Author=kapil%2C+bhanu&Subtitle=&submit=Search .

A kiss from a Chow Chow

EB/DL color breakdown

EB/DL colors include (regardless of location):

royal blue
kelly green
forest green
brown
maroon

No one may break this chain.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant––
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind––

--Emily Dickinson

Jelly Fish All Around

Laura Solomon's second book will be out soon (8/1) and you must read it: http://www.uglyducklingpresse.org/page-blueandredthings.html.


Russian Poem

I have a red heart
& a green wall,
the other side of which
I’ve never seen.

When he is lonely
God visits
me in my itty room—
he always says the same,

“I have a green wall
& a red heart,
the other side of which
I’ve never seen.

When bored I
create & destroy
to prove I am not
a piano key.”

-Laura Solomon

I've Got A Thing About Seeing My Grandson Grow Old (Cat Stevens)

I buy the nicest things from a super market store
Vitamin land and marzipan and I know just what they're all for
I've organized my useless life in a way I've never done before
Even visit the dentist now

But I've got no time for silly chitter chatter
I'm on my way
Cause while my blood's still warm and my mind doesn't matter
I'm hoping to stay
'Cause I've got a thing about seeing my grandson grow old

I just can't wait to see that city on the moon
With air conditioned gardens that'll play your favorite tune
I'll see my feet upon that street if it's the last thing that I'll do
Even sweep the roads to be there

But I've got no time for silly chitter chatter
I'm on my way
Cause while my blood's still warm and my mind doesn't matter
I'm hoping to stay
'Cause I've got a thing about seeing my grandson grow old

I'll see my feet upon that street if it's the last thing that I'll do
Even sweep the roads to be there

But I've got no time for silly chitter chatter
I'm on my way
Cause while my blood's still warm and my mind doesn't matter
I'm hoping to stay
'Cause I've got a thing about seeing my grandson grow old

Cat Stevens - Where Do The Children Play

Neil Diamond - Cherry, Cherry

EDDIE RABBITT - I Love A Rainy Night

Raining in Philadelphia

Noisettes IWE

Noisettes - Don't Give Up

Noisettes - Scratch Your Name: Performance Version- Closed Captioned

Lady Lazarus (Sylvia Plath) I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it-- A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot A paperweight, My face a featureless, fine Jew linen. Peel off the napkin 0 my enemy. Do I terrify?-- The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth? The sour breath Will vanish in a day. Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be At home on me And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three. What a trash To annihilate each decade. What a million filaments. The peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see Them unwrap me hand and foot The big strip tease. Gentlemen, ladies These are my hands My knees. I may be skin and bone, Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman. The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident. The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut As a seashell. They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. Dying Is an art, like everything else, I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call. It's easy enough to do it in a cell. It's easy enough to do it and stay put. It's the theatrical Comeback in broad day To the same place, the same face, the same brute Amused shout: 'A miracle!' That knocks me out. There is a charge For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart-- It really goes. And there is a charge, a very large charge For a word or a touch Or a bit of blood Or a piece of my hair or my clothes. So, so, Herr Doktor. So, Herr Enemy. I am your opus, I am your valuable, The pure gold baby That melts to a shriek. I turn and burn. Do not think I underestimate your great concern. Ash, ash -- You poke and stir. Flesh, bone, there is nothing there-- A cake of soap, A wedding ring, A gold filling. Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air.

Sylvia Plath Reads Lady Lazarus

Fever 103° (Sylvia Plath)

Pure? What does it mean?

The tongues of hell

Are dull, dull as the triple

Tongues of dull, fat Cerberus

Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable

Of licking clean

The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin.

The tinder cries.

The indelible smell

Of a snuffed candle!

Love, love, the low smokes roll

From me like Isadora’s scarves, I’m in a fright

One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel,

Such yellow sullen smokes

Make their own element. They will not rise,

But trundle round the globe

Choking the aged and the meek,

The weak

Hothouse baby in its crib,

The ghastly orchid

Hanging its hanging garden in the air,

Devilish leopard!

Radiation turned it white

And killed it in an hour.

Greasing the bodies of adulterers

Like Hiroshima ash and eating in.

The sin. The sin.

Darling, all night

I have been flickering, off, on, off, on.

The sheets grow heavy as a lecher’s kiss.

Three days. Three nights.

Lemon water, chicken

Water, water make me retch.

I am too pure for you or anyone.

Your body

Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern––

My head a moon

Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin

Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.

Does not my heat astound you! And my light!

All by myself I am a huge camellia

Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush.

I think I am going up,

I think I may rise——

The beads of hot metal fly, and I love, I

Am a pure acetylene

Virgin

Attended by roses,

By kisses, by cherubim,

By whatever these pink things mean!

Not you, nor him

Nor him, nor him

(My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats)——

To Paradise.

The Fire that burns the bird


The fire of the poem is within this bird.
O Lord poem!
My Lord poem, serva me.
Save me O Lord from men, who are sure to poison me.
Save me from abuse and wisdom and red hot sin.
Take me into the pure fire, the red eye
The burning fires of morning
That impinge their soul in winged flame.
And on the flame of my tongue
O that Lord, it was I, burnt out more holy than the rest.
O that I on winged flight
Reach into myself and pull out
The pure gold baby that
Burns to a shriek.
In the sun we will all come clean
And washed of our bones
The finger of light, the translucent devil
He makes his soft bed amongst our bones.
And on our bones, he lays his devilish tongue
Licking the marrow of you Lord from us.
And O that I were pure enough
To melt among the earth and trees
And be one with the woods!
The heart of me, bursting within itself!
Like a tree burst of its brain.
And flying above in golden ash and talking tree-like in fiery breath.
It would be I dissipating with you my Lord
In almighty fiery word.

Sylvia Plath Reads 'Fever 103'

talking dog

Dramatic Chipmunk

Doom

In the dream, the tiger was alive but the child did not notice
Its gills were made of moss and the child wept and walked
And had no idea that the tiger was eating its own gills.
She had been in a clean white room for over 2 days,
Had slept and woke, eaten lemon water through her nostrils,
Her bleeding heart like a bleeding windmill within itself.
When she happened upon the tiger she did not notice
But we in the bus did.
We had been talking about love, six girls and a gay guy.
Juliette had worn grey shampoo, not washed out and we told her she looked old.
Mabel had red stockings. I had nine etchings I had bought at a thrift store.
Three were of a scene that progresses from
One man scared of love until his dying day with a graceful mistress.
There was death in the air when the tiger bit.
The child’s limbs were shotty anyway, now she was simply a mess of bone.
We wanted to cry but we couldn’t help thinking that it was all kind of beautiful:
The tiger, the bus, the red stockings.
The sun bleeding in spite of itself.
The sun’s heart like a bleeding spirt that lights the world.
Don’t you see, it is the sun that lights the world?
You take it all very simply, but it is the sun that does it all.
And without it you would be swimming in darkness,
Unsure of tiger, leech, or bitter friend.

Peggy Lee - Fever

John Travolta - SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER More than a woman

Cyndi Lauper True Colors World Liberty Concert 1995

"The great and golden rule of art, as well as life, is this: That the more distinct, sharp, and wirey the bounding line, the more perfect the work of art; and the less keen and sharp, the greater is the evidence of weak imitation, plagiarism, and bungling."

--William Blake, A Descriptive Catalogue, 1809

Very compelling argument for action against climate change:

http://www.break.com/index/tough-to-argue.html

Fleetwood Mac - Never Going Back Again - Live 1977

Never Going Back Again, (Fleetwood Mac)

She broke down and let me in
Made me see where I've been

Been down one time
Been down two times
I'm never going back again

You don't know what it means to win
Come down and see me again

Been down one time
Been down two times
I'm never going back again

Even if one were able to render the whole of the content of faith into conceptual form, it would not follow that one had grasped faith, grasped how one came to it, or how it came to one.

--Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (1843)

Black barn

Death was never the problem
It was life, that was the problem for me
Getting life, that is what I wanted
Except I couldn’t get it, no matter how hard I tried
I tried and tried and my heart burst with trying
My throat closed with regret, o throat
You never knew the way to anywhere
So I left you where I found you
By the road
Black butterfly that rains so
On the barn
There are so many of you, my blackness
And the things you tell me
Are not so much trite
As they are old
And I don’t want anybody around me
When I die
I want to go
As peacefully as I came
Onto this earth, not the horror I have become
Black life that has left me
No mother, no sister
No father, no lover, no child
No dog
I knew no dog to come when called
I only knew the notes of the universe
They came when called
And when they came to me
Like long lost brothers
And when I speak to you now
My long lost brothers have called me home

French Bulldog Puppies

Elvis Presley - Burning Love (Live '73)

Mariah Carey - against all odds

Phil Collins

Phill Collins - Easy Lover Live

Icehouse - Electric Blue

Listen To The Music / The Doobie Brothers

Ever Read a Book Called Awe?
_____________________

Have you ever read a book called Awe?
I have. I wrote it. That’s my book.
I wrote that book. I wrote that one.
Some people read it, they said
We will make your book.
I said Really? I love you.
They said, We love you too.
I said Good then
I will love you forever
They said Great! and looked scared
Some people I love
Don’t love me
Others love me
That’s good
When you sit in landscape of snow
And you’re a bird, that’s Awe.
When you look over a big green field
And the dead soldiers lay all around you, that’s Love.
That’s Love and Awe.
Say it
That’s Love and Awe.
There is nothing better.
Or if there is
Then I don’t care

Muppet Movie - The Rainbow Connection

Hello Operator

Dolly Parton - 9 to 5

islands in the stream

TORI AMOS--Crucify

A classic.

"My first band was another girl and me," Cyndi recalls. "She played the meat and potatoes on her guitar, and I played all the droning weird stuff. That's how I worked in all my bands: Whatever nobody else was playing, I played against it. I did the textural things that were always missing. And whenever I felt some other rhythm pulling at me, I played it. That pushing and pulling builds an interior rhythm, and that's the place where I sing."

I found this on Cyndi Lauper's webpage, the bio section: http://www.cyndilauper.com/uniquecirx/bio.php

Cyndi Lauper "True Colors"

You with the sad eyes
Don't be discouraged
Oh I realize
It's hard to take courage
In a world full of people
You can lose sight of it all
And the darkness inside you
Can make you feel so small

But I see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that's why I love you
So don't be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow

Show me a smile then,
Don't be unhappy, can't remember
When I last saw you laughing
If this world makes you crazy
And you've taken all you can bear
You call me up
Because you know I'll be there

And I'll see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that's why I love you
So don't be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow

April

Aside from being the cruelest month, April is National Autism Awareness Month AND National Poetry Month.
Diamond is the birthstone of April.
The daisy is April's flower.
It is also the month most connected with the sign of Aries.
It is not April anymore, you know. It is May.

Lisa Lisa Cult Jam Lost In Emotion

Fantasia - When I See You

Girls Just Want To Have Fun - Cyndi Lauper (HQ Audio)

Cyndi Lauper - True Colors

John Lennon -

Phil Collins In the air tonight Live NYC 88

In The Air Tonight Music Video

Talk to me - Stevie Nicks (HQ Audio)

van halen - jump

Gwen Stefani - 4 In The Morning

"The Shop" (A Photograph Essay with Christopher Roberti)

Stevie Nicks - Sara - Live