This week was the anniversary of Jack Kerouac's death so for today's Issa's Sunday Service here is Tom Waits performing "Home I'll Never Be." The words are supposedly by Kerouac himself; I haven't been able to verify that except to say that it is everywhere on the net. If anyone knows the history of this particular piece, I'd appreciate it and will share it with readers. Meanwhile, enjoy the Waits performance.
In addition, here's the band Low Anthem performing "Home I'll Never Be," noting that it was recorded by Kerouac and comes from On The Road. Still, any further details would be appreciated.
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This week's feature poems closed out Lilliput Review issue #39, way back in 1992. Hope something grabs you here.
Circle
we move in time with the wind's hands swaying the greendesire ashleaf branches the way our two bodies sway moonmaked with the breeze rhythm learned from watching the wind seduce the ash
christien gholson
Night in Akumal, Mexico
The sky has pulled its shade down to the sea that now caresses the shore like a secret lover softly sighing like a lullaby to which the coconut trees sway a gentle hula crickets sing their songs to the stars and the hidden insects dance about my porch light like a coven it is quiet now more quiet than a dream more tranquil than nothing at all
Cheryl Townsend
1992
My feet aren't working. The clock is dead. There's a new world coming: beauty's headlights blind us from a distance.
This is part 3 of a look at theRubáiyátof Omar Khayyám. To see where all this started, here's part 1 and part 2.
The response up to this point has been, well, nil, but sometimes you just have to do what you've have to do. Mercifully, this post will wrap up this recent fixation: some things you just have to get out of your system. Just as with Japanese and Chinese poetry, I will always have an affinity for the Rubáiyát. The lyric tone and style is antiquated, to be sure. The philosophy, though, is close to my lapsed agnostic heart.
Spill that wine, take that pearl ...
53 But in vain down on the stubborn floor Of Earth, and up to Heav'n's unopening Door ---You gaze To-day while You are You—how then Tomorrow, when You shall be You no more?
56 For "Is" and "Is-Not" though with Rule and Line And "Up-and-Down" by Logic I define, ---Of all that shall care to fathom, I Was never deep in anything but—Wine.
63 Oh threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise! One thing is certain—This Life flies; ---One thing is certain and the rest is Lies; The Flower that once has blown for ever Dies.
64 Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who Before us pass'd the door of Darkness through, ---Not one returns to tell us of the Road Which to discover we must travel too.
65 The Revelations of Devout and Learn'd Who rose before us, and as the Prophets burn'd, ---Are all but stories, which, awoke from Sleep They told their comrades and to Sleep return'd.
66 I sent my Soul through the Invisible, Some letter of the After—life to spell: ---And by and by my Soul return'd to me, And answered "I myself are Heav'n and Hell:"
67 Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire, And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire, ---Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves, So late emerged from, shall so soon expire.
71 The Moving Finger writes and having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit ---Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.
72 And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky, Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die, ---Lift not your hands to It for help—for It As impotently moves as you or I.
74 Yesterday This day's madness did prepare; Tomorrow's Silence, Triumph, or Despair: ---Drink, for you know not whence you came, nor why: Drink for you know not why you go, nor where.
96 Yet Ah, that Spring should vanish with the Rose! That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript shall close! ---The Nightingale that in the branches sang, Ah, whence, and whither flown, who knows?
Cover by David Shabee
This week's trip to the Back Issue Archive of Lilliput Review continues to go way down the alley: August 1993. Here are a few select nuggets from back then: enjoy.
brow to brow mountain and thunderhead
William Hart
You Taught
You taught me woman things with your smooth words and way; how is it you taught me how to leave you?
Terria Tucker Smith
Heads Or Tales
We live in a time where childhood is a lie tomorrow is a fantasy and today is duck duck goose
Cheryl Townsend
Elegiac Feast -----"ramma ramma, katzenjamma"
---------------rise up gypsies, dancers, mountebanks, troubadours, lost souls, poets, painters, ghost of starving, teeth-gnashing Van Gogh, penniless and drunk, staring at the stars in the rain, actors, itinerant players, the irregulars, feast in a world out of joint and biting our ass, drink up rogue gypsy gala, dance till morning, oh Judy, Judy, Judy, sing on, sing on, the singing soul of our crying hearts.
T. Kilgore Splake
Oh, and one little last something, live, because we can:
The following is a call for submissions, poetry, art, and all, for a new publication, A Trunk of Delirium. The co-editor, Cheryl Townsend, is one of my oldest buds in the small press business. Through her Implosion Press, which she has passed on to others, she helped get Lilliput Review started 30 years ago this month (oh, Cat, say it ain't so - we can't be that frigging old). It is with great pleasure that, all these years later, I get to return the favor.
Send Cheryl and Suzanne your very best work, nothing less. It'll be worth it.
A Trunk of Delirium is a new bi-annual publication of literary and artistic works seeking the finest available from both established and as yet known creators. A subsidiary of Le Pink Elephant Press, we open the lid to accept poetry, prose, flash fiction, reviews, interviews, translations, essays, plays, and artworks of all printable forms. Submissions are now giddily accepted at atrunkofdelirium@yahoo.com. [Ed. note: the above link is via Facebook. If you don't have an account, check out this link.]
Editors: Suzanne Savickas & Cheryl Townsend
Publication will be in both web space and print, the later being perfect bound and truly a delight to behold.
A Trunk of Delirium seeks to hold the diverse expressions of today’s most memorable creators, preserving such evoking delights for future consumption of the masses. By offering up its collectives in both web and print spaces, it is intended to make available more avenues to delight in the pulse of our present, yet ever changing, artistic scene of delirious exudence. Let creative liberty prevail!
Early on in the first volume of R. H. Blyth's 4 volume Haiku, he traces the origins of haiku to, among other sources, Zen. He sees it in a number of poems by Bashô, one of which is new to me, in the sense that Blyth's translation makes something I've read totally unfamiliar:
------Yield to the willow All the loathing, all the desire ------Of your heart.
-----------------Bashô
The seeming contradiction here is consummately Zen, its underpinnings firmly grounded in nature where there is no contradiction. This translation shot to the top of the list of my favorite Bashô poems instantly.
Blyth points to a number of other Zen poems in the early history of haiku.
------The cherry blossoms having fallen, Enjoji Temple ------Is quiet once more.
----------------------Onitsura
The irony here is the tourist crowd throngs to the the temple to see the cherry blossoms, then disappears as soon as they've fallen, leaving the temple empty. And what exactly was cherry blossom viewing supposed to remind them of, one might ask?
Buson gives another view:
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------The cherry blossoms having fallen, The temple ------Through the branches.
--------------------------Buson
Blyth follows these poems with a selection of 73 poems that illustrate the path Zen traveled through poetry to arrive at the Japanese haiku. Here are a handful of my favorites, which frequently feel more like maxims than actual poems. They are unattributed:
The raindrops patter on the bashô leaf, but these --are not tears of grief; This is only the anguish of him who is listening --to them.
In the vast inane there is no back or front; The path of the bird annihilates East and West.
The water a cow drinks turns to milk; The water a snake drinks turns to poison.
The old pine-tree speaks divine wisdom; The secret bird manifests eternal truth.
Seeing, they see not; Hearing, they hear not.
What is written is of ages long ago, But the heart knows all the gain and loss.
There is no place to seek the mind; It is like the footprints of the birds in the sky.
If you do not believe, look at September, look at October, How the yellow leaves fall, and fill mountain and river.
Curtis Dunlap of Blogging Along Tobacco Road sent along this amazing reenactment of scenes from Bashô's journal. The first part is done with pen and ink drawings but the second part is live action film, with high production values. The live action film depicts an incident in Bashô's life that many have found very disturbing, including myself. Curtis received permission to post this response to that incident, which is well considered and worth reading. It gives us pause, not only in the life of this master poet, but in our own. Many thanks to Curtis for sharing this.
This week's trip down memory lane in the Lilliput Review archive takes us to August 1994, issue #59. Hope you find something that grabs you.
Memory
You are a dark space in which a circle of tiny turquoise stones revolves endlessly.
Albert Huffstickler
Nourishment
Familiar knives carve me into chunks served up for family dinner. From the scraps and bones I make a broth and feed myself.
Ruth Daigon
I Left My Future
in his car wedged between the cushions with the seat belt-----where it slid when neither of us were looking or paying any attention it is there now as I try to lie my way out of this poem.
Cheryl Townsend
He crept in like mildew.
Suzanne Bowers
Tried and True
1. Find out where it is. 2. Clean it, cook it, & eat it. 3. Sleep under its bones until you're awake. 4. Find another one.
bill kaul
best, Don
PS The regular weekly archival posting will be moving to Tuesday from Thursday next week (or the week after, if this cold gets the best of me) as my evening work schedule has changed.
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