MUSIC: Silvio Rodriguez, "O Melancolia" Y "La Maza"

Yes, I know. The great Cuban singer-poet.

O melancolía, rosa del aliento,
Dime quién me puede amar.

There, now we both know.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBMeGfaY-cA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBD6CkXXSTc

POEM: "Thank You...And Goodnight!"

Thank You...And Goodnight!


Good evening ladies and germs...
Hey waiter how 'bout my fuckin' drink!
Hey! Does your mother know you're here?
(They get too excited they break things)

I’m going to rip off Bill Hicks
And I’m going to rip off Louis CK
Then I’m going to rip off Denis Leary
(I don’t feel like telling my own jokes tonight)

First day at the Shanghai Noodle Factory
The line-boss comes up to him and says
“OK pal so we’re making these noodles
There's 3 things you got to remember…”

It looks like everyone here is loaded
It looks like all my bills are unpaid
My dog can't walk toilet doesn't flush
I'm losing my hair as fast as my appetite

My wife left me last week stole my kids
Things are gone to hell right now we're here

I'm drinking lots more since then not least

The lump on my scrotum's getting bigger

You can figure out the first crunch
You can probably guess the second one
Punchline’s getting a little tricky now...
Believe me comedy is no joke.


© 2014 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Walking Down The Street"

Walking Down The Street

                                          for Tim Hetherington & Chris Hondros


Meet my gaze, it's only natural
Look at me as you would a friend
Wait on the way to child or lover
Boss or belligerence, sacred duty

In the family village compound
In Afghanistan, you shot bandits
What do you carry a knife for
When the fruits are all dried?

But my kingdom is a horse
My shoulders, all my humours
I do not count your invisible steps
Or the invisible weights you carry

Afterwards, after the cordite
There's always at least one starer
Beyond the buildings, a hard ship
She's fondling a brick like a future

I will follow you, it's how we move
Till we both gallop across the field
Opposite the glances that break it
A fierce young horse in the yard

The shoes and my silk dressing gown
You know how I yearned for softness
The rounds are closer now, a shit-fight
No better cover here, I run, good night.


© 2011 Rob Schackne

POEM: "6 Little Poems to Remember"

6 Little Poems to Remember

No form for beauty
anywhere near the end
till I scuffle to get in line

Jeez even mangoes
which are born to be ripe
have a Platonic form

Here I dream of bridges
that have always led to
places I’ve been before

Young Chinese Neighbor
has a finger up his nose
how perfected the search

Jeans dream of youth
it’s no embarrassment
it's a small planet

[hidden track]


© 2014 Rob Schackne

A Floyd Skloot Poem

Open Country


It is both spring and summer here
where we have stopped, halfway home.
Lupine blues the hillside still capped
in snow, the air braces as it warms
between drifting clouds, and a late
afternoon squall brews to the west.
We walk to the fence and stretch.
Calves bolting from our shadows lose
themselves in the sheer joy of play.
We can almost touch a rippled ridge
of Ponderosa Pine that could be five
miles away. Now the light we saw leave
the tops of those trees flows downslope.
It seems to stagger across a fold of land,
then ripple through the grass on its way
to find us where we stand together.


(2008)

POEM: "A Little Kid On The Beach"

A Little Kid On The Beach

Whether out far or deep in
the arm is near the sand
we’re drowning or waving
a little matter of perspective
now looking at Miller’s photo
of the night sky with Jupiter
as near to us as the Moon
thus I have almost heard
the thunders of a distant god
& what remains of this time on Earth
like the Sun Buddha might again
come back as Smokey the Bear
to shout only you can conquer fear
don't rest but rescue everything
unravel the tide watch it coming in.

© 2013 Rob Schackne

PHOTO: "A Shanghai Bird in March 2014"

You’re a poet, so how do you forget your memory? How don't you see it? Just the other day my mate and I were complaining about how we never hear the birds anymore. How we miss them. But for once early this morning I was actually awake. As the sun was coming up I heard some singing outside my window. (You're very funny, Julie. Yes, they were birds.) They stopped around 7:30. After that I suppose they keep their voices down. After that something zooming past sounded like a Ducati. But maybe I was wrong about that.

POEM: "A Letter, Hello, Farewell"

A Letter, Hello, Farewell


Dear friend I have heard
life in the shape of animals

it gives life everlasting
till each slave beast dies

sidewalk moves masses
from the sides of the fence

& the real true road has
no obvious destination

wind takes every face
& offers another breath

before all gets kited on
last pent-up feelings

rain (water) the last resort
up on the next long strings

(I don’t know how they do it)

somehow the show-off is
demagnetized at the poles

positive and negative
it's a planetary swing

tomorrows (time is a thing)
seem to come long after the days.


© 2014 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Three Walls"

Three Walls                          

                                   for Yang Lei, 1982

Because when I was much younger
I imagined a warmer home for us all
A haphazard collection of good uses
Our next tradition, a different love

About the same time Comrade Lei Feng
Becomes immortal watching his old mother
Famous for three walls, no candles, no roof
The rain, cold winters, a long history of bugs

Proletarian dreams...a country girl
1980s slowly kicking home from school
Why couldn’t Xiao Feng try the temples
Sounder sleep, regular meals, a job for life?

The day Mao admires a common soldier
Propaganda’s tale becomes the Truth
The spiders get busy spinning Revolution
Four walls, cold water, dirt floor, mud roof

Wherever He went, we would follow Him
Forty years of Slogan to ensure momentum
They said the People’s Will was everything
(In the museum we saw the ropes they used)

Like any hunger does, tomorrow came at night
Selling beef and chicken, rice and oil futures
Cement floor, shower, low interest, electric light
The dizzy architectures of our glorious comrades

For all I have of this life today, one good turn
Away from the past and all that dereliction
I still dream of whatever it was that was coming
Mostly of beehives and hybrid strains of pollen.


© 2004/2014 Rob Schackne

MUSIC: Pharrell Williams, "Happy" (2014)

I know, 
I know, 
I can't help it.
Dance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6Sxv-sUYtM

MUSIC: Bobby McFerrin, "Don't Worry, Be Happy" (1986)

You know you want to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8gJZClPGCw

POEM: "At Losar"

At Losar

                         for Patterson

It’s a test in moderation
I’ve got a date with Spring
with some Shanghai poets
plum trees & new blossoms
some are pink some are white
the Famous Poet tells us
it's the new emblem of China
young Charlotte introduces me
we all read a couple of poems
Minnow reads one that invokes
Li Bai then he mocks himself
Sexy Girl reads most seriously
Actress can dance hers beautifully
kids are scattered beneath the trees
they sway like little lotus roots
Imei says poetry isn't a profession
and for once I hold my tongue
I read a poem about frustration
a hundred photos are taken
I wear your soft red scarf
when this sun stops the rain
and shines for just an hour
people say they love you.

© 2014 Rob Schackne

A Cees Nooteboom Poem

Trixy


Desolate species, humans.
Everything needs to be conquered,
a thousand Buddhas can’t reverse the stream,
the stone in the middle remains unpolished.

The teachings of the titmouse.
What’s that supposed to mean?
Minus ten and it’s been working all day,
searching the hedge for a morsel.

In the distance I see the world,
in the corner, behind that car,
deeply passionate music
sweeps the litter into a heap.

It’s here alone or more.
Woe to those who have the most words.
They’re up to their knees in night,
their book of faces full of names
and mould.

In the stable thirteen goats are born.
Trixy barks at a shadow of white.


(2012) Tr. David Colmer

A Patty Seyburn Poem

The Alphabetizer Speaks


I have my reasons

have never known starvation nor plenitude
and unless the order of the world
changes, I won’t.
If the order of the world changes, I will
disappear, the way some vowels
elide into their word-bodies
or an individual blade recedes
into a field each season.

Will my daughter carry on this way?
I cannot yet tell her qualities—
if she prefers scale to chance, sequence to random.
And this may mean nothing.
I find chaos theory appealing, and eavesdrop on talk
of black holes, chasms, any abyss
that fetters sense. I relish
the desultory in many matters,
am slovenly, a slacker, a slave to caprice.
Except with the letters.

There is such thing as a calling
though I cannot speak for prophets or martyrs.
I have been summoned
by people of stature and the low-stationed,
comrade and debutante alike.
My eyes suffer, and my hands, my back.

I am my profession. It is no whim.
I do not want the world a certain way.
The world is that way, and I am a vehicle
on the road of nomenclature. I tend the road.

In my dream, all events coterminous—
no linear narrative, preceding or next.
The odd vignette, lone scene, an image
in isolation, no neighbors.
Then I awaken and pace
my thin balcony, calculating
how much of me waits above, how much
lives below, and I pose
the question of balance. My name
cues the turn home.

(2004)

A Gottfried Benn Poem

This is Bad


Someone hands you an English thriller,
highly recommended.
You don’t read English

You’ve worked up a thirst
for something you can’t afford.

You have deep insights,
brand new, and they sound
like an academic glossing Holderlin.

You hear the waves at night
ramping against the shore
and you think: that’s what waves do.

Worse: you’re asked out
when at home you get better coffee,
silence, and you don’t expect to be amused.

Awful: not to die in summer
under a bright sky
when the rich dirt
falls easily from the shovel.


Ca. 1950 (Tr. Harvey Shapiro)

POEM: "Jenny Ducati"

Jenny Ducati

                             
Riding her electric bicycle
in Siberian winter wind
delivering food to Apt. 309
graceful tall and gentle
she dreams of a red Ducati
(bitter brings you nothing)
leaning low on the curves
black suit gleaming helmet
burning high on the crest of hills
perfect weightless moment
sometimes she even races.

                                      Shanghai (Year of the Snake)

© 2014 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Goodbye LV"

Goodbye LV

               They do not know how one pays–those abroad do not know.
               They do not know what one buys, and at what price.
                              
               Czesław Miłosz (1953)


Suppose I just pitch it
over the side...like that
beyond the floating curtains
past the toys on the table

Mustard seeds of grace
which everless we don't see
(all the foolish deviations
taking a long beating)

Buddha smoking something
congrats it looks like a joint
his argument is sustainable
but his method alas is extreme

I watch the wearied ones
down their rows of grease
gathering up their secrets
of a hundred traces of life

The queues are getting longer
starbucks is open for Miles Davis
vulture peak flies in from India
enlightenment is a foot away

Mid-autumn festival is over
unsold full-moon half-moon off
I don't know where China is
baby I live here in China.


© 2012 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Stories"

Stories


All the stories that it tells
Shaking a common umbrella out
The slant of his head the hand
Shook so badly after the accident
That would not let go the bed
Where the best of them was made

A man waiting to cross the road
Sees his eyes glance up the sky
Where someone waited for him once
Who now is part of another heaven
A tree three sweet birds a rainbow
Where the grass is much greener stop

A toddler already festooned with
Red balloons goes after just one more
Learning the measure of passion
A mother who ignores his noises
Ignored her own once upon a time
Now makes up stories in her head

He sits down as oddly as he will
His body whispers things to him
About the door the table the glasses
When the fire jumped across their line
And they heard the Devil’s fierce music
And they were very lucky to get out.


© 2014 Rob Schackne

Otto Dix, "Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden" (1926); POEM: "Portrait Of A Jailed Man"

Portrait Of A Jailed Man


Too sudden into a dirty cell
(The charge was separatism)
Tea leaves that blinded him
Left to recant the sunshine

Hands blooded on sharp work
If sleep comes he dare not wake
When Death comes he will sleep
Bullied and pushed by dreams

Last night the girl came again
Dressed for a painted festival
She led him to the river bank
(The charge was dereliction)

In the coolness she stood quiet
And she pointed to the sunset
At how he was disappearing
And what was leaving him forever

Shoved into the muddy river
He raised a shining dagger
He plunged the self-portrait in
The river rolled by as it always did

The picture was unchanging
(The charge was cooperation)
His heart would not stop beating
It was unconscionable neglect

The prisoner awoke in sweat

In faith or in fear trembling
In a language that wasn’t clear
(The charge was extreme poverty)

He remembers the villagers
Sighing for the big day one day
And sitting down with informers
Who swore they'd never tell.

© 2004/2015 Rob Schackne

PHOTO: Spring Tundra

POEM: "Freedom without order does not exist"

Freedom Without Order Does Not Exist


Hell is hands without feet
Order, order, I want to order

Freedom is there taking a nap
Lord it all went hell for leather

Fools the same as you and me
Hell is balls without a band

A sunset for once the autistic see
5 years since you were translated

Some jungle shit but wait a bit
The monkeys, they all come down.


© 2014 Rob Schackne

POEM: "1-2-3 Roswell"

1-2-3 Roswell
                           
                              for Felix Baumgartner


I don’t really know you
or the variety of ways
any of us can fall falling
or really any more than
that thing about the angels
up by the recurve of earth
forgetting this quiet abyss
in a speed of dark descent
just there seconds ago boom
telling so small from above
blue sky clouds white cells
long field watching your step
balloon helmet pressure suit
one of the other ends of a long day
faced with a blank of possibility
like going into the snowy night.


© 2012 Rob Schackne

POEM: "You Don't Hear a Silent Invocation"

You Don't Hear a Silent Invocation 

I.  Midnight

Sinkhole cave-in water
in flame gas darkness
between wall and hope
the railway incidental
maybe an angel guard
two flags a red & blue
a quick decision then
I raise a glass tonight
to the invisible good
two minutes before
the mud month ends
on this water snake year
most grateful I imagine
things that didn't happen.


II.  3 A.M.

Yet the world works
the winds slamming
midnight ruckus
on protuberant tins
sheets and awnings
howling whistling
the winds are gusting
they speak so swirly
words that sound like
causative derivative
ad hominem inter alia
verum casus fortuitus
the hope & shit of sorrows
the bang of everything
not nailed down.


© 2013 Rob Schackne