Tuesday, December 29, 2015

In Solitary



1. SAMIZDAT*
 Writer’s craft: manacled to conviction 
           like any zek to his sentence, 
            like a blatnoi to a pen
: assaults its own position 
: like a gaybist missionary, assassinates its friends
  
: like any other virgin –
just another bloody period, 
and another conception ends.

2.  YOUR BODY TELLS THE HIGHWAYMAN
If prose is just a page running across your face, 
poetry is the line lying between your thighs.
 
Your body tells the highwayman’s short story life:
The drama of poems at the point of conception, 
but just one more hackneyed form in execution.

3.      LIFE/SENTENCE
 key in the cake –
(in music, truth hid?)
  
oh,
the poet’s prison is 
the rhythm of his
poem 
                        starved, 
                        scarred – 
he makes his
  
break

--Duane Vorhees 



 *inspired by Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago

4 comments:

  1. As soon as I saw "If prose is just a page running across your face,/
    poetry is the line lying between your thighs", I knew who the poet was. Wonderful lines!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you, Dave. I hope style-familiarity doesn't breed contempt.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Samizdat

    le metier d'ecrivan : condamme a ses convictions
    comme n'importe quel captif a sa sentence / comme un voleur a son crayon

    sa propre position assailant
    comme un officier missionnaire de la securite, assassinant ses armis

    comme toute autre vierge :
    juste une autre periode sanglante
    et une conception finit

    --tr Alina Duminica & Dorin Popa

    ReplyDelete
  4. Votre corps indique le brigand

    si laprose est juste une page tombant sur votre visage
    la poesie est la ligne couchee entre vos cuisses

    votre corps indique la courte histoire de la vie de brigand:
    un moment de poesie au point de conception,
    juste une autre forme rabattue dans l'execution.

    --tr Akina Duminica & Dorin Popa

    ReplyDelete

Join the conversation! What is your reaction to the post?