Skorda's Seaside Taverna: 11/1/07

Skopelos and Virgin

-by Skorda

Swallow that campari moon
when first you see it
across the water,
rising round and new above the mountain.
Open your mouth and swallow
while youth holds its roundness near,
and you are running fearless in the dark.
Hold it inside, it is still warm
and you will need its light,
there, inside you.

Down the road of time, somewhere
after you’ve aged, traveled,
Explored, discovered.
And the dust around your doorway
has been pounded hard and smooth under your feet.
When you find yourself growing weary and bored,
when your eyes see only ruins,
and your heart is empty.
You may believe, in your exhaustion,
that this is truth, at last.
That the mystery has unraveled,
leaving no wilderness to explore or tame.
All secrets have been shared,
the frontier has dissolved.
Know then, with these thoughts,
you have been swallowed.

The warm belly of the beast
comforts with confining darkness
and lulls with rhythmic sounds
Murmuring to you,
Curl up and sleep,
just go to sleep.

Shake your head,
stretch your legs,
do not sleep now.

Remember what you know.
You swallowed the moon,
you hold it inside you.
Not as a magpie hoarding shiny things,
or wearing the moon for beauty
or bartering the moon for wealth.
You swallowed the moon for this moment.
When you will walk to the water’s edge,
open your mouth, release the moon
and let its light build you a pathway
across the wine dark sea.
©Skorda 2008

Thursday, November 29, 2007

since feeling is first

- e.e. cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

Friday, November 23, 2007

Song to the Moon

Silver moon upon the deep dark sky,
Through the vast night pierce your rays.
This sleeping world you wander by,
Smiling on men's homes and ways.
Oh moon ere past you glide, tell me,
Tell me, oh where does my loved one bide?
Oh moon ere past you glide, tell me
Tell me, oh where does my loved one bide?
Tell him, oh tell him, my silver moon,

-written by Jaroslav Kvapil, for Dvorak's "Song to the Moon"

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Feather to Fire

centauria

Chironia
travels swiftly across the plains of Thessaly
galloping towards Dodonia
Achilles, his very self, is young
and strong and beautiful
no fear
there is glory
But Penelope
knows the other side of the story,
that when
one doesn't die,
one must endure
-skorda

creation

Wherever the dead are there they are and
Nothing more. But you and I can expect
To see angels in the meadowgrass that look
Like cows -
And wherever we are in paradise
in furnished room without bath and
six flights up
Is all God! We read
To one another, loving the sound of the s’s
Slipping up on the f’s and much is good
Enough to raise the hair on our heads, like Rilke and Wilfred Owen

Any person who loves another person,
Wherever in the world, is with us in this room -
Even though there are battlefields.

-Kenneth Patchen