Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Tracie's Web

Happy end of May!

Soon the summer. Gemini season has officially started! (No suprise what sign I am...)

Here's a poem by another one of the group, who's a May baby, too. (Born 5/31/1819)


Here's the link: http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15816

A child said, What is the grass?
by Walt Whitman

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it
is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .the produced babe
of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and
from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps,
And here you are the mother's laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old
mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths
for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men
and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring
taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and
children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
luckier.




Will be in touch! Enjoy the weather!

xo,
T

Monday, May 01, 2006

Tracie's Web

Well, Spring is springing everywhere. Folks are getting out, enjoying the air, you know, protesting. I have some spare time today because I'm not out buying stuff or spending money. Hope your May 1st was productive, too.

The official end of poetry month is today. So here's a poem. A month for poetry? And I bet you only watch Black TV in February. Here's a poem from the poets.org website...

Beneath Speech
by Mary Ann Samyn

—She lay very still, looking up at the undersides of words.

Pink was pink all the way through, like any organ might be,
plucked from the body and held quiet on a little tray—

Night was a starry dish. One side convex, one side concave.

This must be like winter for fish, she thought,
and all the nouns went seamless as ice and slightly opaque.

If she put out her tongue, she might stay there forever.

In the air, the smell of snow like bits of speech—may I
have a little word?, she wondered, because or so to cover me—


From Purr by Mary Ann Samyn. Copyright 2005 by Mary Ann Samyn. Reprinted with the permission of New Issues Poetry & Prose, Kalamazoo, Michigan. All rights reserved.



Nice, huh?

OMG: Speaking of words...you've got to check out Stephen Colbert's skewering of Bush et al on C-Span. Off the hook! First I read the transcript and was howling. Then I saw the video -- vicious. And appreciated. You can go to Cspan's website or Youtube.com.

Rallies, marches, comedians, protest songs, not a bad way to get the seaon going. For those of you finishing up school, hang in there!

Tracie