The Silver Screen Oasis

My best effort for poetry:

My favorite poetic moment in film- Splendor In The Grass, excerpt form "Ode-Intimations Of Immortality From Recollections Of Early Childhood"


Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

Well I don't know about all that. I'll figure something out though, I just found a book of poems underneath another book of poems and the one I found was writen by Charles Bukowski. It's titled Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit.

Ever been to an open mic poetry reading? Ever stepped on stage and told your poem over a microphone? Of course not! You would have to be borderline insane to do that.

Okay, here is The Egg by Bukowski —

he’s 17.
mother, he said, how do I crack
an egg?

all right, she said to me, you don’t have to
sit there looking like that.

oh mother, he said, you broke the yoke.
I can’t eat a broken yoke.

all right, she said to me, you’re so tough,
you’ve been in the slaughterhouses, factories,
the jails, you’re so god damned tough,
but all people don’t have to be like you,
that doesn’t make everybody else wrong and you
right.

mother, he said, can you bring me some cokes
when you come home from work?

look, Raleigh, she said, can’t you get the cokes
on your bike, I’m tired after
work.

but, mama, there’s a hill.

what hill, Raleigh?

there’s a hill,
it’s there and I have to peddle over
it.

all right, she said to me, you think you’re so
god damned tough. you worked on a railroad track gang, I hear about it every time you get drunk: “I worked on a a railroad track gang.”

well, I said, I did.

I mean, what difference does it make?
everybody has to work somewhere.

mama, said the kid, will you bring me those
cokes?

I really like the kid. I think he’s very
gentle, and once he learns how to crack an
egg he may do some
unusual things, meanwhile
I sleep with his mother
and try to stay out of
arguments.

Okay, this is where I belong, I can get deleted with every post because I won’t care.

However, the first person gets tiring, who cares about the first person? I don’t (ha ha). No, there has to be a third person, I suppose you can write in the first person if the reader reads him in the third person. You know, “I went to the fridge and got a piece of cheese and a pickle,” is not the same as saying “Lester went to the fridge, rooted around, came up with a suspect hunk of cheese and a dill pickle.” With the third person you can set him in motion and watch him go.

One day everything’s going to be different / When I paint my masterpiece

Lester has a bad attitude
He thinks he’s entitled to pickles
and moldy cheese
Not everybody gets to root around in the fridge
and come and go as they please
But Lester likes to complain
Poor Lester
Pitiful Lester
All the world’s against Lester
He’s got a hang nail and a blister on his tongue
And he can’t get his can of beer open
Which drives him plumb crazy
and over the edge

There’s that weird scream again Martha
Do you hear it?
It’s gotta be Lester, Sam
Nobody else is up this late
Should we call the police?
No, that’s a waste of time
Let’s just try and ignore him
He’ll quit pretty soon anyway

Lester went out and bought himself
A pair of cowboy boots
Used
With maybe a too snug fit
For 70 dollars
‘Cause he’s bound and determined
To die with his boots on.

I get kinda nervous Martha
When I don’t hear Lester
Screaming that scream of his
Do you suppose he’s okay?
It’s plenty early Sam
He’ll scream later on about 2 or so.
Do you believe that notion of his
About dying with his boots on?
I suppose. But it’s getting mighty tiring
Waiting for Lester to go one way or the other
With or without his boots on.

"The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes, set to music by Phil Ochs

A Radio with Guts — Charles Bukowski

it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street
I used to get drunk
and throw the radio out the window
while it was playing, and, of course,
it would break the glass in the window
and the radio would sit out there on the roof
still playing
and I’d tell my woman,
“Ah, what a marvelous radio!”

the next morning I’d take the window
off the hinges
and carry it down the street
to the glass man
who put in another pane.

I kept throwing that radio through the window
each time I got drunk
and it would sit out there on the roof
still playing—-
a magic radio
a radio with guts,
and each morning I’d take the window
back to the glass man.

I don’t remember how it ended exactly
though I do remember
we finally moved out.
there was a woman downstairs who worked in
the garden in her bathing suit
and her husband complained he couldn’t sleep nights because of me
so we moved out
and in the next place
I either forgot to throw the radio out the window
or I didn’t feel like it
anymore.

I do remember missing the woman who worked in
the garden in her bathing suit,
she really dug with that trowel
and she put her behind up in the air
and I used to sit in the window
and watch the sun shine all over that thing

while the music played.

Poor Cordelia. She has been disowned by her father, the King, because she did not flatter him like her two sisters did. She is now up for grabs. The Duke of Burgundy respectfully declines but the King of France is set to take her up.

**

Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor;
Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised!
Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon:
Be it lawful I take up what's cast away.
Gods, gods! 'tis strange that from their cold'st neglect
My love should kindle to inflamed respect.
Thy dowerless daughter, king, thrown to my chance,
Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France:
Not all the dukes of waterish Burgundy
Can buy this unprized precious maid of me.
Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind:
Thou losest here, a better where to find.

**

King Lear : I i

A Passer-by
de Charles Baudelaire


The deafening street around me roared.
Tall, slim, in deep mourning, majestic grief,
A woman passed, lifting and swinging
With a pompous gesture the hem and flounces of her skirt,
Swift and noble, with statue limbs.

For me, I drank, twitching like a wretch,
From her eye, livid sky where hurricanes are born,
A softness that fascinates and a pleasure that kills,

A brief glimpse, and then away! O fleeting beauty,
By whose glance I was suddenly reborn,
Shall I see you again only in eternity?

Somewhere else, way too far from here! Too late! Perhaps never!
For I know not where you flee, and you know not where I go,
O you whom I might have loved, O you whom might have known!

THE DOG AND CAT.

A dog and cat, messmates for life,
Were often falling into strife,
Which came to scratching, growls, and snaps,
And spitting in the face, perhaps.
A neighbour dog once chanced to call
Just at the outset of their brawl,
And, thinking Tray was cross and cruel,
To snarl so sharp at Mrs. Mew-well,
Growl'd rather roughly in his ear.
'And who are you to interfere?'
Exclaim'd the cat, while in his face she flew;
And, as was wise, he suddenly withdrew.

It seems, in spite of all his snarling,
And hers, that Tray was still her darling.

Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695)

I went to scratch my left ear
And it wasn’t there
Just a gob of dried blood
I didn’t care.
I went to scratch my nose
And it was there
So I got to wondering
Why my nose is still there
Yet my ear is torn off.