Poetry

Reading: Discussing Death with Death Row Inmates by Liao Yiwu
Liao Yiwu (b. 1958) is a Chinese poet and critic of the Communist regime, for which he has been imprisoned after he wrote a poem about the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. I read one of his poems today, on his 60th birthday. Discussing Death with Death Row Inmates Each night of stars is a ...
Growl
Now that I am lowered into my trench language I become an invocation. I am muscles and tendons, a pressurized blood machine, slowly releasing what was stored between the apostrophes, like a captured animal. I am a cormorant of the apocalypse, a confessing nihilist. Opinions grow on me like frozen waterfalls. My rage is inculcated, ...
Nihilism
Today, I received a strange visitor called nihilism. His bleak appearance and slow, decisive gait exerted a strange fascination on me, so I decided to follow him on the street after he left. I followed nihilism into an alleyway, where a beautiful woman's face smiled at me with the promise of a thousand futures, but ...
poem , in which a Turing machine decides if it could be part of another language along the lines of poetry
Reading: The Hug by Thom Gunn
Thom Gunn (1929-2004) was an English poet. I've read another verse (tamer and hawk) by his hand before. Today I read a simple poem that says something I find lovely. The Hug It was your birthday, we had drunk and dined Half of the night with our old friend Who'd showed us in the end To a ...
on this day
meet me mean me mood me magic make me surface mask me free mark me present on this day Artwork by Ian Bourgeot
Reading: Death of a friend by Rob van Moppes
Rob van Moppes (b. 1948) is a Dutch writer. I am his friend on social media and discovered this tender song-like poem today, so I decided to include it in my series. Death of a friend We met only two years before. Eyes sparkled when she spoke. We talked about the masks we wore, Considered ...
Reading: Gacela of the Dark Death by Lorca
Lorca (1898-1936) was one of the greatest Spanish poets of the twentieth century. I have read another of his poems here before. Today I read some morbid text I stumbled upon on the Internet. This is a 1973 translation by Robert Bly: Gacela of the Dark Death I want to sleep the sleep of the apples, ...
Face
The face of the man who knows he won't be tortured even when his bombs start to go off. His human rights are acute, unlike the human rights of his victims. His smiling face is the face of our own humanity staring back at us.