Louise Landes Levi
Nine Sections from The Book L,
Everyone
wants to know abt Michaux/ I already wrote
about him, but they want to know more,
All
I remember are the old
men in the café where I did the translations
& the tailor, the man who sold suits/ they’re all
gone now, the men, the suits, the poet,
I
visit the place & still smell the
old aromas, they must be in my dream/ I
I can see things as they were & as they are/
Knowing
I can’t ever explain
to you what it was really like,
what the great man & I really said, as the afternoons wore away,
reading poems & chatting
like any 2
old
friends
CREATURES SAVED/
Praying mantis/ stranded at Zaragoza,
crab/ trapped in sand/ big black bug in white cup/
found
in
forest,
CREATURES KILLED/
An entire family of ants / perhaps HUNDREDS, trapped in
sweater / inadvertently left
outside
tent
Are the Buddhists going to
Karma-me-out for this last act/ should I tell
them or just keep quiet, like I’ve
been about EVERYTHING
these last months.
*
I saw
my old friend/ F./ 'does everybody
have to get SENILE? or what ?/ w. EVERYTHING' she said I wanted
to disagree w. but didn’t - /I was being ‘Buddhist’ &/or Louise polite.
Is this TRAINING for
a
poet/
certainly not.
E Mail
a productive/beautiful
day –
LIBERTY
is my way to practice/
the ‘firm’, the ‘corporation', the ‘collective’
the fund raising
is not for
for
me
*
As I wrote, already
10
years
ago/
Louise’s life is not
very economical/ but it cld.
be poetic/ if Love were to
penetrate
my
solitary
condition.
Reading/
La Vita Nouva/ such
matters are divine reflection/ & can not
be controlled by earthly values. we
can try of course./ but I can’t
get back to
(((())))))))))
I think I’m finally writing
my book/
A.
said to me, O writing yr. best poems/I wanted to respond,
No worst. Leave me alone. But maybe she
was
conferring
a
message.
Already
writing my obituary/strange
abt
’impermanence’/ even
Ira
&/
or
La Monte
do not seem to have written theirs (so far)/
*
The
obituary changes/
according to mood swings & so forth/
sometimes it’s only concerned w. absolute
presence/then it’s called ‘my’
‘liberation’/
otherwise it is in honor of ‘my’ great deeds/
which of course obfuscate the terrible ones,
as
frequently
observed/
My
obituary
is my poem
Even
as a child/ I found,
the death-concept, very hard
to swallow/ so I stopped
eating/
now I eat/ but also
write, for instance, my obituary/
still
a
secret
text.
SHIGNON
In
the dark pavilion/ I desperately
must speak with the stranger /he waits for me, on the path/
when it is dark,
when no
one
sees/
We
speak /the
room is round / without walls,
without desire/ yet when we separate/
a
deep
sadness,
you say
if someone hadn’t been waiting
for me we wld. have spoken until dawn.
*
In
the taxi/
unexpected tears/you travel
to
a
forbidden
city,
a thousand of miles away
*
I’m
in the front / w. the driver/
‘cool’ until I exit/ you leap to the street/ the
town celebrating
‘The Festival of the Mad’
I'm dressed in white/ it is my festival
&
embrace
me
your
soft skin against my lips, repeated
a thousand years ago, in Japanese temple/ a last farewell.
Pedro Gonzales,
5. 1.2006/
sensitive sea/ at dawn/
the shore/ deserted/ finally
the vacationing Venezuelans/ have returned
to where they
came
from/
I see a lone pelican/
huge black birds in dense
grey
sky/
When
love came, it came
unexpectedly/
Everyone
or almost everyone/ certainly
poets/ need a muse/ tertons need them
too/ & often, in failure to find them,
do not produce their /
ter/ &
so
w.
poets
whereas I have not had
what I planned/ certainly as
a child, at least certain figures at certain
times do lend me their energy, via
refined imagining, if not
entirely,
their
ear
&
hats off to Leonardo/
for inventing, among so many other
things/ less important perhaps,
the bicycle/ I think
sailing down the road,
this evening/ that
old
moon
full
Pedro Gonzales
Jan 2006
My mother lies
in her card board
box coffin/ surrounded
by flowers/ I chose
especially,
her dress is NOT one,
of course NOT, she might
have
chosen,
A
thousand strange remarks,
& harsh statements, a
beating or 2 or 10 or 20
or 30/
ALL
BURN
w.
her/
*
Only feelings
reserved /in my bones
do not go up in flames, are
not buried/ in a cemetery
in
Brooklyn
*
No I feed them
they grow – entire
gardens have been constructed/
even forests in which shyly
but in deep resonance,
we
meet/
again,
w. no speech, not
even bodies, deformed &
by whose hand,
to complicate
the
AROMA.
Louise Landes Levi was born in NYC and is currently living in a stone tower in Bagnore, Northern Italy. Her books include Extinction (Woodbine Press, 1991),Guru Punk (Cool Grove, 1999) and Don't Fuck w. the Airlines (Il Bagatto, 2005), and translations of Henri Michaux, René Daumal and Mirabai. Recent work has appeared online in MiPOesias and Big Bridge, and some of her Michaux translations can be found online at Long House Poetry
previous page contents next page
Nine Sections from The Book L,
Everyone
wants to know abt Michaux/ I already wrote
about him, but they want to know more,
All
I remember are the old
men in the café where I did the translations
& the tailor, the man who sold suits/ they’re all
gone now, the men, the suits, the poet,
I
visit the place & still smell the
old aromas, they must be in my dream/ I
I can see things as they were & as they are/
Knowing
I can’t ever explain
to you what it was really like,
what the great man & I really said, as the afternoons wore away,
reading poems & chatting
like any 2
old
friends
Bagnore 2006.
CREATURES SAVED/
Praying mantis/ stranded at Zaragoza,
crab/ trapped in sand/ big black bug in white cup/
found
in
forest,
CREATURES KILLED/
An entire family of ants / perhaps HUNDREDS, trapped in
sweater / inadvertently left
outside
tent
Are the Buddhists going to
Karma-me-out for this last act/ should I tell
them or just keep quiet, like I’ve
been about EVERYTHING
these last months.
*
I saw
my old friend/ F./ 'does everybody
have to get SENILE? or what ?/ w. EVERYTHING' she said I wanted
to disagree w. but didn’t - /I was being ‘Buddhist’ &/or Louise polite.
Is this TRAINING for
a
poet/
certainly not.
E Mail
a productive/beautiful
day –
LIBERTY
is my way to practice/
the ‘firm’, the ‘corporation', the ‘collective’
the fund raising
is not for
for
me
*
As I wrote, already
10
years
ago/
Louise’s life is not
very economical/ but it cld.
be poetic/ if Love were to
penetrate
my
solitary
condition.
Reading/
La Vita Nouva/ such
matters are divine reflection/ & can not
be controlled by earthly values. we
can try of course./ but I can’t
get back to
(((())))))))))
I think I’m finally writing
my book/
A.
said to me, O writing yr. best poems/I wanted to respond,
No worst. Leave me alone. But maybe she
was
conferring
a
message.
The
only happily married
‘house holders/ I know
are / GAY. What wld. Buddha say
to that/ Dalai Lama intervened in internet
‘conversazione’ to say all relations based on affection
are valid/Is ALL this/just THAT?
if anyone knows, NN, does,
but it still doesn’t
feel
.....logical/
In Buddha’s time/ there were
ELEMENTS/ rain fell in some kind of
‘normal’ way/ OK, the Vedas knew about
weather control/‘their’ missiles probably functioned a lot better than
‘ours’/ but were things really the same/ is samsara
= samsara, the only equation/ I need
to have a dream/ to assure me,
I’m on the path of Light/
Already
writing my obituary/strange
abt
’impermanence’/ even
Ira
&/
or
La Monte
do not seem to have written theirs (so far)/
*
The
obituary changes/
according to mood swings & so forth/
sometimes it’s only concerned w. absolute
presence/then it’s called ‘my’
‘liberation’/
otherwise it is in honor of ‘my’ great deeds/
which of course obfuscate the terrible ones,
as
frequently
observed/
My
obituary
is my poem
Even
as a child/ I found,
the death-concept, very hard
to swallow/ so I stopped
eating/
now I eat/ but also
write, for instance, my obituary/
still
a
secret
text.
‘Casa di Esther’Pedro Gonzales 2006
SHIGNON
In
the dark pavilion/ I desperately
must speak with the stranger /he waits for me, on the path/
when it is dark,
when no
one
sees/
We
speak /the
room is round / without walls,
without desire/ yet when we separate/
a
deep
sadness,
you say
if someone hadn’t been waiting
for me we wld. have spoken until dawn.
*
In
the taxi/
unexpected tears/you travel
to
a
forbidden
city,
a thousand of miles away
*
I’m
in the front / w. the driver/
‘cool’ until I exit/ you leap to the street/ the
town celebrating
‘The Festival of the Mad’
I'm dressed in white/ it is my festival
&
embrace
me
your
soft skin against my lips, repeated
a thousand years ago, in Japanese temple/ a last farewell.
Pedro Gonzales,
5. 1.2006/
sensitive sea/ at dawn/
the shore/ deserted/ finally
the vacationing Venezuelans/ have returned
to where they
came
from/
I see a lone pelican/
huge black birds in dense
grey
sky/
When
love came, it came
unexpectedly/
Everyone
or almost everyone/ certainly
poets/ need a muse/ tertons need them
too/ & often, in failure to find them,
do not produce their /
ter/ &
so
w.
poets
whereas I have not had
what I planned/ certainly as
a child, at least certain figures at certain
times do lend me their energy, via
refined imagining, if not
entirely,
their
ear
&
hats off to Leonardo/
for inventing, among so many other
things/ less important perhaps,
the bicycle/ I think
sailing down the road,
this evening/ that
old
moon
full
Pedro Gonzales
Jan 2006
My mother lies
in her card board
box coffin/ surrounded
by flowers/ I chose
especially,
her dress is NOT one,
of course NOT, she might
have
chosen,
A
thousand strange remarks,
& harsh statements, a
beating or 2 or 10 or 20
or 30/
ALL
BURN
w.
her/
*
Only feelings
reserved /in my bones
do not go up in flames, are
not buried/ in a cemetery
in
Brooklyn
*
No I feed them
they grow – entire
gardens have been constructed/
even forests in which shyly
but in deep resonance,
we
meet/
again,
w. no speech, not
even bodies, deformed &
by whose hand,
to complicate
the
AROMA.
Louise Landes Levi was born in NYC and is currently living in a stone tower in Bagnore, Northern Italy. Her books include Extinction (Woodbine Press, 1991),Guru Punk (Cool Grove, 1999) and Don't Fuck w. the Airlines (Il Bagatto, 2005), and translations of Henri Michaux, René Daumal and Mirabai. Recent work has appeared online in MiPOesias and Big Bridge, and some of her Michaux translations can be found online at Long House Poetry
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