The season begins its next change, and the air above me, while fresh, bears some wound that I cannot see. I can only see the blood from this wound, and smell the air. With this blood, and in this air, I paint stripes across my face, on my cheeks and my forehead, like a warrior. What have I to fear? Death has always been close to me.
jobe
There are only two seasons - Winter and Baseball.
Bill Veeck
Veeck was OK by me, except for one thing; the designated hitter rule. He was an early supporter of it, and while it doesn’t exactly cut the heart out of baseball, it hurts it. Maybe it cuts the spleen out of baseball. Or the gall bladder.
a prose poem by Charles Baudelaire
Which One Is Genuine
I once knew a woman named Benedicta, who infused everything with the ideal. When one looked into her eyes one wanted nobility, glory, beauty, all those qualities that make us love immortality. But this exquisite woman was too beautiful to live long; she died in fact shortly after I met her, and it was I who buried her one day when spring was waving his encensoir even through the cemetery gates. It was I who buried her, well enclosed in a coffin made of a wood scented and eternal as the treasure boxes of India. And while my eyes remained fixed on that spot where my jewel lay entombed, I saw all at once a tiny human being much like the dead woman, doing a bizarre dance, violent and hysterical, on the loose earth. She howled with laughter as she spoke: "This is me! Benedicta, as she is! I'm trash, everyone knows it! And the punishment for your stupidity and your blind head is this: You'll have to love what I am!" I went into a rage and said, "No! No! No! No!" And in order to give strength to my no, I stomped the earth so fiercely with my foot that my leg sank into the freshly turned earth up to my knee, and like a wolf caught in a trap, I am now tied, perhaps for the rest of my life, to the grave of the ideal.
Charles Baudelaire 1821-1867
I have seen this poem, in English translation, both as a poem and a prose poem. I am not sure which way Charley wrote it, but he did often write prose poems. I love it for its language, and because I see my life as a young man in it. And I like prose poems in general.
Here’s my take on it.
Many men, especially young American men, do this thing where they meet a woman they are attracted to, and immediately put her on a pedestal. They then love what they wish her to be, which is perfect, instead of what she is, a human being. Human beings, as you know, are not perfect. Those relationships either fail, or continue on as flawed things, unhappy.
What I have just described is my first marriage.
Baudelaire loved opium. He took a lot of laudanum, which was a tincture of opium, completely legal then. He also liked visiting sex workers and likely contracted gonorrhea and syphilis. These habits do not lead to a long life and he wasn’t all that healthy to begin with.
We should consult the earth before we build anything else, we should ask the trees if they mind. Do the water and the sky give us permission? We should ask the animals, even the micro-organisms. “Is it alright? Or should we find a way to stop now?” We, the humans, do not own creation. Have we not already taken more than our share?
jobe
One Boy Told Me, a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye
Once you bury your child, or scatter the ashes of your child, dying ceases to be frightening. We all die. Let it come. There is a hope about dying that I hang on to; let me die at sunrise. How lovely to witness the birth of the new light one last time before the darkness takes me. How perfect.
jobe
A dream, just before waking
I wanted forgiveness. I had a journey to make with another man, both of us in our 60. A dangerous journey. The man hated me. I had slighted him or hurt him somehow years before, and though I could not remember exactly what had happened, I knew that I had been in the wrong. I asked him to forgive me. I cannot undo what has happened, I told him, but I do own it, and I’m sorry. He wasn't having it.
Then we were in a crowded room, and hearing me speak was a woman who had wronged me, who I had forgiven. She began whispering to the fellow from behind him. She wearing a hood, but I could see her eyes as she whispered, staring bravely at me. The man kept saying no, very forcefully, so I knew she was also asking for my forgiveness.
Finally, the King came over. He was a strange looking man, dressed in clothes from the middle ages. He did wear his crown. He ordered the man, not to forgive me, but to reconsider. I was contrite, he explained, and he needed us both to go and take the journey. Our lives would be in danger.
The scene changed again and I was in this man's home, a hovel, dirty and messy. We were preparing our packs for the long walk. He said, "I still don't forgive you, you mean son of a bitch."
Waking up then, I wondered if this dream had a message, some psychological meaning, or if it was simply the effects of the peanut butter and cheese sandwich I ate before bed.
jobe
Not a prose poem. An actual dream. I sometimes write them up. The sandwich was real, too.
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