Here's a poem

Mixed-up Moon by Anthony Madrid 

Mixed-up moon. Prop open the book.
Now and forever, you nip it in the bud.
I allow the heart does not make the blood,
Nor the human being the book.
 
Mixed-up moon. I don’t have to look.
Que no quiero ver that talked-up perfection.
It’s no use trying to rub out your reflection
From a piece of polished brass.
 
Mixed-up moon. I’ll take that as a yes.
I’ll take it outside, out of ’shot of the mourners.
I think you’ll agree it’s time we cut corners. We’ll cut
So many corners, the thing becomes a sphere.
 
Mixed-up moon. Insincere, insincere.
Thomas à Kempis and Francis Xavier.
The Better Book says that good behavior
Is the privilege, not the duty, of the good.
 
Mixed-up moon. Don’t misunderstood.
You close the circuit, find out what it’s worth.
Redwood roots running deep in the earth:
They only go down six feet.
 
Mixed-up moon. Pilgrimage sweet.
All with me’s meete that I fashion fit.
We wake and forget the dream we were having:
Same thing happens to childhood.
 
Mixed-up moon. Already reviled it.
Bird in the egg and a tale to embroider.
Any ten words in any order,
The result will be the same.
 
Mixed-up moon. Verstehn Sie ihn?
Ich—hüte mich, ihn zu verstehn.
About these kids making out on the train,
I say: Deja ir a mi pueblo.
 
Mixed-up moon. Count Dracula Twemlow.
Twelve disciples and a canine nuisance.
My rabbi says that whoever chooses
Belief is not a believer.
 
Mixed-up moon. Rock-’em Occam’s cleaver.
First publication in form of a fascicle.
Children! they don’t even know it’s possible:
Having friends you don’t like.
 
Mixed-up moon. Riker’s Island bike.
Raking the grass and raking the weed.
A plane’s shadow on building and street:
It doesn’t travel the speed of the plane.
 
Mixed-up moon. Semper the same.
Temperament, temperament, given to worry.
Their fault is they can’t even tell a story
Unless they understand it.
 
Mixed-up moon. Give Petunia a minute.
He’s gone over to Jesus, molted a feather.
Any ten shapes, taken together,
Are a jigsaw of the degenerate body.
 
Mixed-up moon. Gastrocnemius.
Hard for these geniuses, easy for children.
Most of what passes for bravery is only
Want of imagination.
 
Mixed-up moon. Insert pagination.
Bird in the egg, picking its fur.
You want to know what’s in it for her?
Your good looks and diction/syntax.
 
Mixed-up moon. Everybody wins.
¡Aléjate de mí, Satanás! unless
Any lit match will pass for a compass:
The flame points up, because hell is above us.
 
Mixed-up moon. Hell is above. 29 April 2014:
I have memorized the Hindu poem that says
This hunk of quartz must someday flex
Its back and run up a tree.

Here's a picture

This is a Eurasian Magpie, native to the Netherlands.

Here's a poem

Lullaby by WH Auden

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find the mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

Here's a picture

This is basically what Lil Gob looks like.

Here's a poem

Thanks by WS Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
taking our feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is
              

Here's a picture

I will never have fashion this good again.

Here's a poem

From "A Season in Hell" by Arthur Rimbaud

It is recovered!
What? Eternity.
It is the sea
Mixed with the sun.

My soul eternal,
Redeem your promise,
In spite of the night alone
And the day on fire.

Of human suffrage,
Of common aspirings,
You free yourself then!
You fly according to...

Hope never more,
No orietur.
Science and patience,
Retribution is sure.

No more tomorrows,
Embers of satin,
Your ardor is now
Your duty only.

It is recovered!
What? Eternity.
It is the sea
Mixed with the sun.

Or, in French:

Elle est retrouvée.
Quoi? - L'Éternité.
C'est la mer allée
Avec le soleil.

Âme sentinelle,
Murmurons l'aveu
De la nuit si nulle
Et du jour en feu.

Des humains suffrages,
Des communs élans
Là tu te dégages
Et voles selon.

Puisque de vous seules,
Braises de satin,
Le Devoir s'exhale
Sans qu'on dise : enfin.

Là pas d'espérance,
Nul orietur.
Science avec patience,
Le supplice est sûr.

Elle est retrouvée.
Quoi ? - L'Éternité.
C'est la mer allée
Avec le soleil.

Here's a picture

Believe it or not, this is somehow the only photo I took while in Paris for a week.

Here's a poem?

I went home to see my parents today. We set up a projector in the backyard and listened to music. This is an OK Nick Cave song, not compositionally the most interesting, but I quoted it in my Master's thesis. Anyways, a link and the lyrics.

I am beside you
I am beside you
I am beside you
I am beside you
Look for me
Look for me
I am beside you
Look for me
I try to forget
To remember
That nothing is something
Where something is meant to be
I am beside you
I am beside you
Look for me
Look for me
Well, I think they’ve gathered here for me
I am within you
You are within me
I am beside you
You are beside me
I think they’re singing to be free
I think they’re singing to be free
I think my friends have gathered here for me
I think they’ve gathered here
To be beside me
Look for me
Look for me
I am beside you
You are beside me
You are beside me
Look for me 

Here's some pictures

I promise these are the last baby photos, which you've probably already seen, but they are Spiderman in nature.

Here's a poem:

Sorry I haven't updated in a bit, been a hectic week/end. Hope to talk soon.

Church Going by Philip Larkin

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,
Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new-
Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
"Here endeth" much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognizable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation – marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these – for whom was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

Here's a picture

The national bird of Ireland, the Northern Lapwing.

Here's a poem

Sloe Gin by Seamus Heaney

The clear weather of juniper
darkened into winter.
She fed gin to sloes
and sealed the glass container.

When I unscrewed it
I smelled the disturbed
tart stillness of a bush
rising through the pantry.

When I poured it
it had a cutting edge
and flamed
like Betelgeuse.

I drink to you
in smoke-mirled, blue-
black sloes, bitter
and dependable.