Tag: free verse

Don’t Speak

I’ve got nobody to talk to.
Nobody to say, how you feel?
Nobody to say, you ok?
Nobody. You can’t talk.
I can only talk to you.
And you’re no frigging good, cos you can’t talk back.

It’s been really funny, cos in the stillness I’ve felt
you know
my goodness, you know,
this is me. It’s just
it’s just me now. I feel kinda stripped bare.
I can’t
the only way I can describe it is I feel
tetchy. I feel
every time it gets really quiet I think
I’m out of control.

With all the stillness
I really can look at myself.
I don’t know whether you can
whether that’s ever happened to you
where you’ve actually looked in the mirror and
you can kind of see past the eyes. And it’s like
meeting a new person.

Right now, right this minute
this is the loneliest I’ve felt since I was
was at the children’s home.

From the BBC’s The Big Silence, first broadcast 22 October 2010. By Marika Rose.

On Utility

Philosophy is not
meant to be practical.
It is not meant
to have a use.

It does not exist to
make us more productive
girls and boys. It is a
diet of words to feed
our soul by way of
stimulating our mind.

It is not a roast-beef
sandwich, but more the
substance of an
ethereal longing.

Taken from a Lost in Technopolis post 13 May 2009. By Marika Rose.

Les Americains in Paris

N’avez-vous pas des griddle-cakes?
Quelle espèce de dump is this, anyhow?
Appelez-vous cela coffee?

Où est le N.Y. Times?


What’s the matter?
Don’t you understand English?


De tous les pays godams que j’ai vu.

Je n’ai pas vu une belle femme jusqu’à présent.
Ici est où nous used to come
quand j’étais ici pendant la guerre.


Say, ceci est de la bière vrai!

O boy! Deux semaines from tomorrow
nous sail for home. Sogleich wir zu hause sind,
geh ich zum Childs und eine tasse kaffee
und ein glass eiswasser kaufen.

Phrases most in demand by American visitors to Paris.

Masque

When CARINE ROITFELD
invited me at VOGUE PARIS
90th Anniversary
party on the september 30 in Paris,
I was so thrilled, but when I knew
that was a BAL COSTUME
inspired by EYES WIDE SHUT,
I was worried.

Why?
Cause if CARINE ROITFELD
invites you to her party,
she expects to be
surprised by your look.

All the guests are form creative environments, than are supposed
to be creative even about themselves.

How to think of a dentist who hasn’t
the most white and beautiful teeth?

Anna Della Russo’s blog via the Guardian. By Marika Rose.



The morning question

The morning question,
What good shall I do this day?

Rise, wash, and address
Powerful Goodness;
contrive day’s business,
and take the resolution of the day;
prosecute the present study;
and breakfast.

Work.

Read, or overlook my
accounts, and dine.

Work.

Put things in their places,
supper, music or diversion,
or conversation;
examination of the day.

Evening question,
What good have I done today?

Sleep.

Benjamin Franklin’s daily schedule, from his autobiography which was written between 1771 and 1790. By Rishi Dastidar.

To Poetry

Poetry is dead –
Poetry is like –
Poetry is what gets lost

in translation.

Poetry is everywhere –
Poetry is emotion
recollected in tranquility.

Poetry is to prose
as dancing is to walking,
poetry is not a luxury

Audre Lorde.

Poetry is the synthesis
of hyacinths and biscuits,
poetry is not a luxury–

Poetry is not a project.

Google autosuggestions for the search ‘poetry is’.

Not a Tame Lion

Supposing there were other worlds,
and if one of them was like Narnia –
and if it needed saving –
and if Christ went to save it
as He came to save us –
let’s imagine what shape and name
He might have taken there.
And the answer was Aslan.

From a C.S Lewis letter to a fan, 12 February 1958.

For Love

It is a restless moment
She has kept her head lowered,
To give him a chance to come close.
But he could not, for lack of courage,
She turns and walks away.

He remembers those vanished years.
As though looking through a dusty windowpane,
The past is something he could see, but not touch.
And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.

Subtitle translations of the opening and closing text of In the Mood for Love (Kar Wai Wong, 2000). By Marika Rose.