from The Dream Songs

A step back into published poet territory!

Here are two of John Berryman's Dream Songs, 4 (suggested by Jasmine "since it changes people's lives") & 14. There are over three hundred, though, so plenty more if you want to check them out! (And you should!)

4

Filling her compact & delicious body
with chicken paprika, she glanced at me
twice.
Fainting with interest, I hungered back
and only the fact of her husband & four other people
kept me from springing on her

or falling at her little feet and crying
'You are the hottest one for years of night
Henry's dazed eyes
have enjoyed, Brilliance.' I advanced upon
(despairing) my spumoni. --Sir Bones: is stuffed,
de world, wif feeding girls.

--Black hair, complexion Latin, jewelled eyes
downcast . . . The slob beside her. . . . . feasts . . . What wonders is
she sitting on, over there?
The restaurant buzzes. She might as well be on Mars.
Where did it all go wrong? There ought to be a law against Henry.
--Mr. Bones: there is.

14

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) 'Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no

Inner Resources.' I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
People bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

It's back!

After an inexplicable months-long hiatus, the Poetry Forum is back! I am hoping to get some sort of informal writing workshop started at my grad program, so I will keep you updated about the changes. Meanwhile, feel free to comment on any of the previous posts, if you haven't already. And here's one of my own to begin the transition from well-known, published poets to those among us:

A Map of the Space Between Cupid and Psyche

Bridget Ryan

Lost, on the way back from Taos pueblo,

where stray dogs slept between blue

doorframes, and dust carried the scent

of sage and cedar, I run the line of silver

at my neck between my fingers and hold

one side of the map with my other hand.

I tried to brush

this dusty road away.

I thought it was an eyelash.

But it is more like the straight black wire

that fences the horses and bends only from

the sinewed pressure of a horse’s body.

New Mexico lies in squares between

your hand and mine, in the space

a drop of burning oil could traverse.