Poetry by Mari Ocando

mari_ocando — 2014-04-13 19:07:28 UTC

FOR TESS by Raymond Carver

Out on the Strait the water is whitecapping
As they say here. It’s rough and I’m glad
I’m not out. Glad I fished all day
on Morse Creek, casting a red Daredevil back
and forth. I didn’t catch anything. No bites
even, not one. But it was okay. It was fine!
I carried your dad’s pocketknife and was followed
for awhile by a dog its owner called Dixie.
At times I felt so happy I had to quit
fishing. Once I lay on the bank with my eyes closed,
listening to the sound the water made,
and to the wind in the tops of the trees. The same wind
that blows out on the Strait, but a different wind, too.
For awhile I even let myself imagine that I had died -
and that was all right, at least for a couple
of minutes, until it really sank in: Dead.
As I was laying there with my eyes closed,
just after I’d imagined what it might be like
if in fact I never got up again, I thought of you.
I opened my eyes then and got right up
and went back to being happy again
I’m grateful to you, you see. I wanted to tell you.

Charles Bukowski's The Laughing Heart, in the voice of Tom Waits

mari_ocando — 2014-04-13 19:08:23 UTC

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

mari_ocando — 2014-04-13 19:15:27 UTC

If the poem isn't born, but your life is real,
you are its embodiment.
You dwellin its vulnerable shadow.It goes with you,an unfinished diamond

-Rafael Cadenas (Venezuelan poet) http://www.rafaelcadenas.org

mari_ocando — 2014-04-13 19:17:02 UTC

“If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Rant - Diane di Prima

mari_ocando — 2014-04-13 19:18:19 UTC

"bring yr self home to yrself, enter the garden

the guy at the gate w/ the flaming sword is yrself"

From Rimbaud's 'A Season in Hell'

mari_ocando — 2014-04-13 19:33:33 UTC

However, this is the vigil. Let us welcome all the influxes of vigor and tenderness. And, at dawn, armed with ardent patience, we will enter magnificent cities.

An illustrated version of Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

mari_ocando — 2014-04-13 19:39:15 UTC

by Julian Peters

http://julianpeterscomics.com/page-1-the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock-by-t-s-eliot/