Duc N. Ly

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  Nods1

August 11, 2006 Friday

Last night I saw ‘Poetry in Motion’, a very old film about poets reading and performing their poems. I saw Jim Carroll reciting “Just Visiting”. I re-read from ‘The Book of Nods’ the aforementioned poem and the NY and California Variation. Michael Ondaatje read a poem that he wrote for his niece. It was inspired or an answer to Paul Bowels assertion that Indian people don’t have a sense of the musical. I remember just one pretty line about a lady walking into the room with clanking ankle bracelets. It was the last line of the poem.

I stumbled onto audiopoetry.wordpress.com via the tag features of WordPress. I just listened to a poem by Ondaatje call ‘To a Sad Daughter’ on audiopoetry.wordpress.com. I don’t know if it’s read by Ondaatje.

I’m getting into a reading mode again. I’ve picked up Void of Course by Jim Carroll from my bookshelf.

Basketball Diary

Today I just found some of my old poems hidden in Blogger:

September 30, 2003

All week long my heart flutters with music

These songs are about the rivers and the pathos it affords

I still sing my winter song

Hollow of breath

Horse of mouth

My mouth contains the sea

It’s epic song

No longer echo

September 28, 2003

Wanted

i wanted to simplify

ur misfit

i wanted fuel

u wanted to burn

i wanted the taste

and afterwards

take ur hand

to my sternum

hear the little tin drum

rattle beneath ur palm

u wanted to burn clean

i didn’t let u

there were charred remains

that i could have use to chart a course

of course

i wanted to draw lines

just for u

October 1, 2003

Every night it circles around

We park our words next to each other

Hoping to catch spirits in flight

Holding patterns

Runways too short to clear

Every night circles about me

In quiet destitute

Waiting for signals to land

These hands have a memory of it’s own

They remember the thin belt around your waist

They hold as our bodies shifted to music and rhythm

These memories are recast into dreams

Years later I dream that I danced

All week long my heart flutters with music
These songs are about the rivers and the pathos it affords

I still sing my winter song
Hollow of breath
Horse of mouth
My mouth contains the sea
It’s epic song
No longer echo

All week long my heart flutters with music

12.4.2002

If the cities burn

If the cities burn,
search for me in its amber ashes.
I’ll be waiting there for you,
Lovely heart in hand,
Glad for the respite.
In the ruin of twilight’s winter city,
of hearts aglow and desires repent,
the serpent rides
the lullabies;
in its hours of sleep and dreaming
Waking and taking,
Waking and loving you.

Posted on 12.4.2002 at 12:00 AM

9.6.2002

late thoughts

Every night I crawl down
To where existence crave,
The precursor to my shadows.

Every night weighs down upon me
A brick
At a time
A stone in my pocket
At a time
Like Virginia Woolf walking into the water,
I drown into a sea of Umbrian dreams:
The predecessor to my being.

Posted on 9.6.2002 at 12:00 AM

9.5.2002

o the aerosol I smell

o the aerosol I smell
the arousal of the skin’s
night children
street urchins
that eeks out of your pours
into the sweet fallen night
of yore
i want you back with all the flower
fragrant that brings froth
from the womb

Posted on 9.5.2002 at 12:00 AM

9.4.2002

Burn This

I remember writing a letter to a friend
on a manual typewriter.
The letters appear half red half black
as though each alphabet burned to ashes
as the key strike the hot white page.
By the time I was done,
I had set a row of burning tree tops
that didn’t carry any messages or meaning…
that was soon to disappear
and fade out…forgotten

Posted on 9.4.2002 at 12:00 AM

9.2.2002

It’s summoned through

It’s summoned through
mouth and mask
Here the stone is honed.
It shines for you.
It’s a shrine for you.
But you take that stone
and you trample it to dust
you lay it in your path
and you trample it to death - lexly

Posted on 9.2.2002 at 12:00 AM

6.17.2002

As Far As…

As far as you know
I’m not here
As far as you know
I’m not anywhere near
Your magnetic fields
Of attraction
That makes the filigree
On my arms rise
As far as I can go from here
Not to be anywhere near
As far as you know
I’m nowhere near
Not from fear
Not from here
As far as you go to find
Me here
To find your fears
It’s not anywhere near here
As long as you fear
As long as I fear you near

Posted on 6.17.2002 at 12:00 AM