Thursday, April 21, 2011

When we imagine Jacob wrestling with the Angel
























by Guy Kettlehack

Guy appears in a previous piece.



We imagine that the Angel was immensely strong.
What if we are wrong?
What if he was feeble, soft, ethereal –
apt, perhaps, for Paradise, but not at all

equipped for this pragmatic and incarnate world?
What if how the episode unfurled
required Jacob to change strategy
from grapple to caress: so that, as he

lay hands on that mild evanescent flesh,
he quickly comprehended that his task – a fresh
enlightenment suffusing him, below, above –
must change from causing pain to making love?

Friday, April 15, 2011

by Don Schaeffer

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

The thing that doesn’t want to be

by Guy Kettlehack


Guy says, "I'm not entirely sure why I'm on this site -- someone must have suggested it -- and I'm happy, I suppose, to be 'linkable' in some way or other, but my more conventionally marketable skills are not what I'm pursuing now: I no longer write nonfiction 'self-help' prose (which is I guess would be the category of most of my published books) nor do I book-doctor or edit or consult publishing-wise (which I'd done for many years): I am now that strange useless if happy pariah, a poet -- who's recently added art (to which I've returned after many years) in the form of illustrations for my poems: and playing the violin with some regularity & I hope to some pleasing effect. So I'm not looking for 'work' -- although am always open to peculiar and interesting suggestions for -- ha: well, that's where you may come in. Anyway, I'm here in one form or another. Do with me what you will. "

























The thing that doesn’t want to be
is stuck here for what feels, to it, like an eternity –
which guarantees, of course, it’s not:

but rather merely lots and lots of undesired time.
It’s locked into its vast inarguable premise
that it didn’t ask for this. It is devoid of fear –

which might at least have lent it focus.
One might suppose that its inertia
would result in some repose, but no rest nourishes:

indeed, not one thing flourishes –
not even hatred, fury or psychosis. Sometimes
it daydreams (since it never sleeps)

that some thrombosis might deliver it
from having to exist: but it creeps through
another eon and persists. Its blood runs ruthlessly.

It seems to know that once you’ve come,
you cannot go. At least not for a trillion trillion
trillion trillion trillion trillion years* or so.

Saturday, April 2, 2011