Why I Listen to Rilke and Don't Write Love Poems

Rilke in "Letters to a Young Poet" —

Reading again the injunction Rilke gave to his younger protege not to write love poems because they are too “facile and ordinary,” I am reminded why I do not write love poems.
It’s an overwrought genre.
Look. Love poems are preferably saturated in the oeuvre: Shakespeare’s doting sonnets alone give us all we need:

The Nike of Samothrace

PDF Copy for Printing

Poetry: Gone with the Wind, among others — Leuven, Belgium

In this poem, which I wrote when I was a college student at the Catholic University of Leuven (K.U.L.), and living as a seminarian at the American College, I tap into feelings of aesthetic taste, sharing intimacy — and I used the phrase "stones of erasmus" for the first time! 

     Erasmus was a student in Leuven during the counter-reformation. One can still see the dormitory house where he supposedly lived and studied. There is a saying among students that only if the stones of Erasmus could speak! What would they say?  

photo credit: spirit of paris

After a film,
poster and reflections
neatly crisp

Intently, furtive glances, to the right, then gone …
left man passes, consume in a bite, then a girl
with glasses, lashes and a bic light
smokes.
Curly Q’s and then somberness of night.
But, still the poster glows … the Trocadero, a movie
de l’amour and Vertigo, a fright:
An image of a man, a stale lacuna, a ghost of film noir
gazing, not apart, partly connected.  Dreams and visions
speak aloud to wet, litter caked streets.

Rotted lemon luminaries haze a path,
dulling humid low land streets, scarcity curtains pulled upwards,
A Peugeot passes, the stones of erasmus clamor to get out.
The posters gleam yet; characters speak and a stomach,
somewhere thirsty growls — it is filled and then …
in upward windows aching, she dresses for a silent figure fantasy.

A flicker, then bed, holding a teapot, languidly.
Une regard to a postcard, to consume.
Speeches to please, to sugar, then the tongue licks,
alors, madame …
then laugh,
like a box of potpourri; charming
half-dead, withered, enchanting

PDF Copy for Printing

Alpha Christ Mural from Saint Joseph Abbey With Accompanying Poem

Artist credit: A mural by Gregory DeWit, St. Joseph Abbey Church, Saint Benedict, Louisiana

PDF Copy for Printing

Poem: Neutral Ground

photo credit: Trevor Logan, Jr.

Neutral Ground

On the corner of Carrollton and Willow,
waiting for a bus, the # 34,
to be exact,
I sat on the neutral ground grass,
translating ancient Greek,
oblivious to the hatred.

A red boy and his friends,
in a pick-up truck,
stopped at the traffic light;
he spewed something my way —
knocked on my skull and dropped
among a soggy tootsie roll wrapper,
a bottle cap —

Vroom, like a cartoon,
You fucking bitch
and I merely turned to acknowledge
with a grin
and a greeting.

Not to turn the other cheek,
but out of habit.

I smiled, caught a glance
and turned back to my paperback

                    Greig Roselli

                    New Orleans, Louisiana

PDF Copy for Printing

Fiction Excerpt: Copy of a Novel Theme

I can remember him simply. We were sitting in the sand pits near the river; it was hot that day. He had let his hands rest on a rotten log for too long and red ants had bitten him. I was lucky the neighbor had something to soothe the itch; still, a smiling satyr, although replete suburbanite, full of questions, insistent in his resolve to wrest from me the magnificent solutions, the impossible answers, the raison d’etre of a human life, because he heard me talking about the inexplicable haunting of a man found dead in his car — of asphyxiation; turned on the ignition and let the engine run, attached a pipe to the exhaust, went through the trunk and wrapped it around through the back seat. A jogger had found his corpse days later. No one had noticed him missing. They were used to his threats of death. Why did he do it? I don’t know; I guess he wanted to die in a peaceful place … It’s hard, I thought to myself, to talk to him about this, not because I know the facticity of death, but because I don’t want him — I turn to see him — to die;  so impossible for this stone smoothed boy pregnant with vim, with generosity and ardor, as if talking about decay will somehow mollify an already implacable course into the imaginary.

Pray for the dead man, I say; pray for his family and friends.  He didn’t want to die but he had no other way out.

Extracted from "A novel I have yet to write"

image credit: Greig Roselli

PDF Copy for Printing

Media Art: "Red Marks"

If you look closely at the image I call "Red Marks" there is a human figure to be found. The story is I took this photograph in a normal manner circa 2003 or 2004. I don't remember exactly. I took it with Kodak color film and when I processed the film I stored away in my memory bank. It's basically an image of a man sitting in a chair in a sitting room (you can barely make out the wooden Venetian blinds behind his head). We had been sitting and chatting after dinner one night. I am purposely not revealing who the man is in the photograph for the sake of privacy — and also because my gut says it is more interesting to think of the image without any identifying markers, except a red mark.  Fast forward to 2010 — I scanned the original photograph and then used Photoshop to make the above image. Presto. Primo. What do you think? Leave a note in the comment box below.

PDF Copy for Printing

Photograph: "Lipstick Red Bloody Mary"

The reddest Bloody Mary can be consumed at Outback Steakhouse. I have no idea what they put in this drink to make it lipstick red, but I feel like I'm kissing someone's ruby lips when I drink it.

PDF Copy for Printing