Every Song is a Love Song?

This is a poem not about love
A poem not about knowing glances
Or hands held illicitly under the table
A poem not about sweaty hands
Or butterflies in the stomach
A poem not about nervous laughing
Or small gestures
Pardon my frankness, but this is nothing like a summer day.

This poem is not about many-splendored things
Or quicksilver in the hand
A poem not about red roses
Or diamonds commended
A poem not about bright stars
Or beautiful dreamers
Forgive me if I forget to count the ways.
No, this is a poem not about love.

Jenna S

Complete Otherness

The Moraes

- Francis Bacon, "Three Studies for the Portrait of Henrietta Moraes

Henrietta Moraes

Henrietta Moraes (22 May 1931 – 6 January 1999) was a British artists' model and memoirist. During the 1950s and 1960s, she was the muse and inspiration for many artists of the Soho subculture, including Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, and (much later) Maggi Hambling, and also known for her marriages and love affairs. She left her first husband, Michael Law, and married actor Norman Bowler, with whom she had two children. She later married the Indian writer Dom Moraes.

- Wikipedia

- Francis Bacon, "Portrait of Henrietta Moraes"

- Lucien Freud, "Girl in a Blanket" (1952)

Stadium Rave Music

La Bachata!

Strumming my heartstrings
Drawing me in with each note
Playing the most beautiful song
Hearing the words you wrote

Filling in all the gaps
The melody is for me
Beating loud and clear
Setting my heart free

Only distance keeping us at bay
You still have me in your trance
Two hearts apart, beating as one
How I wish we could dance

A soft kiss upon your delicate hand
Holding you close, holding you tight
Slow dancing under the moonlit skies
The perfect girl, the perfect night

- Tim Smith, "If We Could Dance" (2015)

Every Little...

To Paraphrase Zizek...

Europe

Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal
of a sort of emotional anemia.

And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.

In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.

She would like some one to speak to her,
And is almost afraid that I
will commit that indiscretion.

- Ezra Pound, "The Garden"

Satisfied?

Salvador Dali, "Unsatisfied" (1928)

As a bathtub lined with white porcelain,
When the hot water gives out or goes tepid,
So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion,
O my much praised but-not-altogether-satisfactory lady.

- Ezra Pound, "The Bath Tub"
---

A mock-heroic simile. In a covering note to Harriet Monroe, Pound wrote (Chicago MSS, Dec. 3, 1912):

The "Bath Tub" is intended to diagnose the sensation of two people who never having loved each other save in the Tennysonian manner have come upon a well-meaning satiety... No "spiritual gravity" or "quodlibet." 2 bodies reduced to chemical components...

It is the job of this art of ours to hale a man naked into the presence of his God (or whatever equivalent)...

An earlier title for this poem was "Courtesy" (Chicago MSS).

Focused Distractions

“The erotic state – again, a mixture of concentration and spontaneity – is a hypnoidal state, probably the most powerful kind that we are capable of experiencing, and it is in this condition that unexpected regions of the self are revealed, as the majority of people know from experience.”

― Peter Redgrove, "The Black Goddess and the Unseen Real: Our Uncommon Senses and Their Common Sense"

Melancholic Moods

Naghi Nights

Naghi [1], I swear on your sense of humor
On this exile who thinks he's here to criticize [2]
On the large penis that gives life
That sits behind us and threatens us
I swear on the length and width of [Western-imposed] sanctions
On the rising value of the dollar and the feeling of humiliation [3]
Naghi, I swear on the cardboard Imam [Khomeini] [4]
On the baby [Khamenei] who was saying "Ali!" while stuck in his mother's womb [5]
On the teaching of jurisprudence in the room where nose jobs are given [6]
On Khamenei, the prayer beads and prayer rugs made in China [7]
Naghi, I swear on the finger of Sheys Rezaei [8]
On the religion that has been kicked out and religious soccer [9]
O Naghi, now that the Hidden Imam is asleep, we call upon you, O Naghi [10]
Appear, for we are ready in our burial shrouds, O Naghi [11]
O Naghi, now that the Hidden Imam is asleep, we call upon you, O Naghi
Appear, for we are ready in our burial shrouds, O Naghi
Naghi, I swear on love and Viagra
On raised legs and chakras
On sangak bread [12] and chicken and meat and fish
On silicon chests and striped virginity [13]
Naghi, I swear on Golshifteh's breasts [14]
On lost prestige that we never had [15]
Naghi, I swear on Aryan heritage [16]
On the necklace that you wear around your neck [17]
Naghi, [I give] my life for Farnood's penis [18]
For the 3 billion dollars, soon forgotten like a children's story [19]
And the Persian Gulf and [Lake] Orumiyeh, too [20]
Oh by the way, what was the name of the leader of the Green Movement? [21]
O Naghi, now that the Hidden Imam is asleep, we call upon you, O Naghi
Appear, for we are ready in our burial shrouds, O Naghi
O Naghi, now that the Hidden Imam is asleep, we call upon you, O Naghi
Appear, for we are ready in our burial shrouds, O Naghi
O Naghi, O Naghi, O Naghi
O Naghi, O Naghi, O Naghi
On the anniversary of the death of that old fart, Imam of the [Shi'ah] community [22]
On the fossilized opposition in the diaspora [23]
On the classy widows who frequent discos
On the intellectual discussions in chat rooms
On the dissolute men with a false sense of honor [24]
On the women who defend men's rights [25]
On the color revolution in the television [26]
On the 3% of the [Iranian] population who read books [27]
On the wishy-washy, empty slogans [28]
Naghi, I swear on this crowd of fickle people
Who in the morning say "Long live...!" but at night say "Death to...!" [29]
On the heroes of fictional stories
O Naghi, now that the Hidden Imam is asleep, we call upon you, O Naghi
Appear, for we are ready in our burial shrouds, O Naghi
O Naghi, now that the Hidden Imam is asleep, we call upon you, O Naghi
Appear, for we are ready in our burial shrouds, O Naghi
O Naghi, O Naghi, O Naghi
O Naghi, O Naghi, O Naghi
Ohhhhhhhhhh Naghi

from Wikipedia

Following release of the song "Ay Naghi!" ("Hey, Naghi!"),[14][15] Grand Ayatollah Lotfollah Safi Golpaygani, a 94-year-old Shi’ite cleric based in Qom, issued a fatwa death sentence against Najafi for apostasy.[16] Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem-Shirazi, a "source of emulation" for many Shia Muslims, also issued a fatwa declaring Najafi guilty of apostasy.[17] As of 15 May 2012, more than 800 people in Iran had joined a Facebook campaign calling for Najafi to be executed, saying they were ready to assassinate Najafi if necessary.[18] An Iranian web site, Shia-Online.ir, offered a US$100,000 bounty to anyone who killed Najafi.[19]

In May 2012, the online site HonareNab.ir posted an online "Shoot the Apostates" flash computer game inviting people to shoot and kill Najafi.[20] “Those who love Imam Hadi can practice killing Shahin Najafi by playing this flash game,” said Honar Nab Eslam, who developed the game.[21]

On 25 May 2012, Shiite cleric Ahmad Alamolhoda demanded a plan to execute Najafi.[22]

In June 2012, forty authors of the Rah-e Nikan religious publishing house promised to give royalties from their books to whoever killed Najafi.[23]

The song has drawn sharp anger from protesters who believe it is offensive towards Imam Naghi, the tenth Imam in Shi’ite Islam.[24] In an interview[25] Najafi stated that he was inspired by "The Campaign to Remind Shiites about Imam Naghi" to compose the song. The campaign is a Facebook page that pokes fun at Islamic, and specifically Shi'ite hadiths, with members creating fake, funny hadiths and stories centered around a fictional character named Naghi, who is based on Imam Naghi.[26]

The French New Wave

Packing it In

It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep may be.

-Virgil

Big Boy

Big Boy came
Carrying a mermaid
On his shoulders
And the mermaid
Had her tail
Curved
Beneath his arm.

Being a fisher boy,
He’d found a fish
To carry—
Half fish,
Half girl
To marry.

- Langston Hughes, "Catch"

Comme d'habitude/As Usual