Poem-a-Thon

[PatCarrington]

I know.

Did we just kiss? heehee.

Here. Have this poem.

another peck for you.


Sex Without Love by Sharon Olds


How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

 

[PatCarrington]

Bob Hicok

Ink by Bob Hicok

I feel obligated to get a tattoo.
It's how the skin of the species
is evolving. If I continue
living without plumage,
it will be impossible to mate
or hold a conversation
with a banker. My favorite
is strawberry ice cream. Not
average size scoops, Baskin
and Robbins size scoops
but three and tiny
I discovered one night
tattooed to a thigh.
It was the possibility
of kissing a private dessert
I so admired. I've decided
to get tattoos of my eyes
on the inside of my eyelids
so I can stare at the oceans
of my dreams. I'll have
muscles tattooed to my chest,
money to my palms, the smell
of honeysuckle to my breath. I want
BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF FIRE
tattooed to my brain, mouths
to the bottom of my feet, you
to me. There is not
enough art in this life.
Tattoo my front door
to my tombstone and place
a key on my tongue
like a mint. It's not for me
to decide whether my return
will be called
breaking out or breaking in.

 

[Angeline]

Ink by Bob Hicok

I feel obligated to get a tattoo.
It's how the skin of the species
is evolving. If I continue
living without plumage,
it will be impossible to mate
or hold a conversation
with a banker. My favorite
is strawberry ice cream. Not
average size scoops, Baskin
and Robbins size scoops
but three and tiny
I discovered one night
tattooed to a thigh.
It was the possibility
of kissing a private dessert
I so admired. I've decided
to get tattoos of my eyes
on the inside of my eyelids
so I can stare at the oceans
of my dreams. I'll have
muscles tattooed to my chest,
money to my palms, the smell
of honeysuckle to my breath. I want
BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF FIRE
tattooed to my brain, mouths
to the bottom of my feet, you
to me. There is not
enough art in this life.
Tattoo my front door
to my tombstone and place
a key on my tongue
like a mint. It's not for me
to decide whether my return
will be called
breaking out or breaking in.

Oh, it's great. I think I've seen it before--seems familiar. You posted it because it's about tatoos. Admit it.

 

[PatCarrington]

Oh, it's great. I think I've seen it before--seems familiar. You posted it because it's about tatoos. Admit it.

that did cross my mind.

 

[Tathagata]

Awake - Jim Morrison

I hope I haven't already posted this...

I still read this and feel so many things and get lost in the magic of simple words

AWAKE
Shake dreams from your hair
My pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
The day's divinity
First thing you see.

A vast radiant beach in a cool jeweled moon
Couples naked race down by its quiet side
And we laugh like soft, mad children
Smug in the woolly cotton brains on infancy.
The music and voices are all around us.
Choose, they croon, the Ancient Ones
The time has come again.
Choose now, they croon,
Beneath the moon
Beside an ancient lake.
Enter again the sweet forest,
Enter the hot dream,
Come with us,
Everything is broken up and dances.

 

[Angeline]

Your Eyes Have Their Silence
Gerald William Barrax

Your eyes have their silence in giving words
back more beautifully than trees can rain
and give back in swaying the rain
that makes silence mutable and startles nesting birds.

And so it rains. And so I speak or not
as your eyes go from silence suddenly
at love to wonder (as those quiet birds suddenly
at rain) letting, finally, myself be taught

silence before your eyes conceding everything
spoken as experience, as love, as reason
enough not to speak of them and my reason
crawls into the silence of your eyes. Spring

always promises something, sometimes only more
beauty: and so it rains. And so I take
whatever promise there is in silence as you take
words as rain and give them back in silence before

there are ways to say that more beauty is nothing
for you before my hands can memorize
the beauty of your slender movements and nothing
is beautiful as words nesting in your eyes.

 

[Angeline]

Poem
Saint Geraud (Bill Knott)

I am one man, worshipping silk knees,
I write these lines to cripple the dead,
to come up halt before the living:

I am one man, I run my hand over
your body, I touch the secret vibes
of your earth, I breathe your
heartbeat, Naomi, and always

I am one man alone at night. I fill my hands
with your dark hair
and offer it to the hollows of your face. I am one man,
searching,
alone at night
like a beacon of ashes…

 

[PatCarrington]

New Year's Day by Kim Addonizio


The rain this morning falls
on the last of the snow

and will wash it away. I can smell
the grass again, and the torn leaves

being eased down into the mud.
The few loves I've been allowed

to keep are still sleeping
on the west coast. Here in Virginia

I walk across the fields with only
a few young cows for company.

Big-boned and shy,
they are like girls I remember

from junior high, who never
spoke, who kept their heads

lowered and their arms crossed against
their new breasts. Those girls

are nearly forty now. Like me,
they must sometimes stand

at a window late at night, looking out
on a silent back yard, at one

rusting lawn chair and the sheer walls
of other people's houses.

They must lie down some afternoons
and cry hard for whoever used

to make them happiest,
and wonder how their lives

have carried them
this far without ever once

explaining anything. I don't know
why I'm walking out here

with my coat darkening
and my boots sinking in, coming up

with a mild sucking sound
I like to hear. I don't care

where those girls are now.
Whatever they've made of it

they can have. Today I want
to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk
a little longer in the cold

blessing of the rain,
and lift my face to it.

 

[Angeline]

I Dream I'm the Death of Orpheus
Adrienne Rich, 1968

I am walking rapidly through striations of light and dark thrown
__________ under an arcade.

I am a woman in the prime of life, with certain powers
and those powers severely limited
by authorities whose faces I rarely see.
I am a woman in the prime of life
driving her dead poet in a Black Rolls-Royce
through a landscape of twilight and thorn.
A woman with a certain mission
which if obeyed to the letter will leave her intact.
A woman with the nerves of a panther
a woman with contacts among Hell's Angels
a woman feeling the fullness of her powers
at the precise moment when she must not use them
a woman sworn to lucidity
who sees through the mayhem, the smoky fires
of these underground streets
her dead poet learning to walk backward against the wind
on the wrong side of the mirror.

 

[Sins666]

Annabel Lee

I've had this poem memorized sicine I was twelve. To me Edgar Allan Poe is the greatest poet of all time and this is his greatest work. Greater even than 'The Raven'.

ANNABEL LEE


by Edgar Allan Poe
(1849)



It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;--
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
She was a child and I was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love--
I and my Annabel Lee--
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud by night
Chilling my Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me:--
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of a cloud, chilling
And killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we--
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in Heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:--

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea--
In her tomb by the side of the sea.


-- THE END --

 

[Angeline]

What Was Lost
William Butler Yeats

I SING what was lost and dread what was won,
I walk in a battle fought over again,
My king a lost king, and lost soldiers my men;
Feet to the Rising and Setting may run,
They always beat on the same small stone.

 

[PatCarrington]

Chaplinesque by Boyd Benson


How much easier life must have been
before talk, when love was just
a mild palm fluttering above the heart,
silent and simple,

when Mabel, pure as warm milk,
would set the table for Mack,
that mutt-faced man
just back from the war,

a time when cuffing your boss
(or your waiter) was still
considered smart
like indoor plumbing.

In fact, before talk, one might disarm
any landlord, police officer, or villain
(that is, the schmo with coagulated
eyebrows and pointed Rasputin beard)

with a simple roll of the eyes,
a spurt of seltzer,
followed by a hasty exit
around a building
six times.

Yes, friend, with color yet to hit the world
even loneliness seemed better,
heartache, too.

Before talk, dressed in black
alone, one might simply turn,
shuffle off toward the sunset
and (in subtitles) call it a day.

 

[Angeline]

My Father's Love Letters
Yusef Komunyakaa

On Fridays he'd open a can of Jax
After coming home from the mill,
& ask me to write a letter to my mother
Who sent postcards of desert flowers
Taller than men. He would beg,
Promising to never beat her
Again. Somehow I was happy
She had gone, & sometimes wanted
To slip in a reminder, how Mary Lou
Williams' "Polka Dots & Moonbeams"
Never made the swelling go down.
His carpenter's apron always bulged
With old nails, a claw hammer
Looped at his side & extension cords
Coiled around his feet.
Words rolled from under the pressure
Of my ballpoint: Love,
Baby, Honey, Please.
We sat in the quiet brutality
Of voltage meters & pipe threaders,
Lost between sentences . . .
The gleam of a five-pound wedge
On the concrete floor
Pulled a sunset
Through the doorway of his toolshed.
I wondered if she laughed
& held them over a gas burner.
My father could only sign
His name, but he'd look at blueprints
& say how many bricks
Formed each wall. This man,
Who stole roses & hyacinth
For his yard, would stand there
With eyes closed & fists balled,
Laboring over a simple word, almost
Redeemed by what he tried to say.

 

[The Poets]

bumping

 

[Angeline]

bumping

Here's a good one I read last night, Bumptress.

My Father's Hats
Mark Irwin

Sunday mornings I would reach
high into his dark closet while standing
on a chair and tiptoeing reach
higher, touching, sometimes fumbling
the soft crowns and imagine
I was in a forest, wind hymning
through pines, where the musky scent
of rain clinging to damp earth was
his scent I loved, lingering on
bands, leather, and on the inner silk
crowns where I would smell his
hair and almost think I was being
held, or climbing a tree, touching
the yellow fruit, leaves whose scent
was that of clove in the godsome
air, as now, thinking of his fabulous
sleep, I stand on this canyon floor
and watch light slowly close
on water I can't be sure is there.

 

[Guest]

To be read while listening to cool jazz - preferably Mr. Baker himself.

Lost Fugue for Chet

by Lynda Hull

Chet Baker, Amsterdam, 1988

A single spot slides the trumpet's flare then stops
at that face, the extraordinary ruins thumb-marked
with the hollows of heroin, the rest chiaroscuroed.
Amsterdam, the final gig, canals & countless

stone bridges arc, glimmered in lamps. later this week
his Badlands face, handsome in a print from thirty
years ago, will follow me from the obituary page
insistent as windblown papers by the black cathedral

of St. Nicholas standing closed today: pigeon shit
& feathers, posters swathing tarnished doors, a litter
of syringes. Junkies cloud the gutted railway station blocks
& dealers from doorways call coca, heroina, some throaty

foaming harmony. A measured inhalation, again
the sweet embouchure, metallic, wet stem. Ghostly,
the horn's improvisations purl & murmur
the narrow strasses of Rosse Buurt, the district rife

with purse-snatchers, women alluring, desolate, poised
in blue windows, Michelangelo boys, hair spilling
fluent running chords, mares' tails in the sky green
& violet. So easy to get lost, these cavernous

brown cafes. Amsterdam, & it's spectral fogs, it's
bars & softly shifting tugboats. He builds once more
the dense harmonic structure, the gabled houses.
Let's get lost. Why court the brink & then step back?

After surviving, what arrives? So what's the point
when there are so many women, creamy callas with single
furled petals turning in & in upon themselves
like variations, nights when the horn's coming

genius riffs, metal & spit, that consuming rush
of good dope, a brief languor burnishing
the groin, better than any sex. Fuck Death.
In the audience, there's always this gaunt man, cigarette

in hand, black Maserati at the curb, waiting,
the fast ride through mountain passes, descending with
no rails between asphalt & precipice. Inside magnetic
whispering take me there, take me. April, the lindens

& horse chestnuts flowering, cold white blossoms
on the canal. He's lost as he hears those inner voicings,
a slurred veneer of chords, molten, fingering
articulate. His glance below Dutch headlines, the fall

"accidental" from a hotel sill. Too loaded. What do you do
at the brink? Stepping back in time, I can only
imagine the last hit, lilies insinuating themselves
up your arms, leaves around your face, one hand vanishing

sabled to shadow. The newsprint photo & I'm trying
to recall names, songs, the sinuous figures, but facts
don't matter, what counts is out of pained dissonance,
the sick vivid green of backstage bathrooms, out of

broken rhythms - and I've never forgotten, never -
this is the tied-off vein, this is 3 a.m. terror
thrumming, this is the carnation of blood clouding
the syringe, you shaped summer rains across the quays

of Paris, flame suffusing jade against a girl's
dark ear. From the trumpet, pawned, redeemed, pawned again
you formed one wrenching blue arrangement, a phrase endlessly
complicated as that twilit dive through smoke, applause,

the pale haunted rooms. Cold chestnuts flowering April
& you're falling from heaven in a shower of eighth notes
to the cobbled street below & foaming dappled horses
plunge beneath the still green waters of the Grand Canal.

 

[RhymeFairy]

Wow is what I said when I read this~

"What Do Women Want?"
by Kim Addonizio


I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.

 

[Angeline]

Parthenogenesis
Pablo Neruda

All those who used to give me advice
are crazier every day.
Luckily I ignored them
and they went to another city
where they all live together
constantly swapping hats.

They were worthy subjects,
politically thoughtful,
and every fault I committed
caused them such suffering
that they turned grey and wrinkled,
gave up eating chestnuts,
and an autumnal melancholy
finally left them delirious.

Now I don't know what to be,
forgetful or respectful;
to continue to give them counsel
or reproach them for their madness.
I cannot claim independence.
I am lost in so much foliage---
should I leave, or enter,
travel or linger,
buy tomcats or tomatoes?

I will try to understand
what I mustn't do, then do it,
and so be able to justify
the ways which might escape me,
for if I don't make mistakes,
who will believe in my errors?
If I go on being wise,
no one will notice me.

But I will try to change,
offer greetings with great care
and look to appearances
with dedication and zeal
until I am all that they wish,
as one might be and another might not,
till I exist only in others.

And then, if they leave me in peace,
I am going to change completely,
and differ with my skin;
and when I have another mouth,
other shoes, other eyes;
when it is all different,
and no one can recognize me,
since anything else is beyond me,
I shall go on doing the same.

 

[Angeline]

Of Modern Poetry
Wallace Stevens

The poem of the mind in the act of finding
What will suffice. It has not always had
To find: the scene was set; it repeated what
Was in the script.
______Then the theatre was changed
To something else. Its past was a souvenir.

It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
It has to face the men of the time and to meet
The women of the time. It has to think about war
And it has to find what will suffice. It has
To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage,
And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and
With meditation, speak words that in the ear,
In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,
Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound
Of which, an invisible audience listens,
Not to the play, but to itself, expressed
In an emotion as of two people, as of two
Emotions becoming one. The actor is
A metaphysician in the dark, twanging
An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives
Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly
Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend,
Beyond which it has no will to rise.
__________It must
Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may
Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman
Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.

 

[bluerains]

wet eyes dear one

Of Modern Poetry
Wallace Stevens

The poem of the mind in the act of finding
What will suffice. It has not always had
To find: the scene was set; it repeated what
Was in the script.
______Then the theatre was changed
To something else. Its past was a souvenir.

It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
It has to face the men of the time and to meet
The women of the time. It has to think about war
And it has to find what will suffice. It has
To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage,
And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and
With meditation, speak words that in the ear,
In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,
Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound
Of which, an invisible audience listens,
Not to the play, but to itself, expressed
In an emotion as of two people, as of two
Emotions becoming one. The actor is
A metaphysician in the dark, twanging
An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives
Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly
Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend,
Beyond which it has no will to rise.
__________It must
Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may
Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman
Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.

u r a delight to the soul....blue

 

[bluerains]

praxis

u r a delight to the soul....blue

a word ..by this poet..cries...what say U...

 

[Angeline]

a word ..by this poet..cries...what say U...

I say his 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird is one of the most brilliant pieces of writing I've ever seen.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Wallace Stevens

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the black bird.

II

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

 

[bluerains]

omg

to see the beauty of rainbows of the dark flowing...is just delightful
I have longed to see souls who would see the colors of a boatailed grackle and the rainbow of colors thats shines on the wings of a raven...u rock...

I say his 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird is one of the most brilliant pieces of writing I've ever seen.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Wallace Stevens

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the black bird.

II

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

 

[The Mutt]

Crow Moon
by Tathagata ©

Brother crow left me feathers,
In childhood forests,
And perched high above in bare November trees
Told me of old things, in his chant-hoarsened voice.
Bringer of wisdom, bringer of death
Divine messenger, cosmic trickster
He put me on the path, lit by the March moon
My eyes see it twist and turn
But it is straight as the crow flies
In reality

 

[The Mutt]

My all time favorite poem:

Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.