Poem-a-Thon

[Guest]

The Wife: No Words Can Hold It

Lorna Crozier

The wife’s the last,
but I knew from the start.
As a kid I watched him
hang on the edges of things
to catch a glimpse. Across the schoolyard
his long gaze bent around my friends and me
to stroke her face. I wanted
what it was she had. No words can hold it,
now or then. A bird must feel it
in its wings, or a salmon rising.

Lately I follow him, drift to the edge
of town in my white nightgown,
sometimes a neighbor’s sprinkler
forgotten on the grass, its wish, wish, wish
wetting my feet. Most nights go like this
as far as I will go – I stare across the road
like a ghost who’s lost her was,
watch the curtains at her window
suck in and out as if the house itself is breathing.
So much life in her and mine in pieces.

I could make him choose,
but what’s the use? Fe married me
and she won’t have him
longer than a night.

When he slide between our sheets
near morning, he believes he keeps
her scent a secret. How can he not sense
my knowing? I curl around him,
pretending sleep, pray her smell
will soak into my skin and
he will take me hard
without the gentleness he thinks I want.

 

[RazzRajen]

Rilke

Extinguish Thou My Eyes


Extinguish Thou my eyes:I still can see Thee,
deprive my ears of sound:I still can hear Thee,
and without feet I still can come to Thee,
and without voice I still can call to Thee.

Sever my arms from me, I still will hold Thee
with all my heart as with a single hand,
arrest my heart, my brain will keep on beating,
and Should Thy fire at last my brain consume,
the flowing of my blood will carry Thee.


Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

-Rainer Maria Rilke

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Loneliness


Being apart and lonely is like rain.
It climbs toward evening from the ocean plains;
from flat places, rolling and remote, it climbs
to heaven, which is its old abode.
And only when leaving heaven drops upon the city.

It rains down on us in those twittering
hours when the streets turn their faces to the dawn,
and when two bodies who have found nothing,
dissapointed and depressed, roll over;
and when two people who despise eachother
have to sleep together in one bed-

that is when loneliness receives the rivers...


Translated by Robert Bly

-Rainer Maria Rilke


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Slumber Song


Some day, if I should ever lose you,
will you be able then to go to sleep
without me softly whispering above you
like night air stirring in the linden tree?

Without my waking here and watching
and saying words as tender as eyelids
that come to rest weightlessly upon your breast,
upon your sleeping limbs, upon your lips?

Without my touching you and leaving you
alone with what is yours, like a summer garden
that is overflowing with masses
of melissa and star-anise?



Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

-Rainer Maria Rilke

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Enjoy - as I have done reading his works

Razz

 

[Angeline]

Time to wake up this thread--

it was getting dozy

Anaphora
Elizabeth Bishop

In memory of Marjorie Carr Stevens


Each day with so much ceremony
begins, with birds, with bells,
with whistles from a factory;
such white-gold skies our eyes
first open on, such brilliant walls
that for a moment we wonder
"Where is the music coming from, the energy?
The day was meant for what ineffable creature
we must have missed?" Oh promptly he
appears and takes his earthly nature
instantly, instantly falls
victim of long intrigue,
assuming memory and mortal
mortal fatigue.

More slowly falling into sight
and showering into stippled faces,
darkening, condensing all his light;
in spite of all the dreaming
squandered upon him with that look,
suffers our uses and abuses,
sinks through the drift of bodies,
sinks through the drift of vlasses
to evening to the beggar in the park
who, weary, without lamp or book
prepares stupendous studies:
the fiery event
of every day in endless
endless assent.

 

[Angeline]

And one more breathtaking poem

from the late Elizabeth Bishop


Love Lies Sleeping

Earliest morning, switching all the tracks
that cross the sky from cinder star to star,
coupling the ends of streets
to trains of light.

now draw us into daylight in our beds;
and clear away what presses on the brain:
put out the neon shapes
that float and swell and glare

down the gray avenue between the eyes
in pinks and yellows, letters and twitching signs.
Hang-over moons, wane, wane!
From the window I see

an immense city, carefully revealed,
made delicate by over-workmanship,
detail upon detail,
cornice upon facade,

reaching up so languidly up into
a weak white sky, it seems to waver there.
(Where it has slowly grown
in skies of water-glass

from fused beads of iron and copper crystals,
the little chemical "garden" in a jar
trembles and stands again,
pale blue, blue-green, and brick.)

The sparrows hurriedly begin their play.
Then, in the West, "Boom!" and a cloud of smoke.
"Boom!" and the exploding ball
of blossom blooms again.

(And all the employees who work in plants
where such a sound says "Danger," or once said "Death,"
turn in their sleep and feel
the short hairs bristling

on backs of necks.) The cloud of smoke moves off.
A shirt is taken off a threadlike clothes-line.
Along the street below
the water-wagon comes

throwing its hissing, snowy fan across
peelings and newspapers. The water dries
light-dry, dark-wet, the pattern
of the cool watermelon.

I hear the day-springs of the morning strike
from stony walls and halls and iron beds,
scattered or grouped cascades,
alarms for the expected:

queer cupids of all persons getting up,
whose evening meal they will prepare all day,
you will dine well
on his heart, on his, and his,

so send them about your business affectionately,
dragging in the streets their unique loves.
Scourge them with roses only,
be light as helium,

for always to one, or several, morning comes
whose head has fallen over the edge of his bed,
whose face is turned
so that the image of

the city grows down into his open eyes
inverted and distorted. No. I mean
distorted and revealed,
if he sees it at all.

 

[thunderf64]

Post a poem you found and love in this thread. Did you find a new poet, maybe someone you think others may not have discovered? Are you discovering or resdiscovering a famous modern or classic poet? Post a few of his or her poems in this thread.

I read this to a lover once, many many years ago. It sparked somethign inside me.

Ronald


Elizabeth Barret Browning
A DEAD ROSE

O Rose! who dares to name thee?
No longer roseate now, nor soft, nor sweet;
But pale, and hard, and dry, as stubble-wheat,---
Kept seven years in a drawer---thy titles shame thee.

The breeze that used to blow thee
Between the hedgerow thorns, and take away
An odour up the lane to last all day,---
If breathing now,---unsweetened would forego thee.

The sun that used to smite thee,
And mix his glory in thy gorgeous urn,
Till beam appeared to bloom, and flower to burn,---
If shining now,---with not a hue would light thee.

The dew that used to wet thee,
And, white first, grow incarnadined, because
It lay upon thee where the crimson was,---
If dropping now,---would darken where it met thee.

The fly that lit upon thee,
To stretch the tendrils of its tiny feet,
Along thy leaf's pure edges, after heat,---
If lighting now,---would coldly overrun thee.

The bee that once did suck thee,
And build thy perfumed ambers up his hive,
And swoon in thee for joy, till scarce alive,---
If passing now,---would blindly overlook thee.

The heart doth recognise thee,
Alone, alone! The heart doth smell thee sweet,
Doth view thee fair, doth judge thee most complete,---
Though seeing now those changes that disguise thee.

Yes, and the heart doth owe thee
More love, dead rose! than to such roses bold
As Julia wears at dances, smiling cold!---
Lie still upon this heart---which breaks below thee!

 

[Angeline]

Re: Re: Poem-a-Thon

I read this to a lover once, many many years ago. It sparked somethign inside me.

Ronald

Oh this is great! Thank you for posting it! I reread some love poems by both the Brownings recently, (I read them last in college and thought them overwrought at the time). Some are very beautiful and quite erotic in a Victorian metaphoric sorta way. This is a great example.

 

[thunderf64]

Re: Re: Re: Poem-a-Thon

Oh this is great! Thank you for posting it! I reread some love poems by both the Brownings recently, (I read them last in college and thought them overwrought at the time). Some are very beautiful and quite erotic in a Victorian metaphoric sorta way. This is a great example.

No thank you. I reread this one and loved the rhymning scheme. i sent a quatrain to a frind to challenge her to write some poetry together.

I think YaHell ate it LOL

Ronald

 

[Guest]

THE BAD CHILD

One teacher made the bad child
crawl under her desk and stay there
till recess. It seems strangely sexual
to him now, the dark, the musky smell of her.
Another made the bad child stand
in a waste-paper basket, pushed
wet gum on the end of his nose.
He stood there till he fainted, keeled over
with a crash. One teacher hit the bad child
with the pointing stick when she spelled a word wrong in the spelling bee.
Another made the bad child rise,
show the class she had wet herself,
a yellow pool around her desk.
One teacher made the bad child eat his words
till he gagged on paper, mouth blue from ink.
One touched the child, so very bad,
where he wasn't supposed to,
another broke the bad child's toes
when she wouldn't stop skipping,
one cut off the bad child's fingers
because he drummed and drummed his desk.
One chopped the bad child into bits.
We watched her bury the body
beneath the monkey bars
where every winter on the cold metal
bad children leave their tongues.

Lorna Crozier

 

[Angeline]

Shel the Great

Tess that poem made me think of Shel Silverstein.

Where the Sidewalk Ends
Shel Silverstein

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

 

[Guest]

A poet who is new to me............

Like

by McKinley M. Hellenes


Like a freight train at 2 am
Like going nowhere on the handlebars of a bike
Like the reek of a fresh tattoo
Like a shoelace caught in the door
of a car already on its way

Like drunk sex in a grave yard
Like whiskey on an open wound
Like hair caught in somebody
else's fly

Like a sledgehammer
through a windshield like a
throat gathered in your fists
Like a face between your legs

Like a tattoo at 2 am
Like drunk sex on the handlebars of whiskey
Like the reek of a graveyard gathered in your fists
Like a shoelace caught in an open wound
Like a sledgehammer through the door
of a car going nowhere

Like a freight train
between

your legs


Like a
sledgehammer caight in your fists like a
a drunk freight train tattoo

Like the reek
of your legs doing nowhere
on the handlebars of an open wound
Like someone else's hair
gathered in a graveyard

Like a face caught between whiskey
and a throat through the windshiwld at 2


am


Unfortunately posting it here doesn't allow me to use the format the poet used.

 

[Angeline]

This is a great descriptive "place poem" I just read.

Broadway by Mark Doty

Under Grand Central's tattered vault
--maybe half a dozen electric stars still lit--
one saxophone blew, and a sheer black scrim

billowed over some minor constellation
under repair. Then, on Broadway, red wings
in a storefront tableau, lustrous, the live macaws

preening, beaks opening and closing
like those animated knives that unfold all night
in jewelers' windows. For sale,

glass eyes turned outward toward the rain,
the birds lined up like the endless flowers
and cheap gems, the makeshift tables

of secondhand magazines
and shoes the hawkers eye
while they shelter in the doorways of banks.

So many pockets and paper cups
and hands reeled over the weight
of that glittered pavement, and at 103rd

a woman reached to me across the wet roof
of a stranger's car and said, I'm Carlotta,
I'm hungry. She was only asking for change,

so I don't know why I took her hand.
The rooftops were glowing above us,
enormous, crystalline, a second city

lit from within. That night
a man on the downtown local stood up
and said, My name is Ezekiel,

I am a poet, and my poem this evening is called
fall. He stood up straight
to recite, a child reminded of his posture

by the gravity of his text, his hands
hidden in the pockets of his coat.
Love is protected, he said,

the way leaves are packed in snow,
the rubies of fall. God is protecting
the jewel of love for us.

He didn't ask for anything, but I gave him
all the change left in my pocket,
and the man beside me, impulsive, moved,

gave Ezekiel his watch.
It wasn't an expensive watch,
I don't even know if it worked,

but the poet started, then walked away
as if so much good fortune
must be hurried away from,

before anyone realizes it's a mistake.
Carlotta, her stocking cap glazed
like feathers in the rain,

under the radiant towers, the floodlit ramparts,
must have wondered at my impulse to touch her,
which was like touching myself,

the way your own hand feels when you hold it
because you want to feel contained.
She said, You get home safe now, you hear?

In the same way Ezekiel turned back
to the benevolent stranger.
I will write a poem for you tomorrow,

he said. The poem I will write will go like this:
Our ancestors are replenishing
the jewel of love for us.

 

[Guest]

This is a great descriptive "place poem" I just read.

Broadway by Mark Doty

I love that, Ange. You know me, I can't resist a descriptive work. Thanks for posting it here.

 

[Angeline]

I love that, Ange. You know me, I can't resist a descriptive work. Thanks for posting it here.

Oh yes, great stuff huh Tess? It's somehow harsh and delicate all at once.

 

[Tathagata]

Gustavo Bequer

Two red fire languages
that to a same trunk connected
they come near, and when kissing itself
they form a single flame.

Two notes that of laúd
at the same time the hand starts,
and in the space they are
and harmonious they are embraced.

Two waves that come together
to die on a beach
and that when breaking is crowned
with a silver plume.

Two steam shreds
that of the lake they rise,
and when meeting in the sky
they form a white cloud.

Two ideas that to the pair appear,
two kisses that at the same time explode,
two echoes that are confused,
that is our two souls.

 

[eagleyez]

<<<<< This Guy

Buk


man in the sun
she reads to me from the New Yorker
which I don't buy, don't know
how they get in here, but it's
something about the Mafia
one of the heads of the Mafia
who ate too much and had it too easy
too many fine women patting his
walnuts, and he got fat sucking at good
cigars and young breasts and he
has these heart attacks - and so
one day somebody is driving him
in his big car along the road
and he doesn't feel so good
and he asks the boy to stop and let
him out and the boy lays him out
along the road in the fine sunshine
and before he dies he says:
how beautiful life can be, and
then he's gone.

sometimes you've got to kill 4 or 5
thousand men before you somehow
get to believe that the sparrow
is immortal, money is piss and
that you have been wasting
your time.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Guest]

Coffee Mates
by Allan Brown (for Tom Wayman)

A tall new-on-the-job British Accent strides past,
confusing my morning's blink still further,
her breasts splashing like trumpets
through the staff lounge:
"Oh, you are a Creamer, too?"
and gone,but I undaunted,
attempting yet vigorously to dislodge
cup from pile from her annihilating,
out the door again and finally retire
also to my proper place
leaving the chairs (3)
and couches (4),
their leather new cushions
still dimpled, unrocked.

 

[jessy19]

We Reel Cool By Gwendolyn Brooks

This is one of my all time favs


We Reel Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

 

[jessy19]

Taught Me Purple

Taught Me Purple by Evelyn Tooley Hunt

My mother taught me purple
Although she never wore it.
Wash-gray was her circle,
The tenement her orbit..
My mother taught me golden
And held me up to see it,
Above the broken molding,
Beyond the filthy street.
My mother reached for beauty
And for its lack she died,
Who knew so much of duty
She could not teach me pride.

 

[Liar]

Philip Larkin

Ignorance
Strange to know nothing, never to be sure
Of what is true or right or real,
But forced to qualify or so I feel,
Or Well, it does seem so:
Someone must know.

Strange to be ignorant of the way things work:
Their skill at finding what they need,
Their sense of shape, and punctual spread of seed,
And willingness to change;
Yes, it is strange,

Even to wear such knowledge - for our flesh
Surrounds us with its own decisions -
And yet spend all our life on imprecisions,
That when we start to die
Have no idea why.



and the first poem I remember liking
This Be The Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

 

[Angeline]

Re: We Reel Cool By Gwendolyn Brooks

This is one of my all time favs


We Reel Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

I love Gwendolyn Brooks. She spoke with such simple but finely wrought eloquence.

my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell
by Gwendolyn Brooks

I hold my honey and I store my bread
In little jars and cabinets of my will.
I label clearly, and each latch and lid
I bid, Be firm till I return from hell.
I am very hungry. I am incomplete.
And none can give me any word but Wait,
The puny light. I keep my eyes pointed in;
Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt
Drag out to their last dregs and I resume
On such legs as are left me, in such heart
As I can manage, remember to go home,
My taste will not have turned insensitive
To honey and bread old purity could love.

 

[Guest]

Clip..........................

Philip Larkin


.... the first poem I remember liking

This Be The Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

That's wild! Me too.


Michael Ondaatje

The Distance of a Shout

We lived on the medieval coast
south of warrior kingdoms
during the ancient age of the winds
as they drove all things before them.

Monks from the north came
down our streams floating - that was
the year no one ate river fish.

There was no book of the forest,
no book of the sea, but these
are the places people died.

Handwriting occurred on waves,
on leaves, the scripts of smoke,
a sign on a bridge along the Mahaweli River.

A gradual acceptance of this new language.

 

[Cordelia]

Okay, maybe only us accountant/mathematician types can appreciate a love poem like this...

I was startled and delighted.

~~~~~~~
Internal Revenue
by J. Allyn Rosser



I have distracted rodents from their cheese,
Lured seasoned sirens with my melodies,
And brought some handsome statues to their knees.
I could not beguile you.

Having faced your shoulder, back and heel,
Borne the treadmarks of your fortune’s wheel,
Felt your indifference to what I feel,
My heart would not revile you.

Now I’ve shelved abiding passions, thrust
My childish cares aside, arranged my lusts:
Real property, silent partners, trusts.
-- I don’t know where to file you.


~~~~~~~

Okay, so I'm a sucker for love poems...



Cordelia

 

[Angeline]

Okay, maybe only us accountant/mathematician types can appreciate a love poem like this...

I was startled and delighted.

~~~~~~~
Internal Revenue
by J. Allyn Rosser



I have distracted rodents from their cheese,
Lured seasoned sirens with my melodies,
And brought some handsome statues to their knees.
I could not beguile you.

Having faced your shoulder, back and heel,
Borne the treadmarks of your fortune’s wheel,
Felt your indifference to what I feel,
My heart would not revile you.

Now I’ve shelved abiding passions, thrust
My childish cares aside, arranged my lusts:
Real property, silent partners, trusts.
-- I don’t know where to file you.


~~~~~~~

Okay, so I'm a sucker for love poems...



Cordelia

Cordie my friend that is just lovely. Now don't kill me when I tell you that the first line immediately made me think of this Billy Collins poem.

I Chop Some Parsely While Listening to Art Blakey's Version of Three Blind Mice


And I start wondering how they came to be blind.
If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister,
and I think of the poor mother
brooding over her sightless young triplets.

Or was it a common accident, all three caught
in a searing explosion, a firework perhaps?
If not,
if each came to his or her blindness separately,

how did they ever manage to find one another?
Would it not be difficult for a blind mouse
to locate even one fellow mouse with vision
let alone two other blind ones?

And how, in their tiny darkness,
could they possibly have run after a farmer's wife
or anyone else's wife for that matter?
Not to mention why.

Just so she could cut off their tails
with a carving knife, is the cynic's answer,
but the thought of them without eyes
and now without tails to trail through the moist grass

or slip around the corner of a baseboard
has the cynic who always lounges within me
up off his couch and at the window
trying to hide the rising softness that he feels.

By now I am on to dicing an onion
which might account for the wet stinging
in my own eyes, though Freddie Hubbard's
mournful trumpet on "Blue Moon,"

which happens to be the next cut,
cannot be said to be making matters any better.

 

[annaswirls]

Sumangala's Mother

I am a free woman

I am a free woman
at last free of slavery in the kitchen
where I walked back and forth
stained and squalid
among smelly cooking pots.
I got rid of
my brutal husband who ranked me lower
than the shade he sat in.
Purged of anger and the body's hunger
I meditate
in my own shade from a broad tree.

Here I am
serene.

~~~~~~~

okay quess what year this was written

the 1970's?
maybe the 20's?
2004?

Nope.
6th-3rd Centuries BCE

 

[annaswirls]

Anon. Sanskrit

When he comes back

When he comes back
to my arms

I'll make him feel
what nobody ever felt

everywhere
me
vanishing into him

like water
into the clay of a new jar


5th century BC


from the book I highly recommend checking out from your library

Voices of Light

Spiritual and Visionary Poems by women around the world from ancient sumeria to now.

Edited by Aliki Barnstone