Poem-a-Thon

[Angeline]

Zipping forward in time

to the 13th century. here are a few from Rumi, the brilliant Persian mystic--

Love rests on no foundation.
It is an endless ocean,
with no beginning or end.
Imagine,
a suspended ocean,
riding on a cushion of ancient secrets.
All souls have drowned in it,
and now dwell there.
One drop of that ocean is hope,
and the rest is fear.

*****

The Lovers
will drink wine night and day.
They will drink until they can
tear away the veils of intellect and
melt away the layers of shame and modesty.
When in Love,
body, mind, heart and soul don't even exist.
Become this,
fall in Love,
and you will not be separated again.

*****

I Saw Goodness Getting Drunk


I am gone,
lost any sense of wanting the wine
of the nowhereness ask me,
I don't know where I am.
At times I plunge
to the bottom of the sea,
at times, rise up
like the Sun.
At times, the universe is pregnant by me,
at times I give birth to it.
The milestone in my life
is the nowhereness,
I don't fit anywhere else.
This is me:
a rogue and a drunkard,
easy to spot
in the tavern of Lovers.
I am the one shouting hey ha.
They ask me why I don't
behave myself.
I say, when you
reveal your true nature,
then I will act my age.
Last night, I saw Goodness getting drunk.
He growled and said,
I am a nuisance, a nuisance.
A hundred souls cried out, but
we are yours, we are yours, we are yours.
You are the light
that spoke to Moses and said
I am God, I am God, I am God.
I said Shams-e Tabrizi, who are you?
He said, I am you, I am you, I am you.


~All translations from Persian by Shahram Shiva

 

[Syndra Lynn]

Phenomenal Woman

Phenomenal Woman

- Maya Angelou



Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

 

[upfront]

I guess this just isn't the place to say that Tristesse has a lovely pair of breasts ...

Love the Ondaatje poems (he says, trying to rescue his post with something vaguely relevant).

Love Ange too ... but it's been a while!

 

[Angeline]

I guess this just isn't the place to say that Tristesse has a lovely pair of breasts ...

Love the Ondaatje poems (he says, trying to rescue his post with something vaguely relevant).

Love Ange too ... but it's been a while!

uppppppyyyyyy!!!!

Love you too, dear friend--you have a pm.

 

[Syndra Lynn]

21st Century Rock

Song lyrics from one of my favorite new poets-

Of course when I sing along with it in the car, I substitute my own daughter's name (same syllables and and rhythm) and cry every time!

-------


Zoe Jane Lyrics - 14 Shades Of Grey Album - Staind - Aaron Lewis

Well I want you to notice
To notice when I'm not around
I know your eyes see straight through me
And speak to me without a sound

And I want to hold you
Protect you from all the things I've already endured
And I want to show you
To show you all of the things that this life has in store for you
I'll always love you
The way a father sould love his daughter

When I walked out this morning
I cried as I walked to the door
I cried about how long I'd be away
I cried about leaving you alone

And I want to hold you
Protect you from all the things I've already endured
And I want to show you
To show you all of the things that this life has in store for you
I'll always love you
The way a father sould love his daughter

Sweet Zoe Jane
Sweet Zoe Jane

So I wanted to say this
'cause I wouldn't know where to begin
To explain to you what I have been through
To explain where your daddy has been

And I want to hold you
Protect you from all the things I've already endured
And I want to show you
To show you all of the things that this life has in store for you
I'll always love you
The way a father sould love his daughter

Sweet Zoe Jane
Sweet Zoe Jane

 

[Angeline]

Linda Pastan, who has published 12 collections of poetry, just won the coveted Lilly Poetry Award. The award, which carries a $100,000 USD prize (one of the largest in the USA), is sponsored by The Poetry Foundation (and Poetry Magazine). Here's one of her latest.

THE OBLIGATION TO BE HAPPY
by Linda Pastan

It is more onerous
than the rites of beauty
or housework, harder than love.
But you expect it of me casually,
the way you expect the sun
to come up, not in spite of rain
or clouds but because of them.
And so I smile, as if my own fidelity
to sadness were a hidden vice--
that downward tug on my mouth,
my old suspicion that health
and love are brief irrelevancies,
no more than laughter in the warm dark
strangled at dawn.
Happiness. I try to hoist it
on my narrow shoulders again--
a knapsack heavy with gold coins.
I stumble around the house,
bump into things.
Only Midas himself
would understand.

 

[Angeline]

This poem has been in my head all morning and I totally love it, so what the hell--I'm posting it.

THE CAT AND THE MOON

by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

THE cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For, wander and wail as he would,
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet,
What better than call a dance?
Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion,
A new dance turn.
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.
Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.

 

[Guest]

After Image

by Penn Kemp


Tender, the moment when the lion
licks its caught prey in the face
cupped between soft paws.

Long tongue on zebra hide.
A kind of indolent yawn
after the swirl of dust, the flailing hoof.

This moment looks like love
to the safe observer bedded down

as the film rolls. The zebra seems
steeped in peace, adrenaline

overload just before its eyes
glaze over. Give over

for ever

as if time could hold. If it could last

before the first bite. The blood
letting. Go. The lion on cue lolls,

sur

renders fierce intent

to savour first juice.

 

[Angeline]

I Sit by the Window
Joseph Brodsky

I said fate plays a game without a score,
and who needs fish if you've got caviar?
The triumph of the Gothic style would come to pass
and turn you on--no need for coke, or grass.
I sit by the window. Outside, an aspen.
When I loved, I loved deeply. It wasn't often.

I said the forest's only part of a tree.
Who needs the whole girl if you've got her knee?
Sick of the dust raised by the modern era,
the Russian eye would rest on an Estonian spire.
I sit by the window. The dishes are done.
I was happy here. But I won't be again.

I wrote: The bulb looks at the flower in fear,
and love, as an act, lacks a verb; the zero
Euclid thought the vanishing point became
wasn't math--it was the nothingness of Time.
I sit by the window. And while I sit
my youth comes back. Sometimes I'd smile. Or spit.

I said that the leaf may destory the bud;
what's fertile falls in fallow soil--a dud;
that on the flat field, the unshadowed plain
nature spills the seeds of trees in vain.
I sit by the window. Hands lock my knees.
My heavy shadow's my squat company.

My song was out of tune, my voice was cracked,
but at least no chorus can ever sing it back.
That talk like this reaps no reward bewilders
no one--no one's legs rest on my shoulders.
I sit by the window in the dark. Like an express,
the waves behind the wavelike curtain crash.

A loyal subject of these second-rate years,
I proudly admit that my finest ideas
are second-rate, and may the future take them
as trophies of my struggle against suffocation.
I sit in the dark. And it would be hard to figure out
which is worse; the dark inside, or the darkness out.

 

[Angeline]

Jingle
Kevin Young

Put me on the rack
in the back

sweetie, demote
& discount me

Carry me down
to the basement, low

low prices, one
night only!

Honey I wants
to be free

with purchase
lagniappe on

the side — a street
or commercial

break, an ache

 

[Guest]

Goddess Bless Tim Horton

by Karen Godson


Every morning on the train
I watch her
methodically spreading
strawberry jam on her
muesli bagel
with a plastic knife.
Clenched between her thighs,
her hot
double-double awaits
its turn at her
sweet lips.
A jerk and a bump
and the lucky strawberry jam
is spread across her
already delicious palm.
I want to offer to lick it off
but it's too early
in the morning
to have a jam handprint
on my face.

 

[Angeline]

I'm in a vilanelle state of mind...

To Eva Descending the Stair
Sylvia Plath

Clocks cry: stillness is a lie, my dear;
The wheels revolve, the universe keeps running.
(Proud you halt upon the spiral stair.)

The asteroids turn traitor in the air,
And planets plot with old elliptic cunning;
Clocks cry: stillness is a lie, my dear.

Red the unraveled rose sings in your hair:
Blood springs eternal if the heart be burning.
(Proud you halt upon the spiral stair.)

Cryptic stars wind up the atmosphere,
In solar schemes the tilted suns go turning;
Clocks cry: stillness is a lie, my dear.

Loud the immortal nightingales declare:
Love flames forever if the flesh be yearning.
(Proud you halt upon the spiral stair.)

Circling zodiac compels the year.
Intolerant beauty never will be learning.
Clocks cry: stillness is a lie, my dear.
(Proud you halt upon the spiral stair.)

 

[Angeline]

And one more

(I love this one)

The Philosopher's Content
Mark Strand

This melancholy moment will remain,
So, too, the oracle beyond the gate,
And always the tower, the boat, the distant train.

Somewhere to the south a Duke is slain,
A war is won. Here, it is too late.
This melancholy moment will remain.

Here, an autumn evening without rain,
Two artichokes abandoned on a crate,
And always the tower, the boat, the distant train.

Is this another scene of childhood pain?
Why do the clockhands say 1:28?
This melancholy moment will remain.

The green and yellow light of love's domain
Falls upon the joylessness of fate,
And always the tower, the boat, the distant train.

The things our vision wills us to contain,
The life of objects, their unbearable weight.
This melancholy moment will remain,
And always the tower, the boat, the distant train

 

[denis hale]

Hi Ange!

I don't know if you've heard of this guy or not.

But he's really good.



Here's three of em. His name is David Ignatow.



WITH THE SUN'S FIRE

Are you a horror?
Do you have eyes peering at you
from within at the back of your skull
as you look out in front,
managing to act perfectly calm
and self-possessed, while knowing
you are being watched by a stranger
who without your consent
or prior knowledge examines your acts
of kindness and largesse to make you
feel an emptiness therein?

Those eyes are hollowed, polished bone.
Be well, I am seated beside you,
planning a day's work.
We are contending with the stuff
of stones and stars,
with water, air--
with dirt, with food
and with the sun's fire.


A TIME OF NIGHT

My mouth to utter a cry
that would have the street fall silent
and traffic halt, in despair with itself.
No such luck. No one will jump
into my grave. You keep reading this
with curiosity. We are in the world
dying together
but scanning these words

you see me die alone
Look up
and study those who
to themselves
are persons, to everyone else
a time of morning,
a time of night.


THOUGHTS

Smash myself against a wall
to feel how deeply I love life
as I die in protest
at the silence in routine work
to keep a house.

Silent house
its anguish stilled in bed
under covers in the night
of no history and no memory.
Night without appetite,
zero night, ringing ears
listening to silence of no future.
Night of fixation on death,
seeking it like sex,
pursuing it awake and in dreams
and token deeds
to bring it on-- and then
laughter
of a pepsi cola kid
outside who howls his adolescence,
smashes his bottle on the curb.
I laugh. He is in my company,
with the first smashed bottle.

 

[Angeline]

Re: Hi Ange!

I don't know if you've heard of this guy or not.

But he's really good.



Here's three of em. His name is David Ignatow.



WITH THE SUN'S FIRE

Are you a horror?
Do you have eyes peering at you
from within at the back of your skull
as you look out in front,
managing to act perfectly calm
and self-possessed, while knowing
you are being watched by a stranger
who without your consent
or prior knowledge examines your acts
of kindness and largesse to make you
feel an emptiness therein?

Those eyes are hollowed, polished bone.
Be well, I am seated beside you,
planning a day's work.
We are contending with the stuff
of stones and stars,
with water, air--
with dirt, with food
and with the sun's fire.


A TIME OF NIGHT

My mouth to utter a cry
that would have the street fall silent
and traffic halt, in despair with itself.
No such luck. No one will jump
into my grave. You keep reading this
with curiosity. We are in the world
dying together
but scanning these words

you see me die alone
Look up
and study those who
to themselves
are persons, to everyone else
a time of morning,
a time of night.


THOUGHTS

Smash myself against a wall
to feel how deeply I love life
as I die in protest
at the silence in routine work
to keep a house.

Silent house
its anguish stilled in bed
under covers in the night
of no history and no memory.
Night without appetite,
zero night, ringing ears
listening to silence of no future.
Night of fixation on death,
seeking it like sex,
pursuing it awake and in dreams
and token deeds
to bring it on-- and then
laughter
of a pepsi cola kid
outside who howls his adolescence,
smashes his bottle on the curb.
I laugh. He is in my company,
with the first smashed bottle.

I hadn't and he is. Thanks Denis!


Ange

 

[denis hale]

You're very welcome Ange!

 

[Guest]

Friendship After Love
By Ella Wheeler Wilcox

After the fierce midsummer all ablaze
Has burned itself to ashes, and expires
In the intensity of its own fires,
There come the mellow, mild, St. Martin days
Crowned with the calm of peace, but sad with haze.
So after Love has led us, till he tires
Of his own throes, and torments, and desires,
Comes large-eyed friendship: with a restful gaze,
He beckons us to follow, and across
Cool verdant vales we wander free from care.
Is it a touch of frost lies in the air?
Why are we haunted with a sense of loss?
We do not wish the pain back, or the heat;
And yet, and yet, these days are incomplete.

 

[RazzRajen]

a lovely poem for the season

That was sent to Me and deserves reading

Metamorphosis By Mary Sarton

Always it happens when we are not there--
The tree leaps up alive into the air,
Small open parasols of Chinese green
Wave on each twig. But who has ever seen
The latch sprung, the bud as it burst?
Spring always manages to get there first.

Lovers of wind, who will have been aware
Of a faint stirring in the empty air,
Look up one day through a dissolving screen
To find no star, but this multiplied green,
Shadow on shadow, singing sweet and clear.
Listen, lovers of wind, the leaves are here!

 

[Angeline]

Chutzpah

is a Yiddish word that means "nerve," as in "Boy has she got a nerve!" And I do because this is my own poem, published about six months ago at Poets Against the War. I just reread it. It's timely and I like it, lol, so I don't care--here it is.

Glossolalia

My voice is speaking
in tongues you cannot hear,
or will not listen
to voices crying over and over.

This is not glory.
This false hubris

is dead faces in gas masks
or bodies falling from boats
and filling the Atlantic,

where daddy was a medic in the
Third Wave.

There was no glory,
he said to me
or the night sky.

There was no honor.
Just death and surf,
and death and sand,
and death and death.

Innocence ripped
from exhausted boys,
knee deep in malaria
in north Africa and Bataan.

In Mei Lai the flames of children
screaming in Treblinka
or vaporized flash gone
in Nagasaki.

Children rolling over deserts
rife with land mines,
the legless ones who never walked,
hollow eyes in camps,
hordes hungering in mountain passes.

And even senseless children firing
the last of their innocence
at children sprawled
on the thorns of death
over art history and
organic chemistry books
on a warm spring morning.

We march into the unknown
only to discover
what mothers always know:

It’s just someone else’s child.

It’s all the same in the end,
all this marching
and cheering and waving
goes on and on and on,
but nobody ever owns
the world.

 

[Angeline]

Tess, Check this out

I bet you'll like this--it's so good.

Anne Marie Macari (currently featured at Copper Canyon Press)


Parable

The parable of the pears was the one never repeated
because it has to do with sex, and more than sex it was Jesus at his best showing them secrets
about the different kinds of love. There was a pear
whose brown skin had the whole rough hillside in it,
but inside so sweet he had to lie down to eat it,
and a more rare, red-skinned pear. It had no shame.
The harsh Jesus of the figs and vines
was undone, thankful, he was brimming,
in his mouth that taste he could never confide,
they would never believe him, they still wore
the dullness, they still thought day to day,
something simple might change their lives if only
they listened, if only they forgot everything they knew, something of heaven would sprout
from their mouths if only they were ready for its flavor.

 

[Angeline]

Good one for Mother's Day

Lullaby of a Single Mother
Jenny Factor (another Copper Canyon poet--the italics at the end are part of the original formatting)

The light can only carve so much. The night
is a cricket-pressing darkness, a wet wool coat,
through the open screen, through the unlit rooms,

and my son, squatting in the light’s circle,
shows me how he makes eight trucks go,
and then doesn’t show me. His story plays itself
on the one-room stage our light’s carved out:

Echoes of the stories I read him in his stories.
Echoes of the language I leave him in the night.
Echoes of the history I cannot say,

the ache of the body’s want, the office day,
the papers in the clip on the unlit desk
and the tiny drama where they were left.
How language, simply language, sinks me;

how a workday “No” or “You” can make
my chest slope, my shoes feel tight,
my clothes ill-fit. But now here he sits

in his patch of light:

I bulldoze rocks. I cut the hay.
I wash the sand. I smooth the road.
I lay the tar. I dig holes deep.

I hum my mother’s world to sleep.

I smooth the road. I like to grate.
I bulldoze sand. I lay the tar.

I dump my load. I drag a rake.
I sing my mother back awake.

I sing my mother back awake.

 

[Guest]

Re: Tess, Check this out

I bet you'll like this--it's so good.

Anne Marie Macari (currently featured at Copper Canyon Press)


Parable

The parable of the pears was the one never repeated
because it has to do with sex, and more than sex it was Jesus at his best showing them secrets
about the different kinds of love. There was a pear
whose brown skin had the whole rough hillside in it,
but inside so sweet he had to lie down to eat it,
and a more rare, red-skinned pear. It had no shame.
The harsh Jesus of the figs and vines
was undone, thankful, he was brimming,
in his mouth that taste he could never confide,
they would never believe him, they still wore
the dullness, they still thought day to day,
something simple might change their lives if only
they listened, if only they forgot everything they knew, something of heaven would sprout
from their mouths if only they were ready for its flavor.

You're right, Ange. I do love it. But I have to wonder why you thought of me..........



it was the sex thing - wasn't it?

 

[Angeline]

Re: Re: Tess, Check this out

You're right, Ange. I do love it. But I have to wonder why you thought of me..........



it was the sex thing - wasn't it?

Well ok, probably, lol--but so well done, eh?

 

[Angeline]

Rodger Kamenetz
(featured in the current online issuse of Exquisite Corpse Journal


Removal
--for my friend on the occasion of his cremation

They removed the day from my foot
They removed the hair from my hair
Drinks were served in my former house
in the sunlight where I hid

They removed the pain from my feeling
They removed the eye from my hand
Now wherever I look is gone
in a shadow cut of shadows

How could they lift me out of my bed?
How could they drop me into the fire?
How could they kiss me on the dry lip
with my forehead in forever?

On that morning, a yellow bird sailed
with its tiny beak of flame
The arrow lost its tip
It is only motion now



Vows
for Moira

I have entered you again
with your blonde cigarette in the mouth of poetry
with your fragrant bed, with your sweat ocean
the seaweed climbing through the floor.

I have entered you again
my night inside your pillow, my hair inside your mouth
the long slow digestion of the juicy peach
the owl that no one knows, the crow in his dock

testify against human words

Now and forever I will be the hand on your hand
the mouth on your neck the eye in your skin
here and tomorrow night
here and history

So long as I can hear you
I will swim with your name in my mouth
I will marry you again and again

 

[Merrymaker]

Ivon Gordon Vailakis

The Women From Potamies

wrap their hair with sage.

They walk the stoned covered streets
like birds leaving the nest
and with their shadows they illuminate the way.

They catch the footsteps from the sun
and let time rest on their backs.
Their faces are scorched by the Cretan wind
their faces recognize dreams

so they won’t tumble.

They rock the warmth of the afternoon.
with their rough hands.
They peel walnuts
and mix the syrup of their dreams
with coral threads.

Naked before dusk
they pray for the heavenly traces of the earth
they pray for the bushes, they pray for the oak trees
they pray for the fragrance of the olives.
Their body is embellished with oil and oregano.

They cook with herbs that grow next to the bushes
and season them with syrup made from tenderness
simmered in the zomba.
They add oregano to the lure of the afternoon.
They sit in the balcony of the sky
and they look at the ground and the oak leaves
sharing with them delights and sorrows.

The wind whispers at their backs
and embraces them like leaves.

They peel oranges and chew corals.
From their mouth a breath of island escapes.