Poem-a-Thon

[foehn]

One of my favorites:

I Knew a Woman

by Theodore Roethke


I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin:
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing did we make.)

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)

 

[foehn]

... and one more, since I'm having fun!

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evenings full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear the lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

-- William Butler Yeats

 

[foehn]

(one more for versatility's sake!)

Keeping Things Whole


In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

-- Mark Strand

 

[foehn]

(please don't hate me)

John Berryman

The Dream Songs - 14

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. After
all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, we
ourselves flash and yearn, and moreover my mother
told me as a boy (repeatingly) 'Ever to confess
you're bored means you have no

Inner Resources.' I conclude now I have no inner
resources, because I am heavy bored. Peoples bore
me, literature bores me, especially great literature.
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes as bad as
achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me. And
the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag and somehow a
dog has taken itself & its tail considerably away into
mountains or sea or sky, leaving behind:
me, wag.

 

[Angeline]

(the translation from Farsi--not by me, lol--is a little rough, but you'll get the idea anyway.)

Window
Forugh Farrokhzad

One window is sufficient
One window for beholding
One window for hearing
One window
resembling a well's ring
reaching the earth at the finiteness of its heart
and opening towards the expanse of this repetitive blue kindness
one window filing the small hands of loneliness
with nocturnal benevolence
of the fragrance of wondrous stars
and thereof,
one can summon the sun
to the alienation of geraniums.

One window will suffice me.

I come from the homeland of dolls
from beneath the shades of paper-trees
in the garden of a picture book
from the dry seasons of impotent experiences in friendship and love
in the soil-covered alleys of innocence
from the years of growing pale alphabet letters
behind the desks of the tuberculous school
from the minute that children could write "stone"
on the blackboard
and the frenzied starlings would fly away
from the ancient tree.

I come from the midst of carnivorous plant roots
and my brain is still overflowed
by a butterfly's terrifying shriek
crucified with pins
onto a notebook.

When my trust was suspended from the fragile thread of justice
and in the whole city
they were chopping up my heart's lanterns
when they would blindfold me
with the dark handkerchief of Law
and from my anxios temples of desire
fountains of blood would squirt out
when my life had become nothing
nothing
but the tic-tac of a clock,
I discovered
I must
must
must love,
insanely.

One window will suffice me
one window to the moment of awareness
observance
and silence.
now,
the walnut sapling
has grown so tall that it can interpret the wall
by its youthful leaves.

Ask the mirror
the redeemer's name.
Isn't the shivering earth beneath your feet lonelier than you?
the prophets brought the mission of destruction to our century
aren't these consecutive explosions
and poisonous clouds
the reverberation of the sacred verses?
You,
comrad,
brother,
confidant,
when your reach the moon
write the history of flower massacres.

Dreams always plunge down from their naive height
and die.
I smell the four-petal clover
which has grown on the tomb of archaic meanings.

Wasn't the woman
buried in the shroud of anticipation and innocence,
my youth?

Will I step up the stairs of curiosity
to greet the good God who strolls on the rooftop?

I feel that "time" has passed
I feel that "moment" is my share of history's pages
I feel that "desk" is a feigned distance
between my tresses
and the hands of this sad stranger.

Talk to me
What else would the one offering the kindness of a live flesh want from
you?
but the understanding of the sensation of existence.

Talk to me
I am in the window's refuge
I have a relationship with the Sun.

 

[Angeline]

Border Walls
Forugh Farrokhzad (1935-1967)

Now, again in the silent night,
sequestrant walls, border walls
like plants entwine,
so they may be the guardians of my love.

Now, again the town's evil murmurs,
like agitated schools of fish,
flee the darkness of my extremities.

Now, again windows rediscover themselves
in the pleasure of contact with scattered perfumes,
and trees, in slumberous orchards, shed their bark,
and soil, with its thousand inlets
inhales the dizzy particles of the moon.

***
Now
come closer
and listen
to the anguished beats of my love,
that spread
like the tom-tom of African drums
along the tribe of my limbs.

I, feel.
I know
which moment
is the moment of prayer.

Now stars
are lovers.

In night's refuge,
from innermost breezes, I waft.
In night's refuge, I
tumble madly forth
with my ample tresses, in your palms,
and I offer you the equatorial flowers of this young tropic.

Come with me,
come to that star with me
that is centuries away
from earth's concretion and futile scales,
and no one there
is afraid of light.

On islands adrift upon the waters, I breathe.
I am in search of a share in the expansive sky,
void of the swell of vile thoughts.

Refer with me,
refer with me
to the source of all being,
to the sanctified center of a single origin,
to the moment I was created from you
refer with me,
I am not complete from you.

Now,
on the peaks of my breasts,
doves are flying.
Now,
within the cocoon of my lips,
butterfly kisses are immersed in thoughts of flight.
Now,
the altar of my body
is ready for love's worship.

Refer with me,
I'm powerless to speak
because I love you,
because "I love you" is a phrase
from the world of futilities
and antiquities and redundancies.
Refer with me,
I'm powerless to speak.

In night's refuge, let me make love to the moon,
let me be filled
with tiny raindrops,
with undeveloped hearts,
with the volume of the unborn,
let me be filled.
Maybe my love
will cradle the birth of another Christ.

 

[Angeline]

Standing Still for the Night
Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
(Translated from the Irish by Brian Crowe)

Cast your dark line
over broken tides.
Blanket the blank spaces.
Stars spring
from your cracks
and the moon rides
in your pocket.

Cast it like shadows
flown from your back.
Hold
that
pose.
Take into you
canyon and wood.

Late nights when
we were together
busying ourselves
in barrooms,
I’d enjoy
our ignorance.

Now I wait for our lines
to potentially collide;
you will hear the gossip
that takes away my
breath.

For I’m not whole,
nor was I ever clean.
But it’s me still:
a woman on the line,
bleached and brittle
like old paper.

Cast your nets overseas
and land on your
shadow. My thoughts
will blow away
the canyon walls
and wind will wheeze
through.

 

[Angeline]

After Sunset
Grace Hazard Conkling
1878-1958

I have an understanding with the hills
At evening when the slanted radiance fills
Their hollows, and the great winds let them be,
And they are quiet and look down at me.
Oh, then I see the patience in their eyes
Out of the centuries that made them wise.
They lend me hoarded memory and I learn
Their thoughts of granite and their whims of fern,
And why a dream of forests must endure
Though every tree be slain: and how the pure,
Invisible beauty has a word so brief
A flower can say it or a shaken leaf,
But few may ever snare it in a song,
Though for the quest a life is not too long.
When the blue hills grow tender, when they pull
The twilight close with gesture beautiful,
And shadows are their garments, and the air
Deepens, and the wild veery is at prayer, --
Their arms are strong around me; and I know
That somehow I shall follow when you go
To the still land beyond the evening star,
Where everlasting hills and valleys are:
And silence may not hurt us any more,
And terror shall be past, and grief, and war.

 

[Tathagata]

After Sunset
Grace Hazard Conkling
1878-1958

I have an understanding with the hills
At evening when the slanted radiance fills
Their hollows, and the great winds let them be,
And they are quiet and look down at me.
Oh, then I see the patience in their eyes
Out of the centuries that made them wise.
They lend me hoarded memory and I learn
Their thoughts of granite and their whims of fern,
And why a dream of forests must endure
Though every tree be slain: and how the pure,
Invisible beauty has a word so brief
A flower can say it or a shaken leaf,
But few may ever snare it in a song,
Though for the quest a life is not too long.
When the blue hills grow tender, when they pull
The twilight close with gesture beautiful,
And shadows are their garments, and the air
Deepens, and the wild veery is at prayer, --
Their arms are strong around me; and I know
That somehow I shall follow when you go
To the still land beyond the evening star,
Where everlasting hills and valleys are:
And silence may not hurt us any more,
And terror shall be past, and grief, and war.

Irish you say??
who'd have thunk it


It's beautiful

 

[foehn]

*weep*

*weep, weep* (re: previous poem)

Must be my mood of late. In keeping with that, here's one by Carlos Gorostiza.

I'm posting it with the original Spanish, since it's my translation.

A note: "media naranja" in Spanish is half an orange, but often used colloquiallly to mean one's soul mate. An orange is ridiculously cheap, especially in Argentina, native country of this author.

Spanish (original) first: scroll down for a translation.
[The original rhymes. I'm not that good at translation. And besides, nothing rhymes with "orange."]
=====================================


¿QUIEN ME COMPRA UNA NARANJA?

--Carlos Gorostiza



¿Quién me compra una naranja
para mi consolación?
Una naranja madura
en forma de corazón.

La sal del mar en los labios,
¡Ay de mí!
la sal del mar en las venas
y en los labios recogí.

Nadie me diera los suyos
para besar.
La blanda espiga de un beso
yo no la puedo segar.

Nadie pidiera mi sangre
para beber.
Yo mismo no sé si corre
o si deja de correr.

Cómo se pierden las barcas,
¡Ay de mí!
cómo se pierden las nubes
y las barcas, me perdí.

Y pues nadie me lo pide,
ya no tengo corazón.
¿Quién me compra una naranja
para mi consolación?

-------

Who Will Buy Me an Orange?

--Carlos Gorostiza


Who will buy me an orange
in order to console me?
A ripe orange
shaped like a heart.

The salt of the sea on my lips,
oh my!
The salt of the sea in my veins
and my lips I took in again.

No one would give me theirs
to kiss.
I can no longer harvest
the tender shoot of a kiss.

No one would ask
to drink of my blood.
I myself don’t know if it flows
or stops flowing.

As ships are lost,
oh my!
as clouds are lost,
and ships, I lost myself.

And since no one asks it of me,
I no longer have a heart.
Who will buy me an orange
in order to console me?


~

 

[Angeline]

Re: *weep*

*weep, weep* (re: previous poem)

Must be my mood of late. In keeping with that, here's one by Carlos Gorostiza.

I'm posting it with the original Spanish, since it's my translation.

A note: "media naranja" in Spanish is half an orange, but often used colloquiallly to mean one's soul mate. An orange is ridiculously cheap, especially in Argentina, native country of this author.

Spanish (original) first: scroll down for a translation.
[The original rhymes. I'm not that good at translation. And besides, nothing rhymes with "orange."]
=====================================


¿QUIEN ME COMPRA UNA NARANJA?

--Carlos Gorostiza



¿Quién me compra una naranja
para mi consolación?
Una naranja madura
en forma de corazón.

La sal del mar en los labios,
¡Ay de mí!
la sal del mar en las venas
y en los labios recogí.

Nadie me diera los suyos
para besar.
La blanda espiga de un beso
yo no la puedo segar.

Nadie pidiera mi sangre
para beber.
Yo mismo no sé si corre
o si deja de correr.

Cómo se pierden las barcas,
¡Ay de mí!
cómo se pierden las nubes
y las barcas, me perdí.

Y pues nadie me lo pide,
ya no tengo corazón.
¿Quién me compra una naranja
para mi consolación?

-------

Who Will Buy Me an Orange?

--Carlos Gorostiza


Who will buy me an orange
in order to console me?
A ripe orange
shaped like a heart.

The salt of the sea on my lips,
oh my!
The salt of the sea in my veins
and my lips I took in again.

No one would give me theirs
to kiss.
I can no longer harvest
the tender shoot of a kiss.

No one would ask
to drink of my blood.
I myself don’t know if it flows
or stops flowing.

As ships are lost,
oh my!
as clouds are lost,
and ships, I lost myself.

And since no one asks it of me,
I no longer have a heart.
Who will buy me an orange
in order to console me?


~

Los poetas de Suramérica escriben los poemas que roban el corazón.

(And the Conkling poem made me weep, too).

 

[Angeline]

Welfare Rights
Carol Tarlan

Don't never tell nobody
you're on welfare
not even your
best friend
he still
might dump scorn
on your face and hands
thinking behind his
smile you're a degenerate
lay-about sloth
dog shit and
you don't even own no
dog not bein able to
purchase pet food
with food stamps
no baby don't even
whisper welfare
specially when you hitch
a ride with a pressed
and shiny pro-
fessional man or a
laborin dude with
grease stains on his pants
and they just have to
know how you live
as if your stretched out
raggedy thumb didn't already
say it all
and so you grunt
I get these checks in
the mail on the 1st and
15th of each month
and then by some cosmic
consciousness or just ordin-
ary street sense they
decide you're desperate
for anything and they
leer and rub their
scorpion legs against
yours
offerin $10 or $100 dependin
on what they're wearing
and you got to be polite and
innocent and lower your eyes
real sugary
just like your mama
taught you muttering
No Thank You Sir
when you're burning up
inside and your finger
nails just achin for
some blood

 

[foehn]

yeah, nice

good old Google: "Did you mean, Carol Tarlen?

http://www.pemmicanpress.com/articles/carol-tarlen.html

 

[annaswirls]

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.


It doesn't interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.


It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life's betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.


I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.


I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to
be careful
be realistic
remember the limitations of being human.


It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.


I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.


I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
"Yes."


It doesn't interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.


It doesn't interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.


It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.


I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.




by
Oriah Mountain Dreamer

 

[tungtied2u]

The All Purpose Country and Western Self Pity Song

by Kit Wright

He jumped off the box-car
In Eastbourne, the beast born
In him was too hungry to hide:

His neck in grief's grommet,
He groaned through his vomit
At the churn
And the Yearn
At the turn
Of the tide.

He headed him soon
For a sad-lit saloon
In back of the edge of the strand,
Where a man almost ended
Sat down and extended

His speckled,
Blue-knuckled
And cuckolded
Hand.

Cried,The wind broke my marriage in two.
Clean through the bones of it,
Christ how it blew!
I got no tomorrow
And sorrow
Is tough to rescind:
So forgive me if I should break wind, son,
Forgive me
If I should break wind.

At this the bartender
Addressed the agenda,
A dish-cloth kept dabbing his eye
Said, Pardon intrusion
Upon your effusion
Of loss but none wooed it
Or rued it
As I

For after the eve of Yvonne,
My God, how it hurts now the woman is gone!
Heart-sick as a dog,
I roll on like a log
Down the roaring black river
Where once sailed
A swan.

Then the dog on the floor,
Who'd not spoken before,
Growled, Ain't it the truth you guys said?
I may be a son-
Of -a-bitch but that bitch

Was my Sun
And she dumped me,
The bitch did,
For dead.

So three lonely guys in the night and a hound
Drank up, and they headed them out to the Sound,
Threw up, then they threw themselves
In and they
Drowned.

O dee-o-dayee
o dee-o-dayee
Woe-woe-dalayee

 

[Angeline]

I saw this in a journal today. I think it's a stunning poem.

A Big Wind
Christopher A. Miller


Through this little walk-up
big gusts of wind like elephants
rattle the blinds in their
sockets.

On the fire escape across the way
a boy folds then throws
a paper airplane.
It goes
up and down
delicately, delicately
up and down.

You lie on the bed in
the bedroom, read a
book with your
feet up in the air,
your feet up in the air in white socks.
The wind bursts and blows,
knocks over a tube of chapstick on the dresser.
You hold down the
pages of your book with your long fingers:
long red nails over the base of the creamy pages folded
like a bird.
With your glasses up
on your forehead, you look like
a mechanic
immersed in
an engine.

The wind rolls through and
the blinds smack against the screens
while down the street the
paper airplane shimmies, glides, and
like a home run
lands
softly atop the curb.
The boy claps and yells his approval at this
fine omen, this
best portent.

Startled
you look up
and let go of the book.
And all the pages flutter crisply
in the big wind like
they had planned it
this way
all along.

 

[tungtied2u]

Billy Collins- The Lanyard

The Lanyard

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly-
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that's what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift-not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.


________________________________________

Me too.

 

[Angeline]

Mornin TT2U

It's nice to wake up to Billy Collins. Here's one I love.



Snow Day
Billy Collins

Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and beyond these windows

the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the post office lost
under the noiseless drift,
the paths of trains softly blocked,
the world fallen under this falling.

In a while I will put on some boots
and step out like someone walking in water,
and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,
and I will shake a laden branch,
sending a cold shower down on us both.

But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,
a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.
I will make a pot of tea
and listen to the plastic radio on the counter,
as glad as anyone to hear the news

that the Kiddie Corner School is closed,
the Ding-Dong School, closed,
the All Aboard Children's School, closed,
the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed,
along with -- some will be delighted to hear --

the Toadstool School, the Little School,
Little Sparrows Nursery School,
Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School,
the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed,
and -- clap your hands -- the Peanuts Play School.

So this is where the children hide all day,
These are the nests where they letter and draw,
where they put on their bright miniature jackets,
all darting and climbing and sliding,
all but the few girls whispering by the fence.

And now I am listening hard
in the grandiose silence of the snow,
trying to hear what those three girls are plotting,
what riot is afoot,
which small queen is about to be brought down.

 

[tungtied2u]

Thank you Ang for the Billy!

Here's a Derek Mahon in return.....

A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford
by Derek Mahon

Let them not forget us, the weak souls among
the asphodels –
Seferis, Mythistorema

For J.G. Farrell

Even now there are places where a thought might grow –
Peruvian mines, worked out and abandoned
To a slow clock of condensation,
An echo trapped forever, and a flutter
Of wildflowers in the lift-shaft,
Indian compounds where the wind dances
And a door bangs with diminished confidence,
Lime crevices behind rippling rainbarrels,
Dog corners for bone burials;
And a disused shed in Co. Wexford,

Deep in the grounds of a burnt-out hotel,
Among the bathtubs and the washbasins
A thousand mushrooms crowd to a keyhole.
This is the one star in their firmament
Or frames a star within a star.
What should they do there but desire?
So many days beyond the rhododendrons
With the world waltzing in its bowl of cloud,
They have learnt patience and silence
Listening to the rooks querulous in the high wood.

They have been waiting for us in a foetor
Of vegetable sweat since civil war days,
Since the gravel-crunching, interminable departure
of the expropriated mycologist.
He never came back, and light since then
Is a keyhole rusting gently after rain.
Spiders have spun, flies dusted to mildew
And once a day, perhaps, they have heard something –
A trickle of masonry, a shout from the blue
Or a lorry changing gear at the end of the lane.

There have been deaths, the pale flesh flaking
Into the earth that nourished it;
And nightmares, born of these and the grim
Dominion of stale air and rank moisture.
Those nearest the door growing strong –
‘Elbow room! Elbow room!’
The rest, dim in a twilight of crumbling
Utensils and broken flower-pots, groaning
For their deliverance, have been so long
Expectant that there is left only the posture.

A half century, without visitors, in the dark –
Poor preparation for the cracking lock
And creak of hinges. Magi, moonmen,
Powdery prisoners of the old regime,
Web-throated, stalked like triffids, racked by drought
And insomnia, only the ghost of a scream
At the flashbulb firing squad we wake them with
Shows there is life yet in their feverish forms.
Grown beyond nature now, soft food for worms,
They lift frail heads in gravity and good faith.

They are begging us, you see, in their wordless way,
To do something, to speak on their behalf
Or at least not to close the door again.
Lost people of Treblinka and Pompeii!
‘Save us, save us,’ they seem to say,
‘Let the god not abandon us
Who have come so far in darkness and in pain.
We too had our lives to live.
You with your light meter and relaxed itinerary,
Let not our naïve labours have been in vain!.

 

[Angeline]

Beautiful Sonnet!

BILLIE
Leo Yankevich

I felt it in her body loves ago.
Call it what you will: her psyche, soul,
essence, the ghost I never got to know
that haunts me down my later years. A fool,
I wanted flesh, her buttocks and the small
of her back bent underneath my thrusts, her red
dress open, chestnut hair against the wall,
creamy face pressed deep into the bed
till climax and exhaustion merged with dawn.
I could please her, but could not keep her long.
Three binges later she was packed and gone,
her scent still married to my skin, her song
so like a sparrow’s in my trembling hand,
a song I could not free, or understand.

 

[annaswirls]

When You Go Away, W.S. Merwin

I want to learn how to write like this
to think like this


When You Go Away
W.S. Merwin

When you go away the wind clicks around to the north
The painters work all day but at sundown the paint falls
Showing the black walls
The clock goes back to striking the same hour
That has no place in the years

And at night wrapped in the bed of ashes
In one breath I wake
It is the time when the beards of the dead get their growth
I remember that I am falling
That I am the reason
And that my words are the garment of what I shall never be
Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy

 

[denis hale]

that was

frick... in

gooood!!!!



Here's one:


FROM THE LOVE POEMS OF MILES DAVIS by k. lipschutz


Your eyes, blue as a motherfucker
Your lips, soft as a motherfucker
Your hair, long and satiny as

a motherfucker.

* *

We made love, I got my nut off like a motherfucker

She comes out with she thinks Billy Dee's not
half bad to look at,

so I slap her silly as a motherfucker

* *

Some sorry-assed white boy calls about
an interview

then I call back Lurlene, who's into health food
and that vegetarian shit, and always helps me out

And tits big and nice as a motherfucker.

 

[annaswirls]

Re: that was

~

 

[Tathagata]

.....

 

[Angeline]

Moreover, the Moon---
Mina Loy

Face of the skies
preside
over our wonder.

Fluorescent
truant of heaven
draw us under.

Silver, circular corpse
your decease
infects us with unendurable ease,

touching nerve-terminals
to thermal icicles

Coercive as coma, frail as bloom
innuendoes of your inverse dawn
suffuse the self;
our every corpuscle become an elf.