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[Jennifer C]

Love and Sleep

Lying asleep between the strokes of night

I saw my love lean over my sad bed,

Pale as the duskiest lily's leaf or head,

Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite,

Too wan for blushing and too warm for white,

But perfect-coloured without white or red.

And her lips opened amorously, and said--

I wist not what, saving one word--Delight.

And all her face was honey to my mouth,

And all her body pasture to mine eyes;

The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire,

Th equivering flanks, hair smelling of the south,

The bright light fet, the splendid supple thighs

And glittering eyelids of my soul's desire.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

 

[lindiana]

Robert Frost (1874–1963)

The Road Not Taken


TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

 

[lindiana]

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

A Dream Deferred


What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

 

[Jennifer C]

Distant Eyes

distant eyes! you were birds
and seemed treasuries of sorrow
you've been quiet since the final death
you stopped
and toward
that profound conclusion from within
an amber worm, advanced
beyond carrying its reasons around
like a shell, with its stones
more ruby than a mystery,
more diamond...
distant eyes!
and flocks of pain...

distant eyes! you were birds
or the metaphors of birds...
or else resembled a bit of prose
and those
who came you took one by one:
and the prophet of a storm; of death
it was the spring, skipping
over the spoor of roses
you came... distant eyes!
you! autumn angels...

distant eyes! you were birds,
and seemed treasuries of sorrow


Hilmi Yavuz

 

[Jennifer C]

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

ee cummings

 

[Jennifer C]

Song

Oh, with the hunger of the sea, forever born anew,

With great waves straining, striving, pouring toward the

strand,

The sea of my heart's life in exultation moves toward you,

toward you,

Unreachable far land!

You are that land; you are the sea of which I am a part

In love and dream, Like waves beating upon

Trembling shores, the shock and smiting of your loveliness

upon my heart,

O dear and lovely one.

John Hall Wheelock

 

[Jennifer C]

Eyes and Tears

How wisely Nature did decree,
With the same Eyes to weep and see!
That, having view'd the object vain,
They might be ready to complain.

And since the Self-deluding Sight,
In a false Angle takes each hight;
These Tears which better measure all,
Like wat'ry Lines and Plummets fall.

Two Tears, which Sorrow long did weigh
Within the Scales of either Eye,
And then paid out in equal Poise,
Are the true price of all my Joyes.

What in the World most fair appears,
Yea even Laughter, turns to Tears:
And all the Jewels which we prize,
Melt in these Pendants of the Eyes.

I have through every Garden been,
Amongst the Red,the White, the Green;
And yet, from all the flow'rs I saw,
No Honey, but these Tears could draw.

So the all-seeing Sun each day
Distills the World with Chymick Ray;
But finds the Essence only Showers,
Which straight in pity back he powers.

Yet happy they whom Grief doth bless,
That weep the more, and see the less:
And, to preserve their Sight more true,
Bath still their Eyes in their own Dew.

So 'Magdalen',* in Tears more wise
Dissolv'd those captivating Eyes,
Whose liquid Chains could flowing meet
To fetter her Redeemers feet.

Not full sailes hasting loaden home,
Nor the chast Ladies pregnant Womb,
Nor 'Cynthia' Teeming show's so fair,
As two Eyes swoln with weeping are.

The sparkling Glance that shoots Desire,
Drench'd in these Waves, does lose it fire.
Yea oft the Thund'rer pitty takes
And here the hissing Lightning slakes.

The Incense was to Heaven dear,
Not as a Perfume, but a Tear.
And Stars shew lovely in the Night,
But as they seem the Tears of Light.

Ope then mine Eyes your double Sluice,
And practise so your noblest Use.
For others too can see, or sleep;
But only humane Eyes can weep.

Now like two Clouds dissolving, drop,
And at each Tear in distance stop:
Now like two Fountains trickle down:
Now like two floods o'return and drown.

Thus let your Streams o'reflow your Springs,
Till Eyes and Tears be the same things:
And each the other's difference bears;
These weeping Eyes, those seeing Tears.

Andrew Marvell

 

[anonamouse]

The Tay Bridge Disaster

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

'Twas about seven o'clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clods seem'd to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem'd to say-
"I'll blow down the Bridge of Tay."

When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers' hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say-
"I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay."

But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

So the train sped on with all its might,
And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sught,
And the passengers' hearts felt light,
Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,
With their friends at home they lov'd most dear,
And wish them all a happy New Year.

So the train mov'd slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
The Storm Fiend did loudly bray,
Because ninety lives had been taken away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

As soon as the catastrophe came to be known
The alarm from mouth to mouth was blown,
And the cry rang out all o'er the town,
Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down,
And a passenger train from Edinburgh,
Which fill'd all the peoples hearts with sorrow,
And made them for to turn pale,
Because none of the passengers were sav'd to tell the tale
How the disaster happen'd on the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of thSilv'ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.

-William Topaz McGonagall

"And the dark clods seem'd to frown,"
I do love this line and rhyming of "buttresses" with "confesses"

for more

 

[bogusbrig]

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

'Twas about seven o'clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clods seem'd to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem'd to say-
"I'll blow down the Bridge of Tay."

When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers' hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say-
"I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay."

But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

So the train sped on with all its might,
And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sught,
And the passengers' hearts felt light,
Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,
With their friends at home they lov'd most dear,
And wish them all a happy New Year.

So the train mov'd slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
The Storm Fiend did loudly bray,
Because ninety lives had been taken away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

As soon as the catastrophe came to be known
The alarm from mouth to mouth was blown,
And the cry rang out all o'er the town,
Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down,
And a passenger train from Edinburgh,
Which fill'd all the peoples hearts with sorrow,
And made them for to turn pale,
Because none of the passengers were sav'd to tell the tale
How the disaster happen'd on the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of thSilv'ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.

-William Topaz McGonagall

"And the dark clods seem'd to frown,"
I do love this line and rhyming of "buttresses" with "confesses"

for more

McGonagall!!!!!! What a choice! I read him at school. He's far better than all the farts that take themselves so seriously.

I think he is an unrecognised genius. McGonagal night should replace Burnes night. Scotland missed this homebred genius!!!!!

 

[RhymeFairy]

Fire and Ice
by:
Robert Frost


SOME say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.




(From Harper’s Magazine, December 1920.)

 

[Du Lac]

For those who identify...........

Anne Sexton - The Evil Seekers

We are born with luck
which is to say with gold in our mouth.
As new and smooth as a grape,
as pure as a pond in Alaska,
as good as the stem of a green bean--
we are born and that ought to be enough,
we ought to be able to carry on from that
but one must learn about evil,
learn what is subhuman,
learn how the blood pops out like a scream,
one must see the night
before one can realize the day,
one must listen hard to the animal within,
one must walk like a sleepwalker
on the edge of a roof,
one must throw some part of her body
into the devil's mouth.
Odd stuff, you'd say.
But I'd say
you must die a little,
have a book of matches go off in your hand,
see your best friend copying your exam,
visit an Indian reservation and see
their plastic feathers,
the dead dream.
One must be a prisoner just once to hear
the lock twist into his gut.
After all that
one is free to grasp at the trees, the stones,
the sky, the birds that make sense out of air.
But even in a telephone booth
evil can seep out of the receiver
and we must cover it with a mattress,
and then tear it from its roots
and bury it,
bury it.

 

[wildsweetone]

i like the language and imagery in this poem. it seems a simple moment in time and Hardy has turned it into something i won't forget.


Snow in the Suburbs
by Thomas Hardy

Every branch big with it,
Bent every twig with it;
Every fork like a white web-foot;
Every street and pavement mute:
Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward, when
Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again.
The palings are glued together like a wall,
And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall.

A sparrow enters the tree,
Whereon immediately
A snow-lump thrice his only slight size
Descends on him and showers his head and eyes,
And overturns him,
And near inurns him,
And lights on a nether twig, when its brush
Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush.

The steps are a blanched slope,
Up which, with feeble hope,
A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;
And we take him in.

 

[Du Lac]

Bright Star



Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

John Keats

 

[Jennifer C]

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

"Leisure" by W.H. Davies

 

[Tathagata]

.....

 

[Tathagata]

Shel Silverstein

Sahra Cynthia Sylvia Stout
Would not take the garbage out!
She'd scour the pots and scrape the pans,
Candy the yams and spice the hams,
And though her daddy would scream and shout,
She simply would not take the garbage out.

And so it piled up to the ceilings:
Coffee grounds, potato peelings,
Brown bananas, rotten peas,
Chunks of sour cottage cheese.
It filled the can, it covered the floor,
It cracked the window and blocked the door
With bacon rinds and chicken bones,
Drippy ends of ice cream cones,
Prune pits, peach pits, orange peel,
Gloopy glumps of cold oatmeal,
Pizza crusts and withered greens,
Soggy beans and tangerines,
Crusts of black burned buttered toast,
Gristly bits of beefy roasts...

The garbage rolled on down the hall,
It raised the roof, it broke the wall...
Greasy napkins, cookie crumbs,
Globs of gooey bubble gum,
Cellophane from green baloney,
Rubbery blubbery macaroni,
Peanut butter, caked and dry,
Curdled milk and crusts of pie,
Moldy melons, dried-up mustard,
Eggshells mixed with lemon custard,
Cold French fries and rancid meat,
yellow lumps of Cream of Wheat.

At last the garbage reached so high
That finally it touched the sky.
And all the neighbors moved away,
And none of her friends would come to play.
And finally Sahra Cynthia Stout said,
"OK, I'll take the garbage out!"
But then, of course, it was too late...
The garbage reached across the state,
From New York to the Golden Gate.
And there, in the garbage she did hate,
Poor Sahra met an awful fate,
That I cannot right now relate
Because the hour is much too late.
But children, remember Sahra Stout
And always take the garbage out!

 

[bogusbrig]

Miroslav Hulob

Miroslav Holub. Just got to share this guy, not literally because he's dead but out of interest. The two poems are not his best as far as I'm concerned, I can't be bothered to type so I've just copied and pasted from the net.

INTENSIVE CARE UNIT

God's insects stuck on pins,
betrayed heroes of the abdominal cavity.
Cracked faience of whining puppets,
human soul dripping from plastic tubes.
Behind white curtains a scene
from the war of the salamanders
is endlessly getting ready.
And liturgies change
and souls change
and blushings and palenesses change
and winged prophets change and
writers of chronicles change and
gods change.
But amikacin,
the antibiotic,
is the only one.


Spacetime


When I grow up and you get small,
then --
(In Kaluza's theory the fifth dimension
is represented as a circle
associated with every point
in spacetime)
-- then when I die, I'll never be alive again?
Never.
Never never?
Never never.
Yes, but never never never?
No . . . not never never never,
just never never.
So we made
a small family contribution
to the quantum problem of eleven-dimensional supergravity.

 

[Tathagata]

.....

 

[Angeline]

Lullaby
WH Auden

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

 

[Angeline]

Yesterday

a package arrived. Inside was a bag from City Lights Books in San Francisco. Iniside the bag were two books of poetry.

Thank you dear poet from us both.
Your kindness and friendship is ever.


From one of the books:

Coney Island

1​

Not so laughable this ocean that touches this fun-ruled shore,
Here the comedian-crab engulfs the sand,
commands the boardwalk and strolls with an old-time joke.

And here the fungi-man comes to the beach
humorless, leechy, hands to ground
with a pocketful of sun-tan lotion,
and he suns where the crab suns
tight beneath the merry-go-round.

Twin companions in seach of a farce,
each giggling to each an inhuman scheme:
--Ah, yes! the feet of something dirty-big--
--The feet of everything dirty-big--
--The feet; nothing else--
--Just the feet. He-he-he-he-he--

2​

Night dips into an empty soda bottle,
and the joke wears off,
The fungi-man rolls up his beach towel
and drips away.
But not the comedian-crab . . .
tight beneath the sandy floor
The toe of a universe wiggles in its claw.
Tipsy-topsy
this scatter of feet drops into the sea
breaking into little bits broken men call broken ships.

3​

Now here the sunken world of feetless men and women
ring-around-the-rosie men and women
hop-scotchers on the handle-bars
of imbeciles, inhuman--
flick on their neon mockery of the stars
(noontime for the crab!)
thumbtacking their feet upon the sandy roof.

High tide and hurry hurry houses
pull down their curtains
and the freaks slip out through back doors.
The rollercoaster and the ferris-wheel are a standstill.
The mass silence deafens the last echo of a happy child.
The walky-goof comes with canteloupe feet;
picks up the night-filled soda bottle
. . . and drinks . . .

In a usual morning zig-zag
exhausted crab greets fungi-man;
both sit crouched on the empty beach--waiting.

Both wondering what it could have been
that made this ocean decide this shore.

Gregory Corso

 

[Tzara]

Depressed by a Book of Bad Poetry, I Walk Toward an Unused Pasture
and Invite the Insects to Join Me

Relieved, I let the book fall behind a stone.
I climb a slight rise of grass.
I do not want to disturb the ants
Who are walking single file up the fence post,
Carrying small white petals,
Casting shadows so frail that I can see through them.
I close my eyes for a moment and listen.
The old grasshoppers
Are tired, they leap heavily now,
Their thighs are burdened.
I want to hear them, they have clear sounds to make.
Then lovely, far off, a dark cricket begins
In the maple trees.

--James Wright

 

[bogusbrig]

Depressed by a Book of Bad Poetry, I Walk Toward an Unused Pasture
and Invite the Insects to Join Me

Relieved, I let the book fall behind a stone.
I climb a slight rise of grass.
I do not want to disturb the ants
Who are walking single file up the fence post,
Carrying small white petals,
Casting shadows so frail that I can see through them.
I close my eyes for a moment and listen.
The old grasshoppers
Are tired, they leap heavily now,
Their thighs are burdened.
I want to hear them, they have clear sounds to make.
Then lovely, far off, a dark cricket begins
In the maple trees.

--James Wright

Tzara, you're a hopeless romantic.

 

[Tzara]

Tzara, you're a hopeless romantic.

Sticks and stones
May break my bones
But sturm und drang
preserves me.

That's Romantic with a capital 'R,' Mr. Cynic.

I think I'll go wallow in Tristan und Isolde for a while.

 

[Tzara]

I think I'll go wallow in Tristan und Isolde for a while.

But first, one for Bushman, including a special guest appearance by William Butler Yeats to help B'Brig purge:

Searching for Fairyland

(Mist.)

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
.....I have coom all this distance, lookin for faeryland.

OLD CRONE
.....Well, ye have time, auld father. Tis not yet dark.

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
.....Accents change, and all things change, but Beauty is like a stone.

(A snowfall.)

--Kenneth Koch

 

[Angeline]

Tzara, you're a hopeless romantic.

Yeah, and I've figured out why.