*Poem of the day thread

[Yossarian]

Another from Bukowski, I've been reading a lot of his work lately.



The Aliens
Charles Bukowski


you may not believe it
but there are people
who go through life with
very little
friction or
distress.
they dress well, eat
well, sleep well.
they are contented with
their family
life.
they have moments of
grief
but all in all
they are undisturbed
and often feel
very good.
and when they die
it is an easy
death, usually in their
sleep.

you may not believe
it
but such people do
exist.

but I am not one of
them.
oh no, I am not one
of them,
I am not even near
to being
one of
them

but they are
there

and I am
here.

 

[onemonkey]

there is something strangely echoic and enviable about his ignoble low life.


YOUNG IN NEW ORLEANS - Charles Bukowski

starving there, sitting around the bars,
and at night walking the streets for
hours,
the moonlight always seemed fake
to me, maybe it was,
and in the French Quarter I watched
the horses and buggies going by,
everybody sitting high in the open
carriages, the black driver, and in
back the man and the woman,
usually young and always white.
and I was always white.
and hardly charmed by the
world.
New Orleans was a place to
hide.
I could piss away my life,
unmolested.
except for the rats.
the rats in my dark small room
very much resented sharing it
with me.
they were large and fearless
and stared at me with eyes
that spoke
an unblinking
death.

women were beyond me.
they saw something
depraved.
there was one waitress
a little older than
I, she rather smiled,
lingered when she
brought my
coffee.


that was plenty for
me, that was
enough.


there was something about
that city, though
it didn't let me feel guilty
that I had no feeling for the
things so many others
needed.
it let me alone.


sitting up in my bed
the llights out,
hearing the outside
sounds,
lifting my cheap
bottle of wine,
letting the warmth of
the grape
enter
me
as I heard the rats
moving about the
room,
I preferred them
to
humans.


being lost,
being crazy maybe
is not so bad
if you can be
that way
undisturbed.


New Orleans gave me
that.
nobody ever called
my name.


no telephone,
no car,
no job,
no
anything.


me and the
rats
and my youth,
one time,
that time
I knew
even through the
nothingness,
it was a
celebration
of something not to
do
but only
know.

 

[chrissie]

Some great games going on. (The same cannot be said for poems about it, alas.)

A rugby poem

But it isn’t just the winning
Nor the scoring, nor the cheers,
It’s the friendship and the memories
That last you through the years.

It’s the camaraderie
That’s born of valour not of fame
It’s the sheer exhilaration
When you play the running game.

Peter Fenton

 

[mango5]

The Objects in Japanese Novels

Empty cages outline
the periphery of an unnamed thing.
Their emptiness shines
like lanterns on virgin snow.
A few flakes swirl up,
caught — as scenic views
are caught in parts of speech,
where wishes and schemes
grow gloomy as a shrine,
and hair is a kind of incense.
Here, even abundance is delicate
with a slender waist.
And sorrow, embarrassment, disgust
can be aestheticized too
if surrounded by the right things —
a refreshing breeze, a small drum.


Elaine Equi

 

[Concrete Meadow]

on veterans day u.s.a. 11 november 2003

Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream

words and music by Ed McCurdy (1952)


Last night I had the strangest dream
I'd ever dreamed before
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war

I dreamed I saw a mighty room
Filled with women and men
And the paper they were signing said
They'd never fight again

And when the paper was all signed
And a million copies made
They all joined hands and bowed their heads
And grateful pray'rs were prayed

And the people in the streets below
Were dancing 'round and 'round
While swords and guns and uniforms
Were scattered on the ground

Last night I had the strangest dream
I'd never dreamed before
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Poem of the day thread

Originally posted by RubyToogood
No song lyrics

 

[Yossarian]

The Plough Of Time
Lawrence Ferlinghetti


Night closed my windows and
The sky became a crystal house
The crystal windows glowed
The moon
shown through them
through the whole house of crystal
A single star beamed down
its crystal cable
and drew a plough through the earth
unearthing bodies clasped together
couples embracing
around the earth
They clung together everywhere
emitting small cries
that did not reach the stars
The crystal earth turned
and the bodies with it
And the sky did not turn
nor the stars with it
The stars remained fixed
each with its crystal cable
beamed to earth
each attached to the immense plough
furrowing our lives

 

[small town girl]

"Cynara", by Ernest Dowson

Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt
her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow,Cynara! Thy
breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and
the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old
passion,
Yeah, I was desolate and bowed my
head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara!
in my fashion.

All night upon mine heart I felt her
warm heart beat,
Night-long within mine arms in love
and sleep she lay;
Surely the kisses of her bought red
mouth were sweet;
But I was desolate and sick of an old
passion,
When I awoke and found the dawn
was grey:
Ihave been faithful to thee, Cynara!
in my fashion.

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone,
gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the
throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out
of mind;
But I was desolate and sick of an old
passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance
was long:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara!
in my fashion.

I cried for madder music and for
stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the
lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the
night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old
passion,
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire;
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara!
in my fashion.

 

[onemonkey]

Today's choice has to be..

Bought and Sold - Benjamin Zephaniah

Smart big awards and prize money
Is killing off black poetry
It's not censors or dictators that are cutting up our art.
The lure of meeting royalty
And touching high society
Is damping creativity and eating at our heart.

The ancestors would turn in graves
Those poor black folk that once were slaves would wonder
How our souls were sold
And check our strategies,
The empire strikes back and waves
Tamed warriors bow on parades
When they have done what they've been told
They get their OBEs.

Don't take my word, go check the verse
Cause every laureate gets worse
A family that you cannot fault as muse will mess your mind,
And yeah, you may fatten your purse
And surely they will check you first when subjects need to be amused
With paid for prose and rhymes.

Take your prize, now write more,
Faster,
Fuck the truth
Now you're an actor do not fault your benefactor
Write, publish and review,
You look like a dreadlocks Rasta,
You look like a ghetto blaster,
But you can't diss your paymaster
And bite the hand that feeds you.

What happened to the verse of fire
Cursing cool the empire
What happened to the soul rebel that Marley had in mind,
This bloodstained, stolen empire rewards you and you conspire,
(Yes Marley said that time will tell)
Now look they've gone and joined.

We keep getting this beating
It's bad history repeating
It reminds me of those capitalists that say
'Look you have a choice,'
It's sick and self-defeating if our dispossessed keep weeping
And we give these awards meaning
But we end up with no voice.

--

(and here's why )

 

[small town girl]

Dream Deferred, by Langston Hughes

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?

 

[Yossarian]

One Train May Hide Another
Kenneth Koch

(sign at a railroad crossing in Kenya)

In a poem, one line may hide another line,
As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.
That is, if you are waiting to cross
The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at
Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read
Wait until you have read the next line—
Then it is safe to go on reading.
In a family one sister may conceal another,
So, when you are courting, it's best to have them all in view
Otherwise in coming to find one you may love another.
One father or one brother may hide the man,
If you are a woman, whom you have been waiting to love.
So always standing in front of something the other
As words stand in front of objects, feelings, and ideas.
One wish may hide another. And one person's reputation may hide
The reputation of another. One dog may conceal another
On a lawn, so if you escape the first one you're not necessarily safe;
One lilac may hide another and then a lot of lilacs and on the Appia Antica one tomb
May hide a number of other tombs. In love, one reproach may hide another,
One small complaint may hide a great one.
One injustice may hide another—one colonial may hide another,
One blaring red uniform another, and another, a whole column. One bath
may hide another bath
As when, after bathing, one walks out into the rain.
One idea may hide another: Life is simple
Hide Life is incredibly complex, as in the prose of Gertrude Stein
One sentence hides another and is another as well. And in the laboratory
One invention may hide another invention,
One evening may hide another, one shadow, a nest of shadows.
One dark red, or one blue, or one purple—this is a painting
By someone after Matisse. One waits at the tracks until they pass,
These hidden doubles or, sometimes, likenesses. One identical twin
May hide the other. And there may be even more in there! The obstetrician
Gazes at the Valley of the Var. We used to live there, my wife and I, but
One life hid another life. And now she is gone and I am here.
A vivacious mother hides a gawky daughter. The daughter hides
Her own vivacious daughter in turn. They are in
A railway station and the daughter is holding a bag
Bigger than her mother's bag and successfully hides it.
In offering to pick up the daughter's bag one finds oneself confronted by
the mother's
And has to carry that one, too. So one hitchhiker
May deliberately hide another and one cup of coffee
Another, too, until one is over-excited. One love may hide another love
or the same love
As when "I love you" suddenly rings false and one discovers
The better love lingering behind, as when "I'm full of doubts"
Hides "I'm certain about something and it is that"
And one dream may hide another as is well known, always, too. In the Garden of Eden
Adam and Eve may hide the real Adam and Eve.
Jerusalem may hide another Jerusalem.
When you come to something, stop to let it pass
So you can see what else is there. At home, no matter where,
Internal tracks pose dangers, too: one memory
Certainly hides another, that being what memory is all about,
The eternal reverse succession of contemplated entities. Reading
A Sentimental Journey look around
When you have finished, for Tristram Shandy, to see
If it is standing there, it should be, stronger
And more profound and theretofore hidden as Santa Maria Maggiore
May be hidden by similar churches inside Rome. One sidewalk
May hide another, as when you're asleep there, and
One song hide another song; a pounding upstairs
Hide the beating of drums. One friend may hide another, you sit at the foot of a tree
With one and when you get up to leave there is another
Whom you'd have preferred to talk to all along. One teacher,
One doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man
May hide another. Pause to let the first one pass.
You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one. It can be important
To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.

 

[chrissie]

The Incurable

I have taken maidens
like pots of Vic
and rubbed them into myself
but was never cured
and so, the ailment stays;
I see it carried in each sauntering wench
and forever I seek the cure.
No alchemist has its measure,
no chemist its mix.
Till there comes the medicine
I'll make my own fix.
It may not cure
but it will not harm.
It will make magic
but not the balm
and when, in some minded loft we lay
I'll not only make a woman -
I will also, make hay.

Spike Milligan

 

[PearlySpencer]

For Ruby whoever she might be

Some Winded, Wild Beast


"You worked hard, madame," said a man near her. "Yes," answered Madame DeFarge, I have a great deal to do."

"What do you make, Madame?" "Many things."

"For instance --- " " For instance,"
returned Madame DeFarge, composedly, "shrouds"

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens


1.

Sorrow and Grief are the names
of two animals prowling inside of me,
breathing my breath, devouring
my food. They are grateful
when I lap cold water or plunge
this body we share into the icy salt
of the bay. Then they preen in the sun,
sleek bodies pressed with mine
against the hot sand.


They scale the cliff
when the eagle comes hunting,
when the osprey hovers above the surf,
when the sand chooses the serpent's shape.
Grief and Sorrow leap
from my mouth when the loon calls
and seal beckons. They snuffle
delight at heron's outraged
flight and their cramped legs twitch
with longing when the deer leaps.
When the raven calls, they howl and remember
wolf who stalked this forest.
When grey whale rubs its barnacled back
on the sandbar, then Grief and Sorrow
shudder.


What we know of Sorrow fills
the whole world. What we know
of Grief runs a deep river
underground. At any step
we could drown.


2.

Teach me to knit, Madame. Make room
on the bench in the sun, or by the fire
when it rains. Make me useful.
Then when Sorrow and Grief
batter my throat, my hands will know
what to do, and the click-click of needles
will lull the beast to sleep,
to dream.


3.

When Sorrow dreams, she builds a new world,
and every shroud writhes.

When Grief dreams, the skies fill
with a million mourning cloaks,
bright wings breathing.


Christina V. Pacosz

 

[RubyToogood]

Erm, thanks... I think...

 

[RubyToogood]

Here's an extract from TS Eliot's The Wasteland. The fogginess yesterday made me think of it.


Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit...

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
'Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.'
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.

 

[bluestreak]

i've just come to this thread for the first time and i've fallen in love! some great poems that make me feel uneducated and shallow through my ignorance.

so heres my contribution today, another weathery one:


Wind - Ted Hughes

This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up --
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.

 

[feyr]

Clown in the Moon
Dylan Thomas

My tears are like the quiet drift
Of petals from some magic rose;
And all my grief flows from the rift
Of unremembered skies and snows.

I think, that if I touched the earth,
It would crumble;
It is so sad and beautiful,
So tremulously like a dream Clown in the Moon

 

[mango5]

Tell Me Again

Tell me again
bout de big island
an de small island,
bout de rich island
an de poor island,
how all we is one,
an how Cari-com
an Cari-gone,
tell me again.

Tell me again
how I love you
an you love me,
an how blood ticker dan water,
an how we is brudder
an we is sister
an yu won't cut me t'roat
cause we come on de same boat,
tell me again.

Tell me again
how oil don't spoil,
how we have plenty dollars
but no sense,
an how money is no problem
but de problem is no money,
tell me again.

Tell me again
bout psychology an biology,
bout modern technology,
how he goin by plane
an she goin by boat
an we goin by guess,
tell me again.

Tell me again
how weed don't kill
an yu cold smoke it still,
an how it good for yu eye-sight,
an is ah religious ting,
an yu is ah real rahtid rasta,
tell me again.

Tell me again
how she tell you
dat he tell she
dat dey tell dem
dat you tell me,
tell me again.

Tell me again
bout de sweet Caribbean,
bout palm tree an easy life,
bout Greenidge meantime
an Trinidad time,
an how is ah waste ah time,
tell me again.

Tell me again
bout your poetry
an my poetry,
and how I stupid
an you smart,
an how we is Douen,
an we 'fraid de light,
an how dialect cool
but not for school,
tell me again.


Tell me again
how we have plenty pitch,
an we fix Walter Raleigh boat,
but we can't fix de road,
how we invent steelband
an we love carnival,
an how ah should do like Starsky
an hush,
tell me again.

Tell me again
yu don't understan
when ah say,
'God gave me toots
an He tooks dem backs
dat's why
when I speaks
my spats flews,'
tell me again.

Tell me again
how de Redhouse red
an de 'Doc' well read
an we goin red
an better red dan dead,
tell me again.

Tell me again
how everybody
mus come home;
tell me again
loud an clear;
tell me again
let me cuff yu in yu damn mout'!

Paul Keens-Douglas

 

[Yossarian]

The History Of One Tough Motherfucker
Charles Bukowski

he came to the door one night wet thin beaten and
terrorized
a white cross-eyed tailless cat
I took him in and fed him and he stayed
grew to trust me until a friend drove up the driveway
and ran him over
I took what was left to a vet who said,"not much
chance...give him these pills...his backbone
is crushed, but is was crushed before and somehow
mended, if he lives he'll never walk, look at
these x-rays, he's been shot, look here, the pellets
are still there...also, he once had a tail, somebody
cut it off..."

I took the cat back, it was a hot summer, one of the
hottest in decades, I put him on the bathroom
floor, gave him water and pills, he wouldn't eat, he
wouldn't touch the water, I dipped my finger into it
and wet his mouth and I talked to him, I didn't go any-
where, I put in a lot of bathroom time and talked to
him and gently touched him and he looked back at
me with those pale blue crossed eyes and as the days went
by he made his first move
dragging himself forward by his front legs
(the rear ones wouldn't work)
he made it to the litter box
crawled over and in,
it was like the trumpet of possible victory
blowing in that bathroom and into the city, I
related to that cat-I'd had it bad, not that
bad but bad enough

one morning he got up, stood up, fell back down and
just looked at me.

"you can make it," I said to him.

he kept trying, getting up falling down, finally
he walked a few steps, he was like a drunk, the
rear legs just didn't want to do it and he fell again, rested,
then got up.

you know the rest: now he's better than ever, cross-eyed
almost toothless, but the grace is back, and that look in
his eyes never left...

and now sometimes I'm interviewed, they want to hear about
life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed,
shot, runover de-tailed cat and I say,"look, look
at this!"

but they don't understand, they say something like,"you
say you've been influenced by Celine?"

"no," I hold the cat up,"by what happens, by
things like this, by this, by this!"

I shake the cat, hold him up in
the smoky and drunken light, he's relaxed he knows...

it's then that the interviews end
although I am proud sometimes when I see the pictures
later and there I am and there is the cat and we are photo-
graphed together.

he too knows it's bullshit but that somehow it all helps.

 

[PearlySpencer]

Jarrow

Nothing is left to dig, little to make.
Night has engulfed both firelit hall and sparrow.
Wind and car-noise pours across the Slake.
Nothing is left to dig, little to make
A stream of rust where a great ship might grow.
And where a union-man was hung for show
Nothing is left to dig, little to make.
Night has engulfed both firelit hall and sparrow.

Carol Rumens

 

[PearlySpencer]

A seasonal classic, because it's that time of year, the end of it.

The Road Not Taken


Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could go
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 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 diverge in a wood, and I -
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.


Robert Frost

 

[PearlySpencer]

For Jane, for getting the fuck out of it.

The Cry

Don't think it was all hate
That grew there; love grew there, too,
Climbing by small tendrils where
The warmth fell from eyes' blue

Flame. Don't think even the dirt
And the brute ugliness reigned
Unchallenged. Among the fields
Sometimes the spirit, enchained

So long by the gross flesh, raised
Suddenly there its wild note of praise.

R. S. Thomas

 

[PearlySpencer]

For Janine

How the Sound of Freedom Dies

''I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight do not hate,
Those that I guard do not love.......''
''An Irish Airman Foresees His Death''
William Butler Yeats

Oh, Billy - boy, it's a long way
from Pine Mountain, Kentucky
to Mount Ranier and the tall fir
of Puget Sound. An arduous journey
from those eroded ancient teeth
to these young crags, flashing
a sharp white bite at the sky.

Christina Pacosz



It's only the first bit, the whole piece is about a US pilot killed during the US invasion of Vietnam.

 

[bluestreak]

The Way Through The Woods - by Rudyard Kipling

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate.
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few)
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods. . . .
But there is no road through the woods.


-----

an unsettling yet beautiful poem for a crap winter day.

 

[stripysarah]

Did This Happen to Your Mother?
Did Your Sister Throw Up a Lot?

Alice Walker

I love a man who is not worth
my love.
Did this happen to your mother?
Did your grandmother wake up
for no good reason
in the middle of the night?

I thought love could be controlled.
It cannot.
Only behavior can be controlled.
By biting your tongue purple
rather than speak.
Mauling your lips.
Obliterating his number
too thoroughly
to be able to phone.

Love has made me sick.

Did your sister throw up a lot?
Did your cousin complain
of a painful knot
in her back?
Did your aunt always
seem to have something else
troubling her mind?

I thought love would adapt itself
to my needs
But needs grow too fast;
they come up like weeds.
Through cracks in the conversation.
Through silences in the dark.
Through everything you thought was concrete.

Such needful love has to be chopped out
or forced to wilt back,
poisoned by disapproval
from it's own soil.

This is bad news, for the conservationist.

My hand shakes before this killing.
My stomach sits jumpy in my chest.
My chest is the Grand Canyon
sprawled empty
over the world.

Whoever he is, he is not worth all this.

And I will never
unclench my teeth long enough
to tell him so.

 

[Yossarian]

You Begin
Margaret Atwood

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
this is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.
It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.

 

[Yossarian]

Ann Arbor Variations
Frank O'Hara

Wet heat drifts through the afternoon
like a campus dog, a fraternity ghost
waiting to stay home from football games.
The arches are empty clear to the sky.

Except for the leaves: those lashes of our
thinking and dreaming and drinking sight.
The spherical radiance, the Old English
look, the sum of our being, "hath perced

to the roote" all our springs and falls
and now rolls over our limpness, a daily
dragon. We lose our health in a love
of color, drown in a fountain of myriads,

as simply as children. It is too hot,
our birth was given up to screaming. Our
life on these street lawns seems silent.
The leaves chatter their comparisons

to the wind and the sky fills up
before we are out of bed. O infinite
our siestas! adobe effigies in a land
that is sick of us and our tanned flesh.

The wind blows towards us particularly
the sobbing of our dear friends on both
coasts. We are sick of living and afraid
that death will not be by water, o sea.

2
Along the walks and shaded ways
pregnant women look snidely at children.
Two weeks ago they were told, in these

selfsame pools of trefoil, "the market
for emeralds is collapsing," "chlorophyll
shines in your eyes," "the sea's misery

is progenitor of the dark moss which hides
on the north side of trees and cries."
What do they think of slim kids now?

and how, when the summer's gong of day
and night slithers towards their sweat
and towards the nest of their arms

and thighs, do they feel about children
whose hides are pearly with days of swimming?
Do they mistake these fresh drops for tears?

The wind works over these women constantly!
trying, perhaps, to curdle their milk
or make their spring unseasonably fearful,

season they face with dread and bright eyes,
The leaves, wrinkled or shiny like apples,
wave women courage and sigh, a void temperature.

3
The alternatives of summer do not remove
us from this place. The fainting into skies
from a diving board, the express train to
Detroit's damp bars, the excess of affection
on the couch near an open window or a Bauhaus
fire escape, the lazy regions of stars, all
are strangers. Like Mayakovsky read on steps
of cool marble, or Yeats danced in a theatre
of polite music. The classroon day of dozing
and grammar, the partial eclipse of the head
in the row in front of the head of poplars,
sweet Syrinx! last out the summer in a stay
of iron. Workmen loiter before urinals, stare
out windows at girders tightly strapped to clouds.
And in the morning we whimper as we cook
an egg, so far from fluttering sands and azure!

4
The violent No! of the sun
burns the forehead of hills.
Sand fleas arrive from Salt Lake
and most of the theatres close.

The leaves roll into cigars, or
it seems our eyes stick together
in sleep. O forest, o brook of
spice, o cool gaze of strangers!

the city tumbles towards autumn
in a convulsion of tourists
and teachers. We dance in the dark,
forget the anger of what we blame

on the day. Children toss and murmur
as a rumba blankets their trees and
beckons their stars closer, older, now.
We move o'er the world, being so much here.

It's as if Poseidon left off counting
his waters for a moment! In the fields
the silence is music like the moon.
The bullfrogs sleep in their hairy caves.

across the avenue a trefoil lamp
of the streets tosses luckily.
The leaves, finally, love us! and
moonrise! we die upon the sun.

 

[audiollama]

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
e.e. cummings


somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

 

[onemonkey]

The More Loving One - W. H. Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

--
this was really someone-elses poem for yesterday,
(and we readily admit, not a great one at that)
but i am thankful that she is still around to read it today. Cx

 

[Mation]

The Intensity of the Geranium
Dinah Livingstone

At seven when I wake the room is dark.
Slowly on pink curtain the geranium is outlined,
its upsprawling, pungent, jagged leaves defined
by the returning light, precise and stark,
its shape more present as the colour is still black,
but now a rosy opalescence strokes my mind
as through the chink a cloud-puffy kind
of sunrise peeps with morning's hopeful ache.
I have felt so futile and alone,
pottered unproductively for days
wondering if I'd done all I'd ever do.
The geranium is quite still though it has grown
huge and its intensity impresses this sunrise
with its self-stress, promising mine back too.