*Poem of the day thread

[Ceej]

I love Mary Oliver - the beauty of her words stay with me.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

 

[Brubricker]

On the Inevitable Decline Into Mediocrity of the Popular Musician Who Attains a Comfortable Middle Age

by David Musgrave



O Sting, where is thy death?

 

[Brubricker]

The Farmer's Bride

by Charlotte Mew



Three Summers since I chose a maid,
Too young maybe – but more’s to do
At harvest-time than bide and woo.
When us was wed she turned afraid
Of love and me and all things human;
Like the shut of a winter’s day.
Her smile went out, and ’twasn’t a woman–
More like a little, frightened fay.
One night, in the Fall, she runned away.

“Out ‘mong the sheep, her be,” they said,
‘Should properly have been abed;
But sure enough she wasn’t there
Lying awake with her wide brown stare.
So over seven-acre field and up-along across the down
We chased her, flying like a hare
Before our lanterns. To Church-Town
All in a shiver and a scare
We caught her, fetched her home at last
And turned the key upon her, fast.

She does the work about the house
As well as most, but like a mouse:
Happy enough to chat and play
With birds and rabbits and such as they,
So long as men-folk stay away.
“Not near, not near!” her eyes beseech
When one of us comes within reach.
The women say that beasts in stall
Look round like children at her call.
I’ve hardly heard her speak at all.

Shy as a leveret, swift as he,
Straight and slight as a young larch tree,
Sweet as the first wild violets, she,
To her wild self. But what to me?

The short days shorten and the oaks are brown,
The blue smoke rises to the low gray sky,
One leaf in the still air falls slowly down,
A magpie’s spotted feathers lie
On the black earth spread white with rime,
The berries redden up to Christmas-time.
What’s Christmas-time without there be
Some other in the house than we!

She sleeps up in the attic there
Alone, poor maid. ‘Tis but a stair
Betwixt us. Oh, my God! – the down,
The soft young down of her; the brown,
The brown of her – her eyes, her hair, her hair!

 

[Brubricker]

Night Poem

by Margaret Atwood



There is nothing to be afraid of,
it is only the wind
changing to the east, it is only
your father the thunder
your mother the rain

In this country of water
with its beige moon damp as a mushroom,
its drowned stumps and long birds
that swim, where the moss grows
on all sides of the trees
and your shadow is not your shadow
but your reflection,

your true parents disappear
when the curtain covers your door.
We are the others,
the ones from under the lake
who stand silently beside your bed
with our heads of darkness.
We have come to cover you
with red wool,
with our tears and distant whispers.

You rock in the rain's arms,
the chilly ark of your sleep,
while we wait, your night
father and mother,
with our cold hands and dead flashlight,
knowing we are only
the wavering shadows thrown
by one candle, in this echo
you will hear twenty years later.

 

[Brubricker]

Helas

by Oscar Wilde



To drift with every passion till my soul
Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,
Is it for this that I have given away
Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?
Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll
Scrawled over on some boyish holiday
With idle songs for pipe and virelay,
Which do but mar the secret of the whole.
Surely there was a time I might have trod
The sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance
Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God.
Is that time dead? lo! with a little rod
I did but touch the honey of romance
And must I lose a soul's inheritance?

 

[Pickman's model]

WHITE HELIOTROPE
~Arthur Symons~

The feverish room and that white bed,
The tumbled skirts upon a chair,
The novel flung half-open, where
Hat, hair-pins, puffs, and paints are spread;

The mirror that has sucked your face
Into its secret deep of deeps,
And there mysteriously keeps
Forgotten memories of grace;

And you half dressed and half awake,
Your slant eyes strangely watching me,
And I, who watch you drowsily,
With eyes that, having slept not, ache;

This (need one dread? nay, dare one hope?)
Will rise, a ghost of memory, if
Ever again my handkerchief
Is scented with White Heliotrope.

 

[dynamicbaddog]

Rain Or Shine



the vultures at the zoo
(all three of them)
sit very quietly in their
caged tree
and below
on the ground
are chunks of rotten meat.
the vultures are over-full.
our taxes have fed them
well.

we move on to the next
cage.
a man is in there
sitting on the ground
eating
his own shit.
i recognize him as
our former mailman.
his favorite expression
had been:
"have a beautiful day."

that day i did.

Charles Bukowski

 

[lillia]

"I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then some one at my side says: 'There, she is gone!'

'Gone where?'

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when some one at my side says: 'There, she is gone!' there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: 'Here she comes!'

--Henry Van Dyke

 

[Ceej]

For MA.

Touched by Anno Birkin - another golden soul who left us much too soon.

I saw from this place at the foot of my grave
I gave myself in awe, to childish hope and promise;
The tomb was dug by those whom you know, and love, and trust
There's just enough room to put you in

And you fear that you lust
And you know what you love must be clean
And you fear what you've seen,
What you've touched, what you've been,
And I'm touched - I'm not naming anyone at all

I'm soon to return.
There's soon to be fire in my veins again,
I'm almost ready...
I'm almost home.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

you decided right as he smiled that he was it
the million before are irrelivant
this one's different- he likes to sing

just like the last was different- he likes to smoke
just like the last was different- he likes to act
just like the last was different- he likes to pretend

he talks to you and the world doesn't exist
but you're always talking so maybe it's you don't exist.
maybe your head is in the clouds
but you take it as a compliment

you've changed
but what else is new?
he's replaced every week.

he's an instant personality-
just add water.
guaranteed to last for days

and he's amazing, so that must mean you're amazing.

poem by braineater



another poem by braineater.


One day I cut my wrist.
It hurt so terribly bad.
I went to Mibba, crying and sad,
And wrote a poem about feeling pissed.

I wept, I bawled, I cut it some more.
I sat in my room, called mother a whore.
How dare she put a roof over my head,
The concert is dangerous, she said.

I am running out of rhymes,
So I will finish another times,
Brb, readers, I am going to cuts more.
Mother is a providing whore.



Poem by Susan Musgrave.


You walk into the white field, squat
between rows of frozen cabbages, almost happy
he is gone. You spread the money
all around you on the ground, remembering
how it felt when he put it in your hands.

 

[i_got_poison]

i've been following newcomposition for several years now. he's truly, something else.

do we ever know what to do with ourselves
buzzing around looking for the sweetest hunny
there's nothing but space between the glances we toss
but my ego's all ways been bigger then "the both of us"
working around the clock frantically trying to save these
seconds, so just like those first days of fall after a tremendous
summer... those soft mornings of Autumn fog the sky pours it'self into the
earth... and i blink wide with my morning eyes just trying to hold it all in
my busy ally sees alot of busy bodies, more then enough to enjoy the
dry cigarette on a rickaty stair and ponder the lives passing mine by
she sleeps now. the girl i love, in my life, on the couch i'm slacking to rebuild.
under a large moon, and the dark sweep the heat from the side streets of my concrete city
my life suits the news and the blues, and the stains on my white shirts,
she tells me to remember those times, those summers where she would come to visit
the hours stretched. adventures to unravel, defining the beauity thats lock away with in existance
in falling into her as if she was the earth. wishing death would only call in moments wrap in bliss
i wouldn't say it was ignorence. or maybe we had just decided to be soulmates but kept it on the low
and just as fast the mundane problems i bother myself with would resume it's almost natural order
but days i would lay questioning what to do with myself until the treasured i've freed
returns back to me, always another year to grow wiser, be more impressive, older
the same person with a different story to peddle,
she's been smiling for me all along. and all this long and
... she says ""you know when i used to come visit you?"
"....this time i'm not leaving.".....(and now i feel sappy)

 

[i_got_poison]

another from NC. he hasn't uploaded in ages and now 2 in as many days.

sometimes i wish this beauty of thought were mine.


i feel distant from you,
like i'm writing from the past,searching for where i left you.
but how could you be misplaced
as if some day we would just be found,
face to face could taste tentions tearing from your skin
these seconds wore thin against silent clocks, the ticking's in my head
and then the sun i lift from bed, sheds light into the cracks into my soul
dreams lay dormant graced in heavy sleep
days seem swift rolling monotony to the daily shift
chips in these shoulders growing the knots in my back
i feel the miles in my muscles, and the weight my thoughts carry
shuffling my fingers, crafting words left to linger,
waiting until one of us fucking opens our eyes.
is this still putting stuff behind me or counting down to something big
stuck in today, sifting stray moments, compartmentalizing the grey,
and the hand full of ways witnessing brilliance cascades,
watching loosely this change, it begins, the illumination fades.
i feel distant from you.
like it's something i needed to say.

 

[dynamicbaddog]

It's Ours



there is always that space there
just before they get to us
that space
that fine relaxer
the breather
while say
flopping on a bed
thinking of nothing
or say
pouring a glass of water from the
spigot
while entranced by
nothing

that
gentle pure
space

it's worth

centuries of
existence

say

just to scratch your neck
while looking out the window at
a bare branch

that space
there
before they get to us
ensures
that
when they do
they won't
get it all

ever.

Charles Bukowski

 

[i_got_poison]

Love Is A Great Thing

Love is a great thing, yea, a great and thorough good.
By itself it makes that which is heavy light;
and it bears evenly all that is uneven.
It carries a burden which is no burden;
it will not be kept back by anything low and mean;
It desires to be free from all wordly affections,
and not to be entangled by any outward prosperity,
or by any adversity subdued.
Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble,
attempts what is above its strength,
pleads no excuse of impossibility.
It is therefore able to undertake all things,
and it completes many things and warrants them to take effect,
where he who does not love would faint and lie down.
Though weary, it is not tired;
though pressed it is not straightened;
though alarmed, it is not confounded;
but as a living flame it forces itself upwards and securely passes through all.
Love is active and sincere, courageous, patient, faithful, prudent, and manly.

Thomas A Kempis

 

[lontok09]

A beautiful recitation of Black Ice and Rain, by Michael Donaghy:

 

[vauxhallmum]

I love Kate Tempest

 

[heinous seamus]

The Fly

She sat on a willow stem,
observing
a part of the battle of Crecy,
the roars,
the gasps,
the groans,
the trampling and falling.

During the fourteenth attack
of the French cavalry
she mated
with a brown-eyed male fly
from Vadincourt.

She rubbed her legs together
on a slit-open horse
and pondered
on the immortality of flies.

Relieved she settled
on the blue tongue
of the Duke of Clairvaux.

As silence settled
and the whispers of decay
spread
and only
a few arms and legs
twitched under the beech trees,

she began to lay her eggs
on the one eye
of Johann Uhr,
the King's Armourer.

And there she was pecked off
by a swift
in flight
from the flames of Estrees


Miroslav Holub

 

[heinous seamus]

Snake

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of
the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.

DH Lawrence

 

[lang rabbie]

Just heard this for the first time in many years:

Rising Damp

("A river can sometimes be diverted but is a very hard thing to lose altogether" - Paper to the Auctioneers Institute, 1907)

At our feet they lie low,
The little fervent underground
Rivers of London
Effra, Graveney, Falcon, Quaggy,
Wandle, Walbrook, Tyburn, Fleet
Whose names are disfigured,
Frayed, effaced.
These are the Magogs that chewed the clay
To the basin that London nestles in.
These are the currents that chiselled the city,
That washed the clothes and turned the mills,
Where children drank and salmon swam
And wells were holy.
They have gone under.

Boxed, like the magician's assistant.
Buried alive in earth.
Forgotten, like the dead.
They return spectrally after heavy rain,
Confounding suburban gardens. They infiltrate
Chronic bronchitis statistics. A silken
Slur haunts dwellings by shrouded
Watercourses, and is taken
For the footing of the dead.

Being of our world, they will return
(Westbourne, caged at Sloane Square,
Will jack from his box)
Will deluge cellars, detonate manholes,
Plant effluent on our faces,
Sink the city.

Effra, Graveney, Falcon, Quaggy,
Wandle, Walbrook, Tyburn, Fleet
It is the other rivers that lie
Lower, that touch us only in dreams
That never surface. We feel their tug
As a dowser's rod bends to the surface below
Phlegethon, Acheron, Lethe, Styx

U A Fanthorpe

 

[butchersapron]

One for the Viennese fighters, 77 years ago this week

There Is a Lesson

"All Austrian schools, meanwhile, were closed for an indefinite period under a government decree issued to keep children off the hazardous streets" (15 February 1934, San Francisco Chronicle).

Keep the children off the streets,
Dollfuss,
there is an alphabet written in blood
for them to learn,
there is a lesson thundered by collapsed
books of bodies.

They might be riddled by the bullets
of knowledge
. . .
there is a volume written with three
thousand bodies that can never
be hidden,
there is a sentence spelled by the
grim faces of bereaved women
there is a message, inescapable, that
vibrates the air with voices of
heroes.

Tillie Olsen

 

[invisibleplanet]

Ah, Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire!
Would not we shatter it to bits-and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!

 

[Dillinger4]

Like You by Roque Dalton

Like you I
love love, life, the sweet smell
of things, the sky-
blue landscape of January days.

And my blood boils up
and I laugh through eyes
that have known the buds of tears.
I believe the world is beautiful
and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.

And that my veins don’t end in me
but in the unanimous blood
of those who struggle for life,
love,
little things,
landscape and bread,
the poetry of everyone.

 

[vauxhallmum]

BRIGHTON HOLIDAY


The rooms seemed furnished for a pantomime,
Giant’s wardrobes, tables, chandeliers,
vast windows, winking over Brighton’s piers;
a hotel from a broader, gentler time.

And we’d go traipsing round the bleak shore line
our gumboots on and hats drawn over ears,
wind, waves and water tumbling like tears;
the hermit Sun too miserly to shine.

Yet floating pebbles and a marbled sky
bore witness to your effervescent grace.
Moonwalking on the pier you’d both defy
the pull of gravity in bouncy castle space,
then tickling the slot machines you’d try
to tease the pennies from their glassy place -
and I would laugh with you and kiss your face.

 

[Ceej]

That's lovely, Vauxhallmum - who wrote it?


Being Boring by Wendy Cope

'May you live in interesting times.' Chinese curse

If you ask me 'What's new?', I have nothing to say
Except that the garden is growing.
I had a slight cold but it's better today.
I'm content with the way things are going.

Yes, he is the same as he usually is,
Still eating and sleeping and snoring.
I get on with my work. He gets on with his.
I know this is all very boring.

There was drama enough in my turbulent past:
Tears and passion - I've used up a tankful.
No news is good news, and long may it last,
If nothing much happens, I'm thankful.

A happier cabbage you never did see,
My vegetable spirits are soaring.
If you're after excitement, steer well clear of me.
I want to go on being boring.

I don't go to parties. Well, what are they for,
If you don't need to find a new lover?
You drink and you listen and drink a bit more
And you take the next day to recover.

Someone to stay home with was all my desire
And, now that I've found a safe mooring,
I've just one ambition in life: I aspire
To go on and on being boring.

 

[butchersapron]

Sorry, one a day!! Not 4!!

 

[Ceej]

But there haven't been any for weeks! We're only halfway through January on that basis!

 

[invisibleplanet]

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)

 

[butchersapron]

Yes, very funny.

 

[vauxhallmum]

That's lovely, Vauxhallmum - who wrote it?


It's a bit self indulgent of me, I know, but my mum wrote it recently for my sister who has terminal cancer.

 

[Pickman's model]

Villanelle Of Acheron
Ernest Dowson

By the pale marge of Acheron,
Me thinks we shall pass restfully,
Beyond the scope of any sun.

There all men hie them one by one,
Far from the stress of earth and sea,
By the pale marge of Acheron.

'Tis well when life and love is done,
'Tis very well at last to be,
Beyond the scope of any sun.

No busy voices there shall stun
Our ears: the stream flows silently
By the pale marge of Acheron.

There is the crown of labour won,
The sleep of immortality,
Beyond the scope of any sun.

Life, of thy gifts I will have none,
My queen is that Persephone,
By the pale marge of Acheron,
Beyond the scope of any sun.