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TurkeylegJenkins
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18021 posts
Fri Aug-03-07 12:56 PM

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"Post a Poem That You Love"
Fri Aug-03-07 01:05 PM by TurkeylegJenkins

  

          


It can be a poem by a famous poet or an unknown poet. It can even be a piece of your own.

If it moves you, and you think it will have an affect on others, post it here.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.

  

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Topic Outline
Subject Author Message Date ID
Gregory Corso: Marriage
Aug 03rd 2007
1
Walt Whitman: Poets to Come
Aug 03rd 2007
2
Vladimir Mayakovsky: Conversation w/ a Tax Collector About Poetry
Aug 03rd 2007
3
Allen Ginsberg: Death to Van Gogh's Ear (mp3 audio link)
Aug 03rd 2007
4
Wallace Stevens: Bantams in Pine Woods
Aug 03rd 2007
5
James Wright: Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio
Aug 03rd 2007
6
John Berryman: The Ball Poem
Aug 03rd 2007
7
William Butler Yeats: To a Child Dancing in the Wind
Aug 03rd 2007
8
T.S. Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Aug 03rd 2007
9
not a fan of poetry but i always thought this was amazing
Aug 03rd 2007
12
James Tate: Fuck the Astronauts
Aug 03rd 2007
10
Nikki Giovanni: Beautiful Black Men
Aug 03rd 2007
11
I like that one too
Aug 07th 2007
59
Denis Johnson- Upon Waking
Aug 03rd 2007
13
Pier Paolo Pasolini - Roman Evening
Aug 03rd 2007
14
Forugh Farrokhzad - Another Birth
Aug 03rd 2007
15
um, that was amazing
Aug 06th 2007
47
      RE: um, that was amazing
Aug 07th 2007
53
           yeah i actually googled her and that piece last night
Aug 07th 2007
56
                RE: yeah i actually googled her and that piece last night
Aug 07th 2007
60
Muriel Rukeyser: Waiting for Icarus
Aug 03rd 2007
16
Randall Jarrell: The Woman at the Washington Zoo
Aug 03rd 2007
17
Rita Dove: Snow King
Aug 03rd 2007
18
Christopher Smart: Jubilate Agno
Aug 03rd 2007
19
W.B. Yeats: Sailing To Byzantium
Aug 03rd 2007
20
Robert Frost: The Figure a Poem Makes
Aug 03rd 2007
21
Pamela White Hadas: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Bitch
Aug 03rd 2007
22
sylvia plath: mad girl's love song
Aug 04th 2007
23
dorothy parker: rainy night
Aug 04th 2007
24
Allen Ginsberg: America
Aug 04th 2007
25
Wilfred Owen: Dulce Et Decorum Est
Aug 04th 2007
26
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
Aug 04th 2007
27
Because I Could not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson
Aug 04th 2007
28
Larissa Szporluk - A Memory Palace
Aug 04th 2007
29
Olena Kalytiak Davis - Thirty Years Rising
Aug 04th 2007
30
Charles Wright - Deep Measure
Aug 04th 2007
31
Nathaniel Mackey - Glenn on Monk's Mountain
Aug 04th 2007
32
Marianne Moore - The Fish
Aug 04th 2007
33
Charles Wright - Clear Night
Aug 04th 2007
34
Emily Bronte (2)--
Aug 04th 2007
35
Yusef Komunyakaa- "My Father's Love Letters' (audio link)
Aug 04th 2007
36
Gwendoly Brooks- "My Dreams, My Works..."
Aug 04th 2007
37
Gwendolyn Brooks- "A Bronzeville Woman in a Red Hat"
Aug 04th 2007
38
William Ernest Henley: Invictus
Aug 04th 2007
39
I just got "Invictus" tattoo'd down the back of right arm
Mar 12th 2008
64
William Stafford - A Story That Could Be True
Aug 04th 2007
40
Alexander Blok - I Apprehend You
Aug 06th 2007
41
Wallace Stevens: The Man With the Blue Guitar
Aug 06th 2007
42
Wallace Stevens: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Aug 06th 2007
43
V of this I think is one of the best stanzas
Mar 12th 2008
63
When I was one-and-twenty...By A.E. Housman
Aug 06th 2007
44
Pablo Neruda: I Have Gone Marking
Aug 06th 2007
45
James Tate: Teaching the Ape to Write Poems
Aug 06th 2007
46
John Berryman: Eleven Addresses to the Lord
Aug 07th 2007
48
Adrienne Rich: Diving into the Wreck
Aug 07th 2007
49
e.e. cummings: may i feel said he
Aug 07th 2007
50
William Shakespeare: Sigh No More
Aug 07th 2007
51
Richard WIlbur: The Writer
Aug 07th 2007
52
Mary Oliver: Singapore
Aug 07th 2007
54
W.S. Merwin: Listen
Aug 07th 2007
55
I am a Black Woman ~ Mari Evans
Aug 07th 2007
57
Resignation by Nikki Giovanni
Aug 07th 2007
58
In the silence by Stephany
Mar 11th 2008
61
Pablo Neruda - If you forget me
Mar 11th 2008
62
Langston Hughes: Theme for English B
Mar 12th 2008
65
Love Song for Antonia by Langston Hughes
Mar 12th 2008
66
Keats: When I have fears that I may cease to be
Mar 13th 2008
67
Keats: La Belle Dame sans Merci
Mar 13th 2008
68
Alfred Lord Tennyson - Ulysses
Mar 07th 2009
69
^ certified banger
Mar 07th 2009
70
Langston Hughes-When Susan Wears Red
Mar 08th 2009
71
Margaret Walker: For my people....
Mar 08th 2009
72
Mother to Son by Langston Hughes
Mar 08th 2009
73
Justin Banks - Techno City Blues
Mar 08th 2009
74
The Nymphs Reply to the Shepherd, Walter Raleigh
Mar 08th 2009
75
Adam
Mar 09th 2009
76

TurkeylegJenkins
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18021 posts
Fri Aug-03-07 01:11 PM

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1. "Gregory Corso: Marriage"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Marriage

Should I get married? Should I be good?
Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustus hood?
Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries
tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets
then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries
and she going just so far and I understanding why
not getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel!
Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone
and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky-

When she introduces me to her parents
back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie,
should I sit with my knees together on their 3rd degree sofa
and not ask Where's the bathroom?
How else to feel other than I am,
often thinking Flash Gordon soap-
O how terrible it must be for a young man
seated before a family and the family thinking
We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou!
After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living?

Should I tell them? Would they like me then?
Say All right get married, we're losing a daughter
but we're gaining a son-
And should I then ask Where's the bathroom?

O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends
and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded
just wait to get at the drinks and food-
And the priest! he looking at me as if I masturbated
asking me Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife?
And I trembling what to say say Pie Glue!
I kiss the bride all those corny men slapping me on the back
She's all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha!
And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going on-
Then all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoes
Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers! Chocolates!
All streaming into cozy hotels
All going to do the same thing tonight
The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen
The lobby zombies they knowing what
The whistling elevator man he knowing
Everybody knowing! I'd almost be inclined not to do anything!
Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye!
Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon!
running rampant into those almost climactic suites
yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel!
O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls
I'd sit there the Mad Honeymooner
devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of bigamy
a saint of divorce-

But I should get married I should be good
How nice it'd be to come home to her
and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen
aproned young and lovely wanting my baby
and so happy about me she burns the roast beef
and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair
saying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf!
God what a husband I'd make! Yes, I should get married!
So much to do! Like sneaking into Mr Jones' house late at night
and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books
Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower
like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence
like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest
grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!
And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him
When are you going to stop people killing whales!
And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle
Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust-

Yes if I should get married and it's Connecticut and snow
and she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn,
up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind me,
finding myself in the most common of situations a trembling man
knowledged with responsibility not twig-smear nor Roman coin soup-
O what would that be like!
Surely I'd give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus
For a rattle a bag of broken Bach records
Tack Della Francesca all over its crib
Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib
And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon

No, I doubt I'd be that kind of father
Not rural not snow no quiet window
but hot smelly tight New York City
seven flights up, roaches and rats in the walls
a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job!
And five nose running brats in love with Batman
And the neighbors all toothless and dry haired
like those hag masses of the 18th century
all wanting to come in and watch TV
The landlord wants his rent
Grocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbus
impossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parking-
No! I should not get married! I should never get married!
But-imagine if I were married to a beautiful sophisticated woman
tall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black gloves
holding a cigarette holder in one hand and a highball in the other
and we lived high up in a penthouse with a huge window
from which we could see all of New York and even farther on clearer days
No, can't imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream-

O but what about love? I forget love
not that I am incapable of love
It's just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes-
I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother
And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible
And there's maybe a girl now but she's already married
And I don't like men and-
But there's got to be somebody!
Because what if I'm 60 years old and not married,
all alone in a furnished room with pee stains on my underwear
and everybody else is married! All the universe married but me!

Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible
then marriage would be possible-
Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover
so i wait-bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life.

-- Gregory Corso

_______________________________________________________________________________

<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.

  

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TurkeylegJenkins
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18021 posts
Fri Aug-03-07 01:20 PM

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2. "Walt Whitman: Poets to Come"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Poets to Come

Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for;
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known,
Arouse! Arouse—for you must justify me—you must answer.

I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,
I but advance a moment, only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.
I am a man who, sauntering along, without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you, and then averts his face,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
Expecting the main things from you.

--Walt Whitman

_______________________________________________________________________________

<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.

  

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TurkeylegJenkins
Charter member
18021 posts
Fri Aug-03-07 01:24 PM

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3. "Vladimir Mayakovsky: Conversation w/ a Tax Collector About Poetry"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Because of the unusual formatting of this poem, I couldn't cut and paste it.

Here's a link: http://sye.freeshell.org/Mayakovsky.txt

_______________________________________________________________________________

<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.

  

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TurkeylegJenkins
Charter member
18021 posts
Fri Aug-03-07 01:29 PM

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4. "Allen Ginsberg: Death to Van Gogh's Ear (mp3 audio link)"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

http://www.allenginsberg.org/library/Audio/9963.mp3

_______________________________________________________________________________

<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.

  

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TurkeylegJenkins
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18021 posts
Fri Aug-03-07 01:32 PM

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5. "Wallace Stevens: Bantams in Pine Woods"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Bantams in Pine-Woods

Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt!

Damned universal cock, as if the sun
Was blackamoor to bear your blazing tail.

Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat! I am the personal.
Your world is you. I am my world.

You ten-foot poet among inchlings. Fat!
Begone! An inchling bristles in these pines,

Bristles, and points their Appalachian tangs,
And fears not portly Azcan nor his hoos.

-- Wallace Stevens

_______________________________________________________________________________

<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.

  

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TurkeylegJenkins
Charter member
18021 posts
Fri Aug-03-07 01:34 PM

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6. "James Wright: Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other's bodies.

-- James Wright

_______________________________________________________________________________

<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.

  

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TurkeylegJenkins
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18021 posts
Fri Aug-03-07 01:35 PM

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7. "John Berryman: The Ball Poem"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

The Ball Poem

What is the boy now, who has lost his ball,
What, what is he to do? I saw it go
Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then
Merrily over–there it is in the water!
No use to say 'O there are other balls':
An ultimate shaking grief fixes the boy
As he stands rigid, trembling, staring down
All his young days into the harbour where
His ball went. I would not intrude on him,
A dime, another ball, is worthless. Now
He senses first responsibility
In a world of possessions. People will take balls,
Balls will be lost always, little boy,
And no one buys a ball back. Money is external.
He is learning, well behind his desperate eyes,
The epistemology of loss, how to stand up
Knowing what every man must one day know
And most know many days, how to stand up
And gradually light returns to the street
A whistle blows, the ball is out of sight,
Soon part of me will explore the deep and dark
Floor of the harbour . . I am everywhere,
I suffer and move, my mind and my heart move
With all that move me, under the water
Or whistling, I am not a little boy.

-- John Berryman

_______________________________________________________________________________

<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.

  

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TurkeylegJenkins
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18021 posts
Fri Aug-03-07 01:38 PM

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8. "William Butler Yeats: To a Child Dancing in the Wind"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

To a Child Dancing in the Wind


I

DANCE there upon the shore;
What need have you to care
For wind or water’s roar?
And tumble out your hair
That the salt drops have wet;
Being young you have not known
The fool’s triumph, nor yet
Love lost as soon as won,
Nor the best labourer dead
And all the sheaves to bind.
What need have you to dread
The monstrous crying of wind?


II

Has no one said those daring
Kind eyes should be more learn’d?
Or warned you how despairing
The moths are when they are burned,
I could have warned you, but you are young,
So we speak a different tongue.

O you will take whatever’s offered
And dream that all the world’s a friend,
Suffer as your mother suffered,
Be as broken in the end.
But I am old and you are young,
And I speak a barbarous tongue.

-- William Butler Yeats

_______________________________________________________________________________

<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.

  

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TurkeylegJenkins
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18021 posts
Fri Aug-03-07 01:58 PM

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9. "T.S. Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock


S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo
Non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.



Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the windowpanes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all--
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?


. . . . .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.


. . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in
upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"--
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."


. . . . .

No!I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind?Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

-- T. S. Eliot
_______________________________________________________________________________

<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.

  

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jasonprague
Member since Sep 29th 2005
1900 posts
Fri Aug-03-07 02:27 PM

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12. "not a fan of poetry but i always thought this was amazing"
In response to Reply # 9


          




PEACE

"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." - Kundera

  

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TurkeylegJenkins
Charter member
18021 posts
Fri Aug-03-07 02:03 PM

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10. "James Tate: Fuck the Astronauts"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Fuck the Astronauts


I

Eventually we must combine nightmares
an angel smoking a cigarette on the steps
of the last national bank, said to me.
I put her out with my thumb. I don’t need that
cheap talk I’ve got my own problems.
It was sad, exciting, and horrible.
It was exciting, horrible, and sad.
It was horrible, sad, and exciting.
It was inviting, mad, and deplorable.
It was adorable, glad, and enticing.
Eventually we must smoke a thumb
cheap talk I’ve got my own angel
on the steps of the problems the bank
said to me I don’t need that.
I will take this one window
with its sooty maps and scratches
so that my dreams will remember
one another and so that my eyes will not
become blinded by the new world.


II

The flames don’t dance or slither.
They have painted the room green.
Beautiful and naked, the wives
are sleeping before the fire.
Now it is out. The men have
returned to the shacks,
slaved creatures from the forest
floor across their white
stationwagons. That just about
does it, says the other,
dumping her bucket
over her head. Well, I guess
we got everything, says one,
feeling around in the mud,
as if for a child.
Now they remember they want
that mud, who can’t remember
what they got up for.
They parcel it out: when
they are drunk enough
they go into town with
a bucket of mud, saying
we can slice it up into
windmills like a bloated cow.
Later, they paint the insides
of the shack black,
and sit sucking eggs all night,
they want something real, useful,
but there isn’t anything.


III

I will engineer the sunrise
they have disassembled our shadows
our echoes are erased from the walls
your nipples are the skeletons of olives
your nipples are an oriental delight
your nipples blow away like cigarette papers
your nipples are the mouths of mutes
so I am not here any longer
skein of lightning
memory’s dark ink in your last smile
where the stars have swallowed their train schedule
where the stars have drowned in their dark petticoats
like a sock of hamburger
receiving the lightning
into his clitoris
red on red the prisoner
confesses his waltz
through the corkscrew lightning
nevermind the lightning
in your teeth let’s waltz
I am the hashish pinball machine
that rapes a piano.


-- James Tate

_______________________________________________________________________________

<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.

  

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earthqueen
Charter member
8904 posts
Fri Aug-03-07 02:11 PM

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11. "Nikki Giovanni: Beautiful Black Men"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Beautiful Black Men
(with compliments and apologies to all not mentioned by name)
Nikki Giovanni

i wanta say just gotta say something
bout those beautiful beautiful beautiful outasight
black men
with they afros
walking down the street
is the same ol danger
but a brand new pleasure

sitting on stoops, in bars, going to offices
running numbers, watching for their whores
preaching in churches, driving their hogs
walking their dogs, winking at me
in their fire red, lime green, burnt orange
royal blue tight tight pants that hug
what i like to hug

jerry butler, wilson pickett, the impressions
temptations, mighty mighty sly
don't have to do anything but walk
on stage
and i scream and stamp and shout
see new breed men in breed alls
dashiki suits with shirts that match
the lining that compliments the ties
that smile at the sandals
where dirty toes peek at me
and i scream and stamp and shout
for more beautiful beautiful beautiful
black men with outasight afros

  

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SuiteLady
Member since Oct 19th 2004
16190 posts
Tue Aug-07-07 06:23 PM

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59. "I like that one too"
In response to Reply # 11


  

          


be proud of who you are.

I believe that my life's gonna see,
The love I give,
Return to me.
~ John Mayer

http://www.myspace.com/suitie

  

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crow
Member since Feb 23rd 2005
4034 posts
Fri Aug-03-07 02:39 PM

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13. "Denis Johnson- Upon Waking"
In response to Reply # 0
Fri Aug-03-07 02:40 PM by crow

  

          

at the far edge of earth, night
is going away. another
poem begins. slumped over

the typewriter i must get this
exactly, i want to make it
clear this morning that your

face,as it opens
from its shadow, is more
perfect than yesterday;and

that the light, as it
hesitates over the approach
of your smile, has given this

aching bed more than warmth,
more than poems; somewy

a generous rose, or a very
delicate arrangements of sounds,
has come to peace in this new room.

----------------------------------------------------------------

__________________________________

*Note to self: Add Sig*

  

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King_Friday
Member since Nov 22nd 2002
3087 posts
Fri Aug-03-07 05:55 PM

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14. "Pier Paolo Pasolini - Roman Evening"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

ROMAN EVENING by Pier Paolo Pasolini

Where are you going through the streets of Rome
in buses or trolleys
full of people going home,
hurried and preoccupied
as if routine work were waiting for you,
work from which others are now returning?
It is right after supper,
when the wind smells of warm familial misery
lost in a thousand kitchens,
in the long, illuminated streets
spied on by brighter stars.
In the bourgeois quarter there's a peace
which makes everyone contented,
vilely happy,
a contentment everyone wants
their lives to be full of,
every evening,
Ah, to be different--in a world which
is indeed guilty--that is, not at all innocent. . .
Go, down the dark crooked street
to Trastevere:
There, motionless and disordered,
as if dug from the mud of other eras--
to be enjoyed by those who can steal
one more day from death and grief--
there you have all Rome at your feet. . .

I get off and cross the Garibaldi bridge,
keeping to the parapet
with my knuckles following
the worn edge of the stone,
hard in the warmth
that the night tenderly exhales
onto the arcades of
warm plane trees.
On the opposite bank
flat, lead-colored attics of ochre buildings
fill the washed-out sky
like paving-stones in a row.
Walking along the broken bone-like pavement
I see, or rather smell,
at once excited and prosaic--
dotted with aged stars and loud windows--
the big family neighborhood:
the dark, dank summer gilds it
with the stench
which the wind raining down
from Roman meadows
sheds on trolley tracks and facades.

And how the embankment smells
in a heat so pervasive
as to be itself a space:
from the Sublicio bridge to the Gianicolo
the stench blends with the intoxication
of the life that isn't life.
Impure signs that old drunks, ancient whores,
gangs of abandoned boys
have passed by here:
impure human traces,
humanly infected,
here to reveal these men,
violent and quiet,
their innocent low delights,
their miserable ends.

-translated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti & Francesca Valente

  

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King_Friday
Member since Nov 22nd 2002
3087 posts
Fri Aug-03-07 09:45 PM

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15. "Forugh Farrokhzad - Another Birth"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

ANOTHER BIRTH by Forugh Farrokhzad

My whole being is a dark chant
which will carry you
perpetuating you
to the dawn of eternal growths and blossoming
in this chant I sighed you sighed
in this chant
I grafted you to the tree to the water to the fire.

Life is perhaps
a long street through which a woman holding
a basket passes every day

Life is perhaps
a rope with which a man hangs himself from a branch
life is perhaps a child returning home from school.

Life is perhaps lighting up a cigarette
in the narcotic repose between two love-makings
or the absent gaze of a passerby
who takes off his hat to another passerby
with a meaningless smile and a good morning.

Life is perhaps that enclosed moment
when my gaze destroys itself in the pupil of your eyes
and it is in the feeling
which I will put into the Moon's impression
and the Night's perception.

In a room as big as loneliness
my heart
which is as big as love
looks at the simple pretexts of its happiness
at the beautiful decay of flowers in the vase
at the sapling you planted in our garden
and the song of canaries
which sing to the size of a window.

Ah
this is my lot
this is my lot
my lot is
a sky which is taken away at the drop of a curtain
my lot is going down a flight of disused stairs
a regain something amid putrefaction and nostalgia
my lot is a sad promenade in the garden of memories
and dying in the grief of a voice which tells me
I love
your hands.

I will plant my hands in the garden
I will grow I know I know I know
and swallows will lay eggs
in the hollow of my ink-stained hands.

I shall wear
a pair of twin cherries as ear-rings
and I shall put dahlia petals on my finger-nails
there is an alley
where the boys who were in love with me
still loiter with the same unkempt hair
thin necks and bony legs
and think of the innocent smiles of a little girl
who was blown away by the wind one night.

There is an alley
which my heart has stolen
from the streets of my childhood.

The journey of a form along the line of time
inseminating the line of time with the form
a form conscious of an image
coming back from a feast in a mirror

And it is in this way
that someone dies
and someone lives on.

No fisherman shall ever find a pearl in a small brook
which empties into a pool.

I know a sad little fairy
who lives in an ocean
and ever so softly
plays her heart into a magic flute
a sad little fairy
who dies with one kiss each night
and is reborn with one kiss each dawn.

  

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UncleClimax
Charter member
13786 posts
Mon Aug-06-07 06:35 PM

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47. "um, that was amazing"
In response to Reply # 15


  

          

whoever that poet is has a new fan.

__________________
http://twitter.com/theloniousfunk
http://havetravelled.blogspot.com
http://instagram.com/arsonwelles

“Be uncomfortable; be sand, not oil, to the machinery of the world.”
- Gunter Eich

  

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King_Friday
Member since Nov 22nd 2002
3087 posts
Tue Aug-07-07 04:51 PM

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53. "RE: um, that was amazing"
In response to Reply # 47


  

          

>whoever that poet is has a new fan.

Forugh Farrokhzad (1935-1967)

Great poet from Iran. She died much too young--at age 32--in a car accident. You can read a lot of her work and find more information about her here: http://www.forughfarrokhzad.org/ and here: http://www.foroughfarrokhzad.org/ (note the very slight difference in the web addresses)

Farrokhzad also directed a short film called "The House Is Black". It's a cinema-poem more than anything. I love it and highly recommend it. It's available on region 1 DVD.

  

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UncleClimax
Charter member
13786 posts
Tue Aug-07-07 05:34 PM

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56. "yeah i actually googled her and that piece last night"
In response to Reply # 53


  

          

>>whoever that poet is has a new fan.
>
>Forugh Farrokhzad (1935-1967)
>
>Great poet from Iran. She died much too young--at age 32--in
>a car accident. You can read a lot of her work and find more
>information about her here: http://www.forughfarrokhzad.org/
>and here: http://www.foroughfarrokhzad.org/ (note the very
>slight difference in the web addresses)
>
she's fantastic. do you own any of her books? and not to bag on you for this, but the translation of that poem you posted seems very awkward. i saw an excerpt from the same poem on iranian.com and it was so much more fluid and lovely. but thats not ur fault..just wondering where you got that translation from so i can avoid it

>Farrokhzad also directed a short film called "The House Is
>Black". It's a cinema-poem more than anything. I love it and
>highly recommend it. It's available on region 1 DVD.
>

is it the one about the leprosy house? sounds like something i wouldnt enjoy

__________________
http://twitter.com/theloniousfunk
http://havetravelled.blogspot.com
http://instagram.com/arsonwelles

“Be uncomfortable; be sand, not oil, to the machinery of the world.”
- Gunter Eich

  

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King_Friday
Member since Nov 22nd 2002
3087 posts
Tue Aug-07-07 07:39 PM

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60. "RE: yeah i actually googled her and that piece last night"
In response to Reply # 56


  

          


>she's fantastic. do you own any of her books?

No, actually. . . I've never been able to get my hands on one. And I think it was only recently that web sites dedicated to her started to appear. Seems like for a while you just couldn't find *anything* about her.

>the translation of that poem you posted
>seems very awkward. i saw an excerpt from the same poem on
>iranian.com and it was so much more fluid and lovely. but
>thats not ur fault..just wondering where you got that
>translation from so i can avoid it

Yeah, that came from the forughforrokhzad.org website. They also have a version of one of her poems translated as "The Wind Will Take Us" but I much prefer the translations I've seen that have it called "The Wind Will Carry Us".

You might recall that Abbas Kiarostami called one of his films "The Wind Will Carry Us" and I think someone recited the poem in it as well.

>
>>Farrokhzad also directed a short film called "The House Is
>>Black".
>is it the one about the leprosy house? sounds like something
>i wouldnt enjoy

lol. Yeah, that's the one. But it's not as bad as you might think as far as leprosy movies go.

Oddly enough, not a lot of works made in the "leprosy genre".

  

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jane eyre
Member since Jan 16th 2007
715 posts
Fri Aug-03-07 09:50 PM

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16. "Muriel Rukeyser: Waiting for Icarus"
In response to Reply # 0


          

Waiting for Icarus

He said he would be back and we'd drink wine together
He said that everything would be better than before
He said we were on the edge of a new relation
He said he would never again cringe before his father
He said that he was going to invent full-time
He said he loved me that going into me
He said was going into the world and the sky
He said all the buckles were very firm
He said the wax was the best wax
He said Wait for me here on the beach
He said Just don't cry

I remember the gulls and the waves
I remember the islands going dark on the sea
I remember the girls laughing
I remember they said he only wanted to get away from me
I remember mother saying: Inventors are like poets, a trashy lot
I remember she told me those who try out inventions are worse
I remember she added: Women who love such are the worst of all
I have been waiting all day, or perhaps longer.
I would have liked to try those wings myself.
It would have been better than this.

  

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jane eyre
Member since Jan 16th 2007
715 posts
Fri Aug-03-07 09:54 PM

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17. "Randall Jarrell: The Woman at the Washington Zoo"
In response to Reply # 0


          

line breaks and spacing are lost w/ my copy and paste job.

a link:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15310

  

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jane eyre
Member since Jan 16th 2007
715 posts
Fri Aug-03-07 10:08 PM

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18. "Rita Dove: Snow King"
In response to Reply # 0


          

Snow King

In a far far land where men are men
and women are sun and sky
The Snow King paces. And light throws
a gold patina on the white spaces
where sparrows lie frozen in hallways.

And he weeps for the sparrows, their clumped feathers:
Where is the summer that lasts forever,
with night as soft as antelope eyes?
The Snow King roams the lime-filled spaces
his cracked heart a slow fire, a garnet.

  

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jane eyre
Member since Jan 16th 2007
715 posts
Fri Aug-03-07 10:18 PM

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19. "Christopher Smart: Jubilate Agno"
In response to Reply # 0


          

Jubilate Agno

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1945.html

  

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jane eyre
Member since Jan 16th 2007
715 posts
Fri Aug-03-07 10:50 PM

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20. "W.B. Yeats: Sailing To Byzantium"
In response to Reply # 0


          

Sailing to Byzantium

I.

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees -
Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

II.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

III.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

IV.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

  

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jane eyre
Member since Jan 16th 2007
715 posts
Fri Aug-03-07 11:04 PM

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21. "Robert Frost: The Figure a Poem Makes"
In response to Reply # 0


          

http://www.mrbauld.com/frostfig.html

it's a sloppy transcript but i'm too lazy to search for another link.

"...More than once I should have lost my soul to radicalism if it had been the originality it was mistaken for by its young converts. Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country. For myself the originality need be no more than the freshness of a poem run in the way I have described: from delight to wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being. Its most precious quality will remain its having run itself and carried away the poet with it. Read it a hundred times: it will forever keep its freshness as a petal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went."

  

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jane eyre
Member since Jan 16th 2007
715 posts
Fri Aug-03-07 11:49 PM

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22. "Pamela White Hadas: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Bitch"
In response to Reply # 0


          

**the poem loses some meaning if it's not spaced and italicized as hadas meant for it to be. i couldn't find a link to the poem anywhere. i almost didn't post it for that reason but i like the poem and i like hadas. young bitch and other interesting hadas poems are in "self-evidence: a selection of verse 1977-1997"

helpful information:

the quote from the rhyming dictionary is italicized and so is the title of the dictionary. in the final four line stanza, listens, skill, self, person, stealth and coffin are italicized. AS IF is italicized. the last two lines of the poem are jutted to the far right.


Portrait of the Artist as a Young Bitch

-elf: delf, elf, Guelph, pelf, self, shelf...
Random House Vest Pocket Rhyming Dictionary


She owns such a sad little life.
She writes about it all the time.
She whines. She is no body's wife.
And she would make that rhyme.

Or else she's Queen of Heroines:
"Some genius should write about me
How curious, how scrupled my sins..."
(She sighs) "...what delicate irony

I'd like to provoke." She loves a man,
And she has left him, too.
She's apt to make fun, as much as she can,
Of the ruins she's capered through.

She studies the books on her shelves,
The ones she thinks might translate her
Wonder to order, yield slants on her selves,
Or morally tag her with words as obscure

And ashamed as her own. She pays
In hard-earned coin the market price
For sainthood: willful despair and disgrace.
She'd love to spend forty days in some nice

Hot desert: exile, mangling, hood.
"Let me go for broke, cracked belle
Of despair; let my halo ring wide
Of my dome, Saturnian ruffle."

She listens for unlikely rhymes, as if
a skill could mask self in person,
stealth rattle soft music from coffin;
sound tune bone to reason;

AS IF:
her epitaph.

  

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ScandalousWoman
Member since Nov 19th 2002
25416 posts
Sat Aug-04-07 02:03 AM

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23. "sylvia plath: mad girl's love song"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

***********************
it was good for me, too, lover.
50yearsfromnow.blogspot.com
"Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to the error that counts." ~ Nikki Giovanni

  

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ScandalousWoman
Member since Nov 19th 2002
25416 posts
Sat Aug-04-07 02:07 AM

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24. "dorothy parker: rainy night"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Ghosts of all my lovely sins,
Who attend too well my pillow,
Gay the wanton rain begins;
Hide the limp and tearful willow.

Turn aside your eyes and ears,
Trail away your robes of sorrow,
You shall have my further years-
You shall walk with me tomorrow.

I am sister to the rain;
Fey and sudden and unholy,
Petulant at the windowpane,
Quickly lost, remembered slowly.

I have lived with shades, a shade;
I am hung with graveyard flowers.
Let me be tonight arrayed
In the silver of the showers.

Every fragile thing shall rust;
When another April passes
I may be a furry dust,
Sifting through the brittle grasses.

All sweet sins shall be forgot;
Who will live to tell their siring?
Hear me now, nor let me rot
Wistful still, and still aspiring.

Ghosts of dear temptations, heed;
I am frail, be you forgiving.
See you not that I have need
To be living with the living?

Sail, tonight, the Styx's breast;
Glide among the dim processions
Of the exquisite unblest,
Spirits of my shared transgressions,

Roam with young Persephone.
Plucking poppies for your slumber . . .
With the morrow, there shall be
One more wraith among your number.



***********************
it was good for me, too, lover.
50yearsfromnow.blogspot.com
"Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to the error that counts." ~ Nikki Giovanni

  

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cereffusion
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29598 posts
Sat Aug-04-07 10:08 AM

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25. "Allen Ginsberg: America"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

AMERICA
by Allen Ginsberg
America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good
looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial
for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came
over from Russia.
I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious.
Movie producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that jetplanes 1400 miles an hour
and twentyfive-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live
in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles
more so they're all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings
they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and
the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about
the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing
the party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real
mensch Mother Bloor the Silk-strikers' Ewig-Weibliche made me cry
I once saw the Yiddish orator Israel Amter plain. Everybody must
have been a spy.
America you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. Her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him need big black
niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.


Berkeley, January 17, 1956

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
<--- Don't Slander Me

  

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cereffusion
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Sat Aug-04-07 10:10 AM

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26. "Wilfred Owen: Dulce Et Decorum Est"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
<--- Don't Slander Me

  

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After_Words
Member since Aug 04th 2007
591 posts
Sat Aug-04-07 10:45 AM

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27. "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there's some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.



This poem was posted in my 8th grade English class and I used to just stare at the last stanza and for some reason, it just stuck out at me.

--------------------------------
"I'm sick of following my dreams, man. I'm just going to ask where they're going and hook up with 'em later." -- Mitch Hedberg

  

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After_Words
Member since Aug 04th 2007
591 posts
Sat Aug-04-07 10:52 AM

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28. "Because I Could not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
And Immortality.

We slowly drove—He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility—

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess—in the Ring—
We passed the fields of Gazing Grain—
We passed the Setting Sun—

Or rather—He passed Us—
The Dews drew quivering and chill—
For only Gossamer, my Gown—
My Tippet—only Tulle—

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground—
The Roof was scarcely visible—
The Cornice—in the Ground—

Since then—'tis Centuries—and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity—

--------------------------------
"I'm sick of following my dreams, man. I'm just going to ask where they're going and hook up with 'em later." -- Mitch Hedberg

  

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spivak
Member since Dec 17th 2005
744 posts
Sat Aug-04-07 11:10 AM

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29. "Larissa Szporluk - A Memory Palace"
In response to Reply # 0


          

Memory Palace

A cloud takes a lifetime
to smother the sun. It's finally

a crime, but it's also a glory,
the lining sizzling gold,

the afternoon's image
occulted. Truth is I don't

have an art. One pulls the other
one down. I know

there's a blue-purple hill.
I know all the girls

disappear. I don't
break a sweat. I sit

the whole year with a bird
on my lap. The firmament

wobbles. Their deep
purple feet. Asleep, it comes

back, fast, but late
there were poisonous leaves

and salt on the path
like an alphabet.

  

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spivak
Member since Dec 17th 2005
744 posts
Sat Aug-04-07 11:17 AM

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30. "Olena Kalytiak Davis - Thirty Years Rising"
In response to Reply # 0
Sat Aug-04-07 11:18 AM by spivak

          

Thirty Years Rising

I needed to point to the buildings, as if they all stood
for something, as if Detroit could rise against
into its own skyline, filled in
as it always is inside me:
each cracked sidewalk, each
of the uniformed girls, braided
and quiet as weeds, each bicycled boy, each man
with a car and a wife, the ones I slept with
and arranged, neatly, like a newly laid
subdivision.

But I was driving with my brother
who doesn't like to think
of the thirty years rising
inside us, the leavened truth. He's arrived
at the heavy black X of destination
on the inside of his forehead
and he doesn't want to see me
looking like this: open-palmed
and childishly dressed, with hipbones
instead of children, aching
to put my sneakered feet on his new leather
dash.

He doesn't want to hear me
say something fucked-up, something like:
It's in my bones. My sternum
runs like Woodward Avenue,
it's pinnate, parked on, full
of dirt, holding women in wigs and cigarettes, bars
with pooltables and ashtrays. My ribs
are holding up factories and breweries, two-bedroom
houses and multi-storied lives, this strip,
this city, these sidestreets,
a bony feather.

He's live here all his life.
But I gave up these streets
for so many others. I hopped
turnstiles to ride the Metro,
memorized EL tracks and Muni stations
until I had a huge worn subway
map on the inside of me head, but couldn't get off at any stop,
couldn't begin to live in any city, and couldn't sleep
with anybody but myself. I gave up
this body for so many others. I've been both
an exaggeration of myself and someone
who looks just like me but sounds different.
But now I'm back
to visit both, and I need to point
to my first hotel room;
to the mortuary above which
my tall half-chinese half-german
punkrockboyfriend fingered me
like a book in his little bed;
and to the hospital where our bonemother
died so late or so early that
we were both sound asleep.

I didn't say it,
but: My sternum is breaking
with this, it's sinking
like Woodward as Detroit rises around
my brother's turn, rises and falls.
Falls not at all like this light summer rain
but hard, like someone else's memory,
insistent, unwanted, but suddenly,
and again, being claimed.

  

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spivak
Member since Dec 17th 2005
744 posts
Sat Aug-04-07 11:22 AM

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31. "Charles Wright - Deep Measure"
In response to Reply # 0


          

Deep Measure

Shank of the afternoon, wan weight-light
Undercard of a short month, February Sunday
Wordlessness of the wrong world
In the day's dark niche, the patron saint of what-Goes-Down

Shuffles her golden deck and deals
on for you and one for me...
And that's it, a single number -- we play what we get
My hand says measure,
doves on the wire and the first bulb blades
Edging up through the mulch-mat,
Inside-out of the winter gum trees,
A cold harbor, cold stop and two-step, and here it comes,

Deep measure, deep measure that runnels beneath the bone,
That sways our attitude and sets our lives to muse;
Deep measure, down under and death drawn
Pilgrim, homeboy of false time,
Listen and set your foot down, listen and step lightly

  

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spivak
Member since Dec 17th 2005
744 posts
Sat Aug-04-07 11:35 AM

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32. "Nathaniel Mackey - Glenn on Monk's Mountain"
In response to Reply # 0


          

*spacing is off*

Glenn on Monk's Mountain

Glenn on Monk’s Mountain
—“mu” twenty-fourth part—
Next it was Austria we
were in. Unexpected rain
soaked our shoes,
unexpected snow froze
our
feet. A bitter book
took us there...
A bitter
book in our stomachs,
an aftertaste on
our tongues, a book
based
on another Glenn,
Monk’s
Mountain not the Monk’s we
took it for. A book of overlay,
a book about death at fifty-one,
a book
we lay awake at night reading,
a book we read wanting
to wake up from...
So it
was another Monk’s
Mountain we haunted. Sat
upside
it crosslegged, lotusheaded,
humphed,
heads encased in crystal it
seemed... Bits of straw like
unexpected snow filled the
sky.
Stars were bits of straw blown
about in the crystal we were
in, the rags on our backs a bolt
of black, star-studded
cloth,
the jukebox dressed us in
gabardine, burlap, scratched
our skin with raw silk...
A bit of straw caught in my eye
made it water, water
filled my
head with salt... Straw, ridden
by water, filled my head, my
throat, my chest, salt filled
my head with sound. A sound of
bells
not of bells but of pounded
iron, the Falasha spoken to
by Ogun... I played “Asaph,”
the horn’s bell a swung censer,
wafted
scent the furtive sound I sought...
Liturgical ambush... Fugitive straw...
Limbic ambush... Nastic address...
Pads and keys cried out for
climb, clamor, something yet
to arrive
we called rung. Rickety wood, split
reed, sprung ladder. More splinters
the more steps we took... Rung
was a bough made of air, an
unlikely plank suddenly under our
feet we
floated up from, rung was a loquat
limb, runaway ladder, bent miraculous
branch, thetic step... Flesh beginning
to go like wax, we sat like Buddha,
breath
an abiding chime, chimeless,
bells
had we been
rung

  

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spivak
Member since Dec 17th 2005
744 posts
Sat Aug-04-07 11:38 AM

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33. "Marianne Moore - The Fish"
In response to Reply # 0


          

The Fish

wade
through black jade.
Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
adjusting the ash-heaps;
opening and shutting itself like

an
injured fan.
The barnacles which encrust the side
of the wave, cannot hide
there for the submerged shafts of the

sun,
split like spun
glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness
into the crevices-
in and out, illuminating

the
turquoise sea
of bodies. The water drives a wedge
of iron throught the iron edge
of the cliff; whereupon the stars,

pink
rice-grains, ink-
bespattered jelly fish, crabs like green
lilies, and submarine
toadstools, slide each on the other.

All
external
marks of abuse are present on this
defiant edifice-
all the physical features of

ac-
cident-lack
of cornice, dynamite grooves, burns, and
hatchet strokes, these things stand
out on it; the chasm-side is

dead.
Repeated
evidence ahs proved that it can live
on what can not revive
its youth. The sea grows old in it.

  

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spivak
Member since Dec 17th 2005
744 posts
Sat Aug-04-07 01:48 PM

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34. "Charles Wright - Clear Night"
In response to Reply # 0


          

Clear Night

Clear night, thumb-top of a moon, a back-lit sky.
Moon-fingers lay down their same routine
On the side deck and the threshold, the white keys and the black keys.
Bird hush and bird song. A cassia flower falls.

I want to be bruised by God.
I want to be strung up in a strong light and singled out.
I want to be stretched, like music wrung from a dropped seed.
I want to be entered and picked clean.

And the wind says “What?” to me.
And the castor beans, with their little earrings of death, say “What?” to me.
And the stars start out on their cold slide through the dark.
And the gears notch and the engines wheel.

  

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SepiaSylph
Member since Nov 09th 2005
15422 posts
Sat Aug-04-07 03:02 PM

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35. "Emily Bronte (2)--"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

The Old Stoic:

Riches I hold in light esteem,
And Love I laugh to scorn;
And lust of fame was but a dream,
That vanished with the morn:

And if I pray, the only prayer
That moves my lips for me
Is, "Leave the heart that now I bear,
And give me liberty!"

Yes, as my swift days near their goal:
'Tis all that I implore ;
In life and death a chainless soul,
With courage to endure.



The Horrors of Sleep:

Sleep brings no joy to me,
Remembrance never dies,
My soul is given to mystery,
And lives in sighs.

Sleep brings no rest to me;
The shadows of the dead
My wakening eyes may never see
Surround my bed.

Sleep bring no hope to me,
In soundest sleep they come,
And with their doleful imag'ry
Deepen the gloom.

Sleep brings no strength to me,
No power renewed to brave
I only sail a wilder sea,
A darker wave.

Sleep brings be friend to me
To soothe and aid to bear;
They all gaze on, how scornfully,
And I despair.

Sleep brings no wish to fret
My harassed heart beneath;
My only wish is to forget
In endless sleep of death.

  

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SepiaSylph
Member since Nov 09th 2005
15422 posts
Sat Aug-04-07 03:04 PM

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36. "Yusef Komunyakaa- "My Father's Love Letters' (audio link)"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/komunyakaa/my_father\'s_love_letters.php

On Fridays he'd open a can of Jax
After coming home from the mill,
& ask me to write a letter to my mother
Who sent postcards of desert flowers
Taller than men. He would beg,
Promising to never beat her
Again. Somehow I was happy
She had gone, & sometimes wanted
To slip in a reminder, how Mary Lou
Williams' "Polka Dots & Moonbeams"
Never made the swelling go down.
His carpenter's apron always bulged
With old nails, a claw hammer
Looped at his side & extension cords
Coiled around his feet.
Words rolled from under the pressure
Of my ballpoint: Love,
Baby, Honey, Please.
We sat in the quiet brutality
Of voltage meters & pipe threaders,
Lost between sentences . . .
The gleam of a five-pound wedge
On the concrete floor
Pulled a sunset
Through the doorway of his toolshed.
I wondered if she laughed
& held them over a gas burner.
My father could only sign
His name, but he'd look at blueprints
& say how many bricks
Formed each wall. This man,
Who stole roses & hyacinth
For his yard, would stand there
With eyes closed & fists balled,
Laboring over a simple word, almost
Redeemed by what he tried to say.

  

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SepiaSylph
Member since Nov 09th 2005
15422 posts
Sat Aug-04-07 03:05 PM

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37. "Gwendoly Brooks- "My Dreams, My Works...""
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

My Dreams, My Works, Must Wait Till After Hell

I hold my honey and I store my bread
In little jars and cabinets of my will.
I label clearly, and each latch and lid
I bid, Be firm till I return from hell.
I am very hungry. I am incomplete.
And none can give me any word but Wait,
The puny light. I keep my eyes pointed in;
Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt
Drag out to their last dregs and I resume
On such legs as are left me, in such heart
As I can manage, remember to go home,
My taste will not have turned insensitive
To honey and bread old purity could love.

  

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SepiaSylph
Member since Nov 09th 2005
15422 posts
Sat Aug-04-07 03:11 PM

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38. "Gwendolyn Brooks- "A Bronzeville Woman in a Red Hat""
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

This is a placeholder until I unpack tomorrow and get the book out.
But this poem is really awesome, so I'm mentioning it now.

  

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am12marauder
Member since Apr 24th 2007
231 posts
Sat Aug-04-07 04:51 PM

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39. "William Ernest Henley: Invictus"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Out of the night that covers me
Black as the Pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced or cried aloud
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid

It matters not how strait the gate
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul

----------
If Adolph Hitler were here today, we'd send a limousine anyway

  

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crow
Member since Feb 23rd 2005
4034 posts
Wed Mar-12-08 01:18 PM

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64. "I just got "Invictus" tattoo'd down the back of right arm"
In response to Reply # 39


  

          

Because of this poem and all it represents for me. The last stanza specifically is how I've tried to live my life.

__________________________________

*Note to self: Add Sig*

  

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Paranoid Android
Member since Nov 26th 2002
598 posts
Sat Aug-04-07 05:00 PM

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40. "William Stafford - A Story That Could Be True"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

If you were exchanged in the cradle and
your real mother died
without ever telling the story
then no one knows your name,
and somewhere in the world
your father is lost and needs you
but you are far away.

He can never find
how true you are, how ready.
When the great wind comes
and the robberies of the rain
you stand on the corner shivering.
The people who go by--
you wonder at their calm.

They miss the whisper that runs
any day in your mind,
"Who are you really, wanderer?"--
and the answer you have to give
no matter how dark and cold
the world around you is:
"Maybe I'm a king."


William Stafford

  

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grape
Member since Mar 01st 2005
1123 posts
Mon Aug-06-07 07:48 AM

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41. "Alexander Blok - I Apprehend You"
In response to Reply # 0


          

I apprehend you. Even after all the passing years.
I apprehend you in the same form.

All the horizon is on fire--and painfully clear,
I wait in silence--longing and loving.

All the horizon is on fire, the appearance is near,
But I am afraid--you will change your form.

An irreverent suspicion arises;
You will abandon your familiar form.

Oh, I shall fall, sorrowfully and low,
with no escape from the deadly dreams!

How clear is all the horizon! The radiance approaches,
But I am afraid--you will change your form.

  

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TurkeylegJenkins
Charter member
18021 posts
Mon Aug-06-07 11:42 AM

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42. "Wallace Stevens: The Man With the Blue Guitar"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

The Man With the Blue Guitar

I

The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."

And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."


II

I cannot bring a world quite round,
Although I patch it as I can.

I sing a hero's head, large eye
And bearded bronze, but not a man,

Although I patch him as I can
And reach through him almost to man.

If to serenade almost to man
Is to miss, by that, things as they are,

Say that it is the serenade
Of a man that plays a blue guitar.


III

Ah, but to play man number one,
To drive the dagger in his heart,

To lay his brain upon the board
And pick the acrid colors out,

To nail his thought across the door,
Its wings spread wide to rain and snow,

To strike his living hi and ho,
To tick it, tock it, turn it true,

To bang it from a savage blue,
Jangling the metal of the strings...


IV

So that's life, then: things are they are?
It picks its way on the blue guitar.

A million people on one string?
And all their manner in the thing,

And all their manner, right and wrong,
And all their manner, weak and strong?

And that's life, then: things as they are,
This buzzing of the blue guitar.


V

Do not speak to us of the greatness of poetry,
Of the torches wisping in the underground,

Of the structure of vaults upon a point of light.
There are no shadows in our sun,

Day is desire and night is sleep.
There are no shadows anywhere.

The earth, for us, is flat and bare.
There are no shadows. Poetry

Exceeding music must take the place
Of empty heaven and its hymns,

Ourselves in poetry must take their place,
Even in the chattering of your guitar.


VI

A tune beyond us as we are,
Yet nothing changed by the blue guitar;

Ourselves in the tune as if in space,
Yet nothing changed, except the place

Of things as they are and only the place
As you play them, on the blue guitar,

Placed so, beyond the compass of change,
Perceived in a final atmosphere;

For a moment final, in the way
The thinking of art seems final when

The thinking of god is smoky dew.
The tune is space. The blue guitar

Becomes the place of things as they are,
A composing of senses of the guitar.


VII

It is the sun that shares our works.
The moon shares nothing. It is a sea.

When shall I come to say of the sun,
It is a sea; it shares nothing;

The sun no longer shares our works
And the earth is alive with creeping men,

Mechanical beetles never quite warm?
And shall I then stand in the sun, as now

I stand in the moon, and call it good,
The immaculate, the merciful good,

Detached from us, from things as they are?
Not to be part of the sun? To stand

Remote and call it merciful?
The strings are cold on the blue guitar.


VIII

The vivid, florid, turgid sky,
The drenching thunder rolling by,

The morning deluged still by night,
The clouds tumultuously bright

And the feeling heavy in cold chords
Struggling toward impassioned choirs,

Crying among the clouds, enraged
By gold antagonists in air--

I know my lazy, leaden twang
Is like the reason in a storm;

And yet it brings the storm to bear.
I twang it out and leave it there.


IX

And the color, the overcast blue
Of the air, in which the blue guitar

Is a form, described but difficult,
And I am merely a shadow hunched

Above the arrowy, still string,
The maker of a thing yet to be made;

The color like a thought that grows
Out of a mood, the tragic robe

Of the actor, half his gesture, half
His speech, the dress of his meaning, silk

Sodden with his melancholy words,
The weather of his stage, himself.


X

Raise reddest columns. Toll a bell
And clap the hollows full of tin.

Throw papers in the streets, the wills
Of the dead, majestic in their seals.

And the beautiful trombones -- behold
The approach of him whom none believes,

Whom all believe that all believe,
A pagan in a varnished car.

Roll a drum upon the blue guitar.
Lean from the steeple. Cry aloud,

"Here am I, my adversary, that
Confront you, hoo-ing the slick trombones,

Yet with a petty misery
At heart, a petty misery,

Ever the prelude to your end,
The touch that topples men and rock."


XI

Slowly the ivy on the stones
Becomes the stones. Women become

The cities, children become the fields
And men in waves become the sea.

It is the chord that falsifies.
The sea returns upon the men,

The fields entrap the children, brick
Is a weed and all the flies are caught,

Wingless and withered, but living alive.
The discord merely magnified.

Deeper within the belly's dark
Of time, time grows upon the rock.


XII

Tom-tom, c'est moi. The blue guitar
And I are one. The orchestra

Fills the high hall with shuffling men
High as the hall. The whirling noise

Of a multitude dwindles, all said,
To his breath that lies awake at night.

I know that timid breathing. Where
Do I begin and end? And where,

As I strum the thing, do I pick up
That which momentously declares

Itself not to be I and yet
Must be. It could be nothing else.


XIII

The pale intrusions into blue
Are corrupting pallors...ay di mi,

Blue buds of pitchy blooms. Be content --
Expansions, diffusions -- content to be

The unspotted imbecile revery,
The heraldic center of the world

Of blue, blue sleek with a hundred chins,
The amorist Adjective aflame...


XIV

First one beam, then another, then
A thousand are radiant in the sky.

Each is both star and orb; and day
Is the riches of their atmosphere.

The sea appends its tattery hues.
The shores are banks of muffling mist.

One says a German chandelier --
A candle is enough to light the world.

It makes it clear. Even at noon
It glistens in essential dark.

At night, it lights the fruit and wine,
The book and bread, things as they are,

In a chiaroscuro where
One sits and plays the blue guitar.


XV

Is this picture of Picasso's, this "hoard
Of destructions," a picture of ourselves,

Now, an image of our society?
Do I sit, deformed, a naked egg,

Catching at Good-bye, harvest moon,
Without seeing the harvest or the moon?

Things as they are have been destroyed.
Have I? Am I a man that is dead

At a table on which the food is cold?
Is my thought a memory, not alive?

Is the spot on the floor, there, wine or blood
And whichever it may be, is it mine?


XVI

The earth is not earth but a stone,
Not the mother that held men as they fell

But stone, but like a stone, no: not
The mother, but an oppressor, but like

An oppressor that grudges them their death,
As it grudges the living that they live.

To live in war, to live at war,
To chop the sullen psaltery,

To improve the sewers in Jerusalem,
To electrify the nimbuses--

Place honey on the altars and die,
You lovers that are bitter at heart.


XVII

The person has a mould. But not
Its animal. The angelic ones

Speak of the soul, the mind. It is
An animal. The blue guitar--

On that its claws propound, its fangs
Articulate its desert days.

The blue guitar a mould? That shell?
Well, after all, the north wind blows

A horn, on which its victory
Is a worm composing on a straw.


XVIII

A dream (to call it a dream) in which
I can believe, in face of the object,

A dream no longer a dream, a thing,
Of things as they are, as the blue guitar

After long strumming on certain nights
Gives the touch of the senses, not of the hand,

But the very senses as they touch
The wind-gloss. Or as daylight comes,

Like light in a mirroring of cliffs,
Rising upward from a sea of ex.


XIX

That I may reduce the monster to
Myself, and then may be myself

In face of the monster, be more than part
Of it, more than the monstrous player of

One of its monstrous lutes, not be
Alone, but reduce the monster and be,

Two things, the two together as one,
And play of the monster and of myself,

Or better not of myself at all,
But of that as its intelligence,

Being the lion in the lute
Before the lion locked in stone.


XX

What is there in life except one's ideas.
Good air, good friend, what is there in life?

Is it ideas that I believe?
Good air, my only friend, believe,

Believe would be a brother full
Of love, believe would be a friend

Friendlier than my only friend,
Good air. Poor pale, poor pale guitar...


XXI

A substitute for all the gods:
This self, not that gold self aloft,

Alone, one's shadow magnified,
Lord of the body, looking down,

As now and called most high,
The shadow of Chocorua

In an immenser heaven, aloft,
Alone, lord of the land and lord

Of the men that live in the land, high lord.
One's self and the mountains of one's land,

Without shadows, without magnificence,
The flesh, the bone, the dirt, the stone.


XXII

Poetry is the subject of the poem,
From this the poem issues and

To this returns. Between the two,
Between issue and return, there is

An absence in reality,
Things as they are. Or so we say.

But are these separate? Is it
An absence for the poem, which acquires

Its true appearances there, sun's green,
Cloud's red, earth feeling, sky that thinks?

From these it takes. Perhaps it gives,
In the universal intercourse.


XXIII

A few final solutions, like a duet
With the undertaker: a voice in the clouds,

Another on earth, the one a voice
Of ether, the other smelling of drink.

The voice of ether prevailing, the swell
Of the undertaker's song in the snow

Apostrophizing wreaths, the voice
In the clouds serene and final, next

The grunted breath serene and final,
The imagined and the real, thought

And the truth, Dichtung und Wahrheit, all
Confusion solved, as in a refrain

One keeps on playing year by year,
Concerning the nature of things as they are.


XXIV

A poem like a missal found
In the mud, a missal for that young man,

That scholar hungriest for that book,
The very book, or, less, a page

Or, at the least, a phrase, that phrase,
A hawk of life, that latined phrase:

To know; a missal for brooding-sight.
To meet that hawk's eye and to flinch

Not a the eye but at the joy of it.
I play. But this is what I think.


XXV

He held the world upon his nose
And this-a-way he gave a fling.

His robes and symbols, ai-yi-yi --
And that-a-way he twirled the thing.

Sombre as fir-trees, liquid cats
Moved in the grass without a sound.

They did not know the grass went round.
The cats had cats and the grass turned gray

And the world had worlds, ai, this-a-way:
The grass turned green and the grass turned gray.

And the nose is eternal, that-a-way.
Things as they were, things as they are,

Things as they will be by and by...
A fat thumb beats out ai-yi-yi.


XXVI

The world washed in his imagination,
The world was a shore, whether sound or form

Or light, the relic of farewells,
Rock, of valedictory echoings,

To which his imagination returned,
From which it sped, a bar in space,

Sand heaped in the clouds, giant that fought
Against the murderous alphabet:

The swarm of thoughts, the swarm of dreams
Of inaccessible Utopia.

A mountainous music always seemed
To be falling and to be passing away.


XXVII

It is the sea that whitens the roof.
The sea drifts through the winter air.

It is the sea that the north wind makes.
The sea is in the falling snow.

This gloom is the darkness of the sea.
Geographers and philosophers,

Regard. But for that salty cup,
But for the icicles on the eaves --

The sea is a form of ridicule.
The iceberg settings satirize

The demon that cannot be himself,
That tours to shift the shifting scene.


XXVIII

I am a native in this world
And think in it as a native thinks,

Gesu, not native of a mind
Thinking the thoughts I call my own,

Native, a native in the world
And like a native think in it.

It could not be a mind, the wave
In which the watery grasses flow

And yet are fixed as a photograph,
The wind in which the dead leaves blow.

Here I inhale profounder strength
And as I am, I speak and move

And things are as I think they are
And say they are on the blue guitar.


XXIX

In the cathedral, I sat there, and read,
Alone, a lean Review and said,

"These degustations in the vaults
Oppose the past and the festival.

What is beyond the cathedral, outside,
Balances with nuptial song.

So it is to sit and to balance things
To and to and to the point of still,

To say of one mask it is like,
To say of another it is like,

To know that the balance does not quite rest,
That the mask is strange, however like."

The shapes are wrong and the sounds are false.
The bells are the bellowing of bulls.

Yet Franciscan don was never more
Himself than in this fertile glass.


XXX

From this I shall evolve a man.
This is his essence: the old fantoche

Hanging his shawl upon the wind,
Like something on the stage, puffed out,

His strutting studied through centuries.
At last, in spite of his manner, his eye

A-cock at the cross-piece on a pole
Supporting heavy cables, slung

Through Oxidia, banal suburb,
One-half of all its installments paid.

Dew-dapper clapper-traps, blazing
From crusty stacks above machines.

Ecce, Oxidia is the seed
Dropped out of this amber-ember pod,

Oxidia is the soot of fire,
Oxidia is Olympia.


XXXI

How long and late the pheasant sleeps...
The employer and employee contend,

Combat, compose their droll affair.
The bubbling sun will bubble up,

Spring sparkle and the cock-bird shriek.
The employer and employee will hear

And continue their affair. The shriek
Will rack the thickets. There is no place,

Here, for the lark fixed in the mind,
In the museum of the sky. The cock

Will claw sleep. Mourning is not sun,
It is this posture of the nerves,

As if a blunted player clutched
The nuances of the blue guitar.

It must be this rhapsody or none,
The rhapsody of things as they are.


XXXII

Throw away the lights, the definitions,
And say of what you see in the dark

That it is this or that it is that,
But do not use the rotted names.

How should you walk in that space and know
Nothing of the madness of space,

Nothing of its jocular procreations?
Throw the lights away. Nothing must stand

Between you and the shapes you take
When the crust of shape has been destroyed.

You as you are? You are yourself.
The blue guitar surprises you.


XXXIII

That generation's dream, aviled
In the mud, in Monday's dirty light,

That's it, the only dream they knew,
Time in its final block, not time

To come, a wrangling of two dreams.
Here is the bread of time to come,

Here is its actual stone. The bread
Will be our bread, the stone will be

Our bed and we shall sleep by night.
We shall forget by day, except

The moments when we choose to play
The imagined pine, the imagined jay.


-- Wallace Stevens

_______________________________________________________________________________

<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.

  

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TurkeylegJenkins
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Mon Aug-06-07 11:44 AM

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43. "Wallace Stevens: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird


I

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.


II

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.


III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.


IV

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.


V

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.


VI

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.


VII

O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?


VIII

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.


IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.


X

At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.


XI

He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.


XII

The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.


XIII

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.


-- Wallace Stevens

_______________________________________________________________________________

<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.

  

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crow
Member since Feb 23rd 2005
4034 posts
Wed Mar-12-08 01:17 PM

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63. "V of this I think is one of the best stanzas"
In response to Reply # 43


  

          

In all of poetry. The line just resounds with me for some reason.

__________________________________

*Note to self: Add Sig*

  

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UncleClimax
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Mon Aug-06-07 12:58 PM

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44. "When I was one-and-twenty...By A.E. Housman"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
'Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.'
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
'The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.'
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.


__________________
http://twitter.com/theloniousfunk
http://havetravelled.blogspot.com
http://instagram.com/arsonwelles

“Be uncomfortable; be sand, not oil, to the machinery of the world.”
- Gunter Eich

  

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UncleClimax
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Mon Aug-06-07 01:23 PM

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45. "Pablo Neruda: I Have Gone Marking"
In response to Reply # 0
Mon Aug-06-07 01:24 PM by UncleClimax

  

          

I have gone marking the atlas of your body
with crosses of fire.
My mouth went across: a spider, trying to hide.
In you, behind you, timid, driven by thirst.

Stories to tell you on the shore of evening,
sad and gentle doll, so that you should not be sad.
A swan, a tree, something far away and happy.
The season of grapes, the ripe and fruitful season.

I who lived in a harbor from which I loved you.
The solitude crossed with dream and with silence.
Penned up between the sea and sadness.
Soundless, delirious, between two motionless gondoliers.

Between the lips and the voice something goes dying.
Something with the wings of a bird, something of anguish and oblivion.
The way nets cannot hold water.
My toy doll, only a few drops are left trembling.
Even so, something sings in these fugitive words.
Something sings, something climbs to my ravenous mouth.
Oh to be able to celebrate you with all the words of joy.

Sing, burn, flee, like a belfry at the hands of a madman.
My sad tenderness, what comes over you all at once?
When I have reached the most awesome and the coldest summit
my heart closes like a nocturnal flower.


__________________
http://twitter.com/theloniousfunk
http://havetravelled.blogspot.com
http://instagram.com/arsonwelles

“Be uncomfortable; be sand, not oil, to the machinery of the world.”
- Gunter Eich

  

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TurkeylegJenkins
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Mon Aug-06-07 04:48 PM

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46. "James Tate: Teaching the Ape to Write Poems"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Teaching the Ape to Write Poems

They didn't have much trouble
teaching the ape to write poems:
first they strapped him into the chair,
then tied the pencil around his hand
(the paper had already been nailed down).
Then Dr. Bluespire leaned over his shoulder
and whispered into his ear:
"You look like a god sitting there.
Why don't you try writing something?"

-- James Tate

_______________________________________________________________________________

<--- You may not remember Leonard Marshall, but Joe Montana certainly does.

  

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jane eyre
Member since Jan 16th 2007
715 posts
Tue Aug-07-07 10:41 AM

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48. "John Berryman: Eleven Addresses to the Lord"
In response to Reply # 0


          

3.

Sole watchman of the flying stars, guard me
against my flicker of impulse lust: teach me
to see them as sisters & daughters. Sustain
my grand endeavours: husbandship & crafting.

Forsake me not when my wild hours come;
grant me sleep nightly, grace soften my dreams;
achieve in me patience till the thing be done,
a careful view of my achievement come.

Make me from time to time the gift of the shoulder.
When all hurt nerves whine shut away the whiskey.
Empty my heart toward Thee.
Let me pace without fear the common path of death.

Cross am I sometimes with my little daughter:
fill her eyes with tears. Forgive me, Lord.
Unite my various soul,
sole watchman of the wide & single stars.

  

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jane eyre
Member since Jan 16th 2007
715 posts
Tue Aug-07-07 10:56 AM

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49. "Adrienne Rich: Diving into the Wreck"
In response to Reply # 0


          

Diving into the Wreck

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

  

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jane eyre
Member since Jan 16th 2007
715 posts
Tue Aug-07-07 11:03 AM

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50. "e.e. cummings: may i feel said he"
In response to Reply # 0


          

may i feel said he
(i'll squeal said she
just once said he)
it's fun said she


(may i touch said he
how much said she
a lot said he)
why not said she


(let's go said he
not too far said she
what's too far said he
where you are said she)


may i stay said he
(which way said she
like this said he
if you kiss said she


may i move said he
is it love said she)
if you're willing said he
(but you're killing said she


but it's life said he
but your wife said she
now said he)
ow said she


(tiptop said he
don't stop said she
oh no said he)
go slow said she


(cccome?said he
ummm said she)
you're divine! said he
(you are Mine said she)

  

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jane eyre
Member since Jan 16th 2007
715 posts
Tue Aug-07-07 11:08 AM

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51. "William Shakespeare: Sigh No More"
In response to Reply # 50
Tue Aug-07-07 11:08 AM by jane eyre

          

Sigh No More

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever;
One foot in sea, and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.
Then sigh not so,
But let them go,
And be you blith and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey nonny, nonny.

Sing no more ditties, sing no mo
Of dumps so dull and heavy;
The fraud of men was ever so,
Since summer first was leavy.
Then sigh not so,
But let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey nonny, nonny.

  

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jane eyre
Member since Jan 16th 2007
715 posts
Tue Aug-07-07 11:14 AM

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52. "Richard WIlbur: The Writer"
In response to Reply # 0


          

The Writer

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

  

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janey
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Tue Aug-07-07 05:24 PM

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54. "Mary Oliver: Singapore"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          


In Singapore, in the airport,
A darkness was ripped from my eyes.
In the women’s restroom, one compartment stood open.
A woman knelt there, washing something
in the white bowl.

Disgust argued in my stomach
and I felt, in my pocket, for my ticket.

A poem should always have birds in it.
Kingfishers, say, with their bold eyes and gaudy wings.
Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees.
A waterfall, or if that’s not possible, a fountain
rising and falling.
A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

When the woman turned I could not answer her face.
Her beauty and her embarrassment struggled together, and
neither could win.
She smiled and I smiled. What kind of nonsense is this?
Everybody needs a job.

Yes, a person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.
But first we must watch her as she stares down at her labor,
which is dull enough.
She is washing the tops of the airport ashtrays, as big as
hubcaps, with a blue rag.
Her small hands turn the metal, scrubbing and rinsing.
She does not work slowly, nor quickly, like a river.
Her dark hair is like the wing of a bird.

I don’t doubt for a moment that she loves her life.
And I want to rise up from the crust and the slop
and fly down to the river.
This probably won’t happen.
But maybe it will.
If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it?

Of course, it isn’t.
Neither do I mean anything miraculous, but only
the light that can shine out of a life. I mean
the way she unfolded and refolded the blue cloth,
The way her smile was only for my sake; I mean
the way this poem is filled with trees, and birds.

  

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janey
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Tue Aug-07-07 05:26 PM

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55. "W.S. Merwin: Listen"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

  

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SuiteLady
Member since Oct 19th 2004
16190 posts
Tue Aug-07-07 05:57 PM

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57. "I am a Black Woman ~ Mari Evans"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

I am a Black Woman

I am a black woman
the music of my song
some sweet arpeggio of tears
is written in a minor key
and I
can be heard humming in the night
Can be heard
humming
in the night

I saw my mate leap screaming to the sea
and I/with these hands/cupped the lifebreath
from my issue in the canebrake
I lost Nat's swinging body in a rain of tears
and heard my son scream all the way from Anzio
for Peace he never knew....I
learned Da Nang and Pork Chop Hill
in anguish
Now my nostrils know the gas
and these trigger tire/d fingers
seek the softness in my warrior's beard

I am a black woman
tall as a cypress
strong
beyond all definition still
defying place
and time
and circumstance
assailed
impervious
indestructible
Look
on me and be
renewed


be proud of who you are.

I believe that my life's gonna see,
The love I give,
Return to me.
~ John Mayer

http://www.myspace.com/suitie

  

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SuiteLady
Member since Oct 19th 2004
16190 posts
Tue Aug-07-07 06:15 PM

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58. "Resignation by Nikki Giovanni"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Resignation


I love you
because the Earth turns round the sun
because the North wind blows north
sometimes
because the Pope is Catholic
and most Rabbis Jewish
because winters flow into spring
and the air clears after a storm
because only my love for you
despite the charms of gravity
keeps me from falling off the Earth
into another dimension
I love you
because it is the natural order of things
I love you
like the habit I picked up in college
of sleeping through lectures
or saying I'm sorry
when I get stopped for speeding
because I drink a glass of water
in the morning
and chain-smoke cigarettes
all through the day
because I take my coffee Black
and my milk with chocolate
because you keep my feet warm
through my life a mess
I love you
because I don't want it
any other way
I am helpless
in m love for you
It makes me so happy
to hear you call my name
I am amazed you can resist
locking me in an echo chamber
where your voice reverberates
through the four walls
sending me into spasmatic ecstasy
I love you
because it's been so good
for so long
that if I didn't love you
I'd have to be born again
and that is not a theological statement
I am pitiful in my love for you
The Dells tell me Love
is so simple
the thought though of you
sends indescribably delicious multitudinous
thrills throughout and through-in my body
I love you
because no two snowflakes are alike
and it is possible if you stand tippy-toe
to walk between the raindrops
I love you
because I am afraid of the dark
and can't sleep in the light
because I rub my eyes
when I wake up in the morning
and find you there
because you with all your magic powers were
determined that
I should love you
because there was nothing for you but that
I would love you
I love you
because you made me
want to love you
more than I love my privacy
my freedom my commitments
and responsibilities
I love you `cause I changed my life
to love you
because you saw me one friday
afternoon and decided that I would
love you
I love you I love you I love you

be proud of who you are.

I believe that my life's gonna see,
The love I give,
Return to me.
~ John Mayer

http://www.myspace.com/suitie

  

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SuiteLady
Member since Oct 19th 2004
16190 posts
Tue Mar-11-08 09:20 PM

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61. "In the silence by Stephany"
In response to Reply # 0
Tue Mar-11-08 09:20 PM by SuiteLady

  

          

In the silence
Of the city night
When the lonely
Watch the sky
In yearning


I at rest
Beside you
Lie in peace

I searched
a thousand skies
before you came

And in the morning
when the world
is new,
the lonely turn
away

as I turn to
you beside
me

And in the quiet
of the afternoon
when the lonely
roam,

I turn inside
and you
are with me still

I roamed
A thousand miles
Before you came.












be proud of who you are.

I believe that my life's gonna see,
The love I give,
Return to me.
~ John Mayer

  

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JungleSouljah
Member since Sep 24th 2002
14987 posts
Tue Mar-11-08 11:38 PM

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62. "Pablo Neruda - If you forget me"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

As it's being read at my wedding in 6 weeks (!!) I had to include it here.



I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

______________________________
PSN: RuptureMD
http://hospitalstories.wordpress.com/

The 4th Annual Residency Encampment: Where do we go from here?

All you see is crime in the source code.

  

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deacon
Charter member
3284 posts
Wed Mar-12-08 01:18 PM

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65. "Langston Hughes: Theme for English B"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

The instructor said,
Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you---
Then, it will be true.
I wonder if it's that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:
It's not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me---we two---you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York too.) Me---who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records---Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn't make me NOT like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white---
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That's American.
Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that's true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me---
although you're older---and white---
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

Sites that I contribute to:

http://www.livefrommemphis.com

http://www.geeksofdoom.com

  

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Jelligirl
Member since Jun 20th 2007
146 posts
Wed Mar-12-08 01:54 PM

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66. "Love Song for Antonia by Langston Hughes"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          


If I should sing
All of my songs for you
And you would not listen to them,
If I should build
All of my dream houses for you
And you would never live in them,
If I should give
All of my hopes to you
And you would laugh and say: I do not care,
Still I would give you my love
Which is more than my songs,
More than any houses of dreams,
Or dreams of houses-
I would still give you my love
Though you never looked at me.

I know I'm weird... acceptance is the first step

  

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magilla vanilla
Member since Sep 13th 2002
18728 posts
Thu Mar-13-08 07:09 AM

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67. "Keats: When I have fears that I may cease to be"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love! - then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

---------------------------------
Photo zine(some images NSFW): http://bit.ly/USaSPhoto

"This (and every, actually) conversation needs more Chesterton and less Mike Francesa." - Walleye

  

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magilla vanilla
Member since Sep 13th 2002
18728 posts
Thu Mar-13-08 07:11 AM

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68. "Keats: La Belle Dame sans Merci"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

I.

O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

II.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.

III.

I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

IV.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful - a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

V.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look’d at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

VI.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.

VII.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said -
«I love thee true.»

VIII.

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sigh’d fill sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

IX.

And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream’d - Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream’d
On the cold hill’s side.

X.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried - «La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!»

XI.

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.

XII.

And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

---------------------------------
Photo zine(some images NSFW): http://bit.ly/USaSPhoto

"This (and every, actually) conversation needs more Chesterton and less Mike Francesa." - Walleye

  

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sl_onIce
Member since Jul 22nd 2005
553 posts
Sat Mar-07-09 04:29 AM

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69. "Alfred Lord Tennyson - Ulysses"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees.All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea.I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known,-- cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honor'd of them all,--
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life!Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
to whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,--
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone.He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas.My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me,--
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads,-- you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices.Come, my friends.
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

__________________________________

http://amatorsa.wordpress.com/

  

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The Damaja
Member since Aug 02nd 2003
18637 posts
Sat Mar-07-09 07:06 PM

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70. "^ certified banger"
In response to Reply # 69


  

          

i like this one the most though



The Lotus-Eaters

“COURAGE!” he said, and pointed toward the land,
“This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.”
In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon.
All round the coast the languid air did swoon, 5
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;
And, like a downward smoke, the slender stream
Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.

A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke, 10
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;
And some thro’ wavering lights and shadows broke,
Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.
They saw the gleaming river seaward flow
From the inner land; far off, three mountain-tops, 15
Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,
Stood sunset-flush’d; and, dew’d with showery drops,
Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.

The charmed sunset linger’d low adown
In the red West; thro’ mountain clefts the dale 20
Was seen far inland, and the yellow down
Border’d with palm, and many a winding vale
And meadow, set with slender galingale;
A land where all things always seem’d the same!
And round about the keel with faces pale, 25
Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,
The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.

Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,
Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
To each, but whoso did receive of them 30
And taste, to him the gushing of the wave
Far far away did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,
His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;
And deep-asleep he seem’d, yet all awake, 35
And music in his ears his beating heart did make.

They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore 40
Most weary seem’d the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then some one said, “We will return no more;”
And all at once they sang, “Our island home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.” 45

CHORIC SONG
I

There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, 50
Than tir’d eyelids upon tir’d eyes;
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
Here are cool mosses deep,
And thro’ the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, 55
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.

II

Why are we weigh’d upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
All things have rest: why should we toil alone, 60
We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown;
Nor ever fold our wings,
And cease from wanderings, 65
Nor steep our brows in slumber’s holy balm;
Nor harken what the inner spirit sings,
“There is no joy but calm!”—
Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?

III

Lo! in the middle of the wood, 70
The folded leaf is woo’d from out the bud
With winds upon the branch, and there
Grows green and broad, and takes no care,
Sun-steep’d at noon, and in the moon
Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow 75
Falls, and floats adown the air.
Lo! sweeten’d with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.
All its allotted length of days 80
The flower ripens in its place,
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.

IV

Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o’er the dark-blue sea. 85
Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labor be?
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last? 90
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave? 95
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence—ripen, fall, and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.

V

How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,
With half-shut eyes ever to seem 100
Falling asleep in a half-dream!
To dream and dream, like yonder amber light,
Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height;
To hear each other’s whisper’d speech;
Eating the Lotos day by day, 105
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray;
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;
To muse and brood and live again in memory, 110
With those old faces of our infancy
Heap’d over with a mound of grass,
Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass!

VI

Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives 115
And their warm tears; but all hath suffer’d change;
For surely now our household hearths are cold,
Our sons inherit us, our looks are strange,
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes over-bold 120
Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
Before them of the ten years’ war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.
Is there confusion in the little isle?
Let what is broken so remain. 125
The Gods are hard to reconcile;
’Tis hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Long labor unto aged breath, 130
Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars
And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.

VII

But, propped on beds of amaranth and moly,
How sweet—while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly—
With half-dropped eyelids still, 135
Beneath a heaven dark and holy,
To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
His waters from the purple hill—
To hear the dewy echoes calling
From cave to cave thro’ the thick-twined vine— 140
To watch the emerald-color’d water falling
Thro’ many a woven acanthus-wreath divine!
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,
Only to hear were sweet, stretch’d out beneath the pine.

VIII

The Lotos blooms below the barren peak, 145
The Lotos blows by every winding creek;
All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone;
Thro’ every hollow cave and alley lone
Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown.
We have had enough of action, and of motion we, 150
Roll’d to starboard, roll’d to larboard, when the surge was seething free,
Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind. 155
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl’d
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl’d
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world;
Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, 160
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.
But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning tho’ the words are strong;
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil, 165
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer—some, ’tis whisper’d—down in hell
Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel. 170
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

--------------------
Why do you choose to mimic these wack MCs?
Why do you choose to listen to R&B?

"There are obviously many things which we do not understand, and may never be able to." Leela

*puts emceeing in a box*

  

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kevgalaxy
Member since Jan 03rd 2008
5758 posts
Sun Mar-08-09 01:11 PM

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71. "Langston Hughes-When Susan Wears Red"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

<==Hawtastic.

  

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vee-lover
Member since Jul 30th 2007
20388 posts
Sun Mar-08-09 03:47 PM

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72. "Margaret Walker: For my people...."
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

For my people everywhere singing their slave songs repeatedly:
their dirges and their ditties and their blues and their jubilees,
praying their prayers nightly to an unknown god, bending their knees
to an unseen power; For my people lending their strength to the years,
to the gone years, and the now years and the maybe years, washing
ironing cooking scrubbing sewing mending hoeing plowing digging planting
pruning patching dragging alone never gaining never reaping never
knowing never understanding

For my cramped bewildered years we went to school to learn to know the reasons why and the answers to and the people who and the places where
and the days when, in memory of the bitter hours we discovered we were
black and poor and small and different and nobody cared and nobody
wondered and nobody understood.

For the boys and girls who grew up in spite of these things to be
Man and Woman, to laugh and dance and sing and play and drink their wine and religion and success, to marry their playmates and bear
children and then die of consumption and anemia and lynching;

For my people thronging 47th street in Chicago and Lennox Avenue
in New York and Rampart street in New Orleans, lost disinherited and
dispossessed and happy people filling the cabarets and taverns and
other people's pockets needing bread and shoes and milk and land
and money and something--something all our own;

For my people walking blindly spreading joy, losing time being lazy,
sleeping when hungry, shouting when burdened, drinking when hopeless,
tied and shackled and tangled amongst ourselves by the unseen creatures who tower over us omnisciently and laugh;

For my people blundering and groping and floundering in the dark of churches and schools and clubs and societies, associations and
councils and committees and conventions, distressed and disturbed
and deceived and devoured by money-hungry glory-craving leeches,
prayed on by facile force of state and fad and novelty, by false
prophet and holy believer.

For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way from
confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding, trying to fashion a
world that will hold all the people, all the face, all the Adams and
Eves and their countless generations;

Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace
be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue
forth; let a people loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full
of healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing in our
spirit and our blood. Let the martial songs be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take control.




grassrootsphilosopher

  

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MosCommonThought
Member since Jun 11th 2003
281 posts
Sun Mar-08-09 04:47 PM

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73. "Mother to Son by Langston Hughes"
In response to Reply # 0


          

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor --
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now --
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.






  

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Madvillain 626
Member since Apr 25th 2006
10018 posts
Sun Mar-08-09 07:17 PM

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74. "Justin Banks - Techno City Blues"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Faces buried in the wires
Pistons grind till souls are tired
To and fro with minds dimmed low
Push the gears with nowhere to go

Down they march with sore-tipped shoes
Eyes peer down, they don't know who
Hands rotate on un-set clocks
Wait to be woke by fine-tuned shocks

As time salts soil on land of dreams
A precise, unflinching life unfolds
The conqueror smirks with eyes that gleam
As doldrums pulsate in spirits cold

A face down turned just cannot see
The wonder of Earth that ceased to be
Emotion, a curse in Babylons of new
The Techno City Blues

-------------------------------
If life is stupendous one cannot also demand that it should be easy. - Robert Musil

  

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Caz_Nova
Member since Nov 12th 2004
777 posts
Sun Mar-08-09 07:50 PM

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75. "The Nymphs Reply to the Shepherd, Walter Raleigh"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.

Time drives the flocks from field to fold
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold,
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complains of cares to come.

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields;
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.

Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten
In folly ripe, in season rotten.

Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.

But could youth last and love still breed,
Had joys no date nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.
_______________________________________
<--- Everett Thomas A.K.A. Synch

Now That's What's Up

What am I, if I can't be yours...

S.Y.L.S.B.

  

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jane eyre
Member since Jan 16th 2007
715 posts
Mon Mar-09-09 06:12 PM

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76. "Adam"
In response to Reply # 0


          

by Anthony Hecht

Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew?

"Adam my child, my son,
These very words you hear
Compose the fish and starlight
Of your untroubled dream.
When you awake, my child,
It shall all come true.
Know that it was for you
That all things were begun."

Adam, my child, my son,
Thus spoke Our Father in heaven
To his first, fabled child,
The father of us all.
And I, your father, tell
The words over again
As innumerable men
From ancient times have done.

Tell them again in pain,
And to the empty air.
Where you are men speak
A different mother tongue.
Will you forget our games,
Our hide-and-seek and song?
Child, it will be long
Before I see you again.

Adam, there will be
Many hard hours,
As an old poem says,
Hours of loneliness.
I cannot ease them for you;
They are our common lot.
During them, like as not,
You will dream of me.

When you are crouched away
In a strange clothes closet
Hiding from the one who's "It"
And the dark crowds in,
Do not be afraid--
O, if you can, believe
In a father's love
That you shall know some day.

Think of the summer rain
Or seed pearls of the mist;
Seeing the beaded leaf,
Try to remember me.
From far away
I send my blessing out
To circle the great globe.
It shall reach you yet.

  

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