|
|
Post by Lord Lucan on Nov 11, 2016 5:25:11 GMT -5
Meditations in Time of Civil War
W. B. Yeats
VI. The Stare's Nest by My Window
The bees build in the crevices
Of loosening masonry, and there
The mother birds bring grubs and flies.
My wall is loosening; honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty; somewhere
A man is killed, or a house burned,
Yet no clear fact to be discerned:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
A barricade of stone or of wood;
Some fourteen days of civil war;
Last night they trundled down the road
That dead young soldier in his blood:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare;
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love; O honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
|
|
|
|
Post by Sanziana on Feb 15, 2017 3:05:19 GMT -5
You call me angry, you men who get into bar fights over football. Men who beat your wives when she don’t fry the chicken right. You men who say I talk too loud, who say that my mouth has no business looking like a shotgun. You don’t know anger until you’ve seen an ocean wash up a body, spill blood and all, you don’t know anger until you’re six feet deep in every man’s catcall. 5 million mouths making a mockery of everything God gave me. Asking for a sip of my holy, when a man disrespects me I step outside myself, I give him my salt. Which is to say I season my meat, I prepare a feast. Have you ever seen an ocean clean its plate? When a man tells me I’m unholy of everything except my sins, I say I am an ocean and he is the desert. He is the rain dance, which is to say: praise me. Which is to say, God created the oceans on the third day and man on the 6th. Which is to say, I was worthy before God even made you.
Crystal Valentine - Tempest
Whole poem here
|
|
|
|
Post by Sanziana on Feb 15, 2017 3:06:40 GMT -5
Understand, I’ll slip quietly
away from the noisy crowd
when I see the pale
stars rising, blooming, over the oaks.
I’ll pursue solitary pathways
through the pale twilit meadows,
with only this one dream:
You come too.
Pathways by Rainer Maria Rilke
|
|
|
|
Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Feb 24, 2017 15:58:39 GMT -5
Jesus got up one day a little later than usual. He had been dreaming so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it? A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled back, skin falling off. But he wasn’t afraid of that. It was a beautiful day. How ’bout some coffee? Don’t mind if I do. Take a little ride on my donkey, I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.
—James Tate, “Goodtime Jesus”
|
|
|
|
POEMS
Mar 19, 2017 22:24:24 GMT -5
Post by Lord Lucan on Mar 19, 2017 22:24:24 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
POEMS
Mar 20, 2017 18:34:41 GMT -5
Post by songstarliner on Mar 20, 2017 18:34:41 GMT -5
Luke, I can't see the poem! |
|
|
|
POEMS
Mar 20, 2017 18:47:53 GMT -5
Post by Lord Lucan on Mar 20, 2017 18:47:53 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by Sanziana on Apr 6, 2017 5:17:24 GMT -5
I have committed the worst of sins
One can commit. I have not been
Happy. Let the glaciers of oblivion
Take and engulf me, mercilessly.
My parents bore me for the risky
And the beautiful game of life,
For earth, water, air and fire.
I failed them, I was not happy.
Their youthful hope for me unfulfilled.
I applied my mind to the symmetric
Arguments of art, its web of trivia.
They willed me bravery. I was not brave.
It never leaves me. Always at my side,
That shadow of a melancholy man.
Remorse. Jorge Luis Borges
|
|
|
|
Post by Sanziana on Apr 8, 2017 6:52:34 GMT -5
Some love poems today because I am a hopeless romantic (I admit that bitterly).
For your sake I said I will praise the moon,
tell the colour of the river,
find new words for the agony
and ecstacy of gulls.
Because you are close,
everything that men make, observe
or plant is close, is mine:
the gulls slowly writhing, slowly singing
on the spears of wind;
the iron gate above the river;
the bridge holding between stone fingers
her cold bright necklace of pearls.
The branches of shore trees,
like trembling charts of rivers,
call the moon for an ally
to claim their sharp journeys
out of the dark sky,
but nothing in the sky responds.
The branches only give a sound
to miles of wind.
With your body and your speaking
you have spoken for everything,
robbed me of my strangerhood,
made me one
with the root and gull and stone,
and because I sleep so near to you
I cannot embrace
or have my private love with them.
You worry that I will leave you.
I will not leave you.
Only strangers travel.
Owning everything,
I have nowhere to go.
Owning Everything
by Leonard Cohen
In my night, so brief, alas
The wind is about to meet the leaves.
My night so brief is filled with devastating anguish
Hark! Do you hear the whisper of the shadows?
This happiness feels foreign to me.
I am accustomed to despair.
Hark! Do you hear the whisper of the shadows?
There, in the night, something is happening
The moon is red and anxious.
And, clinging to this roof
That could collapse at any moment,
The clouds, like a crowd of mourning women,
Await the birth of the rain.
One second, and then nothing.
Behind this window,
The night trembles
And the earth stops spinning.
Behind this window, a stranger
Worries about me and you.
You in your greenery,
Lay your hands – those burning memories –
On my loving hands.
And entrust your lips, replete with life's warmth,
To the touch of my loving lips
The wind will carry us!
The wind will carry us!
The Wind Will Carry Us
by Forough Farrokhzad
|
|
|
|
POEMS
Apr 17, 2017 1:18:28 GMT -5
Post by Lord Lucan on Apr 17, 2017 1:18:28 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by Sanziana on May 9, 2017 12:07:42 GMT -5
Gracias A La Vida by Violeta Parra
(the Spanish version first because it sounds better)
Gracias a la vida, que me ha dado tanto.
Me dió dos luceros, que cuando los abro.
Perfecto distingo lo negro del blanco
Y en el alto cielo su fondo estrellado,
Y en las multitudes
El hombre que yo amo.
Gracias a la vida, que me ha dado tanto.
Me ha dado el oìdo que en todo su ancho
Graba noche y dìa grillos y canarios
Martillos, turbinas, ladrillos, chubascos
Y la voz tan tierna de mi bien amado.
Gracias a la vida, que me ha dado tanto.
Me ha dado el sonido y el abecedario.
Con él las palabras que pienso y declaro,
“Madre,” “amigo,” “hermano,” y luz alumbrando
La ruta del alma del que estoy amando.
Gracias a la vida, que me ha dado tanto.
Me ha dado la marcha de mis pies cansados.
Con ellos anduve ciudades y charcos,
Valles y desiertos, montañas y llanos,
Y la casa tuya, tu calle y tu patio.
Gracias a la vida, que me ha dado tanto.
Me diò el corazòn que agita su marco.
Cuando miro el fruto del cerebro humano,
Cuando miro al bueno tan lejos del malo.
Cuando miro el fondo de tus ojos claros.
Gracias a la vida, que me ha dado tanto.
Me ha dado la risa, me ha dado el llanto.
Asì yo distingo dicha de quebranto,
Los dos materiales que forman mi canto,
Y el canto de ustedes que es el mismo canto
Y el canto de todos que es mi propio canto.
Thank you to life – Poem by Violeta Parra
English translation by William Morín
Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me two beams of light, that when opened,
Can perfectly distinguish black from white
And in the sky above, her starry backdrop,
And from within the multitude
The one that I love.
Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me an ear that, in all of its width
Records—night and day—crickets and canaries,
Hammers and turbines and bricks and storms,
And the tender voice of my beloved.
Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me sounds and the alphabet.
With them the words that I think and declare:
“Mother,” “Friend,” “Brother” and the light shining.
The route of the soul from which comes love.
Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me the ability to walk with my tired feet.
With them I have traversed cities and puddles
Valleys and deserts, mountains and plains
And your house, your street and your patio.
Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me a heart, that causes my frame to shudder.
When I see the fruit of the human brain,
When I see good so far from bad,
When I see within the clarity of your eyes…
(or: When i look deep into your clear eyes …)
Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me laughter and it gave me longing.
With them I distinguish happiness and pain—
The two materials from which my songs are formed,
And your song, as well, which is the same song.
And everyone’s song, which is my very song.
|
|
|
|
Post by Celebith on May 10, 2017 8:59:23 GMT -5
Did you ever sit and ponder as you walk along the strand,
That life’s a bitter battle at the best;
And if you only knew it and would lend a helping hand,
Then every man can meet the final test.
The world is but a stage my friend,
And life is but a game;
And how you play is all that matters in the end.
For whether a man is right or wrong,
A woman gets the blame;
And your mother is your dog’s best friend.
Then up came mighty Casey and strode up to the bat,
And Sheridan was fifty miles away.
For it takes a heap of loving to make a home like that,
On the road where the flying fishes play.
-J.H. Marx
|
|
|
|
POEMS
May 17, 2017 4:41:47 GMT -5
Post by Lord Lucan on May 17, 2017 4:41:47 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
POEMS
May 25, 2017 19:48:02 GMT -5
Post by Lord Lucan on May 25, 2017 19:48:02 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on May 29, 2017 19:53:09 GMT -5
My tie is made of terylene,
Eternally I wear it,
For time can never wither, stale,
Shred, shrink, fray, fade, or tear it.
The storms of January fail
To loosen it with bluster;
The rains of April fail to stain
Its polyester luster;
July’s hot sun beats down in vain;
October’s frosts fall futilely,
December’s snow can blow and blow—
My tie remains acutely,
Immutable! When I’m below,
Dissolving in that halcyon
Retort, my carbohydrates shed
From off my frame of calcium—
When I am, in lay language, dead,
Across my crumbling sternum,
Shall lie a spanking fresh cravat,
Unsullied ad aeternum,
A grave and solemn prospect that
Makes light of our allotted
Three score and ten, for terylene
Shall never be unknotted.
—John Updike
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on May 31, 2017 10:01:19 GMT -5
"The light that moves is not the light
The light that stays is not the light
The true light rose countless sleeps ago
Even in the mouth of birds"
-Prince the dog ("Fifteen Dogs", Andre Alexis)
|
|
|
|
Post by St. Sextquisite on Jun 20, 2017 16:15:20 GMT -5
The Rite of Summer by St. Exquisite
I rounded the stage, I sank beneath the hickory shade.
Gathering all the tiger lilies and peonies in the dewy glade.
Arms sprouted anew, they send shoots in search of rays.
Until they find the radiant house and eat from their trays.
Life-bearing succulence served pure in the ultraviolet pyre.
Limbs undergo torpor, sinking far into the loamy gyre.
I rounded the orchestra, I sheltered your hungry progeny.
Then I emerged from this chrysalis, Ceres wielding botany.
They come festooned in gold breeches and safflower attire.
They throw silks 'round where I lay and drink kykeon cider.
|
|
|
|
Post by St. Sextquisite on Jun 26, 2017 13:03:19 GMT -5
I'm Waiting For The Man To Take The Pain Away by St. Exquisite
Dawn lowers its nimbus beak down into the steel loam.
It hopes to find those eager for a quick bite.
Casting forth bait suitable enough for an easy kill.
Like a maple doughnut still brimming with hot grease.
But regrettably neglected in the malador of a speeding vessel.
So dawn makes a hasty retreat into the smoggy spires.
The present enchantment swiftly loses its valuable potency.
While the hidden mutant on the express train attempts to hack
But nothing comes forth but the garbled remains of silence.
So you inchoately fumble about your material remains.
But the wine dark backpack does not give up its secrets easily.
You reach for the tickets to places you haven't a clue.
A solution germinates fleetingly in the brusque confines.
So you gather courage and ask the cat in a blue tux.
Sir, oh beautiful creature, how do I get to Baltimore.
Why sir, we are presently countless oceans apart.
You don't want to go traipsing your way to Baltimore.
You want to find a charming place that best suits your needs.
Slither your way to Montmartre and try the cronut cheese.
|
|
Trurl
Shoutbox Elitist 
Posts: 7,697
|
Post by Trurl on Jul 4, 2017 12:45:12 GMT -5
Daffodils go ping! and oink!
They really are alarming!
I'm scared of big geraniums
And I'm sure that lilac's harming!
I don't feel safe with primroses
And pansies make me jump!
A rhododendron bush makes me go
all wobbly.
And I'm terrified that hyacinths
might whop me when I'm not looking!
Oh dear, just talking about it
makes me want to go and sit down.
- Bert Fegg's Nasty Book for Boys and Girls
|
|
|
|
Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Jul 31, 2017 9:42:05 GMT -5
 —Augustus de Campos |
|
|
|
POEMS
Aug 1, 2017 2:40:49 GMT -5
Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Aug 1, 2017 2:40:49 GMT -5
—Augustus de Campos Oh neat, another author that Mark Z. Danielewski has made a career off of clearly aping and then being lauded for his supposed 'originality'. |
|
|
|
Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Aug 8, 2017 13:08:28 GMT -5
Radio
Why do you play such dreary music
on Saturday afternoon, when tired
mortally tired I long for a little
reminder of immortal energy?
All
week long while I trudge fatiguingly
from desk to desk in the museum
you spill your miracles of Grieg
and Honegger on shut-ins.
Am I not
shut in too, and after a week
of work don’t I deserve Prokofieff?
Well, I have my beautiful de Kooning
to aspire to. I think it has an orange
bed in it, more than the ear can hold.
—Frank O’Hara
|
|
|
|
Post by Dr Livingstone on Aug 10, 2017 1:41:05 GMT -5
A man in his life doesn’t have time to have
a time for everything.
He doesn't have enough seasons to have a season
for every purpose. Ecclesiastes didn’t get it right when he said that.
A man needs to love and hate in the same instant,
to laugh and cry with one and the same eyes,
with one and the same hands to throw stones,
and with one and the same hands to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
To hate and forgive, to remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and digest
what history elongates
over a great many years
A man in his life doesn’t have time.
The moment he lets go, he seeks.
The moment he finds, he forgets.
The moment he forgets, he loves.
The moment he loves, he begins to forget.
His soul is skilled,
his soul is very efficient.
Only his body remains an amateur
forever. It tries and errs,
it doesn’t learn, it gets confused,
drunk and blind in its pleasures and its pains.
He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there's time for everything.
Yehuda Amichai
A Man In His Life
|
|
|
|
POEMS
Aug 11, 2017 12:42:49 GMT -5
Post by Lord Lucan on Aug 11, 2017 12:42:49 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Aug 13, 2017 0:47:33 GMT -5
JOHN BROWN'S PRAYER
Omnipotent and steadfast God,
Who, in Thy mercy, hath
Upheaved in me Jehovah's rod
And his chastising wrath,
For fifty-nine unsparing years
Thy Grace hath worked apart
To mould a man of iron tears
With a bullet for a heart.
Yet, since this body may be weak
With all it has to bear,
Once more, before Thy thunders speak,
Almighty, hear my prayer.
I saw Thee when Thou did display
The black man and his lord
To bid me free the one, and slay
The other with the sword.
I heard Thee when Thou bade me spurn
Destruction from my hand
And, though all Kansas bleed and burn,
It was at Thy command.
I hear the rolling of the wheels,
The chariots of war!
I hear the breaking of the seals
And the opening of the door!
The glorious beasts with many eyes
Exult before the Crowned.
The buried saints arise, arise
Like incense from the ground!
Before them march the martyr-kings,
In bloody sunsets drest,
_O, Kansas, bleeding Kansas,
You will not let me rest!_
_I hear your sighing corn again,
I smell your prairie-sky,
And I remember five dead men
By Pottawattamie._
Lord God it was a work of Thine,
And how might I refrain?
_But Kansas, bleeding Kansas,
I hear her in her pain._
_Her corn is rustling in the ground,
An arrow in my flesh.
And all night long I staunch a wound
That ever bleeds afresh._
Get up, get up, my hardy sons,
From this time forth we are
No longer men, but pikes and guns
In God's advancing war.
And if we live, we free the slave,
And if we die, we die.
But God has digged His saints a grave
Beyond the western sky.
Oh, fairer than the bugle-call
Its walls of jasper shine!
And Joshua's sword is on the wall
With space beside for mine.
And should the Philistine defend
His strength against our blows,
The God who doth not spare His friend,
Will not forget His foes.
|
|
|
|
Post by songstarliner on Sept 7, 2017 21:29:13 GMT -5
Another Reason Why I Don't Keep A Gun In The House
The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.
The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,
and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.
When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton
while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.
- Billy Collins
|
|
|
|
POEMS
Sept 20, 2017 15:26:59 GMT -5
Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Sept 20, 2017 15:26:59 GMT -5
Deceiver, dissembler
Your trousers are alight
From what pole or gallows
Shall they dangle in the night?
When I asked of your career
Why did you have to kick my rear
With that stinking lie of thine
Proclaiming that you owned a mine?
When you asked to borrow my stallion
To visit a nearby moored galleon
How could I ever know that you
Intended to turn him into glue?
What red devil of mendacity
Grips your soul with such tenacity?
Will one you cruelly shower with lies
Put a pistol ball between your eyes?
What infernal serpent
Has lent you his forked tongue?
From what pit of foul deceit
Are all these whoppers sprung?
Deceiver, dissembler
Your trousers are alight
From what pole or gallows
Do they dangle in the night?
—Attributed to William Blake (attributed to)
|
|
dwarfoscar
TI Forumite
it's complicated
Posts: 503 
|
POEMS
Sept 21, 2017 9:34:08 GMT -5
Post by dwarfoscar on Sept 21, 2017 9:34:08 GMT -5
I'm going to tell you a great secret You are time
Time is a woman It needs
To be fawned over and bowed down to
Time like a dress to be undone
Time like endless tresses
Combed
A mirror misted and demisted by breath
You are time asleep at dawn when I rise
You're time like a knife across my gullet
O how I am unable to tell this torment of time unpassing
This torment of time halted like blood in blue vessels
Far worse than desire forever unmet
Than the thirst of the eye when you walk into the room
And my knowing not to break the spell
Far worse than feeling you a stranger
Fleeing
Your mind elsewhere and your heart already in a different century
My God how words are heavy That's what it's all about then
My love beyond pleasure my love out of reach today unattained
You swat at my clock temples
And if you fail to breathe I suffocate
And on my flesh your step waits and comes to rest
I'm going to tell you a great secret Every word
On my lips is stricken with poverty, begging
A trifle for your hands something glowing black below your stare
And this is why I say so often that I love you
For lack of a crystal clear enough of a phrase you'd place around your neck
Don't mind the baseness of my language It is
Plain water making that awful noise in the fire
I'm going to tell you a great secret I don't know how
To speak of the time you seem to be
I don't know how to speak of you I make believe
Like those who remain so long on the platform in the station
Waving their hands after the trains have left
The wrist fading out under the new weight of tears
I'm going to tell you a great secret I fear you
Fear what goes with you to the window in the evening
The gestures you make with unsaid words
I fear time rapid and slow I fear you
I'm going to tell you a great secret Close the doors
It's easier to die than to love
That's why I take such pains to go on living
My love
Louis Aragon (translated from the French by Christophe Brunski)
|
|
|
|
Post by St. Sextquisite on Sept 26, 2017 21:43:04 GMT -5
A Banquet Song
The rain of Zeus descends, and from high heaven
A storm is driven:
And on the running water-brooks the cold
Lays icy hold;
Then up: beat down the winter; make the fire
Blaze high and higher;
Mix wine as sweet as honey of the bee
Abundantly;
Then drink with comfortable wool around
Your temples bound.
We must not yield our hearts to woe, or wear
With wasting care;
For grief will profit us no whit, my friend,
Nor nothing mend;
But this is our best medicine, with wine fraught
To cast out thought.
- Alcaeus (c. 600 BCE)
|
|
|
|
Post by St. Sextquisite on Oct 1, 2017 0:49:15 GMT -5
The Orphic Hymn to Thanatos
"To Thanatos, Fumigation from Manna.
Hear me, O Death, whose empire unconfin'd
extends to mortal tribes of ev'ry kind.
On thee, the portion of our time depends,
whose absence lengthens life, whose presence ends.
Thy sleep perpetual bursts the vivid folds
by which the soul, attracting body holds :
common to all, of ev'ry sex and age,
for nought escapes thy all-destructive rage.
Not youth itself thy clemency can gain,
vigorous and strong, by thee untimely slain.
In thee the end of nature’s works is known,
in thee all judgment is absolved alone.
No suppliant arts thy dreadful rage control,
no vows revoke the purpose of thy soul.
O blessed power, regard my ardent prayer,
and human life to age abundant spare.
|
|
