Poet's Corner

[midcan5]

'In Praise of My Bed'

"At last I can be with you!
The grinding hours
since I left your side!
The labor of being fully human,
working my opposable thumb,
talking, and walking upright.
Now I have unclasped
unzipped, stepped out of.
Husked, soft, a be-er only,
I do nothing, but point
my bare feet into your
clean smoothness
feel your quiet strength
the whole length of my body.
I close my eyes, hear myself
moan, so grateful to be held this way."

Meredith Holmes

 

[American Horse]

Blue Mars (page 438)
I’ve been reading a lot of science fiction again, after many years of neglect. This is the last book of the Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. The book series goes into great detail of the geology, the politics, the aereophany of Mars. Aereophany is essentially the new world-view/religion of Mars.

So much of these three books is much more than ordinary prose, verging on poetry. In this paragraph (I’ve divided into 3 parts) in Blue Mars…Robinson is describing a walk taken alone by a 180 year old scientist, on a future, terraformed Mars....after the aquifers have flooded the basins and lowlands, and Terran life has been transplanted there; about the year 2189:

Meanwhile, the world.
He went back out on it again. Rumpled land under the blue dome of the sky. The ordinary sky at the equator in spring changed color day by day, it took a color chart even to approximate the tone colors: some days it was a deep violet blue—clematis blue, or hyacinth blue, or lapis lazuli, or a purplish indigo. Or Prussian blue, a pigment made from ferric ferrocyanide, interestingly, as there was certainly a lot of ferric material up there. Iron blue. Slightly more purple than Himalayan skies as seen in photographs, but otherwise like the Terran skies seen at those high altitudes. And combined with the rock indented landscape, it did seem like a high-altitude place
Everything: the sky color, the rumpled rock, the cold thin air so pure and chill.

Everything so high.
He walked into the wind, or across the wind, or with the wind at his back and each felt different. In his nostrils the wind was like mild intoxicant, flooding the brain. He stepped on lichen-crusted rocks, from slab to slab, as if walking on a personal sidewalk appearing magically out of the shatter of the land, up and down, every step just a step, wandering attentive to the this-ness of each moment. Moment to moment to moment, each one discrete, like.....loops of timespace, like the successive positions of a finch's head, the little birds plancking from one quantum pose to the next.

It appeared on close inspection that moments were not regular units but varied in duration, depending on what was happening in them. The wind dropped, no birds in sight: everything suddenly still, and oh so silent, except for the buzzing of insects; those moments could last several seconds each. Whereas when sparrows were dogfighting a crow, the moments were nearly instantaneous. Look very closely; sometimes it was a flow, sometimes the planck-planck-planck of individual stillnesses.
To know; There were different ways of knowing…..but none of them was quite so satisfactory.

 

[JW Frogen]

A drunk for so long

I forgot every season

And lost the moonshine.

 

[JW Frogen]

A drunk for so long

Changing like all the seasons

Lost in the moonshine

 

[midcan5]

'Children's Party'

"May I join you in the doghouse, Rover?
I wish to retire till the party's over.
Since three o'clock I've done my best
To entertain each tiny guest.
My conscience now I've left behind me,
And if they want me, let them find me.
I blew their bubbles, I sailed their boats,
I kept them from each other's throats.
I told them tales of magic lands,
I took them out to wash their hands.
I sorted their rubbers and tied their laces,
I wiped their noses and dried their faces.
Of similarities there's lots
Twixt tiny tots and Hottentots.
I've earned repose to heal the ravages
Of these angelic-looking savages.
Oh, progeny playing by itself
Is a lonely little elf,
But progeny in roistering batches
Would drive St. francis from here to Natchez.
Shunned are the games a parent proposes,
They prefer to squirt each other with hoses,
Their playmates are their natural foemen
And they like to poke each other's abdomen.
Their joy needs another woe's to cushion it,
Say a puddle, and someone littler to push in it.
They observe with glee the ballistic results
Of ice cream with spoons for catapults,
And inform the assembly with tears and glares
That everyone's presents are better than theirs.
Oh, little women and little men,
Someday I hope to love you again,
But not till after the party's over,
So give me the key to the doghouse, Rover."

Ogden Nash

 

[midcan5]

My Wife and I #3

We are married too long
we don't fight
instead we call each other names,
joke or just say you are crazy,
we deflect and realize no reason
exists to carry on too far,
today I say when
she drives me mad,
I'm going to whip
the bean soup outta you
... just as soon as
I work up the energy.
She laughs.

 

[midcan5]

'Some Things Don't Make Any Sense at All'

"My mom says I'm her sugarplum.
My mom says I'm her lamb.
My mom says I'm completely perfect
Just the way I am.
My mom says I'm a super-special wonderful terrific little guy.
My mom just had another baby.
Why?"

Judith Viorst

'Fifteen, Maybe Sixteen Things to Worry About'

"My pants could maybe fall down when I dive off the diving board.
My nose could maybe keep growing and never quit.
Miss Brearly could ask me to spell words like stomach and special.
(Stumick and speshul?)
I could play tag all day and always be "it."
Jay Spievack, who's fourteen feet tall, could want to fight me.
My mom and my dad--like Ted's--could want a divorce.
Miss Brearly could ask me a question about Afghanistan.
(Who's Afghanistan?)
Somebody maybe could make me ride a horse.
My mother could maybe decide that I needed more liver.
My dad could decide that I needed less TV.
Miss Brearly could say that I have to write script and stop printing.
(I'm better at printing.)
Chris could decide to stop being friends with me.

The world could maybe come to an end on next Tuesday.
The ceiling could maybe come crashing on my head.
I maybe could run out of things for me to worry about.
And then I'd have to do my homework instead."

Judith Viorst

 

[midcan5]

'A Lesson for This Sunday'


"The growing idleness of summer grass
With its frail kites of furious butterflies
Requests the lemonade of simple praise
In scansion gentler than my hammock swings
And rituals no more upsetting than a
Black maid shaking linen as she sings
The plain notes of some Protestant hosanna—
Since I lie idling from the thought in things—

Or so they should, until I hear the cries
Of two small children hunting yellow wings,
Who break my Sabbath with the thought of sin.
Brother and sister, with a common pin,
Frowning like serious lepidopterists.
The little surgeon pierces the thin eyes.
Crouched on plump haunches, as a mantis prays
She shrieks to eviscerate its abdomen.
The lesson is the same. The maid removes
Both prodigies from their interest in science.
The girl, in lemon frock, begins to scream
As the maimed, teetering thing attempts its flight.
She is herself a thing of summery light,
Frail as a flower in this blue August air,
Not marked for some late grief that cannot speak.

The mind swings inward on itself in fear
Swayed towards nausea from each normal sign.
Heredity of cruelty everywhere,
And everywhere the frocks of summer torn,
The long look back to see where choice is born,
As summer grass sways to the scythe's design."

Derek Walcott

 

[midcan5]

'Learning to Read'

"Very soon the Yankee teachers
Came down and set up school;
But, oh! how the Rebs did hate it,—
It was agin’ their rule.

Our masters always tried to hide
Book learning from our eyes;
Knowledge did’nt agree with slavery—
’Twould make us all too wise.

But some of us would try to steal
A little from the book.
And put the words together,
And learn by hook or crook.

I remember Uncle Caldwell,
Who took pot liquor fat
And greased the pages of his book,
And hid it in his hat.

And had his master ever seen
The leaves upon his head,
He’d have thought them greasy papers,
But nothing to be read.

And there was Mr. Turner’s Ben,
Who heard the children spell,
And picked the words right up by heart,
And learned to read ’em well.

Well, the Northern folks kept sending
The Yankee teachers down;
And they stood right up and helped us,
Though Rebs did sneer and frown.

And I longed to read my Bible,
For precious words it said;
But when I begun to learn it,
Folks just shook their heads,

And said there is no use trying,
Oh! Chloe, you’re too late;
But as I was rising sixty,
I had no time to wait.

So I got a pair of glasses,
And straight to work I went,
And never stopped till I could read
The hymns and Testament.

Then I got a little cabin
A place to call my own—
And I felt independent
As the queen upon her throne.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

 

[midcan5]

"mr youse needn't be so spry
concernin questions arty

each has his tastes but as for i
i likes a certain party


gimme the he-man's solid bliss
for youse ideas i'll match youse

a pretty girl who naked is
is worth a million statues"

e.e. cummings

 

[midcan5]

'Television'

"The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set --
Or better still, just don't install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we've been,
We've watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone's place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnotised by it,
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don't climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink --
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES!
'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say,
'But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!'
We'll answer this by asking you,
'What used the darling ones to do?
'How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?'
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!
Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales
Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
And treasure isles, and distant shores
Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
And pirates wearing purple pants,
And sailing ships and elephants,
And cannibals crouching 'round the pot,
Stirring away at something hot.
(It smells so good, what can it be?
Good gracious, it's Penelope.)
The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,
And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and-
Just How The Camel Got His Hump,
And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,
And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,
There's Mr. Rate and Mr. Mole-
Oh, books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks-
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They'll now begin to feel the need
Of having something to read.
And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen
They'll wonder what they'd ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did."

Roald Dahl

 

[midcan5]

Haven't heard or read Antin in years. There are pauses (spaces) in places but they do not show below.

====

the theory and practice of postmodernism — a manifesto [excerpt]


" about two years ago elly and i decided we needed a new mattress
or maybe elly decided it because i didnt pay much attention to the
problem
we had an old mattress wed had it for years and the salesman
wed bought it from had assured us it would last us a lifetime and it
was getting older and lumpy or lumpy in some places and hollowed out
in others and i just assumed it was part of a normal process of aging
it was getting older we were getting older and wed get used to it but
eleanor has a bad back and she was getting desperate to get rid of
this mattress that had lived with us for such a long time and so
lotally that i thought i knew all its high points and low points its
eminences and pitfalls and i was sure that at night my body
worked its way carefully around the lumps dodging the precipices
and moving to solider ground whenever it could
but maybe eleanor
sleeps more heavily than i do i have a feeling that i spent much of
my life at night avoiding the pitfalls of this mattress that i was used
to and it was a skill id acquired over the ten or fifteen years of this
mattress’ life so I felt there was no reason to get rid of this mattress
that had been promised to us by a salesman who said it would last the
rest of our lives i figured we were going to live long lives i didnt
think we were anywhere close to dying so neither was the mattress
but eleanor kept waking up with backaches
still i figured it was a good mattress and that elly just didnt have
enough skill at avoiding the lumps it never occurred to me that the
mattress was at fault so i didnt do anything and elly didnt do
anything because shes not into consumer products and hates to go
shopping but by the end of a year elly convinced me because she
has a sensitive back and i dont that she had a more accurate
understanding of this business than i did so I said sure eleanor
lets get a new mattress were rebuilding the house as long as
were going to have a new house we may as well have a new mattress
but eleanor said how will i know its a good one i dont want to get
another mattress that gets hollowed and lumpy and gives me backaches
when i wake up how will i know how to get a good one
i said well open the yellow pages and well look up mattresses and
therell be several places that sell them and ill close my eyes and
point a finger at one of these places and it will be a place that has
lots of mattresses where we can make a choice as to what constitutes
a good one by lying on them "

David Antin

 

[midcan5]

'Caboose Thoughts'

"It's going to come out all right—do you know?
The sun, the birds, the grass—they know.
They get along—and we’ll get along.

Some days will be rainy and you will sit waiting
And the letter you wait for won’t come,
And I will sit watching the sky tear off gray and gray
And the letter I wait for won’t come.

There will be ac-ci-dents.
I know ac-ci-dents are coming.
Smash-ups, signals wrong, washouts, trestles rotten,
Red and yellow ac-ci-dents.
But somehow and somewhere the end of the run
The train gets put together again
And the caboose and the green tail lights
Fade down the right of way like a new white hope.

I never heard a mockingbird in Kentucky
Spilling its heart in the morning.

I never saw the snow on Chimborazo.
It’s a high white Mexican hat, I hear.

I never had supper with Abe Lincoln.
Nor a dish of soup with Jim Hill.

But I’ve been around.
I know some of the boys here who can go a little.
I know girls good for a burst of speed any time.

I heard Williams and Walker
Before Walker died in the bughouse.

I knew a mandolin player
Working in a barber shop in an Indiana town,
And he thought he had a million dollars.

I knew a hotel girl in Des Moines.
She had eyes; I saw her and said to myself
The sun rises and the sun sets in her eyes.
I was her steady and her heart went pit-a-pat.
We took away the money for a prize waltz at a
Brotherhood dance.
She had eyes; she was safe as the bridge over the
Mississippi at Burlington; I married her.

Last summer we took the cushions going west.
Pike’s Peak is a big old stone, believe me.
It’s fastened down; something you can count on.

It’s going to come out all right—do you know?
The sun, the birds, the grass—they know.
They get along—and we’ll get along."

Carl Sandburg

 

[American Horse]

'Caboose Thoughts'

. . . .
There will be ac-ci-dents.
I know ac-ci-dents are coming.
Smash-ups, signals wrong, washouts, trestles rotten,
Red and yellow ac-ci-dents.
But somehow and somewhere the end of the run
The train gets put together again
And the caboose and the green tail lights
Fade down the right of way like a new white hope.
. . . .

They said of the first trains: "They'll never gettem goin' ... but if they ever gettem goin' they'll never gettem stopped. (which is a little like what an older man thinks about himself when he does his duty standing in the head)

 

[Bootneck]

The sunset vigil is sadly becoming an all too regular occurence in Afghanistan. We all attend too many and never a hard man will you spot at these sad services. I dedicate this poem by another soldier to all my brothers who gave their lives out there. Particularly the men of 3 Commando Brigade - my friends and colleagues. But most of all I dedicate it to my dearest, lifelong friend, Robert. I miss you Rob.
Rest in peace my brothers. You are loved and never forgotten.

Sunset Vigil

The news is spread far and wide
Another comrade has sadly died
A sunset vigil upon the sand
As a soldier leaves this foreign land

We stand alone, and yet as one
In the fading light of a setting sun
We've all gathered to say goodbye
To our fallen comrade who's set to fly

The eulogy's read about their life
Sometimes with words from pals or wife
We all know when the CO's done
What kind of soldier they'd become

The padre then calls us all to pray
The bugler has Last Post to play
The cannon roars and belches flame
We will recall, with pride, their name

A minute's silence stood in place
As tears roll down the hardest face
Deafening silence fills the air
With each of us in personal prayer

Reveille sounds and the parade is done
The hero remembered, forgotten by none
They leave to start the journey back
In a coffin draped in the Union Jack

Staff Sergeant Andrew McFarlane

 

[midcan5]

They said of the first trains: "They'll never gettem goin' ... but if they ever gettem goin' they'll never gettem stopped. (which is a little like what an older man thinks about himself when he does his duty standing in the head)

Ah aging, consider the alternative. Fifty four is young!

=====================================

'After Reading Tu Fu, I Go Outside to the Dwarf Orchard'


"East of me, west of me, full summer.
How deeper than elsewhere the dusk is in your own yard.
Birds fly back and forth across the lawn
looking for home
As night drifts up like a little boat.

Day after day, I become of less use to myself.
Like this mockingbird,
I flit from one thing to the next.
What do I have to look forward to at fifty-four?
Tomorrow is dark.
Day-after-tomorrow is darker still.

The sky dogs are whimpering.
Fireflies are dragging the hush of evening
up from the damp grass.
Into the world's tumult, into the chaos of every day,
Go quietly, quietly."

Charles Wright


Sighs of Autumn Rain (1)

 

[midcan5]

Seeing an Elvis impersonator who was quite good last evening, I thought I'd share a few lyrics as poetry today.

"I cant stop loving you
So Ive made up my mind
To live in memory
Of such an old lonesome time

I cant stop wanting you
Its useless to say
So Ill just live my life
In dreams of yesterday.

*****

Are you lonesome tonight,
Do you miss me tonight?
Are you sorry we drifted apart?
Does your memory stray to a brighter sunny day
When I kissed you and called you sweetheart?
Do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare?
Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there?
Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again?
Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?

*****

Maybe I didnt treat you
Quite as good as I should have
Maybe I didnt love you
Quite as often as I could have
Little things I should have said and done
I just never took the time

You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind

*****

Fools rush in, where wise men never go
But wise men never fall in love
So how are they to know
When we met, I felt my life begin
So open up your heart and let
This fool rush in

*****

Have I told you lately that I love you?
Could I tell you once again somehow?
Have I told with all my heart and soul how I adore you?
Well darling Im telling you now

*****

Im so hurt to think that you lied to me
Im hurt way down deep inside of me
You said our love was true
And well never, never part
Now youve got someone new
And it breaks my heart

*****

Love me tender,
Love me sweet,
Never let me go.
You have made my life complete,
And I love you so.

Love me tender,
Love me true,
All my dreams fulfilled.
For my darlin I love you,
And I always will.

*****

And when you smile the world is brighter
You touch my hand and Im a king
Your kiss to me is worth a fortune
Your love for me is everything

Ill guess Ill never know the reason why
You love me like you do
Thats the wonder
The wonder of you"


various song writers

 

[midcan5]

'A Farewell, Age 10'

"While its owner looks away I touch the rabbit.
Its long soft ears fold back under my hand.
Miles of yellow wheat bend; their leaves
rustle away and wait for the sun and wind.

This day belongs to my uncle. This is his farm.
We have stopped on our journey; when my father says to
we will go on, leaving this paradise, leaving
the family place. We have my father's job.

Like him, I will be strong all my life.
We are men. If we squint our eyes in the sun
we will see far. I'm ready. It's good, this resolve.
But I will never pet the rabbit again."

William Stafford

 

[midcan5]

'In a Country'

"My love and I are inventing a country, which we
can already see taking shape, as if wheels were
passing through yellow mud. But there is a prob-
lem: if we put a river in the country, it will thaw
and begin flooding. If we put the river on the bor-
der, there will be trouble. If we forget about the
river, there will be no way out. There is already a
sky over that country, waiting for clouds or smoke.
Birds have flown into it, too. Each evening more
trees fill with their eyes, and what they see we can
never erase.

One day it was snowing heavily, and again we were
lying in bed, watching our country: we could
make out the wide river for the first time, blue and
moving. We seemed to be getting closer; we saw
our wheel tracks leading into it and curving out
of sight behind us. It looked like the land we had
left, some smoke in the distance, but I wasn't sure.
There were birds calling. The creaking of our
wheels. And as we entered that country, it felt as if
someone was touching our bare shoulders, lightly,
for the last time."

Larry Levis

 

[midcan5]

'A List of Praises'

"Give praise with psalms that tell the trees to sing,
Give praise with Gospel choirs in storefront churches,
Mad with the joy of the Sabbath,
Give praise with the babble of infants, who wake with the sun,
Give praise with children chanting their skip-rope rhymes,
A poetry not in books, a vagrant mischievous poetry
living wild on the Streets through generations of children.

Give praise with the sound of the milk-train far away
With its mutter of wheels and long-drawn-out sweet whistle
As it speeds through the fields of sleep at three in the morning,
Give praise with the immense and peaceful sigh
Of the wind in the pinewoods,
At night give praise with starry silences.

Give praise with the skirling of seagulls
And the rattle and flap of sails
And gongs of buoys rocked by the sea-swell
Out in the shipping-lanes beyond the harbor.
Give praise with the humpback whales,
Huge in the ocean they sing to one another.

Give praise with the rasp and sizzle of crickets, katydids and cicadas,
Give praise with hum of bees,
Give praise with the little peepers who live near water.
When they fill the marsh with a shimmer of bell-like cries
We know that the winter is over.

Give praise with mockingbirds, day's nightingales.
Hour by hour they sing in the crepe myrtle
And glossy tulip trees
On quiet side streets in southern towns.

Give praise with the rippling speech
Of the eider-duck and her ducklings
As they paddle their way downstream
In the red-gold morning
On Restiguche, their cold river,
Salmon river,
Wilderness river.

Give praise with the whitethroat sparrow.
Far, far from the cities,
Far even from the towns,
With piercing innocence
He sings in the spruce-tree tops,
Always four notes
And four notes only.

Give praise with water,
With storms of rain and thunder
And the small rains that sparkle as they dry,
And the faint floating ocean roar
That fills the seaside villages,
And the clear brooks that travel down the mountains

And with this poem, a leaf on the vast flood,
And with the angels in that other country."

Anne Porter