Poet's Corner

[midcan5]

'The Passing of the Year'

"My glass is filled, my pipe is lit,
My den is all a cosy glow;
And snug before the fire I sit,
And wait to feel the old year go.
I dedicate to solemn thought
Amid my too-unthinking days,
This sober moment, sadly fraught
With much of blame, with little praise.

Old Year! upon the Stage of Time
You stand to bow your last adieu;
A moment, and the prompter's chime
Will ring the curtain down on you.
Your mien is sad, your step is slow;
You falter as a Sage in pain;
Yet turn, Old Year, before you go,
And face your audience again.

That sphinx-like face, remote, austere,
Let us all read, whate'er the cost:
O Maiden! why that bitter tear?
Is it for dear one you have lost?
Is it for fond illusion gone?
For trusted lover proved untrue?
O sweet girl-face, so sad, so wan
What hath the Old Year meant to you?

And you, O neighbour on my right
So sleek, so prosperously clad!
What see you in that aged wight
That makes your smile so gay and glad?
What opportunity unmissed?
What golden gain, what pride of place?
What splendid hope? O Optimist!
What read you in that withered face?

And You, deep shrinking in the gloom,
What find you in that filmy gaze?
What menace of a tragic doom?
What dark, condemning yesterdays?
What urge to crime, what evil done?
What cold, confronting shape of fear?
O haggard, haunted, hidden One
What see you in the dying year?

And so from face to face I flit,
The countless eyes that stare and stare;
Some are with approbation lit,
And some are shadowed with despair.
Some show a smile and some a frown;
Some joy and hope, some pain and woe:
Enough! Oh, ring the curtain down!
Old weary year! it's time to go.

My pipe is out, my glass is dry;
My fire is almost ashes too;
But once again, before you go,
And I prepare to meet the New:
Old Year! a parting word that's true,
For we've been comrades, you and I --
I thank God for each day of you;
There! bless you now! Old Year, good-bye!"

Robert W. Service

 

[American Horse]

Old Long Past


And for old long past, my joy (sweetheart),
For old long past,
We will take a cup of kindness yet,
For old long past,

Should old acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
And days of old long past.

And surely you will pay for your pint-vessel!
And surely I will pay for mine!
And we will take a cup of kindness yet,
For old long past.

We two have run about the hillsides
And pulled the wild daisies fine;
But we have wandered many a weary foot
Since old long past.

We two have paddled in the stream,
From morning sun till noon;
But seas between us broad have roared
Since old long past.

And there is a hand, my trusty friend!
And give me a hand of yours!
And we will take a right good-will drink,
For old long past.


(Chorus) For auld lang syne (By Robert Burns - English version)

 

[midcan5]

'Anybody Can Write a Poem'

"I am arguing with an idiot online.
He says anybody can write a poem.
I say some people are afraid to speak.
I say some people are ashamed to speak.
If they said the pronoun "I"
they would find themselves floating
in the black Atlantic
and a woman would swim by, completely
dry, in a rose chiffon shirt,
until the ashamed person says her name
and the woman becomes wet and drowns
and her face turns to flayed ragged pulp,
white in the black water.
He says that he'd still write
even if someone cut off both his hands.
As if it were the hands that make a poem,
I say. I say what if someone cut out
whatever brain or gut or loin or heart
that lets you say hey, over here, listen,
I have something to tell you all,
I'm different.
As an example I mention my mother
who loved that I write poems
and am such a wonderful genius.
And then I delete the comment
because my mother wanted no part of this or any
argument, because "Who am I
to say whatever?"
Once on a grade school form
I entered her job as hairwasher.
She saw the form and was embarrassed and mad.
"You should have put receptionist."
But she didn't change it.
The last word she ever said was No.
And now here she is in my poem,
so proud of her idiot son,
who presumes to speak for a woman
who wants to tell him to shut up, but can't."

Bradley Paul

 

[midcan5]

'The Magic Kingdom'

'And as in the daily casualties of life every man is, as it were, threatened with numberless deaths, so long as it remains uncertain which of them is his fate, I would ask whether it is not better to suffer one and die, than to live in fear of all? St. Augustine, “City of God.'


"This morning, I found on a slip of paper tucked into a book
a list of questions I’d written down years ago to ask the doctor.
What if it has spread? Is it possible I’m crazy? I’ve just returned
from Florida, from visiting my mother’s last sister, who is eighty
& doing fine. At the airport, my flight grounded by a storm,
I bought a magazine, which fell open to a photograph
of three roseate spoonbills tossing down their elegant shadows
on a chartreuse field of fertilizer-production waste.
Two little girls emptied their Ziplocs of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish
onto the carpet & picked them up, one by one, with great delicacy,
before popping them into their mouths. Their mother, outside
smoking, kept an eye on them through the glass. After my cousin died,
my father died & then my brother. Next, my father’s older brother
& his wife. And, finally, after my mother died, I expected
to die myself. And because this happened very quickly
& because these were, really, almost all the people I knew,
I spent each day smashing dishes with one of my uncle’s hammers
& gluing them back together in new ways. It was strange work
& dangerous, even though I tried to protect myself—
wearing a quilted bathrobe & goggles & leather work gloves
& opening all the windows, even in snow, against the vapors
of the industrial adhesives. Most days now I get up late
& brew coffee & the smell rises from the old enamel pot
I’ve had to balance under the dark drip ever since the carafe
that came with the machine shattered in the dishwasher last month.


One morning I found a lump in my breast & my vision narrowed
to a small dot & I began to sweat. My legs & arms felt weak,
& my heart thrashed behind its bars. We were not written
to be safe. In the old tales, the woodcutter’s daughter’s path
takes her, each time, through the dark forest. There are new words
for all of this: a shot of panic becomes the rustle of glucocorticoid
signalling the sympathetic nervous system into a response
regulated by the sensitivity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis.
And, as I go along, these freshly minted charms clatter together
in the tender doeskin of the throat as though the larynx
were nothing if not a sack of amulets tied with a cord & worn
around the neck. But I tell you I sat on the bathroom floor for hours,
trembling. And I can tell you this because the lump was just a lump
& some days now I don’t even dread the end although I know
it will arrive. The garage is filled with buckets of broken china.
The girls chased each other & waved their arms, casting spells,
the trim of their matching gingham dresses the electric pink
of the birds’ wings. They turned each other into princesses
& super-girls & then they pretended to change back.
Oh, no. You forgot to say forever—they took turns repeating
with dramatic dismay, melting into puddles of themselves,
their sandals & sunburned knees vanishing beneath their hems."

Kathleen Graber

 

[midcan5]

'Life while-you-wait'

"Life while-you-wait,
Performance without rehearsal.
Body without alterations.
Head without premeditation.

I know nothing of the role I play,
I only know it's mine, I can't exchange it.

I have to guess on the spot
just what this play's all about.

Ill-prepared for the privilege of living,
I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.
I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.
I trip at every step over my own ignorance.
I can't conceal my hayseed manners.
My instincts are for hammy histrionics.
Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more.
Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.

Words and impulses you can't take back,
stars you'll never get counted,
your character like a raincoat you button on the run-
the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.

If I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But here comes Friday with a script I haven't seen.
Is it fair, I ask
(my voice a little hoarse,
since I couldn't even clear my throat offstage).

You'd be wrong to think that it's just slapdash quiz
taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no.
I'm standing on the set and I see how strong it is.

The props are surprisingly precise.
The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.
The farthest galaxies have been turned on.
Oh no, there's no question, this must be the premier.
And whatever I do
Will become forever what I've done."

Wistawa Szymborska

 

[midcan5]

'The Gun'

"Late afternoon light slices through the dormer window
to your place on the floor next to a stack of comics.
Across from you is a boy who at eleven is three years
older. He is telling you to pull down your pants.
You tell him that you don't want to. His mother is out
And you are alone in the house. He has given you a Coke,
let you smoke two of his mother's nonfilter Pall Malls,
and years later you can still picture the red packet
on the dark finish of the phonograph. You stand up
and say you have to go home. You live across the street
and only see him in summer when he returns from school.
As you step across the comics toward the stairs,
the boy gives you a shove, sends you stumbling back.
Wait, he says, I want to show you something.
He goes to a drawer and when he turns around
You see he is holding a small gun by the barrel.
You feel you are breathing glass. You ask if it is
loaded and he says, Sure it is, and you say: Show me.
He removes the clip, takes a bullet from his pocket.
See this, he says, then puts the bullet into the clip,
slides the clip into the butt of the gun with a snap.
The boy sits on the bed and pretends to study the gun.
He has a round fat face and black hair. Take off
your pants, he says. Again you say you have to go home.
He stands up and points the gun at your legs. Slowly,
you unhook your cowboy belt, undo the metal buttons
of your jeans. They slide down past your knees.
Pull down your underwear, he tells you. You tell him
you don't want to. He points the gun at your head.
You crouch on the floor, cover your head with your hands.
You don't want him to see you cry. You feel you are
pulling yourself into yourself and soon you will be
no bigger than a pebble. You think back to the time
you saw a friend's cocker spaniel hit by a car and you
remember how its stomach was split open and you imagine
your face split open and blood and gray stuff escaping.
You have hardly ever thought of dying, seriously dying,
and as you grow more scared you have to go to the bathroom
more and more badly. Before you can stop yourself,
you feel yourself pissing into your underwear.
The boy with a gun sees the spreading pool of urine.
You baby, he shouts, you baby, you're disgusting.
You want to apologize, but the words jumble and
choke in your throat. Get out, the boys shouts.
You drag your pants up over your underwear and
run down the stairs. As you slam out of his house,
you know you died up there among the comic books
and football pennants, died as sure as your friend's
cocker spaniel, as sure as if the boy had shot your
face off, shot the very piss out of you. Standing
in the street with urine soaking your pants, you watch
your neighbors pursuing the orderly occupations
of a summer afternoon: mowing the lawn, trimming a hedge.
Where is that sense of the world you woke with
this morning? Now it is smaller. Now it has gone away."

Stephen Dobyns

 

[saveliberty]

Statistically speaking, I'm going to die.
Statistically reasoning, I probably lie.
Statistically cooking, I shouldn't fry.
Statistically counting, no taxes I pay.

I care not the odds.
Against them I'll trod.
Strengthening my bod.
Believing in God.

Entitled I'm not.
Improved what I got.
Refusing to rot.
Accept not my lot.

 

[midcan5]

'What I Am'

"Fred Sanford's on at 12
& I'm standing in the express lane (cash only)
about to buy Head & Shoulders
the white people shampoo, no one knows
what I am. My name could be Lamont.
George Clinton wears colors like Toucan Sam,
the Froot Loop pelican. Follow your nose,
he says. But I have no nose, no mouth,
so you tell me what's good, what's god,
what's funky. When I stop
by McDonalds for a cheeseburger, no one
suspects what I am. I smile at Ronald's poster,
perpetual grin behind the pissed-off, fly-girl
cashier I love. Where are my goddamn fries?
Ain't I American? I never say, Niggaz
in my poems. My ancestors didn't
emigrate. Why would anyone leave
their native land? I'm thinking about shooting
some hoop later on. I'll dunk on everyone
of those niggaz. They have no idea
what I am. I might be the next Jordan
god. They don't know if Toni Morrison
is a woman or a man. Michael Jackson
is the biggest name in showbiz. Mamma se
Mamma sa mamma ku sa, sang the Bushmen
in Africa. I'll buy a dimebag after the game,
me & Jody. He says, Fuck them white people
at work, Man. He was an All-American
in high school. He's cool, but he don't know
what I am, & so what. Fred Sanford's on
in a few & I got the dandruff-free head
& shoulders of white people & a cheeseburger
belly & a Thriller CD & Nike high tops
& slavery's dead & the TV's my daddy--
You big Dummy!
Fred tells Lamont."

Terrance Hayes

 

[saveliberty]

Equality had been won,
no black or white.
In perfect measure
all was shared.
Politics no longer needed,
as fairness governed.
What condition could
arise to cause a fight.

Yet deep within,
uneasiness.
Why did not the gray
and balance leave calm?
No vice or covetness
to display.
We were stripped
of pain and happiness.

 

[midcan5]

'Personals'

"Some nights I sleep with my dress on. My teeth
are small and even. I don't get headaches.
Since 1971 or before, I have hunted a bench
where I could eat my pimento cheese in peace.
If this were Tennessee and across that river, Arkansas,
I'd meet you in West Memphis tonight. We could
have a big time. Danger, shoulder soft.
Do not lie or lean on me. I'm still trying to find a job
for which a simple machine isn't better suited.
I've seen people die of money. Look at Admiral Benbow. I wish
like certain fishes, we came equipped with light organs.
Which reminds me of a little known fact:
if we were going the speed of light, this dome
would be shrinking while we were gaining weight.
Isn't the road crooked and steep.
In this humidity, I make repairs by night. I'm not one
among millions who saw Monroe's face
in the moon. I go blank looking at that face.
If I could afford it I'd live in hotels. I won awards
in spelling and the Australian crawl. Long long ago.
Grandmother married a man named Ivan. The men called him
Eve. Stranger, to tell the truth, in dog years I am up there."

C. D. Wright

 

[midcan5]

'When a Woman Loves a Man'

"When she says margarita she means daiquiri.
When she says quixotic she means mercurial.
And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again,"
she means, "Put your arms around me from behind
as I stand disconsolate at the window."

He's supposed to know that.

When a man loves a woman he is in New York and she is in Virginia
or he is in Boston, writing, and she is in New York, reading,
or she is wearing a sweater and sunglasses in Balboa Park and he
is raking leaves in Ithaca
or he is driving to East Hampton and she is standing disconsolate
at the window overlooking the bay
where a regatta of many-colored sails is going on
while he is stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway.

When a woman loves a man it is one ten in the morning
she is asleep he is watching the ball scores and eating pretzels
drinking lemonade
and two hours later he wakes up and staggers into bed
where she remains asleep and very warm.

When she says tomorrow she means in three or four weeks.
When she says, "We're talking about me now,"
he stops talking. Her best friend comes over and says,
"Did somebody die?"

When a woman loves a man, they have gone
to swim naked in the stream
on a glorious July day
with the sound of the waterfall like a chuckle
of water rushing over smooth rocks,
and there is nothing alien in the universe.

Ripe apples fall about them.
What else can they do but eat?

When he says, "Ours is a transitional era,"
"that's very original of you," she replies,
dry as the martini he is sipping.

They fight all the time
It's fun
What do I owe you?
Let's start with an apology
Ok, I'm sorry, you dickhead.
A sign is held up saying "Laughter."
It's a silent picture.
"I've been fucked without a kiss," she says,
"and you can quote me on that,"
which sounds great in an English accent.

One year they broke up seven times and threatened to do it
another nine times.

When a woman loves a man, she wants him to meet her at the
airport in a foreign country with a jeep.
When a man loves a woman he's there. He doesn't complain that
she's two hours late
and there's nothing in the refrigerator.

When a woman loves a man, she wants to stay awake.
She's like a child crying
at nightfall because she didn't want the day to end.

When a man loves a woman, he watches her sleep, thinking:
as midnight to the moon is sleep to the beloved.
A thousand fireflies wink at him.
The frogs sound like the string section
of the orchestra warming up.
The stars dangle down like earrings the shape of grapes."

David Lehman

 

[midcan5]

'A Poem about Intelligence for My Brothers and Sisters'

"A few years back and they told me Black
means a hole where other folks
got brain/it was like the cells in the heads
of Black children was out to every hour on the hour naps
Scientists called the phenomenon the Notorious
Jensen Lapse, remember?
Anyway I was thinking
about how to devise
a test for the wise
like a Stanford-Binet
for the C.I.A.
you know?
Take Einstein
being the most the unquestionable the outstanding
the maximal mind of the century
right?
And I’m struggling against this lapse leftover
from my Black childhood to fathom why
anybody should say so:
E=mc squared?
I try that on this old lady live on my block:
She sweeping away Saturday night from the stoop
and mad as can be because some absolute
jackass have left a kingsize mattress where
she have to sweep around it stains and all she
don’t want to know nothing about in the first place
“Mrs. Johnson!” I say, leaning on the gate
between us: “What you think about somebody come up
with an E equals M C 2?”
“How you doin,” she answer me, sideways, like she don’t
want to let on she know I ain’
combed my hair yet and here it is
Sunday morning but still I have the nerve
to be bothering serious work with these crazy
questions about
“E equals what you say again, dear?”
Then I tell her, “Well
also this same guy? I think
he was undisputed Father of the Atom Bomb!”
“That right.” She mumbles or grumbles, not too politely
“And dint remember to wear socks when he put on
his shoes!” I add on (getting desperate)
at which point Mrs. Johnson take herself and her broom
a very big step down the stoop away from me
“And never did nothing for nobody in particular
lessen it was a committee
and
used to say, ‘What time is it?’
and
you’d say, ‘Six o’clock.’
and
he’d say, ‘Day or night?’
and
and he never made nobody a cup a tea
in his whole brilliant life!
and
[my voice rises slightly]
and
he dint never boogie neither: never!”

“Well,” say Mrs. Johnson, “Well, honey,
I do guess
that’s genius for you.”"

June Jordan

 

[Mr. H.]

Don't think I've posted here yet.

Wrote this to my daughter years ago.

Sitting in Flowers

Take your tiny self,
Innocent enough,
From that high shelf.

You’re so tough,
Where will you go
All by your self.

You grow.

I see tomorrow,
You filled with sorrow.
Days pass like the hour.

For mother and me,
Time taught us both
What you soon will see.

We, too, grow.

But for now
You are ours.
Stand yourself still
A few more hours.

Stay as we saw you
One day on the hill,
Sitting in flowers.

 

[midcan5]

'My Daughter’s Body'

"If you saw her, you would think she was beautiful.
Strangers stop me on the street to say it.

If they talk to her they see that this beauty
Means nothing. Their sight shifts to pigeons

On the sidewalk. Their eye contact becomes
As poor as hers. They slip away slowly,

With varying degrees of grace. I never know
How much to say to explain the heartbreak.

Sometimes, I tell them. More often,
I remain silent. As her smile sears me, I hold

Her hand all the way home from the swings.
The florist hands her a dying rose and she holds it

Gently without ripping the petals like she does
To the tulips that stare at us with their insipid faces,

Pretending that they can hold my sorrow
In their outstretched cups because I knew them

Before I knew grief. They do not understand that
They are ruined for me now. I planted five hundred

Bulbs as she grew inside of me, her brain already
Formed by strands of our damaged DNA

Or something else the doctors don’t understand.
After her bath, she curls up on me for lullabies—

The only time during the day that her small body is still.
As I sing, I breathe in her shampooed hair and think

Of the skeletons in the Musée de Préhistoire
In Les Eyzies. The bones of the mother and baby

Lie in a glass case in the same position we are
In now. They were buried in that unusual pose,

Child curled up in the crook of the mother’s arm.
The archaeologists are puzzled by the position.

It doesn’t surprise me at all. It would be so easy
To die this way—both of us taking our last breaths

With nursery rhymes on our open lips
And the promise of peaceful sleep."

Jennifer Franklin

 

[midcan5]

'Optimism'

"My friend the pessimist thinks I'm an optimist
because I seem to believe in the next good thing.
But I see rueful shadows almost everywhere.
When the sun rises I think of collisions and AK-47s.
It's my mother's fault, who praised and loved me,
sent me into the dreadful world as if
it would tell me a story I'd understand. The fact is
optimism is the enemy of happiness.
I've learned to live for the next good thing
because lifelong friends write good-bye letters,
because regret follows every timidity.
I'm glad I know that all great romances are fleshed
with failure. I'll take a day of bitterness and rain
to placate the gods, to get it over with.
My mother told me I could be a great pianist
because I had long fingers. My fingers are small.
It's my mother's fault, every undeserved sweetness."

Stephen Dunn

 

[midcan5]

'Mankind Loosed'

"I have died in Viet Nam but I have walked the face of the moon.
I have befouled the waters and tainted the air of a magnificent land but I have made it safe from disease.
I have flown through the sky faster than the sun but I have idled in streets made ugly with traffic.
I have littered the land with garbage but I have built upon it 100 million homes.
I have divided schools with my prejudice but I have sent armies to unite them.
I have beat down my enemies with clubs but I have built courtrooms to keep them free.
I have built a bomb to destroy the world but I have used it to light a light.
I have outraged my brothers in the alleys of the ghettos but I have transplanted a human heart.
I have scribbled out filth and pornography but I have elevated the philosophy of man.
I have watched children starve from my golden towers but I have fed half the earth.
I was raised in a grotesque slum but I am surfeited by the silver spoon of opulence.
I live in the greatest country in the world in the greatest time in history but I scorn the ground I stand upon.
I am ashamed but I am proud. I am an American."

Author Unknown

 

[midcan5]

'Father'

"Laid out on the sidewalk, in a shiny navy suit,
hands folded on his belly-neither dead nor alive.

I pick up a stick thick as a baseball bat,
big enough to whack

an apology out of him. Get up,
I'm taking you to court for child abuse.

Whack. Whack. Whack.
Clouds of dust billow out of him

like that sudden amorphous rising
when you beat an old rug on the clothes line.

remember that Fourth of July you
kicked the dog 27 times at the barbecue

at Minnehaha Falls? What about the time
you took my brother apart in the back yard?

Well, take this, prick. I take out my gramma's
old farm gun, unload it into his groin. No blood

spurts out of the holes, only fumes.
Then that gray residue of fireworks oozes

itself forth. Snakes along the sidewalk.
I walk over to him and bend down close.

Lift his face by the chin. Look at me
when I'm talking to you. His face crumbles,

a puffball disintegrating.
The wind comes up, flings

the fruitful bodies across green fields.

There's nothing left in my hands."

Roseann Lloyd

 

[LadyGunSlinger]

Mmmm, I love poetry.. this is a wonderful place I adore Rumi.. Here's but a small yet succulent taste of the Master at work:

Suddenly the drunken sweetheart appeared out of my door.

She drank a cup of ruby wine and sat by my side.

Seeing and holding the lockets of her hair

My face became all eyes, and my eyes all hands.



From Thief of Sleep

by Shahram Shiva

 

[midcan5]

Another poem song, the old hippie in me still loves Folk. Words make the word go round, now if we could only get all good words.

 

[FRIKSHUN]

My Dad's Pocketknife
He carried it with him every day
Throughout his years of life.
My daddy never left the house
without his pocketknife.
It had a thousand uses,
and he used it every day.
Sharp enough to shave your arm he
tested it that way.
He used it to peel apples,
or pecans, to feed the kids.
He used it to cut fishing lines
or open plastic lids.
When caught out on a camping trip can
opener couldn't be found -
His knife would poke holes in the can top
with a popping sound.
And should you need to borrow it,
he'd loan it with no flak.
But woe unto the one who didn't
give that knife right back.
He may forget clean underwear,
his glasses, or his keys,
he'd lost his wallet several times
and lists of groceries.
He lost his favorite sport coat
at the cleaners for a day.
He even lost the car once
(guess he thought it ran away).
And even with a slew of kids His
own, and others's too -
That knife was in his pocket
when every day was through.
That pocketknife cleaned fingernails,
and sometimes trimmed them too.
It cut holes in dad's fishing hat
so the breeze could whistle through.
Dad's knife cut tape on Christmas gifts,
which saved us time and messes.
It trimmed those "navy pennants"
and cut tags off Easter dresses.
It could, in an emergency
a hammer, or screwdriver be.
He could pick stickers from my hand
that I couldn't even see.
That pocketknife, like Daddy,
could serve a thousand uses.
Just ask his kids about that knife and
the grins that it produces.
My Daddy could do anything,
to hear his family say.
And his knife was just as versatile;
They were alike that way.
When Daddy died at seventy,
He'd pastored fourty years.
And countless folks he'd touched
with his laughter and his tears.
He left six kids, ten grandkids,
and a stubborn minded wife.
And from his pocket, doctors gave
us back his pocketknife.
The only thing of Daddy's
that I kept to be my own
was the pocketknife he carried
and the memories I have known.
Now I carry it in my purse
and use it often, too.
It opens letters quick and neat the
things that knife can do.
And every time I use it,
I picture Daddy there.
And hear him tell me "Keep it sharp
and clean. Treat it with care."
My Daddy was a loving man;
He lead a godly life.
And God used as often
As Dad used that pocketknife.
I pray I'll be as loved someday,
As useful in this life.
I wish I were as versatile
As Daddy's pocketknife.