Poet's Corner

[Sky Dancer]

This precious moment

with you,

like snow on the water.



Lama Drimed

 

[midcan5]

'Any Hack Can Crank Out A Hundred Sonnets'

"Any hack can crank out a hundred sonnets
if he has to; all you have to do
is set up your metronome and start typing,
taking dictation from the day’s small gifts,
whatever presents itself in the street
or dredges itself up from memory
or dreams itself out of your transcribing hand.
It’s an insidious form, because it’s almost
easy, leading you by the wrist through rules
and rhythms as old as the English language
translated down the ages in idioms
transformed by time and driven by dying breaths.
It gives you a false sense of what you meant
when the closing couplet clinches your argument."

Stephen Kessler

 

[Sky Dancer]

It Felt Love


How

Did the rose

Ever open its heart


And give to this world

All its

Beauty?


It felt the encouragement of light

Against its

Being,


Otherwise,

We all remain


Too


Frightened.



Hafiz

 

[midcan5]

'Believe This'

"All morning, doing the hard, root-wrestling
work of turning a yard from the wild
to a gardener’s will, I heard a bird singing
from a hidden, though not distant, perch;
a song of swift, syncopated syllables sounding
like, Can you believe this, believe this, believe?
Can you believe this, believe this, believe?
And all morning, I did believe. All morning,
between break-even bouts with the unwanted,
I wanted to see that bird, and looked up so
I might later recognize it in a guide, and know
and call its name, but even more, I wanted
to join its church. For all morning, and many
a time in my life, I have wondered who, beyond
this plot I work, has called the order of being,
that givers of food are deemed lesser
than are the receivers. All morning,
muscling my will against that of the wild,
to claim a place in the bounty of earth,
seed, root, sun and rain, I offered my labor
as a kind of grace, and gave thanks even
for the aching in my body, which reached
beyond this work and this gift of struggle."

Richard Levine

 

[midcan5]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sSfbQk7DxE&]Sarah Kay - For My Daughter (Awesome Spoken Word) - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Sky Dancer]

 

[midcan5]

'Arrangement'

"Put a few words together prettily and it’s possible
to fall in love.
Move your hand slightly and I’m yours. Or gone.
And think of what can be done with flowers
or paint. I take back
what I said in my message yesterday,
the one saying I had printed and folded each message from you
into a boat, and now had a fleet of origami ships on my desk,
all of them sinking, none of them, I said,
seaworthy. That was mean.
If I think of them differently—not as vessels,
not as anything that might save a life—
but as smooth stones or carved chess pieces,
something I might hold to comfort me,
something I might put in my mouth,
then perhaps I can continue to pass the time this way.
The way I want you
just a detail, just a thing that can be carried."

Missy-Marie Montgomery

 

[George Costanza]

The Wifebeater

There will be mud on the carpet tonight
and blood in the gravy as well.
The wifebeater is out,
the childbeater is out
eating soil and drinking bullets from a cup.
He strides bback and forth
in front of my study window
chewing little red pieces of my heart.
His eyes flash like a birthday cake
and he makes bread out of rock.
Yesterday he was walking
like a man in the world.
He was upright and conservative
but somehow evasive, somehow contagious.
Yesterday he built me a country
and laid out a shadow where I could sleep
but today a coffin for the madonna and child,
today two women in baby clothes will be hamburg.
With a tongue like a razor he will kiss,
the mother, the child,
and we three will color the stars black
in memory of his mother
who kept him chained to the food tree
or turned him on and off like a water faucet
and made women through all these hazy years
the enemy with a heart of lies.
Tonight all the red dogs lie down in fear
and the wife and daughter knit into each other
until they are killed.

Anne Sexton

Boy, your Anne Sexton here is a real barrel of laughs.

Just sayin' . . .

 

[midcan5]

'Dusting'

"Thank you for these tiny
particles of ocean salt,
pearl-necklace viruses,
winged protozoans:
for the infinite,
intricate shapes
of submicroscopic
living things.

For algae spores
and fungus spores,
bonded by vital
mutual genetic cooperation,
spreading their
inseparable lives
from equator to pole.

My hand, my arm,
make sweeping circles.
Dust climbs the ladder of light.
For this infernal, endless chore,
for these eternal seeds of rain:
Thank you. For dust."

Marilyn Nelson

 

[midcan5]

'Three Photos Of Jayne Mansfield'

"The first: Mansfield laid out beside the car wreck,
top part of her head missing. A journalist found her blonde wig
at the scene, thought she’d been decapitated. At 2:25 a.m.,
they hit a curve in the road, when an insecticide truck
came the other way in a fog of chemicals. The impact
sheared off the top of the 1966 Buick Electra.
(Four Chihuahuas in there: just one died.) The second: Mansfield,
beside Sophia Loren at a fancy Hollywood dinner, allows
her breasts to cascade out of her silky dress. Loren is aghast.
Nobody looks very happy in either pic.
The two men beside Loren at the dinner are having
an awful night. Mansfield, however beautiful, is a car wreck.
At the accident, death has brought beauty & perfection.
A friend told me the other day that civilization
is an elaborate design to cover up shit.
I thought of Jayne Mansfield, how the end reveals
what we’ve known all along. The wig of life is removed
& we see the beast unveiled. We are jealous, having suspected
their ugliness. So when something beautiful ends
we are not surprised or disappointed. Quite the opposite.
We hold the bloody blonde wig in our hands.
We even try it on, & look in the mirror. We preen,
all of us, divas for a moment. This is the third picture:
the same, exactly, as the other two."

John Wall Barger

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_GmJpjxG1y...Q/3mB1ynu7QdY/s400/Loren_Mansfield_BHills.jpg

_

 

[midcan5]

'Christmas Tree Lots'

"Christmas trees lined like war refugees,
a fallen army made to stand in their greens.
Cut down at the foot, on their last leg,

they pull themselves up, arms raised.
We drop them like wood;
tied, they are driven through the streets,

dragged through the door, cornered
in a room, given a single blanket,
only water to drink, surrounded by joy.

Forced to wear a gaudy gold star,
to surrender their pride,
they do their best to look alive."

Chris Green

 

[midcan5]

'Course in General Linguistics'

"If I’m going to be attacked, let it be by a rare pathogen
not some yokel hurling
sand ****** at me
from a beat-up Cutlass Sierra at seven a.m.
If I’m going to be attacked,
let it be by asteroid or metastasis
not the toothless yahoo of my expectations.
What I can’t understand is
who has the energy to be a xenophobe at seven in the morning.
Not me anyway, though I have energy enough to think of language.
Thud meant the saying
of sand ******, so a sign is more than a signifier
with its tongue neatly stuck
in the ear of the signified.
It sometimes slobbers around some.
Anyway, I don’t mind being attacked,
just let it be by precision guidance
or satellite track, a line item in the budget
instead of dead language. Sand ******,
he hollered, hoping for a rim shot maybe,
or maybe meaning, Go back where you came from.
How could I explain I had nowhere to go,
no other way to get where I was going,
and I hadn’t meant to sully his morning
and hadn’t meant to make him uncomfortable,
but if he thought he was uncomfortable,
I mean the guy howled
Sand ******! at me,
and there were people around.
I was so embarrassed for them
looking so uncertainly to me and what I might do,
so I set about explaining
how he’d gotten the country of origin wrong,
how my folks are from green fields
and there isn’t any sand there,
and I’m from Chicago,
and sure I’m brown, but I’m harmless.
I mean, I don’t even believe in God.
Then I thought of all the people he meant
when he offered, Sand ******,
and thought of all the people
he might’ve hoisted sand ****** upon
just that morning even, and how even now
he’s probably somewhere in his Cutlass Sierra
shouting, Sand ******! Sand ******!
at over-baked socialites strolling out of tanning salons,
squinting into the sun,
and how all us sand ******* are in this together.
Anyway, he shouted sand ******,
and the others I told this to all agreed
it was just disgusting the way he shouted that at me,
so the signifier disgusting signified that
which signified sand ******
which had meant disgusting all along,
but I could barely blame him,
all that concrete and glass
having fallen out of blue September,
the god-awful, sand-****** sky,
how it was his sky, and I wanted then to embrace him
and murmur, I understand,
or, I’m sorry,
or maybe, I want to stab you in the heart,
meaning, How easy it is to wound,
how much easier to be the wounded."

Jaswinder Bolina

 

[Sky Dancer]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O-0-i_9MyA&feature=related]life doesn't frighten me by maya angelou - YouTube[/ame]

 

[BluePhantom]

Hmm... ok I will play along and toss one of mine in. A song I wrote actually about a friend of mine and her newborn baby. The lyrics are below...song link at the end if you are interested in hearing it musically.

Sleeplessness and Sunrise

She lies awake at night wishing that the cries would fade away into the darkness.
She covers up her head, hiding in her bed.
And though the days are light the night is filled with darkness and pleas of desperation.
She's abandoned all her dreams. She can't take the screams.

And the redness gathers in her eyes and sleeplessness and sunrise haunt her mind,
With all the worries she can't leave behind.

She wanders through the dark, waiting all alone
And wishing that the air would answer her prayers.

She lies awake at night. An eerie silence lingers in the air and fills the darkness.
Thoughts of what had been vanish in the wind.
She kissed her child goodnight softly laying flowers in the dirt and gently weeping.
She wants to hear the screams. She can't take the dreams.

And the redness gathers in her eyes and sleeplessness and sunrise haunt her mind,
With all the worries she can't leave behind.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUlDJndyJU4]sleeplessness and sunrise - YouTube[/ame]

 

[midcan5]

'December Substitute'

"Our substitute is strange because
he looks a lot like Santa Claus.
In fact, the moment he walked in
we thought that he was Santa’s twin.

We wouldn’t think it quite so weird,
if it were just his snowy beard.
But also he has big black boots
and wears these fuzzy bright red suits.

He’s got a rather rounded gut
that’s like a bowl of you-know-what.
And when he laughs, it’s deep and low
and sounds a lot like "Ho! Ho! Ho!"

He asks us all if we’ve been good
and sleeping when we know we should.
He talks of reindeers, sleighs, and elves
and tells us to behave ourselves.

And when it’s time for us to go
he dashes out into the snow.
But yesterday we figured out
just what our sub is all about.

We know just why he leaves so quick,
and why he’s dressed like Old Saint Nick
in hat and coat and boots and all:
He’s working evenings at the mall."

Kenn Nesbitt

 

[midcan5]

"Nearing Xmas Eve! I don't know why--since I'm not a believer in the conventional sense--but every year around this time I end up standing here, pausing before this gray, hulking building with so many of its tall, stained glass windows darkened and lit only by floodlights from outside of it, but with twin spires still pointing towards heaven. Tonight I can see only a single light still shining--in a half-open casement window located on the second floor. "Hello, hello," I call out, "Anybody around up there?--anybody home tonight?" Silhouetted at the casement window, a head appears. "Sure, we're open all night tonight all right--but this isn't a church anymore," the head shouts back in a decidedly irritated voice. "Didn't you know?--our entire operation was finally taken over last year--we were shut down for a while and then re-opened again converted to a peanut-brittle factory," "But don't I recognize you, Sir," I call back--"aren't you the former Sexton?" "Yes," the head says, after we were converted the takeover people thought it would be wise for the sake of efficiency to retain some of the same personnel for a while, so together with some of my staff, I agreed to stay on for a bit." "Does that include God, too?" I hear myself calling back to the former Sexton. "Sure it does," the Sexton shouts back, "have a Merry Christmas!"--and his head disappears from the window. Then I see no silhouetted head much less face, and hear a far deeper and far more resonant voice: "My Son, my Son--we've been putting you on, my Son. But you know you should really come up here anyway--you know in your heart that for all He's ever meant to you, Christ might as well have been a part-time worker in a peanut-brittle factory!" Then suddenly the casement window slams shut. "Oh My God!" I hear myself cry out--"Could that have been God Himself up there? And if so, was He genuinely angry with me, personally?" On the way up the stairs to find out--trembling slightly I must confess--I meet an angel. He's coming down the stairs after apparently just knocking off from working on the night-shift somewhere upstairs. He's beaming radiantly; his wings are folded neatly behind him and he's licking his lips; his cheeks are covered up with peanut-butter and candy and look like two big chocolate chip cookies; and there's a big blob of marshmallow on the tip of his nose...."

Michael Benedikt

 

[midcan5]

'The Dirigible'

"He tilted back his head to lift his nose,
That looked down on my feature’s shining greeting.
This future in-law to my daughter chose
To use this time for our initial meeting
To flaunt he is a more accomplished man.
A trial lawyer, his wealth and status showed
He rose above me like a mountain’s span.
So as his cocksure, growing ego crowed,

I watched his form balloon into the sky,
Blot out the daylight like a sun’s eclipse
And make me wish that somehow I should die,
Till I perceived he looked like those airships,
Whose bulging skin absorbs our every sense,
Yet stands empty except for flatulence."

Kenneth O’Keefe

 

[midcan5]

'Burning the Old Year'

"Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies."

Naomi Shihab Nye

 

[midcan5]

'To the New Year'

"With what stillness at last
you appear in the valley
your first sunlight reaching down
to touch the tips of a few
high leaves that do not stir
as though they had not noticed
and did not know you at all
then the voice of a dove calls
from far away in itself
to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you
here and now whether or not
anyone hears it this is
where we have come with our age
our knowledge such as it is
and our hopes such as they are
invisible before us
untouched and still possible"

W. S. Merwin

 

[midcan5]

'Winter Sun'

"How valuable it is in these short days,
threading through empty maple branches,
the lacy-needled sugar pines.

Its glint off sheets of ice tells the story
of Death’s brightness, her bitter cold.

We can make do with so little, just the hint
of warmth, the slanted light.

The way we stand there, soaking in it,
mittened fingers reaching.

And how carefully we gather what we can
to offer later, in darkness, one body to another."

Molly Fisk