Poet's Corner

[Dhara]

Personal
BY TONY HOAGLAND

Don’t take it personal, they said;
but I did, I took it all quite personal—

the breeze and the river and the color of the fields;
the price of grapefruit and stamps,

the wet hair of women in the rain—
And I cursed what hurt me

and I praised what gave me joy,
the most simple-minded of possible responses.

The government reminded me of my father,
with its deafness and its laws,

and the weather reminded me of my mom,
with her tropical squalls.

Enjoy it while you can, they said of Happiness
Think first, they said of Talk

Get over it, they said
at the School of Broken Hearts

but I couldn’t and I didn’t and I don’t
believe in the clean break;

I believe in the compound fracture
served with a sauce of dirty regret,

I believe in saying it all
and taking it all back

and saying it again for good measure
while the air fills up with I’m-Sorries

like wheeling birds
and the trees look seasick in the wind.

Oh life! Can you blame me
for making a scene?

You were that yellow caboose, the moon
disappearing over a ridge of cloud.

I was the dog, chained in some fool’s backyard;
barking and barking:

trying to convince everything else
to take it personal too.

 

[Dhara]

I Have News For You -

Poem by Tony Hoagland


There are people who do not see a broken playground swing
as a symbol of ruined childhood

and there are people who don't interpret the behavior
of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.

There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool
and think about past pleasures unrecoverable

and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians.
I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings

do not send their sinuous feeder roots
deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives

as if they were greedy six-year-olds
sucking the last half-inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;

and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without
debating the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.

Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?
There are some people, unlike me and you,

who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as
unattainable as that moon;
thus, they do not later
have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.

Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.

I have news for you—
there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room

and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.
Tony Hoagland

 

[Dhara]

Lie Down with a Man

In those days I thought I had to
do everything I was afraid of,
so I lay down with a man.

It was one item on a list--
sleeping in the graveyard, under the full moon,
not looking away from the burned girl's stricken face,
strapping myself into the catapult
of some electric blue pill.

It was the seventies, a whole generation of us
was more than willing to chainsaw through
the branch that we were sitting on
to see what falling felt like--bump bump bump.

Knowing the worse about yourself
seemed like self-improvement then,
and suffering was adventure.

So I lay down with a man,
which I really don't remember
except that it was humorless.

Curtains fluttered in the breeze
from the radio's black grill. Van Morrison
filled up the room like astral aftershave.

I lay my mass of delusions
next to his mass of delusions
in the dark room where I struggled
with the old adversary, myself


--in the form, this time, of a body--
someplace between heaven and earth,
two things I was afraid of.

Tony Hoagland

 

[Dhara]

Good And Evil - Poem by Khalil Gibran

And one of the elders of the city said, "Speak to us of Good and Evil."

And he answered:

Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil.

For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?

Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts, it drinks even of dead waters.

You are good when you are one with yourself.

Yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil.

For a divided house is not a den of thieves; it is only a divided house.

And a ship without rudder may wander aimlessly among perilous isles yet sink not to the bottom.

You are good when you strive to give of yourself.

Yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself.

For when you strive for gain you are but a root that clings to the earth and sucks at her breast.

Surely the fruit cannot say to the root, "Be like me, ripe and full and ever giving of your abundance."

For to the fruit giving is a need, as receiving is a need to the root.

You are good when you are fully awake in your speech,

Yet you are not evil when you sleep while your tongue staggers without purpose.

And even stumbling speech may strengthen a weak tongue.

You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps.

Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping.

Even those who limp go not backward.

But you who are strong and swift, see that you do not limp before the lame, deeming it kindness.

You are good in countless ways, and you are not evil when you are not good,

You are only loitering and sluggard.

Pity that the stags cannot teach swiftness to the turtles.

In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness: and that longing is in all of you.

But in some of you that longing is a torrent rushing with might to the sea, carrying the secrets of the hillsides and the songs of the forest.

And in others it is a flat stream that loses itself in angles and bends and lingers before it reaches the shore.

But let not him who longs much say to him who longs little, "Wherefore are you slow and halting?"

For the truly good ask not the naked, "Where is your garment?" nor the houseless, "What has befallen your house?"

Khalil Gibran

 

[Dhara]

On thing I admire, nay two things
always strike me as admirable:
The way evil characters always
laugh with total happy abandon

About their plots to overthrow the
world, and the way they always
love their cats, mostly white with
blue eyes – given the importance

Of joyous laughter in our lives,
people having pets living longer,
healthy lives - this phenomenon
is deserving of attention

I am thinking of a scheme to overthrow
the world so I can throw back my head
to laugh long and hard and happily,
Hollywood has this down pat

By making villains keep taped laughter
in a box – preferably on a wheel-chair’s
side – as villains are mostly sitting there,
having lost a limb or two

They turn it on for special effect upon
pronouncing their next evil event – luckily
my cell-phone announces incoming messages
with a bout of hysterical laughter

I always irritate my wife by laughing along; the
cat I already have, an evil creature, trying to
scratch me whenever I pass - I’m sure to
enjoy all the advantages of evil

Laughter; keeping an arch-villain cat as the
basis of the evil plot that is my life!

Evil Laughter By Robert Smith

 

[Dhara]

Peanut Butter
BY EILEEN MYLES

I am always hungry
& wanting to have
sex. This is a fact.
If you get right
down to it the new
unprocessed peanut
butter is no damn
good & you should
buy it in a jar as
always in the
largest supermarket
you know. And
I am an enemy
of change, as
you know. All
the things I
embrace as new
are in
fact old things,
re-released: swimming,
the sensation of
being dirty in
body and mind
summer as a
time to do
nothing and make
no money. Prayer
as a last re-
sort. Pleasure
as a means,
and then a
means again
with no ends
in sight. I am
absolutely in opposition
to all kinds of
goals. I have
no desire to know
where this, anything
is getting me.
When the water
boils I get
a cup of tea.
Accidentally I
read all the
works of Proust.
It was summer
I was there
so was he. I
write because
I would like
to be used for
years after
my death. Not
only my body
will be compost
but the thoughts
I left during
my life. During
my life I was
a woman with
hazel eyes. Out
the window
is a crooked
silo. Parts
of your
body I think
of as stripes
which I have
learned to
love along. We
swim naked
in ponds &
I write be-
hind your
back. My thoughts
about you are
not exactly
forbidden, but
exalted because
they are useless,
not intended
to get you
because I have
you & you love
me. It’s more
like a playground
where I play
with my reflection
of you until
you come back
and into the
real you I
get to sink
my teeth. With
you I know how
to relax. &
so I work
behind your
back. Which
is lovely.
Nature
is out of control
you tell me &
that’s what’s so
good about
it. I’m immoderately
in love with you,
knocked out by
all your new
white hair

why shouldn’t
something
I have always
known be the
very best there
is. I love
you from my
childhood,
starting back
there when
one day was
just like the
rest, random
growth and
breezes, constant
love, a sand-
wich in the
middle of
day,
a tiny step
in the vastly
conventional
path of
the Sun. I
squint. I
wink. I
take the
ride.

 

[Dhara]

From “Roll Call”:

thick and road worn,
dirt stained, jacked up 4 wheeler
truck behind us
one hand
on my mother’s shoulder

“You better watch your little black bitch”

I could smell his breath
tobacco plaque tangy
from across the front seat
and even then, I didn’t know
he was talking about me

Kirya Traber

 

[Dhara]

Tweet This You Small Minded Motherfucker

By StaceAnn Chin

Obviously
you are a rotting dick/an ass wipe
an open sore existing
among the worst tumors that plague humanity

you are an apology someone should have made
to women
centuries ago

today you remain
a very good reason abortions should be legal
and available
to every woman who finds herself
carrying the figurative fetus of your fetid misogyny

get the fuck out of my womb
you hater of your own origin
you forget you came from some woman’s ****
the pussy you so deride
provided path for you
to get here spewing such sick soliloquy

your existence
makes a good argument for capital punishment
only I hold myself
accountable to a more compassionate code of ethics
so I refrain from advocating
for the archaic quartering of you
I will also resist the urge
to imagine you shackled in sequestered servitude
kneeling at the altar of some woman’s holy ****
washing her feet with your mouth
only
I would not wish her the degradation
of your tongue on her flesh
your feet on her floors

you are the thing I will spend my entire life
trying to protect my daughter
from/the slime of your ignorance
the sweat of your hate
coward that you are
hiding behind the intangible shroud of the virtual
your keystrokes are the only ones with any power
impotent
unimportant little man
you splatter the male identity
with the putridity you exude
rotting apple/gonorrheal wound
refusing to heal/you would have us conclude
that most people with penises are like you

but for the stellar examples of men in my life
I would think you the norm
your actions would inform the love I cradle
for the small boys in my circle
earnestly learning
how to be better than the monster you are

far and away
fairytales and fiction pervade what they know of vaginas
valuing virginity over the virtue of being fair
bravado over advocating for equality
you make me wish I had a son
to personally prove your antithesis possible

Frankenstein
you frighten me
with your ability to keep breathing
your inclination to replicate
to recruit
to keep pressing the boot of your discrimination
upon the necks of generation after generation
after generation

the only thing that prevents me from raising arms
and going guerilla after you with guns
is our collective dedication
to the eradication of your kind
across all the borders of feminism
and race
and spaces held wire against the throat of equality
women resist heart and body
***** and collarbones
kitchens and bedrooms
we rebuke all you offer as fact
the act of tweeting something does not make true

you are only a narrow opinion
constructed poorly
one hundred forty characters/your cavalry
is not nearly as committed as mine
you and your cronies were contrived
to keep the best parts of us broken
these poems you and your drones continue to encourage
these litanies I continue to compose
will stand as evidence your crumbling tyranny
time will hold your actions
your utterances
as shameful

as it was with every disease before you
the strongest/most admirable parts of being human
will keep adapting/over and over
history has already shown us
what doesn’t kill us/will make our resistance stronger
however unpleasant
the uphill task of surviving you as pandemic
can only make our species more immune

 

[Dhara]

 

[Dhara]

THE FURY OF OVERSHOES

They sit in a row
outside the kindergarten,
black, red, brown, all
with those brass buckles.
Remember when you couldn't
buckle your own
overshoe
or tie your own
overshoe
or tie your own shoe
or cut your own meat
and the tears
running down like mud
because you fell off your
tricycle?
Remember, big fish,
when you couldn't swim
and simply slipped under
like a stone frog?
The world wasn't
yours.
It belonged to
the big people.
Under your bed
sat the wolf
and he made a shadow
when cars passed by
at night.
They made you give up
your nightlight
and your teddy
and your thumb.
Oh overshoes,
don't you
remember me,
pushing you up and down
in the winter snow?
Oh thumb,
I want a drink,
it is dark,
where are the big people,
when will I get there,
taking giant steps
all day,
each day
and thinking
nothing of it?

Anne Sexton

 

[Gracie]

Wow. The Tweet poem is very Buddhistic.

 

[Dhara]

The Witches Life

When I was a child
there was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch.
All day she peered from her second story
window
from behind the wrinkled curtains
and sometimes she would open the window
and yell: Get out of my life!
She had hair like kelp
and a voice like a boulder.

I think of her sometimes now
and wonder if I am becoming her.
My shoes turn up like a jester's.
Clumps of my hair, as I write this,
curl up individually like toes.
I am shoveling the children out,
scoop after scoop.
Only my books anoint me,
and a few friends,
those who reach into my veins.
Maybe I am becoming a hermit,
opening the door for only
a few special animals?
Maybe my skull is too crowded
and it has no opening through which
to feed it soup?
Maybe I have plugged up my sockets
to keep the gods in?
Maybe, although my heart
is a kitten of butter,
I am blowing it up like a zeppelin.
Yes. It is the witch's life,
climbing the primordial climb,
a dream within a dream,
then sitting here
holding a basket of fire.

Anne Sexton

 

[Impenitent]

"Some Kind of Wonderful"
(satirizing the republican position)

He gives me whole lots of money
Enough to buy a big fine car
Color TV, Obamaphone, and cold AC
I got more than I could ask for
I don't have a second job at night
I don't have to work at all !
Cause I got a Messiah for a President
And he knows just how to treat me right

Well my Messiah, he's alright,
Well my Messiah, he's clean out-of-sight.
Don't you know that he's ... he's some kind of wonderful.
He's some kind of wonderful ... yes he is, he's
He's some kind of wonderful, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeahhh ...

When I hold those food stamps in my hands
I know where I can trade them for some blow
Oooh, when Messiah blesses me,
I can be a good baby daddy to my ho
When he wraps his lovin' arms around me,
He knows he's got my vote by design
Yeah, when Messiah kisses me
A thrill run up and down my spine.

My Messiah he's alright ,
My Messiah's clean...
He's clean, articulate, and bright !
Don't you know that he is ...
He's some kind of wonderful.
He's some kind of wonderful ...
Yes he is,
He's some kind of wonderful, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeahhh ...

Now is there anybody, can prove those scandals - he's a-lyin'
Solyndra, Fast-n-Furious, Benghazi, IRS, NSA - prove he's a-lyin'
Can't you get a witness?
Can't you get a witness?
Can't you get a witness? Yeah...
Can't you get a witness? Ohhh...
Can't you get a witness? Yeah...
Can't you get a witness? Hell No!

I'm talkin', talkin' 'bout Obama Yeah.
He's some kind of wonderful.
Talkin' 'bout Obama
He's some kind of wonderful.
Talkin' 'bout Obama
He's some kind of wonderful.
I'm talkin' 'bout Obama, Obama, Obama
He's some kind of wonderful.
I'm talkin' about Obama, Obama, Obama
He's some kind of wonderful.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, ... Obama, Obama
He's some kind of wonderful.
Talkin' 'bout Obama, Obama, Obama
He's some kind of wonderful.
I'm talkin' 'bout Obama, Obama, Obama
He's some kind of wonderful.
(repeat to fade)

 

[Dhara]

It makes me really happy to see this thread so active. I started it with a friend in 2008. So many, many poems. All kinds of poems.

Here's another....

Mercury in Retrograde
BY SHERYL LUNA
The day ended badly with a broken ankle,
a jinxed printer, and a dead car. The dry yellow grass
against the sunset saved me. Roosters

pranced across a lawn of shit, proudly plumed
in black feathers, bobbing before the gray goats.
It was the first day I saw god in the quiet,

and found a mustard seed was very small.
There I had been for years cursing “why?”
and all the gold in the sun fell upon me.

There was a white mare in the midst
of brown smog, majestic in the refinery
clouds. Even the radio wouldn’t work!

My mother limps and her hair falls out.
The faithful drive white Chevy trucks
or yellow Camrys, and I’m here golden

on the smoking shock-less bus.
I lost language in this want, each poem
dust, Spanish fluttered

as music across the desert, even weeds
tumbled unloved. The police sirens seared
the coming night, dogs howled helplessly
sad.

Lo I walk the valley of death, love
lingers in my hard eyes. Mañana never
comes just right. I mend myself in the folds

of paper songs, ring my paper bells
for empty success. Quiero Nada,
if I sing long enough, I’ll grow dreamlike
and find a flock of pigeons, white under
wings lifting awkward bodies like doves
across the silky blue-white sky.

 

[Dhara]

Keep reading. It's always a treat to see how creative expression can heal the heart.

 

[Dhara]

Midcan-- We need ya! Keep going Penitent.

"Bones" by Sheryl Luna

Once, as a girl, she saw a woman shrink
inside herself, gray-headed and dwarf-sized,
as if her small spine collapsed. Age
and collapse were something unreal, like war
and loss. That image of an old woman sitting
in a café booth, folding in on herself, was forgotten
until her own bones thinned and hollowed,
music-less, un-fluted, empty.

She says she takes shark cartilage before she sleeps,
a tablet or two to secure flexibility and forget
that pain is living and living is pain.

And time moves like a slow rusty train
through the desert of weeds, and the low-riders
bounce like teenagers young and forgiving
in her night’s dream. She was sleek in a red dress

with red pumps, the boys with slick hair, tight jeans.
She tells me about 100-pound canisters of lard
and beans, how she could dance despite her fifth
child, despite being beaten and left
in the desert for days, how she saw an angel
or saint glimmer blonde above her, how she rose
and walked into the red horizon despite
her husband’s sin.

I’m thinking how the women
in my family move with a sway, with a hip
ache, and how they each have a disk
slip. The sky seems sullen, gray, and few birds
whisk. It’s how the muse is lost
in an endless stream of commercials, how people
forget to speak to one another as our ending skulks
arthritically into our bones, and the dust
of a thousand years blows across the plain,
and the last few hares sprint across a bloodied
highway. Here in the desert southwest, loss
is living and it comes with chapped lips,
long bumpy bus rides and the smog of some man’s
factory trap. And there are women everywhere
who have half-lost their souls
in sewing needles and vacuum-cleaner parts.
In maquiladoras there grows a slow poem,
a poem that may only live a moment sharply
in an old woman’s soul, like a sudden broken hip.

And yet, each October, this old woman rises
like the blue sky, rises like the fat turkey vultures
that make death something beautiful, something
towards flight, something that circles in a group
and knows it is best not to approach death alone.

Each October she dances, the mariachis yelp
and holler her back to that strange, flexible youth,
back to smoky rancheras and cumbias—songs
rolling in the shadows along the bare Mexican hills.
She tells me, “It’s in the music, where I’ll always
live.” And somehow, I see her jaw relax,
her eyes squint to a slow blindness
as if she can see something I can’t.

And I remember that it is good to be born of dust,
born amid cardboard shanties of sweet gloom.
I remember that the bare cemetery stones
in El Paso and Juárez hold the music, and each spring
when the winds carry the dust of loss there is a howl,
a surge of something unbelievable, like death,
like the collapse of language, like the frail bones
of Mexican grandmothers singing.

 

[Dhara]

Find the poem that suits you. I love them all.

 

[Dhara]

Here's a cute one:

 

[Dhara]

People judge us on our looks or rumors they heard
Same with books.

You do not know what it is about,
Until you read it. The cover is just cover art.
That does not mean it is based on the book.
It is to make the book look pretty.

You do not know a person,
Until you actually talk to them.

You can never realize is a person is good or bad,
Until you get to know them.

Most people bully others, because:
They just love to feel satisfy
Of seeing the other cry or feel pain.

What if the person being bullied was you?
You would not like at all,
Would you?

Coner Girard

 

[Dhara]

For My Love, M

My children are sleeping, wife's
on the phone,
It's warm in the kitchen,
It's quiet and warm.

I'm savoring all the goodness,
I've ever to known
My heart is so full
I'm no longer alone.

Once I was fragile,
Easily broke,
Words could unravel me,
Ugly, mean folk.

Now I just pull back
Relax
Let them be.
Peace in my heart
Wishes for thee.

Dhara