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Index » Entertainment » Books » Poetry Forum Page: Previous  1, 2, 3, ... 208, 209, 210  Next
Post to this Topic
oldviolin

oldviolin Avatar

Location: esse quam videri
Gender: Male


Posted: Aug 19, 2022 - 12:16pm

Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.

James Joyce

 

I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.

Steven Wright

oldviolin

oldviolin Avatar

Location: esse quam videri
Gender: Male


Posted: Aug 18, 2022 - 9:28am

Antigone

Antigone Avatar

Location: A house, in a Virginian Valley
Gender: Female


Posted: Jul 4, 2022 - 7:38am

 Lazy8 wrote:
Written a year ago and read at my mother-in-law's memorial service by the author. My Grandmother's Garden by M. Bessac I am bunches of wildflowers with their roots ripped up
I am the weeds your mother cannot get rid of
And the stained red poppies, held in place with a cup
I am the big willow tree, who watched you learn to love
I am the California sweet peas, so stubborn as to only grow in the summer
The orange tinted daffodils your father bought ...so long ago
The mistletoe your little sister always takes down for Mummer
I am the thorn-prone ivy that only grows in the snow
I am everywhere, it is time you know
For when it is my time to go
I will be anywhere, everywhere in that lush green paseo

 
{#Good-vibes}
Manbird

Manbird Avatar

Location: Owl Creek Bridge
Gender: Male


Posted: Jul 3, 2022 - 8:14pm

 Lazy8 wrote:

Written a year ago and read at my mother-in-law's memorial service by the author.

My Grandmother's Garden by M. Bessac

I am bunches of wildflowers with their roots ripped up
I am the weeds your mother cannot get rid of
And the stained red poppies, held in place with a cup
I am the big willow tree, who watched you learn to love
I am the California sweet peas, so stubborn as to only grow in the summer
The orange tinted daffodils your father bought ...so long ago
The mistletoe your little sister always takes down for Mummer
I am the thorn-prone ivy that only grows in the snow
I am everywhere, it is time you know
For when it is my time to go
I will be anywhere, everywhere in that lush green paseo





Lazy8

Lazy8 Avatar

Location: The Gallatin Valley of Montana
Gender: Male


Posted: Jul 3, 2022 - 8:02pm

Written a year ago and read at my mother-in-law's memorial service by the author.

My Grandmother's Garden by M. Bessac

I am bunches of wildflowers with their roots ripped up
I am the weeds your mother cannot get rid of
And the stained red poppies, held in place with a cup
I am the big willow tree, who watched you learn to love
I am the California sweet peas, so stubborn as to only grow in the summer
The orange tinted daffodils your father bought ...so long ago
The mistletoe your little sister always takes down for Mummer
I am the thorn-prone ivy that only grows in the snow
I am everywhere, it is time you know
For when it is my time to go
I will be anywhere, everywhere in that lush green paseo

ScottN

ScottN Avatar

Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary
Gender: Male


Posted: Jun 30, 2022 - 6:50am

On the 747

by Malena Morling

As soon as I sat down
the seven year old girl
offered me gum
and showed me a postcard
of the airplane we were in.
She was writing her mother
whom she had just left at the gate,
smearing her love
in blue magic marker.
Then she pulled out a drawing
she had made of the wind
and one of a cloud
and a man who had ladders
for legs and eight arms
extending eight hands.
After the heavy body of the plane
lifted off the ground,
she held my hand and talked
about her flute teacher's birds
and the eels she had bought
in a bait store and let loose
on the beach, each one
slithering into the dark
of the green waves,
returning to what she said
she could not imagine.

Antigone

Antigone Avatar

Location: A house, in a Virginian Valley
Gender: Female


Posted: Jun 28, 2022 - 1:18pm

The best defense is offensive

The turkey vulture,
a shy bird ungainly on the ground
but massively graceful in flight,
responds to attack
uniquely.
Men have contempt for this scavenger
because he eats without killing.
When an enemy attacks,
the turkey vulture vomits:
the shock and disgust of the predator
are usually sufficient
to effect his escape.
He loses only his dinner,
easily replaces.
All day I have been thinking
how to adapt
this method of resistance.
Sometimes only the stark
will to disgust
prevents our being consumed:
there are clearly times
when we must make a stink
to survive.

~Marge Piercy
ScottN

ScottN Avatar

Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary
Gender: Male


Posted: Jun 28, 2022 - 11:35am

 Antigone wrote:

Marge Piercy: Right To Life

A woman is not a basket you place
your buns in to keep them warm. Not a brood
hen you can slip duck eggs under.
Not the purse holding the coins of your
descendants till you spend them in wars.
Not a bank where your genes gather interest
and interesting mutations in the tainted
rain, any more than you are.

You plant corn and you harvest
it to eat or sell. You put the lamb
in the pasture to fatten and haul it in to
butcher for chops. You slice the mountain
in two for a road and gouge the high plains
for coal and the waters run muddy for
miles and years. Fish die but you do not
call them yours unless you wished to eat them.

Now you legislate mineral rights in a woman.
You lay claim to her pastures for grazing,
fields for growing babies like iceberg
lettuce. You value children so dearly
that none ever go hungry, none weep
with no one to tend them when mothers
work, none lack fresh fruit,
none chew lead or cough to death and your
orphanages are empty. Every noon the best
restaurants serve poor children steaks.
At this moment at nine o’clock a partera
is performing a table top abortion on an
unwed mother in Texas who can’t get
Medicaid any longer. In five days she will die
of tetanus and her little daughter will cry
and be taken away. Next door a husband
and wife are sticking pins in the son
they did not want. They will explain
for hours how wicked he is,
how he wants discipline.

We are all born of woman, in the rose
of the womb we suckled our mother’s blood
and every baby born has a right to love
like a seedling to sun. Every baby born
unloved, unwanted, is a bill that will come
due in twenty years with interest, an anger
that must find a target, a pain that will
beget pain. A decade downstream a child
screams, a woman falls, a synagogue is torched,
a firing squad is summoned, a button
is pushed and the world burns.

I will choose what enters me, what becomes
of my flesh. Without choice, no politics,
no ethics lives. I am not your cornfield,
not your uranium mine, not your calf
for fattening, not your cow for milking.
You may not use me as your factory.
Priests and legislators do not hold shares
in my womb or my mind.
This is my body. If I give it to you
I want it back. My life
is a non-negotiable demand.

 
{#Clap}
Antigone

Antigone Avatar

Location: A house, in a Virginian Valley
Gender: Female


Posted: Jun 28, 2022 - 5:16am

Marge Piercy: Right To Life

A woman is not a basket you place
your buns in to keep them warm. Not a brood
hen you can slip duck eggs under.
Not the purse holding the coins of your
descendants till you spend them in wars.
Not a bank where your genes gather interest
and interesting mutations in the tainted
rain, any more than you are.

You plant corn and you harvest
it to eat or sell. You put the lamb
in the pasture to fatten and haul it in to
butcher for chops. You slice the mountain
in two for a road and gouge the high plains
for coal and the waters run muddy for
miles and years. Fish die but you do not
call them yours unless you wished to eat them.

Now you legislate mineral rights in a woman.
You lay claim to her pastures for grazing,
fields for growing babies like iceberg
lettuce. You value children so dearly
that none ever go hungry, none weep
with no one to tend them when mothers
work, none lack fresh fruit,
none chew lead or cough to death and your
orphanages are empty. Every noon the best
restaurants serve poor children steaks.
At this moment at nine o’clock a partera
is performing a table top abortion on an
unwed mother in Texas who can’t get
Medicaid any longer. In five days she will die
of tetanus and her little daughter will cry
and be taken away. Next door a husband
and wife are sticking pins in the son
they did not want. They will explain
for hours how wicked he is,
how he wants discipline.

We are all born of woman, in the rose
of the womb we suckled our mother’s blood
and every baby born has a right to love
like a seedling to sun. Every baby born
unloved, unwanted, is a bill that will come
due in twenty years with interest, an anger
that must find a target, a pain that will
beget pain. A decade downstream a child
screams, a woman falls, a synagogue is torched,
a firing squad is summoned, a button
is pushed and the world burns.

I will choose what enters me, what becomes
of my flesh. Without choice, no politics,
no ethics lives. I am not your cornfield,
not your uranium mine, not your calf
for fattening, not your cow for milking.
You may not use me as your factory.
Priests and legislators do not hold shares
in my womb or my mind.
This is my body. If I give it to you
I want it back. My life
is a non-negotiable demand.

ScottN

ScottN Avatar

Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary
Gender: Male


Posted: Jun 26, 2022 - 9:04am

For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid

There is a country to cross you will
find in the corner of your eye, in
the quick slip of your foot—air far
down, a snap that might have caught.
And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing
voice that finds its way by being
afraid. That country is there, for us,
carried as it is crossed. What you fear
will not go away: it will take you into
yourself and bless you and keep you.
That’s the world, and we all live there.

miamizsun

miamizsun Avatar

Location: (3261.3 Miles SE of RP)
Gender: Male


Posted: Jun 21, 2022 - 6:43pm






oldviolin

oldviolin Avatar

Location: esse quam videri
Gender: Male


Posted: Jun 21, 2022 - 5:23pm

Antigone

Antigone Avatar

Location: A house, in a Virginian Valley
Gender: Female


Posted: May 7, 2022 - 7:11am

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come, to take you back.
 
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
 
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.
 
Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.
 
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
 
Be excessively gentle with yourself.
 
John O'Donohue
ScottN

ScottN Avatar

Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary
Gender: Male


Posted: Mar 16, 2022 - 5:26am

Elegy
Patrick Cabello Hansel
 
On your face, your beloved face,
your sweat skinned face, the remnant
grace of mother, father hidden there,
the wind of years, the triumphs
and the savagery, on your springtime
harvest nightfall sunlit face, let me
linger there. Let me touch it as
a baby, my fingers unfolded gently,
my voice harboring no words, let
me touch my face to your face,
Father, let us be here, face to face,
in this land we have sown and reaped,
in that time that has no wind, no
words to worry, let us touch,
Father, let us linger, let us be.
ScottN

ScottN Avatar

Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary
Gender: Male


Posted: Mar 8, 2022 - 4:49am

Dark Charms
by Dorianne Laux
 
Eventually the future shows up everywhere:
those burly summers and unslept nights in deep
lines and dark splotches, thinning skin.
Here's the corner store grown to a condo,
the bike reduced to one spinning wheel,
the ghost of a dog that used to be, her trail
no longer trodden, just a dip in the weeds.
The clear water we drank as thirsty children
still runs through our veins. Stars we saw then
we still see now, only fewer, dimmer, less often.
The old tunes play and continue to move us
in spite of our learning, the wraith of romance,
lost innocence, literature, the death of the poets.
We continue to speak, if only in whispers,
to something inside us that longs to be named.
We name it the past and drag it behind us,
bag like a lung filled with shadow and song,
dreams of running, the keys to lost names.
ScottN

ScottN Avatar

Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary
Gender: Male


Posted: Mar 7, 2022 - 5:14am

NEXT YEAR
by Gary Johnson
 
When we win the lottery next year,
Let’s buy a flat in Paris, France,
And I will worship you, my dear,
In lovely rooms with flowering plants.
Me, a somewhat endearing old relic,
A jowly but still charming man,
And you my darling, rather angelic
Reclining prettily on a silk divan.
 
When I’m tired and don’t feel well,
Pack me off to a nice hotel
With Egyptian sheets and fresh-cut flowers
And room service is 24 hours.
When I die, which I will do,
Wear black for a month or two,
Then look around, find someone new.
ScottN

ScottN Avatar

Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary
Gender: Male


Posted: Feb 25, 2022 - 4:37am

Everything but God
by Anne Pierson Wiese
 
In Europe you can see cathedrals
from far away. As you drive toward them
across the country they are visible—stony
and roosted on the land—even before the towns
that surround them. In New York you come
upon them with no warning, turn a corner
and there one is: on 5th Avenue St. Patrick's,
spiny and white as a shell in a gift shop; dark
St. Agnes lost near a canal and some housing
projects in Brooklyn; or St. John the Divine,
listed in every guidebook yet seeming always
like a momentary vision on Amsterdam
Avenue, with its ragged halo of trees, wide stone
steps ascending directly out of traffic.
 
Lately I have found myself unable
to pass by. The candles' anonymous
wishes waver and flame near the entrance, bright
numerous, transitory and eternal
as a migration: the birds that fly away
are never exactly the same as those that return.
The gray, flowering arches' ribs rise
until they fade, the bones so large and old
they belong to an undetected time
on earth. Here and there people's small backs
in prayer, the windowed saints' robes' orchid
glow, the shadows—ghosts of a long nocturnal
snow from a sky below when we did not yet
exist, with our questions tender as burns.
Antigone

Antigone Avatar

Location: A house, in a Virginian Valley
Gender: Female


Posted: Feb 17, 2022 - 5:55pm

Snow, Aldo
By Kate DiCamillo
 
Once I was in New York,
in Central Park, and I saw
an old man in a black overcoat walking
a black dog. This was springtime
and the trees were still
bare and the sky was
gray and low and it began, suddenly,
to snow:
big fat flakes
that twirled and landed on the
black of the man's overcoat and
the black dog's fur. The dog
lifted his face and stared
up at the sky. The man looked
up, too. "Snow, Aldo," he said to the dog,
"snow." And he laughed. The dog looked
at him and wagged his tail.
 
If I was in charge of making
snow globes, this is what I would put inside:
the old man in the black overcoat,
the black dog,
two friends with their faces turned up to the sky
as if they were receiving a blessing,
as if they were being blessed together
by something
as simple as snow
in March.
Antigone

Antigone Avatar

Location: A house, in a Virginian Valley
Gender: Female


Posted: Feb 16, 2022 - 7:22am

Cloud veil’d moon in the
West. Dawn streaks to the east. Hap-
-py Birthday to me!

miamizsun

miamizsun Avatar

Location: (3261.3 Miles SE of RP)
Gender: Male


Posted: Jan 31, 2022 - 3:11pm

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