A Poem Thread

Discussion in 'Art & Culture' started by Angelus, Nov 9, 2002.

  1. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,832
    Growing up

    The school I went to taught me
    there was no reason to get excited.
    They were going to give me something whether or not I wanted it,
    and call it an education.
    I would learn initially that it was ok to have fun on the playground,
    then later, as I grew, that I should frown at youthful exuberance
    and shame myself into something more mature,
    more focused on the important things,
    like passing my entrance exams and keeping my socks pulled up.
     
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  3. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Michael 345 likes this.
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  5. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    13,077
    Unusual

    I like

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  7. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,832
    A Laptop Moment

    Her curses filled the air, though she didn't usually swear,
    She was having a laptop moment.

    The thing about advice, is there's no way to be nice,
    When she's having a laptop moment.

    Her fingers pounded keys, there was shaking in her knees,
    She was having a laptop moment.

    In between the keyboard bashing and "Oh shit I think it's crashing",
    She was having a laptop moment.
     
  8. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,882
    My Empire
    by Kaveh Akbar, 2021


    My empire made me
    happy because it was an empire
    and mine.

    I was too stupid to rage at anything.

    Babies cried at birth, it was said,
    because the devil pricked them as introduction
    to knowledge.

    I sat fingering my gilded frame, counting
    grievances like toes:

    here my mother, here my ring,
    here my sex, and here my king.

    All still there. Wrath is the desire
    to repay what you've suffered.

    Kneeling on coins
    before the minor deity in the mirror.
    Clueless as a pearl.

    That the prophets arrived not to ease our suffering
    but to experience it seems—can I say this?—
    a waste?

    My empire made me happy
    so I loved, easily, its citizens—such loving
    a kind of birth, an introduction to pain.

    Whatever I learn makes me angry to have learned it.

    The new missiles can detect a fly's heartbeat
    atop a pile of rubble from 6,000 miles away.
    That flies have hearts, 104 cells big, that beat.

    And because of this knowing:
    a pile of rubble.

    The prophets came to participate in suffering
    as if to an amusement park, which makes
    our suffering the main attraction.

    In our brochure:
    a father's grief over his dead father,
    the thorn broken off in a hand.

    My empire made me happy
    because it was an empire, cruel,

    and the suffering wasn't my own.

     
  9. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,253
    I went for a walk in the woods because
    I wanted to live deliberately,
    to front only the essential
    facts of life, and see if
    I could not learn what it
    had to teach, and not
    when I came to die, discover
    that I had not lived.

    - Henry David Thoreau


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  10. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,882
    Kal
    Fatimah Asghar, 2018

    Allah, you gave us a language
    where yesterday & tomorrow
    are the same word. Kal.

    A spell cast with the entire
    mouth. Back of the throat
    to teeth. Tomorrow means I might

    have her forever. Yesterday means
    I say goodbye, again.
    Kal means they are the same.

    I know you can bend time.
    I am merely asking for what
    is mine. Give me my mother for no

    other reason than I deserve her.
    If yesterday & tomorrow are the same
    pluck the flower of my mother's body

    from the soil. Kal means I'm in the crib,
    eyelashes wet as she looks over me.
    Kal means I'm on the bed,

    crawling away from her, my father
    back from work. Kal means she's
    dancing at my wedding not-yet come.

    Kal means she's oiling my hair
    before the first day of school. Kal
    means I wake to her strange voice

    in the kitchen. Kal means
    she's holding my unborn baby
    in her arms, helping me pick a name.

    [via Poets.org↱]
     
  11. geordief Valued Senior Member

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    2,118
    An acquired taste

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  12. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,882
    Weary
    by Rob Wynia, 1994


    Watch me turn the stones,
    that evil comes out.
    Why would I set it free?​
    It always comes back to me.​
    That evil is the only thing
    that always comes back to me.​

    Sun, sky, stone,
    black river water
    washes over me;
    it always touches me.​
    It always touches me.​
    River water is the only thing
    that ever touches me.​

    And if you weary of the pain
    the pain will weary of you, too.​
    And if you weary of the days,
    the days will weary of you, too.​
    And if you weary of me,
    I will weary of you, too.​

    I've seen the face of God,
    and He hates me with disinterest,
    just like all the rest,
    that hateful face of God.​
    Just like all the rest.​
    That evil face of God
    hates me like the rest.​

    [via YouTube↱]
     
  13. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,832
    Onomatopoeic owns:

    A conspiracy of coincidence
    A cacophony of caterwauls
    A roomful of retards

    A prattle of picayunes
    A shitload of shine
    A Dodge full of dipshits
     
    Last edited: Jan 4, 2022
  14. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,600
    "We are all a sun-lit moment
    come from a long darkness;
    what moves us always
    comes from what is hidden,
    what seems to be said
    so suddenly,
    has lived in the body
    for a long, long time."

    Excerpt from
    'A SEEMING STILLNESS'
    In ‘David Whyte : Essentials’
    Many Rivers Press. January 2020
     
  15. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,832
    MY FRIEND


    My friend, I am not what I seem. Seeming is but a garment I wear—a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence.

    The "I" in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable.

    I would not have thee believe in what I say nor trust in what I do—for my words are naught but thy own thoughts in sound and my deeds thy own hopes in action.

    When thou sayest, "The wind bloweth eastward," I say, "Aye, it doth blow eastward"; for I would not have thee know that my mind doth not dwell upon the wind but upon the sea.

    Thou canst not understand my seafaring thoughts, nor would I have thee understand. I would be at sea alone.

    When it is day with thee, my friend, it is night with me; yet even then I speak of the noontide that dances upon the hills and of the purple shadow that steals its way across the valley; for thou canst not hear the songs of my darkness nor see my wings beating against the stars—and I fain would not have thee hear or see. I would be with night alone.

    When thou ascendest to thy Heaven I descend to my Hell—even then thou callest to me across the unbridgeable gulf, "My companion, my comrade," and I call back to thee, "My comrade, my companion"—for I would not have thee see my Hell. The flame would burn thy eye sight and the smoke would crowd thy nostrils. And I love my Hell too well to have thee visit it. I would be in Hell alone.

    Thou lovest Truth and Beauty and Righteousness; and I for thy sake say it is well and seemly to love these things. But in my heart I laugh at thy love. Yet I would not have thee see my laughter. I would laugh alone.

    My friend, thou art good and cautious and wise; nay, thou art perfect—and I, too, speak with thee wisely and cautiously. And yet I am mad. But I mask my madness. I would be mad alone.

    My friend, thou art not my friend, but how shall I make thee understand? My path is not thy path, yet together we walk, hand in hand.

    --The Madman Kahlil Gibran
     
  16. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,600
    Verr
    By Cesare Pavese
    Issue no. 155 (Summer 2000)

    "Death will come and have your eyes.
    This one, the one who abides
    morning to night, the deaf one,
    the one who can't sleep, who sticks
    like a stupid habit, an old regret.

    Your eyes
    will be an idle word,
    a stifled cry, a silence—
    just as you see them
    every morning in the mirror
    when you stand there alone
    peering in.

    And hope, dear hope,
    we'll know on that day too
    that you are life
    and you are nothing.

    For each of us
    death has a certain look.

    Death will come and have your eyes.

    It will be like quitting
    a silly habit,
    like seeing in the mirror
    a dead face
    staring back,
    like listening to shut lips.
    Speechless,
    we'll step into the pit."

    —Translated by Eamon Grennan
     
  17. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,882
    by Jaz Sufi
    When My Classmates Ask Me If My Father Took Down the Towers

    I realize the mirror was in on the joke, too. How had I not known before now?
    Now we can all see my bones are the only white about me,
    and my nose curves like the yaw of a plane, and my hair curling in the dust.

    They ask if my father took down the towers, and,
    as it was a lack of security leading to a loss of gravity, yes, in a way he did,
    in that my mother starts smoking again and suddenly I become

    fascinated with fire. I light candles with other candles, recycling light
    until my room looks like I’m trying to summon something. Maybe
    I’m trying to summon something ―​

    into divinity, or out from the grave, or the attention of any god
    who will teach me how to pray the right way. My father doesn’t
    pray anymore, another quality he shares with the dead.

    The sun glares down on the blacktop like fingers
    digging into a bruise. Everyone crowds around me,
    waiting for an answer, and sweat drips down my cheek.

    Wax running from a flame. Ant under a telescope, I melt, I sizzle.
    I feel so exposed for what I did not know I was
    that surely someone is staring down at me from above,

    a stranger with the face of someone else’s father.
    Is He waiting for an answer, too? What language must I clasp between my hands
    for Him to listen? O Father, who art in heaven, whose children surround me

    on all sides like a flood, teach me how to float. Maybe it isn’t too late for any of us;
    maybe no one ever needed to die to be forgiven. If I give them
    the right answer. If I learn the right words.

    Maybe God will tape the plane together and throw it back
    into the sky, and we can be white again.

     
  18. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,253
    Hope is the thing with feathers
    that perches in the soul
    And sings the tune without the words
    And never stops - at all.

    And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard
    And sore must be the storm
    That could abash the Little Bird
    That kept so many warm.

    I've heard it in the chillest land
    And on the Strangest Sea
    Yet - never - in Extremity
    It asked a crumb - of me.

    -- Emily Dickinson
     
  19. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,832
    I wish that I could fly
    Up in the sky
    So very high
    Just like a dragonfly

    I'd fly above the trees
    Over the seas
    . . .
    Go anywhere I please

    I want to get away
    I want to fly away, yeah, yeah, yeah . . .

    Lenny Kravitz
     
  20. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,600
    Love After Love

    The time will come
    when, with elation
    you will greet yourself arriving
    at your own door, in your own mirror
    and each will smile at the other's welcome,

    and say, sit here. Eat.
    You will love again the stranger who was your self.
    Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
    to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

    all your life, whom you ignored
    for another, who knows you by heart.
    Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

    the photographs, the desperate notes,
    peel your own image from the mirror.
    Sit. Feast on your life.”

    ― Derek Walcott, Collected Poems, 1948-1984
     
  21. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,882
    What Comes
    by Carolyn Forché (2020)

    J’ai rapporté du désespoir un panier si petit mon amour, qu’on a pu le tresser en osier.

    I brought from despair a basket so small, my love, that it might have been woven of willow.

    —Rene Char​

    to speak is not yet to have spoken.

    the not-yet of a white realm of nothing left

    neither for itself nor another

    a no-longer already there, along with the arrival of what has been

    light and the reverse of light

    terror as walking blind along the breaking sea, body in whom I lived

    the not-yet of death darkening what it briefly illuminates

    an unknown place as between languages

    back and forth, breath to breath as a calm

    in the surround rises, fireflies in lindens, an ache of pine

    you have yourself within you

    yourself, you have her, and there is nothing

    that cannot be seen

    open then to the coming of what comes

    [via Poets.org↱)
     
  22. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,600
    The Healing Time

    Finally on my way to yes
    I bump into
    all the places
    where I said no
    to my life
    all the untended wounds
    the red and purple scars
    those hieroglyphs of pain
    carved into my skin and bones,
    those coded messages
    that send me down
    the wrong street
    again and again
    where I find them,
    the old wounds,
    the old misdirections
    and I lift them
    one by one
    close to my heart
    and I say holy
    holy.

    ~ Pesha Gertler
     
  23. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,600
    Sleeping in the Forest
    By: Mary Oliver

    I thought the earth
    remembered me, she
    took me back so tenderly, arranging
    her dark skirts, her pockets
    full of lichens and seeds. I slept
    as never before, a stone
    on the riverbed, nothing
    between me and the white fire of the stars
    but my thoughts, and they floated
    light as moths among the branches
    of the perfect trees. All night
    I heard the small kingdoms breathing
    around me, the insects, and the birds
    who do their work in the darkness. All night
    I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
    with a luminous doom. By morning
    I had vanished at least a dozen times
    into something better.

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