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
    Big Time

    . . .
    The place where I come from
    Is a small town
    They think so small
    They use small words

    But not me
    I'm smarter than that
    I worked it out

    I've been stretching my mouth
    To let those big words
    Come right out

    I've had enough
    I'm getting out
    To the city
    The big, big city

    I'll be a big noise
    With all the big boys
    So much stuff
    I will own

    And I will pray to a big God
    As I kneel in the big Church

    . . .

    Peter Gabriel
     
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  3. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,602
    Night descends furtively over the landscape,
    Trees and mountains, wind and stars.
    Dreams echo longingly in my cavernous soul.
    Voices are overheard from worlds afar,
    Reminding me of other lifetimes.

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  5. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,602
    I Never Saw a Moor

    by Emily Dickinson.

    I never saw a moor,
    I never saw the sea ;
    Yet know I how the heather looks,
    And what a wave must be.

    I never spoke with God,
    Nor visited in heaven ;
    Yet certain am I of the spot
    As if the chart were given.
     
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  7. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,832
    Hey Joe

    Jam me that java jive
    Slam a slunk slinky dive
    Down that ringy ding thing
    Fling on yo fenda flang when you sang

    Lawrd, gimme dat marsee.

    Thatsa ridgy didge, fo yo headge.
     
  8. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,832
    Downhearted -- Australian Crawl (aka the needle and the damage done, Oz version)

    I left my heart back in the Orient
    Down on Bali Bay
    It's not the way that I should feel but
    It's the way I'm gonna stay

    Downhearted
    Broken dreams that never really started
    . . .

    It seems all wrong back here at home
    There's no end in sight
    Should I be made to drag you through this
    Lover's endless fight?

    Downhearted . . .

    Sometimes I think that we should stay
    Happy on the farm
    Sometimes I think I'll give it all away this
    Love and all its charms

    . . .
     
  9. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,832
    The Man

    As I was walking down the street one day
    A Man came up to me and said
    His name was Uncle Sam

    He was tall, kinda goofy looking
    Until I saw the look
    That look in his eye like someone I know

    I watched him standing there, as I was
    Standing looking up at him with his Coca-Cola billboards, and signs
    That conned me into thinking
    Is he the one?

    The one who can win what's never been won?
    I looked up at him and watched how he looked down at me
    Not with a twinkle, I saw his eyes moving
    Darting in and out of various deep and meaningful things

    He was judging, by looking down at how I was looking up
    If I might be of help, or of insignificance to his lofty mission

    Well, looking away at last I thought
    I know why you like being so tall
    It's so nobody can kick you in the nuts
     
  10. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,253
    The Owl Fairy
    Wanders at twilight
    When the trees cast
    Gentle shadows
    On the mossy ground,
    As she steps she sings
    A magical chant
    And the forest
    listens with delight.

    By Paola Merrill, artist and poet​
     
  11. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    Length of Moon
    by Arna Bontemps, 1926

    Then the golden hour
    Will tick its last
    And the flame will go down in the flower.

    A briefer length of moon
    Will mark the sea-line and the yellow dune.

    Then we may think of this, yet
    There will be something forgotten
    And something we should forget.

    It will be like all things we know:
    A stone will fail; a rose is sure to go.

    It will be quiet then and we may stay
    Long at the picket gate,―
    But there will be less to say.

    [via Poets.org↱]
     
  12. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,602
    "Drink deep, drink deep of quietness,
    And on the margins of the sea
    Remember not thine old distress
    Nor all the miseries to be.
    Calmer than mists, and cold
    As they, that fold on fold
    Up the dim valley are rolled,
    Learn thou to be.”
    ― Robinson Jeffers

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  13. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,832
    It's a kind of magic

    Watching a guitar play, the interfering tones mean I'll be
    Sifting through electron graveyards
    Looking for their bones.

    Unplugged there's still a universe of sound
    Made by lots of stuff that doesn't wait around
    For you to hear it.

    Bach pluggin in a working algorythm
    Made changes on a boundary sound
    Quite astoundary.
     
  14. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,602
    The Message of the Rain:
    By Norman H Russell

    When i was a child
    i was a squirrel a bluejay a fox
    and spoke with them in their tongues
    climbed their trees dug their dens
    and knew the taste
    of every grass and stone
    the meaning of the sun
    the message of the night
    now i am old and past
    both work and battle
    and know no shame
    to go alone into the forest
    to speak again to squirrel fox and bird
    to taste the world
    to find the meaning of the wind
    the message of the rain

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  15. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,602
    “You must learn one thing:
    the world was made to be free in.

    Give up all the other worlds
    except the one to which you belong.

    Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
    confinement of your aloneness
    to learn
    anything or anyone
    that does not bring you alive
    is too small for you.”
    ― David Whyte
     
  16. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,602
    “Love, be
    mystical
    as the flickering
    blue flame
    of night
    as the fully-awoken
    moon
    beneath cobwebs
    of passing clouds
    amidst chanting
    high-tides
    fuzzy,
    as my blanket
    big enough
    to illuminate a hundred
    thousand billion galaxies
    and just small enough to fit
    into my embrace.”
    ― Sanober Khan, Turquoise Silence

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

    Messages:
    37,884
    Unravel
    by Toru Kitajima, 2014
    (adapted translation)


    Tell me, tell me
    this machine
    who is inside me?​
    It's broken. It's broken
    in this world
    you laugh without seeing anything.​
    I am broken
    hold your breath:
    I can't unravel
    I can't unravel anymore.​
    Even the truth
    (¡freeze!)​
    can be broken
    cannot be broken
    crazy not crazy​
    I found you and trembled
    gradually being in a distorted world
    it is transparent invisible​
    Do not find me.
    Do not stare.​
    In this world drawn by someone
    I don't want to hurt you.
    Remember me.
    Stay vivid.​
    Infinite loneliness is entwined
    the memory of laughing innocently pierces
    I can't move I can't move
    I can't move I can't move
    I can't move I can't move​
    unraveling the world
    I have changed
    I couldn't change.​
    Two people who are entwined are destroyed
    can be broken
    cannot be broken
    crazy not crazy
    I will not stain you​
    gradually being in a distorted world
    it is transparent and invisible.​
    Do not find me.
    Do not stare.​
    In a lonely trap someone set,
    before the future unravels,
    remember me,
    stay vivid;
    don't forget don't forget.​
    What has changed will paralyze.
    Paradise is filled with what cannot be changed.
    Remember me,​
    tell me tell me:​
    Who is inside me?

    [via YouTube↱]
     
  18. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    The Human Condition
    by Stephen Spender, 1938


    This I is one of
    The human machines
    So common on the gray plains―
    Yet being built into flesh
    My single pair of eyes
    Contain the universe they see;
    Their mirrored multiplicity
    Is packed into a hollow body
    Where I reflect the many, in my one.

    The traffic of the street
    Roars through my head, as in the genitals
    Their unborn London.

    And if this I were destroyed,
    The image shattered,
    My perceived, rent world would fly
    In an explosion of final judgment
    To the ends of the sky,
    The coulour in the iris of the eye.

    Opening my eyes say "Let there be light",
    Closing, they shut me in a coffin.

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

    Messages:
    37,884
    generation of feeling
    by Marwa Helal, 2019


    these growing pains though
    this good will hunting
    we
    fallen twigs
    look like bones
    waiting to be lit

    i am trying to tell you something about how
    rearranging words
    rearranges the universe

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

    Messages:
    37,884
    The Rights of Woman
    by Anna Lætitia Barbauld, 1792


    Yes, injured Woman! rise, assert thy right!
    Woman! too long degraded, scorned, opprest;
    O born to rule in partial Law's despite,
    Resume thy native empire o'er the breast!

    Go forth arrayed in panoply divine;
    That angel pureness which admits no stain;
    Go, bid proud Man his boasted rule resign,
    And kiss the golden sceptre of thy reign.

    Go, gird thyself with grace; collect thy store
    Of bright artillery glancing from afar;
    Soft melting tones thy thundering cannon's roar,
    Blushes and fears thy magazine of war.

    Thy rights are empire: urge no meaner claim,—
    Felt, not defined, and if debated, lost;
    Like sacred mysteries, which withheld from fame,
    Shunning discussion, are revered the most.

    Try all that wit and art suggest to bend
    Of thy imperial foe the stubborn knee;
    Make treacherous Man thy subject, not thy friend;
    Thou mayst command, but never canst be free.

    Awe the licentious, and restrain the rude;
    Soften the sullen, clear the cloudy brow:
    Be, more than princes' gifts, thy favours sued;—
    She hazards all, who will the least allow.

    But hope not, courted idol of mankind,
    On this proud eminence secure to stay;
    Subduing and subdued, thou soon shalt find
    Thy coldness soften, and thy pride give way.

    Then, then, abandon each ambitious thought,
    Conquest or rule thy heart shall feebly move,
    In Nature's school, by her soft maxims taught,
    That separate rights are lost in mutual love.

     
  21. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,602
    "Today I’m flying low
    and I’m not saying a word
    I’m letting all the voodoos
    of ambition sleep.

    The world goes on as it must,
    the bees in the garden rumbling
    a little,
    the fish leaping,
    the gnats getting eaten.
    And so forth.

    But I’m taking the day off.
    Quiet as a feather.
    I hardly move,
    though really
    I’m traveling
    a terrific distance.

    Stillness. One of the doors
    into the temple."

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    Mary Oliver, Today
     
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  22. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    Sissieretta Jones
    by Tyehimba Jess, 2016

    Ad libitum

    I sing this body ad libitum, Europe scraped raw between my teeth until, presto, "Ave Maria" floats to the surface from a Tituba tributary of "Swanee." Until I'm a legato darkling whole note, my voice shimmering up from the Atlantic's hold; until I'm a coda of sail song whipped in salted wind; until my chorus swells like a lynched tongue; until the nocturnes boiling beneath the roof of my mouth extinguish each burning cross. I sing this life in testimony to tempo rubato, to time stolen body by body by body by body from one passage to another; I sing tremolo to the opus of loss. I sing this story staccato and stretto, a fugue of blackface and blued-up arias. I sing with one hand smoldering in the steely canon, the other lento, slow, languorous: lingered in the fields of "Babylon's Falling" ...

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

    Messages:
    37,884
    I Sit and Sew
    by Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson (1918)


    I sit and sew―a useless task it seems,
    My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams―
    The panoply of war, the martial tred of men,
    Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken
    Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death,
    Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath―
    But―I must sit and sew.

    I sit and sew―my heart aches with desire―
    That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire
    On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things
    Once men. My soul in pity flings
    Appealing cries, yearning only to go
    There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe―
    But―I must sit and sew.

    The little useless seam, the idle patch;
    Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch,
    When there they lie in sodden mud and rain,
    Pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain?
    You need me, Christ! It is no roseate dream
    That beckons me―this pretty futile seam,
    It stifles me―God, must I sit and sew?

     
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