Poems that you love

[rayheinrich]

'The Pig' - by Roald Dahl
...
“I thought I’d better eat him first.”

    What an inspiring, civil-rights wise, poem.
(Even though it doesn't quite fall within the approved boundaries of non-violent resistance.)

---

I love this poem - you can hear it read here by the author https://soundcloud.com/phantom-pen/snowy


Snowy

On Monday morning she brought me tea
well-stirred, no hint of honey, but
the tang of gum smoked to my fingertips
as they drummed high country hoofbeats
in snowtime dreaming.

There are words, secret echoes,
that only a melting river knows.

I heard, leftwards, a breast open to
shadows. I have no eyes for tender glances,
coy silk bouncing from kindled wicks,
petals soft and insipid on the stoop.

On Mondays I drink my tea
and stare directly into the sun.

~Leanne Hanson

    Wow! The profound subtlety just knocks my socks off.
And what a wonderful chance to read a poem by Leanne without knowing,
until the end, that it was hers. I can now state, quite free of bias, that
many of her poems are equal to the best I've read (this one being
one of them). (Yours, quite often, affect me the same Way.)

[Leanne]

Snowy was written for a very inspirational woman, without whom it would have no reason to exist.

[rayheinrich]

Snowy was written for a very inspirational woman, without whom it would have no reason to exist.

    Yes, she must have been.

    "A good writer is thin air, all you see is the subject."   (And one without a subject?   Poof! )

[RiverNotch]

Oh, fecking feck.

Lesbos - by Sylvia Plath


Viciousness in the kitchen!
The potatoes hiss.
It is all Hollywood, windowless,
The fluorescent light wincing on and off like a terrible migraine,
Coy paper strips for doors
Stage curtains, a widow's frizz.
And I, love, am a pathological liar,
And my child look at her, face down on the floor,
Little unstrung puppet, kicking to disappear
Why she is schizophrenic,
Her face is red and white, a panic,
You have stuck her kittens outside your window
In a sort of cement well
Where they crap and puke and cry and she can't hear.
You say you can't stand her,
The bastard's a girl.
You who have blown your tubes like a bad radio
Clear of voices and history, the staticky
Noise of the new.
You say I should drown the kittens. Their smell!
You say I should drown my girl.
She'll cut her throat at ten if she's mad at two.
The baby smiles, fat snail,
From the polished lozenges of orange linoleum.
You could eat him. He's a boy.
You say your husband is just no good to you.
His Jew-Mama guards his sweet sex like a pearl.
You have one baby, I have two.
I should sit on a rock off Cornwall and comb my hair.
I should wear tiger pants, I should have an affair.
We should meet in another life, we should meet in air,
Me and you.

Meanwhile there's a stink of fat and baby crap.
I'm doped and thick from my last sleeping pill.
The smog of cooking, the smog of hell
Floats our heads, two venemous opposites,
Our bones, our hair.
I call you Orphan, orphan. You are ill.
The sun gives you ulcers, the wind gives you T.B.
Once you were beautiful.
In New York, in Hollywood, the men said: "Through?
Gee baby, you are rare."
You acted, acted for the thrill.
The impotent husband slumps out for a coffee.
I try to keep him in,
An old pole for the lightning,
The acid baths, the skyfuls off of you.
He lumps it down the plastic cobbled hill,
Flogged trolley. The sparks are blue.
The blue sparks spill,
Splitting like quartz into a million bits.

O jewel! O valuable!
That night the moon
Dragged its blood bag, sick
Animal
Up over the harbor lights.
And then grew normal,
Hard and apart and white.
The scale-sheen on the sand scared me to death.
We kept picking up handfuls, loving it,
Working it like dough, a mulatto body,
The silk grits.
A dog picked up your doggy husband. He went on.

Now I am silent, hate
Up to my neck,
Thick, thick.
I do not speak.
I am packing the hard potatoes like good clothes,
I am packing the babies,
I am packing the sick cats.
O vase of acid,
It is love you are full of. You know who you hate.
He is hugging his ball and chain down by the gate
That opens to the sea
Where it drives in, white and black,
Then spews it back.
Every day you fill him with soul-stuff, like a pitcher.
You are so exhausted.
Your voice my ear-ring,
Flapping and sucking, blood-loving bat.
That is that. That is that.
You peer from the door,
Sad hag. "Every woman's a whore.
I can't communicate."

I see your cute decor
Close on you like the fist of a baby
Or an anemone, that sea
Sweetheart, that kleptomaniac.
I am still raw.
I say I may be back.
You know what lies are for.

Even in your Zen heaven we shan't meet.

[rayheinrich]

Oh, fecking feck.

Lesbos - by Sylvia Plath
...

    I love Plath's work. I stopped reading her more than 30 years ago, it scared me too much.
    But I just did now... guess I've gotten old enough (still scares me).

[RiverNotch]

Oh, fecking feck.

Lesbos - by Sylvia Plath
...

    I love Plath's work. I stopped reading her more than 30 years ago, it scared me too much.
    But I just did now... guess I've gotten old enough (still scares me).

The first poem I ever read of hers is I think Ariel, and right now I'm reading her original manuscript (as in literally -- the book I *borrowed* online contains scanned versions) of Ariel, which includes this gem, among others. With that poem in mind, I've never really gotten scared --- whenever she talked about suicide or death or simply hating other people (especially the Other Woman here), I always thought she was talking about something else, something more than the whole oven thing --- not death, but resurrection. And I guess that's the recommended way of reading it --- after all, she did call the book "Ariel and other poems" --- although I'm not too well read about her, I suppose. A waste, really. ----- or maybe I'm just not as depressed? 

---

Another one, one I may have posted before?

Improvisation on Lines by Isaac the Blind - by Peter Cole


Only by sucking, not by knowing,
can the subtle essence be conveyed—
sap of the word and the world’s flowing

that raises the scent of the almond blossoming,
and yellows the bulbul in the olive’s jade.
Only by sucking, not by knowing.

The grass and oxalis by the pines growing
are luminous in us—petal and blade—
as sap of the word and the world’s flowing;

a flicker rising from embers glowing;
light trapped in the tree’s sweet braid
of what it was sucking. Not by knowing

is the amber honey of persimmon drawn in.
An anemone piercing the clover persuades me—
sap of the word and the world is flowing

across separation, through wisdom’s bestowing,
and in that persuasion choices are made:
But only by sucking, not by knowing
that sap of the word through the world is flowing.

[shemthepenman]

Crystal clear brooks

When the time comes

And the last day dawns

And the air of the piper warms

The high crags of the old country

When the holy writ blows

Like burned paper away

And wise men concede

That there’s more than one way

More than one path

More than one book

More than one fisherman

More than one hook

When the cats have been skinned

And the fish have been hooked

When the masters of war

Are our masters no more

When old friends take their whiskey

Outside on the porch

We will have done well

If we’re able to say

As the sun settles down

On that final day

That we never gave in

That we did all we could

So the kids could go fishing

In crystal clear brooks.

~Roger Waters

[cvanshelton]

Crystal clear brooks

When the time comes

And the last day dawns

And the air of the piper warms

The high crags of the old country

When the holy writ blows

Like burned paper away

And wise men concede

That there’s more than one way

More than one path

More than one book

More than one fisherman

More than one hook

When the cats have been skinned

And the fish have been hooked

When the masters of war

Are our masters no more

When old friends take their whiskey

Outside on the porch

We will have done well

If we’re able to say

As the sun settles down

On that final day

That we never gave in

That we did all we could

So the kids could go fishing

In crystal clear brooks.

~Roger Waters

Very good stuff. Waters is gifted with writing.

[RiverNotch]

Crystal clear brooks

When the time comes

And the last day dawns

And the air of the piper warms

The high crags of the old country

When the holy writ blows

Like burned paper away

And wise men concede

That there’s more than one way

More than one path

More than one book

More than one fisherman

More than one hook

When the cats have been skinned

And the fish have been hooked

When the masters of war

Are our masters no more

When old friends take their whiskey

Outside on the porch

We will have done well

If we’re able to say

As the sun settles down

On that final day

That we never gave in

That we did all we could

So the kids could go fishing

In crystal clear brooks.

~Roger Waters

I bet these'd sound better sung. xD It kinda reads like William Blake (then again, anything clear and protest-y that's also simple and somewhat metered reads like Blake, I've been gushing a bit over him lately.)

[Bueller]

The Triumph of Narcissus and Aphrodite

Am I cool or an asshole? Check this: I'm at this artsy-fartsy faculty party wearing a mauve turtleneck, white blazer, granny glasses and a tooled-silver peace symbol on a leather thong around my neck. Perfect for this crowd, right? I figure I'll test it out. So I lay some heavy eyes on this knockout blonde, about five eight with legs up to here, and when she giggles and whispers in her girlfriend's ear, I read green and move on her, tearing a can from my six-pack. "So," I begin, popping the top, "What do you think of the new Pei student center?" The beer foams up over the edge of the can; I suck it swiftly, but not before some dribbles onto my jacket. She titters, brushing a Veronica Lake curl from her face. "O I thought it was totally awesome" -- a bimbo for sure, I think, with pretensions -- "Form following function but with a dramatic sweep one ordinarily finds in the work of architects intending merely to outrage the sensibilities. And," she adds, "without the stark serenity of Aalto's last works, y'know? Like the Nordic Ski Center he did for the Sibelius house." She tugs at her mini, I pull a lapel aside to show her my gut, flat and rock-hard from five workouts a week. She's got a foot-wide smile, best caps I've ever seen, skin flawless even in the glare of the floodlights. It's clear she's a cute little smartass who loves repartee, so I give her some: "Bet you don't remember Ted Williams' last game!" I go to straighten up gain an inch look even more imposing, but my back has gotten stiff. It's these new shoes, I think. And the hostess must've dimmed the lights. That's cool: more romantic. Still, she doesn't look as clear-skinned now and her smile's lost maybe a little luster. "O I don't?" she comes back, a slight tremor and something savage in her voice.
     
"He went four-for-four with a three-hundred-and-fifty-foot homer his last at-bat ever!" She wipes a fleck of spit from her mouth. "And I saw every Ginger Rodgers-Fred Astaire movie ever made. Stood in line the night they opened. Got the ticket stubs from each one." Her neck's thrust out at me and I could swear she's got a wattle. She's trembling with rage, but you know how cool I am? Even with the sudden ache in my hands and the stiffness in my neck I manage to taunt her with something I think will stop her cold: "I useta party with Dante!" Is it getting darker? And somebody turned off the heat. Her girlfriend's gone and all the other guests, too. There's just a guy sweeping up who stops and leers at us. It pisses me off some, but I lean forward to hear her cause there's this buzz in my ears like a hive of bees, and I realize she's been yapping at me all the while. "Phaeton!" she screams, "When he drove Apollo's chariot across the sky and fell to earth in flames. I was THERE!" Her teeth are yellow and crooked, she's leaning on a stick, her clothes are rags. Now she's just an ectoplasmic outline, a gray halo in the cold dark. (Do I need a new prescription?) The walls are covered with moss. Water drops down onto the rock floor. I'm bent almost double, I can't see her at all, and all I hear is someone laughing. I stare at my shivering hand. There's my pinky ring. I'm still cool.

~William Kulik

[just mercedes]

The Triumph of Narcissus and Aphrodite

~William Kulik

  Thank you for him! Love the voice, makes me think I could use this form for my current project, love the flow-of-consciousness that puts the reader behind the wheel. I hadn't read him until this.

[RiverNotch]

Just read Michael Robartes and the Dancer, by W. B. Yeats --- loved it first to last. "The Second Coming", "A Prayer for My Daughter", all those ballads politic and rhymes sensuous -- oh, what a book of love and anger!

TOWARDS BREAK OF DAY

Was it the double of my dream
The woman that by me lay
Dreamed, or did we halve a dream
Under the first cold gleam of day?

I thought: "There is a waterfall
Upon Ben Bulben side,
That all my childhood counted dear;
Were I to travel far and wide
I could not find a thing so dear."
My memories had magnified
So many times childish delight.

I would have touched it like a child
But knew my finger could but have touched
Cold stone and water. I grew wild
Even accusing heaven because
It had set down among its laws:
Nothing that we love over-much
Is ponderable to our touch.

I dreamed towards break of day,
The cold blown spray in my nostril.
But she that beside me lay
Had watched in bitterer sleep
The marvellous stag of Arthur,
That lofty white stag, leap
From mountain steep to steep.

[Lizzie]

Loved this. The imagery is so vivid, it's captivating.

This one I love, although it is a bit stream of conscious--love the imagery she evokes and the topic in general.  Warning, may be too gross for the male gender....heh.  This was featured in her book "Loose Woman"


Down There – by Sandra Cisneros

At that moment, Little Flower scratched herself
Where one never scratches herself

From “The Smallest woman in the World”
- Clarice Lispector

Your poem thinks it’s bad.
Because it farts in the bath.
Cracks it knuckles in class.
Grabs its balls in public
and adjusts – one,
then the other –
back and forth like Slinky. No,
more like the motion
of a lava lamp.
You follow me?

Your poem thinks it
cool to pee in the pool.
Waits for the moment
someone’s watching before
it sticks a finger up
its nose and licks
it. Your poem’s weird.

The kind that swaggers in like Wayne
or struts its stuff like Rambo.
The kind that learned
to spit at 13 and still
is doing it.

It blames its bad habits
on the Catholic school.
Picked up words that
snapped like bra straps.
Learned words that ignite
of their own gas
like a butt hole flower.
Fell in love with words
that thudded like stones and sticks.
Or stung like fists.
Or stank like shit
gorillas throw at zoos.

Your poem never washes
its hands after using the can.
Stands around rolling
toilet paper into wet balls
it can toss up to the ceiling
just to watch them stick.
Yuk yuk.

Your poem is a used rubber
sticky on the floor next morning.

the black elephant
skin of testicles,
hairy as kiwi fruit
and silly, the shaving
stubble against the purity
of porcelain,

one black pubic
hair on the sexy
lip of toilet seat,

the swirl of spit
with a cream of celery
center,

a cigarette
stub sent hissing
to the piss pot,

half finished
bottles of beer reeking
their yeast incense,

the miscellany of maleness:
nail clippers and keys,
tobacco and ashes,
pennies quarters nickels dimes and
dollars folded into complicated origami
stub of ticket and pencil and cigarette, and
the crumb of the pockets
all scattered on the Irish
linen of the bedside table.

Oh my little booger,
it’s true.

Because someone once
said Don’t
do that!
you like to do it.

Baby, I’d like to mention
the Tampax you pulled with your teeth
once in a Playboy poem*
and fond it, darling, not so bloody.
Not so bloody at all, in fact.
Hardly blood cousin
except for an unfortunate
association of color
that makes you want to swoon.

Yes,
I want to talk at length about Menstruation.
Or my period.
Or the rag as you so lovingly put it.
All right then.

I’d like to mention my rag time.

Gelatinous. Steamy
and lovely to the light to look at
like a good glass of burgundy. Suddenly
I’m artist each month.
The star inside this like a ruby.
Fascinating bits of sticky
I-don’t-know-what-stuff.
The afterbirth without the birth.
The gobs of a strawberry jam.
Membrane stretchy like
saliva in your hand.

It’s important that you feel its slickness,
understand the texture isn’t bloody at all.
That you don’t gush
between the legs. Rather,
it unravels itself like a string from some deep deep center –
like a Russian subatomic submarine,
or better, like a mad Karlov cackling
behind beakers and blooping spirals.
Still with me?

Oh I know, darling,
I’m indulging, but indulge
me if you please.
I find the subject charming.

In fact,
I’d like to dab my fingers
in my inkwell
and write a poem across the wall.
“A Poem of Womanhod”
now wouldn’t that be something?

Words writ in blood. But no,
not blood at all, I told you.
If blood is thicker than water, then
menstruation is thicker than brotherhood.
And the way

it metamorphosizes! Dazzles.
changing daily
like starlight.
From the first
Transparent drop of light
To the fifth day chocolate paste.

I haven’t mentioned smell. Think
Persian rug.
But thicker. Think
Cello.
But richer.
A sweet exotic snuff
From an ancient prehistoric center.
Dark, distinct,
and excellently
female.



*John Updike's "Cunts" in Playboy (January 1984), 163.

[milo]

A friend from another group, Joy Olivia Yourcenar passed away this year. An (as far as I know) unpublished poem she workshopped back in 2003 and one of my favourites by her:

Looking at God's Vacation Slides

When God invites you over
to see her vacation slides,
You're surprised.

You didn't even know she took holidays,
let alone shot Kodachrome 25.
When God invites you over,

you ask if you can bring the dip
and when she laughs and says, him too
You're surprised

to learn she has a sense of humour
But then, you remember sex and platypi.
When God invites you over

the slides are always in focus, never upside down or backwards
and she chats nonchalantly about the nebulous hearts of stars.
You're surprised

by the implicit beauty swirling in oil slicks
and in every, in every other person in the world.
When God invites you over to see her transparencies,
you're...
surprised.

[rayheinrich]

A friend from another group, Joy Olivia Yourcenar passed away this year. An (as far as I know) unpublished poem she workshopped back in 2003 and one of my favourites by her:

Looking at God's Vacation Slides

When God invites you over        
to see her vacation slides,
You're surprised.

You didn't even know she took holidays,
let alone shot Kodachrome 25.
When God invites you over,

you ask if you can bring the dip
and when she laughs and says, him too
You're surprised

to learn she has a sense of humour
But then, you remember sex and platypi.
When God invites you over

the slides are always in focus, never upside down or backwards
and she chats nonchalantly about the nebulous hearts of stars.
You're surprised

by the implicit beauty swirling in oil slicks
and in every, in every other person in the world.
When God invites you over to see her transparencies,
you're...
       surprised.

    A beautiful poem (one of her many). I'm sad to hear this.
    I shall always remember her and her work.

( Kodachrome 25... this best colors of any film stock, even if you always had to make sure you had enough light.)

[just mercedes]

Rainer Maria Rilke

The Duino Elegies


The sixth elegy




Fig-tree, for such a long time now, there has been meaning for me,

in the way you almost wholly omit to flower

and urge your pure secret, unheralded,

into the early, resolute fruit.

Like the jet of a fountain, your arched bough

drives the sap downward, then up: and it leaps from its sleep

barely waking, into the bliss of its sweetest achievement.

See: like the god into the swan

..........We, though, linger,

ah, our pride is in flowering, and, already betrayed,

we reach the late core of our final fruit.

In a few the urge to action rises so powerfully,

that they are already waiting and glowing with their heart’s fullness

when the temptation to flower, like the mild night air,

touches their tender mouths, touches their eyelids:

heroes perhaps, and those chosen to vanish prematurely,

in whom Death the gardener wove different veins.

These plunge ahead: they go before their own smile,

like the team of horses in the slightly

hollowed-out relief of Karnak’s victorious pharaoh.

The hero is strangely close to those who died young. Lasting

doesn’t contain him. Being is his ascent: he moves on,

time and again, to enter the changed constellation

his risk entails. Few could find him there. But

Destiny, that darkly hides us, suddenly inspired,

sings him into the tempest of his onrushing world.

I hear no one like him. All at once I am pierced

by his darkened sound carried on streaming air.

Then, how gladly I would hide from the yearning: O if I,

if I were a boy, and might come to it still, and sit,

propped on the future’s arms, and reading about Samson,

how his mother first bore nothing, and then all.

Was he not a hero already, O mother, in you, did not

his imperious choice begin inside you?

Thousands seethed in the womb and willed to be him,

but see: he grasped and let go, chose and achieved.

And if he shattered pillars, it was when he burst

out of the world of your flesh into the narrower world,

where he went on choosing, achieving. O mothers of heroes,

O sources of ravening rivers! Ravines into which

weeping girls have plunged

from the high heart’s edge, future offerings to the son.

Because, whenever the hero stormed through the stations of love,

each heartbeat, meant for him, lifting him onward,

he turned away, stood at the end of the smiles, someone other.

[RiverNotch]

Rainer Maria Rilke

The Duino Elegies


The sixth elegy




Fig-tree, for such a long time now, there has been meaning for me,

in the way you almost wholly omit to flower

and urge your pure secret, unheralded,

into the early, resolute fruit.

Like the jet of a fountain, your arched bough

drives the sap downward, then up: and it leaps from its sleep

barely waking, into the bliss of its sweetest achievement.

See: like the god into the swan

..........We, though, linger,

ah, our pride is in flowering, and, already betrayed,

we reach the late core of our final fruit.

In a few the urge to action rises so powerfully,

that they are already waiting and glowing with their heart’s fullness

when the temptation to flower, like the mild night air,

touches their tender mouths, touches their eyelids:

heroes perhaps, and those chosen to vanish prematurely,

in whom Death the gardener wove different veins.

These plunge ahead: they go before their own smile,

like the team of horses in the slightly

hollowed-out relief of Karnak’s victorious pharaoh.

The hero is strangely close to those who died young. Lasting

doesn’t contain him. Being is his ascent: he moves on,

time and again, to enter the changed constellation

his risk entails. Few could find him there. But

Destiny, that darkly hides us, suddenly inspired,

sings him into the tempest of his onrushing world.

I hear no one like him. All at once I am pierced

by his darkened sound carried on streaming air.

Then, how gladly I would hide from the yearning: O if I,

if I were a boy, and might come to it still, and sit,

propped on the future’s arms, and reading about Samson,

how his mother first bore nothing, and then all.

Was he not a hero already, O mother, in you, did not

his imperious choice begin inside you?

Thousands seethed in the womb and willed to be him,

but see: he grasped and let go, chose and achieved.

And if he shattered pillars, it was when he burst

out of the world of your flesh into the narrower world,

where he went on choosing, achieving. O mothers of heroes,

O sources of ravening rivers! Ravines into which

weeping girls have plunged

from the high heart’s edge, future offerings to the son.

Because, whenever the hero stormed through the stations of love,

each heartbeat, meant for him, lifting him onward,

he turned away, stood at the end of the smiles, someone other.

Who translated? The poem made me cry, everything's just turning to hell this season. I can only hope to write something like this.

(found it: translated by A. S. Kline. http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR...c509812220 )

[RiverNotch]

'The story is told of a Confucian scholar who besought the twenty-eighth Buddhist patriarch, Bodhidharma, "to pacify his soul." Bodhidharma retorted, "Produce it and I will pacify it." The Confucian replied, "That is my trouble, I cannot find it." Bodhidharma said, "Your wish is granted." The Confucian understood and departed in peace.'

from Coomaraswamy, A. K., Hinduism and Buddhism, 1943, as retold by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

[Achebe]

'The story is told of a Confucian scholar who besought the twenty-eighth Buddhist patriarch, Bodhidharma, "to pacify his soul." Bodhidharma retorted, "Produce it and I will pacify it." The Confucian replied, "That is my trouble, I cannot find it." Bodhidharma said, "Your wish is granted." The Confucian understood and departed in peace.'

from Coomaraswamy, A. K., Hinduism and Buddhism, 1943, as retold by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Nice!!

[ambrosial revelation]

Happy Burn's Night

Address to a Haggis - Robert Burns

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, 
Great chieftain o the puddin'-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye worthy o' a grace
As lang's my arm.

The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin wad help to mend a mill
In time o need,
While thro your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.

His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An cut you up wi ready slight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like onie ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin, rich!

Then, horn for horn, they stretch an strive:
Deil tak the hindmost, on they drive,
Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve
Are bent like drums;
The auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
'Bethankit' hums.

Is there that owre his French ragout,
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad mak her spew
Wi perfect scunner,
Looks down wi sneering, scornfu view
On sic a dinner?

Poor devil! see him owre his trash,
As feckless as a wither'd rash,
His spindle shank a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit;
Thro bloody flood or field to dash,
O how unfit!

But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread,
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He'll make it whissle;
An legs an arms, an heads will sned,
Like taps o thrissle.

Ye Pow'rs, wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies:
But, if ye wish her gratefu prayer,
Gie her a Haggis