some motherfucking poetry (Or, THE INSPIRATION MEME)

[gyzym]

two poems i enjoy under to start us out:

the tragedy of the leaves [charles bukowski]

I awakened to dryness and the ferns were dead,
the potted plants yellow as corn;
my woman was gone
and the empty bottles like bled corpses
surrounded me with their uselessness;
the sun was still good, though,
and my landlady's note cracked in fine and
undemanding yellowness; what was needed now
was a good comedian, ancient style, a jester
with jokes upon absurd pain; pain is absurd
because it exists, nothing more;
I shaved carefully with an old razor
the man who had once been young and
said to have genius; but
that's the tragedy of the leaves,
the dead ferns, the dead plants;
and I walked into a dark hall
where the landlady stood
execrating and final,
sending me to hell,
waving her fat, sweaty arms
and screaming
screaming for rent
because the world has failed us
both

it is at moments after i have dreamed [ee cummings]

it is at moments after i have dreamed
of the rare entertainment of your eyes,
when(being fool to fancy)i have deemed

with your peculiar mouth my heart made wise;
at moments when the glassy darkness holds

the genuine apparition of your smile
(it was through tears always)and silence moulds
such strangeness as was mine a little while;

moments when my once more illustrious arms
are filled with fascination,when my breast
wears the intolerant brightness of your charms:

one pierced moment whiter than the rest

-turning from the tremendous lie of sleep
i watch the roses of the day grow deep.

--

This post is henceforth known as:
THE INSPIRATION MEME

Because everyone has moments where they want to be struck by something beautiful, no? So use these comments and use them well--post your favorite poems, your favorite photographs, your favorite pieces of art, your favorite songs. Post those things that make you stop and catch your breath and stare, the things that bowl you over and build you up. And maybe someone else will see them and interpret them the same way, and maybe someone else will see them and interpret them a totally different way. And maybe you'll see something that strikes you and you'll want to sketch something, or write a fic or an original short or a poem of your own, and leave it in these comments; and maybe you'll see something that strikes you and you'll want to sketch something, or write a fic or an original short or poem of your own, and post it somewhere else. BOTH OF THESE THINGS ARE FINE. In fact, it is all fine: there are only three rules.

1) To the extent we can keep images that are actually on the page baaaaasically safe for work, that'd be awesome. I am personally of the opinion that those Tom Hardy dick shots are both beautiful and deeply inspirational, but someone who has come for the poetry and the pretty photos in the middle of their workday might, you know, not appreciate T.Hard's bait & tackle as much as it should be appreciated.

2) Whenever possible, offer attribution for the poems/songs/photographs/artwork you are posting/linking. It is the right thing to do, and makes it easier for those of us who keep quotebooks like giant hipster nerds like...quoting things...to quote them. If you do not know who to credit something to and/or it's credited to anonymous, simply note that :D

3) DRINK NOT OF THE HATERADE, FOR IT HAS A TASTE MOST FOUL AND ALSO I WILL BAN YOU. Everyone has different tastes, and perhaps you've always hated ee cummings and you think that anyone posting anything by him has TERRIBLE TERRIBLE TASTE. You and I would disagree on that topic, but it is okay for you to think that! It's not okay for you to comment STFU THIS IS STUPID CUMMINGS SUCKS YOU SUCK, because, you know, inspiration works differently for everyone, and nobody likes to be stomped upon. Okay? Okay.

ALL THIS BEAUTY, YOU GUYS. I AM SO EXCITED.
♥

Comments

[endorsements.livejournal.com]

Bukowski? Cummings? You are a lady after my own heart. My favourite poem is probably Snow and Dirty Rain by Richard Siken. An excerpt:

                                               We make these
ridiculous idols so we can pray to what's behind them,
but what happens after we get up the ladder?
Do we simply stare at what is horrible and forgive it?
Here is the river, and here is the box, and here are
the monsters we put in the box to test our strength
against. Here is the cake, and here is the fork, and here's
the desire to put it inside us, and then the question
behind every question: What happens next?
The way you slam your body into mine reminds me
I'm alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling,
and they're only a few steps behind you, finding
the flaw, the poor weld, the place where we weren't
stitched up quite right, the place they could almost
slip right through if the skin wasn't trying to
keep them out, to keep them here, on the other side
of the theater where the curtain keeps rising.

Honourable mention goes to Litany in Which Certain Things are Crossed Out, and really, just anything from Crush. /shameless self-promotion.

[gyzym.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, hilariously enough, I have your Crush link open in a tab already, as a friend of mine were having a Siken geek-out session last night. His brilliance is just...uncapped and unending.

Also:

The way you slam your body into mine reminds me
I'm alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling

See, that makes me want an A/E ficlet. IS NOTHING SACRED, SELF?

The Song of Amergin

[illian.livejournal.com]

I am a stag: of seven tines,
I am a flood: across a plain,
I am a wind: on a deep lake,
I am a tear: the Sun lets fall,
I am a hawk: above the cliff,
I am a thorn: beneath the nail,
I am a wonder: among flowers,
I am a wizard: who but I
Sets the cool head aflame with smoke?

I am a spear: that roars for blood,
I am a salmon: in a pool,
I am a lure: from paradise,
I am a hill: where poets walk,
I am a boar: ruthless and red,
I am a breaker: threatening doom,
I am a tide: that drags to death,
I am an infant: who but I
Peeps from the unhewn dolmen arch?

I am the womb: of every holt,
I am the blaze: on every hill,
I am the queen: of every hive,
I am the shield: for every head,
I am the tomb: of every hope.

Re: The Song of Amergin

[gyzym.livejournal.com]

&hearts &hearts &hearts

Candles by C. P. Cavafy

[illian.livejournal.com]

The days that are to come, they stand before us
like to a row of lighted little candles, —
brilliant, and warm, and lively little candles.

The other days, the by-gone, lag behind,
a mournful row of candles that are quenched:
a few of them, the nearest, smoulder still,
but most are cold, and crooked, and reduced.

I dread to look on these: their shape is grievous,
and grievous the remembrance of their light.
In front, my lighted candles I behold.

I dread to turn, lest I perceive, affrighted,
how fast the sombre row is lengthening,
how fast the extinguished candles multiply.

Re: Candles by C. P. Cavafy

[gyzym.livejournal.com]

God, this is gorgeous and I had never seen it before. That second stanza, jesus fuck, thank you so much for sharing oh my goddddd.

[probablyforsure.livejournal.com]

first of all: mad props for the charles bukowski and e.e. cummings. they're my favorites and why does it seem to be that no one knows of bukowski? he's so fantastic.

a break from the modern though? my absolute, absolute, live-and-breathe poem is dulce et decorum est by wilfred owen. that imageryyyyy; i die.

thanks for the motherfucking poetry! hopefully it will help me power through this motherfucking script i have to write /o\

[gyzym.livejournal.com]

My love for bukowski is, um, not small, let's just put it that way. And I am honest to god considering getting cummings tattooed onto my body, even though I know I should stop at the tat I've already got.

I am always drawn to the modern by default because I have this love affair with nontraditional structure going on, but Dulce et Decorum is a gorgeous, gorgeous piece, no question &hearts

GOOD LUCK ON YOUR SCRIPT BB I AM SURE IT WILL BE EXCELLENT ♥

[postcardmystery.livejournal.com]

I ran ropes from spire to spire; garlands from window to window; gold chains from star to star; and I dance.

- Untitled Fragment, Rimbaud


I laugh sometimes when I think about
say
Céline at a typewriter
or Dostoevsky...
or Hamsun...
ordinary men with feet, ears, eyes,
ordinary men with hair on their heads
sitting there typing words
while having difficulties with life
while being puzzled almost to madness.

Dostoevsky gets up
he leaves the machine to piss,
comes back
drinks a glass of milk and thinks about
the casino and
the roulette wheel.

Céline stops, gets up, walks to the
window, looks out, thinks, my last patient
died today, I won't have to make any more
visits there.
when I saw him last
he paid his doctor bill;
it's those who don't pay their bills,
they live on and on.
Céline walks back, sits down at the
machine
is still for a good two minutes
then begins to type.

Hamsun stands over his machine thinking,
I wonder if they are going to believe
all these things I write?
he sits down, begins to type.
he doesn't know what a writer's block
is:
he's a prolific son-of-a-bitch
damn near as magnificent as
the sun.
he types away.

and I laugh
not out loud
but all up and down these walls, these
dirty yellow and blue walls
my white cat asleep on the
table
hiding his eyes from the
light.

he's not alone tonight
and neither am
I.


- One Thirty Six AM, Bukowski

What need of a lamp
when day lightens us,
what need to blind love
when love stands
with such radiant wings
over us?

What need -
yet to sing love,
love must first shatter us.

- H.D., from the Sappho


I have managed to restrain myself from shoving my Sappho obsession in your face, and from posting it untranslated, because man, would that be a dick move.

[gyzym.livejournal.com]

God I was so close to using One Thirty Six AM as my Bukowski for this post, but jfdhfsdkfhs I am so enthralled by Tragedy of Leaves every time.

Also I know of your classics passion so the Sappho does not surprise me, darling :D And I appreciate that you did not post it untranslated, because my understanding of Greek is like my understanding of Hebrew: I can read it phonetically! But, uh, that's all.

[theravenwrites.livejournal.com]

The Poems of Our Climate by Wallace Stevens

I

Clear water in a brilliant bowl,
Pink and white carnations. The light
In the room more like a snowy air,
Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow
At the end of winter when afternoons return.
Pink and white carnations---one desires
So much more than that. The day itself
Is simplified: a bowl of white,
Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,
With nothing more than the carnations there.


II

Say even that this complete simplicity
Stripped one of all one's torments, concealed
The evilly compounded, vital I
And made it fresh in a world of white,
A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,
Still one would want more, one would need more,
More than a world of white and snowy scents.


III

There would still remain the never-resting mind,
So that one would want to escape, come back
To what had been so long composed.
The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.

And second place goes to An Irish Airman Foresees His Death by Yeats.

[gyzym.livejournal.com]

The imperfect is our paradise.

&hearts &hearts &hearts

[chaoticallyclev.livejournal.com]

Firstly, I love e.e. cummings. So much. and this reminded me that i lost the files i'd collected of all my favorites by him, so I'll be looking to restore that.

Second, I have read Crush by Richard Siken about 20 times through in the past two weeks. That man blows my mind (and my tear ducts.)

Thirdly, the end of this poem gets stuck in my head for days. (and there will be a fourthly, but i feel like putting it in a different comment.)
Before Everything Is Over by George Wallace
before everything is over i would like to make love to you
the same number of times as a gentleman knocking on a
door that will never open for him.

the same number of times a mirror fails to reflect the spirit
of a ruined man. the same number of times a young woman
discovers in the middle of a noisy party

that she is alone. i would like to make love to you like a man
leaning his face from the window of a passenger train to catch
one more look at the one woman he ever

truly adored, but now he must leave behind. like a circus
performer looking up at a ceiling of trapeze rings, crazy
lights and precarious high wires,

knowing he will never climb that high. like a washed up prize
fighter reaching for the canvas because it is his only friend.
like a bum reaching for a twenty dollar bill

that is blowing across a busy boulevard. o i would like to
make love to you before the passersby pass by before
the falling sun falls out of this world

and into the next, before the brown bear of winter falls
into his magnificent winter slumber. i would like to make
love to you with my forehead

pressed to your naked waist. with my platelets pulsing in
your veins. with my brain on fire and snow falling on your
hissing flames o i would like to make

love to you a hundred times with the shuddering knowledge
of you, with your frozen smile and untraceable fingertips.
you with your indecipherable dreams.

because i am doomed to live with you even when i am
without you -- you with your incomplete shoulders. you
with your rainbow colored lips.

you with your empty hands. your perfumed silence, your
perfect elegance. you, with the sunlight that leaks out of
your darkness and into my world.

Fourthly and fiftly

[chaoticallyclev.livejournal.com]

All I Have To Say For Myself by Mindy Nettifee

The last time you came to see me
there were anchors in your eyes,
hardback books in your posture.
You were the five star general of sureness,
a crisp white tuxedo of a man.

I was fiddling with my worn coat pockets,
puffing false confidence ghosts in the cold January air.
My hands were shitty champagne flutes
brimming with cheap merlot.
I couldn’t touch you without ruining you,
so I didn’t touch you at all.

It's when you’re on the brink of something
that you lose your balance.
You told me that once.
When I can’t bring myself to say what I need to,
my heart plays Russian Roulette with my throat.
I swear I fired that night, but, nothing.

Someday, I’ll show you the bullet I had for you,
after time has done the wash.
I’ll take it out of the jar of missed opportunities.
We’ll hold it up to the light.
You’ll roll it around your mouth like a fallen tooth.
You won’t forgive me exactly,
but we’ll laugh about how small it is.
We’ll wonder how such a little thing
could ever have meant so much.



I Have To Tell You by Dorothea Grossman

I have to tell you,
there are times when
the sun strikes me
like a gong,
and I remember everything,
even your ears.

[obfuscate3.livejournal.com]

Mostly-lurker commenting because ... I can't not comment on a post that is all about poetry, since that is all I read now. Have some Frank O'Hara. I liked the first one so much that it's now on my wall.

POEM

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up



SONG

I am stuck in traffic in a taxicab
which is typical
and not just of modern life

mud clambers up the trellis of my nerves
must lovers of Eros end up with Venus
muss es sein? es muss nicht sein, I tell you

how I hate disease, it's like worrying
that comes true
and it simply must not be able to happen

in a world where you are possible
my love
nothing can go wrong for us, tell me

[gyzym.livejournal.com]

I tell you

how I hate disease, it's like worrying
that comes true
and it simply must not be able to happen

in a world where you are possible
my love
nothing can go wrong for us, tell me

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD MY LOVE FOR THOSE LINES IS UNENDING. *WEEPS*

[(Anonymous)]

Suddenly laughter became sobbing
Silent and white like the mist
And united mouths became foam
And upturned hands became astonished.

Suddenly the calm became the wind
That extinguished the last flame in the eye
And passion became foreboding
And the still moment became drama.

Suddenly, no more than suddenly
He who'd become a lover became sad
And he who'd become content became lon

The near became the distant friend
Life became a vagrant venture
Suddenly, no more than suddenly.

[gyzym.livejournal.com]

That's gorgeous work. Who is it?

[butterflythread.livejournal.com]

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there's some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

*

Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?
nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

I hate and I love. Why do I do it, perchance you might ask?
I don't know, but I feel it happening to me and I'm burning up.

*

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

[gyzym.livejournal.com]

DSFJDSKFHDSFHDSJFHDSF ALL OF THESE THINGS ARE AMAZING.

Attribution so I might write them in the red Moleskine full of poetry I keep DO SOMETHING NOT HIDEOUSLY HIPSTER/NERDY WITH THEM?

[darchildre.livejournal.com]

Another lurker commenting because...poetry! I would give your Richard Siken but I see you already have enough. So, other things.

The Icelandic Language, by Bill Holm


In this language, no industrial revolution;
no pasteurized milk; no oxygen, no telephone;
only sheep, fish, horses, water falling.
The middle class can hardly speak it.

In this language, no flush toilet; you stumble
through dark and rain with a handful of rags.
The door groans; the old smell comes
up from under the earth to meet you.

But this language believes in ghosts;
chairs rock by themselves under the lamp; horses
neigh inside an empty gully, nothing
at the bottom but moonlight and black rocks.

The woman with marble hands whispers
this language to you in your sleep; faces
come to the window and sing rhymes; old ladies
wind long hair, hum, tat, fold jam inside pancakes.

In this language, you can't chit-chat
holding a highball in your hand, can't
even be polite. Once the sentence starts its course,
all your grief and failure come clear at last.

Old inflections move from case to case,
gender to gender, softening consonants, darkening
vowels, till they sound like the sea moving
icebergs back and forth in its mouth.


Marsh Languages, by Margaret Atwood

The dark soft languages are being silenced:
Mothertongue Mothertongue Mothertongue
falling one by one back into the moon.

Language of marshes,
language of the roots of rushes tangled
together in the ooze,
marrow cells twinning themselves
inside the warm core of the bone:
pathways of hidden light in the body fade and wink out.

The sibilants and gutturals,
the cave language, the half-light
forming at the back of the throat,
the mouth's damp velvet moulding
the lost syllable for "I" that did not mean separate,
all are becoming sounds no longer
heard because no longer spoken,
and everyone that could once be said in them has
ceased to exist.

The languages of the dying suns
are themselves dying,
but even the word for this has been forgotten.
The mouth against skin, vivid and fading,
can no longer speak both cherishing and farewell.
It is now only a mouth, only skin.
There is no more longing.

Translation was never possible.
Instead there was always only
conquest, the influx
of the language of hard nouns,
the language of metal,
the language of either/or,
the one language that has eaten all the others.


The Sacred by Stephen Dunn

After the teacher asked if anyone had
a sacred place
and the students fidgeted and shrank

in their chairs, the most serious of them all
said it was his car,
being in it alone, his tape deck playing

things he’d chosen, and others knew the truth
had been spoken
and began speaking about their rooms,

their hiding places, but the car kept coming up,
the car in motion,
music filling it, and sometimes one other person

who understood the bright altar of the dashboard
and how far away
a car could take him from the need

to speak, or to answer, the key
in having a key
and putting it in, and going.

[gyzym.livejournal.com]

Oh god oh god oh god.

I love all of these, and I relate so much to that last one, but that first, jfc. "But this language believes in ghosts;" god, god, I honestly, I just. I am overwhelmed by how much I love that piece, and I love them all but that one in particular is just a punch to the gut, thank you so much for sharing &hearts

Evening, by R. M. Rilke

[ravurian]

(Rainer Maria Rilke, Prague, 4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926)

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees:
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;

and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion
of what becomes a star each night, and rises;

and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.

(Translation Stephen Mitchell – The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke)

Re: Evening, by R. M. Rilke

[gyzym.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, Rilke &hearts &hearts &hearts

[paraserpiente.livejournal.com]

I finally gave in and friended the crap out of you JUST IN TIME FOR A POETRY POST, YAY!

this is domestic (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=179229), by carl phillips. it makes me have...Feelings.

If, when studying road atlases
while taking, as you call it, your
morning dump, you shout down to
me names like Miami City, Franconia,
Cancún, as places for you to take
me to from here, can I help it if

all I can think is things that are
stupid, like he loves me he loves me
not? I don’t think so. No more
than, some mornings, waking to your
hands around me, and remembering
these are the fingers, the hands I’ve

over and over given myself to, I can
stop myself from wondering does that
mean they’re the same I’ll grow
old with. Yesterday, in the café I
keep meaning to show you, I thought
this is how I’ll die maybe, alone,

somewhere too far away from wherever
you are then, my heart racing from
espresso and too many cigarettes,
my head down on the table’s cool
marble, and the ceiling fan turning
slowly above me, like fortune, the

part of fortune that’s half-wished-
for only—it did not seem the worst
way. I thought this is another of
those things I’m always forgetting
to tell you, or don’t choose to
tell you, or I tell you but only

in the same way, each morning, I
keep myself from saying too loud I
love you until the moment you flush
the toilet, then I say it, when the
rumble of water running down through
the house could mean anything: flood,

your feet descending the stairs any
moment; any moment the whole world,
all I want of the world, coming down.


*sighs happily*

[gyzym.livejournal.com]

....I honestly don't even know what to say about this except that I don't actually know how to express how much I love it. I just. I am staggered at the amount of happiness welling up in my chest from having read that, oh my godddddd. &hearts

[usakeh.livejournal.com]

YAY, POETRY!

In a Dark Time

BY THEODORE ROETHKE

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood—
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks—is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is—
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

[gyzym.livejournal.com]

♥

*creepin*

[eaconwell.livejournal.com]

does spoken word count? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW2uwvVq4so&feature=related

Re: *creepin*

[gyzym.livejournal.com]

OF COURSE IT DOES! ALSO:

SCRAPING THIS COLD HARD EARTH FOR A PIECE OF MYSELF

♥ ♥ ♥

[(Anonymous)]

A Love Poem

to a map

Maps are never skin. I know
that you're only a guide but

I prefer to pretend otherwise.
Lean over, let me slide my hand

under the couplings of letters
and numbers that cinch your stockings

together. Let me spread you open, let me
undo the tangle of rivers, interstates, and

country roads until they spill out
soft as hair across my lap.

The rustle of sheets hangs in the air
as I trace out each route, the friction

of my fingertips against each delicate
path. The key makes you real, it stretches

inches into miles. It can turn
the idea of something into the thing itself.

~Jamison T. Crabtree

[gyzym.livejournal.com]

Oh oh oh how gorgeous.

[linguini17.livejournal.com]

The Sons of Martha by Rudyard Kipling
The sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited
that good part;
But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother of the
careful soul and the troubled heart.
And because she lost her temper once, and because she
was rude to the Lord her Guest,
Her Sons must wait upon Mary's Sons, world without
end, reprieve, or rest.

It is their care in all the ages to take the buffet and
cushion the shock.
It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care that
the switches lock.
It is their care that the wheels run truly; it is their care
to embark and entrain,
Tally, transport, and deliver duly the Sons of Mary by
land and main.

They say to mountains, "Be ye removed." They say to
the lesser floods, "Be dry."
Under their rods are the rocks reproved-they are not
afraid of that which is high.
Then do the hill-tops shake to the summit-then is the
bed of the deep laid bare,
That the Sons of Mary may overcome it, pleasantly
sleeping and unaware.

They finger death at their gloves' end where they piece
and repiece the living wires.
He rears against the gates they tend: they feed him hungry
behind their fires.
Early at dawn, ere men see clear, they stumble into
his terrible stall,
And hale him forth a haltered steer, and goad and turn
him till evenfall.

To these from birth is Belief forbidden; from these till
death is Relief afar.
They are concerned with matters hidden - under the
earthline their altars are-
The secret fountains to follow up, waters withdrawn to
restore to the mouth,
And gather the floods as in a cup, and pour them again
at a city's drouth.

They do not preach that their God will rouse them a
little before the nuts work loose.
They do not teach that His Pity allows them to drop
their job when they dam'-well choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark
and the desert they stand,
Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren's
day may be long in the land.

Raise ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path
more fair or flat -
Lo, it is black already with blood some Son of Martha
spilled for that!
Not as a ladder from earth to Heaven, not as a witness
to any creed,
But simple service simply given to his own kind in their
common need.

And the Sons of Mary smile and are blessed - they
know the Angels are on their side.
They know in them is the Grace confessed, and for
them are the Mercies multiplied.
They sit at the Feet - they hear the Word - they see
how truly the Promise runs.
They have cast their burden upon the Lord, and - the
Lord He lays it on Martha's Sons!


Casabianca by Elizabeth Bishop
Love's the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite "The boy stood on
the burning deck." Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.

Love's the obstinant boy, the ship
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love's the burning boy.

[gyzym.livejournal.com]

Oh, god, I love the first, but that second is going to say with me for days. &hearts

Mayakovsky

[(Anonymous)]

My heart’s aflutter!
I am standing in the bath tub
crying. Mother, mother
who am I? If he
will just come back once
and kiss me on the fae
his coarse hair brush
my temple, it’s throbbing!

then I can put on my clothes
I guess, and walk the streets.

I love you, I love you,
but I’m turning to my verses
and my heart is closing

like a fist.
Words! be
sick as I am sick, swoon,
roll back your eyes, a pool,
and I’ll stare down
at my wounded beauty
which at best is only a talent
for poetry.

Cannot please, cannot charm or win
what a poet!
and the clear water is thick

with bloody blows on its head
I embraced a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained.

That’s funny! there’s blood on my chest
oh yes, I’ve been carrying bricks
what a funny place to rupture!
and now it is raining on the ailanthus
as I step out onto the window ledge
the tracks below me are smoky and
glistening with a passion for running
I leap into the leaves, green like the sea

Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funy
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

--Frank O'Hara

Re: Mayakovsky

[gyzym.livejournal.com]

&hearts ______ &hearts

[jibrailis.livejournal.com]

I was just sending someone an email with my favourite poems, so I had these at hand and ready!


Long Ride Home, by Gregory Scofield

The crevice of you, that gorge
between hip and thigh,

that smooth divide, flat-out
as any highway

a long ride home. Green light
my red-night traveller, I’ll ride

the map
as far as it goes, drive you

the way you were meant
to be driven: hard to the touch,

light on the breaks — Go on
my explorer, stretch all your miles

stretch me to last, stretch me
your long brown legs

switch on the cruise, boy
sing me to navel valley,

sing me down to peachland,
I’m humming like hot concrete

beneath the skin, bed me down
you awesome flier, lift me

to a higher altitude — Go on
take the wheel, take it

and cruise me
a slow moon mile.



Rechargeable Dry Cell Poem, by J.W Miller

I used to love to lie awake past bedtime
reading by flashlight under the breathing covers.
Maybe that’s why I take you to bed like a book now
&
open you to a good place & turning
your pages quietly, love you to the end.

Explains why I’m Eveready, why
you’re a strange new story every time.



You Fit Into Me, by Margaret Atwood

You fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye

[miznarrator.livejournal.com]

That is pretty much the only thing by Atwood I like, but I LOVE IT COMPLETELY.

[dremiel.livejournal.com]

Oh GOD! Bukowski and Siken. Rilke and Roethke. cummings. Coming to this at this point is almost overwhelming.

Wild Angels

O wild angels of the open hills
Before all legends and before all tears:
O voyagers of where the evening falls
In the vast August of the years:
O half-seen passers of the lonely knolls,
Before all sorrow and before all truth
You were: and you were with me in my youth.

Angels of the shadowed ancient land
That lies yet unenvisioned, without myth,
Return, and silent-winged descend
On the winds that you have voyaged with,
And in the barren evening stand
On the hills of my childhood, in whose silences,
Savage, before all sorrow, your presence is.

Ursula K. Le Guin

[dakunut.livejournal.com]

Jabberwocky


’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.


Lewis Carroll

[popcorn-orgasms.livejournal.com]

I love Jabberwocky! And your icon!!!!!!!!

[fiercynn.livejournal.com]

oooh, may I throw some Kaminsky out there? My absolute favorite by him is "Musica Humana" (http://fishousepoems.org/archives/ilya_kaminsky/musica_humana_live.shtml) but it's a bit long for an LJ comment, so here's something else:


Elegy for Joseph Brodsky

i

In plain speech, for the sweetness
between the lines is no longer important,
what you call immigration I call suicide.
I am sending, behind the punctuation,
unfurling nights of New York, avenues
slipping into Cyrillic
winter coils words, throws snow on a wind.
You, in the middle of an unwritten sentence, stop,
exile to a place further than silence.

ii

I left your Russia for good, poems sewn into my pillow
rushing towards my own training
to live with your lines
on a verge of a story set against itself.
To live with your lines, those where sails rise, waves
beat against the city's granite in each vowel,--
pages open by themselves, a quiet voice
speaks of suffering, of water.

iii

We come back to where we have committed a crime,
we don't come back to where we loved, you said;
your poems are wolves nourishing us with their milk.
I tried to imitate you for two years. It feels like burning
and singing about burning. I stand
as if someone spat at me.
You would be ashamed of these wooden lines
how I don't imagine your death
but it is here, setting my hands on fire.

- Ilya Kaminsky

[popcorn-orgasms.livejournal.com]

These are two of my favorites. I also adore Gwendolyn Brooks's Maud Martha. It's a novella that's prose-poetry.

The God Who Loves You
Carl Dennis

It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you’d be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week –
Three fine houses sold to deserving families –
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college,
Knowing the roommate you’d have been allotted
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music
Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion.
A life thirty points above the life you’re living
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
You don’t want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withhold from your wife the day’s disappointments
So she can save her empathy for the children.
And would you want this god to compare your wife
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
You’d have enjoyed over there higher in insight
Than the conversation you’re used to.
And think how this loving god would feel
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife
Would have pleased her more than you ever will
Even on your best days, when you really try.
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
You’re spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven’t written in months. Sit down tonight
And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you’ve witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you’ve chosen.

And
William Wordsworth--Lucy Poems

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and oh,
The difference to me!

[seeingrightly.livejournal.com]

Oh, that first one, oh.

[kleat.livejournal.com]

Wow. Poetry discussions are so rare I find; this was a welcome change! (And I love that poem by Cummings... Had never heard of Bukowsky though so it was nice to discover him!) Mind if I post a couple in French? Every French student is probably sick and tired of these poems we've heard them so many times but I can't seem to get either out of my mind... So here are Paul Verlaine's It rain in my heart, and Rimbaud's The Sleeper in the Valley. (I'm posting the translations as well though they really don't do them justice...).

Il Pleure Dans Mon Coeur, by Paul Verlaine.

Il pleure dans mon cœur
Comme il pleut sur la ville ;
Quelle est cette langueur
Qui pénètre mon cœur ?

Ô bruit doux de la pluie,
Par terre et sur les toits!
Pour un cœur qui s'ennuie,
Ô le chant de la pluie !

Il pleure sans raison
Dans ce cœur qui s'écœure.
Quoi! nulle trahison ? ...
Ce deuil est sans raison.

C'est bien la pire peine,
De ne savoir pourquoi
Sans amour et sans haine
Mon cœur a tant de peine!

**************

There is weeping in my heart
like the rain falling on the town.
What is this languor
that pervades my heart?

Oh the patter of the rain
on the ground and the roofs!
For a heart growing weary
oh the song of the rain!

There is weeping without cause
in this disheartened heart.
What! No betrayal?
There's no reason for this grief.

Truly the worst pain
is not knowing why,
without love or hatred,
my heart feels so much pain.

*****************

Le Dormeur du Val, by Arthur Rimbaud.

C'est un trou de verdure où chante une rivière,
Accrochant follement aux herbes des haillons
D'argent ; où le soleil, de la montagne fière,
Luit : c'est un petit val qui mousse de rayons.

Un soldat jeune, bouche ouverte, tête nue,
Et la nuque baignant dans le frais cresson bleu,
Dort ; il est étendu dans l'herbe, sous la nue,
Pâle dans son lit vert où la lumière pleut.

Les pieds dans les glaïeuls, il dort. Souriant comme
Sourirait un enfant malade, il fait un somme :
Nature, berce-le chaudement : il a froid.

Les parfums ne font pas frissonner sa narine ;
Il dort dans le soleil, la main sur sa poitrine,
Tranquille. Il a deux trous rouges au côté droit.

**********

It is a green hollow where a stream gurgles
Crazily catching from grasses rags
Of silvery; where the sun, from the proud mountain,
Shines: it is a little valley bubbling over with lights.

A young soldier, with his mouth open, uncovered head,
With the nape of his neck bathing in the cool blue cresses,
Is sleeping; he is stretched out on the grass, under the skies,
Pale in his green bed where light is raining.

His feet in wild gladiolas, he is sleeping. Smiling as
A sick child would smile, he is having a nap:
Cradle him warmly, Nature : he is cold.

No perfume makes his nostrils quivering;
He sleeps in the sun, his hand on his breast
At peace. There are two red holes in his right side.


Unoriginal I know, but I really love both of these poems! The second one especially had me crying the first time I read it and is the poem that first got me into poetry.

[gentle-thorns.livejournal.com]

French poetry!

Do you know this one:

Rappelle-toi Barbara
Il pleuvait sans cesse sur Brest ce jour-là
Et tu marchais souriante
Épanouie ravie ruisselante
Sous la pluie

It's from Barbara by Jacques Prevert. I love that poem. I think it loses something in translation, though.

[(Anonymous)]

Buffalo Bill's by ee cummings.

Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeons justlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what I want to know is
how do you like your blue-eyed boy
Mister Death

Pioneers! O Pioneers! by Walt Whitman (abbreviated)

For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

All the past we leave behind,
We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

[...]
All the hapless silent lovers,
All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,
All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

I too with my soul and body,
We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way,
Through these shores amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Lo, the darting bowling orb!
Lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets,
All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

[...]
Do the feasters gluttonous feast?
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock'd and bolted doors?
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Has the night descended?
Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged nodding
on our way?
Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Till with sound of trumpet,
Far, far off the daybreak call--hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind,
Swift! to the head of the army!--swift! spring to your places,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

America by Walt Whitman (thank you levi's ad for this)

Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair'd in the adamant of Time.