|
Post by LonelyForsaken on Jul 19, 2014 1:24:25 GMT -5
I open this thread as an invite to share poetry you find remarkable in some way. At first I thought the criteria should be that the poet be well known, famous for some reason, or dead, but I think these are too limiting. I’m on the fence about songs because if we start posting them it could turn into a favorite lyrics/songs thread but some songs are very poetic. I open with a song that to me is more poetic than lyrical. So, it must be a published work and it can’t be your own (Aish started a thread for published members already). Comment if you wish.
|
|
|
Post by LonelyForsaken on Jul 19, 2014 1:28:08 GMT -5
I’ll start with a song I feel is poetry; The words in prentices are unclear to me. They are what it sounds like to me.
Poems for April (song)
Poem (thought) to paper read this one again Look it all once over help me with the end and know it’ll always mean yes
Mr. writer doctor please don’t tell your wife If she comes to call I will put up a fight and you don’t know your (night)
Hide the intentions of the lie Call me out Call me But don’t trust the mistress in your life the deadened eye unrevealing
Made of something I’ve been searching for Hide my dirty hands on wooden floors You and I we spoke of sand but here is the dirt
All the words for April challenge me some more Put them in a box for me mine can now be yours What harm can four little lines really risk
Cover up the burden reconcile the T’s marriage of our word is my final plea You can’t trust everything you read
Hide the intentions of the lie Call me out Call me But don’t trust the mistress in your life the deadened eyes unrevealing
Face another god I’ll blame it on Fill between the lines with broken song Promise can’t be kept for long so watch for a curve
Did you get it when I said it my three line lengthy message Did you get it in a rhythm of a five seven and five I meant it when I said it in clicking of my tempo The breaks are all for you
Yoooooouuuuuuuuu
~Alice in the River
|
|
|
Post by LonelyForsaken on Jul 19, 2014 1:29:41 GMT -5
Breathes there the man with soul so dead Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land! Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned, As home his footsteps he hath turned From wandering on a foreign strand! If such there breathe, go, mark him well; For him no minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim Despite those titles, power, and pelf, The wretch, concentred all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust from whence he sprung, Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.
~Sir Walter Scott
|
|
|
Post by LonelyForsaken on Jul 19, 2014 1:30:32 GMT -5
The Coming of Wisdom with Time
Though leaves are many, the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun; Now I may wither into the truth.
~William Buttler Yeats
|
|
|
Post by LonelyForsaken on Jul 19, 2014 1:31:18 GMT -5
Serpent’s Tail
When you are old as I now am I shall be young as you, my lamb; For lest love’s timely force should fail The serpent swallows his own tail.
~Robert Graves
|
|
|
Post by LonelyForsaken on Jul 19, 2014 1:32:01 GMT -5
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
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 is 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.
~Robert frost
|
|
|
Post by LonelyForsaken on Jul 19, 2014 1:33:48 GMT -5
Barefoot
Loving me with my shoes off means loving my long brown legs, sweet dears, as good as spoons; and my feet, those two children let out to play naked. Intricate nubs, my toes. No longer bound. And what's more, see toenails and all ten stages, root by root. All spirited and wild, this little piggy went to market and this little piggy stayed. Long brown legs and long brown toes. Further up, my darling, the woman is calling her secrets, little houses, little tongues that tell you.
There is no one else but us in this house on the land spit. The sea wears a bell in its navel. And I'm your barefoot wench for a whole week. Do you care for salami? No. You'd rather not have a scotch? No. You don't really drink. You do drink me. The gulls kill fish, crying out like three-year-olds. The surf's a narcotic, calling out, I am, I am, I am all night long. Barefoot, I drum up and down your back. In the morning I run from door to door of the cabin playing chase me. Now you grab me by the ankles. Now you work your way up the legs and come to pierce me at my hunger mark
~Anne Sexton
|
|
|
Post by LonelyForsaken on Jul 19, 2014 1:34:57 GMT -5
The Waking
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Of those so close beside me, which are you? God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there, And learn by going where I have to go. Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how? The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair; I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Great Nature has another thing to do To you and me, so take the lively air, And, lovely, learn by going where to go. This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. What falls away is always. And is near. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I learn by going where I have to go.
~Theodore Roethke
|
|
|
Post by Aish on Jul 19, 2014 3:03:37 GMT -5
Meditations on a File
I weigh you, a minute in each hand, With the sun & a woman's perfume In my senses, a need to smooth Everything down. You belong
To a dead man, made to fit A keyhole of metal to search For light, to rasp burrs off In slivers thin as hair, true
Only to slanted grooves cut Across your tempered spine. I'd laugh when my father said Rat-tail. Now, slim as hope
& solid as remorse In your red mausoleum, Whenever I touch you I crave something hard. -by Yusef Komunyakaa
|
|
|
Post by Aish on Jul 19, 2014 3:04:29 GMT -5
The Only Thing I Imagine Luz Villa Admires about Her Husband’s Gun–
is the six-chambered cylinder, the spinnable heart, how it clicks into place,
lonely but strong by design. She understands its negative worth, how it holds in the dark
and withstands what is held, how it burns and smells of smoke when left and left and left. -By XOCHIQUETZAL CANDELARIA
|
|
|
Post by LonelyForsaken on Jul 19, 2014 3:04:31 GMT -5
Again and Again and Again
You said the anger would come back just as the love did.
I have a black look I do not like. It is a mask I try on. I migrate toward it and its frog sits on my lips and defecates. It is old. It is also a pauper. I have tried to keep it on a diet. I give it no unction.
There is a good look that I wear like a blood clot. I have sewn it over my left breast. I have made a vocation of it. Lust has taken plant in it and I have placed you and your child at its milk tip.
Oh the blackness is murderous and the milk tip is brimming and each machine is working and I will kiss you when I cut up one dozen new men and you will die somewhat, again and again.
~Anne Sexton
|
|
|
Post by LonelyForsaken on Jul 19, 2014 3:27:19 GMT -5
Crazy Jane Talks With The Bishop
I met the Bishop on the road And much said he and I. 'Those breasts are flat and fallen now, Those veins must soon be dry; Live in a heavenly mansion, Not in some foul sty.'
'Fair and foul are near of kin, And fair needs foul,' I cried. 'My friends are gone, but that's a truth Nor grave nor bed denied, Learned in bodily lowliness And in the heart's pride.
'A woman can be proud and stiff When on love intent; But Love has pitched his mansion in The place of excrement; For nothing can be sole or whole That has not been rent.'
~William Butler Yeats
|
|
|
Post by Aish on Jul 19, 2014 10:13:38 GMT -5
Crow
A crow oils its way into my garden sidewalks through winter detritus grey-eyes me balefully daring me to retrieve the twig it has filched to nest the new generation of omens - by Jennifer Chrystie
|
|
|
Post by LonelyForsaken on Jul 19, 2014 21:59:15 GMT -5
/\ That poem (Crow) is really good. I’ll have to look her up./\
I love birds and bird poetry, even Gertrude Stein’s reference to chickens in the food section of “Tender Buttons.” I’m tempted to post “The Raven” by Poe but will go with this instead;
Ode to a Nightingale
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness,— That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth; That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs, Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays; But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet Wherewith the seasonable month endows The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves; And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy! Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain— To thy high requiem become a sod.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that oft-times hath Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf. Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?
~ John Keats
|
|
|
Post by LonelyForsaken on Jul 19, 2014 22:02:55 GMT -5
Bright Star
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art! - Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors - No -yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever -or else swoon to death.
~John Keats
|
|