to continue the poetry discussion even more, post a favorite poem of your own...

[Wetzelbill]

You know, when in Rome... :)

Ok, I'll post one of my less serious ones. A weird one I wrote last night derived from some of my junk email messages in the last week. Like a spam collage. :)

POUNDING THE RING

“Clovis” cackled Peeves, slipping
around in Goyle’s Tsunami.
“how’s this?”

he spoke faces and voices over fifty years.
she quavered at him in surprise.
writing domination filmed in live earth.

at their final, Goyle swapped teen’s drinks.
the barely legal model shows edge
at the barnyard event.

she met without mercy already.

the preparations. diamond made,
among the horse’s army.
me, you don’t know, a comic fond
of the greatest older art.

sitting on an ebony car, turning to try
the model ring. dirty. only
without her info the story would
never break explicit.

Clovis writing

Goyle toying.

Peeves speaking.

men were watching Dana with the crowds.
the best, man for man grunted.
I’ll bang just much, over on the way.

she shook for the cool of clouds and mist.
her dress only one sobering note.
blasting a gentle, merry, childish voice.

up into the clouds, in private moment.

[Wetzelbill]

1. What? No hits yet?

Maybe everybody is all poetry'd out. :shrug:

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. My dear Wetzelbill!

Well, actually, sweetie...

I didn't see your thread earlier...

I'll BRB!

Got to find one of mine!

[Wetzelbill]

4. awesome

Looking forward to it.

[Breeze54]

3. Surreal Wordsmith Simic Is Named Poet Laureate

FEATURED POET

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/entertainment/july-dec07/poet_08-02.html

August 2, 2007

The Library of Congress has appointed Charles Simic, whose work is known for its surrealism,
dark humor and irony, as its 15th poet laureate. He takes over the position from Donald Hall,
who had served since 2006.

--------------

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171684

My Shoes

by Charles Simic

Shoes, secret face of my inner life:
Two gaping toothless mouths,
Two partly decomposed animal skins
Smelling of mice nests.

My brother and sister who died at birth
Continuing their existence in you,
Guiding my life
Toward their incomprehensible innocence.

What use are books to me
When in you it is possible to read
The Gospel of my life on earth
And still beyond, of things to come?

I want to proclaim the religion
I have devised for your perfect humility
And the strange church I am building
With you as the altar.

Ascetic and maternal, you endure:
Kin to oxen, to Saints, to condemned men,
With your mute patience, forming
The only true likeness of myself.

--------------

I'm still trying to think of my 'favorite' poem. ;)

------

Looking for just the right poem?
Search thousands of great poems by subject, occasion, or author.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poetrytool.html

;)

[Wetzelbill]

7. that is very nice

I love his use of spirituality. I always find that interesting in poetry.

Yeah, snag one of yours when you get the chance, I love reading thoughts from intelligent people who dabble. :)

[Breeze54]

9. Maybe you can help me.

I've been searching for this poem for a while now.

I used to own the book but I lost it. :(

One of the lines was:

"For every tear I ever cried, turned to pearl before it died..."

I think the author's first name was Suzanne?

She used to publish small books of poetry.

I have tried google but with no success.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

5. OK! Here's a couple of mine....Let me know what you think:

SPRING

The timid and tender

Greens of spring

Fearful of winter's strike

So new on the trees

Backlit by the sun

Pale and shimmering

In the hesitant light

So cautiously growing

Day by day,

Soon they will be

The brassy overheated

Greens of high summer

Their virginity lost

In the sun's harsh light.


ON LOVE

Have you ever

Loved someone so much

That every breath is a hymn of praise?


I have


And the words just pour out of me

Every breath sings

My throat catches with joy

My heartbeat rises

And I tremble

For he has opened the door

And so much of what I am

Is because of him...

[bigwillq]

6. Submersion

Submersion


A trap

between heart and mind

I search my soul

and wonder what I'll find.

Fear travels

light into places

so black and cold

like stone

beyond the simple center

of creatures

where a pulse

can slightly be

but you're too ignorant

to see

Base your assumptions

on truth

pure truth

rather than from the mills

that turn our desolate world

into tiny, shattered fragments

of our own body

Each piece divided

over miles and miles

of space

where we are

poked, pried, touched, examined

until we are unrecognizable

not only to everyone else

but to ourselves as well.

We try to piece

the splinters together

but it only ends

in failure.

Take a breath.

[redqueen]

8. Seamus Heaney - Rite of Spring

Rite of Spring


So winter closed its fist
And got it stuck in the pump.
The plunger froze up a lump

In its throat, ice founding itself
Upon iron. The handle
Paralysed at an angle.

Then the twisting of wheat straw
into ropes, lapping them tight
Round stem and snout, then a light

That sent the pump up in a flame
It cooled, we lifted her latch,
Her entrance was wet, and she came.






ooops... I somehow missed the "of your own" part. :P

ah well, I'm leaving this here anyway cause I LOVE it. :D

[janx]

20. Heaney wrote some poems about some "bog people"--

some corpses unearthed in Scandiland somewhere...very morbid, yes, but intriguing. Apparently the bogs to the north of Ireland aroused his curiosity. It had to do with peat.

[elehhhhna]

10. THE CINNAMON PEELER by Michael Ondaatje

THE CINNAMON PEELER by Michael Ondaatje
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbor to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
-- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...

When we swam once
I touched you in water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said


this is how you touch other women
the grasscutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.

And you searched your arms

for the missing perfume.

and knew
what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter

left with no trace

as if not spoken to in an act of love

as if wounded without the pleasure of scar.


You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me.

[elehhhhna]

11. Slouching towards Bethlehem (this & the above are my 2 faves)

Slouching towards Bethlehem
W.B Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

[janx]

19. Nobody beats Yeats! (Well, almost...)

:party:

[janx]

12. I don't have a favorite--how could anyone have just one

favorite? But I'll post a couple of good ones. Give me a few minutes... ;-)

[Breeze54]

13. I've always liked this one! -- "Casey at the Bat"

Casey at the Bat

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=174665

by Ernest Lawrence Thayer

A Ballad of the Republic, Sung in the Year 1888

The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day;
The score stood four to two with but one inning more to play.
And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,
A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.

A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest
Clung to that hope which springs eternal in the human breast;
They thought if only Casey could but get a whack at that—
We’d put up even money now with Casey at the bat.

But Flynn preceded Casey, as did also Jimmy Blake,
And the former was a lulu and the latter was a cake;
So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat,
For there seemed but little chance of Casey’s getting to the bat.

But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all,
And Blake, the much despised, tore the cover off the ball;
And when the dust had lifted, and men saw what had occurred,
There was Jimmy safe at second and Flynn a-hugging third.

Then from 5,000 throats and more there rose a lusty yell;
It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell;
It knocked upon the mountain and recoiled upon the flat,
For Casey, mighty Casey, was advancing to the bat.

There was ease in Casey’s manner as he stepped into his place;
There was pride in Casey’s bearing and a smile on Casey’s face.
And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,
No stranger in the crowd could doubt ’twas Casey at the bat.

Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt;
Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt.
Then while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip,
Defiance gleamed in Casey’s eye, a sneer curled Casey’s lip.

And now the leather-covered sphere came hurtling through the air,
And Casey stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there.
Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped—
“That ain’t my style,” said Casey. “Strike one,” the umpire said.

From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled roar,
Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore.
“Kill him! Kill the umpire!” shouted some one on the stand;
And it’s likely they’d have killed him had not Casey raised his hand.

With a smile of Christian charity great Casey’s visage shone;
He stilled the rising tumult; he bade the game go on;
He signaled to the pitcher, and once more the spheroid flew;
But Casey still ignored it, and the umpire said, “Strike two.”

“Fraud!” cried the maddened thousands, and echo answered fraud;
But one scornful look from Casey and the audience was awed.
They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles strain,
And they knew that Casey wouldn’t let that ball go by again.

The sneer is gone from Casey’s lip, his teeth are clinched in hate;
He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate.
And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go,
And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey’s blow.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has struck out.

[UrbScotty]

14. A Psalm of Life by Longfellow

Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou are, to dust thou returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, - act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sand of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

[janx]

15. Here is a very compact sonnet of Frost's--there is so much

present in so few words. It's interesting to contemplate it from the idea of "intelligent design" that is promulgated these days...think about it! I had my students write a paper about the poem in that context. ;-)

Design

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all*, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth--
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth--
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

--Robert Frost

* A heal-all is a type of flower

[janx]

16. This reminds me of a classic exercise in poetry.

I've written very little poetry, but I teach creative writing sometimes. In any case this exercise comes from In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet's Portable Workshop by Steve Kowit, and it adopts methods of William Burroughs in selecting random words and phrases (as you have done, WB) and connecting them to make a poetic story.

The gist of the exercise is this: you grab a couple of newspapers and magazines--as different in subject matter as you can find, like Sports Illustrated, National Geographic, Cosmopolitan, Woman's Day, National Enquirer, The New York Times--and even within newspapers, you should choose widely different sections. Then, you start circling random words and phrases you find interesting, without giving much thought to why you find them interesting. You circle hundreds of these and then make a list of them.

Now for the tough part: you have to make a poem that makes sense out of a portion of the words and phrases you have circled. The poem has to present a story that a reader will understand (as opposed to a random drug trip or something), and it has to show some evidence of meter, of sound. You don't have to adhere to the exact words you've found in the magazines and newspapers (because they're often tortured--you might want to keep them that way for effect, or you might not).

So what you have done here, WB, is like that exercise. You might want to try it! :hi:

Your mind is working on many levels when you attempt such a thing, and it's great fun.

[Wetzelbill]

32. I actually have tried it, that's how I decided to do this one

the one I worked on when I first tried it, my professor has been wanting me to submit somewhere. I'm not really a poet though. I can write it, but it's not my thing. I'm light years better at short fiction and creative nonfiction. :)

[janx]

17. Oh man, I misunderstood...

I thought we were supposed to post poems that were our favorites, not those we have written, but that's OK. Any all-purpose poetry thread is good.

[BarenakedLady]

18. Some silly ones

(with my apologies to Shakespeare)

Shall I compare thee to a stomach ache?

Shall I compare thee to a stomach ache?
Thou are more nasty and more annoying:
Rough bubbles do shake the intestinal tract of gas,
And stomach’s release hath all too big a stink:
Sometime too odorous the nose of heaven smells,
And often is his green complexion dimm'd;
And every gas from food sometime declines,
By chance or nature's calling on the pot:
But thy eternal stomach ache shall not fade
Nor lose possession of my gastrointestinal distress;
Nor shall Tums dim thou discomfort in its chalk,
When in eternal pain to gas thou cramp’d:
So long as men can breathe, or nose can smell,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.


Prom Queen Wannabe

She entered the room
With an intrepid saunter
Her eyes scanned the crowd
Sure the boys would all want her

For the benefit of admirers
She sashayed through the door
Then her pink satin shoes
Hit water on the floor

She lost all decorum
As she sailed through the air
“Motherfucker!” she screamed
“This just isn’t fair!”

Yet as she fell to the ground
It still did confuse her
When a wool-suited boy said
“What a fucking loser!”

[Inchworm]

35. Hey you!

I was away kinda sorta...

Did you write these? :loveya:

:hi:

[hfojvt]

21. I've done that before

they were ignored.


Plus, they rhyme :hide:

[EFerrari]

24. black triangle in light

(This sestina doesn't really work but it was fun to try it. :) )

While the others sleep, the black cat

Sits on the sill in a rectangle of light,

The only one in the dark kitchen, still

As an unwatched sculpture. This morning,

A quiet waiting wedge, the cat eyes

Some gulls ferry between sky and sand.



Perhaps knowing how near the sand

Dunes are, across the highway only, the cat

Presses the glass, paws her reflection, eyes

Never leaving the gulls just beyond the light

Warming her screened perch. Slowly, it’s morning

In that window. She sits, watching, still.



And she might stay all day, watching still.

The smell of the sea, the ping of blown sand

Tease her to the glass, testing her each morning.

Ancient patience meets disregard in the cat

Who measures the gulls’ flight in the cold light,

Noting the ravens’ clatter too, with great green eyes.



So much unsaid by those wide eyes.

Yet something about her suggests, “Be still,

Or, come closer, I will jump into the light

You play in. You’re playing, I know. The sand

Smells like a beach a grain at a time.” The cat

Stretches gently, jumps, finished for this morning.



I’d thought to paint her, there, some morning.

How to give the motion of her stillness to other eyes?

Or, show color condensing around this small monochrome cat?

An early sketch shows promise but still

It’s only promise, not salt, flight or sand.

Here: A small black triangle on a pale plane of light.



She draws us there, summoning beach light

Slowly into the room. Brightest at mid morning,

But not bright now. The bunch grasses wave, trapping sand

Blown across the highway, and the surfers’ eyes

Narrow against the wind, the ones still

Too young for shades, as they pass by window and cat.



As if you could outwalk the light world of her eyes,

Or the day’s flight from morning, sweeping over the sand.

Or, forgive the still capture of this small black cat.

[janx]

26. It works. It doesn't have to be exact.

Excellent! :party:

The great thing about form is that you can fool around with it and still have some great images, meaning, and sound.

[EFerrari]

30. What I found was that free verse allowed me to get too baggy

so the formal experiments helped me focus up a little more. I want to try them all. :party:

[hfojvt]

27. I found these in a search

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=4345646#4346017

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=3991267#3991357

[EFerrari]

29. "The Man from Nantucket is not a sonnet" - JVS

:rofl:

[janx]

22. Here's an old one. My dear friend and poetry mentor taught

me a lot about form, and eventually I got this into (and out of) a sestina form.

Chester


Chester brooded in the yellow rocking chair,
wet himself, rocking, peeing in a flower-puddle.
He wept through pepper-gray lashes for the corpse of his love.
He blinked at the dinner plate moon glittering his fields.

The moon saw an adolescent Chester
tripping through muscular honeysuckle vines,
the spiral road, hissing blue racers, and raspberry thorns,
Remembered the monster dust house of Lois,
of parental gaggings, of white-floral, and of wing-silent chairs.

His love, Lois, she smelled of cinnamon sex.
She curled into his arms, an exhausted raccoon.
Once, they were drunk, she’d offered their bed to drunken guests
and then, forgetting, she’d climbed into her party’s borrowed bed.

What an embarrassment! He remembered, and forgot,
and peed rivulets, rocky creeks onto the lilting yellow chair.

The fire of cremation ripened her body to calcium and sand.
He’d buried the bone clusters where the cows chewed straw-grasses
with a nipping and crackling sound.

She had carefully loved him by the pond,
waltzing free-naked muddy edge on edge one night.
Her round toes were immersed in the water
and by every creature which ate and shat within it.
The pond was Lois, the sparkling field was Lois,
the cattle were Lois by extension and breath.

Her rising body moisture was a passing cloud
like the yellow-rose scent of her spirit,
the tenacity of the honeysuckle vine,
hissing blue racers, and raspberry thorns, and Chester.

[janx]

23. kick for the president

[Wetzelbill]

33. ha!

you're hilarious. I see a speechwriting job at somewhere in your future.

Pending Kurovski's approval. :)

[vixengrl]

25. Okay--I can show a couple--

Age of a Woman



I don't feel young to myself (or just right, either.)

I feel old, unspeakably old, unbearably old, old!

I'm so old, I've seen great mountains fall,

Toppling into eternal, self-renewing seas

As volcanoes erupted red and white hot

Becoming cold and ancient mountains themselves.

I've seen the scum of stagnant pools give birth,

Bringing forth a dreadful flow of life

In terrible and awe-inspiring variety,

And I have seen that pageant of life

Decay into stagnant pools of muck and filth.

I'm so old, I threw the acorn of the

Great-great-grandaddy of the tallest oak in the world

Into the ground,

And watered it with my tears at the so-called fall of man.

I'm so old I was Rahab's madam.

My toenail clippings are older than your deepest fear.

I had a scarab farm and a pet dodo and the first wheel.

I am so old that I spoke the first word ever

Spoken in the first language ever known to the

First person ever to hear something and

Not understand.

I am old, do you hear me? Ancient.

But you, now, you're a new wrinkle.




Jazz Hymn: To Repeat until

We feel Blued-

Out


My dark mood casts a shadow so heavy

It leaves cracks in the sidewalk

You can fall into and die.

My dark mood is the same exact color

Of the pupil of the eye of a cyclone

Headed for a packed church

When a wedding is going on.

My dark mood is invisible by night

Ugly by day, therefore

Chiefly nocturnal.

My dark mood sounds

Like a playerless saxophone

With a cool hot wail

Only the desperate hear.

My dark mood is like

Satan's day off

When we got no one to blame

But our own damn selves.

And my dark mood

Goes on and on

Like a fire's damp remains,

When the sizzle has gone cold.

[mokawanis]

28. a short one

Frustration

At 3 a.m.
your words
in air above
our bed
spiral into
drunken random
enter me
dyslexic

[EFerrari]

31. Topography

Tracing that light tan line
my sons stretched across my belly, I imagine
you drawing away from this body, imagine you
seeing this: a map of my boys, their father
(yours, your woman -- marked lover, mother, that woman who
lived in her body). Imagine you seeing not me
but a half formed world unreadable,
no impression of me but all
those that have wandered through this body.

I imagine you afraid
to be lost, not asking directions
and I imagine you squinting.

[EFerrari]

34. kick

[Wetzelbill]

36. These are all great

Sorry I had to abandon my thread for the last day. Doing some column writin' and so forth. Finally got around to reading everybody's work. :) :toast: