POETRY
- Started
- Last post
- 71 Responses
- colin_s0
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too nearyour slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first roseor if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands-e.e. cummings
- colin_s0
I wanted to be sure to reach you;
though my ship was on the way it got caught
in some moorings. I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. In storms and
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide
around my fathomless arms, I am unable
to understand the forms of my vanity
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder
in my hand and the sun sinking. To
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks, it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.-Frank O'Hara
- allthethings0
Love Songs In Age
She kept her songs, they took so little space,
The covers pleased her:
One bleached from lying in a sunny place,
One marked in circles by a vase of water,
One mended, when a tidy fit had seized her,
And coloured, by her daughter -
So they had waited, till in widowhood
She found them, looking for something else, and stoodRelearning how each frank submissive chord
Had ushered in
Word after sprawling hyphenated word,
And the unfailing sense of being young
Spread out like a spring-woken tree, wherein
That hidden freshness, sung,
That certainty of time laid up in store
As when she played them first. But, even more,The glare of that much-mentioned brilliance, love,
Broke out, to show
Its bright incipience sailing above,
Still promising to solve, and satisfy,
And set unchangeably in order. So
To pile them back, to cry,
Was hard, without lamely admitting how
It had not done so then, and could not now.--Philip Larkin
- cannonball19781
Being a Lake
He has never dreamed of being a lake
in the high mountains, and now he wonders why.
Surely there could be no better, in the way
of dreamy aspirations: to be clear and cold
and swum through by trout. To allow the sunlight
far into your depths. To be ceilinged by ice
and many feet of snow in the winter, to shine pure blue
into the pure blue of the sky, to show the stars
the stars, to be drunk by wild animals.
And to admit an occasional human,
who, because of the memory of being there. Being there.
Not a visitor but a dreamer, dreaming
this very lake is what he's always wanted to be.Robert Wrigley
- fuck I missed a linecannonball1978
- always dig your stuff cannonballpockets
- or post for that matterpockets
- glad you like it. its a wonderful poem and im not a poetry guycannonball1978
- cannonball19782
Being a Lake
He has never dreamed of being a lake
in the high mountains, and now he wonders why.
Surely there could be no better, in the way
of dreamy aspirations: to be clear and cold
and swum through by trout. To allow the sunlight
far into your depths. To have depths no one
will ever visit. To be ceilinged by ice
and many feet of snow in the winter, to shine pure blue
into the pure blue of the sky, to show the stars
the stars, to be drunk by wild animals.
And to admit an occasional human,
who, because of the memory of being there. Being there.
Not a visitor but a dreamer, dreaming
this very lake is what he's always wanted to be.Robert Wrigley
- sarahfailin0
He Visits My Town Once a Year
~ Amir Khusrow (1253 – 1325)He visits my town once a year.
He fills my mouth with kisses and nectar.
I spend all my money on him.
Who, girl, your man?
No, a mango.
- poetry? or joke? :)
great punch lineKrassy - Legit poem from the 13th centurysarahfailin
- poetry? or joke? :)
- sarahfailin8
'the genius of the crowd'
there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given dayand the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peacethose who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have lovebeware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks averagebut there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfectlike a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlocktheir finest art
-Bukowski
- amen_niko
- +++renderedred
- Besides Bukowski, I admire William Wordsworth & John Clare and so on, such great minds.helloeatbreathedrive
- hank was a big fan of canadian, Al PurdyGnash
- never could get into him after how he treats his girlfriends. f bukowskijaylarson
- this poem says more about him and his fans than anything to mejaylarson
- you should read Fuck Machinedasohr
- Jaydasohr
- de4k1
After that beauty from Bukowski, seems apt to post this —
When I was a child, I thought,
Casually, that solitude
Never needed to be sought.
Something everybody had,
Like nakedness, it lay at hand,
Not specially right or specially wrong,
A plentiful and obvious thing
Not at all hard to understand.Then, after twenty, it became
At once more difficult to get
And more desired — though all the same
More undesirable; for what
You are alone has, to achieve
The rank of fact, to be expressed
In terms of others, or it’s just
A compensating make-believe.Much better stay in company!
To love you must have someone else,
Giving requires a legatee,
Good neighbours need whole parishfuls
Of folk to do it on — in short,
Our virtues are all social; if,
Deprived of solitude, you chafe,
It’s clear you’re not the virtuous sort.Viciously, then, I lock my door.
The gas-fire breathes. The wind outside
Ushers in evening rain. Once more
Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am.Philip Larkin
(1951)
- _niko2
There will come soft rains
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows calling with their shimmering sound;And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.Sarah Teasdale
Published 1918
- sted7
blue users are old,
green are new,
whatever the username,
bobo we know it's you.~ renderedred / 2020
- grafician2
Ozymandias
BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
-
I met a traveller 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 readWhich 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 on 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.”
- MrT2
- colin_s-1
granted it was a tv promo, still a wonderful reading
- MrT0
OK I’m a poetry numpty despite being an avid reader of fiction, in particular. I recently read Pale Fire - of course you all know - and it really struck home when I got to the poem.
Any thoughts on good ways to poetically pop my cherry?
- _niko5
A Small Needful Fact
by Ross GayIs that Eric Garner worked
for some time for the Parks and Rec.
Horticultural Department, which means,
perhaps, that with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he put gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.
- nb2
- sarahfailin1
https://www.poetryfoundation.org…
Plans for Altering the River
BY RICHARD HUGOThose who favor our plan to alter the river
raise your hand. Thank you for your vote.
Last week, you'll recall, l spoke about how water
never complains. How it runs where you tell it,
seemingly at home, flooding grain or pinched
by geometric banks like those in this graphic
depiction of our plan. We ask for power:
a river boils or falls to tum our turbines.
The river approves our plans to alter the river.Due to a shipwreck downstream, I'm sad to report
our project is not on schedule. The boat
was carrying cement for our concrete rip rap
balustrade that will force the river to run
east of the factory site through the state-owned
grove of cedar. Then, the uncooperative
carpenters union went on strike. When we get
that settled, and the concrete, given good weather
we can go ahead with our plan to alter the river.We have the injunction. We silenced the opposition.
The workers are back. The materials arrived
and everything's humming. l thank you
for this award, this handsome plaque I'll keep
forever above my mantle, and I'll read
the inscription often aloud to remind me
how with your courageous backing l fought
our battle and won. I'll always remember
this banquet this day we started to alter the river.Flowers on the bank? A park on Forgotten Island?
Return of cedar and salmon? Who are these men?
These Johnnys-come-lately with plans to alter the river?
What's this wild festival in May
celebrating the runoff, display floats on fire
at night and a forest dance under the stars?
Children sing through my locked door, 'Old stranger,
we're going to alter, to alter, alter the river.'
Just when the water was settled and at home.- the link is for the poem of the day, pretty great to have bookmarked imosarahfailin
- Gardener1
I picked up this Scottish poetry/folk music album yesterday, it's not all that scarce but I'd never come across it before
