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Monday, September 14th, 2009
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8:47 pm - for the monster truck
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THE SHAMPOO Elizabeth Bishop
The still explosions on the rocks,
the lichens, grow
by spreading, gray, concentric shocks.
They have arranged
to meet the rings around the moon, although
within our memories they have not changed.
And since the heavens will attend
as long on us,
you've been, dear friend,
precipitate and pragmatical;
and look what happens. For Time is
nothing if not amenable.
The shooting stars in your black hair
in bright formation
are flocking where,
so straight, so soon?
-- Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin,
battered and shiny like the moon.
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| Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
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12:16 am - heaven
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- courtesy of dtwof
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| Friday, August 21st, 2009
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12:03 am - a heartening message just recieved from one of my high school mentors
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Just home—and I am saving your poems to read in the morning, savored
over my long morning coffee(s). Before trundling off to bed, I only
want to say this: do not let anyone convince you that the "real" world
is bleak.
It is not—even in this time of misappropriated language ("death
panels"). But there is always an imperative for poetry and poets: to
be subversive by insisting on alertness. You are alert, and your voice
is needed.
The world is colorful and thrilling, and worthy of passion to the nth
degree. Don't let anyone rob you of that great romp.
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| Sunday, July 5th, 2009
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6:31 pm - for liz
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Sweetness
BY STEPHEN DUNN
Just when it has seemed I couldn’t bear
one more friend
waking with a tumor, one more maniac
with a perfect reason, often a sweetness
has come
and changed nothing in the world
except the way I stumbled through it,
for a while lost
in the ignorance of loving
someone or something, the world shrunk
to mouth-size,
hand-size, and never seeming small.
I acknowledge there is no sweetness
that doesn’t leave a stain,
no sweetness that’s ever sufficiently sweet ....
Tonight a friend called to say his lover
was killed in a car
he was driving. His voice was low
and guttural, he repeated what he needed
to repeat, and I repeated
the one or two words we have for such grief
until we were speaking only in tones.
Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough
to make sense of what it means to be alive,
then returns to its dark
source. As for me, I don’t care
where it’s been, or what bitter road
it’s traveled
to come so far, to taste so good.
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| Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
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11:17 pm
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Trust, by Thomas Smith
It's like so many other things in life
to which you must say no or yes.
So you take your car to the new mechanic.
Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.
The package left with the disreputable-looking
clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,
the envelope passed by dozens of strangers--
all show up at their intended destinations.
The theft that could have happened doesn't.
Wind finally gets where it was going
through the snowy trees, and the river, even
when frozen, arrives at the right place.
And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life
is delivered, even though you can't read the address.
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| Monday, June 22nd, 2009
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6:36 pm
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One of those mornings
& everything is suddenly a beautiful garden
with birds in it & angels & trees
made of wings
a crazy doodle of a garden
& you don't understand anything
but there you are
making a poem of it
the most hopeless poem
in the universe
oh
god how my toe itches!
that beautiful garden
friends
is not there
- Harold Norse (-June 13th)
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| Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
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8:58 pm
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Whenever I Make a New Poem by Lew Welch
Whenever I make a new poem,
the old ones sound like gibberish.
How can they ever made sense in a book?
Let them say:
"He seems to have lived in the mountains.
He traveled now and then.
When he appeared in cities,
he was almost always drunk.
"Most of his poems are lost.
Many of those we have found in
letters to his friends.
"He had a very large number of friends."
1973
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| Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
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1:20 pm
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Another Year by Anne Michaels
Another year and we're together,
crossing your glinting fields.
Five p.m. under a sky claimed in childhood,
claimed in streets connecting your house with mine,
home from another city,
another year of separation.
We pause in our metallic light
and talk—50, 15, 25 years old,
depending on the subject.
Traversed by the treeline,
your body in your mother's jacket.
Nothing breaks the restraint of this grid,
your face held in place by pines,
New Year's Eve, our conversation.
Each year the forest presses our dialogue
into another ring.
One day the wooden record will play itself;
we'll hear each time we chose
one past over another to extrapolate,
each time that path grew over.
Your brother skates on the pond,
moving like pen on paper.
Time emanates from our selves.
We run after it
like your retriever let go in a field:
part fluid muscle, part slung leash.
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| Thursday, May 14th, 2009
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8:49 pm
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so for our final seminar this semester my professor asked us to bring in one poem that we thought had something to offer us, something we could use in our own work or learn from. so, i thought i'd share it with you guys...
Causes by Mona Van Duyn
"Questioned about why she had beaten her spastic
child to death, the mother told police, 'I hit him
because he kept falling off his crutches.' " News Item
Because one's husband is different from one's self,
the pilot's last words were "Help, my God, I'm shot!"
Because the tip growth on a pine tree looks like Christmas tree candles,
cracks appear in the plaster of old houses.
And because the man next door likes to play golf,
a war started in some country where it is hot,
and whenever a maid waits at the bus-stop with her bundles,
the fear of death comes over us in vacant places.
It is all foreseen in the glassy eye on the shelf,
woven in the web of notes that sprays from a trumpet,
announced by a salvo of crackles when the fire kindles,
printed on the nature of things when a skin bruises.
And there's never enough surprise at the killer in the self,
nor enough difference between the shooter and the shot,
nor enough melting down of stubs to make new candles
as the earth rolls over, inverting billions of houses.
1970
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| Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
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6:36 pm - pretty much exemplifies my moment...
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Waiting for Icarus by Muriel Rukeyser
He said he would be back and we'd drink wine together
He said that everything would be better than before
He said we were on the edge of a new relation
He said he would never again cringe before his father
He said that he was going to invent full-time
He said he loved me that going into me
He said was going into the world and the sky
He said all the buckles were very firm
He said the wax was the best wax
He said Wait for me here on the beach
He said Just don't cry
I remember the gulls and the waves
I remember the islands going dark on the sea
I remember the girls laughing
I remember they said he only wanted to get away from me
I remember mother saying: Inventors are like poets, a trashy lot
I remember she told me those who try out inventions are worse
I remember she added: Women who love such are the worst of all
I have been waiting all day, or perhaps longer.
I would have liked to try those wings myself.
It would have been better than this.
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| Friday, May 8th, 2009
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8:15 pm
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Dream On by James Tate
Some people go their whole lives
without ever writing a single poem.
Extraordinary people who don't hesitate
to cut somebody's heart or skull open.
They go to baseball games with the greatest of ease.
and play a few rounds of golf as if it were nothing.
These same people stroll into a church
as if that were a natural part of life.
Investing money is second nature to them.
They contribute to political campaigns
that have absolutely no poetry in them
and promise none for the future.
They sit around the dinner table at night
and pretend as though nothing is missing.
Their children get caught shoplifting at the mall
and no one admits that it is poetry they are missing.
The family dog howls all night,
lonely and starving for more poetry in his life.
Why is it so difficult for them to see
that, without poetry, their lives are effluvial.
Sure, they have their banquets, their celebrations,
croquet, fox hunts, their sea shores and sunsets,
their cocktails on the balcony, dog races,
and all that kissing and hugging, and don't
forget the good deeds, the charity work,
nursing the baby squirrels all through the night,
filling the birdfeeders all winter,
helping the stranger change her tire.
Still, there's that disagreeable exhalation
from decaying matter, subtle but everpresent.
They walk around erect like champions.
They are smooth-spoken and witty.
When alone, rare occasion, they stare
into the mirror for hours, bewildered.
There was something they meant to say, but didn't:
"And if we put the statue of the rhinoceros
next to the tweezers, and walk around the room three times,
learn to yodel, shave our heads, call
our ancestors back from the dead--"
poetrywise it's still a bust, bankrupt.
You haven't scribbled a syllable of it.
You're a nowhere man misfiring
the very essence of your life, flustering
nothing from nothing and back again.
The hereafter may not last all that long.
Radiant childhood sweetheart,
secret code of everlasting joy and sorrow,
fanciful pen strokes beneath the eyelids:
all day, all night meditation, knot of hope,
kernel of desire, pure ordinariness of life
seeking, through poetry, a benediction
or a bed to lie down on, to connect, reveal,
explore, to imbue meaning on the day's extravagant labor.
And yet it's cruel to expect too much.
It's a rare species of bird
that refuses to be categorized.
Its song is barely audible.
It is like a dragonfly in a dream--
here, then there, then here again,
low-flying amber-wing darting upward
then out of sight.
And the dream has a pain in its heart
the wonders of which are manifold,
or so the story is told.
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| Sunday, May 3rd, 2009
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12:05 pm
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[In Colorado, In Oregon, upon]
In Colorado, In Oregon, upon
each beloved fork, a birthday is celebrated.
I miss each and every one of my friends.
I believe in getting something for nothing.
Push the chair, and what I can tell you
with almost complete certainty
is that the chair won't mind.
And beyond hope,
I expect it is like this everywhere.
Music soothing people.
Change rolling under tables.
The immaculate cutoff so that we may continue.
A particular pair of trees waking up against the window.
This partnership of mind, and always now
in want of forgiveness. That forgiveness be
the domain of the individual,
like music or personal investment.
Great forward-thinking people brought us
the newspaper, and look what we have done.
It is time for forgiveness. Dear ones,
unmistakable quality will soon be upon us.
Don't wait for anything else.
- JOSHUA BECKMAN
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| Saturday, April 25th, 2009
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10:33 pm
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A White City
James Schuyler
My thoughts turn south
a white city
we will wake in one another's arms.
I wake
and hear the steampipe knock
like a metal heart
and find it has snowed.
1969
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| Monday, April 20th, 2009
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3:11 pm
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Autobiography Literaria
Frank O'Hara
When I was a child
I played by myself in a
corner of the schoolyard
all alone.
I hated dolls and I
hated games, animals were
not friendly and birds
flew away.
If anyone was looking
for me I hid behind a
tree and cried out "I am
an orphan."
And here I am, the
center of all beauty!
writing these poems!
Imagine!
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| Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
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11:37 pm
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Sorry But It Was Beautiful
by Andrew Vecchione, 6th Grade, in response to WCW
Sorry I took your money and burned it but
it looked
like the world falling apart when it crackled
and burned
So I think it was worth it after all you can't
see the
world fall apart every day.
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| Friday, April 10th, 2009
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7:06 pm
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What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why
Edna St. Vincent Millay
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
1923
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| Sunday, April 5th, 2009
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10:02 pm
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A Dark Thing Inside the Day
by: Linda Gregg
So many want to be lifted by song and dancing,
and this morning it is easy to understand.
I write in the sounds of chirping birds hidden
in the almond trees, the almonds still green
and thriving in the foliage. Up the street,
a man is hammering to make a new house as doves
continue their cooing forever. Bees humming
and high above in the brilliant clear sky.
The roses are blooming and I smell the sweetness.
Everything desirable is here already in abundance.
And the sea. The dark thing is hardly visible
in the leaves, under the sheen. We sleep easily.
So I bring no sad stories to warn the heart.
All the flowers are adult this year. The good
world gives and the white doves praise all of it.
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| Saturday, March 28th, 2009
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11:54 pm - making that joyful noise
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Envoi
by William Meredith
Go, little book. If anybody asks
Why I add poems to a time like this,
Tell how the comeliness I can't take in
Of ships and other figures of content
Compels me still until I give them names;
And how I give them names impatiently,
As who should pull up roses by the roots
That keep him turning on his empty bed,
The smell intolerable and thick with loss.
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| Monday, February 23rd, 2009
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4:21 pm - at home with strangeness
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"I was remembering how the linguist at the University Library insisted that what lives beyond the frontier is invisible to us, because the beings from those regions sate themselves at a different fountain of reason and thus elude our gaze. But I grew more and more convinced that this invisibility was more likely the result of how perfectly we have succeeded in mastering our gaze and keeping it on a short tether. The severity with which we restrict the roving of our eyes seems rather to indicate that we are aware of the fact that our gaze vaguely recognizes the monsters on the margins and that we fear it might encounter some familiar beasts and strike up a conversation that would recall an old friendship and a forgotten common language."
--From The Other City by Michal Ajvaz
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| Wednesday, February 11th, 2009
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12:14 am
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wow.
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