The Poetry Thread

**Reflection** · October 20, 2009, 07:22 PM

a poem is a frozen moment
melted by each reader for themselves
to flow into the here and now.
—hilde domin

Do you read poetry? Post here on KHI's "favorite poems" archive. Added in chronological posting order. Happy reading!

Spoiler: curiosity - alastair reid

may have killed the cat; more likely
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. to distrust
what is always said, what seems
to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,
leave home, smell rats, have hunches
do not endear cats to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

face it. curiosity
will not cause us to die—
only lack of it will.
never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.

only the curious
have, if they live, a tale
worth telling at all.

dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible,
are changeable, marry too many wives,
desert their children, chill all dinner tables
with tales of their nine lives.
well, they are lucky. let them be
nine-lived and contradictory,
curious enough to change, prepared to pay
the cat price, which is to die
and die again and again,
each time with no less pain.
a cat minority of one
is all that can be counted on
to tell the truth. and what cats have to tell
on each return from hell
is this: that dying is what the living do,
that dying is what the loving do,
and that dead dogs are those who do not know
that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

Spoiler: song of powers - david mason

mine, said the stone,
mine is the hour.
I crush the scissors,
such is my power.
stronger than wishes,
my power, alone.

mine, said the paper,
mine are the words
that smother the stone
with imagined birds,
reams of them, flown
from the mind of the shaper.

mine, said the scissors,
mine all the knives
gashing through paper’s
ethereal lives;
nothing’s so proper
as tattering wishes.

as stone crushes scissors,
as paper snuffs stone
and scissors cut paper,
all end alone.
so heap up your paper
and scissor your wishes
and uproot the stone
from the top of the hill.
they all end alone
as you will, you will.

Spoiler: grief - elizabeth barrett browning

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
that only men incredulous of despair,
half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
beat upward to god's throne in loud access
of shrieking and reproach. full desertness,
in souls as countries, lieth silent-bare
under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
of the absolute Heavens. deep-hearted man, express
grief for thy dead in silence like to death—
most like a monumental statue set
in everlasting watch and moveless woe
till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet:
if it could weep, it could arise and go.

Spoiler: the hollow men - t.s. eliot

I.
we are the hollow men
we are the stuffed men
leaning together
headpiece filled with straw. alas!
our dried voices, when
we whisper together
are quiet and meaningless
as wind in dry grass
or rats' feet over broken glass
in our dry cellar
shape without form, shade without colour,
paralysed force, gesture without motion;
those who have crossed
with direct eyes, to death's other kingdom
remember us — if at all — not as lost
violent souls, but only
as the hollow men
the stuffed men.

II.
eyes I dare not meet in dreams
in death's dream kingdom
these do not appear:
there, the eyes are
sunlight on a broken column
there, is a tree swinging
and voices are
in the wind's singing
more distant and more solemn
than a fading star.
let me be no nearer
in death's dream kingdom
let me also wear
such deliberate disguises
rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
in a field
behaving as the wind behaves
no nearer —
not that final meeting
in the twilight kingdom

III.
this is the dead land
this is cactus land
here the stone images
are raised, here they receive
the supplication of a dead man's hand
under the twinkle of a fading star.
is it like this
in death's other kingdom
waking alone
at the hour when we are
trembling with tenderness
lips that would kiss
form prayers to broken stone.

IV.
the eyes are not here
there are no eyes here
in this valley of dying stars
in this hollow valley
this broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
in this last of meeting places
we grope together
and avoid speech
gathered on this beach of the tumid river
sightless, unless
the eyes reappear
as the perpetual star
multifoliate rose
of death's twilight kingdom
the hope only
of empty men.

V.
here we go round the prickly pear
prickly pear prickly pear
here we go round the prickly pear
at five o'clock in the morning.
between the idea
and the reality
between the motion
and the act
falls the shadow
for thine is the kingdom
between the conception
and the creation
between the emotion
and the response
falls the shadow
life is very long
between the desire
and the spasm
between the potency
and the existence
between the essence
and the descent
falls the shadow
for thine is the kingdom
for thine is
life is
for thine is the
this is the way the world ends
this is the way the world ends
this is the way the world ends
not with a bang but a whimper.

Spoiler: art - charles bukowski

as the
spirit
wanes,
the
form
appears

Spoiler: as I grow older - langston hughes

it was a long time ago.
I have almost forgotten my dream.
but it was there then,
in front of me,
bright like a sun—
my dream.
and then the wall rose,
rose slowly,
slowly,
between me and my dream.
rose until it touched the sky—
the wall.
shadow.
I am black.
I lie down in the shadow.
no longer the light of my dream before me,
above me.
only the thick wall.
only the shadow.
my hands!
my dark hands!
break through the wall!
find my dream!
help me to shatter this darkness,
to smash this night,
to break this shadow
into a thousand lights of sun,
into a thousand whirling dreams
of sun!

Spoiler: conscientious objector - edna st. vincent millay

I shall die, but
that is all that I shall do for death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall;
I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
he is in haste; he has business in cuba,
business in the balkans, many calls to make this morning.
but I will not hold the bridle
while he clinches the girth.
and he may mount by himself:
I will not give him a leg up.

though he flick my shoulders with his whip,
I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
with his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where
the black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for death;
I am not on his pay-roll.

I will not tell him the whereabouts of my friends
nor of my enemies either.
though he promise me much,
I will not map him the route to any man’s door.
am I a spy in the land of the living,
that I should deliver men to death?
brother, the password and the plans of our city
are safe with me; never through me
shall you be overcome.

Spoiler: i am - john clare

I AM! yet what I am none cares or knows,
my friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
they rise and vanish, an oblivious host,
like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
and yet I am! and live with shadows tost

into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
into the living sea of waking dreams,
where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
but the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
and e'en the dearest—that I loved the best—
are strange—nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
a place where woman never smil'd or wept;
there to abide with my creator, god,
and sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
the grass below—above the vaulted sky.

Spoiler: lady lazarus - sylvia plath

I have done it again.
one year in every ten
I manage it—

a sort of walking miracle, my skin
bright as a nazi lampshade,
my right foot

a paperweight,
my face a featureless, fine
jew linen.

peel off the napkin
o my enemy.
do I terrify?—

the nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
the sour breath
will vanish in a day.

soon, soon the flesh
the grave cave ate will be
at home on me

and I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
and like the cat I have nine times to die.

this is number three.
what a trash
to annihilate each decade.

what a million filaments.
the peanut-crunching crowd
shoves in to see

them unwrap me hand and foot
the big strip tease.
gentlemen, ladies

these are my hands
my knees.
I may be skin and bone,

nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
the first time it happened I was ten.
it was an accident.

the second time I meant
to last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

as a seashell.
they had to call and call
and pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

dying
is an art, like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

it's easy enough to do it in a cell.
it's easy enough to do it and stay put.
it's the theatrical

comeback in broad day
to the same place, the same face, the same brute
amused shout:

'a miracle!'
that knocks me out.
there is a charge

for the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
for the hearing of my heart—
it really goes.

and there is a charge, a very large charge
for a word or a touch
or a bit of blood

or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
so, so, herr doktor.
so, herr enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
the pure gold baby

that melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
do not think I underestimate your great concern.

ash, ash —
you poke and stir.
flesh, bone, there is nothing there—

a cake of soap,
a wedding ring,
a gold filling.

herr god, herr lucifer
beware
beware.

out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
and I eat men like air.

Spoiler: america - allen ginsberg

america I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
america two dollars and twentyseven cents january
17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
america when will we end the human war?
go fcuk yourself with your atom bomb.
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
america when will you be angelic?
when will you take off your clothes?
when will you look at yourself through the grave?
when will you be worthy of your million trotskyites?
america why are your libraries full of tears?
america when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
when can I go into the supermarket and buy what I
need with my good looks?
america after all it is you and I who are perfect not
the next world.
your machinery is too much for me.
you made me want to be a saint.
there must be some other way to settle this argument.
burroughs is in tangiers I don't think he'll come back
it's sinister.
are you being sinister or is this some form of practical
joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
america stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
america the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday
somebody goes on trial for murder.
america I feel sentimental about the wobblies.
america I used to be a communist when I was a kid
I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses
in the closet.
when I go to chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
my mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
you should have seen me reading marx.
my psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the lord's prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
america I still haven't told you what you did to uncle
max after he came over from russia.

I'm addressing you.
are you going to let your emotional life be run by
time magazine?
I'm obsessed by time magazine.
I read it every week.
its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner
candystore.
I read it in the basement of the berkeley public library.
it's always telling me about responsibility. business-
men are serious. movie producers are serious.
everybody's serious but me.
it occurs to me that I am america.
I am talking to myself again.
asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
my national resources consist of two joints of
marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable
private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour
and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of
underprivileged who live in my flowerpots
under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of france, tangiers
is the next to go.
my ambition is to be president despite the fact that
I'm a catholic.
america how can I write a holy litany in your silly
mood?
I will continue like henry ford my strophes are as
individual as his automobiles more so they're
all different sexes.
america I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500
down on your old strophe
america free tom mooney
america save the spanish loyalists
america sacco & vanzetti must not die
america I am the scottsboro boys.
america when I was seven momma took me to com-
munist cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a
handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and
sentimental about the workers it was all so sin-
cere you have no idea what a good thing the
party was in 1835 scott nearing was a grand
old man a real mensch mother bloor made me
cry I once saw israel amter plain. everybody
must have been a spy.
america you don't really want to go to war.
america it's them bad russians.
them russians them russians and them chinamen.
and them russians.
the russia wants to eat us alive. the russia's power
mad. she wants to take our cars from out our
garages.
her wants to grab chicago. her needs a red readers'
dgest. her wants our auto plants in siberia.
him big bureaucracy running our fillingsta-
tions.
that no good. ugh. him make indians learn read.
him need big black ******s. hah. her make us
all work sixteen hours a day. help.
america this is quite serious.
america this is the impression I get from looking in
the television set.
america is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
it's true I don't want to join the army or turn lathes
in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and
psychopathic anyway.
america I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

Spoiler: legend - hart crane

as silent as a mirror is believed
realities plunge in silence by...

I am not ready for repentance;
nor to snatch regrets. for the moth
bends no more than the still
imploring flame. and tremorous
in the white falling flakes
kisses are, —
the only worth all granting.

it is to be learned—
this cleaving and this burning,
but only by the one who
spends out himself again.

twice and twice
(again the smoking souvenir,
bleeding eidolon!) and yet again.
until the bright logic is won
unwhispering as a mirror
is believed.

then, drop by caustic drop, a perfect cry
shall string some constant harmony, —
relentless caper for all those who step
the legend of their youth into the noon.

Spoiler: the gates between - elizabeth s. phelps

pearl-white, opaque and fixed fast,
flashing between the hands unclasped,
blinding between despairing eyes,
the awful gates shut to, at last,
on comfort snatched, and anguish done,
pn every moan beneath the sun,
till we and ours, and joy are one.

this is your hour, gates of god,
your solemn hour, bars of gold,
but there shall come another yet.
like silken sails you shall be furled,
like melting mist you shall be set.

oh, ye the dearest! vanished from
love's little inner, sheltered spot.
to ye I whisper; not forget,
but loved the dearer, namèd not.
across the barrier old as life,
lean to us from the silent world.

Spoiler: annabel lee - poe

it was many and many a year ago,
in a kingdom by the sea
that a maiden there lived whom you may know
by the name of annabel lee—
and this maiden she lived with no other thought
than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
in this kingdom by the sea,
but we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my annabel lee—
with a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
coveted her and me.

and this was the reason that, long ago,
in this kingdom by the sea,
a wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
my beautiful annabel lee;
so that her highborn kinsmen came
and bore her away from me,
to shut her up in a sepulchre
in this kingdom by the sea.

the angels, not half so happy in heaven,
went envying her and me—
yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
in this kingdom by the sea)
that the wind came out of the cloud by night,
chilling and killing my annabel lee.

but our love it was stronger by far than the love
of those who were older than we--
of many far wiser than we—
and neither the angels in heaven above,
nor the demons down under the sea,
can ever dissever my soul from the soul
of the beautiful annabel lee:

for the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
of the beautiful annabel lee:
and the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
of the beautiful annabel lee:
and so, all the night-tide, I lay down by the side
of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
in the sepulchre there by the sea—
in her tomb by the sounding sea.

Spoiler: for annie - poe

thank heaven! the crisis—
the danger is past,
and the lingering illness
is over at last—
and the fever called "living"
is conquered at last.

sadly, I know
I am shorn of my strength,
and no muscle I move
as I lie at full length—
but no matter!—I feel
I am better at length.

and I rest so composedly,
now, in my bed
that any beholder
might fancy me dead—
might start at beholding me,
thinking me dead.

the moaning and groaning,
the sighing and sobbing,
are quieted now,
with that horrible throbbing
at heart: —ah, that horrible,
horrible throbbing!

the sickness— the nausea—
the pitiless pain—
have ceased, with the fever
that maddened my brain—
with the fever called "living"
that burned in my brain.

and oh! of all tortures
that torture the worst
has abated—the terrible
torture of thirst
for the naphthaline river
of passion accurst:
—I have drunk of a water
that quenches all thirst:

—of a water that flows,
with a lullaby sound,
from a spring but a very few
feet under ground—
from a cavern not very far
down under ground.

and ah! let it never
be foolishly said
that my room it is gloomy
and narrow my bed;
for man never slept
in a different bed—
and, to sleep, you must slumber
in just such a bed.

my tantalized spirit
here blandly reposes,
forgetting, or never
regretting its roses—
its old agitations
of myrtles and roses:

for now, while so quietly
lying, it fancies
a holier odor
about it, of pansies—
a rosemary odor,
commingled with pansies—
with rue and the beautiful
puritan pansies.

and so it lies happily,
bathing in many
a dream of the truth
and the beauty of annie—
drowned in a bath
of the tresses of annie.

she tenderly kissed me,
she fondly caressed,
and then I fell gently
to sleep on her breast—
deeply to sleep
from the heaven of her breast.

when the light was extinguished,
she covered me warm,
and she prayed to the angels
to keep me from harm—
to the queen of the angels
to shield me from harm.

and I lie so composedly,
now, in my bed,
(knowing her love)
that you fancy me dead—
and I rest so contentedly,
now, in my bed,
(with her love at my breast)
that you fancy me dead—
that you shudder to look at me,
thinking me dead.

but my heart it is brighter
than all of the many
stars in the sky,
for it sparkles with annie—
it glows with the light
of the love of my annie—
with the thought of the light
of the eyes of my annie.

Spoiler: the sleeper - poe

at midnight, in the month of june,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
an opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
exhales from out her golden rim,
and softly dripping, drop by drop,
upon the quiet mountain top,
steals drowsily and musically
into the universal valley.
the rosemary nods upon the grave;
the lily lolls upon the wave;
wrapping the fog about its breast,
the ruin moulders into rest;
looking like lethe, see! the lake
a conscious slumber seems to take,
and would not, for the world, awake.
all beauty sleeps!—and lo! where lies
irene, with her destinies!

oh, lady bright! can it be right—
this window open to the night?
the wanton airs, from the tree-top,
laughingly through the lattice drop—
the bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
flit through thy chamber in and out,
and wave the curtain canopy
so fitfully—so fearfully—
above the closed and fringéd lid
’neath which thy slumb’ring soul lies hid,
that, o’er the floor and down the wall,
like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
why and what art thou dreaming here?
sure thou art come o’er far-off seas,
a wonder to these garden trees!
strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress!
strange, above all, thy length of tress,
and this all solemn silentness!

the lady sleeps! oh, may her sleep,
which is enduring, so be deep!
heaven have her in its sacred keep!
this chamber changed for one more holy,
this bed for one more melancholy,
I pray to god that she may lie
forever with unopened eye,
while the pale sheeted ghosts go by!

my love, she sleeps! oh, may her sleep,
as it is lasting, so be deep!
soft may the worms about her creep!
far in the forest, dim and old,
for her may some tall vault unfold—
some vault that oft hath flung its black
and wingéd pannels fluttering back,
triumphant, o’er the crested palls
of her grand family funerals—

some sepulchre, remote, alone,
against whose portals she hath thrown,
in childhood, many an idle stone—
some tomb from out whose sounding door
she ne’er shall force an echo more,
thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
it was the dead who groaned within.

Spoiler: i wandered lonely as a cloud - wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
that floats on high o'er vales and hills,
when all at once I saw a crowd,
a host, of golden daffodils;
beside the lake, beneath the trees,
fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

continuous as the stars that shine
and twinkle on the milky way,
they stretched in never-ending line
along the margin of a bay:
ten thousand saw I at a glance,
tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

the waves beside them danced; but they
out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
a poet could not but be gay,
in such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
what wealth the show to me had brought:

for oft, when on my couch I lie
in vacant or in pensive mood,
they flash upon that inward eye
which is the bliss of solitude;
and then my heart with pleasure fills,
and dances with the daffodils.

Spoiler: a learned man came to me once - stephen crane

a learned man came to me once.
he said, "I know the way — come."
and I was overjoyed at this.
together we hastened.
soon, too soon, were we
where my eyes were useless,
and I knew not the ways of my feet.
I clung to the hand of my friend;
but at last he cried, "I am lost."

Spoiler: a man went before a strange god - stephen crane

a man went before a strange god —
the god of many men, sadly wise.
and the deity thundered loudly,
fat with rage, and puffing.
"kneel, mortal, and cringe
and grovel and do homage
to my particularly sublime majesty."

the man fled.

then the man went to another god —
the god of his inner thoughts.
and this one looked at him
with soft eyes
lit with infinite comprehension,
and said, "my poor child!"

Spoiler: a man said to the universe - stephen crane

a man said to the universe:
"sir, I exist!"
"however," replied the universe,
"the fact has not created in me
a sense of obligation."

Spoiler: i carry your heart with me - e.e. cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Spoiler: their faces shall be as flames - g.c. waldrep

that was the spring the bees disappeared, we didn’t know
where they went, where they’d gone, where they were going, it was a
rapture of the bees, only the weak, the young, the freshly dead
left behind, a rapture of bees, my neighbor with the ducks had begun to walk
like a duck, follow follow follow sam he sang as he walked, and they followed,
it was that simple, of course I thought of the piper, although
this procession was more benign, my neighbor’s I mean, though he intended
to have each for dinner, eventually, and he did not name them,
as we don’t name bees, because we don’t see clearly enough
to distinguish them as persons, person in the grammatical sense, first second
or third, which is why we refer to them in the collective, usually,
they breed, they swarm, they milk their honey for us
in the collective, and they vanish collectively, is this then the true
rapture, was the one true god after all a god of bees, and now she is taking
them home, is this any more comforting than all the other proposed explanations,
pesticide, fungus, mites, electromagnetism, even the infrasound the giant
windmills make, that sends the bats and raptors
to their deaths, all invention gone awry, hive after hive
suddenly empty, as if they’d all flown out less than purposefully, casually,
and somehow forgotten to come back, held up at the doctor’s or the u-haul
dealer’s, swarms of them, hundreds, thousands vagabond
in some other landscape, or rising, we shall meet them in the air,
at the post office to mail a letter to a woman who might or might not be my love
because a rate change had caught me with insufficient postage
I had to wait, the clerk was preoccupied with a sort of crate
made of wire mesh, through which I could see bees, resistant the clerk said
as she filled out the forms and sent them, registered parcel post, somewhere
else, only then did she sell me the stamp I needed,
or thought I needed, or hoped to need (there is a season
when one hopes to need), and I thought about what it would be like
to mail a crate of bees, resistant, to my love, if I had a love, and have them
vanish en route, the mesh crate arriving dusty, empty, one or two
broken, desiccated bodies rattling lightly around inside, like seeds in a gourd,
or like a child you’ll never have, that is, the possibility of that child, the rattling
blood of it, a different sort of vanishing, we would all like to believe
in the act, that houdini was a man, only a man, as he proved in the moment
and by the precise circumstance of his death, and the fact of his body,
lifeless but extant, rattling around the arcade, the park, the amusement pier
of disturbing coincidences, while in missouri another hobbyist beekeeper
walks out to her tomblike hives on a spring morning
to find nothing there, just boxes, empty boxes, a sort of game
a child might invent, this rapture, same sort of funny story
a child will invent, when shown a photograph, this is the policeman,
and this is the woman with two heads, and this, which looks like a modest
red house in a suburb, this is really the ghost of the bees,
a small ghost, a modest ghost, like the ghosts of the locusts and the elms,
not a ghost to trouble us, until (in the photograph) the house spreads its wings
and vanishes, as houses do, or as houses will when the rapture extends
to architecture, the god of small houses having, first, existed, and then wed
the bee god, so that we are left sleeping alone again, and out of doors, in spring,
as one more source of sweetness is subtracted from this world
and added to another, perhaps, as we would like to think, one of the
more comforting ideas, a sort of economics, a grand
accounting, until what angel of houses or of bees blows what trumpet,
and we fall as mountains upon the insects, devour them as seas,
scorch the houses as with fire, we become the ground that hollows beneath
them and the air they fly through, their wormwood star, as all the bees of heaven
watch from heaven and all the houses of heaven lean down
for a closer look, and the smoke drifts upward, and we are the smoke, we are
only the smoke, inside of which my neighbor walks, with his ducks, and sings,
and they follow, and my hive lazes, drowses as if they or it were dreaming
us, as if they or us were touchable, simple as a story, an explanation,
any fiction, as if they thought of us, or were praying, or were dancing,
or were lonely, as if they could be, or would be, touched.

Spoiler: the tyger - william blake

tyger! tyger! burning bright
in the forests of the night,
what immortal hand or eye
could frame thy fearful symmetry?

in what distant deeps or skies
burnt the fire of thine eyes?
on what wings dare he aspire?
what the hand dare seize the fire?

and what shoulder, & what art
could twist the sinews of thy heart?
and when thy heart began to beat,
what dread hand? & what dread feet?

what the hammer? what the chain?
in what furnace was thy brain?
what the anvil? what dread grasp
dare its deadly terrors clasp?

when the stars threw down their spears,
and watered heaven with their tears,
did he smile his work to see?
did he who made the Lamb make thee?

tyger! tyger! burning bright
in the forests of the night,
what immortal hand or eye
could frame thy fearful symmetry

Spoiler: how we danced - anne sexton

the night of my cousin's wedding
I wore blue.
I was nineteen
and we danced, father, we orbited.
we moved like angels washing themselves.
we moved like two birds on fire.
then we moved like the sea in a jar,
slower and slower.
the orchestra played
"oh how we danced on the night we were wed."
and you waltzed me like a lazy susan
and we were dear,
very dear.
now that you are laid out,
useless as a blind dog,
now that you no longer lurk,
the song rings in my head.
pure oxygen was the champagne we drank
and clicked our glasses, one to one.
the champagne breathed like a skin diver
and the glasses were crystal and the bride
and groom gripped each other in sleep
like nineteen-thirty marathon dancers.
mother was a belle and danced with twenty men.
you danced with me never saying a word.
instead the serpent spoke as you held me close.
the serpent, that mocker, woke up and pressed against me
like a great god and we bent together
like two lonely swans.

Spoiler: common magic - bronwen wallace

the old man
across from you on the bus holds
a young child on his knee; he is singing
to her and his voice is a small boy
turning somersaults in the green
country of his blood.
it’s only when the driver calls his stop
that he emerges into this puzzle
of brick and tiny hedges. only then
you notice his shaking hands, his need
of the child to guide him home.

all over the city
you move in your own seasons
through the seasons of others: old women faces
clawed by weather you can’t feel
clack dry tongues at passersby
while adolescente seethe
in their glassy atmospheres of anger.

in parks, the children
are alien life-forms, rooted
in the galaxies they’re grown through
to get here. their games weave
the interface and their laughter
tickles that part of your brain where smells
are hidden and the nuzzling textures of things.

it’s a wonder that anything gets done
at all: a mechanic flails
at the muffler of your car
through whatever storm he’s trapped inside
and the mailman stares at numbers
from the haze of a distant summer.

yet somehow letters arrive and buses
remember their routes. banks balance.
mangoes ripen on the supermarket shelves.
everyone manages. you gulp the thin air
of this planet as if it were the only
one you knew. even the earth you’re
standing on seems solid enough.
it’s always the chance word, unthinking
gesture that unlocks the face before you.
reveals intricate countries
deep within the eyes. the hidden
lives, like sudden miracles,
that breathe there.

Spoiler: lucifer - dean young

you can read almost anything
about angels, how they bite off
the heads first, copulate with tigers,
tortured miles davis until he stuck
a mute in his trumpet to torture them back.
the pornographic magazines ported
into the redwoods. the sweetened breath
of the starving. the prize livestock
rolls over on her larval young,
the wooden dwarf turning in the cogs
of the clockworks. I would have
a black bra hanging from the shower rod.
I would have you up against
the refrigerator with its magnets
for insurance agents and oyster bars.
miracles, ripped thumbnails,
everything a piece of something else,
archangelic, shadow-clawed,
the frolicking despair of repeating
decimals because it never comes out even.
mostly the world is lava’s rhythm,
the impurities of darkness
sometimes called stars. mostly
the world is assignations, divorces
conducted between rooftops. forever
and forever the checkbook unbalanced,
the beautiful bodies bent back
like paper clips, the discharged
blandishing cardboard signs by the exits.
coppers and silvers and radiant traces,
gold flecks from our last brush,
brushfires. always they’re espousing
accuracy when it’s accident, the arrow
not in the aimed-for heart but throat
that has the say. there are no transitions,
only falls.

Spoiler: pastoral - jennifer chang

something in the field is
working away. root-noise.
twig-noise. plant
of weak chlorophyll, no
name for it. something
in the field has mastered
distance by living too close
to fences. yellow fruit, has it
pit or seeds? stalk of wither. grass-
noise fighting weed-noise. dirt
and chant. something in the
field. coreopsis. I did not mean
to say that. yellow petal, has it
wither-gift? has it gorgeous
rash? leaf-loss and worried
sprout, its bursting art. some-
thing in the. field fallowed and
cicada. I did not mean to
say. has it roar and bloom?
has it road and follow? a thistle
prick, fraught burrs, such
easy attachment. stem-
and stamen-noise. can I lime-
flower? can I chamomile?
something in the field cannot.

Spoiler: daydreams for ginsberg - jack kerouac

I lie on my back at midnight
hearing the marvelous strange chime
of the clocks, and know it's mid-
night and in that instant the whole
world swims into sight for me
in the form of beautiful swarm-
ing m u t t a worlds-
everything is happening, shining
buhudda-lands,
bhuti

blazing in faith, I know I'm
forever right & all's I got to
do (as I hear the ordinary
extant voices of ladies talking
in some kitchen at midnight
oilcloth cups of cocoa
cardore to mump the
rinnegain in his
darlin drain-) i will write
it, all the talk of the world
everywhere in this morning, leav-
ing open parentheses sections
for my own accompanying inner
thoughts-with roars of me
all brain-all world
roaring-vibrating-I put
it down, swiftly, 1,000 words
(of pages) compressed into one second
of time-I'll be long
robed & long gold haired in
the famous greek afternoon
of some greek city
fame immortal & they'll
have to find me where they find
the t h n u p f t of my
shroud bags flying
flag yagging lucien
midnight back in their
mouths-gore vidal'll
be amazed, annoyed-
my words'll be writ in gold
& preserved in libraries like
finnegans wake & visions of neal

Spoiler: underneath - jorie graham

spring
up, up you go, you must be introduced.
you must learn belonging to (no-one)
drenched in the white veil (day)
the circle of minutes pushed gleaming onto your finger.

gaps pocking the brightness where you try to see in.
missing: corners, fields,
completeness: holes growing in it where the eye looks hardest.
below, his chest, a sacred weightless place

and the small weight of your open hand on it.
and these legs, look, still yours, after all you've done with them.
explain the six missing seeds.

explain muzzled.
explain tongue breaks thin fire in eyes.
learn what the great garden-(up, up you go)-exteriority, exhales:
the green never-the-less the green who-did-you-say-you-are

and how it seems to stare all the time, that green,
until night blinds it temporarily.
what is it searching for all the leaves turning towards you.
breath the emptiest of the freedoms.
when will they notice the hole in your head (they won't).
when will they feel for the hole in your chest (never).
up, go. let being-seen drift over you again, sticky kindness.
those wet strangely unstill eyes filling their heads-
thinking or sight?-
all waiting for the true story-
your heart, beating its little song: explain . . .

explain requited

explain indeed the blood of your lives I will require
explain the strange weight of meanwhile

and there exists another death in regards to which

we are not immortal

variegated dappled spangled intricately wrought
complicated obstruse subtle devious
scintillating with change and ambiguity

summer

explain two are

explain not one
(in theory) (and in practice)
blurry, my love, like a right quotation,
wanting so to sink back down,
you washing me in soil now, my shoulders dust, my rippling dust,
look I'll scrub the dirt listen.
up here how will I
(not) hold you.
where is the dirt packed in again around us between us obliterating difference
must one leave off explain edges

(tongue breaks) (thin fire) (in eyes)
and bless. and blame.
(moonless night.

vase in the kitchen)

fall

explain duty to remain to the end.
duty not to run away from the good.
the good.
(beauty is not an issue.)
a wise man wants?
a master.

winter

oh my beloved I speak of the absolute jewels.
dwelling in place for example.
in fluted listenings.
in panting waters human-skinned to the horizon.
muzzled the deep.
fermenting the surface.
wrecks left at the bottom, yes.
space birdless.
light on it a woman on her knees-her having kneeled everywhere
already.
god's laughter unquenchable.
back there its river ripped into pieces, length gone, buried in parts, in
sand.
believe me I speak now for the sand.
here at the front end, the narrator.
at the front end, the meanwhile: god's laughter.
are you still waiting for the true story? (god's laughter)
the difference between what is and could be? (god's laughter)
in this dance the people do not move.
deferred defied obstructed hungry,
organized around a radiant absence.
in his dance the people do not move.

Spoiler: a poison tree - william blake

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

and I watered it in fears
night and morning with my tears,
and I sunned it with smiles
and with soft deceitful wiles.

and it grew both day and night,
till it bore an apple bright,
and my foe beheld it shine,
and he knew that it was mine -

and into my garden stole
when the night had veiled the pole;
in the morning, glad, I see
my foe outstretched beneath the tree.

Spoiler: the sciences sing a lullaby - albert goldbarth

physics says: go to sleep. Of course
you’re tired. every atom in you
has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes
nonstop from mitosis to now.
quit tapping your feet. they’ll dance
inside themselves without you. go to sleep.

geology says: it will be all right. slow inch
by inch america is giving itself
to the ocean. go to sleep. let darkness
lap at your sides. give darkness an inch.
you aren’t alone. all of the continents used to be
one body. you aren’t alone. go to sleep.

astronomy says: the sun will rise tomorrow,
zoology says: on rainbow-fish and lithe gazelle,
psychology says: but first it has to be night, so
biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town
and
history says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down.

Spoiler: things - lisel mueller

what happened is, we grew lonely
living among the things,
so we gave the clock a face,
the chair a back,
the table four stout legs
which will never suffer fatigue.

we fitted our shoes with tongues
as smooth as our own
and hung tongues inside bells
so we could listen
to their emotional language,

and because we loved graceful profiles
the pitcher received a lip,
the bottle a long, slender neck.

even what was beyond us
was recast in our image;
we gave the country a heart,
the storm an eye,
the cave a mouth
so we could pass into safety.

Spoiler: bluebird - charles bukowski

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

Spoiler: forgetfulness - billy collins

the name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of paraguay.

whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

it has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

no wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
no wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Spoiler: on turning ten - billy collins

the whole idea of it makes me feel
like I’m coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light—
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

you tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
but I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
at four I was an arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
at seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

but now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

this is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
it is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

it seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
if you cut me I could shine.
but now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

Spoiler: an excerpt from a magnetic personality - jason guriel

a rose is a rose
that arose, a magnetic
personality very
nearly said. she knew
how to draw
this one painter
to her place in paris
and make him something
greater. (she knew
how to cube him.)
but the magnetic
can turn on
a dime and go
all red like a face
of a rubik’s cube.
in fact, its flip
side can repel what it
once sucked in—
all those friends,
romans, countrymen,
cubists.

Spoiler: an excerpt from berkeley eclogue - robert hass

sunlight on the streets in the afternoon
and shadows on the faces in the open-air-cafes.
what for? wrong question. you knock
without knowing that you knocked. the door
opens on a century of clouds and centuries
of centuries of clouds. the bird sings
among the toyons in the spring’s diligence
of rain. and then what? hand on your heart.
would you die for spring? what would you die for?
anything?

Spoiler: somewhere I have never traveled - e.e. cummings

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 near

your 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 rose

or 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 color 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

**Pelafina** · October 20, 2009, 11:11 PM

I don't care if he's a hipster poet or whatever, I love T.S. Eliot's work.

Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.

A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

**Nyangoro** · October 20, 2009, 11:15 PM

You all should have seen this coming a mile away!

Spoiler: "Raven" - Edgar Allen Poe

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more,'

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; -
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!'
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!'
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
`Surely,' said I, `surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
'Tis the wind and nothing more!'

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
`Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, `art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as `Nevermore.'

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before -
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'
Then the bird said, `Nevermore.'

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
`Doubtless,' said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore -
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never-nevermore."'

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore -
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking `Nevermore.'

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
`Wretch,' I cried, `thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee
Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -
Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting -
`Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!

**Trag** · October 20, 2009, 11:46 PM

Art
by bukowski

As the
spirit
wanes,
the
form
appears

I don't really care for poetry, though.

**King Sora X** · October 28, 2009, 04:35 AM

Originally Posted by Nevermore

You all should have seen this coming a mile away!

Spoiler: "Raven" - Edgar Allen Poe

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more,'

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; -
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!'
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!'
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
`Surely,' said I, `surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
'Tis the wind and nothing more!'

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
`Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, `art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as `Nevermore.'

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before -
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'
Then the bird said, `Nevermore.'

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
`Doubtless,' said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore -
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never-nevermore."'

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore -
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking `Nevermore.'

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
`Wretch,' I cried, `thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee
Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -
Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting -
`Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!

Yes we all know you love Edgar Allan Poe, who doesn't, all of his poems are epically good :3

**revarai20** · October 29, 2009, 09:56 PM

Genius idea as I love poetry! :]

Ah yes, Langston Hughes.

As I Grow Older by Langston Hughes:

[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333][COLOR=#333333][FONT=Arial]It was a long time ago.[/FONT][/COLOR]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]I have almost forgotten my dream.[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]But it was there then,[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]In front of me,[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]Bright like a sun--[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]My dream.[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]And then the wall rose,[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]Rose slowly,[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]Slowly,[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]Between me and my dream.[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]Rose until it touched the sky--[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]The wall.[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]Shadow.[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]I am black.[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]I lie down in the shadow.[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]No longer the light of my dream before me,[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]Above me.[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]Only the thick wall.[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]Only the shadow.[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]My hands![/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]My dark hands![/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]Break through the wall![/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]Find my dream![/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]Help me to shatter this darkness,[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]To smash this night,[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]To break this shadow[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]Into a thousand lights of sun,[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]Into a thousand whirling dreams[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=#333333]Of sun! [/COLOR][/FONT][/COLOR][/FONT]

**Pelafina** · November 21, 2009, 06:11 PM

Here are two more that I've always liked, especially the first.

Conscientious Objector - Edna St. Vincent Millay

I shall die, but
that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall;
I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba,
business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle
while he clinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself:
I will not give him a leg up.

Though he flick my shoulders with his whip,
I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where
the black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death;
I am not on his pay-roll.

I will not tell him the whereabout of my friends
nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much,
I will not map him the route to any man’s door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living,
that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city
are safe with me; never through me Shall you be overcome.

I Am - John Clare

I AM! yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish, an oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.

**stephaknee** · December 4, 2009, 03:27 PM

Lady Lazarus - Sylvia Plath

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it----

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
0 my enemy.
Do I terrify?----

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart----
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash ---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

America - Allen Ginsberg
America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January
17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go diddly yourself with your atom bomb.
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I
need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not
the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back
it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical
joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday
somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid
I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses
in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle
Max after he came over from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by
Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner
candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Business-
men are serious. Movie producers are serious.
Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of
marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable
private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour
and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of
underprivileged who live in my flowerpots
under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers
is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that
I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly
mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as
individual as his automobiles more so they're
all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500
down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Com-
munist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a
handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and
sentimental about the workers it was all so sin-
cere you have no idea what a good thing the
party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand
old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me
cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody
must have been a spy.
America you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen.
And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power
mad. She wants to take our cars from out our
garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Readers'
Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia.
Him big bureaucracy running our fillingsta-
tions.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read.
Him need big black ******s. Hah. Her make us
all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in
the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes
in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and
psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

**Siren** · December 4, 2009, 07:01 PM

Legend-Hart Crane

As silent as a mirror is believed
Realities plunge in silence by ...

I am not ready for repentance;
Nor to snatch regrets. For the moth
Bends no more than the still
Imploring flame. And tremorous
In the white falling flakes
Kisses are,—
The only worth all granting.

It is to be learned—
This cleaving and this burning,
But only by the one who
Spends out himself again.

Twice and twice
(Again the smoking souvenir,
Bleeding eidolon!) and yet again.
Until the bright logic is won
Unwhispering as a mirror
Is believed.

Then, drop by caustic drop, a perfect cry
Shall string some constant harmony,—
Relentless caper for all those who step
The legend of their youth into the noon

**Nyangoro** · December 4, 2009, 07:17 PM

The Gates Between - Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

Pearl-white, opaque and fixed fast,
Flashing between the hands unclasped,
Blinding between despairing eyes,
The awful Gates shut to, at last,
On comfort snatched, and anguish done,
On every moan beneath the sun,
Till we and ours, and joy are one.

This is your hour, Gates of God,
Your solemn hour, bars of gold,
But there shall come another yet.
Like silken sails you shall be furled,
Like melting mist you shall be set.

Oh, ye the dearest! vanished from
Love's little inner, sheltered spot.
To ye I whisper; not forget,
But loved the dearer, namèd not.
Across the barrier old as life,
Lean to us from the Silent World.

**Reflection** · December 4, 2009, 09:59 PM

Originally Posted by stephaknee

Lady Lazarus - Sylvia Plath

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it----

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
0 my enemy.
Do I terrify?----

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart----
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash ---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

ughhh I love plath so much. <3

**scubasteve** · December 5, 2009, 12:30 AM

Spoiler: "ghetto gospel" - tupac shakur ft. elton john

Uhh,
Hit them with a little ghetto gospel

[Chorus - Elton John:]
Those who wish to follow me (my ghetto gospel)
I welcome with my hands
And the red sun sinks at last into the hills of gold
And peace to this young warrior without the sound of guns

[2Pac]
If I could recollect before my hood days
I'd sit and reminisce, thinking of bliss of the good days
I stop and stare at the younger, my heart goes to 'em
They tested, it was stress that they under
And nowadays things changed
Everyone's ashamed to the youth cause the truth looks strange
And for me it's reversed, we left them a world that's cursed, and it hurts
'cause any day they'll push the button
and you all condemned like Malcolm X and Bobby Hutton, died for nothing
Don't them let me get teary, the world looks dreary
but when you wipe your eyes, see it clearly
there's no need for you to fear me
if you take your time to hear me, maybe you can learn to cheer me
it ain't about black or white, cause we're human
I hope we see the light before its ruined
my ghetto gospel

[Chorus - Elton John]

[2Pac]
Tell me do you see that old lady ain't it sad
Living out a bag, but she's glad for the little things she has
And over there there's a lady, crack got her crazy
Guess she's given birth to a baby
I don't trip and let it fade me, from outta the frying pan
We jump into another form of slavery
Even now I get discouraged
Wonder if they take it all back while I still keep the courage
I refuse to be a role model
I set goals, take control, drink out my own bottles
I make mistakes, I learn from everyone
And when it's said and done
I bet this Brother be a better one
If I upset you, don't stress
Never forget, that God hasn't finished with me yet
I feel his hand on my brain
When I write rhymes, I go blind, and let the lord do his thang
But am I less holy
'cause I choose to puff a blunt and drink a beer with my homies
Before we find world peace
We gotta find peace and end the war on the streets
My ghetto gospel

[Chorus - Elton John]

[2Pac]
Lord can you hear me speak!!
To pay the price of being hell bound...

**Reflection** · December 5, 2009, 12:39 AM

Originally Posted by scubasteve

Spoiler: "ghetto gospel" - tupac shakur ft. elton john

Uhh,
Hit them with a little ghetto gospel

[Chorus - Elton John:]
Those who wish to follow me (my ghetto gospel)
I welcome with my hands
And the red sun sinks at last into the hills of gold
And peace to this young warrior without the sound of guns

[2Pac]
If I could recollect before my hood days
I'd sit and reminisce, thinking of bliss of the good days
I stop and stare at the younger, my heart goes to 'em
They tested, it was stress that they under
And nowadays things changed
Everyone's ashamed to the youth cause the truth looks strange
And for me it's reversed, we left them a world that's cursed, and it hurts
'cause any day they'll push the button
and you all condemned like Malcolm X and Bobby Hutton, died for nothing
Don't them let me get teary, the world looks dreary
but when you wipe your eyes, see it clearly
there's no need for you to fear me
if you take your time to hear me, maybe you can learn to cheer me
it ain't about black or white, cause we're human
I hope we see the light before its ruined
my ghetto gospel

[Chorus - Elton John]

[2Pac]
Tell me do you see that old lady ain't it sad
Living out a bag, but she's glad for the little things she has
And over there there's a lady, crack got her crazy
Guess she's given birth to a baby
I don't trip and let it fade me, from outta the frying pan
We jump into another form of slavery
Even now I get discouraged
Wonder if they take it all back while I still keep the courage
I refuse to be a role model
I set goals, take control, drink out my own bottles
I make mistakes, I learn from everyone
And when it's said and done
I bet this Brother be a better one
If I upset you, don't stress
Never forget, that God hasn't finished with me yet
I feel his hand on my brain
When I write rhymes, I go blind, and let the lord do his thang
But am I less holy
'cause I choose to puff a blunt and drink a beer with my homies
Before we find world peace
We gotta find peace and end the war on the streets
My ghetto gospel

[Chorus - Elton John]

[2Pac]
Lord can you hear me speak!!
To pay the price of being hell bound...

oh yes o/

**Reverie** · December 7, 2009, 12:10 AM

Poems are so fun to read and this one is not an exception. :)

**Kiba** · December 7, 2009, 12:30 AM

I like this poem slightly more than The Raven. But I love the Raven. ^_^

Spoiler: Annabel Lee by Poe

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee--
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love--
I and my Annabel Lee--
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me--
Yes!--that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we--
Of many far wiser than we--
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:
And so, all the night-tide, I lay down by the side
Of my darling--my darling--my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea--
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

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