Title: Poems
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Date Posted：10/03/2018 10:38 AMCopy HTML

Feel free to ad one of your's or leave a comment,

Fall

Yes Tis the proper name for the season

because the temperature,

leaves and snow are falling

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：15/04/2023 8:43 AMCopy HTML

Bay Leaves Launch Audio in a New Window
BY NIKKI GIOVANNI
I watched Mommy
Cook
Though I cooked
With Grandmother
With Grandmother I learned
To pluck chickens
Peel carrots
Turn chittlins inside out
Scrub pig feet
With Mommy I watched
leftovers for stew
Or vegetable soup
Great northern beans
Mixed collards turnips and mustard greens
Garlic cloves Bay Leaves
Very beautifully green
Stiff   so fresh
With just a pinch of salt
Not everything together
All the time but all the time
Keeping everything
I make my own
Frontier soup in a crock pot
I make my own ice cream with a pinch of salt
And everything else
With garlic
But fresh Bay Leaves
Are only for very special
Ox Tails

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Date Posted：14/04/2023 7:58 AMCopy HTML

Mayor Harold Washington
BY GWENDOLYN BROOKS
Mayor. Worldman. Historyman.
Beyond steps that occur and close,
your steps are echo-makers.
You can never be forgotten.
We begin our health.
We enter the Age of Alliance.
This is our senior adventure.

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Date Posted：05/04/2023 8:03 AMCopy HTML

To the Harbormaster Launch Audio in a New Window
BY FRANK O'HARA
I wanted to be sure to reach you;
though my ship was on the way it got caught   
in some moorings. I am always tying up   
and then deciding to depart. In storms and   
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide   
around my fathomless arms, I am unable   
to understand the forms of my vanity   
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder   
in my hand and the sun sinking. To   
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage   
of my will. The terrible channels where   
the wind drives me against the brown lips   
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet   
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and   
if it sinks, it may well be in answer   
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.

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Date Posted：04/04/2023 9:51 AMCopy HTML

I have never seen "Volcanoes" — (175)
BY EMILY DICKINSON
I have never seen "Volcanoes" —
But, when Travellers tell
How those old — phlegmatic mountains
Usually so still —
Bear within — appalling Ordnance,
Fire, and smoke, and gun,
Taking Villages for breakfast,
And appalling Men —
If the stillness is Volcanic
In the human face
When upon a pain Titanic
Features keep their place —
If at length the smouldering anguish
Will not overcome —
And the palpitating Vineyard
In the dust, be thrown?
If some loving Antiquary,
On Resumption Morn,
Will not cry with joy "Pompeii"!
To the Hills return!

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Date Posted：03/04/2023 8:34 AMCopy HTML

Fairy Tale with Laryngitis and Resignation Letter
BY JEHANNE DUBROW
You remember the mermaid makes a deal,
her tongue evicted from her throat,
and moving is a knife-cut with every step.
This is what escape from water means.
Dear Colleagues, you write, for weeks
I’ve been typing this letter in the bright
kingdom of my imagination. Your body
is a ship of pain. Pleasure is when you climb
the rocks and watch the moonlight
touching everywhere you want to go,
a silver world called faraway. Dear Colleagues,
you write, this place is a few sentences
contained by the cursor’s rippling barrier—
what happened here is only beaks
and brackets, the serif’s liquid stroke.
The old story has witches, a prince in love
with the surging silence of women,
a knife that turns the water red. You write,
Dear Colleagues, now these years are filed
in the infinite oceans of bureaucracy.
Everything bleaches or fades. In other words,
goodbye. Sometimes it’s possible to walk,
although you’ve been told inside the oyster
shell of your heart there is no soul.
Creatures like you must end as a spray of salt,
green droplets floating breathless in the air.

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Date Posted：30/03/2023 7:43 AMCopy HTML

Sylvia Plath’s Elegy for Sylvia Plath
BY SINA QUEYRAS
If you can’t feel love in life you won’t feel it in death, nor
Will you feel the tulip’s skin, nor the soft gravel
Of childhood under cheek. You will have writhed
Across the page for a hard couplet, a firm rhyme, ass
High as any downward dog, and cutlass arms
Lashing any mother who tries to pass: Let’s be frank
About the cost of spurs, mothers like peonies
Whirling in storm drains, families sunk before
Reaching open water. The empty boudoir
Will haunt, but not how you imagine it will.
Nothing, not even death frees mothers
From the cutting board, the balloons, their
Lack of resistance, thoughts, he said, quick
As tulips staggering across the quad.
She heard, I like my women splayed
Out, red. Read swollen, domesticated,
Wanting out. The tulips were never warm
My loves, they never smelled of spring,
They never marked the path out of loneliness,
Never led me home, nor to me, nor away
From what spring, or red, or tulips
Could never be.

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Date Posted：28/03/2023 9:26 AMCopy HTML

A fierce and violent opening
BY DOROTHEA LASKY
Blood is gushing everywhere
From the lips of the bear’s face
Out the elevators
The children’s eyes
When they are taken down by the ax
The whole hotel is overtaken with blood
You know I’ve started to think
You really shouldn’t say
Things you don’t mean
The way you gushed into me
And then that woman
Who seems so much older, and isn’t
Dear woman, I read your essay
That fate could have been me
Blood is gushing from between my legs
I can’t feel a thing
No really
I can’t feel a thing
When they propped me up
They said, oh, she’s so strong
But I am not
I cry too
I cried for you
You left me, always, in the rain
Dear love, you were so brave
The blood exploded within you
You were that whole hotel
Could have been us
I gushed
Out came the blue-green cream

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Date Posted：24/03/2023 9:05 AMCopy HTML

Philomela’s tongue says
BY MELISSA STUDDARD
you could mistake grief for a diamond
the way it shines when cut into, like fish
eyes in a boat’s drain. The eyes fly
into death seeing everything: the cloud
of alcohol in Sagittarius B2, the ten
billion-trillion-trillion carat diamond
in Centaurus, the soul swimming through
air with its tie hanging silver beneath it
like a kite string. But Philomela’s tongue
does not die. Shards of memory fall through
her, finding muscle at the shore where blood
meets vein, cutting the string that’s kept
her sanity tied to the root. In its place,
mute swans lie dormant beneath frozen
lakes of scar. Tereus says she cannot say
what happened. She says silence writhes
inside the walls of truth, like a fox thrashing
hot in a hound’s jaws, or a riled fly, frantic
to escape the hand that carries it to safety.

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Date Posted：22/03/2023 8:56 AMCopy HTML

I Have a Time Machine
BY BRENDA SHAUGHNESSY
But unfortunately it can only travel into the future
at a rate of one second per second,
 
which seems slow to the physicists and to the grant
committees and even to me.
 
But I manage to get there, time after time, to the next
moment and to the next.
 
Thing is, I can't turn it off. I keep zipping ahead—
well not zipping—And if I try
 
to get out of this time machine, open the latch,
I'll fall into space, unconscious,
 
then desiccated! And I'm pretty sure I'm afraid of that.
So I stay inside.
 
There's a window, though. It shows the past.
It's like a television or fish tank.
 
But it's never live; it's always over. The fish swim
in backward circles.
 
Sometimes it's like a rearview mirror, another chance
to see what I'm leaving behind,
 
and sometimes like blackout, all that time
wasted sleeping.
 
Myself age eight, whole head burnt with embarrassment
at having lost a library book.
 
Myself lurking in a candled corner expecting
to be found charming.
 
Me holding a rose though I want to put it down
so I can smoke.
 
Me exploding at my mother who explodes at me
because the explosion
 
of some dark star all the way back struck hard
at mother's mother's mother.
 
I turn away from the window, anticipating a blow.
I thought I'd find myself
 
an old woman by now, traveling so light in time.
But I haven't gotten far at all.
 
Strange not to be able to pick up the pace as I'd like;
the past is so horribly fast.

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Date Posted：20/03/2023 9:20 AMCopy HTML

A Memory of Us
BY SAFIA ELHILLO
when i think of us i think of the lakewater
near longtown, what might not technically
constitute a lake but i prefer that word for
the open mouth of its vowel, how it called
us to its throat & held us there, in the sun,
the high points of our faces slick with light
& its arc around our shoulders, the soft
gathering of flesh around our knees,
the lone chair we found near the shore
where we took turns posing, jutting out
an eloquent hip, cackling in the bright language
of flowers for whom i downloaded an app
& learned their names: beautyberry, yarrow,
cornus florida, black-eyed susan, & you,
& you, my bright hibiscus, my every color

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Date Posted：17/03/2023 9:30 AMCopy HTML

Under the Poplars
BY CÉSAR VALLEJO
TRANSLATED BY REBECCA SEIFERLE
for José Eulogio Garrido
 
      Like priestly imprisoned poets,         
the poplars of blood have fallen asleep.
On the hills, the flocks of Bethlehem                  
chew arias of grass at sunset.                  
      The ancient shepherd, who shivers         
at the last martyrdoms of light,                  
in his Easter eyes has caught                           
a purebred flock of stars.                           
      Formed in orphanhood, he goes down         
with rumors of burial to the praying field,         
and the sheep bells are seasoned with shadow.
      It survives, the blue warped         
in iron, and on it, pupils shrouded,                  
a dog etches its pastoral howl.

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Date Posted：16/03/2023 9:54 AMCopy HTML

An Irish Airman foresees his Death
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

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Date Posted：15/03/2023 8:59 AMCopy HTML

Catch
BY SAMIYA BASHIR
if this is a game then we have made it, unknowing,
to the final four. unlikely underdogs. spectators turned
to suspect sport. anti-athletes. out of shape beyond reason.
at season’s height we fight for a limited audience. few dancers.
fewer cheers. down by 30 and our coach m.i.a. we, foolish, dribble.
each bounce-back brings a stranger. can’t call us for traveling because
we ain’t going nowhere. instead, we trade terrified looks. search
for the pass but no one stays open for long. even if we knew what to do
to pull this through we’ve got two other teams waiting, impatient, to take us out.
 

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Date Posted：13/03/2023 9:09 AMCopy HTML

Hello
BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE
Some nights
the rat with pointed teeth
makes his long way back
to the bowl of peaches.
He stands on the dining room table
sinking his tooth
drinking the pulp
of each fruity turned-up face
knowing you will read
this message and scream.
It is his only text,
to take and take in darkness,
to be gone before you awaken
and your giant feet
start creaking the floor.
Where is the mother of the rat?
The father, the shredded nest,
which breath were we taking
when the rat was born,
when he lifted his shivering snout
to rafter and rivet and stone?
I gave him the names of the devil,
seared and screeching names,
I would not enter those rooms
without a stick to guide me,
I leaned on the light, shuddering,
and the moist earth under the house,
the trailing tails of clouds,
said he was in the closet,
the drawer of candles,
his nose was a wick.
How would we live together
with our sad shoes and hideouts,
our lock on the door
and his delicate fingered paws
that could clutch and grip,
his blank slate of fur
and the pillow where we press our faces?
The bed that was a boat is sinking.
And the shores of morning loom up
lined with little shadows,
things we never wanted to be, or meet,
and all the rats are waving hello.

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Date Posted：12/03/2023 9:31 AMCopy HTML

Memoir V Launch Audio in a New Window
BY RODOLFO AVELAR
Two women exist inside of me.         I’m so transgender
              I just do that. One is always
nude—says she’s making up for lost time.                      She’s light :
holist : touch : break.                                       How can I be
              so transgender that no one can see it?              I want
to ask so badly:                 Can you see her? Energypink
                            & waisttrained & transmogrified & there?
              The other thinks about words & optics:
                                                                       I’m so trans no one can tell.
                            I’m so trans I’m like the mountains I
travel through, highwayed—
                            telephonepoled—brushfired.
                                          Out of all the new words, sister
                            has been the hardest to fit myself into.
              Light : holist : tarpouch :
  break.
                            I bottle myself in drips, the trinity
cloud of my efforts horizonlined.
              I can always feel myself inching towards it, it,
              it is always there.                I’m every version
                               of myself I made, a light inching. How best
                               can I be your sister?
                                                            How can I be that charged?

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Date Posted：11/03/2023 9:37 AMCopy HTML

Marshlands
BY EMILY PAULINE JOHNSON
A thin wet sky, that yellows at the rim,
And meets with sun-lost lip the marsh’s brim.
The pools low lying, dank with moss and mould,
Glint through their mildews like large cups of gold.
Among the wild rice in the still lagoon,
In monotone the lizard shrills his tune.
The wild goose, homing, seeks a sheltering,
Where rushes grow, and oozing lichens cling.
Late cranes with heavy wing, and lazy flight,
Sail up the silence with the nearing night.
And like a spirit, swathed in some soft veil,
Steals twilight and its shadows o’er the swale.
Hushed lie the sedges, and the vapours creep,
Thick, grey and humid, while the marshes sleep.

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Date Posted：09/03/2023 10:03 AMCopy HTML

March: An Ode
BY ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
I
Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell, and the splendour of winter had passed out of sight,
The ways of the woodlands were fairer and stranger than dreams that fulfil us in sleep with delight;
The breath of the mouths of the winds had hardened on tree-tops and branches that glittered and swayed
Such wonders and glories of blossomlike snow or of frost that outlightens all flowers till it fade
That the sea was not lovelier than here was the land, nor the night than the day, nor the day than the night,
Nor the winter sublimer with storm than the spring: such mirth had the madness and might in thee made,
March, master of winds, bright minstrel and marshal of storms that enkindle the season they smite.
II
And now that the rage of thy rapture is satiate with revel and ravin and spoil of the snow,
And the branches it brightened are broken, and shattered the tree-tops that only thy wrath could lay low,
How should not thy lovers rejoice in thee, leader and lord of the year that exults to be born
So strong in thy strength and so glad of thy gladness whose laughter puts winter and sorrow to scorn?
Thou hast shaken the snows from thy wings, and the frost on thy forehead is molten: thy lips are aglow
As a lover's that kindle with kissing, and earth, with her raiment and tresses yet wasted and torn,
Takes breath as she smiles in the grasp of thy passion to feel through her spirit the sense of thee flow.
III
Fain, fain would we see but again for an hour what the wind and the sun have dispelled and consumed,
Those full deep swan-soft feathers of snow with whose luminous burden the branches implumed
Hung heavily, curved as a half-bent bow, and fledged not as birds are, but petalled as flowers,
Each tree-top and branchlet a pinnacle jewelled and carved, or a fountain that shines as it showers,
But fixed as a fountain is fixed not, and wrought not to last till by time or by tempest entombed,
As a pinnacle carven and gilded of men: for the date of its doom is no more than an hour's,
One hour of the sun's when the warm wind wakes him to wither the snow-flowers that froze as they bloomed.
IV
As the sunshine quenches the snowshine; as April subdues thee, and yields up his kingdom to May;
So time overcomes the regret that is born of delight as it passes in passion away,
And leaves but a dream for desire to rejoice in or mourn for with tears or thanksgivings; but thou,
Bright god that art gone from us, maddest and gladdest of months, to what goal hast thou gone from us now?
For somewhere surely the storm of thy laughter that lightens, the beat of thy wings that play,
Must flame as a fire through the world, and the heavens that we know not rejoice in thee: surely thy brow
Hath lost not its radiance of empire, thy spirit the joy that impelled it on quest as for prey.
V
Are thy feet on the ways of the limitless waters, thy wings on the winds of the waste north sea?
Are the fires of the false north dawn over heavens where summer is stormful and strong like thee
Now bright in the sight of thine eyes? are the bastions of icebergs assailed by the blast of thy breath?
Is it March with the wild north world when April is waning? the word that the changed year saith,
Is it echoed to northward with rapture of passion reiterate from spirits triumphant as we
Whose hearts were uplift at the blast of thy clarions as men's rearisen from a sleep that was death
And kindled to life that was one with the world's and with thine? hast thou set not the whole world free?
VI
For the breath of thy lips is freedom, and freedom's the sense of thy spirit, the sound of thy song,
Glad god of the north-east wind, whose heart is as high as the hands of thy kingdom are strong,
Thy kingdom whose empire is terror and joy, twin-featured and fruitful of births divine,
Days lit with the flame of the lamps of the flowers, and nights that are drunken with dew for wine,
And sleep not for joy of the stars that deepen and quicken, a denser and fierier throng,
And the world that thy breath bade whiten and tremble rejoices at heart as they strengthen and shine,
And earth gives thanks for the glory bequeathed her, and knows of thy reign that it wrought not wrong.
VII
Thy spirit is quenched not, albeit we behold not thy face in the crown of the steep sky's arch,
And the bold first buds of the whin wax golden, and witness arise of the thorn and the larch:
Wild April, enkindled to laughter and storm by the kiss of the wildest of winds that blow,
Calls loud on his brother for witness; his hands that were laden with blossom are sprinkled with snow,
And his lips breathe winter, and laugh, and relent; and the live woods feel not the frost's flame parch;
For the flame of the spring that consumes not but quickens is felt at the heart of the forest aglow,
And the sparks that enkindled and fed it were strewn from the hands of the gods of the winds of March.

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Date Posted：08/03/2023 10:18 AMCopy HTML

In My Dreams
BY STEVIE SMITH
In my dreams I am always saying goodbye and riding away,   
Whither and why I know not nor do I care.
And the parting is sweet and the parting over is sweeter,   
And sweetest of all is the night and the rushing air.
In my dreams they are always waving their hands and saying goodbye,
And they give me the stirrup cup and I smile as I drink,   
I am glad the journey is set, I am glad I am going,
I am glad, I am glad, that my friends don't know what I think.

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Date Posted：07/03/2023 9:42 AMCopy HTML

The Lady's Yes
BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
" Yes !" I answered you last night ;
" No !" this morning, Sir, I say !
Colours, seen by candle-light,
Will not look the same by day.
When the tabors played their best,
Lamps above, and laughs below —
Love me sounded like a jest,
Fit for Yes or fit for No !
Call me false, or call me free —
Vow, whatever light may shine,
No man on your face shall see
Any grief for change on mine.
Yet the sin is on us both —
Time to dance is not to woo —
Wooer light makes fickle troth —
Scorn of me recoils on you !
Learn to win a lady's faith
Nobly, as the thing is high ;
Bravely, as for life and death —
With a loyal gravity.
Lead her from the festive boards,
Point her to the starry skies,
Guard her, by your truthful words,
Pure from courtship's flatteries.
By your truth she shall be true —
Ever true, as wives of yore —
And her Yes, once said to you,
SHALL be Yes for evermore.

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：06/03/2023 10:00 AMCopy HTML

Willow
BY ANNA AKHMATOVA
TRANSLATED BY JENNIFER REESER
...and a decrepit handful of trees.
—Aleksandr Pushkin
And I matured in peace born of command,
in the nursery of the infant century,
and the voice of man was never dear to me,
but the breeze’s voice—that I could understand.
The burdock and the nettle I preferred,
but best of all the silver willow tree.
Its weeping limbs fanned my unrest with dreams;
it lived here all my life, obligingly.
I have outlived it now, and with surprise.
There stands the stump; with foreign voices other
willows converse, beneath our, beneath those skies,
and I am hushed, as if I’d lost a brother.

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：05/03/2023 10:14 AMCopy HTML

  
We Play Charades
BY UMA MENON
My first instinct is to translate
the word. Make it easier to understand
without saying the word itself.
I feel guilt for this mistake—
for changing languages instead
of describing. Isn’t this an easy way out?
My mother and I are playing charades
alone. We make this mistake over &
over, our tongues
too quick to learn. After all,
isn’t this what we are used to?
When one language fails,
we try the next & the next
until someone understands.
A syllable escapes like a captured cricket,
singing for its love of freedom. It is too late
to go back now, to jar the language
we first learned. We do not want to,
either, so in this game, we swallow first.
Card, swallow, describe, flip.
Card, swallow, describe, flip.

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：04/03/2023 11:02 AMCopy HTML

Appalachian Elegy (Sections 1-6)
BY BELL HOOKS
1.
 
hear them cry
the long dead
the long gone
speak to us
from beyond the grave
guide us
that we may learn
all the ways
to hold tender this land
hard clay direct
rock upon rock
charred earth
in time
strong green growth
will rise here
trees back to life
native flowers
pushing the fragrance of hope
the promise of resurrection
 
2.
 
such then is beauty
surrendered
against all hope
you are here again
turning slowly
nature as chameleon
all life change
and changing again
awakening hearts
steady moving from
unnamed loss
into fierce deep grief
that can bear all burdens
even the long passage
into a shadowy dark
where no light enters
 
3.
 
night moves
through the thick dark
a heavy silence outside
near the front window
a black bear
stamps down plants
pushing back brush
fleeing manmade
confinement
roaming unfettered
confident
any place can become home
strutting down
a steep hill
as though freedom
is all
in the now
no past
no present
 
4.
 
earth works
thick brown mud
clinging pulling
a body down
heard wounded earth cry
bequeath to me
the hoe the hope
ancestral rights
to turn the ground over
to shovel and sift
until history
rewritten resurrected
returns to its rightful owners
a past to claim
yet another stone lifted to
throw against the enemy
making way for new endings
random seeds
spreading over the hillside
wild roses
come by fierce wind and hard rain
unleashed furies
here in this touched wood
a dirge a lamentation
for earth to live again
earth that is all at once a grave
a resting place a bed of new beginnings
avalanche of splendor
 
5.
 
small horses ride me
carry my dreams
of prairies and frontiers
where once
the first people roamed
claimed union with the earth
no right to own or possess
no sense of territory
all boundaries
placed by unseen ones
here I will give you thunder
shatter your hearts with rain
let snow soothe you
make your healing water
clear sweet
a sacred spring
where the thirsty
may drink
animals all
 
6.
 
listen little sister
angels make their hope here
in these hills
follow me
I will guide you
careful now
no trespass
I will guide you
word for word
mouth for mouth
all the holy ones
embracing us
all our kin
making home here
renegade marooned
lawless fugitives
grace these mountains
we have earth to bind us
the covenant
between us
can never be broken
vows to live and let live
 

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：03/03/2023 9:35 AMCopy HTML

People
BY D. H. LAWRENCE
The great gold apples of night
Hang from the street's long bough
Dripping their light
On the faces that drift below,
On the faces that drift and blow
Down the night-time, out of sight
In the wind's sad sough.
The ripeness of these apples of night
Distilling over me
Makes sickening the white
Ghost-flux of faces that hie
Them endlessly, endlessly by
Without meaning or reason why
They ever should be.

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：02/03/2023 9:34 AMCopy HTML

The Amazon River Dolphin
BY LINDA RODRIGUEZ
The sudden pink shape
surfacing in black-water lagoons
shocked explorers.
All dolphins share man’s
thumb and fingerbones,
but these also wear his flesh.
When the river overflows
and floods the varzea,
these dolphins travel miles
to splash in the shallows
amongst buttress-roots of giant
rainforest trees.
The waters abate, trapping fish,
dolphins never.
 
A lamp burning dolphin oil
blinds. At night
the pink-flesh contours melt and blur.
The flipper extends the hidden hand
to lift its woman’s torso
to the land. An Eve,
born each night from the black Amazon,
roams the dark banks for victims
to draw to the water and death.
Taboo to the Indians,
this pink daughter of the river’s magic
always looks, to explorers,
like she’s smiling.
 

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：28/02/2023 9:13 AMCopy HTML

V

I Was Sleeping Where the Black Oaks Move
BY LOUISE ERDRICH
We watched from the house
as the river grew, helpless
and terrible in its unfamiliar body.   
Wrestling everything into it,
the water wrapped around trees
until their life-hold was broken.
They went down, one by one,
and the river dragged off their covering.
Nests of the herons, roots washed to bones,   
snags of soaked bark on the shoreline:   
a whole forest pulled through the teeth   
of the spillway. Trees surfacing
singly, where the river poured off
into arteries for fields below the reservation.
When at last it was over, the long removal,   
they had all become the same dry wood.   
We walked among them, the branches   
whitening in the raw sun.
Above us drifted herons,
alone, hoarse-voiced, broken,
settling their beaks among the hollows.
Grandpa said, These are the ghosts of the tree people   
moving among us, unable to take their rest.
Sometimes now, we dream our way back to the heron dance.   
Their long wings are bending the air   
into circles through which they fall.   
They rise again in shifting wheels.   
How long must we live in the broken figures   
their necks make, narrowing the sky.

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：27/02/2023 9:02 AMCopy HTML

Imaginary Dad Launch Audio in a New Window
BY TINA CANE
                             Was so imaginary   he ceased to exist
he wasn’t sleeping   in a treehouse    or stalking the woods
in fatigues    cheeks smeared green    with camouflage grease
a knife between his teeth    like I had envisioned him
he was just a married guy
                                          living
in a small town    near a dozen   of my made-up cousins
kin so distant    they didn’t even know    to miss me
all their lives
                         I’d picture them
fumbling in their pockets    through loose change
patting their pants   in search of something
left behind   all the time    never knowing
what it was
                     or what it was like
to eat Twizzlers    while watching   Apocalypse Now
in a darkened theater   on Bleecker St.
                                                                 to think
each time a soldier    appeared on screen    Now, there’s a dad
if I ever saw one   because of course   they’d seen one
he was nothing like that    and he belonged to me

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：24/02/2023 10:32 AMCopy HTML

Gwendolyn Brooks: America in the Wintertime
BY HAKI R. MADHUBUTI
in this moment of orangutans, wolves, and scavengers,
of high heat redesigning the north & south poles
and the wanderings of new tribes in limousines,
with the confirmations of liars, thieves, and get-over artists,
in the wilderness of pennsylvania avenue,
standing rock, misspelled executive orders
on yellow paper with crooked signatures.
where are the kind language makers among us?
at a time of extreme climate damage,
deciphering fake news, alternative truths, and me-ism
you saw the twenty-first century and left us
not on your own accord or permission.
you have fought and fought most of the twentieth century
creating an army of poets who learned
and loved language and stories
of complicated rivers, seas, and oceans.
where is the kind green nourishment of kale and wheatgrass?
you thought, wrote, and lived poetry,
knew that terror is also language based
on denial, first-ism, and rich cowards.
you were honey and yes to us,
never ran from Black as in bones, Africa,
blood and questioning yesterdays and tomorrows.
we never saw you dance but you had rhythm,
you were a warrior before the war,
creating earth language, uncommon signs and melodies,
and did not sing the songs of career slaves.
keenly aware of tubman, douglass, wells-barnett, du bois,
and the oversized consciousness and commitment of never-quit people
religiously taking note of the bloodlust enemies of kindness
we hear your last words:
     america
     if you see me as your enemy
     you have no
     friends.

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：22/02/2023 10:14 AMCopy HTML

It’s Not That
BY MAUREEN N. MCLANE
It’s not that I’m opposed
to poison in my lips
or pig in my soap—
it's not that I’m opposed.
It’s not that I’m opposed
to plastic bottles that won’t decompose
to malodorous phosphorus flows—
it’s not that I’m opposed
to what you propose—
surgery on your imperfect nose
favelas blasted
with hoses— it’s not that
I’m opposed to opposing
the opposite of anonymous
neighbors, the nosy stargazers
who discover new celebrity planets
about to crash into your car. It’s not that
I’m opposed that we drive
when it’s not very far
to walk or bike not opposed
you’re opposed to the subway
the stink of the general—
train 4, 5, or 6–not opposed
to the sex on Craigslist
to your pets’ special tricks
to the organized slaughter of cows
by the tenderest machines—
not opposed to your dreams
to their screams to our hopes
not opposed to the hordes
with their ropes knives and bombs
set in desolate streets slums
and thrumming towns not opposed
to your proms and baptisms
to ongoing Christian schisms
most unopposed to fierce Muslims
Jews Baha’is and Hindus posed
in poses temples now oppose
the Kama Sutra too ooh-la-la
for the petit-bourgeois members of the BJP
—not opposed to a big GDP
to a loud ATV not opposed to anything
I can see hear or touch
to “enough or too much”—
It’s not that I’m opposed
to whatever I should propose
opposing, knowing
knowing is thinning
in the species’ extra inning
on a world slow spinning on an
axis slightly tilting
into folly so is it folly
to suppose you could oppose
proposing something to oppose

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：20/02/2023 9:40 AMCopy HTML

February
BY MARGARET ATWOOD
Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
He’ll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around here
should snip a few testicles. If we wise
hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it’s love that does us in. Over and over
again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：18/02/2023 12:03 PMCopy HTML

From the House of Yemanjá
BY AUDRE LORDE
My mother had two faces and a frying pot   
where she cooked up her daughters
into girls
before she fixed our dinner.
My mother had two faces
and a broken pot
where she hid out a perfect daughter   
who was not me
I am the sun and moon and forever hungry   
for her eyes.
I bear two women upon my back   
one dark and rich and hidden
in the ivory hungers of the other   
mother
pale as a witch
yet steady and familiar
brings me bread and terror
in my sleep
her breasts are huge exciting anchors   
in the midnight storm.
All this has been
before
in my mother's bed
time has no sense
I have no brothers
and my sisters are cruel.
Mother I need
mother I need
mother I need your blackness now   
as the august earth needs rain.   
I am
the sun and moon and forever hungry   
the sharpened edge
where day and night shall meet
and not be
one.

zxxlyzq
Rank：Diamond Member Score：16720 Posts：3344 From：USA Register：18/12/2008 10:21 PM	Date Posted：10/03/2018 10:38 AMCopy HTML Feel free to ad one of your's or leave a comment, Fall Yes Tis the proper name for the season because the temperature, leaves and snow are falling
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：15/04/2023 8:43 AMCopy HTML Bay Leaves Launch Audio in a New Window BY NIKKI GIOVANNI I watched Mommy Cook Though I cooked With Grandmother With Grandmother I learned To pluck chickens Peel carrots Turn chittlins inside out Scrub pig feet With Mommy I watched leftovers for stew Or vegetable soup Great northern beans Mixed collards turnips and mustard greens Garlic cloves Bay Leaves Very beautifully green Stiff so fresh With just a pinch of salt Not everything together All the time but all the time Keeping everything I make my own Frontier soup in a crock pot I make my own ice cream with a pinch of salt And everything else With garlic But fresh Bay Leaves Are only for very special Ox Tails
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：14/04/2023 7:58 AMCopy HTML Mayor Harold Washington BY GWENDOLYN BROOKS Mayor. Worldman. Historyman. Beyond steps that occur and close, your steps are echo-makers. You can never be forgotten. We begin our health. We enter the Age of Alliance. This is our senior adventure.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：05/04/2023 8:03 AMCopy HTML To the Harbormaster Launch Audio in a New Window BY FRANK O'HARA I wanted to be sure to reach you; though my ship was on the way it got caught in some moorings. I am always tying up and then deciding to depart. In storms and at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide around my fathomless arms, I am unable to understand the forms of my vanity or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder in my hand and the sun sinking. To you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage of my will. The terrible channels where the wind drives me against the brown lips of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet I trust the sanity of my vessel; and if it sinks, it may well be in answer to the reasoning of the eternal voices, the waves which have kept me from reaching you.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：04/04/2023 9:51 AMCopy HTML I have never seen "Volcanoes" — (175) BY EMILY DICKINSON I have never seen "Volcanoes" — But, when Travellers tell How those old — phlegmatic mountains Usually so still — Bear within — appalling Ordnance, Fire, and smoke, and gun, Taking Villages for breakfast, And appalling Men — If the stillness is Volcanic In the human face When upon a pain Titanic Features keep their place — If at length the smouldering anguish Will not overcome — And the palpitating Vineyard In the dust, be thrown? If some loving Antiquary, On Resumption Morn, Will not cry with joy "Pompeii"! To the Hills return!
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：03/04/2023 8:34 AMCopy HTML Fairy Tale with Laryngitis and Resignation Letter BY JEHANNE DUBROW You remember the mermaid makes a deal, her tongue evicted from her throat, and moving is a knife-cut with every step. This is what escape from water means. Dear Colleagues, you write, for weeks I’ve been typing this letter in the bright kingdom of my imagination. Your body is a ship of pain. Pleasure is when you climb the rocks and watch the moonlight touching everywhere you want to go, a silver world called faraway. Dear Colleagues, you write, this place is a few sentences contained by the cursor’s rippling barrier— what happened here is only beaks and brackets, the serif’s liquid stroke. The old story has witches, a prince in love with the surging silence of women, a knife that turns the water red. You write, Dear Colleagues, now these years are filed in the infinite oceans of bureaucracy. Everything bleaches or fades. In other words, goodbye. Sometimes it’s possible to walk, although you’ve been told inside the oyster shell of your heart there is no soul. Creatures like you must end as a spray of salt, green droplets floating breathless in the air.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：30/03/2023 7:43 AMCopy HTML Sylvia Plath’s Elegy for Sylvia Plath BY SINA QUEYRAS If you can’t feel love in life you won’t feel it in death, nor Will you feel the tulip’s skin, nor the soft gravel Of childhood under cheek. You will have writhed Across the page for a hard couplet, a firm rhyme, ass High as any downward dog, and cutlass arms Lashing any mother who tries to pass: Let’s be frank About the cost of spurs, mothers like peonies Whirling in storm drains, families sunk before Reaching open water. The empty boudoir Will haunt, but not how you imagine it will. Nothing, not even death frees mothers From the cutting board, the balloons, their Lack of resistance, thoughts, he said, quick As tulips staggering across the quad. She heard, I like my women splayed Out, red. Read swollen, domesticated, Wanting out. The tulips were never warm My loves, they never smelled of spring, They never marked the path out of loneliness, Never led me home, nor to me, nor away From what spring, or red, or tulips Could never be.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：28/03/2023 9:26 AMCopy HTML A fierce and violent opening BY DOROTHEA LASKY Blood is gushing everywhere From the lips of the bear’s face Out the elevators The children’s eyes When they are taken down by the ax The whole hotel is overtaken with blood You know I’ve started to think You really shouldn’t say Things you don’t mean The way you gushed into me And then that woman Who seems so much older, and isn’t Dear woman, I read your essay That fate could have been me Blood is gushing from between my legs I can’t feel a thing No really I can’t feel a thing When they propped me up They said, oh, she’s so strong But I am not I cry too I cried for you You left me, always, in the rain Dear love, you were so brave The blood exploded within you You were that whole hotel Could have been us I gushed Out came the blue-green cream
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：24/03/2023 9:05 AMCopy HTML Philomela’s tongue says BY MELISSA STUDDARD you could mistake grief for a diamond the way it shines when cut into, like fish eyes in a boat’s drain. The eyes fly into death seeing everything: the cloud of alcohol in Sagittarius B2, the ten billion-trillion-trillion carat diamond in Centaurus, the soul swimming through air with its tie hanging silver beneath it like a kite string. But Philomela’s tongue does not die. Shards of memory fall through her, finding muscle at the shore where blood meets vein, cutting the string that’s kept her sanity tied to the root. In its place, mute swans lie dormant beneath frozen lakes of scar. Tereus says she cannot say what happened. She says silence writhes inside the walls of truth, like a fox thrashing hot in a hound’s jaws, or a riled fly, frantic to escape the hand that carries it to safety.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：22/03/2023 8:56 AMCopy HTML I Have a Time Machine BY BRENDA SHAUGHNESSY But unfortunately it can only travel into the future at a rate of one second per second, which seems slow to the physicists and to the grant committees and even to me. But I manage to get there, time after time, to the next moment and to the next. Thing is, I can't turn it off. I keep zipping ahead— well not zipping—And if I try to get out of this time machine, open the latch, I'll fall into space, unconscious, then desiccated! And I'm pretty sure I'm afraid of that. So I stay inside. There's a window, though. It shows the past. It's like a television or fish tank. But it's never live; it's always over. The fish swim in backward circles. Sometimes it's like a rearview mirror, another chance to see what I'm leaving behind, and sometimes like blackout, all that time wasted sleeping. Myself age eight, whole head burnt with embarrassment at having lost a library book. Myself lurking in a candled corner expecting to be found charming. Me holding a rose though I want to put it down so I can smoke. Me exploding at my mother who explodes at me because the explosion of some dark star all the way back struck hard at mother's mother's mother. I turn away from the window, anticipating a blow. I thought I'd find myself an old woman by now, traveling so light in time. But I haven't gotten far at all. Strange not to be able to pick up the pace as I'd like; the past is so horribly fast.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：20/03/2023 9:20 AMCopy HTML A Memory of Us BY SAFIA ELHILLO when i think of us i think of the lakewater near longtown, what might not technically constitute a lake but i prefer that word for the open mouth of its vowel, how it called us to its throat & held us there, in the sun, the high points of our faces slick with light & its arc around our shoulders, the soft gathering of flesh around our knees, the lone chair we found near the shore where we took turns posing, jutting out an eloquent hip, cackling in the bright language of flowers for whom i downloaded an app & learned their names: beautyberry, yarrow, cornus florida, black-eyed susan, & you, & you, my bright hibiscus, my every color
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：17/03/2023 9:30 AMCopy HTML Under the Poplars BY CÉSAR VALLEJO TRANSLATED BY REBECCA SEIFERLE for José Eulogio Garrido Like priestly imprisoned poets, the poplars of blood have fallen asleep. On the hills, the flocks of Bethlehem chew arias of grass at sunset. The ancient shepherd, who shivers at the last martyrdoms of light, in his Easter eyes has caught a purebred flock of stars. Formed in orphanhood, he goes down with rumors of burial to the praying field, and the sheep bells are seasoned with shadow. It survives, the blue warped in iron, and on it, pupils shrouded, a dog etches its pastoral howl.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：16/03/2023 9:54 AMCopy HTML An Irish Airman foresees his Death BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love; My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：15/03/2023 8:59 AMCopy HTML Catch BY SAMIYA BASHIR if this is a game then we have made it, unknowing, to the final four. unlikely underdogs. spectators turned to suspect sport. anti-athletes. out of shape beyond reason. at season’s height we fight for a limited audience. few dancers. fewer cheers. down by 30 and our coach m.i.a. we, foolish, dribble. each bounce-back brings a stranger. can’t call us for traveling because we ain’t going nowhere. instead, we trade terrified looks. search for the pass but no one stays open for long. even if we knew what to do to pull this through we’ve got two other teams waiting, impatient, to take us out.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：13/03/2023 9:09 AMCopy HTML Hello BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE Some nights the rat with pointed teeth makes his long way back to the bowl of peaches. He stands on the dining room table sinking his tooth drinking the pulp of each fruity turned-up face knowing you will read this message and scream. It is his only text, to take and take in darkness, to be gone before you awaken and your giant feet start creaking the floor. Where is the mother of the rat? The father, the shredded nest, which breath were we taking when the rat was born, when he lifted his shivering snout to rafter and rivet and stone? I gave him the names of the devil, seared and screeching names, I would not enter those rooms without a stick to guide me, I leaned on the light, shuddering, and the moist earth under the house, the trailing tails of clouds, said he was in the closet, the drawer of candles, his nose was a wick. How would we live together with our sad shoes and hideouts, our lock on the door and his delicate fingered paws that could clutch and grip, his blank slate of fur and the pillow where we press our faces? The bed that was a boat is sinking. And the shores of morning loom up lined with little shadows, things we never wanted to be, or meet, and all the rats are waving hello.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：12/03/2023 9:31 AMCopy HTML Memoir V Launch Audio in a New Window BY RODOLFO AVELAR Two women exist inside of me. I’m so transgender I just do that. One is always nude—says she’s making up for lost time. She’s light : holist : touch : break. How can I be so transgender that no one can see it? I want to ask so badly: Can you see her? Energypink & waisttrained & transmogrified & there? The other thinks about words & optics: I’m so trans no one can tell. I’m so trans I’m like the mountains I travel through, highwayed— telephonepoled—brushfired. Out of all the new words, sister has been the hardest to fit myself into. Light : holist : tarpouch : break. I bottle myself in drips, the trinity cloud of my efforts horizonlined. I can always feel myself inching towards it, it, it is always there. I’m every version of myself I made, a light inching. How best can I be your sister? How can I be that charged?
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：11/03/2023 9:37 AMCopy HTML Marshlands BY EMILY PAULINE JOHNSON A thin wet sky, that yellows at the rim, And meets with sun-lost lip the marsh’s brim. The pools low lying, dank with moss and mould, Glint through their mildews like large cups of gold. Among the wild rice in the still lagoon, In monotone the lizard shrills his tune. The wild goose, homing, seeks a sheltering, Where rushes grow, and oozing lichens cling. Late cranes with heavy wing, and lazy flight, Sail up the silence with the nearing night. And like a spirit, swathed in some soft veil, Steals twilight and its shadows o’er the swale. Hushed lie the sedges, and the vapours creep, Thick, grey and humid, while the marshes sleep.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：09/03/2023 10:03 AMCopy HTML March: An Ode BY ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE I Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell, and the splendour of winter had passed out of sight, The ways of the woodlands were fairer and stranger than dreams that fulfil us in sleep with delight; The breath of the mouths of the winds had hardened on tree-tops and branches that glittered and swayed Such wonders and glories of blossomlike snow or of frost that outlightens all flowers till it fade That the sea was not lovelier than here was the land, nor the night than the day, nor the day than the night, Nor the winter sublimer with storm than the spring: such mirth had the madness and might in thee made, March, master of winds, bright minstrel and marshal of storms that enkindle the season they smite. II And now that the rage of thy rapture is satiate with revel and ravin and spoil of the snow, And the branches it brightened are broken, and shattered the tree-tops that only thy wrath could lay low, How should not thy lovers rejoice in thee, leader and lord of the year that exults to be born So strong in thy strength and so glad of thy gladness whose laughter puts winter and sorrow to scorn? Thou hast shaken the snows from thy wings, and the frost on thy forehead is molten: thy lips are aglow As a lover's that kindle with kissing, and earth, with her raiment and tresses yet wasted and torn, Takes breath as she smiles in the grasp of thy passion to feel through her spirit the sense of thee flow. III Fain, fain would we see but again for an hour what the wind and the sun have dispelled and consumed, Those full deep swan-soft feathers of snow with whose luminous burden the branches implumed Hung heavily, curved as a half-bent bow, and fledged not as birds are, but petalled as flowers, Each tree-top and branchlet a pinnacle jewelled and carved, or a fountain that shines as it showers, But fixed as a fountain is fixed not, and wrought not to last till by time or by tempest entombed, As a pinnacle carven and gilded of men: for the date of its doom is no more than an hour's, One hour of the sun's when the warm wind wakes him to wither the snow-flowers that froze as they bloomed. IV As the sunshine quenches the snowshine; as April subdues thee, and yields up his kingdom to May; So time overcomes the regret that is born of delight as it passes in passion away, And leaves but a dream for desire to rejoice in or mourn for with tears or thanksgivings; but thou, Bright god that art gone from us, maddest and gladdest of months, to what goal hast thou gone from us now? For somewhere surely the storm of thy laughter that lightens, the beat of thy wings that play, Must flame as a fire through the world, and the heavens that we know not rejoice in thee: surely thy brow Hath lost not its radiance of empire, thy spirit the joy that impelled it on quest as for prey. V Are thy feet on the ways of the limitless waters, thy wings on the winds of the waste north sea? Are the fires of the false north dawn over heavens where summer is stormful and strong like thee Now bright in the sight of thine eyes? are the bastions of icebergs assailed by the blast of thy breath? Is it March with the wild north world when April is waning? the word that the changed year saith, Is it echoed to northward with rapture of passion reiterate from spirits triumphant as we Whose hearts were uplift at the blast of thy clarions as men's rearisen from a sleep that was death And kindled to life that was one with the world's and with thine? hast thou set not the whole world free? VI For the breath of thy lips is freedom, and freedom's the sense of thy spirit, the sound of thy song, Glad god of the north-east wind, whose heart is as high as the hands of thy kingdom are strong, Thy kingdom whose empire is terror and joy, twin-featured and fruitful of births divine, Days lit with the flame of the lamps of the flowers, and nights that are drunken with dew for wine, And sleep not for joy of the stars that deepen and quicken, a denser and fierier throng, And the world that thy breath bade whiten and tremble rejoices at heart as they strengthen and shine, And earth gives thanks for the glory bequeathed her, and knows of thy reign that it wrought not wrong. VII Thy spirit is quenched not, albeit we behold not thy face in the crown of the steep sky's arch, And the bold first buds of the whin wax golden, and witness arise of the thorn and the larch: Wild April, enkindled to laughter and storm by the kiss of the wildest of winds that blow, Calls loud on his brother for witness; his hands that were laden with blossom are sprinkled with snow, And his lips breathe winter, and laugh, and relent; and the live woods feel not the frost's flame parch; For the flame of the spring that consumes not but quickens is felt at the heart of the forest aglow, And the sparks that enkindled and fed it were strewn from the hands of the gods of the winds of March.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：08/03/2023 10:18 AMCopy HTML In My Dreams BY STEVIE SMITH In my dreams I am always saying goodbye and riding away, Whither and why I know not nor do I care. And the parting is sweet and the parting over is sweeter, And sweetest of all is the night and the rushing air. In my dreams they are always waving their hands and saying goodbye, And they give me the stirrup cup and I smile as I drink, I am glad the journey is set, I am glad I am going, I am glad, I am glad, that my friends don't know what I think.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：07/03/2023 9:42 AMCopy HTML The Lady's Yes BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING " Yes !" I answered you last night ; " No !" this morning, Sir, I say ! Colours, seen by candle-light, Will not look the same by day. When the tabors played their best, Lamps above, and laughs below — Love me sounded like a jest, Fit for Yes or fit for No ! Call me false, or call me free — Vow, whatever light may shine, No man on your face shall see Any grief for change on mine. Yet the sin is on us both — Time to dance is not to woo — Wooer light makes fickle troth — Scorn of me recoils on you ! Learn to win a lady's faith Nobly, as the thing is high ; Bravely, as for life and death — With a loyal gravity. Lead her from the festive boards, Point her to the starry skies, Guard her, by your truthful words, Pure from courtship's flatteries. By your truth she shall be true — Ever true, as wives of yore — And her Yes, once said to you, SHALL be Yes for evermore.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：06/03/2023 10:00 AMCopy HTML Willow BY ANNA AKHMATOVA TRANSLATED BY JENNIFER REESER ...and a decrepit handful of trees. —Aleksandr Pushkin And I matured in peace born of command, in the nursery of the infant century, and the voice of man was never dear to me, but the breeze’s voice—that I could understand. The burdock and the nettle I preferred, but best of all the silver willow tree. Its weeping limbs fanned my unrest with dreams; it lived here all my life, obligingly. I have outlived it now, and with surprise. There stands the stump; with foreign voices other willows converse, beneath our, beneath those skies, and I am hushed, as if I’d lost a brother.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：05/03/2023 10:14 AMCopy HTML We Play Charades BY UMA MENON My first instinct is to translate the word. Make it easier to understand without saying the word itself. I feel guilt for this mistake— for changing languages instead of describing. Isn’t this an easy way out? My mother and I are playing charades alone. We make this mistake over & over, our tongues too quick to learn. After all, isn’t this what we are used to? When one language fails, we try the next & the next until someone understands. A syllable escapes like a captured cricket, singing for its love of freedom. It is too late to go back now, to jar the language we first learned. We do not want to, either, so in this game, we swallow first. Card, swallow, describe, flip. Card, swallow, describe, flip.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：04/03/2023 11:02 AMCopy HTML Appalachian Elegy (Sections 1-6) BY BELL HOOKS 1. hear them cry the long dead the long gone speak to us from beyond the grave guide us that we may learn all the ways to hold tender this land hard clay direct rock upon rock charred earth in time strong green growth will rise here trees back to life native flowers pushing the fragrance of hope the promise of resurrection 2. such then is beauty surrendered against all hope you are here again turning slowly nature as chameleon all life change and changing again awakening hearts steady moving from unnamed loss into fierce deep grief that can bear all burdens even the long passage into a shadowy dark where no light enters 3. night moves through the thick dark a heavy silence outside near the front window a black bear stamps down plants pushing back brush fleeing manmade confinement roaming unfettered confident any place can become home strutting down a steep hill as though freedom is all in the now no past no present 4. earth works thick brown mud clinging pulling a body down heard wounded earth cry bequeath to me the hoe the hope ancestral rights to turn the ground over to shovel and sift until history rewritten resurrected returns to its rightful owners a past to claim yet another stone lifted to throw against the enemy making way for new endings random seeds spreading over the hillside wild roses come by fierce wind and hard rain unleashed furies here in this touched wood a dirge a lamentation for earth to live again earth that is all at once a grave a resting place a bed of new beginnings avalanche of splendor 5. small horses ride me carry my dreams of prairies and frontiers where once the first people roamed claimed union with the earth no right to own or possess no sense of territory all boundaries placed by unseen ones here I will give you thunder shatter your hearts with rain let snow soothe you make your healing water clear sweet a sacred spring where the thirsty may drink animals all 6. listen little sister angels make their hope here in these hills follow me I will guide you careful now no trespass I will guide you word for word mouth for mouth all the holy ones embracing us all our kin making home here renegade marooned lawless fugitives grace these mountains we have earth to bind us the covenant between us can never be broken vows to live and let live
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：03/03/2023 9:35 AMCopy HTML People BY D. H. LAWRENCE The great gold apples of night Hang from the street's long bough Dripping their light On the faces that drift below, On the faces that drift and blow Down the night-time, out of sight In the wind's sad sough. The ripeness of these apples of night Distilling over me Makes sickening the white Ghost-flux of faces that hie Them endlessly, endlessly by Without meaning or reason why They ever should be.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：02/03/2023 9:34 AMCopy HTML The Amazon River Dolphin BY LINDA RODRIGUEZ The sudden pink shape surfacing in black-water lagoons shocked explorers. All dolphins share man’s thumb and fingerbones, but these also wear his flesh. When the river overflows and floods the varzea, these dolphins travel miles to splash in the shallows amongst buttress-roots of giant rainforest trees. The waters abate, trapping fish, dolphins never. A lamp burning dolphin oil blinds. At night the pink-flesh contours melt and blur. The flipper extends the hidden hand to lift its woman’s torso to the land. An Eve, born each night from the black Amazon, roams the dark banks for victims to draw to the water and death. Taboo to the Indians, this pink daughter of the river’s magic always looks, to explorers, like she’s smiling.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：28/02/2023 9:13 AMCopy HTML V I Was Sleeping Where the Black Oaks Move BY LOUISE ERDRICH We watched from the house as the river grew, helpless and terrible in its unfamiliar body. Wrestling everything into it, the water wrapped around trees until their life-hold was broken. They went down, one by one, and the river dragged off their covering. Nests of the herons, roots washed to bones, snags of soaked bark on the shoreline: a whole forest pulled through the teeth of the spillway. Trees surfacing singly, where the river poured off into arteries for fields below the reservation. When at last it was over, the long removal, they had all become the same dry wood. We walked among them, the branches whitening in the raw sun. Above us drifted herons, alone, hoarse-voiced, broken, settling their beaks among the hollows. Grandpa said, These are the ghosts of the tree people moving among us, unable to take their rest. Sometimes now, we dream our way back to the heron dance. Their long wings are bending the air into circles through which they fall. They rise again in shifting wheels. How long must we live in the broken figures their necks make, narrowing the sky.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：27/02/2023 9:02 AMCopy HTML Imaginary Dad Launch Audio in a New Window BY TINA CANE Was so imaginary he ceased to exist he wasn’t sleeping in a treehouse or stalking the woods in fatigues cheeks smeared green with camouflage grease a knife between his teeth like I had envisioned him he was just a married guy living in a small town near a dozen of my made-up cousins kin so distant they didn’t even know to miss me all their lives I’d picture them fumbling in their pockets through loose change patting their pants in search of something left behind all the time never knowing what it was or what it was like to eat Twizzlers while watching Apocalypse Now in a darkened theater on Bleecker St. to think each time a soldier appeared on screen Now, there’s a dad if I ever saw one because of course they’d seen one he was nothing like that and he belonged to me
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：24/02/2023 10:32 AMCopy HTML Gwendolyn Brooks: America in the Wintertime BY HAKI R. MADHUBUTI in this moment of orangutans, wolves, and scavengers, of high heat redesigning the north & south poles and the wanderings of new tribes in limousines, with the confirmations of liars, thieves, and get-over artists, in the wilderness of pennsylvania avenue, standing rock, misspelled executive orders on yellow paper with crooked signatures. where are the kind language makers among us? at a time of extreme climate damage, deciphering fake news, alternative truths, and me-ism you saw the twenty-first century and left us not on your own accord or permission. you have fought and fought most of the twentieth century creating an army of poets who learned and loved language and stories of complicated rivers, seas, and oceans. where is the kind green nourishment of kale and wheatgrass? you thought, wrote, and lived poetry, knew that terror is also language based on denial, first-ism, and rich cowards. you were honey and yes to us, never ran from Black as in bones, Africa, blood and questioning yesterdays and tomorrows. we never saw you dance but you had rhythm, you were a warrior before the war, creating earth language, uncommon signs and melodies, and did not sing the songs of career slaves. keenly aware of tubman, douglass, wells-barnett, du bois, and the oversized consciousness and commitment of never-quit people religiously taking note of the bloodlust enemies of kindness we hear your last words: america if you see me as your enemy you have no friends.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：22/02/2023 10:14 AMCopy HTML It’s Not That BY MAUREEN N. MCLANE It’s not that I’m opposed to poison in my lips or pig in my soap— it's not that I’m opposed. It’s not that I’m opposed to plastic bottles that won’t decompose to malodorous phosphorus flows— it’s not that I’m opposed to what you propose— surgery on your imperfect nose favelas blasted with hoses— it’s not that I’m opposed to opposing the opposite of anonymous neighbors, the nosy stargazers who discover new celebrity planets about to crash into your car. It’s not that I’m opposed that we drive when it’s not very far to walk or bike not opposed you’re opposed to the subway the stink of the general— train 4, 5, or 6–not opposed to the sex on Craigslist to your pets’ special tricks to the organized slaughter of cows by the tenderest machines— not opposed to your dreams to their screams to our hopes not opposed to the hordes with their ropes knives and bombs set in desolate streets slums and thrumming towns not opposed to your proms and baptisms to ongoing Christian schisms most unopposed to fierce Muslims Jews Baha’is and Hindus posed in poses temples now oppose the Kama Sutra too ooh-la-la for the petit-bourgeois members of the BJP —not opposed to a big GDP to a loud ATV not opposed to anything I can see hear or touch to “enough or too much”— It’s not that I’m opposed to whatever I should propose opposing, knowing knowing is thinning in the species’ extra inning on a world slow spinning on an axis slightly tilting into folly so is it folly to suppose you could oppose proposing something to oppose
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：20/02/2023 9:40 AMCopy HTML February BY MARGARET ATWOOD Winter. Time to eat fat and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat, a black fur sausage with yellow Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries to get onto my head. It’s his way of telling whether or not I’m dead. If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am He’ll think of something. He settles on my chest, breathing his breath of burped-up meat and musty sofas, purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat, not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door, declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory, which are what will finish us off in the long run. Some cat owners around here should snip a few testicles. If we wise hominids were sensible, we’d do that too, or eat our young, like sharks. But it’s love that does us in. Over and over again, He shoots, he scores! and famine crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits thirty below, and pollution pours out of our chimneys to keep us warm. February, month of despair, with a skewered heart in the centre. I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries with a splash of vinegar. Cat, enough of your greedy whining and your small pink bumhole. Off my face! You’re the life principle, more or less, so get going on a little optimism around here. Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：18/02/2023 12:03 PMCopy HTML From the House of Yemanjá BY AUDRE LORDE My mother had two faces and a frying pot where she cooked up her daughters into girls before she fixed our dinner. My mother had two faces and a broken pot where she hid out a perfect daughter who was not me I am the sun and moon and forever hungry for her eyes. I bear two women upon my back one dark and rich and hidden in the ivory hungers of the other mother pale as a witch yet steady and familiar brings me bread and terror in my sleep her breasts are huge exciting anchors in the midnight storm. All this has been before in my mother's bed time has no sense I have no brothers and my sisters are cruel. Mother I need mother I need mother I need your blackness now as the august earth needs rain. I am the sun and moon and forever hungry the sharpened edge where day and night shall meet and not be one.