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：17/02/2023 10:10 AMCopy HTML

Harlem
BY LANGSTON HUGHES
What happens to a dream deferred?
      Does it dry up
      like a raisin in the sun?
      Or fester like a sore—
      And then run?
      Does it stink like rotten meat?
      Or crust and sugar over—
      like a syrupy sweet?
      Maybe it just sags
      like a heavy load.
      Or does it explode?

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：16/02/2023 10:13 AMCopy HTML

Eating Chocolate Ice Cream: Reading Mayakovsky Launch Audio in a New Window
BY BARBARA GUEST
Since I’ve decided to revolutionize my life
                       since
                                  ”
                       decided
                                           ”
                       revolutionize
                                           ”
                       life       
                                           ”
                                      
How early it is! It is eight o’clock in the morning.
Well, the pigeons were up earlier
Did you eat all your egg?
Now we shall go for a long walk.
Now? There is too much winter.
I am going to admire the snow on your coat.
Time for hot soup, already?
You have worked for three solid hours.
I have written forty-eight, no forty-nine,
no fifty-one poems.
How many states are there?
I cannot remember what is uniting America.
It is then time for your nap.
What a lovely, pleasant dream I just had.
But I like waking up better.
I do admire reality like snow on my coat.
Would you take cream or lemon in your tea?
No sugar?
And no cigarettes.
Daytime is good, but evening is better.
I do like our evening discussions.
Yesterday we talked about Kant.
Today let’s think about Hegel.
In another week we shall have reached Marx.
Goody.
Life is a joy if one has industrious hands.
Supper? Stew and well-cooked. Delicious.
Well, perhaps just one more glass of milk.
Nine o’clock! Bath time!
Soap and a clean rough towel.
Bedtime!
The Red Army is marching tonight.
They shall march through my dreams
in their new shiny leather boots,
their freshly laundered shirts.
All those ugly stains of caviar and champagne
and kisses
have been rubbed away.
They are going to the barracks.
They are answering hundreds of pink
and yellow and blue and white telephones.
How happy and contented and well-fed they look
lounging on their fur divans,
chanting, “Russia how kind you are to us.
How kind you are to everybody.
We want to live forever.”
Before I wake up they will throw away
their pistols, and magically
factories will spring up where once
there was rifle fire, a roulette factory,
where once a body fell from an open window.
Hurry dear dream
I am waiting for you
under the eiderdown.
And tomorrow will be more real, perhaps,
than yesterday.

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：15/02/2023 9:42 AMCopy HTML

Angel
BY ANGELA JACKSON
for Jerry Ward
I am the only one here.
 
I stand in my one place
and I can see a good piece
down the road. I am yonder,
further than the chunk of your stone.
Right now, directly,
I am persimmon falling free
and the prisoner opening up
in me.
Don’t come through my door and
want to run my house. I am
the angel who sweep air in and out my own
dancing body. I got good eyes. I can see.
A good piece down the road. Clear to
God murmuring in me. My head is the burning
bush. What I hold in my hand is the promised
land. I set my people free in me.
And we walk without wandering like people named
after mere plants,
because we are tree
and high-stepping roots
cake-walking
in this promised place.
 
Where I go is where I am now.
Don’t mess with me: you hurt yourself.
In the middle of my stride now. I am walking
yes indeed I am walking through my own house.
I am walking yes indeed on my own piece of road.
Toting my own load
and yours and mine.
I tell you
I feel fine and clear this morning even
when it’s night and a full moon with my thumbprint
on it.
Everything is clamorous and quiet.
            I am the only One here.
            And we don’t break. No indeed.
            Come hell and high water.
            We don’t break
            for nothing.

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：12/02/2023 9:37 AMCopy HTML

February 11th 1990
BY WANDA COLEMAN
                                          —for Dennis Brutus
This year the leaves turn red green black
freedom colors each leaf
each stitch of grass. I am amazed
at my sweet harvest. The prison door has opened
and a nation’s heart is released. I am full
having spent my greediness in a ritual of joy.

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：10/02/2023 9:32 AMCopy HTML

Scallop Song Launch Audio in a New Window
BY ANNE WALDMAN
I wore a garland of the briar that put me now in awe
I wore a garland of the brain that was whole
It commanded me, done babbling
And I no more blabbed, spare no lie
Tell womanhood she shake off pity
Tell the man to give up tumult for the while
To wonder at the sight of baby's beauty
Ne let the monsters fray us with things that not be
From a high tower poem issuing
Everything run along in creation till I end the song
Ne none fit for so wild beasts
Ne none so joyous, ne none no give no lie
Tell old woes to leave off here:
I sing this into a scallop shell with face of a pearl
& leave all sorrow bye & bye.

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：09/02/2023 9:03 AMCopy HTML

One Art
BY ELIZABETH BISHOP
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：08/02/2023 9:06 AMCopy HTML

The Lammergeier Daughter Launch Audio in a New Window
BY PASCALE PETIT
That night, I opened your wardrobe and found
a trophy of vultures, their necks pierced
by hanger hooks. I saw at once
that you hunted everything I loved—
the griffon, the Himalayan, the lammergeier,
who haunted our home with wheeling cries.
I peeled off my skin then, and robed myself
as a bird bride. Veiled in morning mist
I married the sky. Of course, you aimed
at my heart, but as the bullet tore through me
I wrapped my talons around your skull,
lifted you high, and dropped you as a lamb
drops newborn from his mother
onto the snow-fleeced earth.
I landed beside you on the quilt.
And when the flesh-eaters had done their work,
it was I, your lammergeier daughter,
who devoured your bones—look, Father,
how they slide down my throat like rifles.

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：07/02/2023 11:49 AMCopy HTML

      
Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep
By Mary Elizabeth Frye
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：02/02/2023 9:16 AMCopy HTML

Togetherness Launch Audio in a New Window
BY YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA
Someone says Tristan
& Isolde, the shared cup
& broken vows binding them,
& someone else says Romeo
& Juliet, a lyre & Jew’s harp
sighing a forbidden oath,
but I say a midnight horn
& a voice with a moody angel
inside, the two married rib
to rib, note for note. Of course,
I am thinking of those Tuesdays
or Thursdays at Billy Berg’s
in LA when Lana Turner would say,
“Please sing ‘Strange Fruit’
for me,” & then her dancing
nightlong with Mel Torme,
as if she knew what it took
to make brass & flesh say yes
beneath the clandestine stars
& a spinning that is so fast
we can’t feel the planet moving.
Is this why some of us fall
in & out of love? Did Lady Day
& Prez ever hold each other
& plead to those notorious gods?
I don’t know. But I do know
even if a horn & voice plumb
the unknown, what remains unsaid
coalesces around an old blues
& begs with a hawk’s yellow eyes.

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Date Posted：31/01/2023 11:05 AMCopy HTML

In Strength Sweetness
BY ELIZABETH WILLIS
in the wind / an inky air
in the air / finchness
in the ink / a stone
in the winter / winter
in the nest / in the piney
in the tree / filigree
in the great / bye and bye
in the worm / William Blake
in the fall / fortune
in the ocean / a figure
in canvas / the grain
in the apartment / a body
in the mountain / its making
in the cottage / a fable
in the mind / its miniature
in the seed / a sun
in the fist / a question
in the question/ an expedition
in the expedition / a bank
in the dollar / a seal
in the seal / another seal
in the sand /  a massacre
in the blood / spirit
in the word / your mouth
in the tale / its labyrinth
in the lion / the bee
in the bee / a plain
in the plan / a city
in your city / its anger
in your anger / a harbor
in your harbor / a boat
in the boat / open sea

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Date Posted：25/01/2023 9:32 AMCopy HTML

     
ddress to a HaggisFair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o the puddin'-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o' a grace
As lang's my arm.
The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin wad help to mend a mill
In time o need,
While thro your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.
His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An cut you up wi ready slight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like onie ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin, rich!
Then, horn for horn, they stretch an strive:
Deil tak the hindmost, on they drive,
Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve
Are bent like drums;
The auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
'Bethankit' hums.
Is there that owre his French ragout,
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad mak her spew
Wi perfect scunner,
Looks down wi sneering, scornfu view
On sic a dinner?
Poor devil! see him owre his trash,
As feckless as a wither'd rash,
His spindle shank a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit;
Thro bloody flood or field to dash,
O how unfit!
But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread,
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He'll make it whissle;
An legs an arms, an heads will sned,
Like taps o thrissle.
Ye Pow'rs, wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies:
But, if ye wish her gratefu prayer,
Gie her a Haggis
Address to a Haggis TranslationGood luck to you and your honest, plump face,
Great chieftain of the sausage race!
Above them all you take your place,
Stomach, tripe, or intestines:
Well are you worthy of a grace
As long as my arm.
The groaning trencher there you fill,
Your buttocks like a distant hill,
Your pin would help to mend a mill
In time of need,
While through your pores the dews distill
Like amber bead.
His knife see rustic Labour wipe,
And cut you up with ready slight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like any ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm steaming, rich!
Then spoon for spoon, the stretch and strive:
Devil take the hindmost, on they drive,
Till all their well swollen bellies by-and-by
Are bent like drums;
Then old head of the table, most like to burst,
'The grace!' hums.
Is there that over his French ragout,
Or olio that would sicken a sow,
Or fricassee would make her vomit
With perfect disgust,
Looks down with sneering, scornful view
On such a dinner?
Poor devil! see him over his trash,
As feeble as a withered rush,
His thin legs a good whip-lash,
His fist a nut;
Through bloody flood or field to dash,
O how unfit.
But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread,
Clap in his ample fist a blade,
He'll make it whistle;
And legs, and arms, and heads will cut off
Like the heads of thistles.
You powers, who make mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill of fare,
Old Scotland wants no watery stuff,
That splashes in small wooden dishes;
But if you wish her grateful prayer,
Give her [Scotland] a Haggis!

AA

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Date Posted：20/01/2023 10:04 AMCopy HTML

A Dream Within a Dream
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone? 
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

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Date Posted：19/01/2023 10:09 AMCopy HTML

If you smell iodine, the captain is nearby” Launch Audio in a New Window
BY LYUDMYLA DIADCHENKO
TRANSLATED BY PADMA THORNLYRE
If you smell iodine, the captain is nearby.
The pines support heaven upon their needles.
An aquamarine July strolls along the seashore,
Its ever-returning feet massaged by pebbles.
You dilute the climate with tears. Carving melons
Smells of vacation ... just as the inevitable captain.
Hello! I know this well: summer has come. Henceforth,
It will knock at my threshold. I will prepare. I change
Unnecessarily so many times each day. The soul
Immaculate gasps when you bring her to the glassy sea.
When summer ends, I will spill iodine. Let it smell,
To make the captain believe his sea is my flat.

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Date Posted：18/01/2023 9:35 AMCopy HTML

Dreams
© Jane A Beresford
Published: April 2, 2017
We slip beneath the pillow's spell
And drift from heaven and into hell
To lose control of conscious mind
The secrets of our soul to find.

A timeless journey fills our being.
The blind man now becomes all-seeing.
The lonely now becomes the lover.
The childless wife a loving mother.

Reflection of our dormant fears
Once woken may reduce to tears.
With sleep the master free to prey
On untold thought which nightly stray.

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Date Posted：17/01/2023 10:03 AMCopy HTML

I Have Longed To Move Away by Dylan Thomas
I have longed to move away
From the hissing of the spent lie
And the old terrors' continual cry
Growing more terrible as the day
Goes over the hill into the deep sea;
I have longed to move away
From the repetition of salutes,
For there are ghosts in the air
And ghostly echoes on paper,
And the thunder of calls and notes.

I have longed to move away but am afraid;
Some life, yet unspent, might explode
Out of the old lie burning on the ground,
And, crackling into the air, leave me half-blind.
Neither by night's ancient fear,
The parting of hat from hair,
Pursed lips at the receiver,
Shall I fall to death's feather.
By these I would not care to die,
Half convention and half lie.

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Date Posted：16/01/2023 10:56 AMCopy HTML

  
The Benefits Of Exercise
© Alan Balter
Published: October 4, 2017
All my life I've been extra large, plus
I'm known as a very large fellow.
I would easily pass as a school district bus
If somebody painted me yellow.

"No secret to losing weight," I've been told.
"Just cut the fat from your diet."
"Get up and about even if it's cold."
Once again, I decided to try it.

But jogging was something senseless to me,
And riding a bike seemed insane.
Joining a gym involved a large fee,
And lifting weights was a pain.

So for exercise I choose horseback riding.
It's fun and easier than it sounds.
It's a very effective form of dieting
'Cause my horse lost forty pounds.

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：16/01/2023 10:56 AMCopy HTML

  
The Benefits Of Exercise
© Alan Balter
Published: October 4, 2017
All my life I've been extra large, plus
I'm known as a very large fellow.
I would easily pass as a school district bus
If somebody painted me yellow.

"No secret to losing weight," I've been told.
"Just cut the fat from your diet."
"Get up and about even if it's cold."
Once again, I decided to try it.

But jogging was something senseless to me,
And riding a bike seemed insane.
Joining a gym involved a large fee,
And lifting weights was a pain.

So for exercise I choose horseback riding.
It's fun and easier than it sounds.
It's a very effective form of dieting
'Cause my horse lost forty pounds.

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Date Posted：13/01/2023 9:59 AMCopy HTML

I Knew A Woman by Theodore Roethke
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin:
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing did we make.)

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)

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Date Posted：10/01/2023 9:23 AMCopy HTML

The Streets
BY RICK BAROT
When he came back from the streets he said
that everyone had worn masks, the stores
had all been boarded up, and the cops had
their gear and their shields, so that everything
was muffled while also terrible, terrifying.
He saw a woman, an older white woman,
get shoved down and she stayed down, curled
up, until she was helped. Because I was sick
and couldn’t go there, I had the luxury
of seeing the woman as an image, a seashell
or an ampersand on the ground, though I didn’t
tell him this. He saw the tents people lived in
by the park get torched, and I could smell
on him what he had seen. There were people
with bullhorns you couldn’t really hear.
There was singing along with the chanting
of all the names of those who were murdered.
He said it didn’t matter what kind of day
it was but it was ironic that it was a beautiful
summer day, the sky a swimming pool.
He lost the two friends he had gone with.
Though they’d told each other to meet in front
of the public library if they got separated,
the crowd had gotten thick and angry there.
At the crowd’s edges were people selling
T-shirts, books, and water, like the commerce
that sprung up at the edges of battlefields.
But it wasn’t a war, he said, because he
could walk away from it and take the bus
back home. I thought of him looking like a boy,
looking out the window, the tilt of late sun
a hand smoothing a tablecloth. I thought
of the bus the way I thought of poems, that it
was a civic space and a lyric space at once.
I knew not to say any more about what
I was only imagining. He turned and went
to the other room, to wash his hands and face.

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Date Posted：07/01/2023 9:06 AMCopy HTML

The Garden by Moonlight
BY AMY LOWELL
A black cat among roses,
Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon,
The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock.
The garden is very still,   
It is dazed with moonlight,
Contented with perfume,
Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies.
Firefly lights open and vanish   
High as the tip buds of the golden glow
Low as the sweet alyssum flowers at my feet.
Moon-shimmer on leaves and trellises,
Moon-spikes shafting through the snow ball bush.   
Only the little faces of the ladies’ delight are alert and staring,
Only the cat, padding between the roses,
Shakes a branch and breaks the chequered pattern
As water is broken by the falling of a leaf.
Then you come,
And you are quiet like the garden,
And white like the alyssum flowers,   
And beautiful as the silent sparks of the fireflies.
Ah, Beloved, do you see those orange lilies?
They knew my mother,
But who belonging to me will they know
When I am gone.

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：06/01/2023 9:40 AMCopy HTML

The Snow Arrives After Long Silence
BY NANCY WILLARD
The snow arrives after long silence
from its high home where nothing leaves
tracks or strains or keeps time.
The sky it fell from, pale as oatmeal,
bears up like sheep before shearing.
The cat at my window watches
amazed. So many feathers and no bird!
All day the snow sets its table
with clean linen, putting its house
in order. The hungry deer walk
on the risen loaves of snow.
You can follow the broken hearts
their hooves punch in its crust.
Night after night the big plows rumble
and bale it like dirty laundry
and haul it to the Hudson.
Now I scan the sky for snow,
and the cool cheek it offers me,
and its body, thinned into petals,
and the still caves where it sleeps.
 

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：05/01/2023 11:32 AMCopy HTML

Barbershop Quartet, East Village Grille
BY SEBASTIAN MATTHEWS
Inside the standard lunch hour din they rise, four
seamless voices fused into one, floating somewhere
between a low hum and a vibration, like the sound
of a train rumbling beneath noisy traffic.
The men are hunched around a booth table,
a fire circle of coffee cups and loose fists, leaning in
around the thing they are summoning forth
from inside this suddenly beating four-chambered
heart.   I’ve taken Avery out on a whim, ordered quesadillas
and onion rings, a kiddy milk with three straws.
We’re already deep in the meal, extra napkins
and wipes for the grease coating our faces
and hands like mid-summer sweat.   And because
we’re happy, lost in the small pleasures of father
and son, at first their voices seem to come from inside
us. Who’s that boy singing? Avery asks, unable
to see these men wrapped in their act.   I let him
keep looking, rapt.   And when no one is paying
attention, I put down my fork and take my boy’s hand,
and together we dive into the song.   Or maybe it pours
into us, and we’re the ones brimming with it.

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：04/01/2023 9:39 AMCopy HTML

Dreams
© Jane A Beresford
Published: April 2, 2017
We slip beneath the pillow's spell
And drift from heaven and into hell
To lose control of conscious mind
The secrets of our soul to find.

A timeless journey fills our being.
The blind man now becomes all-seeing.
The lonely now becomes the lover.
The childless wife a loving mother.

Reflection of our dormant fears
Once woken may reduce to tears.
With sleep the master free to prey
On untold thought which nightly stray.

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：03/01/2023 8:36 AMCopy HTML

The Robots are Coming
BY KYLE DARGAN
with clear-cased woofers for heads,
no eyes. They see us as a bat sees
a mosquito—a fleshy echo,
a morsel of sound. You've heard
their intergalactic tour busses
purring at our stratosphere's curb.
They await counterintelligence
transmissions from our laptops
and our blue teeth, await word
of humanity's critical mass,
our ripening. How many times
have we dreamed it this way:
the Age of the Machines,
postindustrial terrors whose
tempered paws—five welded fingers
—wrench back our roofs,
siderophilic tongues seeking blood,
licking the crumbs of us from our beds.
O, great nation, it won't be pretty.
What land will we now barter
for our lives ? A treaty inked
in advance of the metal ones' footfall.
Give them Gary. Give them Detroit,
Pittsburgh, Braddock—those forgotten
nurseries of girders and axels.
Tell the machines we honor their dead,
distant cousins. Tell them
we tendered those cities to repose
out of respect for welded steel's
bygone era. Tell them Ford
and Carnegie were giant men, that war
glazed their palms with gold.
Tell them we soft beings mourn
manufacture's death as our own.

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：02/01/2023 8:51 AMCopy HTML

Weekend Glory by Maya Angelou
Some clichty folks
don't know the facts,
posin' and preenin'
and puttin' on acts,
stretchin' their backs.

They move into condos
up over the ranks,
pawn their souls
to the local banks.
Buying big cars
they can't afford,
ridin' around town
actin' bored.

If they want to learn how to live life right
they ought to study me on Saturday night.

My job at the plant
ain't the biggest bet,
but I pay my bills
and stay out of debt.
I get my hair done
for my own self's sake,
so I don't have to pick
and I don't have to rake.

Take the church money out
and head cross town
to my friend girl's house
where we plan our round.
We meet our men and go to a joint
where the music is blue
and to the point.

Folks write about me.
They just can't see
how I work all week
at the factory.
Then get spruced up
and laugh and dance
And turn away from worry
with sassy glance.

They accuse me of livin'
from day to day,
but who are they kiddin'?
So are they.

My life ain't heaven
but it sure ain't hell.
I'm not on top
but I call it swell
if I'm able to work
and get paid right
and have the luck to be Black
on a Saturday night.

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Date Posted：30/12/2022 7:08 AMCopy HTML

         
The Waking by Theodore Roethke
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：28/12/2022 2:09 AMCopy HTML

Rank：Diamond Member
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Re：Poems

Date Posted：17/12/2022 9:22 AMCopy HTML

Terms and Conditions Launch Audio in a New Window
BY CINDY JUYOUNG OK
You call me ho; it’s short for home.
A cockroach falls from a chandelier
and my bodega loyalty fluctuates in
pace with the funeral’s bloody nose.
I’ve been eating trees my whole life,
which usually made me more patient
but more cruel; recently I stood on
a porch that wraps around that nest,
the house that used me. Any noise
can be a curse to a child of chaos,
silent hallways from Gothic novels
to twilight wind in fire songs. This
unlucky, to not even be an architect
and to be inundated with the prose
of it all—were we, daughters, spent,
when all hoped for sums? You call
out ha; it’s short for harvest. To be
a child is to gather secrets, an elder
to risk in transit. Once when I was
recovering, covering again myself,
I confused sharing for stealing, read
murder into shadows until laughter
came from silhouettes. We’ve since
phased, piano bleaching the scene,
becoming the fog and the pulp. You
name me ma; I know it means mine.

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：14/12/2022 9:47 AMCopy HTML

  
Evening Prayer
BY VANDANA KHANNA
                                              1.
Two Gods: the one in the closet
and the one from school days
and both are not mine. I opened
the door on God at dusk and closed
him the rest of the day. He perched
on the ledge above my father's shirts
and wool suits, a mandir in every Hindu
house, ours smelling of starch, surrounded
by ties and old suitcases. I was the ghost
at school, sat on the pew and watched
as other girls held God under their tongues.
My lips remember the prayer my parents
taught me those evenings with their bedroom
closet open—Ganesh carved in metal, Krishna
blue in a frame. I don't remember the translation,
never sure I really knew it. I got mixed up sometimes,
said a section of the "Our Father" in the middle
of the arti, ending in Amen when I meant Krishna,
Krishna, not sure when to kneel and when to touch
someone's feet with my hands.
                                              2.
My name means it all—holiness, God, evenings
praying to a closet. My mother says before I
was born, I was an ache in the back of her throat,
wind rushing past her ear, that my father prayed
every evening, closet door open, for a daughter.
And so I am evening prayer, sunset and mantra.
At school, I longed for a name that was smooth
on the backs of my teeth, no trick getting it out.
Easy on the mouth, a Lisa or a Julie—brown hair
and freckles, not skin the color of settling dusk,
a name you could press your lips to, press lips
against, American names of backyard swings, meat loaf
in the oven, not of one-room apartments
overlooking parking lots, the smell of curry
in a pot, food that lined the hallways with its
memory for days. I watched the hair on my legs
grow dark and hated it. I longed to disappear,
to turn the red that sheened on the other girls
in school, rejecting the sun, burning with spite.
In the mirror, I called myself another, practicing—
the names, the prayers, fitting words into my mouth
as if they belonged: Ram, Ram and alleluia, bhagvan,
God the Father, thy will be done Om shanti, shanti, shanti.

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Re：Poems

Date Posted：11/12/2022 9:56 AMCopy HTML

Still I Rise
BY MAYA ANGELOU
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

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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：17/02/2023 10:10 AMCopy HTML Harlem BY LANGSTON HUGHES What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：16/02/2023 10:13 AMCopy HTML Eating Chocolate Ice Cream: Reading Mayakovsky Launch Audio in a New Window BY BARBARA GUEST Since I’ve decided to revolutionize my life since ” decided ” revolutionize ” life ” How early it is! It is eight o’clock in the morning. Well, the pigeons were up earlier Did you eat all your egg? Now we shall go for a long walk. Now? There is too much winter. I am going to admire the snow on your coat. Time for hot soup, already? You have worked for three solid hours. I have written forty-eight, no forty-nine, no fifty-one poems. How many states are there? I cannot remember what is uniting America. It is then time for your nap. What a lovely, pleasant dream I just had. But I like waking up better. I do admire reality like snow on my coat. Would you take cream or lemon in your tea? No sugar? And no cigarettes. Daytime is good, but evening is better. I do like our evening discussions. Yesterday we talked about Kant. Today let’s think about Hegel. In another week we shall have reached Marx. Goody. Life is a joy if one has industrious hands. Supper? Stew and well-cooked. Delicious. Well, perhaps just one more glass of milk. Nine o’clock! Bath time! Soap and a clean rough towel. Bedtime! The Red Army is marching tonight. They shall march through my dreams in their new shiny leather boots, their freshly laundered shirts. All those ugly stains of caviar and champagne and kisses have been rubbed away. They are going to the barracks. They are answering hundreds of pink and yellow and blue and white telephones. How happy and contented and well-fed they look lounging on their fur divans, chanting, “Russia how kind you are to us. How kind you are to everybody. We want to live forever.” Before I wake up they will throw away their pistols, and magically factories will spring up where once there was rifle fire, a roulette factory, where once a body fell from an open window. Hurry dear dream I am waiting for you under the eiderdown. And tomorrow will be more real, perhaps, than yesterday.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：15/02/2023 9:42 AMCopy HTML Angel BY ANGELA JACKSON for Jerry Ward I am the only one here. I stand in my one place and I can see a good piece down the road. I am yonder, further than the chunk of your stone. Right now, directly, I am persimmon falling free and the prisoner opening up in me. Don’t come through my door and want to run my house. I am the angel who sweep air in and out my own dancing body. I got good eyes. I can see. A good piece down the road. Clear to God murmuring in me. My head is the burning bush. What I hold in my hand is the promised land. I set my people free in me. And we walk without wandering like people named after mere plants, because we are tree and high-stepping roots cake-walking in this promised place. Where I go is where I am now. Don’t mess with me: you hurt yourself. In the middle of my stride now. I am walking yes indeed I am walking through my own house. I am walking yes indeed on my own piece of road. Toting my own load and yours and mine. I tell you I feel fine and clear this morning even when it’s night and a full moon with my thumbprint on it. Everything is clamorous and quiet. I am the only One here. And we don’t break. No indeed. Come hell and high water. We don’t break for nothing.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：12/02/2023 9:37 AMCopy HTML February 11th 1990 BY WANDA COLEMAN —for Dennis Brutus This year the leaves turn red green black freedom colors each leaf each stitch of grass. I am amazed at my sweet harvest. The prison door has opened and a nation’s heart is released. I am full having spent my greediness in a ritual of joy.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：10/02/2023 9:32 AMCopy HTML Scallop Song Launch Audio in a New Window BY ANNE WALDMAN I wore a garland of the briar that put me now in awe I wore a garland of the brain that was whole It commanded me, done babbling And I no more blabbed, spare no lie Tell womanhood she shake off pity Tell the man to give up tumult for the while To wonder at the sight of baby's beauty Ne let the monsters fray us with things that not be From a high tower poem issuing Everything run along in creation till I end the song Ne none fit for so wild beasts Ne none so joyous, ne none no give no lie Tell old woes to leave off here: I sing this into a scallop shell with face of a pearl & leave all sorrow bye & bye.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：09/02/2023 9:03 AMCopy HTML One Art BY ELIZABETH BISHOP The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster. —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident the art of losing’s not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：08/02/2023 9:06 AMCopy HTML The Lammergeier Daughter Launch Audio in a New Window BY PASCALE PETIT That night, I opened your wardrobe and found a trophy of vultures, their necks pierced by hanger hooks. I saw at once that you hunted everything I loved— the griffon, the Himalayan, the lammergeier, who haunted our home with wheeling cries. I peeled off my skin then, and robed myself as a bird bride. Veiled in morning mist I married the sky. Of course, you aimed at my heart, but as the bullet tore through me I wrapped my talons around your skull, lifted you high, and dropped you as a lamb drops newborn from his mother onto the snow-fleeced earth. I landed beside you on the quilt. And when the flesh-eaters had done their work, it was I, your lammergeier daughter, who devoured your bones—look, Father, how they slide down my throat like rifles.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：07/02/2023 11:49 AMCopy HTML Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep By Mary Elizabeth Frye Do not stand at my grave and weep I am not there; I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow, I am the diamond glints on snow, I am the sun on ripened grain, I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning's hush I am the swift uplifting rush Of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry, I am not there; I did not die.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：02/02/2023 9:16 AMCopy HTML Togetherness Launch Audio in a New Window BY YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA Someone says Tristan & Isolde, the shared cup & broken vows binding them, & someone else says Romeo & Juliet, a lyre & Jew’s harp sighing a forbidden oath, but I say a midnight horn & a voice with a moody angel inside, the two married rib to rib, note for note. Of course, I am thinking of those Tuesdays or Thursdays at Billy Berg’s in LA when Lana Turner would say, “Please sing ‘Strange Fruit’ for me,” & then her dancing nightlong with Mel Torme, as if she knew what it took to make brass & flesh say yes beneath the clandestine stars & a spinning that is so fast we can’t feel the planet moving. Is this why some of us fall in & out of love? Did Lady Day & Prez ever hold each other & plead to those notorious gods? I don’t know. But I do know even if a horn & voice plumb the unknown, what remains unsaid coalesces around an old blues & begs with a hawk’s yellow eyes.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：31/01/2023 11:05 AMCopy HTML In Strength Sweetness BY ELIZABETH WILLIS in the wind / an inky air in the air / finchness in the ink / a stone in the winter / winter in the nest / in the piney in the tree / filigree in the great / bye and bye in the worm / William Blake in the fall / fortune in the ocean / a figure in canvas / the grain in the apartment / a body in the mountain / its making in the cottage / a fable in the mind / its miniature in the seed / a sun in the fist / a question in the question/ an expedition in the expedition / a bank in the dollar / a seal in the seal / another seal in the sand / a massacre in the blood / spirit in the word / your mouth in the tale / its labyrinth in the lion / the bee in the bee / a plain in the plan / a city in your city / its anger in your anger / a harbor in your harbor / a boat in the boat / open sea
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：25/01/2023 9:32 AMCopy HTML ddress to a Haggis Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o the puddin'-race! Aboon them a' ye tak your place, Painch, tripe, or thairm: Weel are ye wordy o' a grace As lang's my arm. The groaning trencher there ye fill, Your hurdies like a distant hill, Your pin wad help to mend a mill In time o need, While thro your pores the dews distil Like amber bead. His knife see rustic Labour dight, An cut you up wi ready slight, Trenching your gushing entrails bright, Like onie ditch; And then, O what a glorious sight, Warm-reekin, rich! Then, horn for horn, they stretch an strive: Deil tak the hindmost, on they drive, Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve Are bent like drums; The auld Guidman, maist like to rive, 'Bethankit' hums. Is there that owre his French ragout, Or olio that wad staw a sow, Or fricassee wad mak her spew Wi perfect scunner, Looks down wi sneering, scornfu view On sic a dinner? Poor devil! see him owre his trash, As feckless as a wither'd rash, His spindle shank a guid whip-lash, His nieve a nit; Thro bloody flood or field to dash, O how unfit! But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed, The trembling earth resounds his tread, Clap in his walie nieve a blade, He'll make it whissle; An legs an arms, an heads will sned, Like taps o thrissle. Ye Pow'rs, wha mak mankind your care, And dish them out their bill o fare, Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware That jaups in luggies: But, if ye wish her gratefu prayer, Gie her a Haggis Address to a Haggis Translation Good luck to you and your honest, plump face, Great chieftain of the sausage race! Above them all you take your place, Stomach, tripe, or intestines: Well are you worthy of a grace As long as my arm. The groaning trencher there you fill, Your buttocks like a distant hill, Your pin would help to mend a mill In time of need, While through your pores the dews distill Like amber bead. His knife see rustic Labour wipe, And cut you up with ready slight, Trenching your gushing entrails bright, Like any ditch; And then, O what a glorious sight, Warm steaming, rich! Then spoon for spoon, the stretch and strive: Devil take the hindmost, on they drive, Till all their well swollen bellies by-and-by Are bent like drums; Then old head of the table, most like to burst, 'The grace!' hums. Is there that over his French ragout, Or olio that would sicken a sow, Or fricassee would make her vomit With perfect disgust, Looks down with sneering, scornful view On such a dinner? Poor devil! see him over his trash, As feeble as a withered rush, His thin legs a good whip-lash, His fist a nut; Through bloody flood or field to dash, O how unfit. But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed, The trembling earth resounds his tread, Clap in his ample fist a blade, He'll make it whistle; And legs, and arms, and heads will cut off Like the heads of thistles. You powers, who make mankind your care, And dish them out their bill of fare, Old Scotland wants no watery stuff, That splashes in small wooden dishes; But if you wish her grateful prayer, Give her [Scotland] a Haggis! AA
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：20/01/2023 10:04 AMCopy HTML A Dream Within a Dream BY EDGAR ALLAN POE Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow — You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand — How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep — while I weep! O God! Can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：19/01/2023 10:09 AMCopy HTML If you smell iodine, the captain is nearby” Launch Audio in a New Window BY LYUDMYLA DIADCHENKO TRANSLATED BY PADMA THORNLYRE If you smell iodine, the captain is nearby. The pines support heaven upon their needles. An aquamarine July strolls along the seashore, Its ever-returning feet massaged by pebbles. You dilute the climate with tears. Carving melons Smells of vacation ... just as the inevitable captain. Hello! I know this well: summer has come. Henceforth, It will knock at my threshold. I will prepare. I change Unnecessarily so many times each day. The soul Immaculate gasps when you bring her to the glassy sea. When summer ends, I will spill iodine. Let it smell, To make the captain believe his sea is my flat.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：18/01/2023 9:35 AMCopy HTML Dreams © Jane A Beresford Published: April 2, 2017 We slip beneath the pillow's spell And drift from heaven and into hell To lose control of conscious mind The secrets of our soul to find. A timeless journey fills our being. The blind man now becomes all-seeing. The lonely now becomes the lover. The childless wife a loving mother. Reflection of our dormant fears Once woken may reduce to tears. With sleep the master free to prey On untold thought which nightly stray.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：17/01/2023 10:03 AMCopy HTML I Have Longed To Move Away by Dylan Thomas I have longed to move away From the hissing of the spent lie And the old terrors' continual cry Growing more terrible as the day Goes over the hill into the deep sea; I have longed to move away From the repetition of salutes, For there are ghosts in the air And ghostly echoes on paper, And the thunder of calls and notes. I have longed to move away but am afraid; Some life, yet unspent, might explode Out of the old lie burning on the ground, And, crackling into the air, leave me half-blind. Neither by night's ancient fear, The parting of hat from hair, Pursed lips at the receiver, Shall I fall to death's feather. By these I would not care to die, Half convention and half lie.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：16/01/2023 10:56 AMCopy HTML The Benefits Of Exercise © Alan Balter Published: October 4, 2017 All my life I've been extra large, plus I'm known as a very large fellow. I would easily pass as a school district bus If somebody painted me yellow. "No secret to losing weight," I've been told. "Just cut the fat from your diet." "Get up and about even if it's cold." Once again, I decided to try it. But jogging was something senseless to me, And riding a bike seemed insane. Joining a gym involved a large fee, And lifting weights was a pain. So for exercise I choose horseback riding. It's fun and easier than it sounds. It's a very effective form of dieting 'Cause my horse lost forty pounds.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：16/01/2023 10:56 AMCopy HTML The Benefits Of Exercise © Alan Balter Published: October 4, 2017 All my life I've been extra large, plus I'm known as a very large fellow. I would easily pass as a school district bus If somebody painted me yellow. "No secret to losing weight," I've been told. "Just cut the fat from your diet." "Get up and about even if it's cold." Once again, I decided to try it. But jogging was something senseless to me, And riding a bike seemed insane. Joining a gym involved a large fee, And lifting weights was a pain. So for exercise I choose horseback riding. It's fun and easier than it sounds. It's a very effective form of dieting 'Cause my horse lost forty pounds.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：13/01/2023 9:59 AMCopy HTML I Knew A Woman by Theodore Roethke I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one: The shapes a bright container can contain! Of her choice virtues only gods should speak, Or English poets who grew up on Greek (I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.) How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin, She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand; She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin: I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand; She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake, Coming behind her for her pretty sake (But what prodigious mowing did we make.) Love likes a gander, and adores a goose: Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize; She played it quick, she played it light and loose; My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees; Her several parts could keep a pure repose, Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose (She moved in circles, and those circles moved.) Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay: I'm martyr to a motion not my own; What's freedom for? To know eternity. I swear she cast a shadow white as stone. But who would count eternity in days? These old bones live to learn her wanton ways: (I measure time by how a body sways.)
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：10/01/2023 9:23 AMCopy HTML The Streets BY RICK BAROT When he came back from the streets he said that everyone had worn masks, the stores had all been boarded up, and the cops had their gear and their shields, so that everything was muffled while also terrible, terrifying. He saw a woman, an older white woman, get shoved down and she stayed down, curled up, until she was helped. Because I was sick and couldn’t go there, I had the luxury of seeing the woman as an image, a seashell or an ampersand on the ground, though I didn’t tell him this. He saw the tents people lived in by the park get torched, and I could smell on him what he had seen. There were people with bullhorns you couldn’t really hear. There was singing along with the chanting of all the names of those who were murdered. He said it didn’t matter what kind of day it was but it was ironic that it was a beautiful summer day, the sky a swimming pool. He lost the two friends he had gone with. Though they’d told each other to meet in front of the public library if they got separated, the crowd had gotten thick and angry there. At the crowd’s edges were people selling T-shirts, books, and water, like the commerce that sprung up at the edges of battlefields. But it wasn’t a war, he said, because he could walk away from it and take the bus back home. I thought of him looking like a boy, looking out the window, the tilt of late sun a hand smoothing a tablecloth. I thought of the bus the way I thought of poems, that it was a civic space and a lyric space at once. I knew not to say any more about what I was only imagining. He turned and went to the other room, to wash his hands and face.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：07/01/2023 9:06 AMCopy HTML The Garden by Moonlight BY AMY LOWELL A black cat among roses, Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon, The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock. The garden is very still, It is dazed with moonlight, Contented with perfume, Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies. Firefly lights open and vanish High as the tip buds of the golden glow Low as the sweet alyssum flowers at my feet. Moon-shimmer on leaves and trellises, Moon-spikes shafting through the snow ball bush. Only the little faces of the ladies’ delight are alert and staring, Only the cat, padding between the roses, Shakes a branch and breaks the chequered pattern As water is broken by the falling of a leaf. Then you come, And you are quiet like the garden, And white like the alyssum flowers, And beautiful as the silent sparks of the fireflies. Ah, Beloved, do you see those orange lilies? They knew my mother, But who belonging to me will they know When I am gone.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：06/01/2023 9:40 AMCopy HTML The Snow Arrives After Long Silence BY NANCY WILLARD The snow arrives after long silence from its high home where nothing leaves tracks or strains or keeps time. The sky it fell from, pale as oatmeal, bears up like sheep before shearing. The cat at my window watches amazed. So many feathers and no bird! All day the snow sets its table with clean linen, putting its house in order. The hungry deer walk on the risen loaves of snow. You can follow the broken hearts their hooves punch in its crust. Night after night the big plows rumble and bale it like dirty laundry and haul it to the Hudson. Now I scan the sky for snow, and the cool cheek it offers me, and its body, thinned into petals, and the still caves where it sleeps.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：05/01/2023 11:32 AMCopy HTML Barbershop Quartet, East Village Grille BY SEBASTIAN MATTHEWS Inside the standard lunch hour din they rise, four seamless voices fused into one, floating somewhere between a low hum and a vibration, like the sound of a train rumbling beneath noisy traffic. The men are hunched around a booth table, a fire circle of coffee cups and loose fists, leaning in around the thing they are summoning forth from inside this suddenly beating four-chambered heart. I’ve taken Avery out on a whim, ordered quesadillas and onion rings, a kiddy milk with three straws. We’re already deep in the meal, extra napkins and wipes for the grease coating our faces and hands like mid-summer sweat. And because we’re happy, lost in the small pleasures of father and son, at first their voices seem to come from inside us. Who’s that boy singing? Avery asks, unable to see these men wrapped in their act. I let him keep looking, rapt. And when no one is paying attention, I put down my fork and take my boy’s hand, and together we dive into the song. Or maybe it pours into us, and we’re the ones brimming with it.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：04/01/2023 9:39 AMCopy HTML Dreams © Jane A Beresford Published: April 2, 2017 We slip beneath the pillow's spell And drift from heaven and into hell To lose control of conscious mind The secrets of our soul to find. A timeless journey fills our being. The blind man now becomes all-seeing. The lonely now becomes the lover. The childless wife a loving mother. Reflection of our dormant fears Once woken may reduce to tears. With sleep the master free to prey On untold thought which nightly stray.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：03/01/2023 8:36 AMCopy HTML The Robots are Coming BY KYLE DARGAN with clear-cased woofers for heads, no eyes. They see us as a bat sees a mosquito—a fleshy echo, a morsel of sound. You've heard their intergalactic tour busses purring at our stratosphere's curb. They await counterintelligence transmissions from our laptops and our blue teeth, await word of humanity's critical mass, our ripening. How many times have we dreamed it this way: the Age of the Machines, postindustrial terrors whose tempered paws—five welded fingers —wrench back our roofs, siderophilic tongues seeking blood, licking the crumbs of us from our beds. O, great nation, it won't be pretty. What land will we now barter for our lives ? A treaty inked in advance of the metal ones' footfall. Give them Gary. Give them Detroit, Pittsburgh, Braddock—those forgotten nurseries of girders and axels. Tell the machines we honor their dead, distant cousins. Tell them we tendered those cities to repose out of respect for welded steel's bygone era. Tell them Ford and Carnegie were giant men, that war glazed their palms with gold. Tell them we soft beings mourn manufacture's death as our own.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：02/01/2023 8:51 AMCopy HTML Weekend Glory by Maya Angelou Some clichty folks don't know the facts, posin' and preenin' and puttin' on acts, stretchin' their backs. They move into condos up over the ranks, pawn their souls to the local banks. Buying big cars they can't afford, ridin' around town actin' bored. If they want to learn how to live life right they ought to study me on Saturday night. My job at the plant ain't the biggest bet, but I pay my bills and stay out of debt. I get my hair done for my own self's sake, so I don't have to pick and I don't have to rake. Take the church money out and head cross town to my friend girl's house where we plan our round. We meet our men and go to a joint where the music is blue and to the point. Folks write about me. They just can't see how I work all week at the factory. Then get spruced up and laugh and dance And turn away from worry with sassy glance. They accuse me of livin' from day to day, but who are they kiddin'? So are they. My life ain't heaven but it sure ain't hell. I'm not on top but I call it swell if I'm able to work and get paid right and have the luck to be Black on a Saturday night.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：30/12/2022 7:08 AMCopy HTML The Waking by Theodore Roethke I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Of those so close beside me, which are you? God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there, And learn by going where I have to go. Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how? The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair; I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Great Nature has another thing to do To you and me; so take the lively air, And, lovely, learn by going where to go. This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. What falls away is always. And is near. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I learn by going where I have to go.
DirtyDancer1957	Share to: #87
Rank：Diamond Member Score：235015 Posts：47003 From：United Kingdom Register：30/10/2008 5:23 PM	Re：Poems Date Posted：28/12/2022 2:09 AMCopy HTML
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：17/12/2022 9:22 AMCopy HTML Terms and Conditions Launch Audio in a New Window BY CINDY JUYOUNG OK You call me ho; it’s short for home. A cockroach falls from a chandelier and my bodega loyalty fluctuates in pace with the funeral’s bloody nose. I’ve been eating trees my whole life, which usually made me more patient but more cruel; recently I stood on a porch that wraps around that nest, the house that used me. Any noise can be a curse to a child of chaos, silent hallways from Gothic novels to twilight wind in fire songs. This unlucky, to not even be an architect and to be inundated with the prose of it all—were we, daughters, spent, when all hoped for sums? You call out ha; it’s short for harvest. To be a child is to gather secrets, an elder to risk in transit. Once when I was recovering, covering again myself, I confused sharing for stealing, read murder into shadows until laughter came from silhouettes. We’ve since phased, piano bleaching the scene, becoming the fog and the pulp. You name me ma; I know it means mine.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：14/12/2022 9:47 AMCopy HTML Evening Prayer BY VANDANA KHANNA 1. Two Gods: the one in the closet and the one from school days and both are not mine. I opened the door on God at dusk and closed him the rest of the day. He perched on the ledge above my father's shirts and wool suits, a mandir in every Hindu house, ours smelling of starch, surrounded by ties and old suitcases. I was the ghost at school, sat on the pew and watched as other girls held God under their tongues. My lips remember the prayer my parents taught me those evenings with their bedroom closet open—Ganesh carved in metal, Krishna blue in a frame. I don't remember the translation, never sure I really knew it. I got mixed up sometimes, said a section of the "Our Father" in the middle of the arti, ending in Amen when I meant Krishna, Krishna, not sure when to kneel and when to touch someone's feet with my hands. 2. My name means it all—holiness, God, evenings praying to a closet. My mother says before I was born, I was an ache in the back of her throat, wind rushing past her ear, that my father prayed every evening, closet door open, for a daughter. And so I am evening prayer, sunset and mantra. At school, I longed for a name that was smooth on the backs of my teeth, no trick getting it out. Easy on the mouth, a Lisa or a Julie—brown hair and freckles, not skin the color of settling dusk, a name you could press your lips to, press lips against, American names of backyard swings, meat loaf in the oven, not of one-room apartments overlooking parking lots, the smell of curry in a pot, food that lined the hallways with its memory for days. I watched the hair on my legs grow dark and hated it. I longed to disappear, to turn the red that sheened on the other girls in school, rejecting the sun, burning with spite. In the mirror, I called myself another, practicing— the names, the prayers, fitting words into my mouth as if they belonged: Ram, Ram and alleluia, bhagvan, God the Father, thy will be done Om shanti, shanti, shanti.
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Rank：Diamond Member Score：639530 Posts：127906 From：England Register：24/03/2010 8:09 AM	Re：Poems Date Posted：11/12/2022 9:56 AMCopy HTML Still I Rise BY MAYA ANGELOU You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops, Weakened by my soulful cries? Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard ’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines Diggin’ in my own backyard. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.