A Poem a Day

[ralphvirus]

I don't think I've seen something like this here yet.  The "Let me read you this one part" thread seems to be devoted to prose.  So post a poem you enjoy here.  I've got two to start from Stan Rice

"I Called the Cow"

I called the Cow
and she came to me,
black and brown, she bowed
her smooth blunt head, and said,
"I am one of the dead,
who come and go like flowers,
who rarely speak your tongue,
and so you think us dumb
beasts, but we are not so,
we are trapped between death and life,
unable to want, or choose,
I have no dread, I have no name,
all my faces are the same
black or brown, with blaze,
I eat, I drink, I stand
in the shade of the one shade tree
and try, like fire, to think."



"Pity"

In pitiless sun
The farmer is
Beating his donkey.

Only its brown eyes
Drifting in pain
From side to side

[Mesmerize]

ooooh I love poetry.  Here's one from Gregory Corso called, "The Whole Mess... Almost"

I ran up six flights of stairs
to my small furnished room
opened the window
and began throwing out
those things most important in life

First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink:  
"Don't!  I'll tell awful things about you!"
"Oh yeah?  Well, I've nothing to hide... OUT!"
Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement:
"It's not my fault!  I'm not the cause of it all!"  "OUT!"
Then Love, cooing bribes:  "You'll never know impotency!
All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!"
I pushed her fat ass out and screamed:
"You always end up a bummer!"
I picked up Faith Hope Charity
all three clinging together:
"Without us you'll surely die!"
"With you I'm going nuts!  Goodbye!"

Then Beauty... ah, Beauty--
As I led her to the window
I told her:  "You I loved best in life
...but you're a killer; Beauty kills!"
Not really meaning to drop her
I immediately ran downstairs
getting there just in time to catch her
"You saved me!" she cried
I put her down and told her:  "Move on."

Went back up those six flights
went to the money
there was no money to throw out.
The only thing left in the room was Death
hiding beneath the kitchen sink:
"I'm not real!"  It cried
"I'm just a rumor spread by life..."
Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all
and suddenly realized Humor
was all that was left--
All I could do with Humor was to say:
"Out the window with the window!"

[The_Tourist]

We
 

All went down to the creek to catch tadpoles,
and Martin had the gift:
his hand flashed in the water and came up wriggling

most of us had styrofoam cups on hand
but Martin had only his pockets
stuffed bottom to mouth with warm polliwogs
all grey and flaccid and flecked with lint

he would produce them for you if you asked:
they lay limp in his palm a dozen at a time

it was a difficult lesson
on the general theme of empathy

by...uhh..."anonymous"

[Maaik]

An Obvious Valentine Conceit

Against my better judgment, I
took the old bow from above
the mantle, gave it
to you.

Unloaded cord strained
behind your forefingers, pulled
taut to cheek, released
with a snap and sent
slipping, spinning
from your grasp,
your arm to shoulder to chest
rattled in sympathy.  We chuckled.
I went to the kitchen for drinks.

My head in the cooler, I heard
your laugh ride atop
terrible scratching, torn up
chords, serrated sounds.
Bottle in each hand, I watched you
tear the limb across the strings
of my guitar.  “Everything you listen to
sounds like this.
We should start a band” you said
and fell beside yourself
on the couch.

The bow skittered to the floor and
I joined you on the sofa.
Bottles at our lips, we imbibed
without the weapon.

From the necks of our drinks
we kept furtive watch over the
thin crescent of elm still
on the floor.  “Do you
even have arrows for that
thing?”
“Sure.”
“Don’t you worry?”
At this I smiled, took your
soft hand in mine.  “About
you?”

Eyebrow raised, a look of purpose
overtook your smile, you locked
on the bow, grimacing,
empty bottle fumbling, then
an arrow notched
pinched in your hand.
And you stood over me
trajectory trained in
at my heart.  “Where
did this come from?”

I looked from the steel
tip to your face.  “I thought you
brought it over here.”

Tremors of laughter roiled
through you.  Screaming giggles
connected us and I
lay helpless, smiling
at your shaking
drunken mercy.

I could only laugh
as the missile plunged through me
pinned me to the couch.

Now
I will drink as you push
the arrow through my chest and
out my shoulder, spicing the blood
soaking deltas into couch
and clothes.  Let you
plug the holes with pills
from your purse.  Sobbed
apologies met
only with smiles
from sobered eyes and
a request not to twist the thing
so much as it bores on through.
Under your control—one
long steady pull
on arrow
and bottle—do I
trust your tenderness
and the hardening
of my blood.

[rockmeamadeus]

I saw a man pursuing the horizion;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
"It is futile," I sad,
"You can never-"

"You lie," he cried,
And ran on.

---------------------

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter- bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."



(two by Stephen Crane)

[elpollodiablo]

in my pocket there are
twenty four quarters
of dollars
six dollars for parking
meters: one half
hour per quarter
dollar: price of time
before your apartment, always
one
empty
space between the hazard
yellow cubs, parallel
parking on a street
crowded with cars always
I wonder, which might be his
and which will be
as I slot a quarter dollar
and listen for the response
hollow mechanical
response: time purchased
increments of days,
hours halves and quarters of
hours until my front tires
bump over the uneven cobbles
of your street; I come
before your apartment
and I see no empty space.

[jebreject]

"Blue Mountain"

Blue mountains are of themselves blue mountains
And white clouds are of themselves white clouds
And there is a blue mountain, Croghan Kinsella,
And around it there are often white clouds.

Whether all things are accurately themselves
Or modifications of each other I do not know,
But clear mornings from my bathroom window
I see white clouds and a blue mountain.

"Wine of Lovers"

Today space is terrific.
With no wife or husband
We'll gallop on this wine
To a faggot heaven.

Like two angels ecstatic
With Riviera fever
We'll reach the beach
In the blue morning.

On the wing of the whirlwind,
Baby,
Side by side

We'll drive up to the paradise
Of making it with someone
New.

"Separation of Church and State"

No Jack Kerouac stamp.

"Wisconsin"

The high school band was legendary.

All by James Liddy

[Wally]

Myke, who wrote that? it's fraggin splendid.

[Maaik]

I did.  Thank you.

[Wally]

Really?

Holy shit! I really liked that. *tips hat*

[Gracelette]

From Galway Kinnell's The Book of Nightmares:


THE HEN FLOWER

1

Sprawled
on our faces in the spring
nights, teeth
biting down on hen feathers, bits of the hen
still stuck in the crevices-if only
we could let go
like her, throw ourselves
on the mercy of darkness, like the hen,

tuck our head
under a wing, hold ourselves still
a few moments, as she
falls out into her little trance in the witchgrass,
or turn over
and be stroked with a finger
down the throat feathers,
down the throat knuckles,
down over the hum
of the wishbone tuning its high D in thin blood,
down over
the breastbone risen up
out of breast flesh, until the fatted thing
woozes off, head
thrown back
on the chopping block, longing only
to die.

2

When the ax-
scented breeze flourishes
about her,her cheeks crush in,
her comb
grays, the gizzard
that turns the thousand acidic millstones of her fate
convulses: ready or not
the next egg, bobbling
its globe of golden earth,
skids forth,
ridding her even
of the life to come.

3

Almost high
on subsided gravity, I remain afoot,
a hen flower
dangling from a hand,
wing
of my wing,
of my bones and veins,
of my flesh
hairs lifting all over me in the first ghostly breeze
after death,

wing
made only to fly-unable
to write out the sorrows of being unable
to hold another in one's arms-and unable
to fly,
and waiting, therefore,
for the sweet, eventual blaze in the genes,
that one day, according to gospel, shall carry it back
into pink skies, where geese
cross at twilight, honking
in tongues.

4

I have glimpsed
by corpse-light, in the opened cadaver
of hen, the mass of tiny,
unborn eggs, each getting
tinier and yellower as it reaches back toward
the icy pulp
of what is, I have felt the zero
freeze itself around the finger dipped slowly in.

5

When the Northern Lights
were opening across the black sky and vanishing,
lighting themselves up
so completely they were vanishing,
I put to my eye the lucent
section of the spealbone of a ram-

I thought suddenly
I could read the cosmos spelling itself,
the huge broken letters
shuddering across the black sky and vanishing,

and in a moment,
in the twinkling of an eye, it came to me
the mockingbird would sing all her nights the cry of the rifle,
the tree would hold the bones of the sniper who chose not to
climb down,
the rose would bloom no one would see it,
the chameleon longing to be changed would remain the color
of blood.


And I went up
to the henhouse, and took up
the hen killed by weasels, and lugged
the sucked
carcass into first light. And when I hoisted
her up among the young pines, a last
rubbery egg slipping out as I flung her high, didn't it happen
the dead
wings creaked open as she soared
across the arms of the Bear?

6

Sprawled face down, waiting
for the rooster to groan out
it is the empty morning, as he groaned out thrice
for the disciple
of stone,
he who crushed with his heel the brain out of the snake,

I remember long ago I sowed my own first milk
tooth under hen feathers, I planted under hen
feathers the hook of the wishbone, which had
broken itself so lovingly toward me.

For the future.

It has come to this.

7

Listen, Kinnell,
dumped alive
and dying into the old sway bed,
a layer of crushed feathers all that there is
between you
and the long shaft of darkness shaped as you,
let go.

Even this haunted room
all its materials photographed with tragedy,
even the tiny crucifix drifting face down at the center of the earth,
even these feathers freed from their wings forever
are afraid.
 

[jebreject]

Really?

Holy shit! I really liked that. *tips hat*

me 2

miles, did you write the one you posted as well?

[Wally]

in my pocket there are
twenty four quarters
of dollars
six dollars for parking
meters: one half
hour per quarter
dollar: price of time
before your apartment, always
one
empty
space between the hazard
yellow cubs, parallel
parking on a street
crowded with cars always
I wonder, which might be his
and which will be
as I slot a quarter dollar
and listen for the response
hollow mechanical
response: time purchased
increments of days,
hours halves and quarters of
hours until my front tires
bump over the uneven cobbles
of your street; I come
before your apartment
and I see no empty space.

Pretty wonderful, kinda reminds me of something James Jones would have written had he cared more about people then he did about koala bears.

[jebreject]

I want to keep posting James Liddy, but I'll spare y'all for now.  However, keeping with Irish poets, here are two that couldn't be more dissimilar.

"Who Killed James Joyce?"

Who killed James Joyce?
I, said the commentator,
I killed James Joyce
For my graduation.

What weapon was used
To slay mighty Ulysses?
The weapon that was used
Was a Harvard thesis.

How did you bury Joyce?
In a broadcast Symposium,
That's how we buried Joyce
To a tuneful encomium.

Who carried the coffin out?
Six Dublin codgers
Led into Langham Place
by W.R. Rodgers.

Who said the burial prayers?--
Please do not hurt me--
Joyce was no Protestant,
Surely not Bertie?

Who killed Finnegan?
I, said a Yale-man,
I was the man who made
The corpse for the wake man.

And did you get high marks,
The Ph.D.?
I got the B.Litt.
And my master's degree.

Did you get money
For you Joycean knowledge?
I got a scholarship
To Trinity College.

I made the pilgrimage
In the Bloomsday swelter
From the Martello Tower
To the cabby's shelter.

- Patrick Kavanagh

"A Blessing of Weapons"

He fires joy-shots out of view
of the audience--the same four songs
each night for over nine years.

Do I have the right to kill a blade
that rusts and consumes its scabbard
till it is wedded to dry land,
working at less than oyster-power,

every educated muscle so hulked,
he in his wider circles thinks
a dense patch of star, a moon
or two my inmost paradise?

If I belonged to the place
as I wanted to belong
to the small-scale war, the army town,
the three-act, one-day battle,

instead of the harrying treaty
of oblivion, using different muscles,
I would be reading, ventre à terre,
that number, my street address as a child,

why they kept our names on the signs
describing the massacre.

-Medbh McGuckian

[elpollodiablo]

Really?

Holy shit! I really liked that. *tips hat*

me 2

miles, did you write the one you posted as well?

I did. That's the first verse I've written in more than a year.

And thanks for the kind words, Dommy.

I dunno how I knew, but I did know somehow that Myhque's was Maaikk's.

[alistarr*]

by john mcauliffe (by virtue of his dissertation and short fiction help, the man responsible for my degree being as good as it is):

Action

It is 3 a.m., on a wet night, and I'm stood
In the middle of a field,
Listening to The Open Mind, a repeat, on a walkman
When Corman with his wand and loudspeaker cone
Directs me, "Hey you," and then the long arm,
To walk across the field,
And to wade into the river
With the boom close to the water.
This is experience and I need experience

[jebreject]

I really dislike that last line for some reason.  

[elpollodiablo]

Contents
-----
Your Table of Contents foretells disappointment.
At a glance we can see how selective it is--you've selected
what doesn't cut deep. The result is a pleasantness--
as if the book were dressed for a party where the snacks are
nifty and expensive.

You include "Charming Young Man Eating Spanish Rice"
and "Charming Midlife Man Sipping Cappuccino"
and these are probably appealing in some way--in the way of
cool comfortable entertainment...
But Janet is not here, Janet who said, years back,
"Some promises are not made in words."
And in a hotel lobby there was a child who said
"I don't want to say goodbye because that means you're leaving."
This, with the veins pale blue in the child's right temple,
this is missing.

What you offer nearly vanishes beneath the silent hooves
of the all-night stampede of what you don't offer.

We flip around in the book and we get itchy.
You give us your ode to red hair,
an ode to women seen on public tranist;
and the ballad of sweet lonely you on the wrong train from Hamburg to
  Wurzburg.
You give us your ode to a Royal typewriter
and "Poem on Poems About Writing"
and your sonnet cycle "Maybe Maybe I'm Lovable"
and your lampoons of poets with Big Deep Masculine Hearts;
plus many jeux d'esprit involving muddy swans and small potatoes.
Also you offer an elegy for a touchdown pass thrown in 1964
at Coleytown Junior High School, along with
elegies for fifteen gentle normal hungers attached to fifteen songs

and these are not worthless, we don't say they're worthless
but our skin itches, our fingers writhe, our jaws clench
in this air of omission--

where is the little boy deep in Philadelphia who loved yellow raisins?
Not just his image but everything his existence meant;
and where is the dull blue wall of a construction site
across from St. Luke's Hospital the morning of your aunt's death?
Where, where is some study of your casual blind uncaring
in Providence, Syracuse, and Waltham?
Where is your sense of walking festooned in failure,
a fanning peacock of failure?
We don't find that in the Contents here!

We want to turn the page and read "What I Tried to Articulate
But Forfeited Due to Convention". That's nowhere
in this pleasant book . . . And you don't even include
the weariness of still trying to rock with the Rolling Stones
along a 3 A.M. highway in Ohio thirty years after "Exile on Main Street"--

do you? Oh maybe you do "to some extent". But in the dark byways of thought
you too must hear pounding those silent hooves
and feel, like us, this itchy lack in the hazy humid moonlight.


-Mark Halliday
---

I just typed that whole thing and FUCK are my hands cramping. I hate standing and typing.

[Good Intentions]

Wow.

[Wally]

1) Why are you standing?

2) I kinda knoiw that poem and frankly your early one has got more dirt under it's fingernails.

[elpollodiablo]

1) I'm at work, and stand to give the appearance of working.

2) You're actually familiar with this poem? I know it was published in Poetry Review in London a few years ago... That's pretty neat. This guy is on staff at OU.

And while I appreciate the praise, I like his a lot more.

[Wally]

1) Oh, well that sucks.

2) Yeah, the magazine might be where I know it from, more likely from one of the dopey ass creative writing groups I've attended.

And obviously you'd prefer his, a) because it wasn't you who wrote it and we nearly always prefer somone...yada yada yada. b) From what I can tell it's more formed, and fits into a structure I recognise even if I can not name, whilst your's did not.

Basically I read his not knowing the author and felt the dirt from a bag garden fall beneath my fingers. I read yours not knowing the author and felt the dirt from the forest fall beneath  my fingers.

But we like what we like, and it's all wrong.

[kuta]

is there a Bad Poetry thread around here yet?
i have a lot of it and i should really dump it somewhere..
actually.  
 i should probably dump it nowhere.
 

[Wally]

is there a Bad Poetry thread around here yet?
i have a lot of it and i should really dump it somewhere..
actually.  
 i should probably dump it nowhere.
 

Pick a thread. any thread, because deep within it a bad poem lies.

[kuta]

is there a Bad Poetry thread around here yet?
i have a lot of it and i should really dump it somewhere..
actually.  
 i should probably dump it nowhere.
 

Pick a thread. any thread, because deep within it a bad poem lies.

hahah d;
you're right.