A Poem a Day

[elpollodiablo]

Nae cunt leaves till we figgeh wha cunt did et.

[Squealbot]

One morning early I met armoured cars
In convoy, warbling along on powerful tyres,
All camouflaged with broken alder branches,
And headphoned soldiers standing up in turrets.
How long were they approaching down my roads
As if they owned them?  The whole country was sleeping.
I had rights-of-way, fields, cattle in my keeping,
Tractors hitched to buckrakes in open sheds,
Silos, chill gates, wet slates, the greens and reds
Of outhouse roofs.  Whom should I run to tell
Among all of those with their back doors on the latch
For the bringer of bad news, that small-hours visitant
Who, by being expected, might be kept distant?
Sowers of seed, erectors of headstones...
O charioteers, above your dormant guns,
It stands here still, stands vibrant as you pass,
The invisible, untoppled omphalos.

"The Toome Road" - Seamus Heaney

[Lucy]

hey, it's national poetry month, so let's post some poetry again.  it can be good, bad, whatever, as long as you like it or feel like posting it.

here's one i saw the author perform at school...the way he said tito puente stuck with me, and led to my checking out that music later.

Now the Dead Will Dance the Mambo
by Martín Espada

—Achill Island, County Mayo, Ireland, June 2000

Last night the shadow of a cloud rolled off the bare mountain
like a shawl slipping from the shoulder of a giant.
Shirts on the clothesline sagged in rain.
We burned turf, fists of earth blackening in the fireplace,
room full of poets’ books leaning rumpled, half-asleep.
All night a radio sang in Irish, tongues sod-hard with lament
or celebration. Then the BBC news, and the announcer’s lips
pinching the name: Tito Puente, The Mambo King, dead in New York.

I would listen to Tito’s records and see my father years ago:
black hair shiny as the spinning disk, combed slick
before the dance. I learned to spy on his mambo step,
drummed the pots and kitchen tables of Brooklyn.
I saw Tito Puente, too, hammering timbales on the Jazzboat
in Boston Harbor, brandishing drumsticks overhead
to scatter the malevolent spirits that grabbed at his hair.
Guadalupe pushed backstage to return with Tito’s drumstick,
splintered from repeating, always repeating the beat of slaves.
Here, on this island, I rehearse the Irish word for drum:
bodhrán, gripped by hand like the pandereta,
circle of skin and wood for the grandchildren of slaves
to thump as they sang the news in Ponce, Puerto Rico.

Again today the rain grays the graying stones.
We shake away drizzle in the pub dwarfed by mountains.
In brown Guinness light we squint to see
the posters of their Easter dead: James Connolly
bellowing insurrection to the Citizen Army,
the year 1916 ablaze above his head, numbers torched
like the pillars of an empire’s monuments to itself.
The bartender says Connolly eyed the firing squad
strapped to a chair in the stonebreakers’ yard,
gangrene feasting on his wound so he could not stand.
I tell the bartender that Puerto Rico has its Easter dead:
a march on Palm Sunday, colonial police intoxicated
by the incense of gun smoke, Cadets of the Republic
painting slogans on the street in their belly-blood.
That was Ponce in 1937, and Rafael still says:
My mother left in a white dress and came home in a red dress.

Tito Puente is dead, and we are in a pub on Achill Island
plundering the jukebox, flipping between the Wolfe Tones
and the Dubliners till we discover Tito’s Oye Como Va.
The beat is a hand slapping the bar, heads nodding
as if their ears funneled a chant of yes-yes, yes-yes,
and when we shoot a game of pool in his memory
the table becomes a dance floor at the Palladium,
cue ball spinning through a crowd of red and green.
Now James Connolly could dance the mambo,
gangrene forever banished from his leg.

[ralphvirus]

The Dissection of Beauty

         

        I strap her in securely to her pedestal
        Where she lilts and sways like a flower.
        It hurts to see her dancing with the wind
        And my heart shudders in a shivering, breathless fire.


        I slice her open and peel back layer after layer
        Of pretension and watch the skin smoke, ignite,
        And melt into a black puddle at my feet.
        Unwinding her muscles like balls of string,

        I strip her down to her cold bones, and
        Reaching between her shivering ribs,
        My fingers encircle her heart, which sits in my palm
        Tiny, trembling, and pink, feebly oozing alabaster blood.


       

Night in the Psychiatric Ward

         
        You couldn’t leave the wing.
        They had me sealed in a corner
        Of the dim hospital, swept into the margins.
        The nurses looked like us,
        Our sane doppelgangers with laced shoes.
        There were no windows anywhere.
        We couldn’t watch the normal world
        And it couldn’t be bothered by us.
        We were on a planet where beings
        With nametags and clipboards watched us,
        Guarded us from ourselves.
        Someone was needed to hold
        Our fractured lives together. All night
        They glided the corridors like mothers.

[jebreject]

ROMEO AND JULIET

If you will die for me,
I will die for you

and our graves will
be like two lovers washing
their clothes together
in a laundromat.

If you will bring the soap,
I will bring the bleach

- Richard Brautigan

[rockmeamadeus]

Both of these are by Stephen Crane. Fucking love that guy's poetry.




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."

-----

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

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

[heather]

omg i just found this poem it's hilarious [i think]


your mom


your mom your mom
she is the bomb

her womb is BIG
and full of sass

i can't believe
you have her mom ass

-anonymous, 1984

[Mesmerize]

pretty much a standard, but doesn't make it any less great.

Code:

"A Supermarket in California"
       What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
       In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
       What peaches and what penumbras!  Whole families shopping at night!  Aisles full of husbands!  Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!  --and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

       I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
       I heard you asking questions of each:  Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas?  Are you my Angel?
       I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
       We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

       Where are we going, Walt Whitman?  The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
       (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
       Will we walk all night through solitary streets?  The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
       Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
       Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

[alistarr*]

Both of these are by Stephen Crane. Fucking love that guy's poetry.




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."

-----

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

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

the same stephen crane who wrote "the open boat"? but of course he is a wonderful poet as well. loved both of these, especially the second (but maybe only because it followed the first).

[martin_van_buren]

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."

Inspired by the Stephen Crane love in the "currently reading" thread, I was just about to post that EXACT SAME POEM here. So instead here's another by the Cranemeister:

A learned man came to me once.
He said, "I know the way, -- come."
And I was overjoyed at this.
Together we hastened.
Soon, too soon, were we
Where my eyes were useless,
And I knew not the ways of my feet.
I clung to the hand of my friend;
But at last he cried, "I am lost."

[Andrew_TSKS]

Both of these are by Stephen Crane. Fucking love that guy's poetry.




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."

-----

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

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

i love that first one. never heard the second one but it is an instant favorite.

[Greg Nog]

Yeah, both of those are phenomenal. It's a little bit odd, 'cause I tend to have kind of chip on my shoulder when it comes to poetry.

I kinda wanna cover the first one as a comic.  It's amazing.

[Good Intentions]

Some time ago I translated a poem by Breyten Breytenbach and put it on here. Today I got inspired to do the same, since Breytenbach is an awe-inspiring genius.

If it's not obvious, Wellington refers to a place. A harbour town on the mountaineous Cape coast, to be precise.

I shall die and go to my father

I shall die and go to my father
Wellington's way
With long legs bright in the dark
Where the rooms are dark and heavy
Where the stars sit like gulls on the gables
And angels dig in the garden for worms
I shall die, and with little luggage set upon the road
Over Wellington's mountains
Passing through the trees and the dusk
And go to my father
The sun shall pulse in the earth
The wind's waves will make the folds creak
We hear the boarders dragging their feet above our heads
We will play checkers on the verandah,
old Father cheats,
And listen over the radio to the evening news

Friends, fellow mortals
Don't hesitate
Now life hangs from us like flesh on our limbs
But death shames not
We come and go like water to and fro
So, like sounds out of mouths, so we come and go
Our bones will know this freedom

Come along, in my dying
In my going to my father
Wellington's way
Where with worms angels fish fat stars out of heaven
Let us die, and pass away and be glad
My father has a large boarding home

[jebreject]

Seaside Improvisation by Richard Siken

Code:

I take off my hands and I give them to you but you don't
    want them, so I take them back
  and put them on the wrong way, the wrong wrists. The yard is dark,
the tomatoes are next to the whitewashed wall,
    the book on the table is about Spain,
      the windows are painted shut.
Tonight you're thinking of cities under crowns
   of snow and I stare at you like I'm looking through a window,
       counting birds.
    You wanted happiness, I can't blame you for that,
and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy
    but tell me
you love this, tell me you're not miserable.
      You do the math, you expect the trouble.
         The seaside town. The electric fence.
Draw a circle with a piece of chalk. Imagine standing in a constant cone
      of light. Imagine surrender. Imagine being useless.
A stone on the path means the tea's not ready,
    a stone in the hand means somebody's angry, the stone inside you still
hasn't hit bottom.

[milly balgeary]

For Elpollodiablo:

For Owen
by Stephen King

Walking to school you ask me
what other schools have grades.
I get as far as Fruit Street and your eyes go away.
As we walk under these yellow trees
you have your army lunch box under one arm and your
short legs, dressed in combat fatigues,
make your shadow into a scissors
that cuts nothing on the sidewalk.
You tell me suddenly that all the students there are fruits.
Everyone picks on the blueberries because they are so small.
The bananas, you say, are patrol boys.
In your eyes I see homerooms of oranges,
assemblies of apples.
All, you say, have arms and legs
and the watermelons are often tardy.
They waddle, and they are fat.
"Like me," you say.
*       *       *
I could tell you things but better not.
That watermelon children cannot tie their own shoes;
the plums do it for them.
Or how I steal your face --
steal it, steal it, and wear it for my own.
It wears out fast on my face.
It's the stretching that does it.
I could tell you that dying's an art
and I am learning fast.
In that school I think you have already
picked up your own pencil
and begun to write your name.
Between now and then I suppose we could
someday play you truant and drive over to Fruit Street
and I could park in a rain of these October leaves
and we could watch a banana escort the last tardy
watermelon
through those tall doors.

[Good Intentions]

I found a Breyten Breytenbach poem he wrote in English, so you can see why I am so crazy about him and try to do justice to him all I can

Today I Went Down
   
  today I went down on your body
while windows were thick white eyes
and hearkened the clogged cavities
in the small darkroom of your chest,
hedging an eternity over the aching voice
from your gorgeous throat,
agony and exaltation flow in one divide
if I may make so bold,
your thighs are a loveword your hair
night's glittering lining of secret disport:
I aimed for the innermost moon
and rent, moved by the syntax and the slow
of sadness and of joy, so
I love you, love you so

when the blinding comes,
the discomposure of silence,
it must be high up the hills
where hundreds of poor
stamp their feet in the dust, and drums
and woman voices like this ululating skyline
gag the final ecstasy

[nonotyet]

What I Learned From My Mother

I learned from my mother how to love
the living, to have plenty of vases on hand in case you have to rush to the hospital with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole grieving household, to cube home-canned pears and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.
I learned to attend viewing even if I didn't know the deceased, to press the moist hands of the living, to look in their eyes and offer sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.
I learned that whatever we say means nothing, what anyone will remember is that we came.
I learned to believe I had the power to ease awful pains materially like an angel.
Like a doctor, I learned to create
from another's suffering my own usefulness, and once you know how to do this, you can never refuse.
To every house you enter, you must offer
healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself, the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.
--Julia Kasdorf

[elpollodiablo]

Head Wound
-
On the day that my life span matched my mother's life span,
on the day when I had come to live as long as my mother lived--
she died in 1975, of cancer, three days after her fifty-second birthday--
on the day when I had lived as many days as she got to live
(though for her there were hundreds and hundreds of days of
miserable pain, which has not at all been my fate)--
on that day
I went to the gym to play basketball with some friends.

The game was fun, intense, chaotic--
trying to steal a rebound from big Patrick
I got my head in a wrong conjunction of time and space
and his big elbow hit me hard--I staggered
and muttered "I'm okay I'm okay" but everyone said "No you're not"
and my hand came scarlet from my head.
They made me sit down, and someone ran for towels and ice.
There was a silence in the universe for perhaps ten seconds
and it seemed to clang with meaning.

To see if I had a concussion one guy asked me questions
like today's date and my age and I told him.
Minutes later, when it was clear the cut on my head was superficial,
everybody spoke knowingly about head wounds
like a staff of doctors who can't be fazed--
"Heads wounds, man, yeah, they bleed like a river" . . .
But I remember their eyes in that ten-second silence:

human beings in the presence of something--fate
their eyes all remarkably sober and focused and interested
watching my eyes as I mopped ineffectually at the bright red stream
crossing my forehead and dripping to darken my blue teeshirt
with strange implication.

Driving to the Emergency Room I had seven thoughts:
1. It's a reminder.
2. It's a warning.
3. Let's not get carried away.
4. No wonder it is necessary and has always been necessary
to read poems and write them, to read novels and write them,
because the world is this enormous haunted cavern or enchanted gynasium
filled, too filled with symbolic meanings ready at any moment
to spring forth like goblins and make anything significant.
5. I'm lucky, she wasn't lucky;
she wasn't lucky, I'm lucky, it doesn't mean
ANYTHING--
6. But even if it doesn't, I can still say
her bad luck was bad;
7. And if that's true, doesn't it follow
that my good luck is good?

-Halliday

[nonotyet]

a poem I had written down from some random livejournal cause I kind of loved it, and came across tonight:

MY POLITICAL GUT

HANGS OUT OF MY PANTS

BUT THAT IS OKAY BECAUSE

I AM MAKING A STATEMENT ABOUT FEMINISM.

ACTUALLY, IT IS JUST VERY HARD

TO FIND PANTS THAT ARE NOT CUT THAT LOW.

BUT I AM AT LEAST SORT OF FASHIONABLE

AND THAT IS VERY IMPORTANT IN THIS WORKADAY WORLD.

MY CHUBBY ARMS

ARE SO COMFORTABLE

THAT PEOPLE FALL ASLEEP ON THEM.

LET’S SEE YOU DO THAT,

ANGELINA JOLIE.

THAT’S RIGHT, I’M CALLING YOU OUT.

TAKE OFF THAT BABY BACKPACK

AND TRY TO BOUNCE THAT LITTLE AFRICAN KID

ON YOUR BONYASS KNEE.

WAIT, I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE TALKING ABOUT ARMS.

MY PSEUDO-HIP SHORT HAIRCUT

DOES NOT MEAN I AM A LESBIAN.

THANK YOU,

THAT IS ALL.

MY ENORMOUS FEET

GIVE ME EXCELLENT BALANCE

AND MEAN THAT I CAN SORT OF

PICK THINGS UP WITH THEM.

SO WHEN MY VIBRATOR FALLS OUT OF MY BED

I DON’T HAVE TO SIT UP TO GET IT.

THIS IS MORE IMPORTANT TO ME

THAN YOU COULD POSSIBLY IMAGINE.

[Mesmerize]

"Bonfire At Midnight" by Rumi

A shout comes out of my room
where I've been cooped up.
After all my lust and dead living I can still live with you.
You want me to.
You fix and bring me food.
You forget the way I've been.

The ocean moves and surges in the heat
of the middle of the day,
in the heat of this thought I'm having.
Why aren't all human resistances burning up with this thought?

It's a drum and arms waving.
It's a bonfire at midnight on the top edge of a hill,
this meeting again with you.

[MurkPlectrum]

//

[elpollodiablo]

When you come all "wow look at all the reactionaries with their undeveloped taste in verse LOL" it pretty much makes me not want to read whatever you might be recommending.

I also read back through the thread and failed to see where people were saying that they "don't like poetry". In fact it seemed more like a lot of people discussing some poetry they enjoy.

The fact that there are no curse words nor personal attacks in this post says a lot about my mood right now.

[elpollodiablo]

Don't take that as a snap if I'm just totally misinterpreting your post. It's pretty fucking disjointed.

[RavingLunatic]

Will never get people who say they "don't like poetry."

I don't like poetry because I don't understand it. I've gotta have shit spelled out for me.

And that poem you posted is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. It looks like pure claptrap to me, but I suppose it has some sort of profound meaning that I can't even come close to deciphering.

[SPACERACE]

you should have seen the first edit.


that was a snap.