Poems that you love

[GoodtimeJesus]

Some Trees
by John Ashbery

These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance.
Arranging by chance

To meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing
With it, you and I
Are suddenly what the trees try

To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain.

And glad not to have invented
Such comeliness, we are surrounded:
A silence already filled with noises,
A canvas on which emerges

A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
Placed in a puzzling light, and moving,
Our days put on such reticence
These accents seem their own defense.

Love that Ashbery poem.

One of my favorites, by Dean Young:

I Am But a Traveler in This Land
& Know Little of Its Ways - Dean Young

Is everything a field of energy caused
by human projection? From the crib bars
hang the teething tools. Above the finger-drummed
desk, a bit lip. The cyclone fence of buts

surrounds the soccer field of what if.
Sometimes it seems like a world where no one
knows what he or she is doing, eight lanes
both directions. How about a polymer

that contracts in response to electrical
charge? A swimming pool on the 18th floor?
King Lear done by sock puppets? Anyone
who has traveled here knows the discrepancies

between idea and fact. The idea is the worm
in the tequila and the next day is the fact.
In between may be the sacred—real blood
from the wooden virgin’s eyes, and the hoax—

landing sites in cornfields. Maybe ideas
are best sprung from actions like the children
of Zeus. One gives us elastic and the omelette,
another nightmares and SUVs. There’s considerable

wobble in the system, and the fan belt screams,
waking the baby. Swaying in the darkened
nursery, kissing the baby-smelling head:
good idea! But also sadness looking at the sea.

The stranded whale, guided out of the cove
by tugboats, turns and swims back in.
The violinist will not let go her violin
which is 200 years old and still on the train

thus she is dragged down the track. By what
manner is the soul joined to the body?
Answer: an arm connecting a violin
to a violinist. According to Freud,

there are no accidents. Astrologists
and Presbyterians agree for different reasons.
You fall down the stairs with a birthday cake.
You try to fit a blunderbuss into a laptop.

Human consciousness: is it the projector
or the screen? They come in orange jumpsuits
and spray the grass so everything dies
but the grass. It is too late to ask Kafka

what he thinks. Sometimes they give you
a box of ash, a handshake, and the rest
is your problem. In one version,
the beggar turns out to be a king and grants

the poor couple a castle and a moat and two
silver horses said to be sired by the wind.
That was before dentistry, which might have been
a better gift. You did not want to get sick
in the 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th or 18th centuries.

So too the 19th and 20th were to be avoided
but the doctor coming to bleed you is the master
of the short story. After the kiss from whom
he will never know, the lieutenant, going home,

touches a bush in which birds are singing.

[Truerenigma]

Sestina: Like
BY A. E. STALLINGS

[milo]

Sestina: Like
BY A. E. STALLINGS

With a nod to Jonah Winter

Now we’re all “friends,” there is no love but Like,
A semi-demi goddess, something like
A reality-TV star look-alike,
Named Simile or Me Two. So we like
In order to be liked. It isn’t like
There’s Love or Hate now. Even plain “dislike”

Is frowned on: there’s no button for it. Like
Is something you can quantify: each “like”
You gather’s almost something money-like,
Token of virtual support. “Please like
This page to stamp out hunger.” And you’d like
To end hunger and climate change alike,

But it’s unlikely Like does diddly. Like
Just twiddles its unopposing thumbs-ups, like-
Wise props up scarecrow silences. “I’m like,
So OVER him,” I overhear. “But, like,
He doesn’t get it. Like, you know? He’s like
It’s all OK. Like I don’t even LIKE

Him anymore. Whatever. I’m all like ... ”
Take “like” out of our chat, we’d all alike
Flounder, agape, gesticulating like
A foreign film sans subtitles, fall like
Dumb phones to mooted desuetude. Unlike
With other crutches, um, when we use “like,”

We’re not just buying time on credit: Like
Displaces other words; crowds, cuckoo-like,
Endangered hatchlings from the nest. (Click “like”
If you’re against extinction!) Like is like
Invasive zebra mussels, or it’s like
Those nutria-things, or kudzu, or belike

Redundant fast food franchises, each like
(More like) the next. Those poets who dislike
Inversions, archaisms, who just like
Plain English as she’s spoke — why isn’t “like”
Their (literally) every other word? I’d like
Us just to admit that’s what real speech is like.

But as you like, my friend. Yes, we’re alike,
How we pronounce, say, lichen, and dislike
Cancer and war. So like this page. Click Like.

I read this when it appeared in Poetry magazine and almost posted it as a poem I hated . . .

[Truerenigma]

Theory My Natural Brown Ass

I've paid for too many degrees,
posited too many historical positions,
made too many semiotic apologetics,
forwarded far too many feminist responses
to too many textual materialities

to have an ass this big.

In theory, my ass
does not signify.

But this insistence of the body,
this non-linguistic expression
of inertia and caloric lust,
is a corporeal truth that mental exercise
can't deconstruct.

Or is it just an inverted absence?
The presence of the lack
of any Aryan heritage?

I'm the post-colonial girl
who went abroad and squatted and lunged
while the maid, snapping out
wet laundry, watched.
Skinny brown bitch, was what I thought!
The poor men looked at my ass
like it was a pair of Boston Cremes.

But I was raised
on white girls' dreams.
This juicy back might fly in hip hop,
but I meant to fit
into tinier social circles,
and JLo's butt's already taking up
two stools at the representation bar.
Missy E's already gone
bonh bo bonh bonh
all the way to the bank.

My ass doesn't give a shit
that my mind is post third wave.
It is imperialist, a booty-Gap,
expanding into a third space: the place

beyond my seams. Who cares
that sizes are all 'seems' anyway:
you shop, you walk
the slippery significatory slope
on which an 'S', 'M', or 'L' might fall.
The mall

is the spatial organization
of desire, I know, but
does that make my ass look small?

—Sonnet L'Abbe

[milo]

The Return of the Shopping Dead

I love the smell of vegetarians in the morning.
My beard is long and gray and when I’m yawning
the walmart boys do crocodile things –
I squeeze some red tomatoes and I sing
a giant bird nested in canned food
some have pictures of missing children.

Sometimes I see my lovely mom
waiting in line like a sad elephant.
I grab her flabby tail and I follow
the grocery muse to an abyss of weight.

Hi mom. Thought you were dead.
What’s in the bag?
In the shiny bag, mother?

Spare ribs, chocolate bars
some cigarettes, a lighter.

But the neon brightens,
and the ghost that pretends
to be a cashier stretches her hand.

While I study her transparant veins
I hear some sirens doing the street,

the noisy beggars I always believed
baptised you a thief and a virgin.

Martijn Benders

[Truerenigma]

The Return of the Shopping Dead

I love the smell of vegetarians in the morning.
My beard is long and gray and when I’m yawning
the walmart boys do crocodile things –
I squeeze some red tomatoes and I sing
a giant bird nested in canned food
some have pictures of missing children.

Sometimes I see my lovely mom
waiting in line like a sad elephant.
I grab her flabby tail and I follow
the grocery muse to an abyss of weight.

Hi mom. Thought you were dead.
What’s in the bag?
In the shiny bag, mother?

Spare ribs, chocolate bars
some cigarettes, a lighter.

But the neon brightens,
and the ghost that pretends
to be a cashier stretches her hand.

While I study her transparant veins
I hear some sirens doing the street,

the noisy beggars I always believed
baptised you a thief and a virgin.

Martijn Benders

[milo]

Took he then the White Man's curses,
Rules for putting words in order,
Rules for making White Man's verses,
Shredded them in office shredder.
Into little bits of paper
Did brave Hiawatha shred them,
Piled them in a little pileup.
Took he then his flint and sparker,
Treaty gift from passing White Man,
Flint and sparker made by Ronson,
Touched it to the pile of tinder,
Tender tinder now the Rules were,
Turned them into sparks arising,
Sparks to summon all the Muses
Rising in the evening moonlight.
Such a fire no Muse refuses,
Lit by flint and steel from Ronson,
Made of sparks that now the Rules is,
Swimming like an Indian maiden
Nude and bobbing in the water,
Bobbing, bobbing in the water,
Lapping, licking, lucky water,
First the titty, then the booty,
Neither with a stitch of clothing.
"Write," she said to Hiawatha,
"Write my titty, write my booty,
Write your *loving*, write your *feeling*
Gushing where the stinking Rules were!"
So she said to Hiawatha
Ere she turned into a Raven
Leaving Hiawatha ravin'
By the smoking embers smoking
Something he rolled up for ravin'
Of the titty and the booty
Bobbing, gleaming in the moonlight.

Dennis Hammes

[Truerenigma]

Took he then the White Man's curses,
Rules for putting words in order,
Rules for making White Man's verses,
Shredded them in office shredder.
Into little bits of paper
Did brave Hiawatha shred them,
Piled them in a little pileup.
Took he then his flint and sparker,
Treaty gift from passing White Man,
Flint and sparker made by Ronson,
Touched it to the pile of tinder,
Tender tinder now the Rules were,
Turned them into sparks arising,
Sparks to summon all the Muses
Rising in the evening moonlight.
Such a fire no Muse refuses,
Lit by flint and steel from Ronson,
Made of sparks that now the Rules is,
Swimming like an Indian maiden
Nude and bobbing in the water,
Bobbing, bobbing in the water,
Lapping, licking, lucky water,
First the titty, then the booty,
Neither with a stitch of clothing.
"Write," she said to Hiawatha,
"Write my titty, write my booty,
Write your *loving*, write your *feeling*
Gushing where the stinking Rules were!"
So she said to Hiawatha
Ere she turned into a Raven
Leaving Hiawatha ravin'
By the smoking embers smoking
Something he rolled up for ravin'
Of the titty and the booty
Bobbing, gleaming in the moonlight.

Dennis Hammes

*Feeling* words...in no particular order.

[bena]

I like this one because it can be read on many levels. See if you guys like it as well.


BY Imtiaz Dharker.


The right word



Outside the door,

lurking in the shadows,

is a terrorist.



Is that the wrong description?

Outside that door,

taking shelter in the shadows,

is a freedom fighter.



I haven't got this right .

Outside, waiting in the shadows,

is a hostile militant.



Are words no more

than waving, wavering flags?

Outside your door,

watchful in the shadows,

is a guerrilla warrior.



God help me.

Outside, defying every shadow,

stands a martyr.

I saw his face.







No words can help me now.

Just outside the door,

lost in shadows,

is a child who looks like mine.



One word for you.

Outside my door,

his hand too steady,

his eyes too hard

is a boy who looks like your son, too.



I open the door.

Come in, I say.

Come in and eat with us.



The child steps in

and carefully, at my door,

takes off his shoes.

[milo]

Dizzy

I set out to sea to design some dizains;
To seize them in dozens I sailed,
But, lulled by the lap of the sea's refrains
Of the lap of the mermaid I toiled and tailed
For the tits I would doze on and lap, I failed.
A grizzled old man, I returned with ghazals
Of gazelles that I gazed while I guzzled with pals
On their grazing and dozing and frolicking free,
For I have no disdain for dizains, only mals,
And I gruesome what sick when I guzzled at sea.

Dennis Hammes

[Truerenigma]

Dizzy

I set out to sea to design some dizains;
To seize them in dozens I sailed,
But, lulled by the lap of the sea's refrains
Of the lap of the mermaid I toiled and tailed
For the tits I would doze on and lap, I failed.
A grizzled old man, I returned with ghazals
Of gazelles that I gazed while I guzzled with pals
On their grazing and dozing and frolicking free,
For I have no disdain for dizains, only mals,
And I gruesome what sick when I guzzled at sea.

Dennis Hammes

I had almost forgotten how, for someone who was primarily by and large such a big advocate for formal poetry, he would deviate so far from the norm, to push the limits of what poetry could do, even as doggerel and nonsense. (I'm actually seasick.)

[milo]

Dizzy

I set out to sea to design some dizains;
To seize them in dozens I sailed,
But, lulled by the lap of the sea's refrains
Of the lap of the mermaid I toiled and tailed
For the tits I would doze on and lap, I failed.
A grizzled old man, I returned with ghazals
Of gazelles that I gazed while I guzzled with pals
On their grazing and dozing and frolicking free,
For I have no disdain for dizains, only mals,
And I gruesome what sick when I guzzled at sea.

Dennis Hammes

I had almost forgotten how, for someone who was primarily by and large such a big advocate for formal poetry, he would deviate so far from the norm, to push the limits of what poetry could do, even as doggerel and nonsense. (I'm actually seasick.)

There is a childlike "joy in language" in his writing.

[milo]

Possession

Ownership has nothing to do
with the midnight feel of four hot feet
and briar toes scoring your back,
or with the fuzz of striping orange
on your pillowcase. There is no master.
There is the whiffling purr of a too-old cat
who walks with a stiffleg wobble,
a drunk on stilts, but hinged--
hinged in the middle to waver toward
the water bowl and hover, shedding.

If he were a man we could sit,
cry in some corridor, sip bad coffee.
The nurses would fawn, and their soles
would sigh, hushing the ward. They're mourning.
They're mourning. Be silent. Be kind.

I'll answer when it rings. The voice
will ripple, and I will sound cold
as if I've lost my next best garden hose.

From now on there will be one head
to a pillow in this house, four legs to a bed.
And who will wake up cold in the night,
dreaming that a cat hums melodies?

Julie Carter

[Truerenigma]

The Hearts

The legendary muscle that wants and grieves,
The organ of attachment, the pump of thrills
And troubles, clinging in stubborn colonies

Like pulpy shore-life battened on a jetty.
Slashed by the little deaths of sleep and pleasure,
They swell in the nurturing spasms of the waves,

Sucking to cling; and even in death itself—
Baked, frozen—they shrink to grip the granite harder.
“Rid yourself of attachments and aversions”—

But in her father’s orchard, already, he says
He’d like to be her bird, and she says: Sweet, yes,
Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing,

Showing that she knows already—as Art Pepper,
That first time he takes heroin, already knows
That he will go to prison, and that he’ll suffer

And knows he needs to have it, or die; and the one
Who makes the General lose the world for love
Lets him say, Would I had never seen her, but Oh!

Says Enobarbus, Then you would have missed
A wonderful piece of work, which left unseen
Would bring less glory to your travels. Among

The creatures in the rock-torn surf, a wave
Of agitation, a gasp. A scholar quips,
Shakespeare was almost certainly homosexual,

Bisexual, or heterosexual, the sonnets
Provide no evidence on the matter. He writes
Romeo an extravagant speech on tears,

In the Italian manner, his teardrops cover
His chamber window, says the boy, he calls them crystals,
Inanely, and sings them to Juliet with his heart:

The almost certainly invented heart
Which Buddha denounces, in its endless changes
Forever jumping and moving, like an ape.

Over the poor beast’s head the crystal fountain
Crashes illusions, the cold salt spume of pain
And meaningless distinction, as Buddha says,

But here in the crystal shower mouths are open
To sing, it is Lee Andrews and The Hearts
In 1957, singing I sit in my room

Looking out at the rain, My tear drops are
Like crystals, they cover my windowpane, the turns
Of these illusions we make become their glory:

To Buddha every distinct thing is illusion
And becoming is destruction, but still we sing
In the shower. I do. In the beginning God drenched

The Emptiness with images: the potter
Crosslegged at his wheel in Benares market
Making mud cups, another cup each second

Tapering up between his fingers, one more
To sell the tea-seller at a penny a dozen,
And tea a penny a cup. The customers smash

The empties, and waves of traffic grind the shards
To mud for new cups, in turn; and I keep one here
Next to me: holding it awhile from out of the cloud

Of dust that rises from the shattered pieces,
The risen dust alive with fire, then settled
And soaked and whirling again on the wheel that turns

And looks on the world as on another cloud,
On everything the heart can grasp and throw away
As a passing cloud, with even Enlightenment

Itself another image, another cloud
To break and churn a salt foam over the heart
Like an anemone that sucks at clouds and makes

Itself with clouds and sings in clouds and covers
Its windowpane with clouds that blur and melt,
Until one clings and holds—as once in the Temple

In the time before the Temple was destroyed
A young priest saw the seraphim of the Lord:
Each had six wings, with two they covered their faces,

With two they covered their legs and feet, with two
They darted and hovered like dragonflies or perched
Like griffins in the shadows near the ceiling—

These are the visions, too barbarous for heaven
And too preposterous for belief on earth,
God sends to taunt his prophet with the truth

No one can see, that leads to who knows where.
A seraph took a live coal from the altar
And seared the prophet’s lips, and so he spoke.

As the record ends, a coda in retard:
The Hearts in a shifting velvety ah, and ah
Prolonged again, and again as Lee Andrews

Reaches ah high for I have to gain Faith, Hope
And Charity, God only knows the girl
Who will love me—Oh! if we only could

Start over again! Then The Hearts chant the chords
Again a final time, ah and the record turns
Through all the music, and on into silence again.

—Robert Pinsky

[milo]

Someone mentioned my azimuth which reminded me of my old friend shambhu

Valediction
------------
On the way unlearned,
exhaled your skin-dark
autumn smog. But the sun-scent stays
unwashed upon my sleeve,
a whiff of summer sniffed out
like a half burnt giveaway.

A peat-crusted gleam leads
out of the underpass
this way. Woven baskets stacked
with gourds await
a timid finger push
to set them toppling on the tracks.

I touch a well known speck.
Stain of salted plums
on my palm there-- an aftertaste
of parting soured away,
a part of you canned in,
sold out layered with platform dust.

But I am ready,
muscle-tensed to sprint,
squeeze tough-boned through the lanes
to grab the window,
whip a handkerchief
and power the soot-lined pane.

A speech sir. Who, me ?
No, my shrug has a word
for you, unlettered as I am
or clearer incoherence
of a wheeze-drawn whisper
as I wave into the cam.

So much for uncalled
chit-chat; there is time
to sip your dun-rich fingertips
curling from the flask,
watch a lash flicker,
an iris ripple in my cup.

Let me cling at last.
Always wasted you,
unrelenting, drained the loam
beneath your cantilevers,
unsettled your cobbles
with moody steps as I walked home.

Still, acquiesce to write,
trace my beginnings
beyond your gaudy billboard truths,
Charnock's remains hung out
to dry, sodden, solid
above the signal azimuth.

Shambhu

[Truerenigma]

Pysche Revised

She could not love him till she saw him clear:
that much she thought she knew. A troubled light
gossiped in whispers from her lifted lamp;
she neared the bed he slept in, not in fear
so much as in resigned need for full sight
of him, such as he might be. He lay damp
and heavy, as if travels through the night
were more than even gods could bear; a cramp
stirred like regret accross his breast, his face
sealed in momentary grasp of bright
visions destined to fail by day. how near
he was, perfected by imperfect grace!
She quenched the lamp, and radiance washed the place.
She could not see him till she held him dear.

Rhina P. Espaillat

[ellajam]

Pysche Revised

She could not love him till she saw him clear:
that much she thought she knew. A troubled light
gossiped in whispers from her lifted lamp;
she neared the bed he slept in, not in fear
so much as in resigned need for full sight
of him, such as he might be. He lay damp
and heavy, as if travels through the night
were more than even gods could bear; a cramp
stirred like regret accross his breast, his face
sealed in momentary grasp of bright
visions destined to fail by day. how near
he was, perfected by imperfect grace!
She quenched the lamp, and radiance washed the place.
She could not see him till she held him dear.

Rhina P. Espaillat

Interesting poem, it makes me start from the top again and again, thanks for posting it.

[ChristopherSea]

Pysche Revised

She could not love him till she saw him clear:
that much she thought she knew. A troubled light
gossiped in whispers from her lifted lamp;
she neared the bed he slept in, not in fear
so much as in resigned need for full sight
of him, such as he might be. He lay damp
and heavy, as if travels through the night
were more than even gods could bear; a cramp
stirred like regret accross his breast, his face
sealed in momentary grasp of bright
visions destined to fail by day. how near
he was, perfected by imperfect grace!
She quenched the lamp, and radiance washed the place.
She could not see him till she held him dear.

Rhina P. Espaillat

Interesting poem, it makes me start from the top again and again, thanks for posting it.

I agree with Marcella! What strikes me in particular with this piece is the enjambment./Chris

[Truerenigma]

Pysche Revised

She could not love him till she saw him clear:
that much she thought she knew. A troubled light
gossiped in whispers from her lifted lamp;
she neared the bed he slept in, not in fear
so much as in resigned need for full sight
of him, such as he might be. He lay damp
and heavy, as if travels through the night
were more than even gods could bear; a cramp
stirred like regret across his breast, his face
sealed in momentary grasp of bright
visions destined to fail by day. how near
he was, perfected by imperfect grace!
She quenched the lamp, and radiance washed the place.
She could not see him till she held him dear.

Rhina P. Espaillat

Interesting poem, it makes me start from the top again and again, thanks for posting it.

Doesn't it kinda Psych you out with the unexpected rhyme scheme, and the way the last line seems to dichotomously echo the first?

I absolutely love this poem. The only nit I have is for some reason my tongue always want to say "monumental gasps" instead of "momentary grasp" in L10. (not sure if it's an awkwardness in a missing article, or my own problem.)

That, and it's a bit difficult to memorize, but that's understandable.

[Blake]

I love the poetry of Robert E Howard because some of it, like this one tell a story well while painting a vivid picture with words.

Solomon Kane's Homecoming
by Robert E Howard

The white gulls wheeled above the cliffs, the air was slashed with foam,
The long tides moaned along the strand when Solomon Kane came home.
He walked in silence strange and dazed through the little Devon town;
His gaze, like a ghost’s come back to life, roamed up the streets and down.

The people followed wonderingly to mark his spectral stare,
And in the tavern silently they thronged about him there.
He heard as a man hears in a dream the worn old rafters creak,
And Solomon lifted his drinking-jack and spoke as a ghost might speak:

“There sat Sir Richard Grenville once; in smoke and flame he passed.
And we were one to fifty-three, but we gave them blast for blast.
From crimson dawn to crimson dawn, we held the Dons at bay.
The dead lay littered on our decks, our masts were shot away.

“We beat them back with broken blades, till crimsom ran the tide;
Death thundered in the cannon smoke when Richard Grenville died.
We should have blown her hull apart and sunk beneath the Main.”
The people saw upon his wrist the scars of the racks of Spain.

“Where is Bess?” said Solomon Kane. “Woe that I caused her tears.”
“In the quiet churchyard by the sea she has slept these seven years.”
The sea-wind moaned at the window-pane, and Solomon bowed his head.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and the fairest fade,” he said.

His eyes were mytical deep pools that drowned unearthly things,
And Solomon lifted up his head and spoke of his wanderings.
“Mine eyes have looked on sorcery in dark and naked lands,
Horror born of the jungle gloom and death on the pathless sands.

And I have known a deathless queen in a city old as Death,
Where towering pyramids of skulls her glory witnesseth.
“Her kiss was like an adder’s fang, with the sweetness Lilith had,
And her red-eyed vassals howled for blood in that City of the Mad.

And I have slain a vampire shape that drank a black king white,
And I have roamed through grisly hills where dead men walked at night.
“And I have seen heads fall like fruit in a slaver’s barracoon,
And I have seen winged demons fly all naked in the moon.

My feet are weary of wandering and age comes on apace;
I fain would dwell in Devon now, forever in my place.”
The howling of the ocean pack came whistling down the gale,
And Solomon Kane threw up his head like a hound that sniffs the trail.

A-down the wind like a running pack the hounds of the ocean bayed,
And Solomon Kane rose up again and girt his Spanish blade.
In his strange cold eyes a vagrant gleam grew wayward and blind and bright,
And Solomon put the people by and went into the night.

A wild moon rode the wild white clouds, the waves in white crests flowed,
When Solomon Kane went forth again, and no man knew his road.
They glimpsed him etched against the moon, where clouds on hilltop thinned;
They heard an eerie echoed call that whistled down the wind.