Poems that you love

[Wastrel]

I wouldn't say this is a poem I love. It was a recent, random read. Because Im weird it made me laugh. At the end I thought "oh god, Oscar Wilde wrote this" and I almost cried.

THE HOUSE OF JUDGEMENT - a prose poem by Oscar Wilde - bless his cotton socks

And there was silence in the House of Judgment, and the Man came 
naked before God.
And God opened the Book of the Life of the Man. 
And God said to the Man, 'Thy life hath been evil, and thou hast 
shown cruelty to those who were in need of succour, and to those 
who lacked help thou hast been bitter and hard of heart. The poor 
called to thee and thou didst not hearken, and thine ears were 
closed to the cry of My afflicted. The inheritance of the fatherless thou didst take unto thyself, and thou didst send the foxes into the vineyard of thy neighbour's field. Thou didst take the bread of the children and give it to the dogs to eat, and My lepers who lived in the marshes, and were at peace and praised Me, thou didst drive forth on to the highways, and on Mine earth out of which I made thee thou didst spill innocent blood.' 
And the Man made answer and
said, 'Even so did I.' 
And again God opened the Book of the Life of the Man. 
And God said to the Man, 'Thy life hath been evil, and the Beauty I 
have shown thou hast sought for, and the Good I have hidden thou 
didst pass by. The walls of thy chamber were painted with images, 
and from the bed of thine
abominations thou didst rise up to the sound of flutes. Thou didst build seven altars to the sins I have 
suffered, and didst eat of the thing that may not be eaten, and the 
purple of thy raiment was broidered with the three signs of shame. Thine idols were neither of gold nor of silver that endure, but of flesh that dieth. Thou didst stain their hair with perfumes and put pomegranates in their hands. Thou didst stain their feet with saffron and spread carpets before them. With antimony thou didst stain their eyelids and their bodies thou didst smear with myrrh. Thou didst bow thyself to the ground before them, and the thrones of thine idols were set in the sun. Thou didst show to the sun thy shame and to the moon thy madness.' 
And the Man made answer and
said, 'Even so did I.' 
And a third time God opened the Book of the Life of the Man. 
And God said to the Man, 'Evil hath been thy life, and with evil didst thou requite good, and with
wrongdoing kindness. The hands 
that fed thee thou didst wound, and the breasts that gave thee suck thou didst despise. He who came to thee with water went away 
thirsting, and the outlawed men who hid thee in their tents at night thou didst betray before dawn.
Thine enemy who spared thee 
thou didst snare in an ambush, and the friend who walked with thee 
thou didst sell for a price, and to those who brought thee Love thou didst ever give Lust in thy turn.' 
And the Man made answer and
said, 'Even so did I.' 
And God closed the Book of the Life of the Man, and said, 'Surely I 
will send thee into Hell. Even into Hell will I send thee.' 
And the Man cried out, 'Thou canst not.' 
And God said to the Man, 'Wherefore can I not send thee to Hell, and for what reason?' 
'Because in Hell have I always lived,' answered the Man. 
And there was silence in the House of Judgment.
And after a space God spake, and said to the Man, 'Seeing that I may not send thee into Hell, surely I will send thee unto Heaven. Even unto Heaven will I send thee.' 
And the Man cried out, 'Thou canst not.' 
And God said to the Man, 'Wherefore can I not send thee unto Heaven, and for what reason?' 
'Because never, and in no place, have I been able to imagine it,' 
answered the Man. 
And there was silence in the House of Judgment.

[Lizzie]

As If

As if the corpse behind the crime scene tape
got up and took a bow where it dropped dead;
as if I got a phone call from the grave
and asked its occupant to share my bed.
Nine years ago, we fought and split apart
with our beloved city underwater.
I turned to short-term lovers in the dark;
you moved in with a southern judge's daughter.
I have to pinch myself to prove you're back,
though balder, ten pounds thinner, better dressed--
as if the universe had jumped a track,
no hurricane, no choices second-guessed.
At times my ears pick up the strangest sound,
as if the dead were clapping underground.

~Julie Kane, from Cherry Tree

[Achebe]

Nice one Lizzie

[shemthepenman]

The Destruction of Sennacherib by Lord Byron 

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

   Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

   For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

   And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

   And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

   And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

[YolaSm]

What We Want by Linda Pastan


What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names--
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don't remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there
even in full sun.

[milo]

This Is the Time of Grasshoppers and All That I See Is Dying
BY ADRIAN C. LOUIS


Colleen,
this is the time of grasshoppers
and all that I see is dying except
for my virulent love for you.

The Cowturdville Star-Times,
which usually has a typo
in every damn column,
says the grasshoppers this year
“are as big as Buicks” and
that’s not bad, but then we
get two eight-point pages
of who had dinner with whom
at the bowling alley café and
who went shopping at Target
in Rapid City and thus the high
church of Adrian the Obscure is sacked.

Even my old Dylan tapes are fading,
becoming near-comic antiques.
The grasshoppers are destroying
our yard and they’re as big as
my middle finger saluting God.
The grass is yellow. The trees
look like Agent Orange has hit
but it’s only the jaw-work of those
drab armored insects who dance
in profusion and pure destruction.

Sweet woman, dear love of my life,
when you’re not angry and sputtering
at everything and everyone, you
become so childlike, so pure.
Your voice seems to have grown
higher recently, almost a little-girl pitch.

Today, like most days, I have you
home for your two-hour reprieve
from the nursing home prison.
We’re sitting at the picnic table in
the backyard staring at the defoliation
of lilacs, brain matter, and honeysuckle.
You’re eating a Hershey Bar and
a crystal glob of snot is hanging
from your nose.
I reach over, pinch it off,
and wipe it on my jeans.
You thrust the last bite
of chocolate into my mouth
as a demented grasshopper
jumps onto your ear.
You scream. I howl
with laughter until you do too.
Happiness comes with a price.

This is the times of grasshoppers
and all that I see is dying except
for my swarming love for you.

Last night on PBS some
lesioned guy being screwed to death
by legions of viral invisibility
blurted the great cliché of regret:
I wish I could be twenty
again and know what
I know now …

My own regrets are equally foolish.
And, I wonder, how the hell
is it I’ve reached a place
where I’d give what’s left
of my allotment of sunsets
and frozen dinners
for some unholy replay
of just one hour in some nearly
forgotten time and place?

Darling,
in the baked soil of the far west,
I first saw the ant lions, those
hairy little bugs who dug funnel
traps for ants in the dry earth.
At twelve, looking over the edge
of one such funnel surrounded by
a circle of tiny stones in the sand,
I aimed a beam of white light
from my magnifying glass
and found I could re-create
a hell of my own accord.

Poverty and boredom
made me cruel early on.
The next summer while digging
postholes I found a cache of
those grotesque yellow bugs
we called Children of the Earth
so I piled matches atop them
and barbecued their ugliness.
I was at war with insects.

In my fifteenth summer I got
covered with ticks in the sagebrush
and that fall I nervously lost my cherry
in a cathouse called the Green Front
and got cursed with crabs but that’s
not what I want to sing about
at all… come on now.
This is no bug progression.
This ain’t no insect sonata.

This is only misdirection,
a sleight of hand upon the keys
and the unholy replay of just
one hour in some nearly
forgotten time and place
that I’d like to return to
will remain myth or maybe
a holy, tumescent mystery.

And let’s not call
these bloodwords
POETRY or a winter count
of desperate dreams
when reality is much simpler.

Colleen,
I swear to Christ
this is the time of grasshoppers
and all that I see is dying except
for my sparkling love for you.

[billy]

milo, that's one of the best poems i think i've read. it's got an Erskine Caldwellishness about it (at least i think it does)
it also reminds me of emile zola somewhat. anyway, thanks for showing it. it's sort of made my day.

[shemthepenman]

The Point by Paul Muldoon

Not Sato’s sword, not Sato’s ‘consecrated blade’
that for all its years in the oubliette
of Thoor Ballylee is unskilled, keen,
lapped yet in the lap of a geisha’s gown.

Not the dagger that Hiroo Onoda
would use again and again to undo
the frou-frous, the fripperies, the Fallopian
tubes of a dead cow in the Philippines.

What everything in me wants to articulate
is this little bit of a scar that dates
from the time O’Clery, my school-room foe,

rammed his pencil into my exposed thigh
(not, as the chronicles have it, my calf)
with such force that the point was broken off.

[milo]

milo, that's one of the best poems i think i've read. it's got an Erskine Caldwellishness about it (at least i think it does)
it also reminds me of emile zola somewhat. anyway, thanks for showing it. it's sort of made my day.

I agree, billy. It made my day as well.

[shemthepenman]

My Problem by Tom Paulin

A wall made of air
a wall that’s like pure skreeky styrofoam
—of course I’m kidding myself
into believing there must be some
way that with a certain—no not native flair
I can push out and off
till I gouge
scramble scuff
over that jagged—jagged and abstract
wall a wall that’s so huge
I can’t neglect it
as I sit or situate myself
on the flat land
below a dike outside Delft
where I fidget with the palm of my right hand
in the which
there’s this wee skelf
that might just be the jag the gouge the problem

[Achebe]

milo, that's one of the best poems i think i've read. it's got an Erskine Caldwellishness about it (at least i think it does)
it also reminds me of emile zola somewhat. anyway, thanks for showing it. it's sort of made my day.

Interesting 
Apart from some arresting images I found it to be well written prose.
That’s just me.

[RiverNotch]

milo, that's one of the best poems i think i've read. it's got an Erskine Caldwellishness about it (at least i think it does)
it also reminds me of emile zola somewhat. anyway, thanks for showing it. it's sort of made my day.

Interesting 
Apart from some arresting images I found it to be well written prose.
That’s just me.

...same here, and (a big 'uhhh' on my part) i don't care enough to reread it.

[Lizzie]

Folding a Five-Cornered Star So the Corners Meet


This sadness I feel tonight is not my sadness.

Maybe it's my father's.
For having never been prized by his father.
For having never profited by his son.

This loneliness is Nobody's. Nobody's lonely
because Nobody was never born
and will never die.

This gloom is Someone Else's.
Someone Else is gloomy
because he's always someone else.
For so many years, I answered to a name,
and I can't say who answered.

Mister Know Nothing? Brother Inconsolable?
Sister Every Secret Thing? Anybody? Somebody?

Somebody thinks:
With death for a bedfellow,
how could thinking be anything but restless?
Somebody thinks: God, I turn my hand face down
and You are You and I am me. 
I turn my hand face up
and You are the I
and I am your Thee.

What happens when you turn your hand?

Lord, remember me.
I was born in the City of Victory,
on a street called Jalan Industri, where
each morning, the man selling rice cakes went by
pushing his cart, its little steamer whistling,
while at his waist, at the end of a red string,
a little brass bell
shivered into a fine, steady seizure.

This sleeplessness is not my sleeplessness.
It must be the stars' insomnia.
And I am their earthbound descendant.

Someone, Anyone, No one, me, and Someone Else.
Five in a bed, and none of us can sleep.
Five in one body, begotten, not made.
And the sorrow we bear together is none of ours.
Maybe it's Yours, God.
For living so near to your creatures.
For suffering so many incarnations unknown to Yourself.
For remaining strange to lovers and friends,
and then outliving them and all of their names for You.
For living sometimes for years without a name.
And all of Your spring times disheveled.
And all of Your winters one winter.


~Li-Young Lee, from "Image"

[Lizzie]

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
      For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
   Steady thy laden head across a brook;
   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft
      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

~Keats

[Achebe]

Postcard 1 - Poem by Miklos Radnoti

Out of Bulgaria, the great wild roar of the artillery thunders,
resounds on the mountain ridges, rebounds, then ebbs into silence
while here men, beasts, wagons and imagination all steadily increase;
the road whinnies and bucks, neighing; the maned sky gallops;
and you are eternally with me, love, constant amid all the chaos,
glowing within my conscience — incandescent, intense.
Somewhere within me, dear, you abide forever —
still, motionless, mute, like an angel stunned to silence by death
or a beetle hiding in the heart of a rotting tree.

Translated by Michael R. Burch 

[ellajam]

^^^ wowee

[RiverNotch]

A folk song and a hymn


Greensleeves, rumored to have been composed by King Henry VIII

Alas my love you do me wrong
To cast me off discourteously;
And I have loved you oh so long
Delighting in your company.

Greensleeves was my delight,
Greensleeves my heart of gold
Greensleeves was my heart of joy
And who but my lady Greensleeves.

I have been ready at your hand
To grant whatever thou would'st crave;
I have waged both life and land
Your love and goodwill for to have.

Greensleeves was my delight,
Greensleeves my heart of gold
Greensleeves was my heart of joy
And who but my lady Greensleeves.

Thy petticoat of slender white
With gold embroidered gorgeously;
Thy petticoat of silk and white
And these I bought gladly.

Greensleeves was my delight,
Greensleeves my heart of gold
Greensleeves was my heart of joy
And who but my lady Greensleeves.


Jerusalem, from William Blake's prologue to his own Milton

And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.

[shemthepenman]

The Fly

Little Fly, 
Thy summer's play 
My thoughtless hand 
Has brushed away. 

Am not I 
A fly like thee? 
Or art not thou 
A man like me? 

For I dance 
And drink, and sing, 
Till some blind hand 
Shall brush my wing. 

If thought is life 
And strength and breath 
And the want 
Of thought is death; 

Then am I 
A happy fly, 
If I live, 
Or if I die.

by William Blake



Matchbox
Are you more real than me
I'll burn you, & set you free
Wept bitter tears
Excessive courtesy
I won't forget 

by Jim Morrison



The Flea

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,   
How little that which thou deniest me is;   
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;   
Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,
    Yet this enjoys before it woo,
    And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
    And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, nay more than married are.   
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;   
Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met,   
And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
    Though use make you apt to kill me,
    Let not to that, self-murder added be,
    And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?   
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?   
Yet thou triumph’st, and say'st that thou   
Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now;
    ’Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:
    Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,
    Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

by John Donne

[homer1950]

One of my favorites
Dover Beach, by Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; - on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

[Lizzie]

Bumping this for rowens.

Lawrence


On two occasions in the past twelve months
I have failed, when someone at a party
spoke of him with a dismissive scorn
to stand up for D. H. Lawrence,

a man who burned like an acetylene torch
from one end to the other of his life.
These individuals, whose relationship to literature
is approximately that of a tree shredder

to stands of old-growth forest,
these people leaned back in their chairs,
bellies full of dry white wine and the ovum of some foreign fish,
and casually dropped his name

the way pygmies with their little poison spears
strut around the carcass of a fallen elephant.
"O Elephant," they say,
"you are not so big and brave today!"

It's a bad day when people speak of their superiors
with a contempt they haven't earned,
and it's a sorry thing when certain other people

don't defend the great dead ones
who have opened up the world before them.
And though, in the catalogue of my betrayals,
this is a fairly minor entry,

I resolve, if the occasion should recur,
to uncheck my tongue and say: "I love the spectacle
of maggots condescending to a corpse,"
or, "You should be so lucky in your brainy, bloodless life

as to deserve to lift
just one of D. H. Lawrence's urine samples
to your arid psychobiographic
theory-tainted lips."

Or maybe I'll just take the shortcut
between the spirit and the flesh,
and punch someone in the face,
because human beings haven't come that far

in their effort to subdue the body,
and we still walk around like zombies
in our dying, burning world,
able to do little more

than fight, and fuck, and crow,
something Lawrence wrote about
in such a manner
as to make us seem magnificent.


 ~Tony Hoagland, from Ploughshares