Poet's Corner

[sky dancer]

Call It a Good Marriage

by Robert Graves

Call it a good marriage -
For no one ever questioned
Her warmth, his masculinity,
Their interlocking views;
Except one stray graphologist
Who frowned in speculation
At her h's and her s's,
His p's and w's.

Though few would still subscribe
To the monogamic axiom
That strife below the hip-bones
Need not estrange the heart,
Call it a good marriage:
More drew those two together,
Despite a lack of children,
Than pulled them apart.

Call it a good marriage:
They never fought in public,
They acted circumspectly
And faced the world with pride;
Thus the hazards of their love-bed
Were none of our damned business -
Till as jurymen we sat on
Two deaths by suicide.

 

[sky dancer]

Exeat

by Stevie Smith

I remember the Roman Emperor, one of the cruellest of them,
Who used to visit for pleasure his poor prisoners cramped in dungeons,
So then they would beg him for death, and then he would say:
Oh no, oh no, we are not yet friends enough.
He meant they were not yet friends enough for him to give them death.
So I fancy my Muse says, when I wish to die:
Oh no, Oh no, we are not yet friends enough,

And Virtue also says:
We are not yet friends enough.

How can a poet commit suicide
When he is still not listening properly to his Muse,
Or a lover of Virtue when
He is always putting her off until tomorrow?

Yet a time may come when a poet or any person
Having a long life behind him, pleasure and sorrow,
But feeble now and expensive to his country
And on the point of no longer being able to make a decision
May fancy Life comes to him with love and says:
We are friends enough now for me to give you death;
Then he may commit suicide, then

 

[eots]

ozzy suicide soution lyrics



Wine is fine but whiskeys quicker
Suicide is slow with liquor
Take a bottle and drown your sorrows
Then it floods away tomorrows

Evil thoughts and evil doings
Cold, alone you hang in ruins
Thought that youd escape the reaper
You cant escape the master keeper

cause you feel like youre living a lie
Such a shame whos to blame and youre wondering why
Then you ask from your cask us there life after birth
What you sow can mean hell on this earth

Now you live inside a bottle
The reapers traveling at full throttle
Its catching you but you dont see
The reaper is you and the reaper is me

Breaking laws, knocking doors
But theres no one at home
Made your bed, rest your head
But you lie there and moan
Where to hide, suicide is the only way out
Dont you know what its really about


Ozzy Osbourne | Suicide Solution lyrics

 

[eots]

hey skydancer don't be killing yourself..jesuis still loves you....

 

[midcan5]

35/10

"Brushing out our daughter’s brown
silken hair before the mirror
I see the grey gleaming on my head,
the silver-haired servant behind her. Why is it
just as we begin to go
they begin to arrive, the fold in my neck
clarifying as the fine bones of her
hips sharpen? As my skin shows
its dry pitting, she opens like a moist
precise flower on the tip of a cactus;
as my last chances to bear a child
are falling through my body, the duds among them,
her full purse of eggs, round and
firm as hard-boiled yolks, is about
to snap its clasp. I brush her tangled
fragrant hair at bedtime. It’s an old
story—the oldest we have on our planet—
the story of replacement."

Sharon Olds

 

[sky dancer]

Venus in the arc of the young moon

is a boat the arms of a bay,

the sky clear to infinity

but for the trailing gossamer

of a transatlantic plane.

The old year and the old era dead,

pushed burning out to sea

bearing the bones of heroes, tyrants,

ideologues, thieves and deceivers

in a smoke of burning money.


The dream is over. Glaciers will melt.

Seas will rise to swallow golden islands.

Somewhere a volcano may whelm a city,

earth shake its skin like an old horse,

a hurricane topple a town to rubble.

Yet tonight, under the cold beauty

of the moon and Venus, something like hope begins,

as if times can turn, the world change course,

as if truth can speak, good men come to power,

and words have meaning again.

Maybe black-hearted boys in love with death

won't blow themselves and us to smithereens.

Maybe guns will fall silent, the powerful

cease slaughtering the weak, the rich

will not gorge as the poor starve.


Hope spoke the word 'Yes', the word 'we', the word 'can',

and a thousand British teenagers at Poetry Live

rose to their feet in a single yell of joy -

black, white, Christian, Muslim, Jew,

faithful and faithless. We are all in this together.

Ie. gallwn ni. (Yes, we can)

BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | Poem sent for Obama inauguration

 

[sky dancer]

Launch

A boat is sliding into the water today

to test the water and the boat

which glides down a grassy bank

the prow touching the wavelets

then another push

and the length of it up and buoyant

the tapered length of it floating

toward the middle on its own

as we watch from the shore

pointing to the heavy clouds coming in

from every side

but now above us only the sun's golden rafters

and the boat afloat

out there on the bright surface of the water.

--By Billy Collins.

 

[sky dancer]

Poem for Obama

We want a hero, an uncommon one,

The common wisdom being that integrity

In an age of irony is as unlikely as fun

On jury duty and equally as vital to the city,

The state, and the nation. Put the likelihood

Of rejection and the inevitability

Of injustice on one side; the ability

Of free people to choose their livelihood

On the other; and though hope is genteel

And faith obsolete, yet breathes there

A man or woman who cannot feel

The charge of the change in the air?

May God, in this winter hour,

Shine on your countenance

And teach you to balance

The heart's poetry and the mind's power.

-- By David Lehman.

 

[sky dancer]

“Smile.”

By Elizabeth Alexander


When I see a black man smiling

like that, nodding and smiling

with both hands visible, mouthing

“Yes, Officer,” across the street,

I think of my father, who taught us

the words “cooperate,” “officer,”

to memorize badge numbers,

who has seen black men shot at

from behind in the warm months

north.

And a last burst of verse

They never write doggerel

for the inaugural —-

only classy verse.

Each poet reads a poem

by the Capitol dome —-

and is never terse

Probably every poet

is afraid he’ll blow it —-

oh, such drama!

May this year’s recitation

exceed expectation —-

and please Obama.

 

[sky dancer]

Blues


I am lazy, the laziest
girl in the world. I sleep during
the day when I want to, 'til
my face is creased and swollen,
'til my lips are dry and hot. I
eat as I please: cookies and milk
after lunch, butter and sour cream
on my baked potato, foods that
slothful people eat, that turn
yellow and opaque beneath the skin.
Sometimes come dinnertime Sunday
I am still in my nightgown, the one
with the lace trim listing because
I have not mended it. Many days
I do not exercise, only
consider it, then rub my curdy
belly and lie down. Even
my poems are lazy. I use
syllabics instead of iambs,
prefer slant to the gong of full rhyme,
write briefly while others go
for pages. And yesterday,
for example, I did not work at all!
I got in my car and I drove
to factory outlet stores, purchased
stockings and panties and socks
with my father's money.

To think, in childhood I missed only
one day of school per year. I went
to ballet class four days a week
at four-forty-five and on
Saturdays, beginning always
with plie, ending with curtsy.
To think, I knew only industry,
the industry of my race
and of immigrants, the radio
tuned always to the station
that said, Line up your summer
job months in advance. Work hard
and do not shame your family,
who worked hard to give you what you have.
There is no sin but sloth. Burn
to a wick and keep moving.

I avoided sleep for years,
up at night replaying
evening news stories about
nearby jailbreaks, fat people
who ate fried chicken and woke up
dead. In sleep I am looking
for poems in the shape of open
V's of birds flying in formation,
or open arms saying, I forgive you, all.

Elizabeth Alexander

 

[sky dancer]

Haircut


I get off the IRT in front of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture after riding an early
Amtrak from Philly to get a hair cut at what used to be the Harlem "Y" barbershop. It gets me in at ten to
ten. Waiting, I eat fish cakes at the Pam Pam and listen to the ladies call out orders: bacon-biscuit twice,
scrambled scrambled fried, over easy, grits, country sausage on the side. Hugh is late. He shampoos me,
says "I can't remember, Girlfriend, are you tender-headed?" From the chair I notice the mural behind me
in the mirror. I know those overlapped sepia shadows, a Renaissance rainforest, Aaron Douglas! Hugh tells
me he didn't use primer and the chlorine eats the colors every day. He clips and combs and I tell him how
my favorite Douglas is called "Building More Stately Mansions," and he tells me how fly I'd look in a Salt 'n'
Pepa 'do, how he trained in Japan.
Clip clip, clip clip. I imagine a whoosh each time my hair lands on the floor and the noises of small brown
mammals. I remember, my father! He used to get his hair cut here, learned to swim in the caustic water,
played pool and basketball. He cuts his own hair now. My grandfather worked seventy-five years in
Harlem building more stately mansions. I was born two blocks away and then we moved.
None of that seems to relate to today. This is not my turf, despite the other grandfather and great-aunt who
sewed hearts back into black chests after Saturday night stabbings on this exact corner, the great-uncle who
made a mosaic down the street, both grandmothers. What am I always listening for in Harlem? A voice
that says, "This is your place, too," as faintly as the shadows in the mural? The accents are unfamiliar; all
my New York kin are dead. I never knew Fats Waller but what do I do with knowing he used to play with a
ham and a bottle of gin atop his piano; never went to Olivia's House of Beauty but I know Olivia, who lives
in St. Thomas, now, and who exactly am I, anyway, finding myself in these ghostly, Douglas shadows while
real ghosts walk around me, talk about my stuff in the subway, yell at me not to butt the line, beg me, beg
me, for my money?
What is black culture? I read the writing on the wall on the side of the "Y" as I always have: "Harlem Plays
the Best Ball in the World." I look in the mirror and see my face in the mural with a new haircut. I am a
New York girl; I am a New York woman; I am a flygirl with a new hair cut in New York City in a mural
that is dying every day.

Elizabeth Alexander

 

[sky dancer]

“The female seer will burn upon this pyre”

by Elizabeth Alexander


Sylvia Plath is setting my hair
on rollers made from orange-juice cans.
The hairdo is shaped like a pyre.


My locks are improbably long.
A pyramid of lemons somehow
balances on the rickety table


where we sit, in the rented kitchen
which smells of singed naps and bergamot.
Sylvia Plath is surprisingly adept


at rolling my unruly hair.
She knows to pull it tight.
Few words.
Her flat, American belly,


her breasts in a twin sweater set,
stack of typed poems on her desk,
envelopes stamped to go by the door,


a freshly baked poppyseed cake,
kitchen safety matches, black-eyed Susans
in a cobalt jelly jar. She speaks a word,


“immolate,” then a single sentence
of prophecy. The hairdo done,
the nursery tidy, the floor swept clean


of burnt hair and bumblebee husks.

 

[sky dancer]

Crash
by Elizabeth Alexander


I am the last woman off of the plane
that has crashed in a cornfield near Philly,


picking through hot metal
for my rucksack and diaper bag.


No black box, no fuselage,
just sistergirl pilot wiping soot from her eyes,


happy to be alive. Her dreadlocks
will hold the smoke for weeks.


All the white passengers bailed out
before impact, so certain a sister


couldn’t navigate the crash. O gender.
O race. O ye of little faith.


Here we are in the cornfield, bruised and dirty but alive.
I invite sistergirl pilot home for dinner


at my parents’, for my mother’s roast chicken
with gravy and rice, to celebrate.

 

[sky dancer]

Narrative: Ali
by Elizabeth Alexander

a poem in twelve rounds


1.


My head so big
they had to pry
me out. I’m sorry
Bird (is what I call
my mother). Cassius
Marcellus Clay,
Muhammad Ali;
you can say
my name in any
language, any
continent: Ali.



2.


Two photographs
of Emmett Till,
born my year,
on my birthday.
One, he’s smiling,
happy, and the other one
is after. His mother
did the bold thing,
kept the casket open,
made the thousands look upon
his bulging eyes,
his twisted neck,
her lynched black boy.
I couldn’t sleep
for thinking,
Emmett Till.


One day I went
Down to the train tracks,
found some iron
shoe-shine rests
and planted them
between the ties
and waited
for a train to come,
and watched the train
derail, and ran,
and after that
I slept at night.



3.


I need to train
around people,
hear them talk,
talk back. I need
to hear the traffic,
see people in
the barbershop,
people getting
shoe shines, talking,
hear them talk,
talk back.



4.


Bottom line: Olympic gold
can’t buy a black man
a Louisville hamburger
in nineteen-sixty.


Wasn’t even real gold.
I watched the river
drag the ribbon down,
red, white, and blue.



5.


Laying on the bed,
praying for a wife,
in walk Sonji Roi.


Pretty little shape.
Do you like
chop suey?


Can I wash your hair
underneath
that wig?


Lay on the bed,
Girl. Lie
with me.


Shake to the east,
to the north,
south, west—


but remember,
remember, I need
a Muslim wife. So


Quit using lipstick.
Quit your boogaloo.
Cover up your knees


like a Muslim
wife, religion,
religion, a Muslim


wife. Eleven
months with Sonji,
first woman I loved.



6.


There’s not
too many days
that pass that I
don’t think
of how it started,
but I know
no Great White Hope
can beat
a true black champ.
Jerry Quarry
could have been
a movie star,
a millionaire,
a senator,
a president—
he only had
to do one thing,
is whip me,
but he can’t.



7. Dressing-Room Visitor


He opened
up his shirt:
“KKK” cut
in his chest.
He dropped
his trousers:
latticed scars
where testicles
should be, His face
bewildered, frozen
in the Alabama woods
that night in 1966
when they left him
for dead, his testicles
in a Dixie cup.
You a warning,
they told him,
to smart-mouth,
sassy-acting *******,
meaning *******
still alive,
meaning any ******,
meaning *******
like me.



8. Training


Unsweetened grapefruit juice
will melt my stomach down.
Don’t drive if you can walk,
don’t walk if you can run.
I add a mile each day
and run in eight-pound boots.


My knuckles sometimes burst
the glove. I let dead skin
build up, and then I peel it,
let it scar, so I don’t bleed
as much. My bones
absorb the shock.


I train in three-minute
spurts, like rounds: three
rounds big bag, three speed
bag, three jump rope, one-
minute breaks,
no more, no less.


Am I too old? Eat only
kosher meat. Eat cabbage,
carrots, beets, and watch
the weight come down:
two-thirty, two-twenty,
two-ten, two-oh-nine.



9.


Will I go
like Kid Paret,
a fractured
skull, a ten-day
sleep, dreaming
alligators, pork
chops, saxophones,
slow grinds, funk,
fishbowls, lightbulbs,
bats, typewriters,
tuning forks, funk
clocks, red rubber
ball, what you see
in that lifetime
knockout minute
on the cusp?
You could be
let go,
you could be
snatched back.



10. Rumble in the Jungle


Ali boma ye,
Ali boma ye,
means kill him, Ali,
which is different
from a whupping
which is what I give,
but I lead them chanting
anyway, Ali
boma ye, because
here in Africa
black people fly
planes and run countries.


I’m still making up
for the foolishness
I said when I was
Clay from Louisville,
where I learned Africans
live naked in straw
huts eating tiger meat,
grunting and grinning,
swinging from vines,
pounding their chests—


I pound my chest but of my own accord.



11.


I said to Joe Frazier,
first thing, get a good house
in case you get crippled
so you and your family
can sleep somewhere. Always
keep one good Cadillac.
And watch how you dress
with that cowboy hat,
pink suits, white shoes—
that’s how pimps dress,
or kids, and you a champ,
or wish you were, ‘cause
I can whip you in the ring
or whip you in the street.
Now back to clothes,
wear dark clothes, suits,
black suits, like you the best
at what you do, like you
President of the World.
Dress like that.
Put them yellow pants away.
We dinosaurs gotta
look good, gotta sound
good, gotta be good,
the greatest, that’s what
I told Joe Frazier,
and he said to me,
we both bad *******.
We don’t do no crawlin’.



12.


They called me “the fistic pariah.”


They said I didn’t love my country,
called me a race-hater, called me out
of my name, waited for me
to come out on a stretcher, shot at me,
hexed me, cursed me, wished me
all manner of ill will,
told me I was finished.


Here I am,
like the song says,
come and take me,


“The People’s Champ,”


myself,
Muhammad.

 

[sky dancer]

Where the Sidewalk Ends


There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

Shel Silverstein

 

[sky dancer]

Sex Without Love*


A pleasure we do out of love for the other person
We our sharing the sexual experiment with
When the innocent become the sexual

It’s when that passion of love turns into a hobby
Then into an obsession and then that turns into a have to have
You can’t stop thinking about your next fix
You look for it everywhere in everyone
You start having withdraws from it
You wonder how you got this way
So dependent on it to get you through the day
You think it’s the only thing that your good at
The guys keep coming and going like fire
At times when it hurts so bad you cant do anything
You tell yourself no more not another time
But as soon as soon as your better
Your right back at it
You ask yourself
Why you do this every time
You just don’t understand
It’s as if your being sexualy
Taken advantage by your own body

You wanna tear your hair our if your not doing it
The people just keep getting older while your still the same age
Started 2-3 years now it doesn’t really matter how old as long as you get the fix
You have to do it
It is your drug
Your Acid

People have been telling you for months that you need help
The people that know you the real you
This isn’t the real you and you know it
You can feel it
The lying
The addiction
The lack of pride you have for your body and self
It’s not you
It’s like he said right before he left
How does it feel to be trash now that you are trash,
And now you are truly trash.
You are not trash this is not you

You know how this started a young women lost within her broken hearted emotions
You just know you don’t know how to stop it
You now need help
Lots of help
Cause sitting here
Your itching to do it again
And pleading someone help
HELP! ! ! PLEASE! ! ! HELP! ! !
You don’t wanna be like this forever

Crystal Midnight

 

[sky dancer]

One Inch Tall


If you were only one inch tall, you'd ride a worm to school.
The teardrop of a crying ant would be your swimming pool.
A crumb of cake would be a feast
And last you seven days at least,
A flea would be a frightening beast
If you were one inch tall.

If you were only one inch tall, you'd walk beneath the door,
And it would take about a month to get down to the store.
A bit of fluff would be your bed,
You'd swing upon a spider's thread,
And wear a thimble on your head
If you were one inch tall.

You'd surf across the kitchen sink upon a stick of gum.
You couldn't hug your mama, you'd just have to hug her thumb.
You'd run from people's feet in fright,
To move a pen would take all night,
(This poem took fourteen years to write--
'Cause I'm just one inch tall).

Shel Silverstein

 

[sky dancer]

On the Ning Nang Nong


On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all say BOO!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So its Ning Nang Nong
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning
Trees go ping
Nong Ning Nang
The mice go Clang
What a noisy place to belong
is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!

Spike Milligan

 

[sky dancer]

Lovesong


He loved her and she loved him.
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Off that moment's brink and into nothing
Or everlasting or whatever there was

Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His words were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assassin's attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon's gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
Her vows put his eyes in formalin
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall

Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other's face

Ted Hughes

 

[sky dancer]

The Lesson


Chaos ruled OK in the classroom
as bravely the teacher walked in
the nooligans ignored him
hid voice was lost in the din

"The theme for today is violence
and homework will be set
I'm going to teach you a lesson
one that you'll never forget"

He picked on a boy who was shouting
and throttled him then and there
then garrotted the girl behind him
(the one with grotty hair)

Then sword in hand he hacked his way
between the chattering rows
"First come, first severed" he declared
"fingers, feet or toes"

He threw the sword at a latecomer
it struck with deadly aim
then pulling out a shotgun
he continued with his game

The first blast cleared the backrow
(where those who skive hang out)
they collapsed like rubber dinghies
when the plug's pulled out

"Please may I leave the room sir?"
a trembling vandal enquired
"Of course you may" said teacher
put the gun to his temple and fired

The Head popped a head round the doorway
to see why a din was being made
nodded understandingly
then tossed in a grenade

And when the ammo was well spent
with blood on every chair
Silence shuffled forward
with its hands up in the air

The teacher surveyed the carnage
the dying and the dead
He waggled a finger severely
"Now let that be a lesson" he said

Roger McGough