Poet's Corner

[midcan5]

'Doing Laundry on Sunday'

"So this is the Sabbath, the stillness
in the garden, magnolia
bells drying damp petticoats

over the porch rail, while bicycle
wheels thrum and the full-breasted tulips
open their pink blouses

for the hands that pressed them first
as bulbs into the earth.
Bread, too, cools on the sill,

and finches scatter bees
by the Shell Station where a boy
in blue denim watches oil

spread in phosphorescent scarves
over the cement. He dips
his brush into a bucket and begins

to scrub, making slow circles
and stopping to splash water on the children
who, hours before it opens,

juggle bean bags outside Gantsy’s
Ice Cream Parlor,
while they wait for color to drench their tongues,

as I wait for water to bloom
behind me—white foam, as of magnolias,
as of green and yellow

birds bathing in leaves—wait,
as always, for the day, like bread, to rise
and, with movement

imperceptible, accomplish everything."

Brigit Pegeen Kelly

 

[AZ_X_BubbleHead]

Holy smokes some talented writers here...Some scary ones as well. I love authors who write about their pasts, views, life..Just tell stories. So here goes my first, and old, poetry entry to USMB...

08July2003 - 2:25am

The Submariner


I have punched holes through almost every ocean.

In most foreign ports I have caused quite a commotion.

I have kissed the local island girls as they rubbed me with lotion.

I have stumbled around town high upon the Habu potion.


I must admit we are a strange breed.

A little fun is all we really need.

Dive Dive is our humbling creed.

For we are the heros upon the pages you read.


We work very hard and strive to be the best.

We train all day to pass the final test.

We wear symbolic dolphins across our chest.

And a red badge of courage upon our vest.


We don't fight wars banging the war drum.

Through depth and stealth is the way we come.

And when we return we'll preform our victory hum,

Because we fight for a cause, a cause known as Freedom.

 

[midcan5]

'Dangerous for Girls'

"It was the summer of Chandra Levy, disappearing
from Washington D.C., her lover a Congressman, evasive
and blow-dried from Modesto, the TV wondering

in every room in America to an image of her tight jeans and piles
of curls frozen in a studio pose. It was the summer the only
woman known as a serial killer, a ten-dollar whore trolling

the plains of central Florida, said she knew she would
kill again, murder filled her dreams
and if she walked in the world, it would crack

her open with its awful wings. It was the summer that in Texas, another
young woman killed her five children, left with too many
little boys, always pregnant. One Thanksgiving, she tried

to slash her own throat. That summer the Congressman
lied again about the nature of his relations, or,
as he said, he couldn't remember if they had sex that last

night he saw her, but there were many anonymous girls that summer,
there always are, who lower their necks to the stone
and pray, not to God but to the Virgin, herself once

a young girl, chosen in her room by an archangel.
Instead of praying, that summer I watched television, reruns of
a UFO series featuring a melancholic woman detective

who had gotten cancer and was made sterile by aliens. I watched
infomercials: exercise machines, pasta makers,
and a product called Nails Again With Henna,

ladies, make your nails steely strong, naturally,
and then the photograph of Chandra Levy
would appear again, below a bright red number,

such as 81, to indicate the days she was missing.
Her mother said, please understand how we're feeling
when told that the police don't believe she will be found alive,

though they searched the parks and forests
of the Capitol for the remains and I remembered
being caught in Tennessee, my tent filled with wind

lifting around me, tornado honey, said the operator when I called
in fear. The highway barren, I drove to a truck stop where
maybe a hundred trucks hummed in pale, even rows

like eggs in a carton. Truckers paced in the dining room,
fatigue in their beards, in their bottomless
cups of coffee. The store sold handcuffs, dirty

magazines, t-shirts that read, Ass, gas or grass.
Nobody rides for free, and a bulletin board bore a
public notice: Jane Doe, found in a refrigerator box

outside Johnson, TN, her slight measurements and weight.
The photographs were of her face, not peaceful in death,
and of her tattoos Born to Run, and J.T. caught in

scrollworks of roses. One winter in Harvard Square, I wandered
drunk, my arms full of still warm, stolen laundry, and
a man said come to my studio and of course I went—

for some girls, our bodies are not immortal so much as
expendable, we have punished them or wearied
from dragging them around for so long and so we go

wearing the brilliant plumage of the possibly freed
by death. Quick on the icy sidewalks, I felt thin and
fleet, and the night made me feel unique in the eyes

of the stranger. He told me he made sculptures
of figure skaters, not of the women's bodies,
but of the air that whipped around them,

a study of negative space,
which he said was the where-we-were-not
that made us. Dizzy from beer,

I thought why not step into
that space? He locked the door behind me."

Connie Voisine

 

[Bootneck]

The Illegal Immigrant

I cross ocean, poor and broke.
Take bus, see employment folk.
Nice man treat me good in there.
Say I need to see welfare.
Welfare say, 'You come no more,
We send cash right to your door.'
Welfare cheques - they make you wealthy!
NHS - it keep you healthy!
By and by, I get plenty money.
Thanks to you, you British dummy!
Write to friends in motherland.
Tell them 'come fast as you can.'
They come in turbans and Ford trucks,
And buy big house with welfare bucks!
They come here, we live together.
More welfare cheques, it gets better!
Fourteen families, they moving in,
but neighbour's patience wearing thin.
Finally, British guy moves away.
Now I buy his house, then say,
'Find more immigrants for house to rent.'
And in the yard I put a tent.
Everything is very good,
and soon we own the neighbourhood.
We have hobby, it's called breeding.
Welfare pay for baby feeding.
Kids need dentist? Wives need pills?
We get free! We got no bills!
British crazy! They work all year,
to keep the welfare running here.
We think UK darn good place.
Too darn good for British race!
If they no like us, they can scram.
Got lots of room in Afghanistan !

 

[midcan5]

'Facing It'

"My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't,
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way--the stone lets me go.
I turn that way--I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair."

Yusef Komunyakaa

 

[midcan5]

'Beyond the Red River'

"The birds have flown their summer skies to the south,
And the flower-money is drying in the banks of bent grass
Which the bumble bee has abandoned. We wait for a winter lion,
Body of ice-crystals and sombrero of dead leaves.

A month ago, from the salt engines of the sea,
A machinery of early storms rolled toward the holiday houses
Where summer still dozed in the pool-side chairs, sipping
An aging whiskey of distances and departures.

Now the long freight of autumn goes smoking out of the land.
My possibles are all packed up, but still I do not leave.
I am happy enough here, where Dakota drifts wild in the universe,
Where the prairie is starting to shake in the surf of the winter dark."

Thomas McGrath

 

[midcan5]

'Niggerlips'

"Niggerlips was the high school name
for me.
So called by Douglas
the car mechanic, with green tattoos
on each forearm,
and the choir of round pink faces
that grinned deliciously
from the back row of classrooms,
droned over by teachers
checking attendance too slowly.

Douglas would brag
about cruising his car
near sidewalks of black children
to point an unloaded gun,
to scare *******
like crows off a tree,
he'd say.

My great-grandfather Luis
was un negrito too,
a shoemaker in the coffee hills
of Puerto Rico, 1900.
The family called him a secret
and kept no photograph.
My father remembers
the childhood white powder
that failed to bleach
his stubborn copper skin,
and the family says
he is still a fly in milk.

So Niggerlips has the mouth
of his great-grandfather,
the song he must have sung
as he pounded the leather and nails,
the heat that courses through copper,
the stubbornness of a fly in milk,
and all you have, Douglas,
is that unloaded gun."

Martín Espada

 

[Bootneck]

WOMAN'S LOVE POEM

Before I lay me down to sleep,
I pray for a man, who's not a creep,
One who's handsome, smart and strong,
One who loves to listen long.
One who thinks before he speaks,
One who'll call, not wait for weeks.
I pray he's gainfully employed,
When I spend his cash, won't be annoyed.
Pulls out my chair and opens my door,
Massages my back and begs to do more.
Oh! Send me a man who'll make love to my mind,
Knows what to answer to "how big is my behind?"
I pray that this man will love me to no end,
And always be my very best friend.

MAN'S LOVE POEM

I pray for a deaf-mute nymphomaniac with
Huge boobs who owns a bar on a golf course,
And loves to send me fishing and hunting. This
Doesn't rhyme and I don't give a shit

 

[midcan5]

Life is Good

There were no really good Labor day poems
so I decided I would write a few thoughts.
I have worked so long and yet it seems a short time
If religious I would say I was blessed
WE were blessed we started slow and saved
Eventually we lived the American dream
New car vacations and kids to college
New home no bills everyone's dream
Dinners out and a good bottle of wine large tip
I used to save weeks $1.50 for an AMC model car
One twenty-fifth the size of the car
One day I would own, American what else
And now my wife's clothing fill the house
We have seen Paris and little town America
The backroads still entice, saner places,
Places Rockwell painted.

Bill Moyers Journal . Special Feature: Deepening the American Dream | PBS
Rethinking the American Dream | vanityfair.com

 

[midcan5]

'Good Looker'

"I have a place for everything and all is in its place,
But when my husband’s searching things just vanish without trace.
He opens up the cupboard door and says, “It’s not in here.”
(I think he’s waiting for the thing to wave to him and cheer.)

“It must be in there somewhere, you just used it yesterday.”
“Nope”, he says with arms still folded, “not in here, no way.”
By now I’m getting crabby ‘cause I’ve got my job to do,
But for the sake of peace I take up searching for it too.

I reach inside the cupboard and I shift a tin or two,
Do you believe in miracles? The thing comes into view.
And does he hug and kiss me ‘cause the flaming thing is found?
Not on your life, that’s when he turns the situation ‘round.

He accuses me of hiding it, “You shouldn’t shove it here.”
“I haven’t shoved it anywhere!”... (at least not yet, my dear.)
So now I’m an inventor and I’m working on a plan,
To build a see-through cupboard that will liberate my man.

The shelves are all transparent, things are set to wave and cheer,
Automatically, when someone says, "It’s not in here.""

Glenny Palmer

 

[midcan5]

'Out of the Blue'

1.

"All lost.

All lost in the dust.
Lost in the fall and the crush and the dark.
Now all coming back.

2.

Up with the lark, downtown New York.
The sidewalks, the blocks.
Walk. Don't walk. Walk. Don't Walk.

Breakfast to go:
an adrenalin shot
in a Styrofoam cup

Then plucked from the earth,
rocketed skyward,
a fifth a mile
in a minute, if that.
The body arrives
then the soul catches up.

3.

That weird buzz
of being at work
in the hour before work.

All terminals dormant,
all networks idle.
Systems in sleep-mode,

all stations un-peopled.
I get here early
just to gawp from the window.

Is it shameless or brash to have reached top,
just me and America
ninety floors up?

Is it brazen to feel like a king, like a God,
to ge surfing the wave
of a power trip,

a fortune under each fingertip,
a billion a minute, a million a blink,
selling sand to the desert,

ice to the Arctic,
money to the rich.
The elation of trading in futures and risk.

Here I stand, a compass needle,
a sundial spindle
right at the pinnacle.

Under my feet
Manhattan's a simple bagatelle, a pinball table,
all lights and mirrors and whistles and bells.

The day begun.
The sun like a peach.
A peach of a sun.

And everything framed
by a seascape dotted with ferries and sails
and a blue sky zippered with vapour trails.

Beyond this window it's vast and it's sheer.
Exhilaration. All breath. All clear.

4.

Arranged on the desk
among the rubber bands and bulldog clips:

here is a rock from Brighton beach,
here is a beer-mat, here is a leaf

of a oak, pressed and dried, papery thin.
Here is a Liquorice Allsorts tin.

A map of the Underground pinned to the wall
The flag of St George. A cricket ball.

Here is a calendar, counting the days.
Here is a photograph snug in its frame,

this is my wife on our wedding day,
here is a twist of her English hair.

Here is a picture in purple paint:
two powder-paint towers, heading for space,

plus rockets and stars and the Milky way,
plus helicopters and aeroplanes.

Jelly-copters and fairy-planes.
In a spidery hand, underneath it, it says,

"If I stand on my toes can you see me wave?"

5.

The towers at one.
The silent prongs of a tuning fork,
testing the calm.

Then a shudder or bump.
A juddering thump or a thud.
I swear no more

than a thump or a thud
But a Pepsi Max jumps out of its cup.
and a filing cabinet spews its lunch.

And the water-cooler staggers then slumps.
Then a sonic boom and the screen goes blue.
Then a deep, ungodly dragon's roar.

In the lobby, the lift opens up,
and out of the door
the tongue of a dragon comes rolling out.

Then the door slides shut and the flames are gone.
Then ceiling tiles, all awry at once.
Then dust, a soft, white dust

snowing down from above.
We are ghostly at once.
See, there on the roof,

the cables, wires, pipes and ducts,
the veins and fibres and nerves and guts,
exposed and loose.

In their shafts, the lift-cars clang
and the cables are plucked,
a deep, sub-human, unaudible twang.

And a lurch.
A pitch.
A sway to the south.

I know for a fact these towers can stand
the shoulder-charge of a gale force wind
or the body-check of a hurricane.

But this is a punch, a hammer blow.
I sense it thundering underfoot,
a pulsing, burrowing, aftershock

down through the bone-work of girders and struts,
down into earth and rock.
Right to the root.

The horizon totters and lists.
The line of the land seems to teeter
on pins and stilts,

a perceptible tilt.
Then the world re-aligns, corrects itself.
Then hell lets loose.

And I knew we torn
I knew we were holed
because through that hole

a torrent of letters and memos and forms
now streams and storms
now flocks and shoals
now passes and pours
now tacks and jibes
now flashes and flares
now rushes and rides
now flaps and glides...

the centrefold of the New York Times
goes winging by

then a lamp
a coat
a screen
a chair

a youghurt pot
a yucca plant
a yellow cup
a Yankees cap

A shoe falls past, freeze-framed against the open sky.
I see raining flames.
I see hardware fly.

6.

Millicent wants an answer now.
Anthony talks through a megaphone.
Mitch says it looks like one of those days.
Abdoul calls his mother at home.

Christopher weeps for his cat and his dog.
Monica raises her hand to her eye.
Lee goes by with his arm on fire.
Abigail opens a bottom drawer.

Raymond punches a hole in the wall.
Pedro loosens his collar and tie.
Ralph and Craig join an orderly queue.
Amy goes back to look for her purse.

Joseph presses his face to the glass.
Theresa refrains from raising her voice.
Abdoul tries his mother again.
Bill pulls a flashlight out of his case.

Tom replaces the top on a pen.
Peter hears voices behind the door
Abdoul tries his mother again.
Glen writes a note on a paper plane.

Gloria's plan is another dead-end.
Paul draws a scarf over Rosemary's face.
Arnold remembers the name of his wife.
Judy is looking for Kerry and Jack.

Edwardo lights a ciragette.
Dennis goes down on his hands and knees
Stephanie edges out onto the ledge.
Jeremy forces the door of the lift.

Dean gets married in less than a month.
Peter is struggling under the weight.
Sue won't leave without locking her desk.
Mike lifts a coat-stand over his head.

Elaine is making a call to a school.
Claude won't be needing this anymore.
Rosa and Bob never stood a chance.
Josh goes looking but doesn't come back."

Simon Armitage

rest here.

Out of the Blue Simon Armitage

 

[Sky Dancer]

Race

Sometimes I think about Great-Uncle Paul who left Tuskeegee,
Alabama to become a forester in Oregon and in so doing
became fundamentally white for the rest of his life, except
when he travelled without his white wife to visit his siblings —
now in New York, now in Harlem, USA — just as pale-skinned,
as straight-haired, as blue-eyed as Paul, and black. Paul never told anyone
he was white, he just didn’t say that he was black, and who could imagine,
an Oregon forester in 1930 as anything other than white?
The siblings in Harlem each morning ensured
no one confused them for anything other than what they were, black.
They were black! Brown-skinned spouses reduced confusion.
Many others have told, and not told, this tale.
When Paul came East alone he was as they were, their brother.

The poet invents heroic moments where the pale black ancestor stands up
on behalf of the race. The poet imagines Great-Uncle Paul
in cool, sagey groves counting rings in redwood trunks,
imagines pencil markings in a ledger book, classifications,
imagines a sidelong look from an ivory spouse who is learning
her husband’s caesuras. She can see silent spaces
but not what they signify, graphite markings in a forester’s code.

Many others have told, and not told, this tale.
The one time Great-Uncle Paul brought his wife to New York
he asked his siblings not to bring their spouses,
and that is where the story ends: ivory siblings who would not
see their brother without their telltale spouses.
What a strange thing is “race,” and family, stranger still.
Here a poem tells a story, a story about race.

Elizabeth Alexander

 

[Sky Dancer]

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

© Mary Oliver. Online Source

 

[midcan5]

'An Inventory of an Elaborate Pile of Garbage at 2nd Ave. and 2nd St. on June 1, 2000'

"Blackened tea kettle like one I have at home, couch with living man, eyes closed, his dog and runny dog shit on sidewalk. Cardboard boxes, lamp shade, the filter basket of a drip-o-later, a wooden serving tray with loose bottom. A mouse's body with eyes open and intact. Styrofoam peanuts. 2 balsa wood whiskey bottle boxes, thin wooden fruit basket. Wooden construction walls with POST NO BILLS painted gray. A piece of paper ordering the closing of the Mars Bar garden. A man setting out 4 candles, and 2 sets of wrapped paper plates. A junkie couple, white, late 30s, covered in scabs and tattoos with dog, had constructed a lean-to over the couch and slept that day. I thought about what brought them to this moment and thought "be in the moment," thought "be here now," thought "what's the worse thing that could happen?" Thought "shit happens." And began to think "today is the first day of the rest of. . ." Thought this could be the best day of their lives."

Brenda Coultas

 

[Bootneck]

Ode Tae A Fart
Writen in the style of Robert Burns:

Oh what a sleekit horrible beastie
Lurks in your belly efter the feastie
Just as ye sit doon among yer kin
There sterts to stir an enormous wind
The neeps and tatties and mushy peas
Stert workin like a gentle breeze
But soon the puddin wi the sauncie face
Will have ye blawin all ower the place

Nae matter whit the hell ye dae
A'body's gonnae hiv tae pay
Even if ye try tae stifle
It's like a bullet oot a rifle
Hawd yer bum tight tae the chair
Tae try and stop the leakin air
Shifty yersel fae cheek tae cheek
Prae tae God it doesnae reek

But aw yer efforts go assunder
Oot it comes like a clap o thunder
Ricochets aroon the room
Michty me a sonic boom
God almighty it fairly reeks
Hope I huvnae shit my breeks
Tae the bog I better scurry
Aw whit the hell it's no ma worry

A'body roon aboot me chokin
Wan or two are nearly bokin
I'll feel better for a while
Cannae help but raise a smile
Wiz him! I shout with accusin glower
Alas too late, he's just keeled ower
Ye dirty bugger they shout and stare
A dinnae feel welcome any mair

Where e'ere ye go let yer wind gan' free
Sounds like just the job fur me
Whit a fuss at rabbie's party
Ower the sake o one wee farty

 

[midcan5]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC-YSIsBGLs]YouTube - Patrick Swayze - Lisa Niemi - George - One Last Dance[/ame]

 

[midcan5]

'A Happy Birthday'

"This evening, I sat by an open window
and read till the light was gone and the book
was no more than a part of the darkness.
I could easily have switched on a lamp,
but I wanted to ride this day down into night,
to sit alone and smooth the unreadable page
with the pale gray ghost of my hand."

Ted Kooser

 

[midcan5]

'The Anniversary of My Death'

"Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveller
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what"

W.S.Merwin

 

[glade]

This is so nice all your poems are grate! I wish I could share too, but I write in Spanish! I've tried in English but it's not the same....but you guys are awesome....

 

[Sky Dancer]

To My Wife - With A Copy Of My Poems

by Oscar Wilde

I can write no stately proem
As a prelude to my lay;
From a poet to a poem
I would dare to say.

For if of these fallen petals
One to you seem fair,
Love will waft it till it settles
On your hair.

And when wind and winter harden
All the loveless land,
It will whisper of the garden,
You will understand.