Poet's Corner

[Gdjjr]

Good mornin, mornin
How are you today
Are you gonna show me your sunshine
or, are you gonna stay cloudy and gray

I did everything you asked
I slept all night long
now I'm feelin restless
wanna put how I feel in a song

I have a lot left to say
not a whole lot left to do
but try to make music and songs
somebody will listen to

So mornin play me your music
and I'll play you mine

Like you, I can make it cloudy
or, I can make it shine

 

[Fed Starving II]

The holidays are on their way
I miss my grandmother and my family, my friends
And although life isn't the same without them
The holidays are on their way

 

[lg325]

Fall
Brown leaves with bits of red
Hunting season ,jackets and warm camps
Cold mornings ,cool afternoons and longer nights ,Thanksgiving
In Fall

 

[lg325]

Winter
chopping wood
indoors ,fireplace ,cozy
windows trimmed with icy frost
Winter

 

[lg325]

Evening
cooking meals
clean up ,shower ,relax
pajamas ,books and bedtime
In Evening

 

[lg325]

Blue Lead Fences Found this, just thought I would share it.
Loch Lomond
Climb upon the roof and peek
Pantone cape around my neck
Running fast, your shoes come off
Nothing is left and nothing is lost
It feels good to be young
Throwing air and throwing rocks
Sharpened boards and filling ponds
An eight year old having fun
Let's organize the weaker ones
With enough wind, I can fly
Call them up and say goodbye

Songwriters: Dave Depper, Ritchie Young
For non-commercial use only.

 

[lg325]

Ask Not For Whom The Bell Tolls
Poem by Denis Martindale
It is a matter of life and death.
We sense our mortality in the destiny of another.
This isn't easy for us to confront.
We seek ignorance of such final thoughts.
Only those who have been made aware,
Can truly face death.
We look at its empty eyes and see nothing.
At first, we are afraid.
This is our human existence at stake.
If we were merely mortals, then this would be normal.
However, humans are not merely mortals.
Every single word within us cries out against the waste.
I am unique. So are you.
There is an expression,
'We will never see his like again.'

Even so, Easter has taught us
That God preserves the life force beyond death.
It is the hope of resurrection
That sustains us in this life.
Those that have this faith in God,
Believe in the past, the present AND the future
And we therefore spend our lives
In prayer and good works.
No matter where we are,
While there is a single thought left within us,
We can still pray.
This is life.
Not the striving for more and more things,
While others starve to death.

Let's be more sympathetic
In regard to complete strangers,
Men, women and children
Facing terrifying squalor, disease and persecution.
It's easy to feel sorry
For the good old Georges of this world,
Because they are the good ones we don't want to lose.
But what about the tiny babies
Who haven't the strength to lift a finger
To do any good works?
They are more deserving if left to live a full life
Than the ones who have already lived for decades...
Many of these have never seen a shoe...
And they don't even know that each one of them
Has an eternal soul...
Listen to this poem:

 

[lg325]

For Whom the Bell Tolls by John Donne​ ​

No man is an island, Entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thine own Or of thine friend's were. Each man's death diminishes me, For I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.

 

[lg325]

A star
Shepherds with, message ,journey ,
Three wise men with varied gifts
Come together in a manger to there savior
A Child

 

[lg325]

A disaster
Crippling gout, lost job
Debts pile up ,no help comes
Sell all, pay off debts , leave rest behind
New beginnings

 

[lg325]

There is A coolness in the air
But hot tempers everywhere
Home ,work and on the street
People standing up on there feet
calloused hands from digging a ditch
Anger causes those hands to clinch
News man seems to only to deceive
working man not sure who to believe
Elite takes his money and looks down there nose
at this working man who's future is to just grow old
But along with the coolness in the air, hot tempers everywhere.
All the deception has taken its toll, we all are marching on the Capitol.

 

[midcan5]

'Amanda Gorman's inaugural poem'

"When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade
We've braved the belly of the beast
We've learned that quiet isn't always peace
And the norms and notions
of what just is
Isn’t always just-ice
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it
Somehow we do it
Somehow we've weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn’t broken
but simply unfinished"

See link for rest.

READ: Transcript of Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem

Amanda Gorman became the youngest person to deliver a poem at a U.S. presidential inauguration, with the 22-year-old reciting her poem “The Hill We Climb” after Joe Biden and Kamala Har…

thehill.com

 

[lg325]

Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH


The child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
(Wordsworth, "My Heart Leaps Up")

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day.
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare,
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,
The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every Beast keep holiday;—
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy.

Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
Oh evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,
And the Children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm:—
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
—But there's a Tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone;
The Pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a Mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely Nurse doth all she can
To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' Darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learn{e}d art
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little Actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his "humorous stage"
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy Soul's immensity;
Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,—
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave,
A Presence which is not to be put by;
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That Nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realised,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young Lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

• Related

 

[lg325]

Growing up
enjoying the day, no cares
stress of school and teen age years
first kiss, first job lost love and tears
Memories treasured.

 

[lg325]

Enjoying the moment the joys and fears,
childhood ,teenage ,young adult years.
Waking to familiar voices and smells,
breakfast ready, its mother, I can tell.
Father checking his truck and tools,
us children getting ourselves ready for school.
Mother and Father leave each to there work,
us children waiting for the school bus, clutching our books.
Elementary school ,learning the basics ,foundation for future days,
getting home with sweaters tied around our waist.
Playtime was baseball ,football, grappling with friends,
exploring nature, coming home with bruises and scraped shins.
Jr .High ,first dance, more classes ,noticing that girl with hair sericeous,
best friend whispers you know she likes you, I reply, are you serious!

High School , plans for future, home work. ,class work gets piled on,
week ends working hard ,then study from sunset to dawn.
( to be continued)

 

[lg325]

Graduation comes with tears and goodbyes,
time comes with regret to sever the ties.
New experiences comes with hard truths.
College for some ,hard labor for other youths.
Laborers struggle to just get by. There future,
there dreams turned aside, they struggle to be mature.
College seem prison for some ,envy the laborers out in the sun.
Adult life for both is struggle and strife. With fond dreams of there childhood life. (done)

 

[Briss]

Innocent days when I at least
Resembled not so much the beast
Recede from me like memory;
Like most of you; like most of me.

 

[Briss]

Lycanthroholic

One cold and frosty moonlit night
Whilst feeling restless and full of spite,
I left my home; went over field
And chanced upon a bitter meal.

A dog had come to challenge me
She sensed my evil flowing free,
Attacked but couldn't overcome;
She came too close; her neck was wrung.

Such foolish courage of mortal flesh,
Not satisfied with run and fetch.
At least her blood-stained eyes were spared
The sight of how her bones were bared.

Those cold and frosty moonlit nights
When I would spread that touch of fright
Kept family to their house, secure,
For such as me there is no cure.

I ask of family, love, and friends
Their pain and blood again and again.

 

[Ringtone]

A Tiny Brown Moth and a Little Gray Sparrow
by Michael Rawlings (a.k.a., Ringtone)​

A tiny brown moth, believing his heart above all else,
Battered himself against the window pane,
Thinking to embrace the morning air—wings aflutter.
A little gray sparrow, believing his hunger above all else,
Battered his sharp beak against the window pane,
Hoping to spear the tiny morsel—wings aflutter.
Eager, persistent, furiously tap, tap, tapping.
Bemused!
Frightened!
Angry!
“What is this?” the sparrow exclaimed.
“His soft belly bruises my beak!”
And still the tiny brown moth
Battered himself against the window pane,
Eager to embrace the morning air—wings aflutter.

 

[Ringtone]

A Dirge for J. Alfred Prufrock: The Last Hurrah:
with hat in hand and at the feet of T. S. Eliot
By Michael Rawlings (a.k.a., Ringtone)
​

Let us go then, you and me,
And stroll beneath a cloudy sea
As evening spreads across its face like a toothless grin.
Let us go a-meandering down narrow-minded suburban lanes,
Silky slick with sullen rains
And hemmed in by redundant four-bedroom stalls and grated sewage drains;
Past the immaculate parks and the quaint, steepled churches,
the lofty perches,
Where the vagabond Riffraff lurches in the pristine shadows:
A restless Crowd that chases dreams of easy grace and meadows,
And sings a melancholy hymn, a petulant brew, that lingers at your nervebone.

A chorus of crickets roll their eyes,
And dance beneath the cloudy skies.

The Air is still tonight—drenched with slumber.
A withered leaf dodders on spindly legs across Its gnarled spine.

And above the tiny rustlings, above the glistening lanes,
Above the languid shadows that creep and close
on the mournful strains—
The Stars draw back the shroud and peep,
Shake their bearded chins, cast their pearly eyes away and weep.
And below, crookbacked lampposts unfurl their hazy-white plumes and glare
At the four-footed heaps, at the white picket fences,
At the cracks in the sidewalks, at the manicured grasses,
As the musty night seeps through our senses.
And through the parlor windows we may see, you and I,
The flickering glow of that babbling flow on the walls:
The Soma of the enervated masses.
Morpheus has alighted on his throne at the commencement
of another dreary evening. . . .

And there will be other nights and other days too!
There will be seconds to spin and minutes to spill,
Hours to wend down a winding rill,
Moments for me and moments for you. . . .

There will be sacks full of question marks to sow
In furrowed brows replete with sad, fetid lies and concessions.
There will be secrets to air and rumors to grow,
Indiscretions to breed and issues to hoe
During the endless rounds of therapeutic confessions.
And if someone should say,
“Do you know?” and “Do you know?”
To whom shall I turn for the answer?

And there will be time for the time of the pitch and the shoeshine.
There will be time to bend our resolutions, to brood with callow men;
Time to follow the errant line of ink to its conclusion—
bleeding from a boosted pen.
There will be time for hope and time for hope to crash . . .
Time to reach for desperate dreams or drive them toward a sudden stop.

And the world’s amusements, its diversions, abound!
Sought by pale hands, chased by wooden feet:
Candy-coated rainbows that calm and feed the head
Or illicit, well-used harpies that slip into your bed . . .
Charms that lift you or drop you into a cold sweat.

A chorus of crickets roll their eyes
And dance beneath the cloudy skies.

I have cravenly suffered the sentimental drivel of the career politician—
The pandering fop, the trailer-trash clone,
The glib picaro who would do anything at all to be somebody,
Except be somebody who would do anything useful.
I have felt his pudgy fingers foraging in my pockets—
The easy smile, the evasive speech, the beguiling eyes
that woo the timid sheep . . .
The stuff and the skinny of Orwellian nightmares.

And I have seen the feverish glint
That lights the eyes of the campus policemen
(The goose bumps on their hairy arms!),
Who train our sensitivities, arrest our moral zeal.
I Have heard the awkward silence of hounded thoughts and speeches;
Have seen the spittle that files off the rhetoric of the mindless Jacobins . . .
The unwashed, slogan-spouting cutouts reared by academic leeches.
And moreover, I have choked on the gall and the licentious,
toe-jam-funk-smellin’ rot of pretentious celluloid gods.

And the nanny state, the meddler, bewitches so easily!
Conceived by venal men, contrived by ruthless means . . .
That ancient human misery loosed again on you and me,
Watching, prying . . . or it smothers,
The self-anointed class, the deified regime.

My carcass—scourged by jagged teeth—was spewed out
onto a distant Eastern shore.

Oh, let’s do lunch and explore the boundless profundities
of our pregnant self-esteem,
As we boldly proclaim our tolerance for everything that’s grown,
Lest something sacred, something precious rise above the common drone.
Let us smirk, let us squawk, let us blather till we mock
Every triumph, every blunder that has ever inspired wonder,
Every wisdom, every dream that has ever caused a scream,
till all music and all poetry are dead.

A chorus of crickets roll their eyes
And dance beneath the cloudy skies.

I have stood naked, caught inside a crystal jar—
Trapped inside the frozen moment, trapped inside the silent pause,
Surrounded by a lethal ring of faces;
Have stood mute in bewildered indecision—the simmering flush
of sudden, unshed tears behind the stupid smile.
When I’m standing inches tall and shrinking,
When my throat is clogged with cobwebs,
When my sluggish steps turn into miles and miles—
What shall I say to the man, with the withering sneer, standing by the open door?

And I have listlessly shuffled through the tedious echoes
of endless, wayward discussions—
Strung out from the feet of my feet to the feet at your doorstep,
past the bathroom and down the hall.
I have flirted with fancies and consorted with the shadows on the wall
(Attired in a three-piece suit and matching tie!)
And I have littered my life with wasted days beneath the dismal pall.

The wisdom of this world is a chatty girl with brazen eyes and big teeth.

I have seen the painted lips that frame the smiles
across the smoke-filled room;
Have heard the music—the laughter!—that mingles
with the cloying scent of cheap perfume.
I have romanced the evening’s glow and sated its spineless flowers;
Have stumbled from dark and sordid keeps—
A beer in one hand, a pretty fräulein in the other.
Soft, ripe breasts can swell my lust or soothe my rest . . .
Thighs that sway ‘neath a breathless wisp of silk or spread on satin sheets.

And I have known the scorn of Woman, the sting of unrequited love;
Have watched her smiling eyes sink into pools of contempt.
I have cursed the passing of those quintessential moments
when a word or touch was lost,
And my keening heart—wounded by a thousand shards of glass—
Has stumbled through the daze of days and the wane
of bitter, sleepless nights.

And after all the medicinal blather, the commiserations;
After all the drunken sleeps;
After the blood that flows from Private altars, the tearstains;
After all the moral leaps;
After all the feigned disclosures . . . the crickets, the withered leaves;
After all the tedious echoes, the teaspoons, the broken jars;
After all the banalities . . . that flow from the lips flickering on the parlor walls:
What shall I say to the woman with the lustrous shrug and the censorious eyes?

Shall I say, after a snort or two, that I have wrestled
with demons in squalid hotel rooms? . . .
The paint that peels from walls,
The lone, naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

When Evening spreads His toothless grin across the face of Day,
When Dusk grovels at His feet as She scorns Her fallen Star—
Shall I wallow in the moonlight,
Bring the lesser stars to tears
With another tale of love’s discarded toys?

A chorus of crickets roll their eyes
And dance beneath the cloudy skies.

The many voices that saturate the airwaves,
The talking heads that float atop the breeze
Crawl inside my weary head and eviscerate my dreams. . . .

And again, after all the crowded halls, the Dread;
After all the passion and the romance and the mighty deeds are dead;
After the tantrums, the trials, the outstretched hands;
After all the woe that staggers stunned and broken hearts . . .
the girl with the big teeth;
After the ashtrays, the crumbs, the bloodshot eyes . . .
After all the sweet and tender mercies in this world are scattered,
left to rot beneath the pall:
What shall I do about the missing button on my vest?

I have communed with fragile ghosts and willows—bent and lashed by storms.

. . . .

Shall I say that I have rummaged through the scuttled relics
inside the bowels of a Leviathan?
Have gathered their bones around me?
Have counted and named them all?
I have counted and named them all!
And I have teetered on the very edge of madness;
Rather, I have dangled inches above its gaping maw—
My wriggling feet, my white-knuckled grip . . . straining sweat and slipping,
wrapped around the final rung.

And I have looked into the eyes—the amused, malignant ulcers—
of a creature beyond redemption;
Have smelled its yellow breath,
Felt its vile touch slither up my spine like the wet lick of a wounded dog . . .
The crystalline moment of recognition, the puddle of urine on the floor.

When I have squandered every last square inch of the soul that's in me,
When I have spent it all—who shall turn my reeling head toward home?

. . . .


Shall I dream the dreams of angels?
Roust the harpies from my bed?
In the morning, with my coffee,
I can smooth my rumpled head.

Shall I press the monumental question?
Smartly reinforce the crease?
I shall cast my lot with heaven . . .
The moldy mysterious on my fleece!
Should I butter my toast?
Insist on rye or wheat?
Let us dance a torrid tango
And display our nimble feet!

When the Soma oozes from our waxy ears
And mingles with the silvery tears
of those ancient Fellows loitering behind the clouds;
When it’s time to shoo the Riffraff,
When it’s time to chase my feet,
When the relentless siege of the daze of days
And the fog of sleepless nights have razed
And burned and trampled and buried my hapless brain:
Shall I walk or ride the bus?
Ride the bus or take a walk?

A host of insidious insinuations
Prance about my contemplations
And wrap their velvet paws around my throat.

A chorus of crickets roll their eyes
And dance beneath the cloudy skies.

. . .

Shall I offer my head on a platter,
A mere chit of a chat amidst the clatter,
For one last persuasive dance before his sire’s throne?

No!

I’m not a martyr!
I’ve no great calling to obey.
I’ve no olive branch to offer.
Let his conscience rot away!
I’m a pauper with high notions,
A poet with some flair.
I plot stories full of riches,
But have no coat or hope to spare.

When the sky sobs and the wind wails,
When the Earth shakes the dust off Her face—
I discretely take my leave and fade into the gray.

My sodden flesh—bleached and rancid, trampled by gleeful feet—lay wasted,
stretched out on hot sands.

. . . .

We have come to the end of a certain class of human folly—
Raised up and spread abroad by brutal hands,
Passed through many sewers . . . beneath the glistening lanes,
Incessantly chanted by clueless brats
And shrugged off by indifferent, universal imperatives.
Yet we still hear, you and I, that vicious chorus of whores,
with curled lips,
Sniveling behind the final curtain.
Oh, aren’t they finished?
Exposed and known?
Are you certain?

When we are laid out on stainless steel beneath florescent lights,
When our sightless eyes are closed by busy fingers,
When they have numbered and tagged our toes—
Numbered and tagged them all!—
Who shall pluck out the tufts of hair sprouting from our fleshy ears?

. . . .

We have aimlessly wandered down tedious streets beneath a grieving sky—
Without hope, without respite, without another single sign
of life appearing anywhere in sight,
Except a gang of looney crickets dancing jigs throughout the night.

Oh, I wish the mermaids would sing to me.
I wish the mermaids would sing. . . .