POETRY SWAP MEET: Poetry we don't usually know about, or?
Anonymous
Henry Rollins
A Moment of Guilt
Guilt wanted a moment of my time
I asked, "Guilt, what could I possible do for you?"
Guilt said "I've touched many. The good, the bad, the ones you think
Would be impervious to my persuasions, and I've reduced them to
Mere shell of themselves
I take the very strong, the heroic, the weak and the despicable alike
I invade their every thought and movement
Their marriages fail, they become depressed, despondent
Some of them are unable to hold on
But most come out better."
I asked, "How could that be? How could anyone become better by
Having been put through so much pain?
Guilt said, "I make them see themselves for what they are."
I asked, "Whats the point?"
Guilt said, "THat's the problem I'm having, I've come to hate myself, I hate what I do. I feel awful."
"So, youre feeling the wrath of guilt?" I asked
Guilt looked at the ground and nodded
Guilt then looked up and said, I can't get to you, I've tried and tried. Nothing seems to work."
"Why do you think that is?", I asked
Guilt answered, " Because you're a monster."
I said "It took you this long to figure that out?”
A Moment of Guilt
Guilt wanted a moment of my time
I asked, "Guilt, what could I possible do for you?"
Guilt said "I've touched many. The good, the bad, the ones you think
Would be impervious to my persuasions, and I've reduced them to
Mere shell of themselves
I take the very strong, the heroic, the weak and the despicable alike
I invade their every thought and movement
Their marriages fail, they become depressed, despondent
Some of them are unable to hold on
But most come out better."
I asked, "How could that be? How could anyone become better by
Having been put through so much pain?
Guilt said, "I make them see themselves for what they are."
I asked, "Whats the point?"
Guilt said, "THat's the problem I'm having, I've come to hate myself, I hate what I do. I feel awful."
"So, youre feeling the wrath of guilt?" I asked
Guilt looked at the ground and nodded
Guilt then looked up and said, I can't get to you, I've tried and tried. Nothing seems to work."
"Why do you think that is?", I asked
Guilt answered, " Because you're a monster."
I said "It took you this long to figure that out?”
Jade-Pandora
jade tiger
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Charles Simic (b. 1938)
Charles Simic, 15th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, 2007-2008. Charles Simic was born in former Yugoslavia on May 9, 1938. His childhood was complicated by the events of World War II.
GRAY-HEADED SCHOOLCHILDREN
Old men have bad dreams,
So they sleep little.
They walk on bare feet
Without turning on the light,
Or they stand leaning
On gloomy furniture
Listening to their hearts beat.
The one window across the room
Is black like a blackboard.
Every old man is alone
In this classroom, squinting
At that fine chalk line
That divides being here
From being-here-no-more.
No matter. It was a glass of water
They were going to get,
But not just yet.
They listen for mice in the walls,
A car passing on the street,
Their dead fathers shuffling past them
On their way to the kitchen.
Jade-Pandora
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Billy Collins (b. 1941)
William James Collins, born in Manhattan, NYC, known as Billy Collins, is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003.
Reading Myself to Sleep
The house is all in darkness except for this corner bedroom
where the lighthouse of a table lamp is guiding
my eyes through the narrow channels of print,
and the only movement in the night is the slight
swirl of curtains, the easy lift and fall of my breathing,
and the flap of pages as they turn in the wind of my hand.
Is there a more gentle way to go into the night
than to follow an endless rope of sentences
and then to slip drowsily under the surface of a page
into the first tentative flicker of a dream,
passing out of the bright precincts of attention
like cigarette smoke passing through a window screen?
All late readers know this sinking feeling of falling
into the liquid of sleep and then rising again
to the call of a voice that you are holding in your hands,
as if pulled from the sea back into a boat
where a discussion is raging on some subject or other,
on Patagonia or Thoroughbreds or the nature of war.
Is there a better method of departure by night
than this quiet bon voyage with an open book,
the sole companion who has come to see you off,
to wave you into the dark waters beyond language?
I can hear the rush and sweep of fallen leaves outside
where the world lies unconscious, and I can feel myself
dissolving, drifting into a story that will never be written,
letting the book slip to the floor where I will find it
in the morning when I surface, wet and streaked with
daylight.
Jade-Pandora
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Charles Simic (b. 1938)
Charles Simic, 15th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, 2007-2008. Charles Simic was born in former Yugoslavia on May 9, 1938. His childhood was complicated by the events of World War II.
WHAT THE GYPSIES TOLD MY GRANDMOTHER
WHILE SHE WAS STILL A YOUNG GIRL
War, illness and famine will make you their favorite grandchild.
You'll be like a blind person watching a silent movie.
You'll chop onions and pieces of your heart
into the same hot skillet.
Your children will sleep in a suitcase tied with a rope.
Your husband will kiss your breasts every night
as if they were two gravestones.
Already the crows are grooming themselves
for you and your people.
Your oldest son will lie with flies on his lips
without smiling or lifting his hand.
You'll envy every ant you meet in your life
and every roadside weed.
Your body and soul will sit on separate stoops
chewing the same piece of gum.
Little cutie, are you for sale? the devil will say.
The undertaker will buy a toy for your grandson.
Your mind will be a hornet's nest even on your
deathbed.
You will pray to God but God will hang a sign
that He's not to be disturbed.
Question no further, that's all I know.
Vandel_Viaclovsky
Van
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Van
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Etheridge Knight (1931–1991)
Etheridge Knight began writing poetry while an inmate at the Indiana State Prison and published his first collection, Poems from Prison in 1968.
The Sun Came
And if sun comes
How shall we greet him?
—Gwen Brooks
The sun came, Miss Brooks,—
After all the night years.
He came spitting fire from his lips.
And we flipped—We goofed the whole thing.
It looks like our ears were not equipped
For the fierce hammering.
And now the Sun has gone, has bled red,
Weeping behind the hills.
Again the night shadows form.
But beneath the placid face a storm rages.
The rays of Red have pierced the deep, have struck
The core. We cannot sleep.
The shadows sing: Malcolm, Malcolm, Malcolm.
The darkness ain't like before.
The Sun came, Miss Brooks.
And we goofed the whole thing.
I think.
(Though ain't no vision visited my cell.)
Etheridge Knight began writing poetry while an inmate at the Indiana State Prison and published his first collection, Poems from Prison in 1968.
The Sun Came
And if sun comes
How shall we greet him?
—Gwen Brooks
The sun came, Miss Brooks,—
After all the night years.
He came spitting fire from his lips.
And we flipped—We goofed the whole thing.
It looks like our ears were not equipped
For the fierce hammering.
And now the Sun has gone, has bled red,
Weeping behind the hills.
Again the night shadows form.
But beneath the placid face a storm rages.
The rays of Red have pierced the deep, have struck
The core. We cannot sleep.
The shadows sing: Malcolm, Malcolm, Malcolm.
The darkness ain't like before.
The Sun came, Miss Brooks.
And we goofed the whole thing.
I think.
(Though ain't no vision visited my cell.)
Vandel_Viaclovsky
Van
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Van
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William Shakespeare
from Titus Andronicus
(Aaron the Moor confession)
First Goth
What, canst thou say all this, and never blush?
AARON
Ay, like a black dog, as the saying is.
LUCIUS
Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?
AARON
Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.
Even now I curse the day--and yet, I think,
Few come within the compass of my curse,--
Wherein I did not some notorious ill,
As kill a man, or else devise his death,
Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it,
Accuse some innocent and forswear myself,
Set deadly enmity between two friends,
Make poor men's cattle break their necks;
Set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night,
And bid the owners quench them with their tears.
Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves,
And set them upright at their dear friends' doors,
Even when their sorrows almost were forgot;
And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,
Have with my knife carved in Roman letters,
'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.'
Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things
As willingly as one would kill a fly,
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed
But that I cannot do ten thousand more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcLGJ0c-X9k
from Titus Andronicus
(Aaron the Moor confession)
First Goth
What, canst thou say all this, and never blush?
AARON
Ay, like a black dog, as the saying is.
LUCIUS
Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?
AARON
Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.
Even now I curse the day--and yet, I think,
Few come within the compass of my curse,--
Wherein I did not some notorious ill,
As kill a man, or else devise his death,
Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it,
Accuse some innocent and forswear myself,
Set deadly enmity between two friends,
Make poor men's cattle break their necks;
Set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night,
And bid the owners quench them with their tears.
Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves,
And set them upright at their dear friends' doors,
Even when their sorrows almost were forgot;
And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,
Have with my knife carved in Roman letters,
'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.'
Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things
As willingly as one would kill a fly,
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed
But that I cannot do ten thousand more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcLGJ0c-X9k
Jade-Pandora
jade tiger
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James Wright (1927-1980)
James Arlington Wright, American poet of the postmodern era who wrote about sorrow, salvation, and self-revelation, often drawing on his native Ohio River valley for images of nature and industry.
You and I Saw Hawks Exchanging the Prey
They did the deed of darkness
In their own mid-light.
He plucked a gray field mouse
Suddenly in the wind.
The small dead fly alive
Helplessly in his beak,
His cold pride, helpless.
All she receives is life.
They are terrified. They touch.
Life is too much.
She flies away sorrowing.
Sorrowing, she goes alone.
Then her small falcon, gone.
Will not rise here again.
Smaller than she, he goes
Claw beneath claw beneath
Needles and leaning boughs,
While she, the lovelier
Of these brief differing two,
Floats away sorrowing,
Tall as my love for you,
And almost lonelier.
Delighted in the delighting,
I love you in mid-air,
I love myself the ground.
The great wings sing nothing
Lightly. Lightly fall.
Blackwolf
I.M.Blackwolf
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I.M.Blackwolf
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"WHAT THE GYPSIES TOLD MY GRANDMOTHER
WHILE SHE WAS STILL A YOUNG GIRL"
Yeah , those gypsies are part of my old Tradition...;)
They know how to curse...you don't want to cross them ,
because they mean every word they say...
I used to work for Butler Amusements in the U.S. , and
there were more than a few working there , motorized
gypsy wagons and all...
I remember a young teen girl named Areeba , and her
grandmother...Areeba was drop dead beautiful , but
her grandmother made it clear to anyone watching Areeba
flamenco dance around the late nite fire ;
You touch Areeba , you will wish you drop dead before we
get to you...she was an authentic gypsy witch...;)
...LOL...
That curse is real , believe it or not...nice find , Jade !
WHILE SHE WAS STILL A YOUNG GIRL"
Yeah , those gypsies are part of my old Tradition...;)
They know how to curse...you don't want to cross them ,
because they mean every word they say...
I used to work for Butler Amusements in the U.S. , and
there were more than a few working there , motorized
gypsy wagons and all...
I remember a young teen girl named Areeba , and her
grandmother...Areeba was drop dead beautiful , but
her grandmother made it clear to anyone watching Areeba
flamenco dance around the late nite fire ;
You touch Areeba , you will wish you drop dead before we
get to you...she was an authentic gypsy witch...;)
...LOL...
That curse is real , believe it or not...nice find , Jade !
Jade-Pandora
jade tiger
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jade tiger
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Blackwolf said:WHAT THE GYPSIES TOLD MY GRANDMOTHER
WHILE SHE WAS STILL A YOUNG GIRL
Oh yes, I knew about gypsies from when I was small, of a family that had set up shop in an abandoned structure down the hill from where I grew up. I was fascinated, but I steered clear. I believed what I felt in my 4-yr-old’s gut.
And as for the find, I’ve enjoyed Simic’s work for years; this particular piece included very much. Soul-satisfying for me to post it in this forum that I’d always hoped to create on DU for the past two years. Thanks for coming in to enjoy.
Hepcat61
geoff cat
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geoff cat
Dangerous Mind
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C. K. Williams 1936–2015
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry 2000
The Sanctity
-For Nick and Arlene de Credico
The men working on the building going up here have got these great,
little motorized wheelbarrows that're supposed to be for lugging bricks and mortar
but that they seem to spend most of their time barrel-assing up the street in,
racing each other or trying to con the local secretaries into taking rides in the bucket.
I used to work on jobs like that and now when I pass by the skeleton of the girders
and the tangled heaps of translucent brick wrappings, I remember the guys I was with then
and how hard they were to know. Some of them would be so good to be with at work,
slamming things around, playing practical jokes, laughing all the time, but they could be miserable,
touchy and sullen, always ready to imagine an insult or get into a fight anywhere else.
If something went wrong, if a compressor blew or a truck backed over somebody,
they'd be the first ones to risk their lives dragging you out
but later you'd see them and they'd be drunk, looking for trouble, almost murderous,
and it would be frightening trying to figure out which person they really were.
Once I went home to dinner with a carpenter who'd taken me under his wing
and was keeping everyone off my back while he helped me. He was beautiful but at his house, he sulked.
After dinner, he and the kids and I were watching television while his wife washed the dishes
and his mother, who lived with them, sat at the table holding a big cantaloupe in her lap,
fondling it and staring at it with the kind of intensity people usually only look into fires with.
The wife kept trying to take it away from her but the old lady squawked
and my friend said, "Leave her alone, will you?" "But she's doing it on purpose," the wife said.
I was watching. The mother put both her hands on it then, with her thumbs spread
as though the melon were a head and her thumbs were covering the eyes and she was aiming it like a gun
or a camera.
Suddenly the wife muttered, "You bitch!" ran over to the bookshelf, took a book down -
A History of Revolutions - rattled through the pages and triumphantly handed it to her husband.
A photograph: someone who's been garroted and the executioner, standing behind him in a business hat,
has his thumbs just like that over the person's eyes, straightening the head,
so that you thought the thumbs were going to move away because they were only pointing
the person at something they wanted him to see and the one with the hands was going to say, "Look!
Right there!"
"I told you," the wife said. "I swear to god she's trying to drive me crazy."
I didn't know what it all meant but my friend went wild, started breaking things, I went home
and when I saw him the next morning at breakfast he acted as though nothing had happened.
We used to eat at the Westfield truck stop, but I remember Fritz's, The Victory, The Eagle,
and I think I've never had as much contentment as I did then, before work, the light just up,
everyone sipping their coffee out of the heavy white cups and teasing the middle-aged waitresses
who always acted vaguely in love with whoever was on jobs around there right then
besides the regular farmers on their way back from the markets and the long-haul truckers.
Listen: sometimes when you go to speak about life it's as though your mouth's full of nails
but other times it's so easy that it's ridiculous to even bother.
The eggs and the toast could fly out of the plates and it wouldn't matter
and the bubbles in the level could blow sky high and it still wouldn't.
Listen to the back-hoes gearing up and the shouts and somebody cracking his sledge into the mortar pan.
Listen again. He'll do it all day if you want him to. Listen again.
Jade-Pandora
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David Wevill (b. 1935)
David (Anthony) Wevill (a poet & translator), was born in Japan, and later moved with his family to Canada before the outbreak of WWII. He read History & English at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and became a noted member of an underground literary movement in London known as The Group. After the death of his wife, Assia, and their daughter, Shura, in 1969, Wevill went to the American Southwest, where he became a professor emeritus in the Department of English at The University of Texas at Austin for forty years. He became a dual citizen (American & Canadian) in 1994.
29 (1974)
He asked each sunrise
for a new mask
to be worn until his
face can take the sun
habit, habit
gone in the nights
lost, like dogs
so the fumbling of his hands
savage things
even
when light
is clearest—
this black one hangs in the hall
it is a gift, like his others
no one
completes its phase: they
grow inward and vanish, crying
named
he cannot give them: they
want someone, are mates of light
weeping elsewhere
ii
they are a crowd
come to no
event, random
as a leaf pile
dark faces of a Sicilian funeral
bright faces on the Padre Island sand
conning shells
this
stalling of the mind—
why will he not choose one
and wear it?
iii
By noon the number of the day
is a continuous thunder,
the black mask has no body
but had become what it can see
inward, and trees,
cedars, circle the wooden shed
waiting for the cry “Eureka!” or “Fire”
to come as the wind climbs
higher and higher
and sun
crawls the cliff
like diamondbacks... the
unrepentant rocks are his bones too
his back bends with the rivers
old fish bones put on flesh
and dance his eyes two circles
the holes in the middle are night
his mouth is a widening song
one by one
his fingers put out leaves, searching
for airs they have not touched... this
is where Hamlet falls
where Little Wolf shot Thin Elk through the heart
iv
the last is human
to bear the blood of others
through the mask’s eyes
his true face multiplies all
the deaths it comes to
asking, asking
to be seen
as God
was once
in a
corn seed
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Mary Oliver ( 1935 - 2019 )
Mary Oliver, was an American poet. She has won the National Book Award (‘92) and the Pulitzer Prize (‘84). The New York Times described her as "far and away, this country's best-selling poet."
Poppies
The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation
of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.
There isn’t a place
in this world that doesn’t
sooner or later drown
in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage
shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course nothing stops the cold,
black, curved blade
from hooking forward—
of course
loss is the great lesson.
But I also say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness,
when it’s done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields,
touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delight—
and what are you going to do—
what can you do
about it—
deep, blue night?
Jade-Pandora
jade tiger
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jade tiger
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James Wright (1937-1980)
James Arlington Wright, an American poet of the postmodern era who wrote about sorrow, salvation, and self-revelation, often drawing on his native Ohio River valley for images of nature and industry.
Blessing
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
Vandel_Viaclovsky
Van
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Van
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Robert Lowell
(1917-1977)
COLLOQUY IN BLACK ROCK
Here the jack-hammer jabs into the ocean;
My heart, you race and stagger and demand
More blood-gangs for your nigger-brass percussions,
Till I, the stunned machine of your devotion,
Clanging upon this cymbal of a hand,
Am rattled screw and footloose. All discussions
End in the mud-flat detritus of death.
My heart, beat faster, faster. In Black Mud
Hungarian workmen give their blood
For the martyre Stephen who was stoned to death.
Black Mud, a name to conjure with: O mud
For watermelons gutted to the crust,
Mud for the mole-tide harbor, mud for mouse,
Mud for the armored Diesel fishing tubs that thud
A year and a day to wind and tide; the dust
Is on this skipping heart that shakes my house,
House of our Savior who was hanged till death.
My heart, beat faster, faster. In Black Mud
Stephen the martyre was broken down to blood:
Our ransom is the rubble of his death.
Christ walks on the black water. In Black Mud
Darts the kingfisher. On Corpus Christi, heart,
Over the drum-beat of St. Stephen’s choir
I hear him, Stupor Mundi, and the mud
Flies from his hunching wings and beak – my heart,
The blue kingfisher dives on you in fire.
Hepcat61
geoff cat
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geoff cat
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Ezra Pound, 1885 - 1972
with Hemingway, Joyce, Stein, Fitzgerald and others - a member of the Paris "Lost Generation" of the 1920's
In a Station of the Metro (1926)
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.