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POETRY SWAP MEET: Poetry we don't usually know about, or?

snugglebuck
Dangerous Mind
United States 77awards
Joined 3rd Feb 2014
Forum Posts: 1873


We’re all familiar with Muhammad Ali's rhyming wit.  “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”  But few realize that Ali wrote profound poetry.  Now You See Me; Last Night I Had a Dream; There Live a Great Man Named Joe; and my favorite, He Took a Few Cups of Love.

He took a few cups of love.

He took one tablespoon of patience,

One teaspoon of generosity,

One pint of kindness.

He took one quart of laughter,

One pinch of concern.

And then, he mixed willingness with happiness.

He added lots of faith,

And he stirred it up well.

Then he spread it over a span of a lifetime,

And he served it to each and every deserving person he met.

Indeed, Ali was the greatest boxer of all time.

Jade-Pandora
jade tiger
Tyrant of Words
United States 154awards
Joined 9th Nov 2015
Forum Posts: 5134


Alison Townsend
Professor of Languages & Literatures, born: May 13, 1953,  Pennsylvania

PERSEPHONE REMEMBERS: THE BED

It happens in the dark.
If it was light would she be able to stand it?
Her father’s bed a cave she crawls into
when she wakes, forgetting, then remembering,
the scab sleep weaves over the raw place torn open.

The bed, the bed, something that happened in the bed.

Her mother is dead
and everything green has been folded away,
like the flower-sprigged eiderdown in the closet
where she buried her face to remember summer
and the scent of her mother’s live body.

The bed, something happened in the bed,

and the bear she once pretended to be—
those times she touched herself where no one had before—
has gotten inside her father’s body, touching
where she touched, and it is wrong then
gone between her fingers and

the bed, the bed. Something that happened,

something that wakes her after she has fallen
a long way through darkness, someone
who shakes her, says to get up and return
to her own bed, it is morning now, “our secret,”
she must not tell her brother and sister.

The bed, something in the bed,
where her mother taught her to make
hospital corners, where she tucks
and folds the blank spaces into rhymes,
counting the beats between each breath,
bed and head, bed and red, bed and dead.

The bed, the bed, something happened and her mother

is dead and there is no one between
the girl and the sparks of their father’s
sadness, loss a bright red wound he circles
like a bear before sleep, the cave walls
flickering with the prints of hands.

The bed, the bed, it is

her own bed then, carved posts
and pineapple finials, the mattress
imprinted with the shape of her body,
and she is a feather, light in her father’s arms.
Though what she remembers is a dream

the bed, the bed, girl moving like a ghost,
walking, just a glimpse of something
that happened to the girl dreaming
in green cotton pajamas she is that girl
in the bed with her father then

back in her own bed again, where the pictures
run together into something wet on her leg,
the bed and the bear and what happened?
It blurs, it is red, and she is her mother,
which must mean she is dead, too.

Though sun shines through white lace
across her window, though her brother
and sister sigh and stir, though she tastes
the dirt from which each green word springs,
bitter as medicine at the back of her mouth.

__________________________________

Alison Townsend: “I write poetry to make discoveries, to articulate what feels (at least initially) beyond words, to find out what I don’t know I know.”

Jade-Pandora
jade tiger
Tyrant of Words
United States 154awards
Joined 9th Nov 2015
Forum Posts: 5134

M.K. Meder

BLESSING IN DISGUISE
Die knowing something.
—Walker Evans

there is no beer. E=mc2. Beyond the death of self,
more than a dreamless sleep, the absence of all things
familiar, something greater than the freedom from
the vagaries of the marketplace survives. For example,

in a blue day abundant red flowers against a yellow wall.
He died into his statue, a very young boy says
a few steps behind us in the museum courtyard.
Well. Maybe. Sure. Why not, we speculate. In heaven

As distant in time as the memory of memory is in mind,
small caskets in the museum, which once held sandals,
bones, the hair of saints, a piece of the True Cross,
a remnant of Christ’s seamless robe, rest in glass cases.

Now, scientists tell us, at the deepest subatomic level,
if you look closely enough, nothing’s there holding
any of it together, not the caskets in the museum,
the wood, iron, copper, silver; not the peacock feathers,

turquoise, agate, amethyst, ivory, pearls and jasper
that adorn them; not the holy relics; not the red flowers,
the yellow wall; not us. It seems we are bound to this world
the way color is bound to its seed, the seed to the dark.

_________________________________

M.K. Meder: “While exploring the planes on which the finite and the infinite sometimes meet, the coincidence of a kind I’m also pleased to discover in my kitchen and my garden now and then, much of my work, as this poem does, returns to me as an often elusive sense of wonder, without which I’d find the obligation to live joyfully otherwise unimaginable.”

souladareatease
Tyrant of Words
United States 29awards
Joined 28th Dec 2012
Forum Posts: 5085

Jade-Pandora
jade tiger
Tyrant of Words
United States 154awards
Joined 9th Nov 2015
Forum Posts: 5134


Wendy Videlock

STICKS AND SKY

I am steeped in the sticks and stuck on the sky.
The sky is wider than a Twitter feed.
Unplug for a spell, and you’ll understand why

to over feed is to sleep with a capital lie.
The sparrow prefers a world that is wide, and treed.
I am steeped in the sticks and stuck on the sky,

and drawn to the root where the river runs dry.
The sound of the rain is a scattering seed.
Unplug for a spell and you’ll understand why

what you feed is the same as what you buy.
We’ve been given the lobe, and the mighty bleed.
I am steeped in the sticks and stuck on the sky—

a crescent moon and the stars are my fourth of July.
The sparrow prefers an action to a creed.
Unplug for a spell and you’ll understand why

it’s good to be kind outside the public eye.
To learn the difference between word, and deed.
I am steeped in the sticks, and stuck on the sky;
unplug for a spell, and you’ll understand why.

________________________________

Wendy Videlock: “Something tells me that if all our world leaders read poetry, wrote poetry, or were involved deeply in any of the arts, we’d have a far better chance at achieving world peace.”

Known for poems that evoke myth, fairy tale, and the natural world, Videlock lives with her husband and children in western Colorado.

Jade-Pandora
jade tiger
Tyrant of Words
United States 154awards
Joined 9th Nov 2015
Forum Posts: 5134


Temidayo Jacob

MY MOTHER DIED WITH HER HOME

When my mother died,
she took home along with her.
Here, home is not a mere thing,
but a person holding different
pieces of peace together as one.

Father comes home every night
after spraying himself with alcohol,
with lips of heartbroken prostitutes
kissing his shirt, finding their way
into my father’s house like black ants.
They lick his skin and call him daddy
while he feeds them with fresh sugar.

My elder sister is the rag of the town,
every man uses her wetness to clean
up their already drawn dirty desires.
Sometimes, she becomes eatable too:
at dawn, she is a ripe mango whose
sweetness is being sucked out hungrily;
at dusk, she is a new tuber of yam whose
bitterness is being burnt out by fire.

My younger brother is the morning sun
whose brightness was washed away
by the rain that fell after my mother left.
He got tired of being seen as a shadow
instead of the light that births a shadow.
Last night, he became a swollen wet bag;
the well in our compound is a witness.

Here I am, in the smallest dark room,
using a pen to create a picture of all of us
with mother in the middle, holding us.
Hoping she will return home
even if she can’t return herself to us.

_____________________________

Temidayo Jacob: “I am a Nigerian student, writer, and photographer. I grew up in Lagos. I’m pseudonymously known as Mayor Jake. Poetry is sounds louder than thunder. My poems are based on real life experiences and societal happenings. I write poetry to bring light out of darkness and to show the darkness in light.”

poet Anonymous

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Jade-Pandora
jade tiger
Tyrant of Words
United States 154awards
Joined 9th Nov 2015
Forum Posts: 5134


AND SOMETIMES ‘FIERCE’ 🐾

Jade-Pandora
jade tiger
Tyrant of Words
United States 154awards
Joined 9th Nov 2015
Forum Posts: 5134


Marjorie Lotfi Gill

THE WRONG PERSON TO ASK
Tehran, 1977

Ask me for the measure of rose water
in baklava, how to butter each layer of filo
away from the corner so it holds itself apart
under heat, or the exact crush of pistachio,
fine as rubble, not yet dust.

Ask why the man squatting on our roof
in the worst sun of Ramadan refused even a sip
of my water, waved it away like a drink offered
in rain. Ask about the fountain out back, its patter
of stray drops against sidewalk the devil’s music.
Hitchi, he’d said, I want nothing.

Ask me how to speak one kind of English
at school and another at home.

Ask about the cherry tree at the bottom
of the garden, and the only time I remember
it in fruit: my father smiling, pulling me
from the cleft of its branches in darkness.

Ask about the bars on my bedroom window.

Ask me how many sugar cubes I could slip into
my chai before Maman Bozorg noticed. (Four.)

Ask about giving live chicks in a cardboard box
as a get-well gift for a child with chicken pox.

Ask why the baker mixed the dough for barbari
in an old claw-footed tub before feeding
stretched handfuls into the mouth of the fire.

Ask about the army of ants, daytimes, and the scattering
of cockroaches, nights, how they can fly into dreams.

Ask about Kadijeh and Anola, their mud-walled hut
squat in our rose garden, tending the Shomal house
and their sealed mouths for twenty-five years.

Ask me about chicken soup for a childhood cold,
the beheading of a bird for my benefit, the refusal
to open my mouth in gratitude.

Ask how the grandfather clock of a samovar,
its bubble and hiss, marks out time in the house.

Ask me how to taarof, how to say no
when you mean yes.

Ask about my Ameh, the warmth of her arms around
my skinny frame, her language that seeped across
my tongue. Ask how I can have forgotten Farsi
and the sound of her voice bidding me, night
after night, to sleep, to let the day go.

Ask me how to listen.

_____________________________

Marjorie Lotfi Gill: “Because I am half Iranian and grew up in Iran, people have been asking me what I think about President Trump pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal this week. This poem is what I wish they would ask instead.”

Jade-Pandora
jade tiger
Tyrant of Words
United States 154awards
Joined 9th Nov 2015
Forum Posts: 5134


T.S. Davis, RN

THE GRAVEDIGGER THINKS OF

The gravedigger sits on the [backhoe smoking a cigarette.
It’s quiet beneath the trees that partially hide him
from the scrum of mourners beset by grief, regret,
their weeping faces wan and pinched and grim.
The gravedigger waits until the last one leaves,
then yells to signal his men to lower the box,
and turns the key that wakes his rumbling beast
that lumbers now to move the dirt and rocks.
The gravedigger fills the hole until the mound
remarks upon the grass like blood on skin.
And when he cuts the engine there is no sound
except the whispered shush of trees in wind.
The gravedigger thinks of all he needs to do
before he sleeps tonight, like me, like you.

________________________________

T.S. Davis, RN: “When I was fifteen and living in a cage of equal parts conditioning and inexperience, Dylan Thomas and Kenneth Patchen roared up in a metaphorical ’65 baby blue Mustang blasting away with words like hollow tip bullets at the concrete and steel of my small town prison and broke me out of jail. I joined their gang and I’ve been on the run ever since.”

souladareatease
Tyrant of Words
United States 29awards
Joined 28th Dec 2012
Forum Posts: 5085

[***

souladareatease
Tyrant of Words
United States 29awards
Joined 28th Dec 2012
Forum Posts: 5085

https://youtu.be/XWso2Kx4-KE

Poet/ singer/entertainer
Henry Rollins

Title:  Rattus Norvegicus

I am Rattus Norvegicus.
I’m sitting in some shit-hole rat’s nest and I’m a little angry.
I wanted to be a talk show host not a rat.
You think you men have it bad with women?  
Well I got it a lot worse let me tell you.
What am I gonna say to some nice looking girl who I wanna meet?
I can tread water for over 36 hours?
I can chew through lead pipes and cinderblocks?
I can run on telephone wires?!
And what if I do get the girl home?
Can’t fit her though the door, it’s too small.
Yeah I got a lot of gripes.
How’d you like a tail the length of your body to drag around all the time?
Not my idea of fun, not by a long shot.
And do you see the neighborhoods that I’m forced to live in?
Those people live like pigs!
Can’t catch the subway, they haven’t built it yet.
Can’t catch the up-town bus I can’t reach the step-up.
Hey taxi!
And everyone wants to kill me.
Feed me drugs and poison,
Put electrodes in my head and make me run on treadmills.
Dissect, bisect, and defect me,
Bind, blind, maim and tame me.
Are you folks crazy?!
You never invite me to your parties as if I would really wanna go anyhow.
Have you ever asked me to go to a movie?
How about bowling?
You ever seen a rat cry?
I got tears.
And I have a heart, and I got brains.
If you could just see past the fur,
I think that you would see
That I’m a lot like you.

poet Anonymous

<< post removed >>
Taurendil
Strange Creature
Joined 31st Jan 2020
Forum Posts: 2


J.R.R. Tolkien

Tolkien is world-wide reknown as the creator of Middle-Earth, but it is seldom said that he was a master of poetry. One could even say, that all the stories of Middle-Earth are just one single poem of incredible length.

This poem is not one of the Professor's most famous pieces, but still, it has an incredible beauty and dramatic energy. It tells of the battle of power of the elven king Finrod Felagund against the dark lord Sauron

He Chanted a Song of Wizardry

He chanted a song of wizardry,
Of piercing, opening, of treachery,
Revealing, uncovering, betraying.
Then sudden Felagund there swaying
Sang in answer a song of staying,
Resisting, battling against power,
Of secrets kept, strength like a tower,
And trust unbroken, freedom, escape;
Of changing and of shifting shape,
Of snares eluded, broken traps,
The prison opening, the chain that snaps.
Backwards and forwards swayed their song.
Reeling and foundering, as ever more strong
The chanting swelled, Felagund fought,
And all the magic and might he brought
Of Elvenesse into his words.
Softly in the gloom they heard the birds
Singing afar in Nargothrond,
The sighing of the sea beyond,
Beyond the western world, on sand,
On sand of pearls in Elvenland.
Then the gloom gathered; darkness growing
In Valinor, the red blood flowing
Beside the Sea, where the Noldor slew
The Foamriders, and stealing drew
Their white ships with their white sails
From lamplit havens. The wind wails,
The wolf howls. The ravens flee.
The ice mutters in the mouths of the Sea.
The captives sad in Angband mourn.
Thunder rumbles, the fires burn –
And Finrod fell before the throne.

Josh
Joshua Bond
Tyrant of Words
Palestine 40awards
Joined 2nd Feb 2017
Forum Posts: 1664

Taurendil said:J.R.R. Tolkien

Tolkien is world-wide reknown as the creator of Middle-Earth, but it is seldom said that he was a master of poetry. One could even say, that all the stories of Middle-Earth are just one single poem of incredible length.

This poem is not one of the Professor's most famous pieces, but still, it has an incredible beauty and dramatic energy. It tells of the battle of power of the elven king Finrod Felagund against the dark lord Sauron

He chanted a song of wizardry,
Of piercing, opening, of treachery,
Revealing, uncovering, betraying.
Then sudden Felagund there swaying
Sang in answer a song of staying,
Resisting, battling against power,
Of secrets kept, strength like a tower,
And trust unbroken, freedom, escape;
Of changing and of shifting shape,
Of snares eluded, broken traps,
The prison opening, the chain that snaps.
Backwards and forwards swayed their song.
Reeling and foundering, as ever more strong
The chanting swelled, Felagund fought,
And all the magic and might he brought
Of Elvenesse into his words.
Softly in the gloom they heard the birds
Singing afar in Nargothrond,
The sighing of the sea beyond,
Beyond the western world, on sand,
On sand of pearls in Elvenland.
Then the gloom gathered; darkness growing
In Valinor, the red blood flowing
Beside the Sea, where the Noldor slew
The Foamriders, and stealing drew
Their white ships with their white sails
From lamplit havens. The wind wails,
The wolf howls. The ravens flee.
The ice mutters in the mouths of the Sea.
The captives sad in Angband mourn.
Thunder rumbles, the fires burn –
And Finrod fell before the throne.


What an excellent posting; thank you.

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