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

Kinkpoet
Tyrant of Words
United States 11awards
Joined 9th May 2019
Forum Posts: 1029


Poet and spoken-word artist Marty McConnell earned her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is a seven-time National Poetry Slam Team member and the 2012 winner of the National Underground Poetry Individual Competition.


Do Not Let This Universe Regret You-Marty McConnell


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVakssyJTEg


Praise the miracle body The odd and undeniable mechanics of hand
Hundred boned foot, perfect stretch of tendon
Praise the veins that river these wrists
Praise the prolapsed valve in a heart
Praise the scars marking a gallbladder absent
Praise the rasp and rattle of functioning lungs
Praise the pre-arthritic ache of elbows and ankles
Praise the lifeline sectioning a palm
Praise the photographic pads of fingertips
Praise the vulnerable dip at the base of a throat
Praise the muscles surfacing on an abdomen
Praise these arms that carry babies, and anthologies
Praise the leg hairs that sprout and are shaved
Praise the ass that refuses to shrink or be hidden
Praise the cunt that bleeds and accepts, bleeds and accepts
Praise the prominent ridge of nose
Praise the strange convexity of rib cage
Praise the single hair that insists on growing from a right areola
Praise the dent where the mole was clipped from the back of a neck
Praise these inner thighs brushing
Praise these eyelashes that sometimes turn inward
Praise these hips preparing to spread into a grandmother’s skirt
Praise the beauty of the freckle on the first knuckle of a left little finger
We’re gone in a blizzard of seconds
Love the body human while we’re here
A gift of minutes on an evolving planet
A country in flux, give thanks
For bone, and dirt, and the million things that will kill us someday
Motion and the pursuit of happiness, no garauntees, give thanks
For chaos theory, ecology, common sense that says we are web
A planet in balance or out
That butterfly in Tokyo setting off thunder storms in Iowa
Tell me you don’t matter to a universe that conspired to give you such a tongue
Such rhythm or rhythmless hips
Such opposable thumbs
Give thanks, or go home a waste of spark
Speak, or let the maker take back your throat
March, or let the creator rescind your feet
Dream, or let your god destroy your good and fertile mind
This is your warning
This your birthright
Do not let this universe regret you


-Marty McConnell

Kinkpoet
Tyrant of Words
United States 11awards
Joined 9th May 2019
Forum Posts: 1029


Lamont Carey is a critically acclaimed motivational speaker, prison re-entry expert, spoken word artist, entrepreneur, author, artist and advocate for changing lives. He uses his life experiences as a delinquent youth, formerly incarcerated prisoner and an artist to inspire individuals, employees and communities.

I Can't Read" by Lamont Carey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lByDfPOG0LA


I'm eleven years old in the sixth grade and I can't read. The class is so full that the teacher doesn't notice me, but I can't read. And when she finally asks me to come to the head of the class, I do everything in my power to make the class laugh. What would you do if you knew that they all would laugh at you?
But I can't read and I can't write and I can't spell and most of the time I don't know my left from my right. But they keep on passing me because I can dribble a ball and I can hit a three pointer, y'all, and I can almost dunk and I am guaranteed to get you 13 points.
But I can't read and I can't right, I can't spell most of the time, I don't know my left from my right. The teacher’s aid says it's the teacher’s fault and the teacher says it's the board of education and the board of education says it’s my parents fault and, y'all, my parents blame me. But I still can't read, I can't write and most of the time I don't know my left from my right.
But on the biggest game of the year, I was coming down the lane and I was doing my thing when number 13 crashed into me. At the same time that I heard my knee snap, I heard my family dream shatter.
See, they depended on me to get us out of the ghetto, so when I hit the ground I did everything in my power not to frown. But it was just too much pain and it ran straight to my brain and the last thing I remember is the doctor saying that I would never run again.
So now I'm asking y'all, what are my options? I can't read.
-Lamont Carey

Kinkpoet
Tyrant of Words
United States 11awards
Joined 9th May 2019
Forum Posts: 1029


Mark Grist is a poet and battle rapper based in Peterborough, UK, who rose to prominence when his Don't Flop rap battle against Mancunian MC Blizzard became an internet sensation. The video of the rap battle became the most viewed UK rap battle of all time and Grist is ranked the third most viewed rap battler in UK history



Girls Who Read


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmEbF2uhsZk


So, what do you go for in a girl?”
He crows, lifting a lager to his lips
Gestures where his mate sits
Downs his glass
“He prefers tits
I prefer ass.
What do you go for in a girl?”
I don’t feel comfortable
The air left the room a long time ago
All eyes are on me
Well, if you must know
I want a girl who reads
Yeah. Reads.
I’m not trying to call you a chauvinist
Cos I know you’re not alone in this
but…
I want a girl who reads
Who needs the written word
& uses the added vocabulary
She gleans from novels and poetry
To hold lively conversation
In a range of social situations
I want a girl who reads
Whose heart bleeds at the words of Graham Greene
Or even Heat magazine
Who’ll tie back her hair while reading Jane Eyre
and goes cover to cover with each Waterstones three for two offer
but I want a girl who doesn’t stop there
I want a girl who reads
Who feeds her addiction for fiction
With unusual poems and plays
That she hunts out in crooked bookshops for days and days and days
She’ll sit addicted at breakfast, soaking up the back of the cornflakes box
And the information she gets from what she reads makes her a total fox
Cos she’s interesting & unique
& her theories make me go weak at the knees
I want a girl who reads
A girl whose eyes will analyse
The menu over dinner
Who’ll use what she learns to kick my ass in arguments
so she always ends the winner
But she’ll still be sweet and she’ll still be flirty
Cos she loves the classics and the classics are dirty
So late at night she’d always have me in a stupor
As she paraphrases the raunchier moments from the works of Jilly Cooper
See, some guys prefer asses
Some prefer tits
And I’m not saying that I don’t like those bits
But what’s more important
What supercedes
For me
Is a girl a with passion, wit and dreams
So I want a girl who reads.

-Mark Grist

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


Rebekah Miron

CELEBRITY


It was started by cruelty, those mouths
dark as houses where each consonant,
each vowel, scored the walls with hate.

They took a woman to pieces,
pressed her flesh against their lips,
told stories about the taste,

about the way she fell apart on the tongue,
melted warm as butter, because
the world was hungry too, they said.

She was judged by the eye, measured by sight,
a little salt, seasoning, until our plates heaved,
the flavours strange, acerbic.

Still we chewed when they told us to
and once we’d finished, it was miraculous,
they even fed us her absence.

They gave us tragedy, a fresh grave,
and when we opened empty mouths
to gorge on the flowers,

they tasted cheap like paper,
and we weren’t sure why,
but anyway, we eat them still.

_________________________________

Rebekah Miron: “’In a world where you can be anything, be kind,’ wrote Caroline Flack on social media last December. On Saturday, we learned the much-loved British presenter had taken her own life. While there’s never a simple explanation for this kind of tragedy, it’s clear the British tabloids played no small part. Flack was tormented and harassed during a mental health crisis. Today, an online petition calling for a law that would prevent newspapers from ‘sharing private information that is detrimental to a celebrity, their mental health and those around them,’ quickly gained over 400,000 signatures. Politicians also lined up to criticize the tabloids, as well as hate-fueled social media commentators. This comes just weeks after Meghan Markle and Prince Harry threatened legal action against several British tabloids. I felt so sad and shocked when I heard the news about Caroline Flack. I wanted to write something in response, to address the vicious gossip-mongers who tear women in the media to shreds. Some shame-faced tabloids have even been deleting cruel articles in the wake of Flack’s death. But I also felt I had to acknowledge something about gossip in general, because there’s no supply without demand. We have to turn away from the tabloids, ignore the clickbait, we can’t believe what we read in the papers. When we consume this fakery, we become part of the problem too.”

Kinkpoet
Tyrant of Words
United States 11awards
Joined 9th May 2019
Forum Posts: 1029


Dick Bakken, The Whiskey Epiphanies, Poetry

Arizona poet Dick Bakken is one of the most dynamic performers of poetry in this country. His readings are intense, mesmerizing. His poetry has appeared in a variety of journals and has been recorded on radio and CD. He is a poet in the true oral tradition. At the same time, his poems hold up as well on the page as they do on the stage. But you need to gulp them with energy. These are not sweet, relaxing poems, not poems for bedtime or for lazing away an afternoon. They constitute Bakken's selected life's work, 1963 to 2013. They hit hard and are not easy to forget.

https://youtu.be/K0C1DcxMzVs


What Is Sleep
transcribed from taped live improvisation

sleep is the brain of a flower
sleep is your last chance to open like a parachute
sleep is a train with gold windows coming over a waterfall
sleep is that long sled ride down a snowy hill
sleep is the star at the bottom of my beer
sleep is an elephant kneeling to a child with a sparkler
sleep is the castle you were born in
sleep is in love with the butterfly of my lips
sleep is a horse nobody else can ride
sleep is the desert at night on a lunchbox pressed to our heart
sleep is the journal of God
yes
that's what sleep is

sleep is a nun driving a tractor in a snowstorm
sleep is a stop sign in flames
sleep is a semi rolling wide open through a cathedral
sleep is the highway away from my head
sleep is glowing like any tailpipe in the stars
sleep is a loose ribbon falling from the sky
sleep is a balcony full of soldiers tossing rose petals and panties
sleep is the lost dress that floats
sleep is a blind sailor who kisses like a woman
sleep is that milk you thought you'd never get again
sleep is not ours to keep
sleep is where the wind went

sleep
what is sleep

fog in a cat's mouth

                                  popcorn on a lamb's back

                                                                                   a cloud in an elevator

sleep is a Cadillac with a hood full of doves
sleep is a watermelon kissed by a priest

                                               sleep is a hot
                                          flashlight to my heart
                                        as I swim to the cellar with
                                             my red eye glowing
-Dick Bakken

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


Clint Margrave

WHEN DEATH TRAVELS


No one makes him
take his shoes off at security
or asks to see his boarding pass.
 
There are no bags to check
because baggage is strictly for the living.
 
No windows on the plane
because there’s nothing to see.
 
No seatbelts because
there’s nothing to impact.
 
The flight attendants
attend to nothing.
 
And though there are delays,
there are never any cancellations.
 
No one greets him at the gate
or holds a sign with his name.
No one is happy to see him.

_________________________________

Clint Margrave: “I write poetry because I’m not good at fixing anything.”

Kinkpoet
Tyrant of Words
United States 11awards
Joined 9th May 2019
Forum Posts: 1029


Richard Brautigan (1935-1984) is best known for his novel Trout Fishing in America (1967) a counterculture classic which, according to poet Billy Collins, “had a huge impact. It achieved a kind of instant cult status, not just for adolescents but I think for a whole generation that was weaned on a much more traditional kind of fiction. And I think it also had to do with something of the drug culture, that this was a kind of refracted and drugged way of looking at things. It was a disruptive and surrealistic vision.
That vision is also evident in his poems, one of which – “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace” – presents a prescient and optimistic view of a future society. “


All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace
-Richard Brautigan

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace

-Richard Brautigan

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


Rita Mae Reese
Born and raised in Charleston, West Virginia.  Fiction writer, and marketing director at Headmistress Press, an independent publisher of chapbooks and full-length collections by lesbian poets.


ON THE PROBLEMS OF EMPATHY

1
Twice a year the orphans come.
Like Job’s children, pawns in a bet
made with the Devil.

2
You and your mother watch
from the porch as Father Whiskey’s car
rolls up the long dirt drive.
The orphans inside ignore the fields,
the cows, the pond, the patch of woods.

3
When you were younger,
you begged for a brother,
or even a sister.

4
What should you say to an orphan?
You think of your mother’s
habitual prelude to sympathy:
“There’s nothing easier
than burying other people’s children, but …”
The orphans are beyond sympathy.

5
Sympathy being one of the problems.
How far does it go?
Not quite to the horizon.
Not even to the trees beyond the pond.

6
The orphans, their still-breathing,
lye- and cabbage-smelling bodies,
are also a problem.

7
Father Whiskey with his lazy eye
thinks a good Catholic family
with only one child is both
problem and solution.

8
One eye looks at your mother.
The other looks at God
looking at you.

9
Sympathy requires action, or at least words;
empathy is a private affair,
which is nevertheless a basis for community.
However the distinctions are imprecise and need further work.

10
Father Whiskey sees God looking at you as if
—if you believed in the Creed, the Holy Ghost,
and all that he has tried to tell you,
if you could even look a statue
of Mary in the eye—
then you could reach out a hand,
lay it on this boy’s scrubbed forehead,
make him your brother.

11
Later, in college, in a winter of mind and place,
you will read Edith Stein’s
On the Problem of Empathy.
Now though she is of no help to you.

12
You stand on the front porch
and wait for the miracle
to begin in your shoulder
and travel down through your fingertips,
the way you’ve heard lightning
tries to escape the body.

13
In a few months there will be different orphans.
Then the time comes but no orphans.

14
Years later, in a city where you can’t speak
the language, you will pass a woman
sitting on the pavement, a burnt-out shell
of a woman holding an infant. The infant is sleeping,
on his head a robin’s-egg-blue bonnet, spotless.

15
Your problem is you feel too much, or not at all.

16
Their grown bodies move past you.

_________________________________

Rita Mae Reese: “Once on a road trip to Atlanta, Georgia, I came across a copy of The Habit of Being, the collected letters of Flannery O’Connor. Then, I had no faith to speak of, not even in myself. In one of the letters, O’Connor wrote to a friend: ‘If I live long enough and develop as an artist to the proper extent, I would like to write a comic novel about a woman—and what could be more comical or more terrible than an angular intellectual proud woman approaching God inch by inch grinding her teeth?’ I return to O’Connor’s stories and letters again and again, each time recognizing more of my comical, terrible self and—more surprisingly—the seeds of faith.”

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


Michael Nesmith

Different Drum

Lyrics (1965)
(recorded by Linda Ronstadt & The Stone Poneys in 1967)

You and I travel to the beat of a diff'rent drum.
Oh, can't you tell by the way I run
Ev'ry time you make eyes at me.

You cry and you moan and say it’ll work out.
But honey child I've got my doubts,
You can't see the forest for the trees.

Oh, don't get me wrong. It's not that I'm knockin'.
It's just that I am not in the market
For a girl who wants to love only me.

Yes, and I ain't sayin' you ain't pretty.
All I'm sayin’ is I'm not ready for any person,
Place or thing to try and pull the reins in on me.

So Goodbye, I'll be leavin'.
I see no sense in the cryin' and grievin'.
We'll both live a lot longer if you live without me.

Oh, don't get me wrong. It's not that I'm knockin'.
It's just that I am not in the market
For a girl who wants to love only me.

Yes, and I ain't sayin' you ain't pretty.
All I'm sayin’ is I'm not ready for any person,
Place or thing to try and pull the reins in on me.

So Goodbye, I'll be leavin'.
I see no sense in the cryin' and grievin'.
We'll both live a lot longer if you live without me.


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w9qsDgA1q8Y

_________________________________

Robert Michael Nesmith (b. December 30, 1942 in Dallas, Texas) is an American musician, songwriter, actor, producer, novelist, businessman, and philanthropist, best known as a member of the pop rock band the Monkees and co-star of the TV series The Monkees (‘66-‘68)

Kinkpoet
Tyrant of Words
United States 11awards
Joined 9th May 2019
Forum Posts: 1029


Paul Frederic Simon (born October 13, 1941) is an American musician, singer-songwriter and actor. Simon’s fame, influence, and commercial success began as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, formed in 1964 with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote nearly all of the pair’s songs, including three that reached No. 1 on the U.S. singles charts: “The Sound of Silence”, “Mrs. Robinson”, and “Bridge over Troubled Water”. Source: https://www.poeticous.com/simon

Under African Skies  ——Paul Simon

Joseph's face was black as night
The pale yellow moon shone in his eyes
His path was marked
By the stars in the Southern Hemisphere
And he walked his days
Under African skies
This is the story of how we begin to remember
This is the powerful pulsing of love in the vein
After the dream of falling and calling your name out
These are the roots of rhythm
And the roots of rhythm remain
In early memory
Mission music
Was ringing 'round my nursery door
I said take this child, Lord
From Tucson Arizona
Give her the wings to fly through harmony
And she won't bother you no more
This is the story of how we begin to remember
This is the powerful pulsing of love in the vein
After the dream of falling and calling your name out
These are the roots of rhythm
And the roots of rhythm remain
Joseph's face was as black as the night
And the pale yellow moon shone in his eyes
His path was marked
By the stars in the Southern Hemisphere
And he walked the length of his days
Under African skies

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Paul Simon

PoetsRevenge
Dangerous Mind
United States 28awards
Joined 30th June 2016
Forum Posts: 704

Yes, this index is so helpful in finding some hidden gems to read, thanks, Josh
And thanks to Jade for that post about China, it really inspired me 📖

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

PoetsRevenge said:Yes, this index is so helpful in finding some hidden gems to read, thanks, Josh
And thanks to Jade for that post about China, it really inspired me 📖


No Problem. I'll try and keep it updated  - if it's getting too far "out of date", feel free to give me a nudge.  

David_Macleod
14397816
Tyrant of Words
United Kingdom 39awards
Joined 5th Nov 2014
Forum Posts: 2983


The Poetry Of SPIKE MILLIGAN

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


Have A Nice Day

'Help, help, ' said a man. 'I'm drowning.'
'Hang on, ' said a man from the shore.
'Help, help, ' said the man. 'I'm not clowning.'
'Yes, I know, I heard you before.
Be patient dear man who is drowning,
You, see I've got a disease.
I'm waiting for a Doctor J. Browning.
So do be patient please.'
'How long, ' said the man who was drowning. 'Will it take for the Doc to arrive? '
'Not very long, ' said the man with the disease. 'Till then try staying alive.'
'Very well, ' said the man who was drowning. 'I'll try and stay afloat.
By reciting the poems of Browning
And other things he wrote.'
'Help, help, ' said the man with the disease, 'I suddenly feel quite ill.'
'Keep calm.' said the man who was drowning, ' Breathe deeply and lie quite still.'
'Oh dear, ' said the man with the awful disease. 'I think I'm going to die.'
'Farewell, ' said the man who was drowning.
Said the man with the disease, 'goodbye.'
So the man who was drowning, drownded
And the man with the disease past away.
But apart from that,
And a fire in my flat,
It's been a very nice day.


I Must Go Down To The Sea Again

I must go down to the sea again,
to the lonely sea and the sky;
I left my shoes and socks there -
I wonder if they're dry?


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


Mario Chard

THE BARREL


What would the prison cook who made the rapist’s last meal cook finally for himself? What could it matter that from his window he looked like other men who leavened their hands in dish water? That even before he ate he filled the sink until the water burned his fingers. A rag laid out for drying. The steam stumbling from a train south of Mar del Plata, a girl sleeps without wishing to, wakes to an arm that pulls her through a door into Miramar, blinks beside the man who woke her, not her father, though to others he looks as though he were, a man with his daughter, the daughter does not speak, only cries when later, in a restaurant, he gives her a menu she cannot read and makes her order his plate like a catalogue of every meal that could have filled it. How his wife loved artichokes, left her bowl out for the leaves. How she kept record of every meal. How when he felt it right to kneel beside the table, the unmoved silver, give thanks, the words swelled in his mouth as if he spoke them in a barrel, like a victim must with little choice left but where to rest her hands.

_________________________________

Mario Chard: “Like all poets, I suppose, it’s difficult to discuss a poem that you feel is its own answer. What I can say about ‘The Barrel’ is that it still haunts me, and I’m not quite sure I’ll ever decide, if given the choice, on what meal I’d choose for my last. I think I’d be grateful for at least the choice. Isn’t that always the first thing taken from a victim? I wish this poem had the power to give that back.”

——————————————
Mario Chard was born in northern Utah. The son of an Argentine immigrant mother and an American father, he teaches in Atlanta, Georgia, where he lives with his wife and sons.

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


Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach

EVERY MUSICIAN’S SUICIDE MAKES ME THINK

of the first time you told me goodbye
over landlines when we were such children
and the morning seemed years away

how you warned me you wouldn’t last
the night and the promise
of my body                         wasn’t enough

to keep you but the next day
we made love on the floor
and I told you how hard it was

to know your body—        a sinking boat         a run-over deer’s ribcage
    warm         and expanding
    slower with each step         thick bass strings
    roped         into silent nooses
    a small boy’s voice         set to man’s music—

you told me it was easy
to want         nothing
and feel it

told me this after you came
and I didn’t believe you
trusted an ocean

of dead fish
was still an ocean
trusted such a mouth

must want for me to swim
inside         but desire
for another body

doesn’t mean love
for your own         and if your desire
were that ocean

it’d be one of mouths         gasping.

______________________________

Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach: “On the day Chris Cornell died, my first thought went to my husband, a huge fan and incredibly talented musician himself, who also struggles with depression. A man who holds a deep admiration for other artists and life, while often being overwhelmed by thoughts of the opposite. Hearing of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington’s death, and that his body was found on what would have been Cornell’s 53rd birthday, and then reading about their friendship and the open letter Bennington wrote in response to his friend’s suicide, I was again taken to the musician I fell in love with and married. I felt at once grateful to still have him and scared at the prospect of this being temporary and fragile, living every day on the cusp of loss. I wrote this poem as a way of figuring out my own feelings about loving someone who fights this heavy darkness, a poem about being there to see the fight and feeling powerless to help.”

__________________________________

Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach came to the United States as a Jewish refugee in 1993, from Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Oregon and is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Julia is the Poetry Editor for Construction Magazine.

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