Poems from your favorite poets

vogonpoetbythelake

vogonpoetbythelake

New Moon Tongue

Faint new moon arc, curl,
again in the west. Blue eve,
deer-moving dusk.
Purple shade in a plant-realm---
a million years of sniffs,
licks, lip and
reaching tongue.

Gary Snyder
Mountains and Rivers Without End

vogonpoetbythelake

On not finding you at home

Usually you appear at the front door
when you hear my steps on the gravel.
but today the door was closed,
not a wisp of pale smoke from the chimney.

I peered into a window
but there was nothing but a table with a comb,
some yellow flowers in a glass of water
and dark shadows in the corners of the room.

I stood for a while under the big tree
and listened to the wind and the birds.
your wind and your birds,
your dark green winds beyond the clearing.

This is not what it is like to be you,
I realized as a few of your magnificent clouds
flew over the rooftop.
It is just me thinking about being you.

And before I headed back down the hill.
I walked in a circle around your house.
making an invisible line
which you would have to cross before dark.

Billy Collins

THE TROUBLE WITH
POETRY
AND OTHER POEMS
.

PJSiren

I dropped by to see you
late last night
But you were out
like a light
Your head was on the floor
& rats played pool w/ your eyes

Death is a good disguise
for late at night

Wrapping all its games in its calm garden

But what happens
when the guests return
& all unmask
& you are asked
to leave
for want of a smile

I'll still take you then
But I'm your friend

~ Jim Morrison

PJSiren

I am troubled immeasurably
by your eyes
I am struck by the feather
of your soft reply

Broken glass
speaks quick disdain
and conceals what your
eyes fight to explain.

~Jim Morrison

vogonpoetbythelake

THE TUFTED PUFFIN
excerpt from
"Thoughts to Live By" Maxwell Maltz

WINGS

Be like the bird that,
Pausing in its flight awhile
On boughs too light,
Feels them give way,
Yet sings!
Knowing she has wings.

by Victor Hugo

JWPearl

it says poets from your favorite poets
i guess this is my favorite poem because
my daughter did it when she was eight years
old.. written as follows



POEMS



Dogs
fast, playful
barking,running,chasing
loves to chew up shoes
Dogs


Friends
good,funny
understanding,helping,smiling
always by your side
Friends



Buzzing bees and tall trees
the sounds of nature and the
smell of flowers.

The small butterfly gracefully
fluttered its colourful wings
about.


Salty breeze and dunking
waves, the bright orange
sun and exciting beach games.




typed just as it was written
14 years ago
mary knows her rock...

vogonpoetbythelake

Andrew Zawacki

                   Two Poems from Masquuerade

                                            4

Return was a myth departure coined as incentive: we didn't believe it, bracken and twig, but moved ahead anyway.  Negotiating winter's frisk and what remained of its pane, worn away by powerlines and barns the rain brought down, we kept to where the sun revamped its reach: upholstered clouds and amassings of geese, making their exodus vocal, mountains that seemed to change their position, ruptures in the road the crews ignored, before defaulting to some other damage control.  It would not have been false to conjure transparency or zero, to coax the sight of scaffolds ghosting white lines, ilex, tea tree, birch.  The metabolism of snowshoe and compass: nothing could stall it or usher it onward, not when it had already been stated, and called us so we came.

                                            12

Asleep on the shattered surface of a cinematic, lunar creek, one of us dreamt the silhouette of a dog, yet found upon waking it hadn't strayed.  Such were the spells of a landscape that couldn't be trusted although we devised it ourselves, if only to attribute otherwise:  a zone where no one believed any longer the hollows that brought them this far, where flowers were blooming again, without any scent.

                                       (2001)

Ms. Haiku

West Wind, 2, by Mary Oliver

You are young. So you know everything. You leap
into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me.
Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without
any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.
Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and
your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to
me. There is life without love. It is not worth a bent
penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a
dead dog nine days unburied. When you hear, a mile
away and still out of sight, the churn of the water
as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the
sharp rocks—when you hear that unmistakable
pounding—when you feel the mist on your mouth
and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls
plunging and steaming—then row, row for your life
toward it.

I posted this in 2012, but Mary Oliver past away this week, and I keep thinking of this poem.

brianlux

Ms. Haiku said:

West Wind, 2, by Mary Oliver

You are young. So you know everything. You leap
into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me.
Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without
any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.
Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and
your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to
me. There is life without love. It is not worth a bent
penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a
dead dog nine days unburied. When you hear, a mile
away and still out of sight, the churn of the water
as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the
sharp rocks—when you hear that unmistakable
pounding—when you feel the mist on your mouth
and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls
plunging and steaming—then row, row for your life
toward it.

I posted this in 2012, but Mary Oliver past away this week, and I keep thinking of this poem.

I heard about that as well.  What a great poet and essayist.  Sad to hear of her passing.

jjflash

brianlux said:

Ms. Haiku said:

West Wind, 2, by Mary Oliver

You are young. So you know everything. You leap
into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me.
Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without
any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.
Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and
your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to
me. There is life without love. It is not worth a bent
penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a
dead dog nine days unburied. When you hear, a mile
away and still out of sight, the churn of the water
as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the
sharp rocks—when you hear that unmistakable
pounding—when you feel the mist on your mouth
and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls
plunging and steaming—then row, row for your life
toward it.

I posted this in 2012, but Mary Oliver past away this week, and I keep thinking of this poem.

I heard about that as well.  What a great poet and essayist.  Sad to hear of her passing.

Ditto, Brian. I just recently found her work. Krista Tippett w/ On Being re-aired an interview she did w/ Mary in 2015ish. Definitely worth a listen. RIP, Mary. Grateful that'll her voice will continue thru her poems.

vogonpoetbythelake

                                                                                      Imaginary Places

Reading, we are allowed to follow someone else's train of thought as it starts off for an imaginary place.  This train has been produced for us--or rather materialized and extended until it is almost nothing like the ephemeral realizations with which we are familiar.  To see words pulled one by one  into existence is to intrude on a privacy of sorts.  But we are familiar with the contract between spectator and performer.  Now the text isn't a train but an actress model who takes off her school uniform piece by piece alone with the camera man.  She's a good girl playing at being bad, all the time knowing better.  She invites us to join her in that knowledge.  But this is getting us nowhere.

(2002)
Rae Armantrout

rollings

1The silver fox has shed its tail now

Left it by the frozen water
The leaves were drifting down
Now they are gone, gone, gone

2. I draw milady's carriage
Ever since her horse retired
I don't think I can pull much longer
I've never been this tired before

3 Up jump the black chain dancers
Empty hands that grasp for answers
Fasten on to one another, fly
Fly away

4 Ariel is sweetly singing
Wait you, just one more season
You're not blind, you only hide your
Eyes within your hands, within your hands

Ariel, Ariel
Ariel, Ariel

5 There is no night like this night
Where candles burn through daylight
Minds restrained by golden tethers fade
Fade away

6 The sun objects with smiling sadness
Roman highways laced in diamonds
Sink like grave Atlantis into
Dreams of other days they fade away

7 Monuments to crippled madness
Puppets dangle in the treetops
The cold magician carves his voice in stone
Then flies away, then flies away

8 Ariel sings overhead
Deaf men mouth the words she's said
But they don't hear the songs she's singing now
Oh no, not now

Ariel, Ariel
Ariel, Ariel

9 As wild and unholy place
As any place I've ever been
You can knock and knock and knock
No one comes to let you in, no one comes

10 As solid and as fine a floor
As any floor I've walked upon
Broke beneath my footsteps
I've got no place left to stand, not any more

11 Loves to love and not to chain
Some are lost but some remain
Nothing can replace the light
That once has died turned to night, no one can

12 If I had the sense to know
Which things count and which are show
I'd hold my fate within my hands
Instead of all these chains and bands
Yes, I would

Ariel, Ariel
Ariel, Ariel

Ariel, Ariel
Ariel, Ariel

Ariel, Ariel
Ariel, Ariel

~Robert Hunter, Grateful Dead lyricist