Post your favorite poem(s)
Radar(Baba)O'Riley
Posts: 947
Dare you to go first.
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David Lerner
all I want to do
is make poetry famous
all I want to do is
burn my initials into the sun
all I want to do is
read poetry from the middle of a
burning building
standing in the fast lane of the
freeway
falling from the top of the
Empire State Building
the literary world
sucks dead dog dick
I'd rather be Richard Speck
than Gary Snyder
I'd rather ride a rocketship to hell
than a Volvo to Bolinas
I'd rather
sell arms to the Martians
than wait sullenly for a
letter from some diseased clown with a
three-piece mind
telling me that I've won a
bullet-proof pair of rose-colored glasses
for my poem "Autumn in the Spring"
I want to be
hated
by everyone who teaches for a living
I want people to hear my poetry and
get headaches
I want people to hear my poetry and
vomit
I want people to hear my poetry and
weep, scream, disappear, start bleeding,
eat their television sets, beat each other to death with
swords and
go out and get riotously drunk on
someone else's money
this ain't no party
this ain't no disco
this ain't foolin' a
grab-bag of
clever wordplay and sensitive thoughts and
gracious theories about
how many ambiguities can dance on the head of a
machine gun
this ain't no
genteel evening over
cappuccino and bullshit
this ain't no life-affirming
our days have meaning
as we watch the flowers breath through our souls and
fall desperately in love
this ain't no letter-press, hand-me-down,
wimpy beatnik festival of bitching about
the broken rainbow
it is a carnival of dread
it is a savage sideshow
about to move to the main arena
it is terror and wild beauty
walking hand in hand down a bombed-out road
as missiles scream, while a
sky the color of arterial blood
blinks on and off
like the lights on Broadway
after the last junkie's dead of AIDS
I come not to bury poetry
but to blow it up
not to dandle it on my knee
like a retarded child with
beautiful eyes
but
throw it off a cliff into
icy seas and
see if the motherfucker can
swim for its life
because love is an excellent thing
surely we need it
but, my friends...
there is so much to hate These Days
that hatred is just love with a chip on its shoulder
a chip as big as the Ritz
and heavier than
all the bills I'll never pay
because they're after us
they're selling radioactive charm bracelets
and breakfast cereals that
lower your IQ by 50 points per mouthful
we got politicians who think
starting World War III
would be a good career move
we got beautiful women
with eyes like wet stones
peering out at us from the pages of
glossy magazines
promising that they'll
fuck us till we shoot blood
if we'll just buy one of these beautiful switchblade knives
I've got mine
toddler
toddling around campus. his teeny
fingers fixed
around his mother's pinkie
like shark teeth.
his other hand
strummed
his lower lip
-plip-plip-plip-
until it dangled dry.
he wore
chubbiness under his clothes.
bspankaspankbspankyspankspankspankfspankaspankt.
snuggle-cuddle-skin: softer than a
marshmallow's kiss. his smile
melted every
frown, warmed
espankvspankespankrspankyspankspankspankespankyspanke.
the ends of his lips
held up
his peach cobbler cheeks
and baked them with
a glow that could humble
the dawn.
a blue-leaf forest floated
in his eyes.
cspanklspankespankaspankr.spankspankspankfspankospankrspankespankvspankespankr.
each blink
glazed slowly across those eyes, as if the
lids were savoring the slide.
I
sat on the grass
as he passed
and
wondered what a
sspankhspankospanktspankgspankuspanknspankspankspankbspanklspankaspanksspankt
would do to him.
Canal water preferably, so stilly
Greeny at the heart of summer. Brother
Commemorate me thus beautifully
Where by a rock niagarously roars
The falls for those who sit in the tremendous silence
Of mid-July. No one will speak in prose
Who finds his way to these Parnassian islands.
A swan goes by head low with many apologies,
Fantastic light looks through the eyes of bridges -
And look! a barge comes bringing from Athy
And other far-flung towns mythologies.
O commemorate me with no hero-courageous
Tomb - just a canal-bank seat for the passer-by.
Stop them from killing girls and men
Figure out ways around the war
I always thought thats what presidents were for
Eddie Vedder (Montreal 2003)
All the while the city dark
With the dawn as its backdrop...
The twinkle of a hundred flashbulbs
From the hilltops:
Personal pieces of what won't be
The sky bleeds blue
And across the river she stands
Motionless in the biting wind
Numbing everything inside of me
Failing 'neath those bitter winds
Numbing all of us
Steadfast I stand against the cruel tempest
Of a raw winter morning in Pittsburgh
And the frigid dawn of airlines and soft drinks -
No rivers, no candlesticks, no gardens of maple leaves
My contemplations,
Fevered philosophies on the slow death of American character,
Are abruptly startled out of me
And fall quite nicely into a mournful whimper
And an empty shiver
The first explosion
Then the second, and the third
Vibrate up my legs
To rattle my childhood
And the core of this proud river valley
With nineteen seconds and a tear
A thought-invincible icon
Nestled against the quiet Ohio...
The identity of something so few places
Can still claim as more than a memory...
A cherished piece of this old steel city...
Comes crashing to the ground
heart on your sash...
why the eyeshadow bleeds so purple in the shadows of an evening storm.
the rain may wash
the hands torn
and burned by a travel through the hair.
love is nobody's martyr.
the grace the rapture the glory the net,
oh so captured and sopping wet in this daily drizzled haze.
the salt is worth the devil's fear;
that epoxy bond so strong, so forthright,
that the night may bow and gaze upon itself-
its deepest respect the urn within which we slumber-
ashes to ashes flung upon this lidless wonder.
the flames are not remembered,
the passion full fledged and fleshed out amongst the leaves in the autumnal tide pool.
whither goest thou, young angel?
and whence doth the questions arise?
your answers were flung upon this lidless sky,
dust to dust your proven why.
take your tears of salt and hydrogen,
smear them away.
let them not darken your tailored silk, holding fashion in their sway.
it is neither the flag we wave nor is it the prose we read
i remember the nails,
i planted those seeds
and your love came back to me;
the net the glory the rapture the grace
all for one kiss
upon my face.
Who said that all oceans are made up of water?
I have seen a man howl like the ocean
and be as dry as the sand.
I have seen a road that burned like a rose
and all men who followed it drown like a stone.
A leaf may float on the wind
but the tree is never the same.
The sky can turn monstrous with clouds
while a kernel of corn still shines like the sun.
A word can open you like a flower
and be sharper than a knife.
Men who fall down and kiss the earth
know the long journey to a woman.
Even if the world were draped in black,
the sight of an ant is a miracle.
Who can forget a tree late at night
when the leaves swim like a shoal of fish.
Whoever finds a starfish
is married to the rope of heaven.
There is no ending.
Tomorrow arrives with a dose of oblivion
or another handful of truths.
His house is in the village though
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake
The woods are lovely dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep
Damn Straight! It said poem(s), I thought of some of my favorites.
Crisp * Clean * Refreshing
A cool spring rain that gently falls
A golden spray that soaks the walls,
The carpeting and warm red bricks
the hearth on which the twelve-pack sits
Having come to rest right there
By being pitched up through the air
“Here’s your fucking mistress, Jerk!
Go, fuck this, yeah, that would work”
You love this more than me I’d say
Now, listen bitch, for that I paid.
And now you’ll pay in black and blue
You need some proof that I love you?
Then, here, I’ll grab you by the arm
And smack your face free of it’s charm
While your child, the otherside
The paper wall, the door locked tight
Bereft in her decision to
Stay safe inside or
protect you
The king of beers
The king of me
Now understand
Your need for me
by Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
we wash our clothes
plates and phantoms
in the open sky.
There is a soft crying in the rain
as though water had turned
to a crystalline sorrow
and fallen
under the weight of lucent sadness.
It does not give a hoot for you,
O falling sun,
all this world of dripping purple;
nor does it believe
your dry skinned promise.
All together cry
in naked day
and none see you,
but the narrow blade of orange
as you cut a bleeding seam
between charcoal cloudsoles
and horizons.
Our god visits us at night (which is
a season, unto itself) in calm fire,
as a turtle
falling from the roof. In love,
our hands seek upward; we have
all the wintertime to pray.
Carolyn Forche
We rise from the snow where we've
lain on our backs and flown like children,
from the imprint of perfect wings and cold gowns,
and we stagger together wine-breathed into town
where our people are building
their armies again, short years after
body bags, after burnings. There is a man
I've come to love after thirty, and we have
our rituals of coffee, of airports, regret.
After love we smoke and sleep
with magazines, two shot glasses
and the black and white collapse of hours.
In what time do we live that it is too late
to have children? In what place
that we consider the various ways to leave?
There is no list long enough
for a selective service card shriveling
under a match, the prison that comes of it,
a flag in the wind eaten from its pole
and boys sent back in trash bags.
We'll tell you. You were at that time
learning fractions. We'll tell you
about fractions. Half of us are dead or quiet
or lost. Let them speak for themselves.
We lie down in the fields and leave behind
the corpses of angels.
ok it's by ernst jandl:
what you can do without vowels
kss
fck
lck
sck
pss
sht
lol...blessed those who don't understand it
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down hy my side
And called me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she loved me -- she
Too weak, for all her heart's endeavor,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me forever.
But passion sometimes would prevail,
Nor could tonight's gay feast restrain
A sudden thought of one so pale
For love of her, and all in vain:
So, she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I looked up at her eyes
Happy and proud; at last l knew
Porphyria worshiped me: surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While l debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string l wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
l am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
l warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And l untightened next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:
l propped her head up as before,
Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still:
The smiling rosy little head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
That all it scorned at once is fled,
And l, its love, am gained instead!
Porphyria's love: she guessed not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said aword!
I lost contact with the Board for a moment. I had to come out of my host browser and switch to Internet Explorer for the first time. The board pages are zoomed enormously so the writing is really much bigger....I enjoyed capturing the reading of your poem that way!
Now, I'll have to think of some more poems to share. Okay?
I think it's one of the most poetic pieces of literature ever written.
"O the sea and the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."
(Closing lines of "Ulysses", James Joyce)
thanks for the thread, radar
SEPTEMBER SONG
born 19.6.32 - deported 24.9.42
Undesirable you may have been, untouchable
you were not. Not forgotten
or passed over at the proper time.
As estimated, you died. Things marched,
sufficient to that end.
Just so much Zyklon and leather, patented
terror, so many routine cries.
(I have made
an elegy for myself it
is true)
September fattens on vines. Roses
flake from the wall. The smoke
of harmless fires drifts to my eyes.
This is plenty. This is more than enough.
BOSCH
Rafael Alberti
The Devil--
blubber-lipped,
asshole-hipped,
anus-eyed,
tail-wide,
& caprihorny,
Beelzebuggering,
cummingbirding,
sniffing,
whiff-emitting,
strumpeting,
fart-trumpeting
through a funnel.
Loving & dancing,
drinking & prancing,
singing & laughing,
smelling & touching,
eating, fucking,
sleeping & sleeping
weeping & weeping.
Mandrake, mandrake,
The devil has a crooked stake.
Cock-a-doodle-do!
I ride and I crow,
go mounted on a doe
& on a porcupine,
on a camel, on a lion,
on a burro, on a bear,
on a horse, on a hare,
and on a bugler.
Cork, cork,
The devil has a small pitchfork.
Love in a garden,
nude . . . ah, summer!
Garden of Delights.
On one foot the appletree
& on all fours the flower
(And your lovers,
asses bare to the wind,
to perching birds, small bouquets.)
Prickster, dickster,
The devil is a trickster.
The devil jackrabbit
jackoffrabbit
packoffrabbit
fackoffrabbit,
with his satyry,
summery,
cuntery
company,
jabs,
grabs,
dabs,
nabs,
stabs,
with
an
enema.
Bellies, nostrils,
lizards' tails,
dolphins flying,
ears impaled,
eyes gape-mouthed,
lost brooms,
boats in dread,
vomiting & wounds,
the dead.
He preaches, he preaches,
The devil puts on leeches.
Ladders sliding,
potlids flowing,
cauldrins blowing.
In the lethal
chamberpots,
the most infernal
rags, shoe-toes
sad, ultimate
scarecrows.
He scythes, he scythes,
Devil cobweb harvests lives.
Nightshade
nightmare,
dark,
polluted,
untransmuted
fruits,
tears,
fear,
& gnashing
teeth
without
cease.
Uneasy painter:
your palette ascends to the skies,
but on a horn your paintbrush flies
to Hell.
Anne Sexton
Live or die, but don't poison everything...
Well, death's been here
for a long time --
it has a hell of a lot
to do with hell
and suspicion of the eye
and the religious objects
and how I mourned them
when they were made obscene
by my dwarf-heart's doodle.
The chief ingredient
is mutilation.
And mud, day after day,
mud like a ritual,
and the baby on the platter,
cooked but still human,
cooked also with little maggots,
sewn onto it maybe by somebody's mother,
the damn bitch!
Even so,
I kept right on going on,
a sort of human statement,
lugging myself as if
I were a sawed-off body
in the trunk, the steamer trunk.
This became perjury of the soul.
It became an outright lie
and even though I dressed the body
it was still naked, still killed.
It was caught
in the first place at birth,
like a fish.
But I play it, dressed it up,
dressed it up like somebody's doll.
Is life something you play?
And all the time wanting to get rid of it?
And further, everyone yelling at you
to shut up. And no wonder!
People don't like to be told
that you're sick
and then be forced
to watch
you
come
down with the hammer.
Today life opened inside me like an egg
and there inside
after considerable digging
I found the answer.
What a bargain!
There was the sun,
her yolk moving feverishly,
tumbling her prize --
and you realize she does this daily!
I'd known she was a purifier
but I hadn't thought
she was solid,
hadn't known she was an answer.
God! It's a dream,
lovers sprouting in the yard
like celery stalks
and better,
a husband straight as a redwood,
two daughters, two sea urchings,
picking roses off my hackles.
If I'm on fire they dance around it
and cook marshmallows.
And if I'm ice
they simply skate on me
in little ballet costumes.
Here,
all along,
thinking I was a killer,
anointing myself daily
with my little poisons.
But no.
I'm an empress.
I wear an apron.
My typewriter writes.
It didn't break the way it warned.
Even crazy, I'm as nice
as a chocolate bar.
Even with the witches' gymnastics
they trust my incalculable city,
my corruptible bed.
O dearest three,
I make a soft reply.
The witch comes on
and you paint her pink.
I come with kisses in my hood
and the sun, the smart one,
rolling in my arms.
So I say Live
and turn my shadow three times round
to feed our puppies as they come,
the eight Dalmatians we didn't drown,
despite the warnings: The abort! The destroy!
Despite the pails of water that waited,
to drown them, to pull them down like stones,
they came, each one headfirst, blowing bubbles the color of cataract-blue
and fumbling for the tiny tits.
Just last week, eight Dalmatians,
3/4 of a lb., lined up like cord wood
each
like a
birch tree.
I promise to love more if they come,
because in spite of cruelty
and the stuffed railroad cars for the ovens,
I am not what I expected. Not an Eichmann.
The poison just didn't take.
So I won't hang around in my hospital shift,
repeating The Black Mass and all of it.
I say Live, Live because of the sun,
the dream, the excitable gift.
Adrian C. Louis
I.
Alien.
Armored.
Sexual.
Robotic.
Evil spawn of the devil,
these Godless grasshoppers
in the yard, in the house,
in my arteries and crawling
out my penis.
They dance on my balls
and do oratories.
They clot on my forehead
and form a thorny crown.
The King of the Grasshoppers screams:
Viva la paparazzi!
The Royal Slut is dead.
Long live the Royal slut.
And the wog in her panties, too.
And the wog in her panties, too.
Viva la paparzzi
II.
Lazy.
Entrepreneurial.
Devious.
Perverted.
Godless grasshoppers have invaded
my private planet. When they first
came, my cats were thrilled beyond
their neutered dreams. God's truth,
they'd proudly carry them into the house
and play with them, bat them and
rip their horny legs off one at a time
and smile like feline felons.
This pleased me in my groin.
But now by pets simply carry
the insects in and stack them
in a pile next to their cat bed.
The cats sleep and the grasshoppers
crawl over them; my pets now
have rude pets of their own.
This is disconcerting. I wish I could
tell my woman what is happening
but she has reached a galaxy where
she understands so very little
of this cruel, little planet.
I pick up big black Taco John
and whisper into his furry ears:
Cat, I am not the King of the Grasshoppers.
The cat shrugs and then hisses when
a big grasshopper jumps on his back
and they gallop off into the flames
of sunset and my private hell.
Oh, Jerusalem!
The hot ice-pack is entering my eyeball.
Stakes are piercing my wrists.
And the moon, the moon is drooling.
LUIS G. URBINA
¿Qué si me duele? Un poco;te confieso
que me heriste a traición;mas por fortuna
tras el rapto de ira vino una
dulce resignación...Pasó el acceso.
¿Sufrir? ¿Llorar? ¿Morir? ¿Quién piensa en eso?
El amor es un huésped que importuna;
mirame cómo estoy;ya sin ninguna
tristeza que decirte.Dame un beso.
Dana Levin
I'm seeing this
through Richard's eyes.
The dark warehouse, the lights, the card to get in.
The floor shiny with moisture, stains on the walls,
eggwhite, yellow,
the room sodden with cock-smell, excess,
want.
Sweat pours from the men as they smack and kiss
into each other, fucking themselves
out of suit and tie, lies
to the parents, the boss, the wife-
Spread out on mats, in doorless rooms, calling
"Fuck me! I want to be fucked!"
Don't you want to say this
every day of your life?
In the airshaft of your apartment building,
in the cubicles of your office?
Hoses to wash out the shit and blood.
To be clean for the fucking, to be clean
for the love.
But can you see them? See the organisms
stretching their tendrils?
Into the cracks in the rectum, into the blood sluicing
through the bodies on the floor?
The building's a hothouse, a breeder, a nest-
Feel the steam, the musk, how you stew unknowing
in a petri dish, sowing the seed
into the ass in front of you, grinding, grinding
for love?
Who rent the sky? What cracked open
to let this in?
God with his beaker standing over the roof,
pouring, pouring-
This is the experiment, the laboratories haphazard
in the trick's hotel room, the used
syringe.
Do you think it is the scourge, do you think
you are the chosen?
It will spread, it will spread.
Into the backs of cars behind the football field,
into the master bedroom
in the suburbs.
Can you feel yourself wanting, can you feel the love?
Angels gather in the corners of the building.
They do not judge.
Any page of any ee cummings collection
Carl Sandburg
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse. and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.