Post your favorite poem(s)

Yellow

i look forward to checking all these out tonight

thanks for the thread, radar

Yellow

holy shit, be

FinsburyParkCarrots

Geoffrey Hill

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.

Radar(Baba)O'Riley

Those owners of Rot may turn to 114 for comparisons.....

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.

Radar(Baba)O'Riley

Live

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.

Radar(Baba)O'Riley

Migraine

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.

Eder

-Humorismos Tristes-
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.

Radar(Baba)O'Riley

Bathhouse, 1980

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.

Radar(Baba)O'Riley

Any page of any ee cummings collection

Radar(Baba)O'Riley

Chicago

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.

Yellow

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever!
Ae fareweel, and then forever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.

Wha shall say that Fortune grieves him,
While the star of hope she leaves him ?
Me, nae cheerful twinkle lights me,
Dark despair around benights me.

I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy:
Naething could resist my Nancy!
But to see her was to love her
Love but her, and love for ever.

Had we never lov'd sae kindly,
Had we never lov'd sae blindly,
Never met - or never pairted -
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

Fare-thee-weel, thou first and fairest!
Fare-thee-weel, thou best and dearest!
Thine be ilka joy and treasure,
Peace, enjoyment, love and pleasure!

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever!
Ae farewell, alas, for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee

savannah66

Originally posted by Radar(Baba)O'Riley

Any page of any ee cummings collection

AMEN!!!

ee cummings is perhaps my favorite poet.

Yellow

stopped by the library today, picked up some cummings upon your recommendation...


wherelings whenlings
(daughters of ifbut offspring of hopefear
sons of unless and children of almost)
never shall guess the dimension of

him whose
each
foot likes the
here of this earth

whose both
eyes
love
this now of the sky...









man....... WAY wicked anachronistic...

Radar(Baba)O'Riley

cummings comes in many shapes and sizes and daffodil laughs

Yellow

i can *see* his influence on you, mr o'

cassia

one that starts...

my naked lady framed by twilight


(don't have my collectedpoems with me)just thinkin.....
believe in Sonnets--Actualities, xv perhaps (?)

ilovecummings taut beautiful imagemusic~~


~~you know what's odd, is that i find i like..love...facets of a poem...very Rarely do i like a whole-poem, as is...do you know what i mean...

like a turn of a phrase, a good sound cluster

but for a whole poem to be just-right....i'm one finicky goldilocks....

Radar(Baba)O'Riley

XV

my naked lady framed in twilight
is an accident
whose niceness betters easily the intent
of genius-
painting wholly feels ashamed
before this music, and poetry cannot
go near because perfectly fearful.
meanwhile these speak her wonderful

But i(having in my arms caught
the picture)hurry it slowly

cassia

yesyesyesohgodyes....


isn't it positively Luscious~~

thankz ror

cassia

radah
pleaseplease....refresh me with the close lines...

taste
precise

ooh how does it go.....

i just know that eec so does it there, for me

and now, every time i choose the word "precise"
it's all about
this poem~~~

(unholy, maybe...i getz them a little mixed up)~~~

Radar(Baba)O'Riley

Dang, cas~
would've been easier to have me pull every 23rd snowflake off Antartica.
Ummmmmmmmmmmm.......................

I have failed miserably and deserve to be spanked in an overhand-palm-slightly-cupped fashion.