Sonnets from Friends
DopeBeastie
Posts: 2,513
The Longest Day (A South African Coloured Women's Sonnet)
Adeola Agbebiyi
The time you made love - I prefer it to Fucked -
All weekend, yes I know, so everyone does.
But do they really? Yeah, who cares what they think,
The Fifth Estate is Coked Out, or they drink.
Anyways, that time, that one, you remember,
It was the best day of my life: I was
Your Sun, you were my Moon, or whatever,
You were my May, I was So December,
You felt so good, deep inside, I remember.
I was your sun and you grooved in my light.
You worshipped, we connected and felt right.
I mooned out; whats more, you mooned your Dad,
Oh yeah, I felt so good to be a part
Of the act that was "an arrow in his heart"
Adeola Agbebiyi
The time you made love - I prefer it to Fucked -
All weekend, yes I know, so everyone does.
But do they really? Yeah, who cares what they think,
The Fifth Estate is Coked Out, or they drink.
Anyways, that time, that one, you remember,
It was the best day of my life: I was
Your Sun, you were my Moon, or whatever,
You were my May, I was So December,
You felt so good, deep inside, I remember.
I was your sun and you grooved in my light.
You worshipped, we connected and felt right.
I mooned out; whats more, you mooned your Dad,
Oh yeah, I felt so good to be a part
Of the act that was "an arrow in his heart"
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James Stephens
Two voices are there: one is of the deep;
It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody,
Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea,
Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep:
And one is of an old half-witted sheep
Which bleats articulate monotony,
And indicates that two and one are three,
That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep:
And, Wordsworth, both are thine: at certain times
Forth from the heart of thy melodious rhymes,
The form and pressure of high thoughts will burst:
At other times < good Lord! I'd rather be
Quite unacquainted with the A.B.C.
Than write such hopeless rubbish as thy worst.
Dost pour thy plaint through all the circling years;
I would that to my ever-listening ears
Some spirit might translate thy language! Roars
The wave that spends its force against the rocks
That its assaults deride; a giant's pain
It voices! Soft dost thou complain
By pebbly beach to Summer's fields and flocks.
Tell'st thou of cities hid beneath thy breast?
Of famed Atlantis, known in story only?
Of sepulchres innumerable, where rest
The wrecks of ages, peacefully and lonely?
Tell why thou plaintest, melancholy sea!
And the sea answers, Hush, it may not be.
And I won't make the same mistakes
(Because I know)
Because I know how much time that wastes
(And function)
Function is the key
Donald Justice
And on the porch, across the upturned chair,
The boy would spread a dingy counterpane
Against the length and majesty of the rain,
And on all fours crawl under it like a bear
To lick his wounds in secret, in his lair;
And afterwards, in the windy yard again,
One hand cocked back, release his paper plane
Frail as a mayfly to the faithless air. And summer evenings he would
whirl around Faster and faster till the drunken ground
Rose up to meet him; sometimes he would squat
Among the bent weeds of the vacant lot,
Waiting for dusk and someone dear to come
And whip him down the street, but gently home.
for Phillis Miracle Wheatley
June Jordan
Girl from the realm of birds florid and fleet
flying full feather in far or near weather
Who fell to a dollar lust coffled like meat
Captured by avarice and hate spit together
Trembling asthmatic alone on the slave block
built by a savagery travelling by carriage
viewed like a species of flaw in the livestock
A child without safety of mother or marriage
Chosen by whimsy but born to surprise
They taught you to read but you learned how to write
Begging the universe into your eyes:
They dressed you in light but you dreamed with the night.
From Africa singing of justice and grace,
Your early verse sweetens the fame of our Race.
why must poets insist on writing poetry about poetry and poets? i HATE that!
Joan Larkin
Is 'vagina' suitable for use
in a sonnet? I don't suppose so.
A famous poet once told me, 'Vagina's ugly.'
Meaning, of course, the sound of it. In poems.
Meanwhile he inserts his penis frequently
into his verse, calling it, seriously, 'My
Penis'. It is short, I know, and dignified.
I mean of course the sound of it. In poems.
The whole thing is unfortunate, but petty,
like my hangup concerning English Dept memos
headed "Mr/Mrs/Miss" - only a fishbone
In the throat of the revolution -
a waste of brains - to be concerned about
this minor issue of my cunt's good name.
wasp stings and mad hornets and buzzing bees,
mad matadors and white teeth women foam,
miles davis and bill evans and harmonies
those sketches of spain are sweet memories,
swirling dreams reflect the night's spanish moon,
full of bright promise, lithe her frame's frailties,
vibrant tremors, cali forn formed to swoon.
sift and shift the sand and search the living soul
and love all that is sound...
leave the verse and form, give yourself
solstice sunshine in the love that you have found.
from your friend, j
As she slams the door in his drunken face
And now he stands outside
And all the neighbours start to gossip and drool
He cries oh, girl you must be mad,
What happened to the sweet love you and me had?
Against the door he leans and starts a scene,
And his tears fall and burn the garden green
all of these others i've posted come to me from a friend of mine who is newly separated from his fast-asleep wife... he's got two daughters and a soon to be ex who never really loved him... which means he may have never really loved her...
that's usually how these things go, imo.
but i love him just the same.
in that, "not your wife" kinda way
he is brave enough to say "fuck" and "orgasm" in poems
and he beat me at a poetry slam, so...
props and all that.
holla holla
here's todays:
Faint Praise
Wendy Cope
Size isn't everything. It's what you do
That matters, darling, and you do quite well
In some respects. Credit where credit's due -
You work, you're literate, you rarely smell.
Small men can be aggressive, people say,
But you are often genial and kind,
As long as you can have things all your way
And I comply, and do not speak my mind.
You look all right. I've never been disgusted
By paunchiness. Who wants some skinny youth?
My friends have warned me that you can't be trusted
But I protest I've heard you tell the truth.
Nobody's perfect. Now and then, my pet,
You're almost human. You could make it yet.
Diane Ackerman
How like a virus entering a cell
libertine, blasé, pollen-thighed,
you threw your coat aside
and pumped your salty cargo pell-mell
through my delicate biosphere.
in that tidal basin where life's begun,
your twin orchids blazed like suns:
white heat eclipsing but to reappear.
and how I sculled through your mind lagoons
(vetchy, radiant, thick with fauna),
regaled by egret-flight and japonica,
deadsummer, when in arctic rooms
time rode the floe of our imaginings,
And my heart beat faster for its clipped wings.
Love poem to Lizzie
Angus Fletcher
O, my dearest Lizzie,
You're the sweetest hizzo.(1)
You're completely off the hizzy,(2)
I could not ask for mizzo.(3)
Your smile makes me dizzy,
Your perfume lays me lizzo.(4)
Your cooking is the shizzy.(5)
Lose you? 'T'd be a crizzo.(6)
When we're getting busy,
You're like a catcher's mizzo. (7)
You make my hair go frizzy.
You are eroticizzo. (8)
O, my dearest Lizzie,
You truly are the shizzy.
(1) Hizzo - Ho, meaning woman or girlfriend.
(2) Hizzy - Hook, as in 'off the hook'
(3) Mizzo - More, as in more cheese.
(4) Lizzo - Low, as in laid low by one punch.
(5) Shizzy - Shit, as in 'The Shit' meaning unmatched, exemplary.
(6) Crizzo - Crime.
(7) Mizzo - Second meaning mitt, a catcher's mitt. We think the author meant
this as a simile for the female sexual organs.
(8) Eroticizzo - Pronounced Eee-RAW-ti-Sizzo.
Rosanna Warren
High Summer. Plenitude. The granite knoll
thrusts through gray soil at the hill crest. Drought:
spring is fulfilled. I crouch on the warm skull
of New Hampshire. Spikes of parched grass jut
through the anthill at my feet, and the whole field
grates with small oracles the cicadas
scrape between thigh and wing. What do I hold
at bay? The idea of harvest, days that ooze S
From the valley rises the interstate's purr,
the whine of outboards from the lake, a child's voice
quarreling. Someone's hammer raps the air,
duet with its own knocked echo. Here is the precise
dead heart of the living day, the hollow core, the pit
around which light thickens, and we eat.
Marilyn Nelson
Diverne wanted to die, that August night
his face hung over hers, a sweating moon.
She wished so hard, she killed part of her heart.
If she had died, her one begotten son,
her life's one light, would never have been born.
Pomp Atwood might have been another man:
born with a single race, another name.
Diverne might not have known the starburst joy
her son would give her. And the man who came
out of a twelve-room house and ran to her
close shack across three yards that night, to leap
onto her cornshuck pallet. Pomp was their
share of the future. And it wasn't rape.
In spite of her raw terror. And his whip.
Paul Goodman
How well they flew together side by side
the Stars and Stripes my red and white and blue
and my Black Flag the sovereignty of no
man or law! They were the flags of pride
and nature and advanced with equal stride
across the age when Jefferson long ago
saluted both and said, "Let Shays' men go.
If you discourage mutiny and riot
what check is there on government?"
Today
The gaudy flag is very grand on earth
and they have sewed on it a golden border,
but I will not salute it. At our rally
I see a small black rag of little worth
and touch it wistfully. Chaos is Order.
John Berryman
All we were going strong last night this time,
the mosts were flying & the frozen daiquiris
were downing, supine on the floor lay Lise
listening to Schubert grievous & sublime,
my head was frantic with a following rime:
it was a good evening, and evening to please,
I kissed her in the kitchen -ecstasies-
among so much good we tamped down the crime.
The weather's changing. This morning was cold,
as I made for the grove, without expectation,
some hundred Sonnets in my pocket, old,
to read her if she came. Presently the sun
yellowed the pines & my lady came not
in blue jeans & a sweater. I sat down & wrote.
U.S. Mail
Ander Monson
A postcard from the X, emblem of death
or dollar signs like candlelight in eyes,
the crux and crucifix, the map the mark,
the ink drop spot, the patch stitched in the crotch
that holds your snowmobile suit together,
objective of your love, known otherwise
as architecture, made of point and arc
and light, still life of glass and ice and crust,
math bartered in the margins of your text,
the liquor fix, the hex, the pox, the axe
accident resulting in my brother,
axle greased as slick as 6,surrender
at Appomattox, and the apex from
which everything is down is else is done.