Poems from your favorite poets

2456

Comments

  • rollingsrollings unknown Posts: 7,124
    Charles Bukowski "I'm In Love"

    she's young, she said,
    but look at me,
    I have pretty ankles,
    and look at my wrists, I have pretty
    wrists
    o my god,
    I thought it was all working,
    and now it's her again,
    every time she phones you go crazy,
    you told me it was over
    you told me it was finished,
    listen, I've lived long enough to become a
    good woman,
    why do you need a bad woman?
    you need to be tortured, don't you?
    you think life is rotten if somebody treats you
    rotten it all fits,
    doesn't it?
    tell me, is that it? do you want to be treated like a
    piece of shit?
    and my son, my son was going to meet you.
    I told my son
    and I dropped all my lovers.
    I stood up in a cafe and screamed
    I'M IN LOVE,
    and now you've made a fool of me. . .
    I'm sorry, I said, I'm really sorry.
    hold me, she said, will you please hold me?
    I've never been in one of these things before, I said,
    these triangles. . .
    she got up and lit a cigarette, she was trembling all
    over.she paced up and down,wild and crazy.she had
    a small body.her arms were thin,very thin and when
    she screamed and started beating me I held her
    wrists and then I got it through the eyes:hatred,
    centuries deep and true.I was wrong and graceless and
    sick.all the things I had learned had been wasted.
    there was no creature living as foul as I
    and all my poems were
    false.
  • ooooo, i love Bukowski! thanks for that, Rollings!


    Spleen

    J'ai plus de souvenirs que si j'avais mille ans.

    Un gros meuble à tiroirs encombré de bilans,
    De vers, de billets doux, de procès, de romances,
    Avec de lourds cheveux roulés dans des quittances,
    Cache moins de secrets que mon triste cerveau.
    C'est une pyramide, un immense caveau,
    Qui contient plus de morts que la fosse commune.
    — Je suis un cimetière abhorré de la lune,
    Où comme des remords se traînent de longs vers
    Qui s'acharnent toujours sur mes morts les plus chers.
    Je suis un vieux boudoir plein de roses fanées,
    Où gît tout un fouillis de modes surannées,
    Où les pastels plaintifs et les pâles Boucher
    Seuls, respirent l'odeur d'un flacon débouché.

    Rien n'égale en longueur les boiteuses journées,
    Quand sous les lourds flocons des neigeuses années
    L'ennui, fruit de la morne incuriosité,
    Prend les proportions de l'immortalité.
    — Désormais tu n'es plus, ô matière vivante!
    Qu'un granit entouré d'une vague épouvante,
    Assoupi dans le fond d'un Sahara brumeux;
    Un vieux sphinx ignoré du monde insoucieux,
    Oublié sur la carte, et dont l'humeur farouche
    Ne chante qu'aux rayons du soleil qui se couche.

    — Charles Baudelaire


    Souvenirs?
    More than I if I had lived a thousand years!

    No chest of drawers crammed with documents,
    love-letters, wedding-invitations, wills,
    a lock of someone's hair rolled up in a deed,
    hides so many secrets as my brain.
    This branching catacombs, this pyramid
    contains more corpses than the potter's field:
    I am a graveyard that the moon abhors,
    where long worms like regrets come out to feed
    most ravenously on my dearest dead.
    I am an old boudoir where a rack of gowns,
    perfumed by withered roses, rots to dust;
    where only faint pastels and pale Bouchers
    inhale the scent of long-unstoppered flasks.

    Nothing is slower than the limping days
    when under the heavy weather of the years
    Boredom, the fruit of glum indifference,
    gains the dimension of eternity...
    Hereafter, mortal clay, you are no more
    than a rock encircled by a nameless dread,
    an ancient sphinx omitted from the map,
    forgotten by the world, and whose fierce moods
    sing only to the rays of setting suns.

    Translation by Richard Howard
    Into the Wild Things
  • The Lost Lagoon

    It is dusk on the Lost Lagoon,
    And we two dreaming the dusk away,
    Beneath the drift of a twilight gray--
    Beneath the drowse of an ending day
    And the curve of a golden moon.

    It is dark on the Lost Lagoon,
    And gone are the depths of haunting blue,
    The grouping gulls, and the old canoe,
    The singing firs, and the dusk and--you,
    And gone is the golden moon.

    O lure of the Lost Lagoon--
    I dream tonight that my paddle blurs
    The purple shade where the seaweed stirs--
    I hear the call of the singing firs
    In the hush of the golden moon.


    American Indian Poetry--Interpretations
  • voidofmanvoidofman Posts: 4,009
    Know
    Now
    No
    O
    No
    Now
    Know

    (My dad wrote this)
  • ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
    Walt Whitman - Song of Myself

    1

    I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
    And what I assume you shall assume,
    For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

    I loafe and invite my soul,
    I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

    My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
    Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
    parents the same,
    I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
    Hoping to cease not till death.

    Creeds and schools in abeyance,
    Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
    I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
    Nature without check with original energy.

    2

    Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with
    perfumes,
    I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
    The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

    The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the
    distillation, it is odorless,
    It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
    I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
    I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

    The smoke of my own breath,
    Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and
    vine,
    My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing
    of blood and air through my lungs,
    The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and
    dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,

    The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies of
    the wind,
    A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
    The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
    The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields
    and hill-sides,
    The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising
    from bed and meeting the sun.

    Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the
    earth much?
    Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
    Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

    Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
    all poems,
    You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
    of suns left,)
    You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
    through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in
    books,
    You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
    You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

    3

    I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the
    beginning and the end,
    But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

    There was never any more inception than there is now,
    Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
    And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
    Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

    Urge and urge and urge,
    Always the procreant urge of the world.

    Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and
    increase, always sex,
    Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of
    life.
    To elaborate is no avail, learn'd and unlearn'd feel that it is so.

    Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well
    entretied, braced in the beams,
    Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
    I and this mystery here we stand.

    Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not
    my soul.

    Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
    Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.

    Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age,
    Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they
    discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.

    Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty
    and clean,
    Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be
    less familiar than the rest.

    I am satisfied - I see, dance, laugh, sing;
    As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the
    night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy
    tread,
    Leaving me baskets cover'd with white towels swelling the house with
    their plenty,
    Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my
    eyes,
    That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
    And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
    Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is
    ahead?
  • the wolfthe wolf Posts: 7,027
    Arthur Rimbaud., "A Season In Hell".

    It's far to long to post here. Do yourself a favor, buy it, its like 9 bucks, or find it online. Borrow it from the library. It very possibly could be the greatest piece of long form poetry ever written. IMHO.
    Peace, Love.


    "To question your government is not unpatriotic --
    to not question your government is unpatriotic."
    -- Sen. Chuck Hagel
  • ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
    Song of the Open Road
    By Walt Whitman


    1
    Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
    Healthy, free, the world before me,
    The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

    Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
    Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
    Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
    Strong and content I travel the open road.

    The earth, that is sufficient,
    I do not want the constellations any nearer,
    I know they are very well where they are,
    I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

    (Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
    I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
    I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
    I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)

    2
    You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is here,
    I believe that much unseen is also here.

    Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial,
    The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas’d, the illiterate person, are not denied;
    The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar’s tramp, the drunkard’s stagger, the laughing party of mechanics,
    The escaped youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the eloping couple,

    The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town, the return back from the town,
    They pass, I also pass, any thing passes, none can be interdicted,
    None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me.

    3
    You air that serves me with breath to speak!
    You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape!
    You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers!
    You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides!
    I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to me.

    You flagg’d walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges!
    You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lined sides! you distant ships!

    You rows of houses! you window-pierc’d façades! you roofs!
    You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards!
    You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much!
    You doors and ascending steps! you arches!
    You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!
    From all that has touch’d you I believe you have imparted to yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly to me,
    From the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive surfaces, and the spirits thereof would be evident and amicable with me.

    4
    The earth expanding right hand and left hand,
    The picture alive, every part in its best light,
    The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted,
    The cheerful voice of the public road, the gay fresh sentiment of the road.

    O highway I travel, do you say to me Do not leave me?
    Do you say Venture not—if you leave me you are lost?
    Do you say I am already prepared, I am well-beaten and undenied, adhere to me?

    O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you,
    You express me better than I can express myself,
    You shall be more to me than my poem.

    I think heroic deeds were all conceiv’d in the open air, and all free poems also,
    I think I could stop here myself and do miracles,
    I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever beholds me shall like me,
    I think whoever I see must be happy.

    5
    From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
    Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
    Listening to others, considering well what they say,
    Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
    Gently,but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
    I inhale great draughts of space,
    The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.

    I am larger, better than I thought,
    I did not know I held so much goodness.

    All seems beautiful to me,
    I can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me I would do the same to you,
    I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
    I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
    I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
    Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
    Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.

    6
    Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze me,
    Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear’d it would not astonish me.

    Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
    It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

    Here a great personal deed has room,
    (Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,
    Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all authority and all argument against it.)

    Here is the test of wisdom,
    Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
    Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it,
    Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
    Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,
    Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things;
    Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.

    Now I re-examine philosophies and religions,
    They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.

    Here is realization,
    Here is a man tallied—he realizes here what he has in him,
    The past, the future, majesty, love—if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.

    Only the kernel of every object nourishes;
    Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
    Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?

    Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously fashion’d, it is apropos;
    Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers?
    Do you know the talk of those turning eye-balls?....
  • ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
    Ben Okri - An African Elegy

    We are the miracles that God made
    To taste the bitter fruit of Time.
    We are precious.
    And one day our suffering
    Will turn into the wonders of the earth.

    There are things that burn me now
    Which turn golden when I am happy.
    Do you see the mystery of our pain?
    That we bear the poverty
    And are able to sing and dream sweet things.

    And that we never curse the air when it is warm
    Or the fruit when it tastes so good
    Or the lights that bounce gently on the waters?
    We bless the things even in our pain.
    We bless them in silence.

    That is why our music is so sweet.
    It makes the air remember.
    There are secret miracles at work
    That only Time will bring forth.
    I too have heard the dead singing.

    And they tell me that
    This life is good
    They tell me to live it gently
    With fire, and always with hope.
    There is wonder here

    And there is surprise
    In everything the unseen moves.
    The ocean is full of songs.
    The sky is not an enemy.
    Destiny is our friend.
  • justamjustam Posts: 21,392
    I like this African Elegy Byrnzie. :thumbup:
    &&&&&&&&&&&&&&
  • rollingsrollings unknown Posts: 7,124
    Byrnzie wrote:
    Song of the Open Road
    By Walt Whitman


    1

    (Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
    I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
    I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
    I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)

    2
    You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is here,
    I believe that much unseen is also here.

    3

    You rows of houses! you window-pierc’d façades! you roofs!
    You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards!
    You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much!
    You doors and ascending steps! you arches!
    You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!

    6

    Here is the test of wisdom,
    Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
    Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it,
    Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
    Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,
    Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things;
    Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.

    Now I re-examine philosophies and religions,
    They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.

    Here is realization,
    Here is a man tallied—he realizes here what he has in him,
    The past, the future, majesty, love—if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.

    I thouroughly enjoyed this poem, thank you Byrnzie.

    The above quoted lines were especially poignant, in my opinion
  • rollingsrollings unknown Posts: 7,124
    :corn:



    "Robert Desnos and the Hummingbird"

    A poem about you would begin with a tiger, a cobra,
    a salami sandwich, it would contain
    taxonomic terms for woody plants: sessile, catkin,
    schizocarp, dehiscent, involucre, whorl;
    it would cruise rue Saint-Martin and pick up chicks
    at the Musée de l'Orangerie between marble busts
    of Etruscan warriors, a poem about you
    would go everywhere, and never arrive.
    It would list a series of phobias:
    ailurophobia fear of cats
    erythrophobia fear of red
    nostophobia fear of returning home
    It would indulge in hyperbole: you are as exotic
    as an ocelot, or the merge of an abacus
    with a hummingbird—a moving scale of song.
    A poem about you would include an obituary,
    Compiègne, Havana, rumba, tango,
    plums, the language of pain which has no letters,
    only cells and vortexes; however, a poem about pain
    would not be a poem about you.
    It would speak of the heart though,
    not as symbol but as organ and orator
    of the body's blood. Its hollow muscularity
    and conical shape, obliquely placed,
    its vena cava and auriculo-ventricular groove;
    endocardium, myocardium, pericardium.
    A poem about you would switch subjects
    suddenly and lilt word duets: creeper vine,
    adder's tongue. It would contemplate
    the prepositional phrase and carry the glare of stars
    beneath the innuendoes of trees. It would abound
    with women: Madeleine, Yvonne, Youki.
    A poem about you would tell a story about a girl
    who might one night while steeping tea, spilled
    honey on a book and discovered you.
    In the end every poem is drenched
    with honey and history and so the girl
    leaned near the window with violet light
    falling through like liquid and wrote a poem
    to you called

    Crepuscule

    A hummingbird quivers near my ear:
    wind singed with sumac, the dusky
    sibilance of your name: Desnos,
    Desnos. Sky thick with cumulonimbus and
    the whining of blue jays. How odd
    to never hold the heft of you
    knowing already your absence, like echo
    and snow, but to think of this
    is to sink into a subterranean landscape
    of crows and curses. Permit me
    the traffic of a broken heart.
    Blue slate of this day stains
    my dress, but the rain's veneer is beautiful
    and contains the language of lost causes.
    Such lassitude in this wet darkness—lamps
    locate bodies like pearls
    rolling across a dresser. Light
    diffracts through my glasses in the rain—
    a microscopic slide of amoeba
    that glitters in my periphery. Every word spoken
    is a city sunk beneat a verdigris sea.
    My heart is full of seaplants smelling
    like lead and laundry.
    Wet bark skimming my spine while
    rivulets write your words upon my bodice:
    J'ai tant rêvé de toi que tu perds ta réalité.

    —Simone Muench
  • ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
    Tao Yuanming (陶淵明), also known as Tao Qian (陶潜), (365–427) was a Chinese poet of the Six Dynasties, generally regarded as the greatest poet during the centuries between the Han and Tang dynasties. Tao Yuanming is also the foremost of the "recluse" poets.

    Tao-Yuanming-01.jpg

    During a series of minor government posts, Tao Yuanming's poems begin to indicate that he was becoming torn between ambition and a desire to retreat into solitude.

    In the Spring of 405, Tao Yuanming was serving in the army, as aide-de-camp to the local commanding officer. The death of his sister together with his disgust at the corruption and infighting of the Jin Court prompted him to resign, factors which led to his becoming convinced that life was too short to compromise on his principles. As he himself put it "為五斗米折腰": he would not "bow like a servant in return for five bushels of grain", a saying which has entered common usage meaning "swallowing one's pride in exchange for a meager existence" (the 'Five bushels of grain' being the specified salary of certain low-rank officials. For his last 22 years, he lived in retirement.

    Returning to Live in the Country

    Young, I was always free of common feeling.
    It was in my nature to love the hills and mountains.
    Mindlessly I was caught in the dust-filled trap.
    Waking up, thirty years had gone.
    The caged bird wants the old trees and air.
    Fish in their pool miss the ancient stream.
    I plough the earth at the edge of South Moor.
    Keeping life simple, return to my plot and garden.
    My place is hardly more than a few fields.
    My house has eight or nine small rooms.
    Elm-trees and Willows shade the back.
    Plum-trees and Peach-trees reach the door.
    Misted, misted the distant village.
    Drifting, the soft swirls of smoke.
    Somewhere a dog barks deep in the winding lanes.
    A cockerel crows from the top of the mulberry tree.
    No heat and dust behind my closed doors.
    My bare rooms are filled with space and silence.
    Too long a prisoner, captive in a cage,
    Now I can get back again to Nature.


    Drinking Wine

    I made my home amidst this human bustle,
    Yet I hear no clamour from the carts and horses.
    You ask,"How can this be?"
    When the mind is distant, all is still
    Plucking chrysanthemums for tea by the east hedge,
    I gaze at distant South Mountain.
    How fine the sun sets in the mist,
    and the soaring birds flying home together.
    In all this there is some meaning,
    I'd like to explain, but there are no words.


    Elegy For Myself

    Boundless - this vast heap Earth,
    this bottomless heaven, how perfectly boundless.
    And among ten thousand things born of them,
    to find myself a person somehow,
    though a person fated from the beginning to poverty
    alone, to those empty cups and bowls,
    against Winter cold.

    Even hauling water brought such joy,
    and I sang under a load of firewood:
    this life in brushwood-gate seclusion
    kept my days and nights utterly full

    Spring and Autumn following each other away,
    there was always garden work -
    some weeding here or hoeing there.
    What I tended I harvested in plenty,
    and to the pleasure of books,
    koto strings added harmony and balance.

    I'd sun in Winter to keep warm,
    and Summers, bathe in cool streams.
    Never working more than hard enough,
    I kept my heart at ease always,
    and whatever came,
    I rejoiced in all heaven made of my hundred-year life.

    Nothing more than this hundred-year life - and still, people resent it.
    Afraid they'll never make it big,
    hoarding seasons, they clutch at days,
    aching to be treasured alive and long remembered in death.

    Alone, alone and nothing like them,
    I've always gone my own way.
    All their esteem couldn't bring me honour,
    so how can mud turn me black?

    Resolute here in my little tumbledown house,
    I drank wine and scribbled poems.

    Seeing what fate brings, our destiny clear,
    who can live without concern?
    But today, facing this final change,
    I can't find anything to resent:
    I lived a long life,
    and cherishing solitude always, abundant.

    Now old age draws to a close,
    what more could I want?
    The seasons pass away, and away.
    And absence returns, something utterly unlike presence.

    My wife's family came this morning,
    and friends hurried over tonight.
    They'll take me out into the country,
    bury me where the spirit can rest easy.

    O dark journey. O desolate grave,
    gate opening into the dark unknown.
    An opulent coffin Huan's disgrace,
    Yang's naked burial a joke,
    It's empty - there's nothing in death
    but the empty sorrows of distance.

    Build no gravemound, plant no trees -
    just let the days and months pass away.
    I avoided it my whole life,
    so why invite songs of praise now?

    Life is deep trouble. And death,
    why should death be anything less?
  • chadwickchadwick up my ass Posts: 21,157
    Byrnzie wrote:
    Tao Yuanming (陶淵明), also known as Tao Qian (陶潜), (365–427) was a Chinese poet of the Six Dynasties, generally regarded as the greatest poet during the centuries between the Han and Tang dynasties. Tao Yuanming is also the foremost of the "recluse" poets.

    Tao-Yuanming-01.jpg

    During a series of minor government posts, Tao Yuanming's poems begin to indicate that he was becoming torn between ambition and a desire to retreat into solitude.

    In the Spring of 405, Tao Yuanming was serving in the army, as aide-de-camp to the local commanding officer. The death of his sister together with his disgust at the corruption and infighting of the Jin Court prompted him to resign, factors which led to his becoming convinced that life was too short to compromise on his principles. As he himself put it "為五斗米折腰": he would not "bow like a servant in return for five bushels of grain", a saying which has entered common usage meaning "swallowing one's pride in exchange for a meager existence" (the 'Five bushels of grain' being the specified salary of certain low-rank officials. For his last 22 years, he lived in retirement.

    Returning to Live in the Country

    Young, I was always free of common feeling.
    It was in my nature to love the hills and mountains.
    Mindlessly I was caught in the dust-filled trap.
    Waking up, thirty years had gone.
    The caged bird wants the old trees and air.
    Fish in their pool miss the ancient stream.
    I plough the earth at the edge of South Moor.
    Keeping life simple, return to my plot and garden.
    My place is hardly more than a few fields.
    My house has eight or nine small rooms.
    Elm-trees and Willows shade the back.
    Plum-trees and Peach-trees reach the door.
    Misted, misted the distant village.
    Drifting, the soft swirls of smoke.
    Somewhere a dog barks deep in the winding lanes.
    A cockerel crows from the top of the mulberry tree.
    No heat and dust behind my closed doors.
    My bare rooms are filled with space and silence.
    Too long a prisoner, captive in a cage,
    Now I can get back again to Nature.


    Drinking Wine

    I made my home amidst this human bustle,
    Yet I hear no clamour from the carts and horses.
    You ask,"How can this be?"
    When the mind is distant, all is still
    Plucking chrysanthemums for tea by the east hedge,
    I gaze at distant South Mountain.
    How fine the sun sets in the mist,
    and the soaring birds flying home together.
    In all this there is some meaning,
    I'd like to explain, but there are no words.


    Elegy For Myself

    Boundless - this vast heap Earth,
    this bottomless heaven, how perfectly boundless.
    And among ten thousand things born of them,
    to find myself a person somehow,
    though a person fated from the beginning to poverty
    alone, to those empty cups and bowls,
    against Winter cold.

    Even hauling water brought such joy,
    and I sang under a load of firewood:
    this life in brushwood-gate seclusion
    kept my days and nights utterly full

    Spring and Autumn following each other away,
    there was always garden work -
    some weeding here or hoeing there.
    What I tended I harvested in plenty,
    and to the pleasure of books,
    koto strings added harmony and balance.

    I'd sun in Winter to keep warm,
    and Summers, bathe in cool streams.
    Never working more than hard enough,
    I kept my heart at ease always,
    and whatever came,
    I rejoiced in all heaven made of my hundred-year life.

    Nothing more than this hundred-year life - and still, people resent it.
    Afraid they'll never make it big,
    hoarding seasons, they clutch at days,
    aching to be treasured alive and long remembered in death.

    Alone, alone and nothing like them,
    I've always gone my own way.
    All their esteem couldn't bring me honour,
    so how can mud turn me black?

    Resolute here in my little tumbledown house,
    I drank wine and scribbled poems.

    Seeing what fate brings, our destiny clear,
    who can live without concern?
    But today, facing this final change,
    I can't find anything to resent:
    I lived a long life,
    and cherishing solitude always, abundant.

    Now old age draws to a close,
    what more could I want?
    The seasons pass away, and away.
    And absence returns, something utterly unlike presence.

    My wife's family came this morning,
    and friends hurried over tonight.
    They'll take me out into the country,
    bury me where the spirit can rest easy.

    O dark journey. O desolate grave,
    gate opening into the dark unknown.
    An opulent coffin Huan's disgrace,
    Yang's naked burial a joke,
    It's empty - there's nothing in death
    but the empty sorrows of distance.

    Build no gravemound, plant no trees -
    just let the days and months pass away.
    I avoided it my whole life,
    so why invite songs of praise now?

    Life is deep trouble. And death,
    why should death be anything less?

    thank you for adding this dude, byrnzie
    i love the words and meaning to solitude and recluse poets

    i'll have to read more of this man's poetry
    for poetry through the ceiling. ISBN: 1 4241 8840 7

    "Hear me, my chiefs!
    I am tired; my heart is
    sick and sad. From where
    the sun stands I will fight
    no more forever."

    Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
  • ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
    chadwick wrote:
    thank you for adding this dude, byrnzie
    i love the words and meaning to solitude and recluse poets

    i'll have to read more of this man's poetry

    Don't mention it.

    I like people who turn their backs on the rat race to drink wine, and write poems. He speaks my kind of language.

    There's a good little translation of some of his stuff here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Selected-Poem ... 882&sr=8-1
  • justamjustam Posts: 21,392
    Thanks for putting these up Byrnzie.
    &&&&&&&&&&&&&&
  • chadwickchadwick up my ass Posts: 21,157
    Byrnzie wrote:
    chadwick wrote:
    thank you for adding this dude, byrnzie
    i love the words and meaning to solitude and recluse poets

    i'll have to read more of this man's poetry

    Don't mention it.

    I like people who turn their backs on the rat race to drink wine, and write poems. He speaks my kind of language.

    There's a good little translation of some of his stuff here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Selected-Poem ... 882&sr=8-1
    fuck yes, byrnzie. i follow exactly what you are saying. and thank you for this, i'll be sure to check it out
    for poetry through the ceiling. ISBN: 1 4241 8840 7

    "Hear me, my chiefs!
    I am tired; my heart is
    sick and sad. From where
    the sun stands I will fight
    no more forever."

    Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
  • pandorapandora Posts: 21,855
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne32Ndoa ... re=related

    I love this poem ...

    his voice

    those strings

    and our love :D
  • Dolores (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs) By Algernon Charles Swinburne


    Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel
    Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour;
    The heavy white limbs, and the cruel
    Red mouth like a venomous flower;
    When these are gone by with their glories,
    What shall rest of thee then, what remain,
    O mystic and sombre Dolores,
    Our Lady of Pain?

    Seven sorrows the priests give their Virgin;
    But thy sins, which are seventy times seven,
    Seven ages would fail thee to purge in,
    And then they would haunt thee in heaven:
    Fierce midnights and famishing morrows,
    And the loves that complete and control
    All the joys of the flesh, all the sorrows
    That wear out the soul.

    O garment not golden but gilded,
    O garden where all men may dwell,
    O tower not of ivory, but builded
    By hands that reach heaven from hell;
    O mystical rose of the mire,
    O house not of gold but of gain,
    O house of unquenchable fire,
    Our Lady of Pain!

    O lips full of lust and of laughter,
    Curled snakes that are fed from my breast,
    Bite hard, lest remembrance come after
    And press with new lips where you pressed.
    For my heart too springs up at the pressure,
    Mine eyelids too moisten and burn;
    Ah, feed me and fill me with pleasure,
    Ere pain come in turn.

    In yesterday's reach and to-morrow's,
    Out of sight though they lie of to-day,
    There have been and there yet shall be sorrows
    That smite not and bite not in play.
    The life and the love thou despisest,
    These hurt us indeed, and in vain,
    O wise among women, and wisest,
    Our Lady of Pain.

    Who gave thee thy wisdom? what stories
    That stung thee, what visions that smote?
    Wert thou pure and a maiden, Dolores,
    When desire took thee first by the throat?
    What bud was the shell of a blossom
    That all men may smell to and pluck?
    What milk fed thee first at what bosom?
    What sins gave thee suck?

    We shift and bedeck and bedrape us,
    Thou art noble and nude and antique;
    Libitina thy mother, Priapus
    Thy father, a Tuscan and Greek.
    We play with light loves in the portal,
    And wince and relent and refrain;
    Loves die, and we know thee immortal,
    Our Lady of Pain.

    Fruits fail and love dies and time ranges;
    Thou art fed with perpetual breath,
    And alive after infinite changes,
    And fresh from the kisses of death;
    Of languors rekindled and rallied,
    Of barren delights and unclean,
    Things monstrous and fruitless, a pallid
    And poisonous queen.

    Could you hurt me, sweet lips, though I hurt you?
    Men touch them, and change in a trice
    The lilies and languors of virtue
    For the raptures and roses of vice;
    Those lie where thy foot on the floor is,
    These crown and caress thee and chain,
    O splendid and sterile Dolores,
    Our Lady of Pain.

    There are sins it may be to discover,
    There are deeds it may be to delight.
    What new work wilt thou find for thy lover,
    What new passions for daytime or night?
    What spells that they know not a word of
    Whose lives are as leaves overblown?
    What tortures undreamt of, unheard of,
    Unwritten, unknown?

    Ah beautiful passionate body
    That never has ached with a heart!
    On thy mouth though the kisses are bloody,
    Though they sting till it shudder and smart,
    More kind than the love we adore is,
    They hurt not the heart or the brain,
    O bitter and tender Dolores,
    Our Lady of Pain.

    As our kisses relax and redouble,
    From the lips and the foam and the fangs
    Shall no new sin be born for men's trouble,
    No dream of impossible pangs?
    With the sweet of the sins of old ages
    Wilt thou satiate thy soul as of yore?
    Too sweet is the rind, say the sages,
    Too bitter the core.

    Hast thou told all thy secrets the last time,
    And bared all thy beauties to one?
    Ah, where shall we go then for pastime,
    If the worst that can be has been done?
    But sweet as the rind was the core is;
    We are fain of thee still, we are fain,
    O sanguine and subtle Dolores,
    Our Lady of Pain.

    By the hunger of change and emotion,
    By the thirst of unbearable things,
    By despair, the twin-born of devotion,
    By the pleasure that winces and stings,
    The delight that consumes the desire,
    The desire that outruns the delight,
    By the cruelty deaf as a fire
    And blind as the night,

    By the ravenous teeth that have smitten
    Through the kisses that blossom and bud,
    By the lips intertwisted and bitten
    Till the foam has a savour of blood,
    By the pulse as it rises and falters,
    By the hands as they slacken and strain,
    I adjure thee, respond from thine altars,
    Our Lady of Pain.

    Wilt thou smile as a woman disdaining
    The light fire in the veins of a boy?
    But he comes to thee sad, without feigning,
    Who has wearied of sorrow and joy;
    Less careful of labour and glory
    Than the elders whose hair has uncurled:
    And young, but with fancies as hoary
    And grey as the world.

    I have passed from the outermost portal
    To the shrine where a sin is a prayer;
    What care though the service be mortal?
    O our Lady of Torture, what care?
    All thine the last wine that I pour is,
    The last in the chalice we drain,
    O fierce and luxurious Dolores,
    Our Lady of Pain.

    All thine the new wine of desire,
    The fruit of four lips as they clung
    Till the hair and the eyelids took fire,
    The foam of a serpentine tongue,
    The froth of the serpents of pleasure,
    More salt than the foam of the sea,
    Now felt as a flame, now at leisure
    As wine shed for me.

    Ah thy people, thy children, thy chosen,
    Marked cross from the womb and perverse!
    They have found out the secret to cozen
    The gods that constrain us and curse;
    They alone, they are wise, and none other;
    Give me place, even me, in their train,
    O my sister, my spouse, and my mother,
    Our Lady of Pain.

    For the crown of our life as it closes
    Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust;
    No thorns go as deep as a rose's,
    And love is more cruel than lust.
    Time turns the old days to derision,
    Our loves into corpses or wives;
    And marriage and death and division
    Make barren our lives.

    And pale from the past we draw nigh thee,
    And satiate with comfortless hours;
    And we know thee, how all men belie thee,
    And we gather the fruit of thy flowers;
    The passion that slays and recovers,
    The pangs and the kisses that rain
    On the lips and the limbs of thy lovers,
    Our Lady of Pain.

    The desire of thy furious embraces
    Is more than the wisdom of years,
    On the blossom though blood lie in traces,
    Though the foliage be sodden with tears.
    For the lords in whose keeping the door is
    That opens on all who draw breath
    Gave the cypress to love, my Dolores,
    The myrtle to death.

    And they laughed, changing hands in the measure,
    And they mixed and made peace after strife;
    Pain melted in tears, and was pleasure;
    Death tingled with blood, and was life.
    Like lovers they melted and tingled,
    In the dusk of thine innermost fane;
    In the darkness they murmured and mingled,
    Our Lady of Pain.

    In a twilight where virtues are vices,
    In thy chapels, unknown of the sun,
    To a tune that enthralls and entices,
    They were wed, and the twain were as one.
    For the tune from thine altar hath sounded
    Since God bade the world's work begin,
    And the fume of thine incense abounded,
    To sweeten the sin.

    Love listens, and paler than ashes,
    Through his curls as the crown on them slips,
    Lifts languid wet eyelids and lashes,
    And laughs with insatiable lips.
    Thou shalt hush him with heavy caresses,
    With music that scares the profane;
    Thou shalt darken his eyes with thy tresses,
    Our Lady of Pain.

    Thou shalt blind his bright eyes though he wrestle,
    Thou shalt chain his light limbs though he strive;
    In his lips all thy serpents shall nestle,
    In his hands all thy cruelties thrive.
    In the daytime thy voice shall go through him,
    In his dreams he shall feel thee and ache;
    Thou shalt kindle by night and subdue him
    Asleep and awake.

    Thou shalt touch and make redder his roses
    With juice not of fruit nor of bud;
    When the sense in the spirit reposes,
    Thou shalt quicken the soul through the blood.
    Thine, thine the one grace we implore is,
    Who would live and not languish or feign,
    O sleepless and deadly Dolores,
    Our Lady of Pain.

    Dost thou dream, in a respite of slumber,
    In a lull of the fires of thy life,
    Of the days without name, without number,
    When thy will stung the world into strife;
    When, a goddess, the pulse of thy passion
    Smote kings as they revelled in Rome;
    And they hailed thee re-risen, O Thalassian,
    Foam-white, from the foam?

    When thy lips had such lovers to flatter;
    When the city lay red from thy rods,
    And thine hands were as arrows to scatter
    The children of change and their gods;
    When the blood of thy foemen made fervent
    A sand never moist from the main,
    As one smote them, their lord and thy servant,
    Our Lady of Pain.

    On sands by the storm never shaken,
    Nor wet from the washing of tides;
    Nor by foam of the waves overtaken,
    Nor winds that the thunder bestrides;
    But red from the print of thy paces,
    Made smooth for the world and its lords,
    Ringed round with a flame of fair faces,
    And splendid with swords.

    There the gladiator, pale for thy pleasure,
    Drew bitter and perilous breath;
    There torments laid hold on the treasure
    Of limbs too delicious for death;
    When thy gardens were lit with live torches;
    When the world was a steed for thy rein;
    When the nations lay prone in thy porches,
    Our Lady of Pain.

    When, with flame all around him aspirant,
    Stood flushed, as a harp-player stands,
    The implacable beautiful tyrant,
    Rose-crowned, having death in his hands;
    And a sound as the sound of loud water
    Smote far through the flight of the fires,
    And mixed with the lightning of slaughter
    A thunder of lyres.

    Dost thou dream of what was and no more is,
    The old kingdoms of earth and the kings?
    Dost thou hunger for these things, Dolores,
    For these, in a world of new things?
    But thy bosom no fasts could emaciate,
    No hunger compel to complain
    Those lips that no bloodshed could satiate,
    Our Lady of Pain.

    As of old when the world's heart was lighter,
    Through thy garments the grace of thee glows,
    The white wealth of thy body made whiter
    By the blushes of amorous blows,
    And seamed with sharp lips and fierce fingers,
    And branded by kisses that bruise;
    When all shall be gone that now lingers,
    Ah, what shall we lose?

    Thou wert fair in the fearless old fashion,
    And thy limbs are as melodies yet,
    And move to the music of passion
    With lithe and lascivious regret.
    What ailed us, O gods, to desert you
    For creeds that refuse and restrain?
    Come down and redeem us from virtue,
    Our Lady of Pain.

    All shrines that were Vestal are flameless,
    But the flame has not fallen from this;
    Though obscure be the god, and though nameless
    The eyes and the hair that we kiss;
    Low fires that love sits by and forges
    Fresh heads for his arrows and thine;
    Hair loosened and soiled in mid orgies
    With kisses and wine.

    Thy skin changes country and colour,
    And shrivels or swells to a snake's.
    Let it brighten and bloat and grow duller,
    We know it, the flames and the flakes,
    Red brands on it smitten and bitten,
    Round skies where a star is a stain,
    And the leaves with thy litanies written,
    Our Lady of Pain.

    On thy bosom though many a kiss be,
    There are none such as knew it of old.
    Was it Alciphron once or Arisbe,
    Male ringlets or feminine gold,
    That thy lips met with under the statue,
    Whence a look shot out sharp after thieves
    From the eyes of the garden-god at you
    Across the fig-leaves?

    Then still, through dry seasons and moister,
    One god had a wreath to his shrine;
    Then love was the pearl of his oyster,
    And Venus rose red out of wine.
    We have all done amiss, choosing rather
    Such loves as the wise gods disdain;
    Intercede for us thou with thy father,
    Our Lady of Pain.

    In spring he had crowns of his garden,
    Red corn in the heat of the year,
    Then hoary green olives that harden
    When the grape-blossom freezes with fear;
    And milk-budded myrtles with Venus
    And vine-leaves with Bacchus he trod;
    And ye said, "We have seen, he hath seen us,
    A visible God."

    What broke off the garlands that girt you?
    What sundered you spirit and clay?
    Weak sins yet alive are as virtue
    To the strength of the sins of that day.
    For dried is the blood of thy lover,
    Ipsithilla, contracted the vein;
    Cry aloud, "Will he rise and recover,
    Our Lady of Pain?"

    Cry aloud; for the old world is broken:
    Cry out; for the Phrygian is priest,
    And rears not the bountiful token
    And spreads not the fatherly feast.
    From the midmost of Ida, from shady
    Recesses that murmur at morn,
    They have brought and baptized her, Our Lady,
    A goddess new-born.

    And the chaplets of old are above us,
    And the oyster-bed teems out of reach;
    Old poets outsing and outlove us,
    And Catullus makes mouths at our speech.
    Who shall kiss, in thy father's own city,
    With such lips as he sang with, again?
    Intercede for us all of thy pity,
    Our Lady of Pain.

    Out of Dindymus heavily laden
    Her lions draw bound and unfed
    A mother, a mortal, a maiden,
    A queen over death and the dead.
    She is cold, and her habit is lowly,
    Her temple of branches and sods;
    Most fruitful and virginal, holy,
    A mother of gods.

    She hath wasted with fire thine high places,
    She hath hidden and marred and made sad
    The fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces
    Of gods that were goodly and glad.
    She slays, and her hands are not bloody;
    She moves as a moon in the wane,
    White-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy,
    Our Lady of Pain.

    They shall pass and their places be taken,
    The gods and the priests that are pure.
    They shall pass, and shalt thou not be shaken?
    They shall perish, and shalt thou endure?
    Death laughs, breathing close and relentless
    In the nostrils and eyelids of lust,
    With a pinch in his fingers of scentless
    And delicate dust.

    But the worm shall revive thee with kisses;
    Thou shalt change and transmute as a god,
    As the rod to a serpent that hisses,
    As the serpent again to a rod.
    Thy life shall not cease though thou doff it;
    Thou shalt live until evil be slain,
    And good shall die first, said thy prophet,
    Our Lady of Pain.

    Did he lie? did he laugh? does he know it,
    Now he lies out of reach, out of breath,
    Thy prophet, thy preacher, thy poet,
    Sin's child by incestuous Death?
    Did he find out in fire at his waking,
    Or discern as his eyelids lost light,
    When the bands of the body were breaking
    And all came in sight?

    Who has known all the evil before us,
    Or the tyrannous secrets of time?
    Though we match not the dead men that bore us
    At a song, at a kiss, at a crime —
    Though the heathen outface and outlive us,
    And our lives and our longings are twain —
    Ah, forgive us our virtues, forgive us,
    Our Lady of Pain.

    Who are we that embalm and embrace thee
    With spices and savours of song?
    What is time, that his children should face thee?
    What am I, that my lips do thee wrong?
    I could hurt thee — but pain would delight thee;
    Or caress thee — but love would repel;
    And the lovers whose lips would excite thee
    Are serpents in hell.

    Who now shall content thee as they did,
    Thy lovers, when temples were built
    And the hair of the sacrifice braided
    And the blood of the sacrifice spilt,
    In Lampsacus fervent with faces,
    In Aphaca red from thy reign,
    Who embraced thee with awful embraces,
    Our Lady of Pain?

    Where are they, Cotytto or Venus,
    Astarte or Ashtaroth, where?
    Do their hands as we touch come between us?
    Is the breath of them hot in thy hair?
    From their lips have thy lips taken fever,
    With the blood of their bodies grown red?
    Hast thou left upon earth a believer
    If these men are dead?

    They were purple of raiment and golden,
    Filled full of thee, fiery with wine,
    Thy lovers, in haunts unbeholden,
    In marvellous chambers of thine.
    They are fled, and their footprints escape us,
    Who appraise thee, adore, and abstain,
    O daughter of Death and Priapus,
    Our Lady of Pain.

    What ails us to fear overmeasure,
    To praise thee with timorous breath,
    O mistress and mother of pleasure,
    The one thing as certain as death?
    We shall change as the things that we cherish,
    Shall fade as they faded before,
    As foam upon water shall perish,
    As sand upon shore.

    We shall know what the darkness discovers,
    If the grave-pit be shallow or deep;
    And our fathers of old, and our lovers,
    We shall know if they sleep not or sleep.
    We shall see whether hell be not heaven,
    Find out whether tares be not grain,
    And the joys of thee seventy times seven,
    Our Lady of Pain.
    Into the Wild Things
  • Let Us Go by Algernon Charles Swinburne

    Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear.
    Let us go hence together without fear;
    Keep silence now, for singing-time is over,
    And over all old things and all things dear.
    She loves not you nor me as all we love her.
    Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear,
    She would not hear.

    Let us rise up and part; she will not know.
    Let us go seaward as the great winds go,
    Full of blown sand and foam; what help is here?
    There is no help, for all these things are so,
    And all the world is bitter as a tear.
    And how these things are, though ye strove to show,
    She would not know.

    Let us go home and hence; she will not weep.
    We gave love many dreams and days to keep,
    Flowers without scent, and fruits that would not grow,
    Saying 'If thou wilt, thrust in thy sickle and reap.'
    All is reaped now; no grass is left to mow;
    And we that sowed, though all we fell on sleep,
    She would not weep.

    Let us go hence and rest; she will not love.
    She shall not hear us if we sing hereof,
    Nor see love's ways, how sore they are and steep.
    Come hence, let be, lie still; it is enough.
    Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep;
    And though she saw all heaven in flower above,
    She would not love.

    Let us give up, go down; she will not care.
    Though all the stars made gold of all the air,
    And the sea moving saw before it move
    One moon-flower making all the foam-flowers fair;
    Though all those waves went over us, and drove
    Deep down the stifling lips and drowning hair,
    She would not care.

    Let us go hence, go hence; she will not see.
    Sing all once more together; surely she,
    She too, remembering days and words that were,
    Will turn a little toward us, sighing; but we,
    We are hence, we are gone, as though we had not been there.
    Nay, and though all men seeing had pity on me,
    She would not see.
    Into the Wild Things
  • ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
    Charles Bukowski - So Now?

    The words have come and gone,
    I sit ill.
    the phone rings, the cats sleep.
    Linda vacuums.
    I am waiting to live,
    waiting to die.
    I wish I could ring in some bravery.
    it's a lousy fix
    but the tree outside doesn't know:
    I watch it moving with the wind
    in the late afternoon sun.
    there's nothing to declare here,
    just a waiting.
    each faces it alone.
    Oh, I was once young,
    Oh, I was once unbelievably
    young!
  • ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
    Federico Garcia Lorca - Ode to Walt Whitman

    By the East River and the Bronx
    boys were singing, exposing their waists
    with the wheel, with oil, leather, and the hammer.
    Ninety thousand miners taking silver from the rocks
    and children drawing stairs and perspectives.

    But none of them could sleep,
    none of them wanted to be the river,
    none of them loved the huge leaves
    or the shoreline's blue tongue.

    By the East River and the Queensboro
    boys were battling with industry
    and the Jews sold to the river faun
    the rose of circumcision,
    and over bridges and rooftops, the mouth of the sky emptied
    herds of bison driven by the wind.

    But none of them paused,
    none of them wanted to be a cloud,
    none of them looked for ferns
    or the yellow wheel of a tambourine.

    As soon as the moon rises
    the pulleys will spin to alter the sky;
    a border of needles will besiege memory
    and the coffins will bear away those who don't work.

    New York, mire,
    New York, mire and death.
    What angel is hidden in your cheek?
    Whose perfect voice will sing the truths of wheat?
    Who, the terrible dream of your stained anemones?

    Not for a moment, Walt Whitman, lovely old man,
    have I failed to see your beard full of butterflies,
    nor your corduroy shoulders frayed by the moon,
    nor your thighs pure as Apollo's,
    nor your voice like a column of ash,
    old man, beautiful as the mist,
    you moaned like a bird
    with its sex pierced by a needle.
    Enemy of the satyr,
    enemy of the vine,
    and lover of bodies beneath rough cloth...

    Not for a moment, virile beauty,
    who among mountains of coal, billboards, and railroads,
    dreamed of becoming a river and sleeping like a river
    with that comrade who would place in your breast
    the small ache of an ignorant leopard.

    Not for a moment, Adam of blood, Macho,
    man alone at sea, Walt Whitman, lovely old man,
    because on penthouse roofs,
    gathered at bars,
    emerging in bunches from the sewers,
    trembling between the legs of chauffeurs,
    or spinning on dance floors wet with absinthe,
    the faggots, Walt Whitman, point you out.

    He's one, too! That's right! And they land
    on your luminous chaste beard,
    blonds from the north, blacks from the sands,
    crowds of howls and gestures,
    like cats or like snakes,
    the faggots, Walt Whitman, the faggots,
    clouded with tears, flesh for the whip,
    the boot, or the teeth of the lion tamers.

    He's one, too! That's right! Stained fingers
    point to the shore of your dream
    when a friend eats your apple
    with a slight taste of gasoline
    and the sun sings in the navels
    of boys who play under bridges.

    But you didn't look for scratched eyes,
    nor the darkest swamp where someone submerges children,
    nor frozen saliva,
    nor the curves slit open like a toad's belly
    that the faggots wear in cars and on terraces
    while the moon lashes them on the street corners of terror.

    You looked for a naked body like a river.
    Bull and dream who would join wheel with seaweed,
    father of your agony, camellia of your death,
    who would groan in the blaze of your hidden equator.

    Because it's all right if a man doesn't look for his delight
    in tomorrow morning's jungle of blood.
    The sky has shores where life is avoided
    and there are bodies that shouldn't repeat themselves in the dawn.

    Agony, agony, dream, ferment, and dream.
    This is the world, my friend, agony, agony.
    Bodies decompose beneath the city clocks,
    war passes by in tears, followed by a million gray rats,
    the rich give their mistresses
    small illuminated dying things,
    and life is neither noble, nor good, nor sacred.

    Man is able, if he wishes, to guide his desire
    through a vein of coral or a heavenly naked body.
    Tomorrow, loves will become stones, and Time
    a breeze that drowses in the branches.

    That's why I don't raise my voice, old Walt Whitman,
    against the little boy who writes
    the name of a girl on his pillow,
    nor against the boy who dresses as a bride
    in the darkness of the wardrobe,
    nor against the solitary men in casinos
    who drink prostitution's water with revulsion,
    nor against the men with that green look in their eyes
    who love other men and burn their lips in silence.

    But yes against you, urban faggots,
    tumescent flesh and unclean thoughts.
    Mothers of mud. Harpies. Sleepless enemies
    of the love that bestows crowns of joy.

    Always against you, who give boys
    drops of foul death with bitter poison.
    Always against you,
    Fairies of North America,
    Pájaros of Havana,
    Jotos of Mexico,
    Sarasas of Cádiz,
    Apios of Seville,
    Cancos of Madrid,
    Floras of Alicante,
    Adelaidas of Portugal.

    Faggots of the world, murderers of doves!
    Slaves of women. Their bedroom bitches.
    Opening in public squares like feverish fans
    or ambushed in rigid hemlock landscapes.

    No quarter given! Death
    spills from your eyes
    and gathers gray flowers at the mire's edge.
    No quarter given! Attention!
    Let the confused, the pure,
    the classical, the celebrated, the supplicants
    close the doors of the bacchanal to you.

    And you, lovely Walt Whitman, stay asleep on the Hudson's banks
    with your beard toward the pole, openhanded.
    Soft clay or snow, your tongue calls for
    comrades to keep watch over your unbodied gazelle.

    Sleep on, nothing remains.
    Dancing walls stir the prairies
    and America drowns itself in machinery and lament.
    I want the powerful air from the deepest night
    to blow away flowers and inscriptions from the arch where you sleep,
    and a black child to inform the gold-craving whites
    that the kingdom of grain has arrived.
  • That is one of the saddest poems I have ever read, made me want to scrub the toilet and I did, thanks for posting, I think
  • I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

    Then someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!"

    "Gone where?"

    Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and full and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear the load of the living freight to her destined port.

    Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment where someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!" There are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: "Here she comes!"

    Henry Van Dyke

    (In memory of Clive Maxwell Sykes May 25 1947 - August 22 2012)
  • moretonbayfigmoretonbayfig Australia Posts: 805
    seeker of truth

    follow no path
    all paths lead where

    truth is here

    - e.e. cummings
  • peacefrompaulpeacefrompaul Posts: 25,293
    "So crucify the ego, before it's far too late
    To leave behind this place so negative and blind and cynical,
    And you will come to find that we are all one mind
    Capable of all that's imagined and all conceivable.
    Just let the light touch you
    And let the words spill through
    And let them pass right through
    Bringing out our hope and reason ...
    before we pine away."-Maynard J. Keenan

    So intelligent... what a thinker
  • mikalinamikalina Posts: 7,206
    I carry your heart with me.... by E. E. Cummings

    I carry your heart with me, carry it in
    my heart,i am never without it,anywhere
    i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
    by only me is your doing,my darling
    i fear...
    no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet) i want
    no world..(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
    and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
    and whatever a sun will always sing is you...

    here is the deepest secret nobody knows
    (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
    and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
    higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
    and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

    I carry your heart...(i carry it in my heart)...
    ********************************************************************************************* image
  • mikalinamikalina Posts: 7,206
    Mirror by Sylvia Plath


    I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
    What ever you see I swallow immediately
    Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
    I am not cruel, only truthful---
    The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
    Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
    It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
    I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
    Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
    Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
    Searching my reaches for what she really is.
    Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
    I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
    She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
    I am important to her. She comes and goes.
    Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
    In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
    Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
    ********************************************************************************************* image
  • rollingsrollings unknown Posts: 7,124
    mikalina wrote:
    Mirror by Sylvia Plath


    I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
    What ever you see I swallow immediately
    Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
    I am not cruel, only truthful---
    The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
    Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
    It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
    I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
    Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
    Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
    Searching my reaches for what she really is.
    Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
    I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
    She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
    I am important to her. She comes and goes.
    Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
    In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
    Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

    "like a terrible fish"
    --how great is that!

    I was reading a Sylvia Plath poem book a few months ago....she is an excellent poet
    but it's true, you could tell that she was writing from a dark place.
  • Green CircleGreen Circle Posts: 5,191
    “…You may write me down in History with your bitter twisted lies. You my trod me in the very dirt but still like dust, I rise.

    Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? Just because I walk like I have oil wells pumping in my living room. Just like suns and like moons with the certainty of tides. Just like hope springing high, still I rise.

    Did you want to see me broken, bowed head, lowered eyes, shoulders falling down like tear drops weakened by my soulful cries?

    Does my sassiness upset you? Don’t take it so hard, just because I laugh, HA HA, As if I have gold mines digging in my own back yard.

    You can shoot me with your words, you can cut me with your lies, You can kill me with your hatefulness but just like LIFE, I RISE...."

    ~Dr. Maya Angelou
    "...And I fight back in my mind. Never lets me be right.
    I got memories. I got shit so much it don't show."
Sign In or Register to comment.