Poems from your favorite poets

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  • vogonpoetbythelake
    vogonpoetbythelake Posts: 2,146
    image
  • vogonpoetbythelake
    vogonpoetbythelake Posts: 2,146
    New Moon Tongue

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

    Gary Snyder
    Mountains and Rivers Without End
  • vogonpoetbythelake
    vogonpoetbythelake Posts: 2,146
    On not finding you at home

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

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

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

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

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

    Billy Collins

    THE TROUBLE WITH
    POETRY
    AND OTHER POEMS
    .
  • PJSiren
    PJSiren Salem, OR Posts: 5,863
    I dropped by to see you
    late last night
    But you were out
    like a light
    Your head was on the floor
    & rats played pool w/ your eyes

    Death is a good disguise
    for late at night

    Wrapping all its games in its calm garden

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

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

    ~ Jim Morrison
    Music is my Religion and Pearl Jam, my Savior!
    Tattooed Dissident!
  • PJSiren
    PJSiren Salem, OR Posts: 5,863
    I am troubled immeasurably
    by your eyes
    I am struck by the feather
    of your soft reply

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

    ~Jim Morrison
    Music is my Religion and Pearl Jam, my Savior!
    Tattooed Dissident!
  • vogonpoetbythelake
    vogonpoetbythelake Posts: 2,146
    edited May 2016
    THE TUFTED PUFFIN
    excerpt from
    "Thoughts to Live By" Maxwell Maltz

    WINGS

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

    by Victor Hugo
    Post edited by vogonpoetbythelake on
  • JWPearl
    JWPearl Posts: 19,893
    it says poets from your favorite poets
    i guess this is my favorite poem because
    my daughter did it when she was eight years
    old.. written as follows



    POEMS



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


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



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

    The small butterfly gracefully
    fluttered its colourful wings
    about.


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




    typed just as it was written
    14 years ago
    mary knows her rock...
  • vogonpoetbythelake
    vogonpoetbythelake Posts: 2,146
    Andrew Zawacki

                       Two Poems from Masquuerade

                                                4

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

                                                12

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

                                           (2001)
  • Ms. Haiku
    Ms. Haiku Washington DC Posts: 7,390

    West Wind, 2, by Mary Oliver

    You are young. So you know everything. You leap
    into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me.
    Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without
    any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.
    Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and
    your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to
    me. There is life without love. It is not worth a bent
    penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a
    dead dog nine days unburied. When you hear, a mile
    away and still out of sight, the churn of the water
    as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the
    sharp rocks—when you hear that unmistakable
    pounding—when you feel the mist on your mouth
    and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls
    plunging and steaming—then row, row for your life
    toward it.
    I posted this in 2012, but Mary Oliver past away this week, and I keep thinking of this poem.
    There is no such thing as leftover pizza. There is now pizza and later pizza. - anonymous
    The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
  • brianlux
    brianlux Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 43,778
    Ms. Haiku said:

    West Wind, 2, by Mary Oliver

    You are young. So you know everything. You leap
    into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me.
    Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without
    any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.
    Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and
    your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to
    me. There is life without love. It is not worth a bent
    penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a
    dead dog nine days unburied. When you hear, a mile
    away and still out of sight, the churn of the water
    as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the
    sharp rocks—when you hear that unmistakable
    pounding—when you feel the mist on your mouth
    and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls
    plunging and steaming—then row, row for your life
    toward it.
    I posted this in 2012, but Mary Oliver past away this week, and I keep thinking of this poem.
    I heard about that as well.  What a great poet and essayist.  Sad to hear of her passing.
    "It's a sad and beautiful world"
    -Roberto Benigni

  • jjflash
    jjflash Posts: 5,041
    brianlux said:
    Ms. Haiku said:

    West Wind, 2, by Mary Oliver

    You are young. So you know everything. You leap
    into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me.
    Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without
    any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.
    Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and
    your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to
    me. There is life without love. It is not worth a bent
    penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a
    dead dog nine days unburied. When you hear, a mile
    away and still out of sight, the churn of the water
    as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the
    sharp rocks—when you hear that unmistakable
    pounding—when you feel the mist on your mouth
    and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls
    plunging and steaming—then row, row for your life
    toward it.
    I posted this in 2012, but Mary Oliver past away this week, and I keep thinking of this poem.
    I heard about that as well.  What a great poet and essayist.  Sad to hear of her passing.
    Ditto, Brian. I just recently found her work. Krista Tippett w/ On Being re-aired an interview she did w/ Mary in 2015ish. Definitely worth a listen. RIP, Mary. Grateful that'll her voice will continue thru her poems.
  • vogonpoetbythelake
    vogonpoetbythelake Posts: 2,146
                                                                                          Imaginary Places

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

    (2002)
    Rae Armantrout
  • rollings
    rollings unknown Posts: 7,127
    1The silver fox has shed its tail now
    Left it by the frozen water
    The leaves were drifting down
    Now they are gone, gone, gone

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

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

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

    Ariel, Ariel
    Ariel, Ariel

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

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

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

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

    Ariel, Ariel
    Ariel, Ariel

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

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

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

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

    Ariel, Ariel
    Ariel, Ariel

    Ariel, Ariel
    Ariel, Ariel

    Ariel, Ariel
    Ariel, Ariel

    ~Robert Hunter, Grateful Dead lyricist

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