Butch Femme Planet  

Go Back   Butch Femme Planet > ART, POETRY, WRITING > Poetry

Poetry Please start one thread for your own poetry and just add to it!

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 11-13-2009, 04:59 PM   #1
evolveme
Member

How Do You Identify?:
honeysuckle venom
Preferred Pronoun?:
a pistol and a sugar cane
Relationship Status:
I promise to aid and abet
 

Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: in between poems where ceilings are floors and joe ghost floats achromatic toward day
Posts: 514
Thanks: 229
Thanked 736 Times in 228 Posts
Rep Power: 503698
evolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputation
Default (and my favorite)

What Do Women Want?

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.

- Kim Addonizio
__________________
Class, race, sexuality, gender and all other categories by which we categorize and dismiss each other need to be excavated from the inside. - Dorothy Allison
evolveme is offline   Reply With Quote
The Following 5 Users Say Thank You to evolveme For This Useful Post:
Old 11-13-2009, 05:30 PM   #2
Blue
Junior Member

How Do You Identify?:
Trans
Preferred Pronoun?:
he
Relationship Status:
Married
 
Blue's Avatar
 

Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: England
Posts: 28
Thanks: 4
Thanked 82 Times in 13 Posts
Rep Power: 660744
Blue Has the BEST ReputationBlue Has the BEST ReputationBlue Has the BEST ReputationBlue Has the BEST ReputationBlue Has the BEST ReputationBlue Has the BEST ReputationBlue Has the BEST ReputationBlue Has the BEST ReputationBlue Has the BEST ReputationBlue Has the BEST ReputationBlue Has the BEST Reputation
Default

I don't know why this poem stayed with me for so long. I first read it when I was about 12 in one of my sister's college textbooks. It has remained one of my favorites.

The Listeners
by Walter De La Mare

'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller's head
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
'Is there anybody there?' he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller's call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:-
'Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,' he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.
Blue is offline   Reply With Quote
The Following User Says Thank You to Blue For This Useful Post:
Old 11-13-2009, 05:36 PM   #3
Mister Bent
Senior Member

How Do You Identify?:
.
 

Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: .
Posts: 2,905
Thanks: 4,151
Thanked 5,824 Times in 1,721 Posts
Rep Power: 21474854
Mister Bent Has the BEST ReputationMister Bent Has the BEST ReputationMister Bent Has the BEST ReputationMister Bent Has the BEST ReputationMister Bent Has the BEST ReputationMister Bent Has the BEST ReputationMister Bent Has the BEST ReputationMister Bent Has the BEST ReputationMister Bent Has the BEST ReputationMister Bent Has the BEST ReputationMister Bent Has the BEST Reputation
Default

To the Harbormaster
Frank O'Hara

I wanted to be sure to reach you;
though my ship was on the way it got caught
in some moorings. I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. In storms and
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide
around my fathomless arms, I am unable
to understand the forms of my vanity
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder
in my hand and the sun sinking. To
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks, it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.
__________________



Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.
- H. L. Mencken
Mister Bent is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-13-2009, 05:39 PM   #4
evolveme
Member

How Do You Identify?:
honeysuckle venom
Preferred Pronoun?:
a pistol and a sugar cane
Relationship Status:
I promise to aid and abet
 

Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: in between poems where ceilings are floors and joe ghost floats achromatic toward day
Posts: 514
Thanks: 229
Thanked 736 Times in 228 Posts
Rep Power: 503698
evolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputation
Default

Sex Without Love

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

- Sharon Olds
__________________
Class, race, sexuality, gender and all other categories by which we categorize and dismiss each other need to be excavated from the inside. - Dorothy Allison
evolveme is offline   Reply With Quote
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to evolveme For This Useful Post:
Old 11-13-2009, 05:41 PM   #5
evolveme
Member

How Do You Identify?:
honeysuckle venom
Preferred Pronoun?:
a pistol and a sugar cane
Relationship Status:
I promise to aid and abet
 

Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: in between poems where ceilings are floors and joe ghost floats achromatic toward day
Posts: 514
Thanks: 229
Thanked 736 Times in 228 Posts
Rep Power: 503698
evolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputation
Default

"To you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage of my will."

I love that.
__________________
Class, race, sexuality, gender and all other categories by which we categorize and dismiss each other need to be excavated from the inside. - Dorothy Allison
evolveme is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-13-2009, 05:43 PM   #6
evolveme
Member

How Do You Identify?:
honeysuckle venom
Preferred Pronoun?:
a pistol and a sugar cane
Relationship Status:
I promise to aid and abet
 

Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: in between poems where ceilings are floors and joe ghost floats achromatic toward day
Posts: 514
Thanks: 229
Thanked 736 Times in 228 Posts
Rep Power: 503698
evolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputationevolveme Has the BEST Reputation
Default

The Borders

To say that she came into me,
from another world, is not true.
Nothing comes into the universe
and nothing leaves it.
My mother—I mean my daughter did not
enter me. She began to exist
inside me—she appeared within me.
And my mother did not enter me.
When she lay down, to pray, on me,
she was always ferociously courteous,
fastidious with Puritan fastidiousness,
but the barrier of my skin failed, the barrier of my
body fell, the barrier of my spirit.
She aroused and magnetized my skin, I wanted
ardently to please her, I would say to her
what she wanted to hear, as if I were hers.
I served her willingly, and then
became very much like her, fiercely
out for myself.
When my daughter was in me, I felt I had
a soul in me. But it was born with her.
But when she cried, one night, such pure crying,
I said I will take care of you, I will
put you first. I will not ever
have a daughter the way she had me,
I will not ever swim in you
the way my mother swam in me and I
felt myself swum in. I will never know anyone
again the way I knew my mother,
the gates of the human fallen.

- Sharon Olds
__________________
Class, race, sexuality, gender and all other categories by which we categorize and dismiss each other need to be excavated from the inside. - Dorothy Allison
evolveme is offline   Reply With Quote
The Following User Says Thank You to evolveme For This Useful Post:
Old 11-13-2009, 06:11 PM   #7
Mister Bent
Senior Member

How Do You Identify?:
.
 

Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: .
Posts: 2,905
Thanks: 4,151
Thanked 5,824 Times in 1,721 Posts
Rep Power: 21474854
Mister Bent Has the BEST ReputationMister Bent Has the BEST ReputationMister Bent Has the BEST ReputationMister Bent Has the BEST ReputationMister Bent Has the BEST ReputationMister Bent Has the BEST ReputationMister Bent Has the BEST ReputationMister Bent Has the BEST ReputationMister Bent Has the BEST ReputationMister Bent Has the BEST ReputationMister Bent Has the BEST Reputation
Default


I Ask You
Billy Collins

What scene would I want to be enveloped in
more than this one,
an ordinary night at the kitchen table,
floral wallpaper pressing in,
white cabinets full of glass,
the telephone silent,
a pen tilted back in my hand?

It gives me time to think
about all that is going on outside--
leaves gathering in corners,
lichen greening the high grey rocks,
while over the dunes the world sails on,
huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake.

But beyond this table
there is nothing that I need,
not even a job that would allow me to row to work,
or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4
with cracked green leather seats.

No, it's all here,
the clear ovals of a glass of water,
a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin,
not to mention the odd snarling fish
in a frame on the wall,
and the way these three candles--
each a different height--
are singing in perfect harmony.

So forgive me
if I lower my head now and listen
to the short bass candle as he takes a solo
while my heart
thrums under my shirt--
frog at the edge of a pond--
and my thoughts fly off to a province
made of one enormous sky
and about a million empty branches.



As with most of the truly good poets I know, I was introduced to Billy Collins by e.
__________________



Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.
- H. L. Mencken
Mister Bent is offline   Reply With Quote
The Following User Says Thank You to Mister Bent For This Useful Post:
Reply


Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 12:15 PM.


ButchFemmePlanet.com
All information copyright of BFP 2018