Your Favorite Poems

[Hollylane]

Romantics

by Lisel Mueller

Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann
The modern biographers worry
"how far it went," their tender friendship.
They wonder just what it means
when he writes he thinks of her constantly,
his guardian angel, beloved friend.
The modern biographers ask
the rude, irrelevant question
of our age, as if the event
of two bodies meshing together
establishes the degree of love,
forgetting how softly Eros walked
in the nineteenth century, how a hand
held overlong or a gaze anchored
in someone's eyes could unseat a heart,
and nuances of address, not known
in our egalitarian language
could make the redolent air
tremble and shimmer with the heat
of possibility. Each time I hear
the Intermezzi, sad
and lavish in their tenderness,
I imagine the two of them
sitting in a garden
among late-blooming roses
and dark cascades of leaves,
letting the landscape speak for them,
leaving nothing to overhear.

[thedivahrrrself]

This is unfinished... the last thing Shelley ever wrote. He is one of my favorite poets, who dared to tackle political issues of his day and also describe the softer things in life.



Music when Soft Voices Die (To --)
BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY


Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the belovèd's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

[Hollylane]

Bees and Morning Glories

by John Ciardi

Morning glories, pale as a mist drying,
fade from the heat of the day, but already
hunchback bees in pirate pants and with peg-leg
hooks have found and are boarding them.

This could do for the sack of the imaginary
fleet. The raiders loot the galleons even as they
one by one vanish and leave still real
only what has been snatched out of the spell.

I've never seen bees more purposeful except
when the hive is threatened. They know
the good of it must be grabbed and hauled
before the whole feast wisps off.

They swarm in light and, fast, dive in,
then drone out, slow, their pantaloons heavy
with gold and sunlight. The line of them,
like thin smoke, wafts over the hedge.

And back again to find the fleet gone.
Well, they got this day's good of it. Off
they cruise to what stays open longer.
Nothing green gives honey. And by now

you'd have to look twice to see more than green
where all those white sails trembled
when the world was misty and open
and the prize was there to be taken.

[Fancy]

How Falling in Love is like Owning a Dog
by Taylor Mali

First of all, it’s a big responsibility,
especially in a city like New York.
So think long and hard before deciding on love.
On the other hand, love gives you a sense of security:
when you’re walking down the street late at night
and you have a leash on love
ain’t no one going to mess with you.
Because crooks and muggers think love is unpredictable.
Who knows what love could do in its own defense?

On cold winter nights, love is warm.
It lies between you and lives and breathes
and makes funny noises.
Love wakes you up all hours of the night with its needs.
It needs to be fed so it will grow and stay healthy.

Love doesn’t like being left alone for long.
But come home and love is always happy to see you.
It may break a few things accidentally in its passion for life,
but you can never be mad at love for long.

Is love good all the time? No! No!
Love can be bad. Bad, love, bad! Very bad love.

Love makes messes.
Love leaves you little surprises here and there.
Love needs lots of cleaning up after.
Somethimes you just want to get love fixed.
Sometimes you want to roll up a piece of newspaper
and swat love on the nose,
not so much to cause pain,
just to let love know Don’t you ever do that again!

Sometimes love just wants to go out for a nice long walk.
Because love loves exercise. It will run you around the block
and leave you panting, breathless. Pull you in different directions
at once, or wind itself around and around you
until you’re all wound up and you cannot move.

But love makes you meet people wherever you go.
People who have nothing in common but love
stop and talk to each other on the street.

Throw things away and love will bring them back,
again, and again, and again.
But most of all, love needs love, lots of it.
And in return, love loves you and never stops.

Taylor Mali

[Truly Scrumptious]

I imagine your smallness
has been the culprit
of writing unintended invitations
to late night subway riders
and overly confident men

I worry about it
if I'm being honest
and if I'm being that
allow me then to be this

I am this boy
who hears the closeness
of the words
worrier
and warrior
all the while knowing
it's you who have made
me both of these things

I am a blade skinning a stone
I am a stone afraid of water
I am water boxing fire
I am fire suffocating

and if I am all of those
allow me then to be this

I am this boy
kidnapping your smile
and ransoming it back to you
for briefcases full of unmarked hand holding

come alone
and no funny business
I can tell the difference between
a briefcase full of hand holding
and one full of foot massages.

~ Shane Koyczan

[Cin]

I woke up around 3 and couldn't fall back to sleep so I amused myself by rereading much loved poetry. I stumbled on this long forgotten gem and saved it to post this morning:

The Drunk Is Gender-Free
By Leonard Cohen

This morning I woke up again
I thank my Lord for that
The world is such a pigpen
That I have to wear a hat
I love the Lord I praise the Lord
I do the Lord forgive
I hope I won’t be sorry
For allowing Him to live
I know you like to get me drunk
And laugh at what I say
I’m very happy that you do
I’m thirsty every day
I’m angry with the angel
Who pinched me on the thigh
And made me fall in love
With every woman passing by
I know they are your sisters
Your daughters mothers wives
If I have left a woman out
Then I apologize
It’s fun to run to heaven
When you’re off the beaten track
The Lord is such a monkey when
You’ve got Him on your back
The Lord is such a monkey
He’s such a woman too
Such a place of nothing
Such a face of you
May E crash into your temple
And look out thru’ your eyes
And make you fall in love
With everybody you despise

[Cin]

Dedicated to bachelorette Desiree's choice this season, Chris Siegfried, who really should try silence over poetry.



Gift
by Leonard Cohen


You tell me that silence

is nearer to peace than poems

but if for my gift

I brought you silence

(for I know silence)

you would say

This is not silence

this is another poem

and you would hand it back to me

[Cin]

Introduction To Poetry
Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.