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.

[Kätzchen]

All The Hemispheres

Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out

Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.

Open up the roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.

Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day.

All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.

Greet yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting.

While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.


~ Hafiz of Shiraz

[Soon]

Adolescence by P. K. Page

In love they wore themselves in a green embrace.
A silken rain fell through the spring upon them.
In the park she fed the swans and he
whittled nervously with his strange hands.
And white was mixed with all their colours
as if they drew it from the flowering trees.

At night his two finger whistle brought her down
the waterfall stairs to his shy smile
which like an eddy, turned her round and round
lazily and slowly so her will
was nowhere—as in dreams things are and aren’t.

Walking along avenues in the dark
street lamps sang like sopranos in their heads
with a violence they never understood
and all their movements when they were together
had no conclusion.

Only leaning into the question had they motion;
after they parted were savage and swift as gulls.
asking and asking the hostile emptiness
they were as sharp as partly sculptured stone
and all who watched, forgetting, were amazed
to see them form and fade before their eyes.

[MrSunshine]

If I could have just one wish,
I would wish to wake up everyday
to the sound of your breath on my neck,
the warmth of your lips on my cheek,
the touch of your fingers on my skin,
and the feel of your heart beating with mine...
Knowing that I could never find that feeling
with anyone other than you.

- Courtney Kuchta -

[Soon]

The Key to Everything

Is there anything I can do
or has everything been done
or do
you prefer somebody else to do
it or don’t
you trust me to do
it right or is it hopeless and no one can do
a thing or do
you suppose I don’t
really want to do
it and am just saying that or don’t
you hear me at all or what?

You’re
waiting for
the right person the doctor or
the nurse the father or
the mother or
the person with the name you keep
mumbling in your sleep
that no one ever heard of there’s no one
named that really
except yourself maybe

if I knew what your name was I’d
prove it’s your
own name spelled backwards or
twisted in some way the one you
keep mumbling but you
won’t tell me your
name or
don’t you know it
yourself that’s it
of course you’ve
forgotten or
never quite knew it or
weren’t willing to believe it

Then there is something I
can do I
can find your name for you
that’s the key to everything once you’d
repeat it clearly you’d
come awake you’d
get up and walk knowing where you’re
going where you
came from

And you’d
love me
after that or would you
hate me?
no once you’d
get there you’d
remember and love me
of course I’d
be gone by then I’d
be far away

by May Swenson

[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.

[Hollylane]

One Woman

by Ron Carlson

Oh, the old love song again and again
devotion and desire without end,
a woman half dressed somewhere and
being admired, or dressed and being admired.

These men go off alone into their rooms
and write it down: she was this and she was that.
Every man says she's the woman above all,
on a pedestal, though no one says pedestal,
that would be crazy,
and there's a thousand of these poems,
and by that I mean a million declarations
of this singular love of this one of a kind woman,
so rare, an absolute phenomenon which
many times rivals the moon or the oceans,
or the wind in the trees or night or any of the
furniture of night or day.

You see what I mean:
big unknowable things.
What are we to make of it? This:
it's true. Each man is telling the truth.
Each woman puts all the other women second.
It's the way. The strap of her gown off her shoulder,
and the paradox prevails. These poems are
all true. Each woman stands alone
in the doorway or on the pedestal
in the perfect light.

[BullDog]

i carry your heart with me
e. e. cummings

i carry your heart with me(i 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 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)

[Hollylane]

Virgil's Bees

by Carol Ann Duffy

Bless air's gift of sweetness, honey
from the bees, inspired by clover,
marigold, eucalyptus, thyme,
the hundred perfumes of the wind.
Bless the beekeeper

who chooses for her hives
a site near water, violet beds, no yew,
no echo. Let the light lilt, leak, green
or gold, pigment for queens,
and joy be inexplicable but there
in harmony of willowherb and stream,
of summer heat and breeze,
each bee's body
at its brilliant flower, lover-stunned,
strumming on fragrance, smitten.

[PoeticSilence]

Something I found ridiculously beautiful:



THE END
by Victoria Redel

At the end of the marriage they lay down on their big, exhausted bed.
It was crowded with all the men and women they had ever loved.

Of course their fathers and mothers were there and a boy in uniform
she'd kissed on a stairwell. His first wife spooned her first husband.

Ridiculous Affair held hands with Stupendous Infatuation.
There was a racket of dreaming and, though both were tired

from the difficult end and in need of sleep, neither could sleep,
so they began telling each other the long, good story of their love.

She was wearing the red dress. The white boat hitched to the wood dock
filled with rainwater. The swans were again teaching the young to fly.

The story went out to nice dinners, took summer holidays, and by the time
they were done, the old loves rolled over in a jumble on the floor,

and, because this is what they knew to do well with one another,
they made love, and then without thinking it was the last time, said,

I love you, and fell asleep under the heavy, blue coverlet.

"The End" by Victoria Redel, from Woman Without Umbrella. © Four Way Books, 2012. Reprinted with without permission

[PoeticSilence]

LEGS
by Joseph Harker

A man walks into the cafe on a Pair Of Legs.
These are the kind of legs that demand metaphor:
legs drifting in like the masts of capsized ships,
legs like walnut saplings in the churchyard.
What is it about a pair of legs that enchants a person?
Or any body part: for he also has arms, knuckles,
upper lip, cropped nape, but it’s the legs that get me.
His legs resist like longbows. Running shorts show
one bronze, fresh-mowed leg with Hebrew tracery
tattooed round the thigh. What’s “nice legs”
in Hebrew? How do you compliment a stranger’s legs
without sounding strange? I know the legs of women
are up for constant debate, the apparition of their legs
traded on the commodities market by leg-men
whistling as they dig the street, knowing good legs
and thinking they’ve something to prove. Legs, though,
have never inspired me until These Legs. I was never
a vulgar leg-admirer hooting at the passerby.
Can one man worship the legs of another, lay kisses
on the saintly knees? And why couldn’t legs be
that once-in-a-lifetime quality? Well-legged can mean
marriageable. Good legs make men dependable,
worldly, and these legs could be wandering monuments,
sculptural as they are. I feel I am discovering legs
for the first time. I’m seeing legs, legs, suddenly
I am judging everyone by the curve of their legs,
sitting here shaking at the injustice of subpar legs,
of overgrown and shapeless legs milling about
this man with Dead Sea Legs as he stands, stretches,
pays for his coffee, scratches his one tattooed leg,
that alphabet leg!, flexing and spinning him away
like a gyroscope, out the door, his Legs gone and him
gone with them.


"LEGS" by Joseph Harker reprinted without permission from his blog Naming Constellations entry dated 7/19/2013
-----please see: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/...3.0/deed.en_US -----

(I'll note that the writer claims he wrote this one for fun and tried to fit the word leg(s) into every line)

[Fancy]

[PoeticSilence]

The Sky

Holding the sky above our heads,
separating it from the earth -
it's an important job
and someone has to do it.
Only the most reliable
and aspiring souls
are given such employment.
Their task to make us feel
that something must be up there,
beyond beyond,
cloaked
in white or grey or blue.

Distracted by the birds,
the agitation of the topmost twigs,
the souls ache. Ache
from the pressure of the sky

reprinted without permission, poetry by Moniza Alzi
This poem is taken from PN Review 141, Volume 28 Number 1, September - October 2001

[PoeticSilence]

Rule 15

what bothers you of course
beyond the smudges on your own window

isn’t so much the yuppies
with their walking poles

walking down your street
but the fact that

they’re not even using them
she just holds hers

both in one hand
and he’s sort of dragging

his behind him leaving
two scratched lines

down the sandy springtime sidewalk
here’s what I’d do

pull the wine from the cupboard
pour yourself a bucket

and head out to the porch
where you can criticize

more clearly


reprinted without permission, poetry by Ryan Vine
This poem is taken from Paper Darts Magazine Published on DateTuesday, September 11, 2012