Your Favorite Poems

[bokster]

I like for you to be still
it is as though you are absent
and you hear me from far away
and my voice does not touch you
It seems as though your eyes had flown away
And it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth
As all things are filled with my soul
You emerge from the things
Filled with my soul
You are like my soul
A butterfly of dream
And you are like the word... Melancholy

I like for you to be still
and you seem far away
It sounds as though you are lamenting
A butterfly cooing like a dove
and you hear me from far away
and my voice does not reach you
Let me come to be still in your silence
And let me talk to you with your silence
That is bright as a lamp
Simple, as a ring
You are like the night
With its stillness and constellations
Your silence is that of a star
As remote and candid

I like for you to be still
it is as though you are absent
Distant and full of sorrow
So you would've died
One word then, One smile is enough
And I'm happy;
Happy that it's not true

[Femmadian]

For Women Who Are Difficult To Love
by Warsan Shire

you are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable
every woman before or after you
is doused in your name
you fill his mouth
his teeth ache with memory of taste
his body just a long shadow seeking yours
but you are always too intense
frightening in the way you want him
unashamed and sacrificial
he tells you that no man can live up to the one who
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn’t you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.

[Talon]

Nine Below--Joy Harjo


Across the frozen Bering Sea is the invisible border
of two warring countries. I am loyal to neither,

only to the birds who fly over, laugh at the ridiculous
ways of humans, know wars destroy dreams,

divide the country, inside us. Last night there was a breaking
wave, in the center of a dream war.

You were there, but I couldn't see you. Woke up cold in a hot house.
Didn't sleep but fought the distances I had imagined,

and went back to find you. I called my heart's dogs,
gave them the sound of your blue saxophone to know you by,

and let them smell the shirt you wore when we last made love.
I walked with them south along the white sea, and

crossed to the fiery plane of my dreaming. We circled the place,
you were not there. I found nothing that I could see.

No trace of war, of you, but the dogs barked, rolled in your
smell, ears pricked at what they could hear that I couldn't.

They ran to me, licked the smell of the wet tracks of your mouth
on my neck, my shoulder.

They smelled you on my fingers, my face. They felt the quivering
nerve of emotion that forced me to live.

It made them nervous, excited. I loosened my mind's rein;
let them find you.

I watched them follow the invisible connection. They traveled a
spiral arc through an Asiatic burst of time.

There were no false boundaries between countries, between us.
They climbed the polar ice, saw it melt.

They flew through the shimmering houses of the gods,
crossed over into your childhood, and then south.

When they arrived in your heart's atmosphere it was an easy
sixty degrees.

The war was over, it had never begun. And you were alive and
laughing, standing beneath a fat sun, calling me home.

[Talon]

A Satirical Romance...Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz


I can't hold you and I can't leave you,
and in sorting the reasons to leave you or hold you,
I find an intangible one to love you,
and many tangible ones to forgo you.

As you won't change, nor let me forgo you,
I shall give my heart defense against you,
so that half shall always be armed to abhor you,
though the other half be ready to adore you.

[Talon]

ECHO
Christina Rossetti


Come to me in the silence of the night,
Come in the speaking silence of a dream,
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
as sunlight on a stream,
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope and love of finished years.

O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter-sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in paradise,
Where souls brim full of love abide and meet,
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

[Talon]

Where Does This Tenderness Come From?
by Marina Tsvetaeva


Where does this tenderness come from?
These are not the first curls I
have stroked slowly
and lips I have known are darker than yours

as stars rise often and go out again
where does this tenderness come from?
so many eyes have risen and died out
in front of these eyes of mine.

And yet no such song
have I heard in the darkness of night before,
where does this tenderness come from?
here, on the ribs of the singer.

Where does this tenderness come from?
And what shall I do with it,
sly singer just passing by?
Your lashes are...longer than anyone's.

[Soon]

Words Wide Night

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.

This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say
it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.

La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine the dark hills I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you

and this is what it is like or what it is like in words.

[gotoseagrl]

Evening Solace

THE human heart has hidden treasures,
In secret kept, in silence sealed;­
The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures,
Whose charms were broken if revealed.
And days may pass in gay confusion,
And nights in rosy riot fly,
While, lost in Fame's or Wealth's illusion,
The memory of the Past may die.

But, there are hours of lonely musing,
Such as in evening silence come,
When, soft as birds their pinions closing,
The heart's best feelings gather home.
Then in our souls there seems to languish
A tender grief that is not woe;
And thoughts that once wrung groans of anguish,
Now cause but some mild tears to flow.

And feelings, once as strong as passions,
Float softly back­a faded dream;
Our own sharp griefs and wild sensations,
The tale of others' sufferings seem.
Oh ! when the heart is freshly bleeding,
How longs it for that time to be,
When, through the mist of years receding,
Its woes but live in reverie !

And it can dwell on moonlight glimmer,
On evening shade and loneliness;
And, while the sky grows dim and dimmer,
Feel no untold and strange distress­
Only a deeper impulse given
By lonely hour and darkened room,
To solemn thoughts that soar to heaven,
Seeking a life and world to come.

Charlotte Brontë

[Talon]

I See, I See The Crescent Moon~Anna Akhmatova



I see, I see the crescent moon
through the willow's thick foliage.
I hear, I hear the regular heartbeat of unshod hooves.

You don't want to sleep either?
In a year you weren't able to forget me,
you're not used to finding your bed empty?

Don't I talk with you
in the sharp cries of falcons?
Don't I look into your eyes
from the matt white pages?

why do you circle round,
my silent house like a thief?
Or do you remember the agreement
and wait for me alive?

I am falling asleep. The moon's blade
cuts through the stilling dark.
Again hoofbeats.
It is my own warm heart
that beats so.

[Talon]

Rain~
Diana Der Hovanessian


Rain undoes the stone
unfastens grass.
Nothing is permanently
attached to bone.
Neither epoxy
nor promises last.

But I keep those inflections
you telephoned to wear
with your frown on rainy days.
There is another you
I have invented from your name
and cemented to my bones forever.

let the rain say nothing stays.

[vagina]

CORAZÓN CORAZA
by: Mario Benedetti


Porque te tengo y no
porque te pienso
porque la noche está de ojos abiertos
porque la noche pasa y digo amor
porque has venido a recoger tu imagen
y eres mejor que todas tus imágenes
porque eres linda desde el pie hasta el alma
porque eres buena desde el alma a mí
porque te escondes dulce en el orgullo
pequeña y dulce
corazón coraza

porque eres mía
porque no eres mía
porque te miro y muero
y peor que muero
si no te miro amor
si no te miro

porque tú siempre existes dondequiera
pero existes mejor donde te quiero
porque tu boca es sangre
y tienes frío
tengo que amarte amor
tengo que amarte
aunque esta herida duela como dos
aunque te busque y no te encuentre
y aunque
la noche pase y yo te tenga
y no.

[vagina]

Dear Billie-by Christine Cassidy

Dear Billie,
I'd offer apologies
for flirting at the party
but I know what you'd say-it's
not all that necessary-

and besides,
I'm enticed, your cool minx eyes
assessing me the way I've
come to enjoy. Why didn't
you, at the end, kiss me? I'd

have given
you skirt, not to flirt. Then
I saw you, whispered in your
nappy hair, smiled a lot, and

had to touch.
Why is it you're the one butch
-my new lover won't say much-
who feeds me information
from the hand, and won't begrudge

my hunger
for knowing somewhat better
whom I've been lusting after
-granted I'm a little late,
a shy date-these last few years?

Fourteen now,
since I've been comfortably out.
Longer, if you count Girl Scouts,
the woman whose flint-lit fires
kindled mine. I stayed closemouthed

about sex,
watched the playground mavericks
pick out sides while I grew breasts,
lip-synched to Janis Joplin,
and fantasized what came next.

That same thrill,
chasing after boyish girls
-rough girls with flaccid pigtails-
who swaggered off fields and courts,
has gotten me in trouble

more than once.
When I wore a cocktail dress
(another time, only lace)
to seduce the dykes in suits
at Seven Sisters dances,

I wish you
had been there with your etudes
of history, tales accrued
not from books. Sea Colony
stories circa '62

my favourite:
at twenty you learned the gait
and gaze that femmes would covet.
You stroked my knee, reminisced.
I thought, does femme etiquette

permit one
bite into your neck, or none?
You laugh at my abstention
and my burn to know just what
you butches want, how and when.

You say I
couldn't take what's on your mind.
What's on mine might terrify
you more. Or is this coax
you expect, or will you try

to please me
when I visit? If you feed
me raisin scones and stories,
I'll reply in kind-naive
but willing, my dear Billie.

[vagina]

Phenomenal Woman
By Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them,
They say they still can’t see.
I say,
It’s in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing,
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need for my care.
’Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

[Talon]

Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Robert Frost



Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

[Talon]

Under The Harvest Moon
by Carl Sandberg



Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers

Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

[ProfPacker]

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

by 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)

[ProfPacker]

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
E. E. Cummings, 1894 - 1962

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

[ProfPacker]

Let America Be America Again
Langston Hughes, 1902 - 1967

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

[ProfPacker]

Flowers & Bullets, by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
(English translation by Anthony Kahn)

Of course:
Bullets don't like people
who love flowers,
They're jealous ladies, bullets,
short on kindness.
Allison Krause, nineteen years old,
you're dead
for loving flowers.


When, thin and open as the pulse
of conscience,
you put a flower in a rifle's mouth
and said,
"Flowers are better than bullets,"
that
was pure hope speaking.


Give no flowers to a state
that outlaws truth;
such states reciprocate
with cynical, cruel gifts,
and your gift, Allison Krause,
was the bullet
that blasted the flower.

Let every apple orchard blossom black,
black in mourning.
Ah, how the lilac smells!
You're without feeling.
Nothing, Nixon said it:
"You're a bum."
All the dead are bums.
It's not their crime.
You lie in the grass,
a melting candy in your mouth,
done with dressing in new clothes,
done with books.

You used to be a student.
You studied fine arts.
But other arts exist,
of blood and terror,
and headsmen with a genuius for the axe.

Who was Hitler?
A cubist of gas chambers.
In the name of all flowers
I curse your works,
you architect of lies,
maestros of murder!
Mothers of the world whisper
"O God, God!"
and seers are afraid
to look ahead.
Death dances rock-and-roll upon the bones
of Vietnam, Cambodia -
On what stage is it booked to dance tomorrow?


Rise up, Tokyo girls,
Roman boys,
take up your flowers
against the common foe.
Blow the world's dandelions up
into a blizzard!
Flowers, to war!
Punish the punishers!
Tulip after tulip,
carnation after carnation
rip out of your tidy beds in anger,
choke every lying throat
with earth and root!
You, jasmine, clog
the spinning blades of mine-layers.

Boldy,
block the cross-hair sights,
drive your sting into the lenses,
nettles!
Rise up, lily of the Ganges,
lotus of the Nile,
stop the roaring props
of planes pregnant
with the death of chidren!
Roses, don't be proud
to find yourselves sold
at higher prices.
Nice as it is to touch a tender cheek,
thrust a sharper thorn a little deeper
into the fuel tanks of bombers.


Of course:
Bullets are stronger than flowers.
Flowers aren't enough to overwhelm them.
Stems are too fragile,
petals are poor armor.
But a Vietnam girl of Allison's age,
taking a gun in her hands
is the armed flower
of the people's wrath!
If even flowers rise,
then we've had enough
of playing games with history.


Young America,
tie up the killer's hands.
Let there be an escalation of truth
to overwhelm the escalating lie
crushing people's lives!
Flowers, make war!
Defend what's beautiful!
Drown the city streets and country roads
like the flood of an army advancing
and in the ranks of people and flowers
arise, murdered Allison Krause,
Immortal of the age,
Thorn-Flower of protest!

[ProfPacker]

CHOICES


If i can't do
what i want to do
then my job is to not
do what i don't want
to do

It's not the same thing
but it's the best i can
do


If i can't have
what i want . . . then
my job is to want
what i've got
and be satisfied
that at least there
is something more to want


Since i can't go
where i need
to go . . . then i must . . . go
where the signs point
through always understanding
parallel movement
isn't lateral


When i can't express
what i really feel
i practice feeling
what i can express
and none of it is equal


I know
but that's why mankind
alone among the animals
learns to cry

Written by Nikki Giovanni