FreeVerse - "Sorrows"

Host Cara Powers of FreeVerse published a two-line stanza poem today of decidedly contemporary poetry that gave the reader strong images. To continue that theme... here's a poem from Lucille Clifton, who often approaches her contemporary topics in a mouth-dropping way. This one puts incredibly visual small stanzas to paper to describe "Sorrows".
It's a wondrous little poem. It's linked to:

SORROWS
by Lucille Clifton


who would believe them winged
who would believe they could be

beautiful who would believe
they could fall so in love with mortals

that they would attach themselves
as scars attach and ride the skin

sometimes we hear them in our dreams
rattling their skulls clicking

their bony fingers
they have heard me beseeching

as i whispered into my own
cupped hands enough not me again

but who can distinguish
one human voice

amid such choruses
of desire

e e cummings day

Thanks to Cara of Ooh Books for hosting FreeVerse! Click on the link above for more.



Cummings was prolific and quixotic; altogether memorable. Cara posted one of his poems today, here's another in a very different genre:


somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

~e e cummings

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

Illustrated Haiku

Thanks to Cara of Ooh Books for hosting FreeVerse! Click on the link above for more.

Scarlet Flower Haiku

~quidrock 2003

Like a human heart

Centered, blood-red, keeping

Life's pulse abloom.

FreeVerse Wednesday

Thanks to Cara of "Oooh, books", for hosting this at Freeverse. Click on the link below for more.






CONDENSATION

The sullen sky cries for you,
a melody of rain on the roof.
Water will evaporate
and change its form,
the tears I cry
could turn into the drops
that fall softly against your window.
Your crimes,
washed away in the perfect rain.

~Jon Meredith

Jon, I've lost track of you, but your poetry never fails to move me.

FreeVerse... Small Seductions

Your Small Seductions


She’ll not be a pawn for your truth,
Nor follow you blindly or silently.
She’ll not sacrifice self for love
Or give away name or integrity.

But she is prey for your small seductions
Glances melting,
Touches burning,
Casual endearments,
Pursuing to the point of being pursued.
Sharing thoughts but holding back
From shared experience.

What is the game and when will it end?
When will you set her free with the truth of your
Intentions, your ego, your state of mind?
Can you live without her, or love with her?

Such is her nature
That she is too afraid to ask,
Too proud to admit that
She may not be able to survive the truth.

~not autobiographical...written in 2008

and linked to:

Something For Everyone

Thanks to Cara of "Oooh, books", for hosting this at Freeverse. Click on the link below for more.






Something For Everyone


I want the water to fill your glass the moment

it sees your thirst.

I want the staircase to meet your footfalls.

I want the line to the freeway to move like breath.

I want the wind flattering your hairline, the rainshower

a welcome refreshment. I want the parking space to fit your car.

I want the birds on your back deck to warble in the exact way

they did during your childhood. I want the photographs

of all your holiday dinners buzzing with a certain unnamable

happiness. I want the dry cleaners to understand

your outrageous requests.

I want the man calling your house to survey

your thoughts on phone companies to remember

the evening is precious as silk. I want your new jeans to not

come undone in the wash. I want snow to land on your eyelashes

like it does in the movies, an etheric, slow-moving kiss.

I want a letter to arrive the moment

you feel most unwelcome of your own company.

I want the scent of lemons in the air. I want the power lines

overshadowed by the view your neighborhood offers at twilight.

I want the downtown ice rink to keep your fantasies aloft.

I want the moon to articulate your most punishing silence.

I want the willow tree revived and teeming, the broken daisies

resurrected and obstinate with brightness.

I want the labyrinth of what ifs narrowed

to a single, poignant sentence.

I want the tulips to be wild as clover, as fog, as good intentions.

I want your heart to cut through its own brutality,

for your body to see everything about you that’s beautiful.

I want love to come at you in thick pats of butter,

in strands of spun sugar, heavy and light as cream.

I want it to bathe your skin until you are nothing

but forgiveness, until your shadows have disappeared,

until all of your perfect right angles have collapsed,

until you are a curve of a curve,

and your hands slide forward and open

and are able, at last, to feel everything.


-priceless poetry by Maya Stein



Would that I had written this for you, B.

Gallagher on Valentines

Sometimes the beauty of free verse by Tess Gallagher takes your breath away. I find that Tess' poetry strikes more chords with women than with men. Happy early Valentines day!

RAIN SOAKED VALENTINE... Tess Gallagher



As if some child, unwilling to shut even
the figurative heart into pocket or
lunch pail, had carried it plate-like
home in a downpour. A passionate
migration - no matter its redundant shape
and thirty others just as crude. The passage
did it good, white lace bleeding, the stock
message smudged out of language by rivulets
and soaring. It came with a lunge,
earnestness of moment, refusing
to be merely "sufficient" as in prudent love -
the effect guaged before the gift.
Anciently worn to trash on its way to me, it
doesn't care if I am moonlight. Just arriving
is candor, is courting.

Poetry About Poetry.... from 2003

Writing Poetry


Unearth crisp verbiage
And soften it, gently.
Use a word that you savor
Uniquely, for once.
Blend the rush of thoughts
That overwhelms you at night
With questions that
Keep you wondering.
Commit them to the page.


Have a palette of adjectives
And adverbs to paint your words
In different tones.
See what textures abound.
Be willing to set aside your
Hard fought battle with verse,
For a time,
Going back to massage and change.
Bend and soothe the words and images.



Feel your pulse and your heartbeat
As they rush through pen to paper.
Lose your own self, release your soul.
Write poetry.

~quidrock

Linked To:

Linking to: Cara Powers FreeVerse.... use the button above.

POEMS ABOUT... WHAT ELSE?? BOOKS

Linking to: Cara Powers FreeVerse.... use the button above.

There is nothing quite so evocative, for me, as poetry written about books and the love of books. Here's a favorite, and also a haiku that I wrote about books.



THE BOOKSTALL

Just looking at them
I grow greedy, as if they were
freshly baked loaves
waiting on their shelves
to be broken open---that one
and that---and I make my choice
in a mood of exalted luck,
browsing among them
like a cow in sweetest pasture.

For life is continuous
as long as they wait
to be read---these inked paths
opening into the future, page
after page, every book
its own receding horizon,
And I hold them, one in each hand,
a curious ballast weighting me
here to the earth.

~Linda Pastan

VORACIOUS (haiku)

Summer bookworm or

Forgetter of what needs me--

Reading on and on.

~quid

FIRES OF OUTRAGE

Thanks to Cara Powers (and Kelly for the lead) for creating FreeVerse to link to. Today I revive a form that vintage, that I really love; it is the triolet.

The Triolet ("triplet"), a French verse form, is a poem or a stanza of eight lines that include two rhymes and two refrains. One refrain is the repetition of the first line at the fourth line and the seventh line; this triple appearance of one line gives the Triolet its name.

My triolet today was written when I was anguishing over the happenings at Gitmo. Today, I think the same poem expresses my feelings as I watch the coverage of the devastation in Haiti, particularly since I heard a lot of insensitivity for their plight in my ordinary life today. How can people compare our level of suffering to theirs?

Here it is:

Fires of Outrage

Fires of outrage
Kindled in the shadow of apathy
Of those who stand idly by, watching as the world tips, then tumbles.
Fires of outrage
Self-inflicted despair dancing with irony
Cursing ourselves for seeking hope; a thing of the past.
Fires of outrage
Kindled in the shadow of apathy.