Past - Due Post of Poetry

Note:  I have fallen away somewhat, as I do from time to time, from the language and the kiss of poetry.   I keep up with Maya Stein and have her posts sent to my email box, and also continue to enjoy the poetry blog, "rooted" by Indian poet Gautami Tripathy (you can find it in my links below).  I had really missed out on National Poetry Month, and did go back on 4/30, to close out the month with one of her poems that had buried itself in my brain.   Coming back to blogger today, I realized I had kept it in draft and had never fininshed the post.   So, here it is, belatedly:

Hanging from the Buckle to Dance

I have nailed a buckle or two on the wall
and hang my poems on those.
I have heard my poems humming songs,
with much dignity and grace.
I take the visions in my stride.
when my muse goes to sleep
I do not miss it.
I take down one of the poems,
rearrange the words to gain a new one
my buckle too gets heavy

                                        ~from the "rooted" blog, G. Tripathy

"STILL" - a poem from Jon Meredith

STILL


by Jon Meredith

Still,
you leave me
breathless
 in the lofty heights
of your sky.
Still,
I watch you
cross the room
and every motion
is God.
Still,
your smile
scorches my resolution
to be anything
but yours.
Still,
I tangle
in your tresses,
a scent
finer than prayer.
Still,
you are
more beautiful than
the moon on water
in Heaven.
Still,
I am
in love with you,
and I will be until
my heart is
Still.

Haven't seen  or heard from Jon Meredith, a Pearlsoup friend, for several years.  I kept all his poetry that I loved and publish it every once in awhile in the hopes that he'll run across it and get in touch.  Much of his verse was broken-hearted...this particular poem more of a love song than much of his work.  Enjoy.

A poem for Wednesday - National Poetry Month

The use of metaphor and the use of color in this poem drew me in.....


This Is A Wonderful Poem

~David Wagoner

Come at it carefully, don't trust it, that isn't its right name,
It's wearing stolen rags, it's never been washed, its breath
Would look moss-green if it were really breathing,
It won't get out of the way, it stares at you
Out of eyes burnt gray as the sidewalk,
Its skin is overcast with colorless dirt,
It has no distinguishing marks, no I.D. cards,
It wants something of yours but hasn't decided
Whether to ask for it or just take it,
There are no policemen, no friendly neighbors,
No peacekeeping busybodies to yell for, only this
Thing standing between you and the place you were headed,
You have about thirty seconds to get past it, around it,
Or simply to back away and try to forget it,
It won't take no for an answer: try hitting it first

And you'll learn what's trembling in its torn pocket.Now, what do you want to do about it?

Lyrics as Poetry - National Poetry Month

I've always thought that song lyrics are sometimes the best poetry. Especially today, when the interest in written poetry has faded...people get their poetry thru song lyrics.

One of the best modern writers of lyrics is indie artist Jason Mraz. Here's his...

Unfold

~ Jason Mraz

Hands in Line

Arms close to my side

I'm fighting tides

Of an ocean's undertow

And I figure that I might not make it

I'm taking empty but seldom speaking

And the words retreat

Yeah, they breath in histories

Still at ease

And the story's untold

And my arms unfold

My hands are high

And I'm holding on, I'm holding out

And i figure that i

Figure that I just might make it

And I'm waking empty but seldom sleeping

And the words repeat breathing histories

Into stories untold but I unfold

See now quality is what you see now

In the corner of your eye

And don't be surprised

If you hear the bells ring

As they form from the sky

They sound bong, bong, bong, bong, ba da

Yea yea bong, bong, bong,bong ba da yea, yea

And I'm always holding on

And I'm already holding out

Said I'm holding out your side

And I'm holding out this time

Cause I figure that I, and I figure that I

Just might make it and I'm

Waking empty but seldom sleeping

And the words repeat breathin histories untold

But I unfold

Today's poem.... it's timely

I am an advocate. DADT has never been right...maybe not even expedient. It is well past its time.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

When you sleep with a gun for the first time,
you interrogate its history like any lover’s,
imagining the deaths it holds in store. When you wed,
the world welcomes your union. Your children’s cries
drag the country in the wake of their echoes.

When the gun goes off, you hold water in your hands.
It moves gracefully through your fingers
as the body you’ve signed becomes a photograph.
Tell no one, another soldier murmurs
as he too takes aim. You breathe and march in unison,

feet stirring the same dry clay into the same dusty spirals.
The songs you exhale make of women the enemy,
their breasts landing sites, their legs
stone columns you must weave your way between.
Nights, you sleep below him on a metal cot

that rocks backwards like a train.
Promise, he says,
but he is talking in his sleep, his boyish voice contorted
by the remnants of compassion. The force of his solitude
reaches you through plaited wire. If you reached for him . . .
But your relation is merely political.

Don’t ask, croons your superior, and reason wavers,
hazy as a target in stark desert sun. But you have a question.
You want to ask what love is, if this is love:
what you feel when anonymous blood runs swiftly,
drizzled in fitful patterns like festive stars.

Carol Guess

Today's poem..... romance from William Stafford

When I Met My Muse

~William Stafford

I glanced at her and took my glasses

off—they were still singing. They buzzed

like a locust on the coffee table and then

ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the

sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and

knew that nails up there took a new grip

on whatever they touched. "I am your own

way of looking at things," she said. "When

you allow me to live with you, every

glance at the world around you will be

a sort of salvation." And I took her hand.

Today's Poem is From Rilke

A Walk

My eyes already touch the sunny hill,

going far ahead of the road I have begun.

So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;

it has its inner light, even from a distance----

and changes us, even if we do not reach it,

into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are;

a gesture waves us on, answering our own wave...

but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

~Rainer Maria Rilke

I'm always touched by Rilke's poetry... this one is a favorite. It feels like you are scrutinizing your own horizons.

Today's Poem.... Robert Frost

I love all the variations of the types of poems that have been written through the ages; from sonnets to free verse, from haiku to poems that take a certain from, like the triolet. I experimented with a form a few years ago that I labeled "acrecentar", with 6 stanzas...each a line longer than the last. Here's a particularly interesting form called the "terza rima", consisting of the body in 3 line parts, or tercets, with a couplet at the end.

From an American master, Robert Frost:

Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain--and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-by;

and further still at an unearthly height

One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

Poetry from my friend, Jon Meredith

Last year, during national poetry month, I chose one of my favorite poems from this man called, "I Am", with this as the quote at the beginning:

"I have met many poets online. I believe in my heart that all poets cannot resist the urge to spill their lives onto paper. They're not writing factually, they're not following established formulas, like in fiction. Normally, they're just bleeding their emotions all over the paper.

Someone that I've lost for now, whose poetry I greatly admire is a young "tragederian" poet from Michigan, Jon Meredith, who writes ghostly poems of love and loss in the aftermath of his divorce and separation from his children. Here is one of Jon's. Jon, wherever you are, I hope you google this and find us all again. But more than that, I hope your life runs smoothly.."

I haven't heard from Jon since then, but here is another beautiful selection from his poetry:

STILL

Still,

you leave

me breathless

in the lofty heights

of your sky.

Still,

I watch you

cross the room

and every motion

is God.

Still,

your smile

scorches my resolution

to be anything

but yours.

Still,

I tangle

in your tresses,

a scent

finer than prayer.

Still,

you are

more beautiful than

the moon on water

in Heaven.

Still,

I am

in love with you,

and I will be until

my heart is

Still.

~Jon Meredith

Great great amateur poem from Matthew Dickman!!!

Image by Rabi Khan, Toronto

http://hubpages.com/profile/rabi+Khan

SLOW DANCE





More than putting another man on the moon,


more than a New Year’s resolution of yogurt and yoga,


we need the opportunity to dance


with really exquisite strangers. A slow dance


between the couch and dining room table, at the end


of the party, while the person we love has gone


to bring the car around


because it’s begun to rain and would break their heart


if any part of us got wet. A slow dance


to bring the evening home, to knock it out of the park. Two people


rocking back and forth like a buoy. Nothing extravagant.


A little music. An empty bottle of whiskey.


It’s a little like cheating. Your head resting


on his shoulder, your breath moving up his neck.


Your hands along her spine. Her hips


unfolding like a cotton napkin


and you begin to think about how all the stars in the sky


are dead. That my body


is talking to your body slow dance. The Unchained Melody,


Stairway to Heaven, power-cord slow dance. All my life


I’ve made mistakes. Small


and cruel. I made my plans.


I never arrived. I ate my food. I drank my wine.


The slow dance doesn’t care. It’s all kindness like children


before they turn four. Like being held in the arms


of my brother. The slow dance of siblings.


Two men in the middle of the room. When I dance with him,


one of my great loves, he is absolutely human,


and when he turns to dip me


or I step on his foot because we are both leading,


I know that one of us will die first and the other will suffer.


The slow dance of what’s to come


and the slow dance of insomnia


pouring across the floor like bath water.


When the woman I’m sleeping with


stands naked in the bathroom,


brushing her teeth, the slow dance of ritual is being spit


into the sink. There is no one to save us


because there is no need to be saved.


I’ve hurt you. I’ve loved you. I’ve mowed


the front yard. When the stranger wearing a shear white dress


covered in a million beads


comes toward me like an over-sexed chandelier


suddenly come to life,


I take her hand in mine. I spin her out


and bring her in. This is the almond grove


in the dark slow dance.


It is what we should be doing right now. Scrapping


for joy. The haiku and honey.


The orange and orangutan slow dance.


~Matthew Dickman



I don't know much about Matthew Dickman, but I do know this. Every line in this poem is exquisite, every line dripping with entendre (double), every line makes me feel alive. When I finish reading this poem I want to have someone in my life who would rush to bring the car around so that I don't get wet. I want to dance again to Unchained Melody. I want to dance again with the one person in my life who will get it, who will know that when one of us dies, the other will suffer. I want the haiku and the honey. At some point, I will read this poem and I won't get tears in my eyes. I'm not sure when that will happen, though. Quid

More From Maya Stein -- National Poetry Month

to walk the long hallway.....

WHOLE



There will be a day you will be catapulted from your own bedrock.

Around you, everything humming as usual, but a scream

will have lodged in your throat, dismantling your song. That shock

will mutate into sadness, then rage, then something so out of proportion

you will not recognize its borders. And then it will be time

to walk the long hallway and it will seem almost obscenely solitary,

you dangling above the precipice of your tiny life, a caricature of alone.

But then, like a great wind, a thousand hands, prayers, offerings will carry

you home, and just like that you will be joined forever, your soul

twinned with everything you see, the heart of the world so clear and close and

whole.


~~Maya Stein (commander of the written word!)



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

Today's Poem -- the second from Marge Piercy

Colors Passing Through Us

Purple as tulips in May, mauve

into lush velvet, purple

as the stain blackberries leave

on the lips, on the hands,

the purple of ripe grapes

sunlit and warm as flesh.

Every day I will give you a color,

like a new flower in a bud vase

on your desk. Every day

I will paint you, as women

color each other with henna

on hands and on feet.



Red as henna, as cinnamon,

as coals after the fire is banked,

the cardinal in the feeder,

the roses tumbling on the arbor

their weight bending the wood

the red of the syrup I make from petals.




Orange as the perfumed fruit

hanging their globes on the glossy tree,

orange as pumpkins in the field,

orange as butterflyweed and the monarchs

who come to eat it, orange as my

cat running lithe through the high grass.



Yellow as a goat's wise and wicked eyes,

yellow as a hill of daffodils,

yellow as dandelions by the highway,

yellow as butter and egg yolks,

yellow as a school bus stopping you,

yellow as a slicker in a downpour.



Here is my bouquet, here is a sing

song of all the things you make

me think of, here is oblique

praise for the height and depth

of you and the width too.

Here is my box of new crayons at your feet.




Green as mint jelly, green

as a frog on a lily pad twanging,

the green of cos lettuce upright

about to bolt into opulent towers,

green as Grand Chartreuse in a clear

glass, green as wine bottles.




Blue as cornflowers, delphiniums,

bachelors' buttons. Blue as Roquefort,

blue as Saga. Blue as still water.

Blue as the eyes of a Siamese cat.

Blue as shadows on new snow, as a spring

azure sipping from a puddle on the blacktop.




Cobalt as the midnight sky

when day has gone without a trace

and we lie in each other's arms

eyes shut and fingers open

and all the colors of the world

pass through our bodies like strings of fire.




~~Marge Piercy



There is something so striking and bold in the use of the "color" words in poetry. The best poets make you visualize all those colors, just in the way they use the words. I'm particularly fond of the "Yellow" beginning in each line of the "yellow" verse of this poem.

Today's Poem - by Marge Piercy

I don't usually repeat authors when I present the poems of others... but with poet Marge Piercy, who is better known as an activist and political writer... I can't just select one. You'll love both today's and tomorrow's. Today's poem tells of the real life of a writer, by one who has pursued her craft for 50+ years.



~~~quid







For the young who want to

Talent is what they say

you have after the novel


is published and favorably


reviewed. Beforehand what


you have is a tedious


delusion, a hobby like knitting.






Work is what you have done


after the play is produced


and the audience claps.


Before that friends keep asking


when you are planning to go


out and get a job.






Genius is what they know you


had after the third volume


of remarkable poems. Earlier


they accuse you of withdrawing,


ask why you don't have a baby,


call you a bum.






The reason people want M.F.A.'s,


take workshops with fancy names


when all you can really


learn is a few techniques,


typing instructions and some-


body else's mannerisms






is that every artist lacks


a license to hang on the wall


like your optician, your vet


proving you may be a clumsy sadist


whose fillings fall into the stew


but you're certified a dentist.






The real writer is one


who really writes. Talent


is an invention like phlogiston


after the fact of fire.


Work is its own cure. You have to


like it better than being loved.






-Marge Piercy

Poem from Brolga

One of my all time favorite internet friends lives in Australia. I have poems from her I love better, but this one illustrates her connection to New Zealand in a wonderous way.

STONE OF OAMARU

Within this forgotten piece of limestone
Awaiting release by unknown hand
Lay beauty and a secret sweetly hidden.
Came the man with caressing hands
To set free the story trapped by time.
His mind and heart guide his tools
Until the woman responds to his touch
Not satisfied he searches further to find
The woman’s secret place and reveals the miracle
Of love, protection and continuity.

~~~~~~~BROLGABLUE

National Poetry Month.... I must include some Sharon Olds

The Shyness

Then, when we were joined, I became
shyer. I became completed, joyful,
and shyer. I may have shone more, reflected
more, and from deep inside there rose
some glow passing steadily through me, but I was not
playing, now, I felt a little like someone
small, in a raftered church, or in
a cathedral, the vaulted spaces of the body
like a sacred woods. I was quiet when my throat was not
making those iron, orbital, rusted,
coming noises at the hinge of matter and
whatever is not matter. He takes me into
ending after ending like another world at the
center of this one, and then, if he begins to
end when I am resting I feel awe, I almost feel
fear, sometimes for a moment I feel
I should not move, or make a sound, as
if he is alone, now,
howling in the wilderness,
and yet I know we are in this place
together. I thought, now is the moment
I could become more loving, and my hands moved shyly
over him, secret as heaven,
and my mouth spoke, and in my beloved’s
voice, by the bones of my head, the fields
groaned, and then I joined him again,
not shy, not bold, released, entering
the true home, where the trees bend down along the
ground and yet stand, then we lay together
panting, as if saved from some disaster, and for ceaseless
instants, it came to pass what I have
heard about, it came to me
that I did not know I was separate
from this man, I did not know I was lonely.

I always have to thank Pam for introducing me to this poet. Subtle, vivid.. no one quite like her. (Pam and Sharon Olds!)

VARIATION ON THE WORD SLEEP

I would like to watch you sleeping,


which may not happen.


I would like to watch you,


sleeping. I would like to sleep


with you, to enter


your sleep as its smooth dark wave


slides over my head


~~~~~~~





and walk with you through that lucent


wavering forest of bluegreen leaves


with its watery sun & three moons


towards the cave where you must descend,


towards your worst fear


~~~~~~~~





I would like to give you the silver


branch, the small white flower, the one


word that will protect you


from the grief at the center


of your dream, from the grief


at the center I would like to follow


you up the long stairway


again & become


the boat that would row you back


carefully, a flame


in two cupped hands


to where your body lies


beside me, and as you enter


it as easily as breathing in


~~~~~~~~





I would like to be the air


that inhabits you for a moment


only. I would like to be that unnoticed


& that necessary.

~~ Margaret Atwood



She's a world renowned author, but, I expect, even better at poetry. If you dig around, you'll find more.

POEMS FOR OCCASIONS

PRAISE

In the eye of the elephant, in the eye of the mouse, in the dark and the bright,in the moon and sun, in the neutrino’s flight, in the electron’s spin,in the universe expanding out or folding in, in yang and yin, in miniature,in magnitude, in melancholy, in gratitude, in silence and in bliss,in the Golden Mean of the nautilus, in the Boolean laptop, in tongues untiedin the barbaric yawp—love abides.

In summer heat and winter hail,in the amoeba, in the great blue whale, on the mountain crest, in the valleyswale, in taut muscle, in crumbling bone, in thunderheads, in river stone—love abides. In Galileo and Gogol, in St. Augustine and Sartre,in the magical mind, in the miracle heart, halfway through morning,in midafternoon, in the quark, in the quasar, in the rush, in the swoon,in the spark—love abides.

In the spiraling arms of the Milky Way,in Andromeda, in night and day, in the owl and the bear, in fur and feather,in prayer—love abides. In the dance, love abides. In the dance, in the dance,in the coming and going, in the blue shift and red, in light and gravity,in the living and the dead, in the madeleine of memory, in the house of pain,in joy, in suffering—love abides.

On the sloop in the sound, on the rafton the river, in the dance, in headwinds, in yaw, in the following sea, in brioand humility, in surrendering. In the carmine evening, in the chartreusedawn, in the desert, in the dingle, in the robin’s song, in the humid streetsof Brooklyn, on bicycles, in bare feet, on BlackBerrys, in taxis, in the bitter-sweet—love abides. In Limerick and Lotus, in Sally’s soothsaying dream,in turquoise heels, on the walk on the trail, in the wedding dress, in the drycastanets of the rattlesnake’s tail, in thistle and vetch—love abides.

In the breath of the earth, in the wind, in the rising and falling and risingagain, in the gathering, in family and friends, in the wild tribe whoopingbeneath the wild tree—love abides. In the earth’s dervish around the sun,where you are now in time undone, in the golden string, in the comingand going of everything, in the oak’s craggy limbs, in the blue bowlof sky, in the boundless river, in your luminous eyes, in your being,in the dance, in your kiss—love abides.


Written as a wedding poem. Incomparable. By Moira Magneson

A west coast poet, Magneson's "Praise" threw me for a loop when I first read it. There is so much imagery in the poem, when you finish, you're a little bit drunk on it. I tried a couple of times to write a poem for some celebration, some milestone...without success. Obviously, she didn't have that problem. ENJOY!

Tune-In Friday ... Pardon the Interruption

Tune-In Friday goes on hiatus during National Poetry Month.

What better way to begin than with the artist...Pablo Neruda? This poem speaks to the beginning of poetry for him.

and something ignited in my soul

and something ignited in my soul

fever or forgotten wings

and I went my own way

deciphering that burning fire

and I wrote the first bare line,

pure foolishness

pure wisdom,

of one who knows nothing

and suddenly I saw the heavens

unfasten and open

~~Pablo Neruda

National Poetry Month - 2010

Slamming

In the last decade, the activists among us have chosen a new format...the poetry slam...where, if you feel strongly about anything at all, it is time to express it; in words and in voices where there are no holds barred. Here's one of the best.

I can't, myself, get comfortable with the heat of the slam format for things such as love and loss. It would, however, become a welcome format if, for example, I wanted to express my emotions on current events. Say, the subject of torture.

Andrea Gibson


Andrea’s billed as “an activist poet”. If you choose to watch her poetry slam in the link below, you’ll see why. It’s a powerful chant for women and mothers everywhere. She makes me stand in awe. I can’t yet find the text for her poem “Say Yes”, but in the meantime, here’s an incredible treatise on lost love.. I give you


PHOTOGRAPHS

I wish I was a photograph

tucked into the corners of your wallet

I wish I was a photograph

you carried like a future in your back pocket

I wish I was that face you show to strangers

when they ask you where you come from

I wish I was that someone that you come from

every time you get there

and when you get there

I wish I was that someone who got phone calls

and postcards saying

wish you were here

I wish you were here

autumn is the hardest season

the leaves are all falling

and they're falling like they're falling in love with the ground

and the trees are naked and lonely

I keep trying to tell them

new leaves will come around in the spring

but you can't tell trees those things

they're like me they just stand there

and don't listen

I wish you were here

I've been missing you like crazy

I've been hazy eyed

staring at the bottom of my glass again

thinking of that time when it was so full

it was like we were tapping the moon for moonshine

or sticking straws into the center of the sun

and sipping like icarus would forever kiss

the bullets from our guns

I never meant to fire you know

I know you never meant to fire lover

I know we never meant to hurt each other

now the sky clicks from black to blue

and dusk looks like a bruise

I've been wrapping one night stands

around my body like wedding bands

but none of them fit in the morning

they just slip off my fingers and slip out the door

and all that lingers is the scent of you

I once swore if I threw that scent into a wishing well

all the wishes in the world would come true

do you remember

do you remember the night I told you

I've never seen anything more perfect than

than snow falling in the glow of a street light

electricity bowing to nature

mind bowing to heartbeat

this is gonna hurt bowing to I love you

I still love you like moons love the planets they circle around

like children love recess bells

I still hear the sound of you

and think of playgrounds

where outcasts who stutter

beneath braces and bruises and acne

are finally learning that their rich handsome bullies

are never gonna grow up to be happy

I think of happy when I think of you

so wherever you are I hope you're happy

I really do

I hope the stars are kissing your cheeks tonight

I hope you finally found a way to quit smoking

I hope your lungs are open and breathing your life

I hope there's a kite in your hand

that's flying all the way up to orion

and you still got a thousand yards of string to let out

I hope you're smiling

like god is pulling at the corners of your mouth

cause I might be naked and lonely

shaking branches for bones

but I'm still time zones away

from who I was the day before we met

you were the first mile

where my heart broke a sweat

and I wish you were here

I wish you'd never left

but mostly I wish you well

I wish you my very very best
~Andrea Gibson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hee7T8MbHGs&feature=player_embedded

The Darker Side of Poetry...

Empty

She lifts her skirt up to her knees
Walks through the garden rows
With her bare feet laughing

I never learned to count my blessings
I choose instead to dwell
In my disasters

I walk on down the hill
Through grass grown tall
And brown and still
It's hard somehow
To let go of my pain

On past the busted back
Of that old and rusted Cadillac
That sinks into this field
Collecting rain

Will I always feel this way
So empty
And estranged?

And of these cut throat busted sunsets
These cold and damp white mornings
I have grown weary

If through my cracked and dusty
Dime store lips
I spoke these words out loud
Would no one hear me?

Lay your blouse across the chair
Let fall the flowers
From your hair
And kiss me
With that country mouth
So plain

Outside the rain is tapping
On the leaves
To me it sounds like
They're applauding us
The quiet love
We've made

Will it always feel this way
So empty
So estranged?

Well I looked my demons in the eyes
Lay bare my chest
Said do your best
To destroy me

I've been to hell and back
So many times
I must admit
You kinda bore me

There's a lot of things
That can kill a man
There's a lot of ways
To die
Yes, and some already did
And walk beside me

There's a lot of things
I don't understand
So many people lie
It's the hurt I hide that fuels
The fire inside me

Will I always feel this way
So empty
So estranged?

~Ray Lamontagne...from "Till the Sun Turns Black"

Not since Dylan...do I think an American has come along that seems to compose so effortlessly, and paint such stark pictures. For perhaps the best version of "To Love Somebody" ever, see Ray Charles LaMontagne and Damien Rice on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNJwBaYAtcM