POETRY

ONE FLOWER

2011-07-06T09:03:00.000-07:00

One flower
on the cliffside
Nodding at the canyon.

~ Jack Kerouac

HEART

2011-07-06T08:39:00.000-07:00

Its hinges rustless, restless;

opening and shutting on trust.

We guard it;

it guides us.

Gods lack it.

Vacant their gaze.

Doctors listen

to its cryptic

lisp.

From sacred

to scared—a few

beats skipped,

a letter slipped.

Cavity and spasm;

a spark can start

it; parting stop it.

Such a radiant husk

to hive our dust!

~ Gregory Orr

JAPANESE HAIKU

2011-03-16T10:01:00.000-07:00

The first day of the year:

thoughts come - and there is loneliness;

the autumn dusk is here.

~ Basho

DREAM RECORD

2010-10-03T06:37:00.000-07:00

A drunken night in my house with a

boy, San Francisco, I lay asleep:

darkness:

I went back to Mexico City

And saw Joan Burroughs leaning

Forward in a garden chair, arms

On her knees. She studied me with

Clear eyes and downcast smile, her

Face restored to a fine beauty

Tequila and salt had made strange

Before the bullet in her brow.

We talked of the life since then.

Well, what's Burroughs doing now ?

Bill on earth, he's in North Africa.

Oh, and Kerouac ? Jack still jumps

With the same beat genius as before,

Notebooks filled with Buddha.

I hope he makes it, she laughed.

Is Huncke still in the can ? No,

Last time I saw him on Times Square.

And how is Kenney? Married, drunk

And golden in the East. You? New

Loves in the West -

Then I knew

She was a dream: and questioned her

Joan, what kind of knowledge have

The dead ? can you still love

Your mortal acquaintances ?

What do you remember of us?

She

Faded in front of me - The next instant

I saw her rain-stained tombstone

Rear an illegible epitapth

Under the gnarled branch of a small

Tree in the wild grass

Of an unveiled garden in Mexico.

~ Allen Ginsberg

THE RED WHEELBARROW

2010-09-18T11:50:00.000-07:00

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

~ William Carlos Williams

EYE TO EYE

2010-09-04T11:16:00.000-07:00

Please forgive this interruption.
I am forging a career,
a delicate enterprise
of eyes. Yours included.
We will meet at the corner,
you with your sack lunch,
me with my guitar.
We will be wearing our famous street faces,
anonymous as trees.
Suddenly you will see me,
you will blink, hesitant,
then realize I have not looked away.
For one brave second
we will stare
openly
from borderless skins.
This is my salary.
There are no days off.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

INVICTUS

2010-05-26T11:12:00.000-07:00

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

~ William Ernest Henley

As I Walked Out One Evening

2010-04-18T10:33:00.000-07:00

A fairly famous poem by Auden. The words may be simple, but the thoughts are profound.

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

'The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

'In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

'Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.

'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.

'O look, look in the mirror?
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.

~ WH Auden

SEPARATION

2010-01-11T08:49:00.000-08:00

Your absence has gone through me
like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stiched with its colour.

~ W.S. Merwin

MIRACLE

2010-01-08T09:26:00.001-08:00

A man, before going to bed, put his watch under his pillow.
Then he went to sleep. Outside the wind was blowing. You
who know
the miraculous continuity of little motions, understand.
A man, his watch, the wind. Nothing else.

~ Yannis Ritsos

ALL YOU WHO SLEEP TONIGHT

2009-02-27T23:19:00.000-08:00

All you who sleep tonight

Far from the ones you love,

No hand to left or right

And emptiness above -

Know that you aren't alone

The whole world shares your tears,

Some for two nights or one,

And some for all their years.

~Vikram Seth

ROOT CELLAR

2009-01-30T20:48:00.000-08:00

Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,

Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,

Shoots dangled and drooped,

Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,

Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.

And what a congress of stinks!

Roots ripe as old bait,

Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,

Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.

Nothing would give up life:

Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.

~ Theodore Roethke

Inaugural Poem

2009-01-20T04:16:00.000-08:00

A Rock, A River, A Tree

Hosts to species long since departed,

Marked the mastodon.

The dinosaur, who left dry tokens

Of their sojourn here

On our planet floor,

Any broad alarm of their hastening doom

Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,

Come, you may stand upon my

Back and face your distant destiny,

But seek no haven in my shadow.

I will give you no more hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than

The angels, have crouched too long in

The bruising darkness,

Have lain too long

Face down in ignorance.

Your mouths spilling words

Armed for slaughter.

The Rock cries out today, you may stand on me,

But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,

A River sings a beautiful song,

Come rest here by my side.

Each of you a bordered country,

Delicate and strangely made proud,

Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.

Your armed struggles for profit

Have left collars of waste upon

My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.

Yet, today I call you to my riverside,

If you will study war no more. Come,

Clad in peace and I will sing the songs

The Creator gave to me when I and the

Tree and the stone were one.

Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your

Brow and when you yet knew you still

Knew nothing.

The River sings and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to

The singing River and the wise Rock.

So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew

The African and Native American, the Sioux,

The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek

The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,

The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,

The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.

They hear. They all hear

The speaking of the Tree.

Today, the first and last of every Tree

Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River.

Plant yourself beside me, here beside the River.

Each of you, descendant of some passed

On traveller, has been paid for.

You, who gave me my first name, you

Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, you

Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then

Forced on bloody feet, left me to the employment of

Other seekers--desperate for gain,

Starving for gold.

You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot ...

You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought

Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare

Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am the Tree planted by the River,

Which will not be moved.

I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree

I am yours--your Passages have been paid.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need

For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,

Cannot be unlived, and if faced

With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon

The day breaking for you.

Give birth again

To the dream.

Women, children, men,

Take it into the palms of your hands.

Mold it into the shape of your most

Private need. Sculpt it into

The image of your most public self.

Lift up your hearts

Each new hour holds new chances

For new beginnings.

Do not be wedded forever

To fear, yoked eternally

To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,

Offering you space to place new steps of change.

Here, on the pulse of this fine day

You may have the courage

To look up and out upon me, the

Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.

No less to Midas than the mendicant.

No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here on the pulse of this new day

You may have the grace to look up and out

And into your sister's eyes, into

Your brother's face, your country

And say simply

Very simply

With hope

Good morning.

-Maya Angelou

2009-01-05T05:16:00.000-08:00

I had a guinea golden;

I lost it in the sand,

And though the sum was simple,

And pounds were in the land,

Still had it such a value

Unto my frugal eye,

That when I could not find it

I sat me down to sigh.

I had a crimson robin

Who sang full many a day,

But when the woods were painted

He, too, did fly away.

Time brought me other robins,--

Their ballads were the same,--

Still for my missing troubadour

I kept the "house at hame."

I had a star in heaven;

One Pleiad was its name,

And when I was not heeding

It wandered from the same.

And though the skies are crowded,

And all the night ashine,

I do not care about it,

Since none of them are mine.

My story has a moral:

I have a missing friend,--

Pleiad its name, and robin,

And guinea in the sand,--

And when this mournful ditty,

Accompanied with tear,

Shall meet the eye of traitor

In country far from here,

Grant that repentance solemn

May seize upon his mind,

And he no consolation

Beneath the sun may find.

-Emily Dickinson

IT MAKES

2008-12-04T01:04:00.000-08:00

It makes sense not

to have the body

seamless,

hermetically sealed, a

non-orificial

box of incorruptibles.

Better shot through and through!

Interpenetrated–

with the world. Air

mists my lymph. Ex

cretion, degrading routine,

gives the world passage.

I am a bead.

Sorted,

thumbed,

threaded,

strung,

fingered (did you say) by

threads of all hues,

riddled through,happily.

Gieve Patel

Fog

2008-06-28T02:07:00.001-07:00

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

-Carl Sandburg

tolkien's

2008-05-04T13:45:00.000-07:00

very few, know this man, as a poet. i surprised myself, by being the first one to volunteer to submit. considering the great work inihos has been puttin into this, i thought i shud, stop being lazy, and spread some tolkien!

THE MAN ON THE MOON CAME DOWN TOO SOON

There is an inn, a merry old inn
beneath an old grey hill,
And there they brew a beer so brown
That the Man in the Moon himself came down
one night to drink his fill.

The ostler has a tipsy cat
that plays a five-stringed fiddle;
And up and down he saws his bow
Now squeaking high, now purring low,
now sawing in the middle.

The landlord keeps a little dog
that is mighty fond of jokes;
When there's good cheer among the guests,
He cocks an ear at all the jests
and laughs until he chokes.

They also keep a hornéd cow
as proud as any queen;
But music turns her head like ale,
And makes her wave her tufted tail
and dance upon the green.

And O! the rows of silver dishes
and the store of silver spoons!
For Sunday there's a special pair,
And these they polish up with care
on Saturday afternoons.

The Man in the Moon was drinking deep,
and the cat began to wail;
A dish and a spoon on the table danced,
The cow in the garden madly pranced
and the little dog chased his tail.

The Man in the Moon took another mug,
and then rolled beneath his chair;
And there he dozed and dreamed of ale,
Till in the sky the stars were pale,
and dawn was in the air.

Then the ostler said to his tipsy cat:
'The white horses of the Moon,
They neigh and champ their silver bits;
But their master's been and drowned his wits,
and the Sun'll be rising soon!'

So the cat on the fiddle played hey-diddle-diddle,
a jig that would wake the dead:
He squeaked and sawed and quickened the tune,
While the landlord shook the Man in the Moon:
'It's after three!' he said.

They rolled the Man slowly up the hill
and bundled him into the Moon,
While his horses galloped up in rear,
And the cow came capering like a deer,
and a dish ran up with the spoon.

Now quicker the fiddle went deedle-dum-diddle;
the dog began to roar,
The cow and the horses stood on their heads;
The guests all bounded from their beds
and danced upon the floor.

With a ping and a pang the fiddle-strings broke!
the cow jumped over the Moon,
And the little dog laughed to see such fun,
And the Saturday dish went off at a run
with the silver Sunday spoon.

The round Moon rolled behind the hill,
as the Sun raised up her head.
She hardly believed her fiery eyes;
For though it was day, to her surprise
they all went back to bed!

-- J R R TOLKIEN

2008-04-19T05:43:00.000-07:00

I do not know the name of this poem, but a friend of mine had this in her IInd standard text book...just thought it was cute...