posted June 02, 2005 06:54 PM            

I just took a 20th Century American Poetry course, so I'll share some "newer" stuff that I fell in love with:

I Know A Man


As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking,--John, I

sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what

can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a ******* big car,

drive, he sd, for
christ's sake, look
out where yr going.

posted June 02, 2005 06:56 PM            

Smokey the Bear heads
into the autumn woods
with a red can of gasoline
and a box of wooden matches.

His ranger's hat is cocked
at a disturbing angle.

His brown fur gleams
under the high sun
as his paws, the size
of catcher's mitts,
crackle into the distance.

He is sick of dispensing
warnings to the careless,
the half-wit camper,
the dumbbell hiker.

He is going to show them
how a professional does it.

posted June 02, 2005 08:45 PM              

*********************************************
Fate - Rossetti

two shall be born... the whole wide world apart
and speak in different tongues... and have no thought each
of the other's being... and no heed

and these same two
over unknown seas, to unknown lands, shall cross
escaping wreck, defying death
and all unconsciously
shape each act, and bend each wandering step
to this one end...

that one day, out of darkness
they must meet
and read Life's meaning in each other's eyes

and these same two
along some narrow path of Life shall walk
so nearly side by side
that should one turn, ever so little space
to left... or right
their needs must stand acknowledged, face to face

and yet...

with wistful eyes, that never meet
and groping hands that never clasp
with lips, calling in vain, to ears that never hear
they seek each other all their weary days
and die unsatisfied

... and this is Fate

posted June 02, 2005 09:49 PM              

my girl's tall with hard long eyes
as she stands, with her long hard hands keeping
silence on her dress, good for sleeping
is her long hard body filled with surprise
like a white shocking wire, when she smiles
a hard long smile it sometimes makes
gaily go clean through me tickling aches,
and the weak noise of her eyes easily files
my impatience to an edge--my girl's tall
and taut, with thin legs just like a vine
that's spent all of its life on a garden-wall,
and is going to die. When we grimly go to bed
with these legs she begins to heave and twine
about me, and to kiss my face and head.

posted June 02, 2005 11:00 PM              

You will start out standing
Proud to steal her anything she sees.
You will start out standing
Proud to steal her anything she sees.
But you will wind up peeking through her keyhole
Down upon your knees.

She never stumbles,
She's got no place to fall.
She never stumbles,
She's got no place to fall.
She's nobody's child,
The Law can't touch her at all.

She wears an Egyptian ring
That sparkles before she speaks.
She wears an Egyptian ring
That sparkles before she speaks.
She's a hypnotist collector,
You are a walking antique.

Bow down to her on Sunday,
Salute her when her birthday comes.
Bow down to her on Sunday,
Salute her when her birthday comes.
For Halloween give her a trumpet
And for Christmas, buy her a drum.

posted June 03, 2005 12:10 AM            

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 will easily 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

posted June 03, 2005 04:13 AM              

I think you meant the reference to TINK.....? She introduced me to him. Now one of my faves.

posted June 03, 2005 04:39 PM            

When death
comes for you, my dear,
let him take you
like a candleflame
that is taken
from its wick
by a gentle stir
of wind
smelling of lilac

The Puma

You are mistaken, he said
I am neither lecher nor womanizer.
If I'm crazy about women
it's for the beauty
some pitying devil threw over them,
a beauty that blinds my gaze to everything
except lips eyes breasts
and roils my blood
like a delicious venom.

When the fit is on me
I am their slave, their man Fiday;
they can do with me as they will
and to their absurdest wish
I am as malleable as putty,
more pliant than straw.
For their ally is not beauty alone
but the scantness of sense or purpose
I find in the remotest curved niche
of the universe;
whoever framed its empty immensities
didn't reckon on a man's reason or conscience
or the unassuageable ache in my heart.

Women and poems are my sole chance here
to give expelled breath shape and contour
and fable it with meaning.
I place on the brow of every woman I love
a crown made from the choicest words;
I dress her like a woodland queen
in trope and metaphor.
My desperation blossoms into garlands
braceleting her wrists, my sick despair
into flowering anklets.
I plug the void with my phallus
and making love on bed or carpet
we transfigure pitchblack nothingness
into a tamed puma whose whiskers
we stroke between enrapturing kisses.

posted June 03, 2005 06:38 PM            

Venus In Gemini
By Mary Jo Wevers

Love
in a bookstore.
What could be more enticing?
So many books, so many words.
Ideas flitting off the pages, out of book jackets, over shelves
like clouds of yellow butterflies born away by the wind.
How many can I catch?
I want to collect them all.

I move through the aisles with a quick step,
wings upon my feet.
My hands reach for them:
Psychology
Ornithology
Art history
Mysteries
Romance?
Why not?

I love
the variety,
each new subject,
the details,
the intrigue,
the excitement of it all.
Why settle down in an armchair with just one?
The stack next to my bed proves
I can read more than one at a time.

My arms full of books
I turn turn down another aisle
my eyes on the top shelf
and I run into you.
Each armful of books crashing to the floor,
yours and mine.

Words burst like balloons from our mouths,
while sorting through the mess.
I ask about the journal.
You say you are a writer.
Are you witty?
Are you clever?
Are you curious?
Can we talk?

http://www.creativechoices.com/article/poem/venus_in_gemini.htm

posted June 03, 2005 07:31 PM            

Come to my bedroom
I've scattered fresh buds on the couch,
perfumed my body.
Birth after birth I am your servant,
sleep only with you.
Mira's Lord does not perish—
one glimse of the Dark One
is all she requests.
--------

The plums tasted
sweet to the unlettered desert-tribe girl—
but what manners! To chew into each!
She was ungainly,
low-caste, ill mannered and dirty,
but the gods took the fruit she'd been sucking
Why? She knew how to love.
She might not distinguish
splendour from filth
but she'd tasted the nectar of passion.
Might not know any Veda,
but a chariot swept her away—
now she frolics in heaven, ecstatically bound to her god.
The Lord of Fallen Fools, says Mira,
will save anyone
who can practice rapture like that—
I myself in a previous birth
was a cowherding girl
at Gokul
----

I love these, I have a whole book of them. they're translations of songs by an Indian Princess from the 15th century called Mira. She was so passionately in love about the God Krishna (the 'Dark One') that she scandalously gave up her royal life to wander the streets as a nomad and do nothing but sing these passion-charged love songs to him till she died.

posted June 07, 2005 12:14 AM              

The moon her magic be, big sad face
Of infinity An illuminated clay ball
Manifesting many gentlemanly remarks

She kicks a star, clouds foregather
In Scimitar shape, to round her
Cradle out, upsidedown any old time

You can also let the moon fool you
With imaginary orange-balls
Of blazing imiginary light in fright

As eyeballs, hurt & foregathered,
Wink to the wince of the seeing
Of a little sprightly otay

Which projects spikes of light
Out the round smooth blue balloon
Ball full of mountains and moons

Deep as the ocean, high as the moon,
Low as the lowliest river lagoon
Fish in the Tar and pull in the Spar

Billy de Bud and Hanshan Emperor
And all wall moongazers since
Daniel Machree, Yeats see

Gaze at the moon ocean marking
the face -

In some cases
The moon is you

posted June 07, 2005 12:38 AM              

Woman of Heart and Mind ` Joni Mitchell

posted June 07, 2005 04:40 PM              

Ride the Turtle's Back

A woman grows hard and skinny.
She squeezes into small corners.
Her quick eyes uncover dust and cobwebs.
She reaches out
for flint and sparks fly in the air.
Flames turned loose on fields
burn down to bare seeds
we planted deep.

The corn is white and perfect.
Under its pale, perfect kernels
a rotting cob is betrayal.
It lies in our bloated stomachs.

I lie in Grandmother's bed
and dream the earth into a turtle.
She carries us slowly across the universe.
The sun warms us.
At night the stars do tricks.
The moon caresses us.

We are listening for the sounds of food.

Mother is giving birth, Grandmother says.
Corn whispers.

Earth groans with labor
turning corn yellow in the sun

I lie in Grandmother's bed.

posted June 08, 2005 06:28 PM              

So it's back once more, back up the slope.
Why do they always ruin my rope
With their cuts?
I felt so ready the other day,
Had a real foretaste of eternity
In my guts.

Spoonfeeding me yet another sip
From life's cup.
I don't want it, won't take any more of it,
Let me throw up.

Life is medium-rare and good, I see,
And the world full of soup and bread,
But it won't pass into the blood for me,
Just goes to my head.

It makes me ill, though others it feeds;
Do see that I must deny it!
For a thousand years from now at least
I'm keeping a diet.

posted June 30, 2005 10:45 PM            

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then is is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

posted July 02, 2005 05:18 AM              

LOL