Poetry Please

[anemos]

14

the Present of his Presence
Sept' 09

Around midnight the sun came out and shone bright.
Awesome !
.
I read next day’s newspapers. Nothing was written about it.
Nothings about the moon’s spells and sun’s warmth.
.
Nobody saw that , but me.
And I know nothing about that.
.
Struggling for a word to describe it.

.
Asking my mind, it says “don’t know”
Asking my heart and it says “bliss”

 

[anemos]

20

See


Naked she was standing in front of his eyes
Eyes that penetrate every inch of her body
Eyes that could see under her skin.

She didn’t felt like covering her nudity
Among the sword eyes , his are like sunbeams.
Warm sunbeam caressing her being.

No.

She didn’t want to hide her body
Just laid on the sand
surrendered to the sun’s warmth

No.

She
didn’t hide her tears either.
A river of sadness and joy
Singing a simple song :


You see , you see
YOU see ME.

 

[Sparhawk]

I'm not very inspired to write poetry but I dusted up my copy of Siu's "The Portable Dragon"

Here's what's added to the Judgment of 29:

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 no 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 (1849-1903)

 

[anemos]

Thanks for sharing Luis.

Its the side of 29 which sometimes gets forgotten.

 

[chingching]

Invictus

and I watched the hurricane the other night ...same message, some people lives are far away on the other side of the spectrum to mine, its humbling to say the least.

 

[chingching]

This is an excerpt and one translation of rilke from letters to a young poet.

For it is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively from his own existence. For if we think of this existence of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, a place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and down. Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous insecurity is so much more human which drives the prisoners in Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode. We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us. We are set down in life as in the element to which we best correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we hold still we are, through a happy mimicry, scarcely to be distinguished from all that surrounds us. We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abuses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us. "
- Rainer Maria Rilke

Now that I think of it I may have posted this somewhere in here before.

 

[angeleyes]

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

Pablo Neruda



Since my inspiration seems to ignore me at the moment, I thought I'd share my favourite poem in the past few years...
Beautiful thread..

 

[sooo]

frost candy cane glitter

frittered flaunty fluff

from the plastic cosmetic saucer

shall today wear a happy face

or solemn?


be still this bleating heart

but not too still.​

 

[anemos]

29

Once again ,
time for that grand canyon trip

Steep cliffs
dire waters.
Earth shelters a tent-temple
to bridge the distant heaven.
By the river shore
a tiny plastic boat
the only way out.

Sacred silence.

Sharp rocky knifes
stripping away pretended costumes
Denuded secrets of a scared heart
Streams of fears and tears in arrears
oath chains than never were broken
confined truths that need to be spoken.

Sacred cycle drawn on the sand.
Beginnings and ends
and from the center
Holding her beloved mojo people
listens to her echoes

I'm here, I fear, I dare...

its time
for that grand canyon trip

 

[sooo]

as one good horse follows another

the refined engage the dao

and pass through it

the way the bull passes through the Matador

 

[chingching]

If I could wrap my self in a diamond
and hold my self to the sun
I might sparkle like all the others
and feel apart of everyone.

 

[Trojina]

(but you do sparkle chingching)

 

[chingching]

thank you

 

[anemos]

junk 5

consuming delays
in a pack of Lays
now I can joke
drinking Coke

 

[anemos]

as one good horse follows another

the refined engage the dao

and pass through it

the way the bull passes through the matador

25 ?

 

[sooo]

25 ?

The primary reference is 26.3.

The Matador appears to effortlessly dance with the bull, as if almost invisible. The Matador restrains the bull by connecting with the dao of the bull, rather than fighting brute force with brute force. I realize that bull fighting is considered politically incorrect, but I was referring only to the dancing with the dao of the bull, and compare the Matador spirit with that of the junzi (the refined). There's also a quantum attachment meaning, the Matador's oneness with the bull, and moving through the dao as a medium or oracle.

I'm clumsy with my words today so I hope I explained it well enough.

 

[anemos]

thank you.

Maybe Political incorrect, but what you say reminds me a beautiful scene in one of Almodovar's movies.

 

[anemos]

WORDS IN INUIT

Words in Inuit begin
to rise on the backs
of my hands:
I cannot read them yet,
but I know they are a map
pointing to deeper and colder currents—
a place where each shell is ridged
like the nails on my toes, in wavy lines,
forfeiting the smooth shell
of my mermaid years.

I am becoming more the underwater rock,
more gray, more tan, more white-spotted,
more the deeper oyster,
more the sea monster,
more the fat divine manatee.
I am becoming sea rocks speckled
with snow. Like the seals, my hair
never growing long no matter how long
I grow it.

My hips are round as amphibians.
Oh seal, oh walrus, oh beloved manatee,
we are alike—large creatures with tiny tetas—
and I find these currents and ice
all right, and to my liking.

I feel a moustache coming on;
oh seal-woman, oh walrus-woman,
oh beloved manatee,
I see you more and more in my morning mirror.
Let us slip through the ice floes together;
let us swim out together,
singing up the mapmaker.

The deepest water
lies just ahead.


"Words in Inuit" poem by CP Estés © 1990, 2011, all rights reserved. From La Pasionaria, The Bright Angel manuscript: Collected Poems of Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, 1960-2011. First published in 1993 in The New Censorship poetry journal

 

[hilary]

Brilliant thread!

I just fell over this one and wanted to share it with someone, and lo and behold, Trojan's anticipated my need

Golden Retrievals
by Mark Doty

​

Fetch? Balls and sticks capture my attention
seconds at a time. Catch? I don’t think so.
Bunny, tumbling leaf, a squirrel who’s–oh
joy–actually scared. Sniff the wind, then

​

I’m off again: muck, pond, ditch, residue
of any thrillingly dead thing. And you?
Either you’re sunk in the past, half our walk,
thinking of what you never can bring back,

​

or else you’re off in some fog concerning
–tomorrow, is that what you call it? My work:
to unsnare time’s warp (and woof!), retrieving,
my haze-headed friend, you. This shining bark,

​

a Zen master’s bronzy gong, calls you here,
entirely, now: Bow-wow, bow-wow, bow-wow​

 

[bamboo]

Did you read Mark Doty's book Dog Years? It is great. highly recommended to anyone in love with one of those 'wordless creatures' ...

 

[anemos]

Did you read Mark Doty's book Dog Years? It is great. highly recommended to anyone in love with one of those 'wordless creatures' ...

Never heard of him before . Just read some poems of his. He is amazing !!!

 

[anemos]

Long Point Light
Long Pont's apparitional
this warm spring morning,
the strand a blur of sandy light,


and the square white
of the lighthouse-separated from us
by the bay's ultramarine


as if it were nowhere
we could ever go-gleams
like a tower's ghost, hazing


into the rinsed blue of March,
our last outpost in the huge
indetermination of sea.


It seems cheerful enough,
in the strengthening sunlight,
fixed point accompanying our walk

along the shore. Sometimes I think
it's the where-we-will be,
only not yet, like some visible outcropping


of the afterlife. In the dark
its deeper invitations emerge:
green witness at night's end,


flickering margin of horizon,
marker of safety and limit.
but limitless, the way it calls us,

and where it seems to want us
to come, And so I invite it
into the poem, to speak,

and the lighthouse says:
Here is the world you asked for,
gorgeous and opportune,

here is nine o'clock, harbor-wide,
and a glinting code: promise and warning.
The morning's the size of heaven.

What will you do with it?

Mark Doty



and this one http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/metro-north/

 

[Trojina]

Wind



This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and the wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door . I dared once to look up-
Throught the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guy rope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap:
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.



by Ted Hughes

 

[rodaki]

a recent find, by Jack Gilbert

 

[hilary]

That Ted Hughes poem feels - especially at the end - like 29.

Nordic Spring

All my castles in the air have melted like snow,
all my dreams have flowed like water,
of all I have loved remains only
a blue sky and some pale stars.
The wind stirs soft among the trees.
Emptiness rests. The water is silent.
The old spruce stands awake and thinks
of the white cloud he's kissed in his dream.

Edith Södergran, translated by David Barrett.

​

(yes, shameless plug)

 

[bamboo]

'May there be some beautiful surprise
Waiting for you inside death
Something you never knew or felt,
Which with one simple touch
Absolves you of all loneliness and loss,
As you quicken within the embrace
For which your soul was eternally made.
'May your heart be speechless
At the sight of the truth
Of all your belief had hoped,
Your heart breathless
In the light and lightness
Where each and every thing
Is at last its true self
Within that serene belonging
That dwells beside us
On the other side
Of what we see.'

john O'Donohue

 

[anemos]

An old photo

Trough a crack in the clock
a fugitive minute
free falling.

Fallow autom leaf
landing on the sand
admist fragments of her figure
overclouded by his shadow
while he catches
the light
the moment
and those tiny hands
building sandcastles
without suspicions
-or even a hunch-
of the lurking waves
behind the gloam

The next day, there is no castle
just a moment
caught by a date
and put in a book
where time rules

Today
from the crack in the clock
a rebel moment
reminds what escapes
and what stays still

 

[sooo]

If I live to be a thousand,
and my mind stays curious and sane,
the one mystery I shall never unravel
is the temperament of a dame.

 

[bamboo]

If you live to be a thousand
and your mind stays sane
you will never unravel
the mystery of a dame

But the soul of a woman
unravels in helpless splendour
for the man who, so haunted by curiousity,
trades sanity for foolishness
and dares to lay flowers at the pathway for her feet.

she will follow thee her Lord throughout the world.

 

[sooo]

Her Lord is there no desire to be,
nor for her to follow me.
To trade a thousand years for foolishness
would be insanity indeed.

I’ll willingly accept a lesser mortality,
for there’s nothing so alluring
as an unsolvable mystery.
Even Confucius offered no more than another fifty.