This poem is a tribute to a song written by Jake Drew. The melody if it still exists, is his as are many of the phrases.
I don't want to see me “make it."
They say, “Congratulations!” But my future feels naked
When the wind blows, after the sun sets,
The comfort from a top firm doesn't warm the shivering from what comes next.
I show the driver my pass,
Sitting in back, on a paved path to another meaningless class.
Forget success!
If I was courageous, I'd digress,
Drop out of everything, university, society, and welcome sobriety...
Write poetry.
I pull the stop;
And I'm in deep thought.
I see a road not taken in my blind spot.
I'd rather die than fill a cubicle.
Nature's too beautiful. My life should be a musical because
It's so euphoric to wander the trails of an unknown land.
Freedom denigrates my consciousness; my world reeks of non-senses.
My passion? Doesn't include a mansion, or fashion.
I'd rather pull a cart, and hope it pulls what I need.
I'd rather be me.
Life's mine to manage.
The day I never made it, is when I'll make it.
I'm gone.
30 May: "Chinese Dream 14" by Timothy Yu
Race, friends, is boring. Everyone says so.
Hashtag all lives matter, the channel turns,
we ourselves live and turn,
and moreover the TV told me yesterday
(unendingly) ‘Ever to talk about race
means you have no
Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no
Inner Resources, because all I see is race.
People have race,
literature has race, especially great literature,
Henry has race, with his blacks & whites
made up as his feelings
about love & sex & art, which have race.
And our social ills, & sin, in Chinese drag
are somehow a dog
that’s eaten itself, & its tail miserably remains
as our mirror, bone or breaker, heaving
on tide: us, flag.
29 May: "Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" by Sharena Lee Satti
Tears burned my face as they dropped from my eyes
I’ve had enough of such sorrow, deception and lies
It’s cut through my heart and pierced it, more times than I dare to think
I’m letting go I’m falling deep this ship is doomed to sink
I have nothing, I am nothing shall I give you my blood too
For you to sip slowly some kind of strange voodoo
I wish I could go back and change some things in my life
I could have prevented such suffering and strife
I feel stuck at a crossroad but both paths are scribbled out
Tearing my hair out, falling to the floor screaming from the depth of my dear heart filled with doubt
With my head held in my hands, I can’t even try to pretend to illuminate my thoughts anymore
I can’t be the person that everyone uses to clean their dirty floor
Where is my worth, I’m full of soul and pure heart not like your heart full of paper?
Whose words and thoughts vanish into space like vapour?
I leave a trail of loving, sweet, scented petals, filled with life and hope where ever I walk
I encourage others to love deeply and speak only of Good positive things when they talk
Why can others not want the same for me?
Only happy when I’m heavily chained and no way of breaking free
I can’t tiptoe around anymore on broken glass pieces
Just remember your words are like paper once crumpled you can’t take out the creases
Once you speak, your words are here to stay
No matter how many days go by it will always stay that way
I’ve had enough of such sorrow, deception and lies
It’s cut through my heart and pierced it, more times than I dare to think
I’m letting go I’m falling deep this ship is doomed to sink
I have nothing, I am nothing shall I give you my blood too
For you to sip slowly some kind of strange voodoo
I wish I could go back and change some things in my life
I could have prevented such suffering and strife
I feel stuck at a crossroad but both paths are scribbled out
Tearing my hair out, falling to the floor screaming from the depth of my dear heart filled with doubt
With my head held in my hands, I can’t even try to pretend to illuminate my thoughts anymore
I can’t be the person that everyone uses to clean their dirty floor
Where is my worth, I’m full of soul and pure heart not like your heart full of paper?
Whose words and thoughts vanish into space like vapour?
I leave a trail of loving, sweet, scented petals, filled with life and hope where ever I walk
I encourage others to love deeply and speak only of Good positive things when they talk
Why can others not want the same for me?
Only happy when I’m heavily chained and no way of breaking free
I can’t tiptoe around anymore on broken glass pieces
Just remember your words are like paper once crumpled you can’t take out the creases
Once you speak, your words are here to stay
No matter how many days go by it will always stay that way
28 May: "so you want to be a writer?" by Charles Bukowski
if it doesn’t come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don’t do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don’t do it. if you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter searching for words, don’t do it. if you’re doing it for money or fame, don’t do it. if you’re doing it because you want women in your bed, don’t do it. if you have to sit there and rewrite it again and again, don’t do it. if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it, don’t do it. if you’re trying to write like somebody else, forget about it. if you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently. if it never does roar out of you, do something else. if you first have to read it to your wife or your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your parents or to anybody at all, you’re not ready. don’t be like so many writers, don’t be like so many thousands of people who call themselves writers, don’t be dull and boring and pretentious, don’t be consumed with self- love. the libraries of the world have yawned themselves to sleep over your kind. don’t add to that. don’t do it. unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don’t do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don’t do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was.
27 May: "I DIED for beauty, but was scarce" by Emily Dickinson
26 May: "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
24 May: "Oranges" by Gary Soto
The first time I walked
With a girl, I was twelve,
Cold, and weighted down
With two oranges in my jacket.
December. Frost cracking
Beneath my steps, my breath
Before me, then gone,
As I walked toward
Her house, the one whose
Porch light burned yellow
Night and day, in any weather.
A dog barked at me, until
She came out pulling
At her gloves, face bright
With rouge. I smiled,
Touched her shoulder, and led
Her down the street, across
A used car lot and a line
Of newly planted trees,
Until we were breathing
Before a drugstore. We
Entered, the tiny bell
Bringing a saleslady
Down a narrow aisle of goods.
I turned to the candies
Tiered like bleachers,
And asked what she wanted -
Light in her eyes, a smile
Starting at the corners
Of her mouth. I fingered
A nickle in my pocket,
And when she lifted a chocolate
That cost a dime,
I didn’t say anything.
I took the nickle from
My pocket, then an orange,
And set them quietly on
The counter. When I looked up,
The lady’s eyes met mine,
And held them, knowing
Very well what it was all
About.
Outside,
A few cars hissing past,
Fog hanging like old
Coats between the trees.
I took my girl’s hand
In mine for two blocks,
Then released it to let
Her unwrap the chocolate.
I peeled my orange
That was so bright against
The gray of December
That, from some distance,
Someone might have thought
I was making a fire in my hands.
With a girl, I was twelve,
Cold, and weighted down
With two oranges in my jacket.
December. Frost cracking
Beneath my steps, my breath
Before me, then gone,
As I walked toward
Her house, the one whose
Porch light burned yellow
Night and day, in any weather.
A dog barked at me, until
She came out pulling
At her gloves, face bright
With rouge. I smiled,
Touched her shoulder, and led
Her down the street, across
A used car lot and a line
Of newly planted trees,
Until we were breathing
Before a drugstore. We
Entered, the tiny bell
Bringing a saleslady
Down a narrow aisle of goods.
I turned to the candies
Tiered like bleachers,
And asked what she wanted -
Light in her eyes, a smile
Starting at the corners
Of her mouth. I fingered
A nickle in my pocket,
And when she lifted a chocolate
That cost a dime,
I didn’t say anything.
I took the nickle from
My pocket, then an orange,
And set them quietly on
The counter. When I looked up,
The lady’s eyes met mine,
And held them, knowing
Very well what it was all
About.
Outside,
A few cars hissing past,
Fog hanging like old
Coats between the trees.
I took my girl’s hand
In mine for two blocks,
Then released it to let
Her unwrap the chocolate.
I peeled my orange
That was so bright against
The gray of December
That, from some distance,
Someone might have thought
I was making a fire in my hands.
23 May: "A Dream Within a Dream" BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
A Dream Within a Dream
Related Poem Content Details
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
21 May: "Another Reason Why I Don'T Keep A Gun In The House" by Billy Collins
The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.
The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,
and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.
When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton
while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.
The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,
and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.
When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton
while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.
20 May: "That Sure is My Little Dog" by Eleanor Lerman
Yes, indeed, that is my house that I am carrying around on my back like a bullet-proof shell and yes, that sure is my little dog walking a hard road in hard boots. And just wait until you see my girl, chomping on the chains of fate with her mouth full of jagged steel. She’s damn ready and so am I. What else did you expect from the brainiacs of my generation? The survivors, the nonbelievers, the oddball-outs with the Cuban Missile Crisis still sizzling in our blood? Don’t tell me that you bought our act, just because our worried parents (and believe me, we’re nothing like them) taught us how to dress for work and to speak as if we cared about our education. And I guess the music fooled you: you thought we’d keep the party going even to the edge of the abyss. Well, too bad. It’s all yours now. Good luck on the ramparts. What you want to watch for is when the sky shakes itself free of kites and flies away. Have a nice day.
19 May: "Having a Coke with You" by Frank O'Hara
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together for the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together for the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it
18 May: "Eating Poetry" by Mark Strand
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.
The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.
Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.
She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.
I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.
17 May: "On Shakespeare. 1630" by John Milton
What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,
The labor of an age in pilèd stones,
Or that his hallowed relics should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?
Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame,
What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a live-long monument.
For whilst to th’ shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;
And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
16 May: "Hour in which I consider hydrangea" by Simone White
["Hour in which I consider hydrangea"]
Related Poem Content Details
BY SIMONE WHITE
Hour in which I consider hydrangea, a salt or sand plant, varietal, the question of varietals, the diet of every mother I know, 5 pounds feels like 20, I have lost … I have lost, yes, a sense of my own possible beauty, grown external, I externalize beauty. Beauty occurs on the surface of plants; the sun darkens the skin of my child, he is so small, he is beautiful (I can see; it is obvious) and everything about him is beautiful. His hand swells from the bite [spread?] of some insect[’s] venom because he is small. He appears to feel nothing. He smashes his skull against the floor. He screams. I hold him in my lap on the kitchen floor in front of an open freezer, pressing a pack of frozen clay against his forehead. He likes the cold. I see; it is so obvious. Hydrangea. When I move, when I walk pushing my child’s stroller (it is both walking and pushing or hauling, sometimes, also, lifting; it is having another body, an adjunct body composed of errand and weight and tenderness and no small amount of power), I imagine I can feel this small amount of weight, this 5 pounds like 20, interfering with the twitch of every muscle in my body. As an object, a mother is confusing, a middle-aged mother with little spare flesh, I feel every inch of major muscle pulling against gravity and against the weight of my child, now sleeping. This is the hour for thinking hydrangea. Let no man look at me. I stop to brush the drowsy child’s little eye. His face. He barely considers his mother. I am all around him. Why should he consider what is all around him? Perhaps what is missing is a subtle power of differentiation. I am in, therefore, a time of mass apprehensions.
Hour in which I consider hydrangea, a salt or sand plant, varietal, the question of varietals, the diet of every mother I know, 5 pounds feels like 20, I have lost … I have lost, yes, a sense of my own possible beauty, grown external, I externalize beauty. Beauty occurs on the surface of plants; the sun darkens the skin of my child, he is so small, he is beautiful (I can see; it is obvious) and everything about him is beautiful. His hand swells from the bite [spread?] of some insect[’s] venom because he is small. He appears to feel nothing. He smashes his skull against the floor. He screams. I hold him in my lap on the kitchen floor in front of an open freezer, pressing a pack of frozen clay against his forehead. He likes the cold. I see; it is so obvious. Hydrangea. When I move, when I walk pushing my child’s stroller (it is both walking and pushing or hauling, sometimes, also, lifting; it is having another body, an adjunct body composed of errand and weight and tenderness and no small amount of power), I imagine I can feel this small amount of weight, this 5 pounds like 20, interfering with the twitch of every muscle in my body. As an object, a mother is confusing, a middle-aged mother with little spare flesh, I feel every inch of major muscle pulling against gravity and against the weight of my child, now sleeping. This is the hour for thinking hydrangea. Let no man look at me. I stop to brush the drowsy child’s little eye. His face. He barely considers his mother. I am all around him. Why should he consider what is all around him? Perhaps what is missing is a subtle power of differentiation. I am in, therefore, a time of mass apprehensions.
15 May: "Adriaen het Kint" By Joyelle McSweeney
Here is the painting, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, Ms. McSweeney mentions.
"Adriaen het Kint"
11 May: "Sleep" by Annie Matheson
| Sleep |
| By Annie Matheson (1853–1924) |
|
10 May: "The Dawn’s Awake!" by Otto Leland Bohanan
| The Dawn’s Awake! |
| Otto Leland Bohanan |
|
9 May: "From The Grave" by Robert Blair
From The Grave
By Robert Blair
Dull Grave!—thou spoil'st the dance of youthful blood,
Strik'st out the dimple from the cheek of mirth,
And every smirking feature from the face;
Branding our laughter with the name of madness.
Where are the jesters now? the men of health
Complexionally pleasant? Where the droll,
Whose every look and gesture was a joke
To clapping theatres and shouting crowds,
And made even thick-lipp'd musing
Melancholy
To gather up her face into a smile
Before she was aware? Ah! sullen now,
And dumb as the green turf that covers them.
8 May: "I Sing the Battle" by Harry Kemp
I Sing the Battle
I SING the song of the great clean guns that belch forth death at will.
"Ah, but the wailing mothers, the lifeless forms and still!"
I sing the song of the billowing flags, the bugles that cry before.
"Ah, but the skeletons flapping rags, the lips that speak no more!"
I sing the clash of bayonets, of sabres that flash and cleave.
"And wilt thou sing the maimed ones, too, that go with pinnedup sleeve?"
I sing acclaimed generals that bring the victory home.
"Ah, but the broken bodies that drip like honey-comb!"
I sing of hosts triumphant, long ranks of marching men.
"And wilt thou sing the shadowy hosts that never march again?"
7 May: "Lady" by Amy Lowell
Lady
By Amy Lowell
You are beautiful and faded
Like an old opera tune
Played upon a harpsichord;
Or like the sun-flooded silks
Of an eighteenth-century boudoir.
In your eyes
Smoulder the fallen roses of outlived minutes,
And the perfume of your soul
Is vague and suffusing,
With the pungence of sealed spice-jars.
Your half-tones delight me,
And I grow mad with gazing
At your blent colors.
My vigor is a new-minted penny,
Which I cast at your feet.
Gather it up from the dust,
That its sparkle may amuse you.
Like an old opera tune
Played upon a harpsichord;
Or like the sun-flooded silks
Of an eighteenth-century boudoir.
In your eyes
Smoulder the fallen roses of outlived minutes,
And the perfume of your soul
Is vague and suffusing,
With the pungence of sealed spice-jars.
Your half-tones delight me,
And I grow mad with gazing
At your blent colors.
My vigor is a new-minted penny,
Which I cast at your feet.
Gather it up from the dust,
That its sparkle may amuse you.
6 May: "Sketch" by Carl Sandburg
Sketch
By Carl Sandburg
The shadows of the ships
Rock on the crest
In the low blue lustre
Of the tardy and the soft inrolling tide.
A long brown bar at the dip of the sky
Puts an arm of sand in the span of salt.
The lucid and endless wrinkles
Draw in, lapse and withdraw.
Wavelets crumble and white spent bubbles
Wash on the floor of the beach.
Rocking on the crest
In the low blue lustre
Are the shadows of the ships.
Rock on the crest
In the low blue lustre
Of the tardy and the soft inrolling tide.
A long brown bar at the dip of the sky
Puts an arm of sand in the span of salt.
The lucid and endless wrinkles
Draw in, lapse and withdraw.
Wavelets crumble and white spent bubbles
Rocking on the crest
In the low blue lustre
Are the shadows of the ships.
5 May: "Love Calls us to the Things of this World" by Richard Wilbur
The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,And spirited from sleep, the astounded soulHangs for a moment bodiless and simpleAs false dawn.Outside the open windowThe morning air is all awash with angels.Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.Now they are rising together in calm swellsOf halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wearWith the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;Now they are flying in place, conveyingThe terrible speed of their omnipresence, movingAnd staying like white water; and now of a suddenThey swoon down into so rapt a quietThat nobody seems to be there.The soul shrinksFrom all that it is about to remember,From the punctual rape of every blessèd day,And cries,“Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steamAnd clear dances done in the sight of heaven.”Yet, as the sun acknowledgesWith a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,The soul descends once more in bitter loveTo accept the waking body, saying nowIn a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,“Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floatingOf dark habits,keeping their difficult balance.”