31 Jan 2019: "My Heart and I" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I.

ENOUGH ! we're tired, my heart and I.

We sit beside the headstone thus,

And wish that name were carved for us.

The moss reprints more tenderly

The hard types of the mason's knife,

As heaven's sweet life renews earth's life

With which we're tired, my heart and I.

II.

You see we're tired, my heart and I.

We dealt with books, we trusted men,

And in our own blood drenched the pen,

As if such colours could not fly.

We walked too straight for fortune's end,

We loved too true to keep a friend ;

At last we're tired, my heart and I.

III.

How tired we feel, my heart and I !

We seem of no use in the world ;

Our fancies hang grey and uncurled

About men's eyes indifferently ;

Our voice which thrilled you so, will let

You sleep; our tears are only wet :

What do we here, my heart and I ?

IV.

So tired, so tired, my heart and I !

It was not thus in that old time

When Ralph sat with me 'neath the lime

To watch the sunset from the sky.

Dear love, you're looking tired,' he said;

I, smiling at him, shook my head :

'Tis now we're tired, my heart and I.

V.

So tired, so tired, my heart and I !

Though now none takes me on his arm

To fold me close and kiss me warm

Till each quick breath end in a sigh

Of happy languor. Now, alone,

We lean upon this graveyard stone,

Uncheered, unkissed, my heart and I.

VI.

Tired out we are, my heart and I.

Suppose the world brought diadems

To tempt us, crusted with loose gems

Of powers and pleasures ? Let it try.

We scarcely care to look at even

A pretty child, or God's blue heaven,

We feel so tired, my heart and I.

VII.

Yet who complains ? My heart and I ?

In this abundant earth no doubt

Is little room for things worn out :

Disdain them, break them, throw them by

And if before the days grew rough

We once were loved, used, — well enough,

I think, we've fared, my heart and I.

30 Jan 2019: "Kamala" by Hermann Hesse

In the novel Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, the main character Siddhartha creates this poem on the spot for Kamala. Enjoy, Siddhartha is my favorite book. The book was written in German, so these are translations.

"Kamala" (Translators: Gunther Olesch, Anke Dreher, Amy Coulter, Stefan Langer, and Semyon Chaichenets)

Into her shady grove stepped the pretty Kamala,
At the grove's entrance stood the brown Samana.
Deeply, seeing the lotus's blossom,
Bowed that man, and smiling Kamala thanked.
More lovely, thought the young man, than offerings for gods,
More lovely is offering to pretty Kamala.


"Kamala" (Translation by Stanley Appelbaum)

Into her shady grove stepped Kamala,
At the entrance to the grove stood the tanned samana.
When he caught sight of the lotus blossom,
He made a low bow, and Kamala thanked him with a smile.
"More lovely,' thought the young man, 'than sacrifice to the for gods,"
"More lovely it is to sacrifice to the beautiful Kamala."

"Kamala" (Translation by Joachim Neugroschel)

Into her shady grove came beautiful Kamala,
At the entrance stood the brown samana.
Deeply, upon sighting the lotus blossom,
He bowed. Smiling, Kamala thanked him.
Lovelier, thought the youth, than sacrificing to the gods
Lovelier is sacrificing to beautiful Kamala.

29 Jan 2019:"The Bagel" by David Ignatow

"The Bagel" by David Ignatow

I stopped to pick up the bagel
rolling away in the wind,
annoyed with myself
for having dropped it
as if it were a portent.
Faster and faster it rolled,
with me running after it
bent low, gritting my teeth,
and I found myself doubled over
and rolling down the street
head over heels, one complete somersault
after another like a bagel
and strangely happy with myself.

28 Jan 2019: "Why" by Despite_Myself

I read, comment, and post on reddit, and the r/Poerty reddit is my favorite. Someone posted a request for one word prompts. I commented with "why," and Despite_Myself wrote the poem below. I was very impressed and ask if I could share it here. So here it is!


"Why" by Despite_Myself

I cannot give a reason,
For I should not tell a lie
You will deplore the answer
When you implore me, Why?

27 Jan 2019: "Sister Cat" by Frances Mayes

"Sister Cat" by Frances Mayes

Cat stands at the fridge,
Cries loudly for milk.
But I've filled her bowl.
Wild cat, I say, Sister,
Look, you have milk.
I clink my fingernail
Against the rim. Milk.
With down and liver,
A word I know she hears.
Her sad miaow. She runs
To me. She dips
In her whiskers but
Doesn't drink. As sometimes
I want the light on
When it is on. Or when
I saw the woman walking
toward my house and
I thought there's Frances.
Then looked in the car mirror
To be sure. She stalks
The room. She wants. Milk
Beyond milk. World beyond
This one, she cries.

26 Jan 2019: "Fat Is Not a Fairy Tale" by Jane Yolen

"Fat Is Not a Fairy Tale" by Jane Yolen

I am thinking of a fairy tale,
Cinder Elephant,
Sleeping Tubby,
Snow Weight,
where the princess is not
anorexic, wasp-waisted,
flinging herself down the stairs.

I am thinking of a fairy tale,
Hansel and Great,
Repoundsel,
Bounty and the Beast,
where the beauty
has a pillowed breast,
and fingers plump as sausage.

I am thinking of a fairy tale
that is not yet written,
for a teller not yet born,
for a listener not yet conceived,
for a world not yet won,
where everything round is good:
the sun, wheels, cookies, and the princess.

25 Jan 2019: " Football" by Louis Jenkins

I take the snap from the center, fake to the right, fade back...

I've got protection. I've got a receiver open downfield...

What the hell is this? This isn't a football, it's a shoe, a man's

brown leather oxford. A cousin to a football maybe, the same

skin, but not the same, a thing made for the earth, not the air.

I realize that this is a world where anything is possible and I

understand, also, that one often has to make do with what one

has. I have eaten pancakes, for instance, with that clear corn

syrup on them because there was no maple syrup and they

weren't very good. Well, anyway, this is different. (My man

downfield is waving his arms.) One has certain responsibilities,

one has to make choices. This isn't right and I'm not going

to throw it.

24 Jan 2019: "Lesson" by Forrest Hamer

It was 1963 or 4, summer,
and my father was driving our family
from Ft. Hood to North Carolina in our 56 Buick.
We'd been hearing about Klan attacks, and we knew

Mississippi to be more dangerous than usual.
Dark lay hanging from the trees the way moss did,
and when it moaned light against the windows
that night, my father pulled off the road to sleep.

      Noises
that usually woke me from rest afraid of monsters
kept my father awake that night, too,
and I lay in the quiet noticing him listen, learning
that he might not be able always to protect us

from everything and the creatures besides;
perhaps not even from the fury suddenly loud
through my body about his trip from Texas
to settle us home before he would go away

to a place no place in the world
he named Viet Nam. A boy needs a father
with him, I kept thinking, fixed against noise
from the dark.

23 Jan 2019: D. C. Berry "Hamlet Off-Stage: Laetes Cool"

Laertes has groupies, proof he has taste,
has cool. Wears skate-board clothes: elephant pants,
the crotch snagging his knees, tent-size tee-shirt.
He wants the play staged at a roller rink:
him, Fortinbras, and me wearing in-lines,
the rest in quads. And instead of a duel,
we throw ourselves a roller-derby brawl.
Why not? Do something with a little class
to offset the end's cartoon slaughter house.




Here is a brief summary of Hamlet: Hamlet's dad, the king, is killed by his uncle Claudius, who marries Hamlet's mom. The uncle, King Claudius, tries to kill Hamlet. Hamlet kills Laertes father, and at the end of the play Laertes kills Hamlet, and Hamlet kills him and Claudius. Hamlet's mother drinks poison and dies. That's the slaughter house ending.

22 Jan 2019: "At Navajo Monument Valley Tribal School" by Sherman Alexie

"At Navajo Monument Valley Tribal School" (from the photograph by Skeet McAuley)

the football field rises
to meet the mesa. Indian boys
gallop across the grass, against

the beginnings of their body.
On those Saturday afternoons,
unbroken horses gather to watch

their sons growing larger
in the small parts of the world.
Everyone is the quarterback.

There is no thin man in a big hat
writing down all the names
in two columns: winners and losers.

This is the eternal football game,
Indians versus Indians. All the Skins
in the wooden bleachers fancydancing,

stomping red dust straight down
into nothing. Before the game is over,
the eighth-grade girls' track team

comes running, circling the field,
their thin and brown legs echoing
wild horses, wild horses, wild horses.

20 Jan 2019: "Otherwise" by Jane Kenyon

"Otherwise" by Jane Kenyon

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

19 Jan 2019: "A Hunger" by Benjamin Saltman

18 Jan 2019: "The Panic Bird" by Robert Phillips

just flew inside my chest. Some
days it lights inside my brain,
but today it's in my bonehouse,
rattling ribs like a birdcage.

If I saw it coming, I'd fend it
off with machete or baseball bat.
Or grab its scrawny hackled neck,
wring it like a wet dishrag.

But it approaches from behind.
Too late I sense it at my back --
carrion, garbage, excrement.
Once inside me it preens, roosts,

vulture on a public utility pole.
Next it flaps, it cries, it glares,
it rages, it struts, it thrusts
its clacking beak into my liver,

my guts, my heart, rips off strips.
I fill with black blood, black bile.
This may last minutes or days.
Then it lifts sickle-shaped wings,

rises, is gone, leaving a residue --
foul breath, droppings, molted midnight
feathers. And life continues.
And then I'm prey to panic again.

17 Jan 2019: "No Retrun" by William Matthews

I like divorce. I love to compose
letters of resignation; now and then
I send one in and leave in a lemon-
hued Huff or a Snit with four on the floor.
Do you like the scent of hollyhock?
To each his own. I love a burning bridge.

I like to watch the small boat go over
the falls -- it swirls in a circle
like a dog coiling for sleep, and its frail bow
pokes blindly out over the falls' lip
a little and a little more and then
too much, and then the boat's nose dives and butt

flips up so that the boat points doomily
down and the screams of the soon-to-be-dead
last longer by echo than the screamers do.
Let's go to the videotape, the news-
caster intones, and the control room does,
and the boat explodes again and again.

16 Jan 2019: "The Portugues in Mergui" by George Green

Without you I am like the Portuguese in Mergui
who have forgotten their language
but still go to church,
unlike their neighbors, the Salon prates,
who live near the mudbanks
trading pearls for opium.

Without you I am a geopolitical feature
like Lot's wife, who only turned her head
like a doe in the forest
to watch the flaming city
crackle and poof.

Without you I must wait in the neglected park alone,
and though I might need a shoeshine
my bright red sport jacket
lends me the prominence of a woodpecker
and the authority of a rooster.

Without you I have brung a cupcake
for a birthday of Chester Nimitz,
who, reared among the dry hills of Texas,
far from any sea shore,
rose to command the mightiest armada
in the history of the world.

And am I not myself an admiral of the clouds?
As such I now command you to come home.

15 Jan 2019 "In Tornado Weather" by Judith Kerman

In Tornado Weather

wet-ash light
blows across the road
I'm driving with my foot to the floor
sixty miles over flat midwestern highway
driving to hear poetry
the sky ready
to boil over, a lid clamped on
the pressure drops
flattens the landscape further
I watch the horizon for state troopers
think of the wind:
one hundred miles to the west it has
sliced the top off a hospital
smashed two miles of Kalamazoo
nothing anyone will read tonight
is wild enough

By Judith Kerman

14 Jan 2019 "Plague Victims Catapulted Over Walls into Besieged City" by Thomas Lux

Plague Victims Catapulted Over Walls Into Besieged City By Thomas Lux

Early germ
warfare. The dead
hurled this way look like wheels
in the sky. Look: there goes
Larry the Shoemaker, barefoot, over the wall,
and Mary Sausage Stuffer, see how she flies,
and the Hatter twins, both at once, soar
over the parapet, little Tommy's elbow bent
as if in a salute,
and his sister, Mathilde, she follows him,
arms outstretched, through the air,
just as she did
on earth.

13 Jan 2019 "Grammar" by Tony Hoagland

Grammar

Maxine, back from a weekend with her boyfriend,
smiles like a big cat and says
that she's a conjugated verb.
She's been doing the direct object
with a second person pronoun named Phil,
and when she walks into the room,
everybody turns:

some kind of light is coming from her head.
Even the geraniums look curious,
and the bees, if they were here, would buzz
suspiciously around her hair, looking
for the door in her corona.
We're all attracted to the perfume
of fermenting joy,

we've all tried to start a fire,
and one day maybe it will blaze up on its own.
In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty,
and when we see it, what we do is natural:
we take our burned hands
out of our pockets,
and clap.

—Tony Hoagland

12 Jan 2019 "Sentimental Moment or Why Did The Baguette Cross the Road?" by Robert Hershon

Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road?

Don't fill up on bread

I say absent-mindedly

The servings here are huge

My son, whose hair may be

receding a bit, says

Did you really just

say that to me?

What he doesn't know

is that when we're walking

together, when we get

to the curb

I sometimes start to reach

for his hand

—Robert Hershon

11 Jan 2019 "The Old Liberators" by Robert Hedin

The Old Liberators

BY ROBERT HEDIN

Of all the people in the mornings at the mall,   

it’s the old liberators I like best,    

those veterans of the Bulge, Anzio, or Monte Cassino   

I see lost in Automotive or back in Home Repair,    

bored among the paints and power tools.   

Or the really old ones, the ones who are going fast,    

who keep dozing off in the little orchards   

of shade under the distant skylights.   

All around, from one bright rack to another,    

their wives stride big as generals,    

their handbags bulging like ripe fruit.   

They are almost all gone now,    

and with them they are taking the flak    

and fire storms, the names of the old bombing runs.   

Each day a little more of their memory goes out,   

darkens the way a house darkens,    

its rooms quietly filling with evening,   

until nothing but the wind lifts the lace curtains,   

the wind bearing through the empty rooms   

the rich far off scent of gardens   

where just now, this morning,   

light is falling on the wild philodendrons.

10 Jan 2018: "Killing the Animals" by Wesley McNair

The chickens cannot
find their heads
though they search for them,
falling in the grass.
And the great bulls
remain on their knees,
unable to remember
how to stand.
The goats cannot find their voices.
They run quickly
on their sides,
watching the sky.

9 Jan 2018: "Saint Francis and the Sow" by Galway Kinnell

Background: St. Francis of Assisi is considered the patron saint of animals and the environment. He had an interesting life, and is best know for helping the poor, sick, and animals. Little Flowers of St. Francis is a book about Francis of Assisi and his companions.


"Saint Francis and the Sow" by Galway Kinnell

The bud

stands for all things,

even for those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;   

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;   

as Saint Francis

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch   

blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow   

began remembering all down her thick length,   

from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,   

from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine   

down through the great broken heart

to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering   

from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:

the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

8 Jan 2018: "Ye White Antarctic Birds" by Lisa Jarnot

Ye white antarctic birds of upper 57th street,
you gallery of white antarctic birds, you street
with white antarctic birds and cabs and white
antarctic birds you street, ye and you the
street and birds I walk upon the galleries of
streets and birds and longings, you the birds
antarctic of the conversations and the bank
machines, you the atm of longing, the longing
for the atm machines, you the lover of the
banks and me and birds and others too and
cabs, and you the cabs and you the subtle
longing birds and me, and you the
conversations yet antarctic, and soup and
teeming white antarctic birds and you the
books and phones and atms the bank
machines antarctic, and you the banks and
cabs, and him the one I love, and those who
love me not, and all antarctic longings, and all
the birds and cabs and also on the street
antarctic of this longing.

7 Jan 2018: "A Romance for the Wild Turkey" by Paul Zimmer

They are so cowardly and stupid
Indians would not eat them
For fear of assuming their qualities.

The wild turkey always stays close
To home, flapping up into trees
If alarmed, then falling out again.
When shot it explodes like a balloon
Full of blood. It bathes by grinding
Itself in coarse dirt, is incapable
Of passion or anger, knows only
Vague innocence and extreme caution,
Walking around in underbrush
Like a cantilevered question mark,
Retreating at least hint of danger.

I hope when the wild turkey
Dreams at night it flies high up
In gladness under vast islands
Of mute starlight, its silhouette
Vivid in the full moon, guided always
By radiant configurations, high
Over chittering fields of corn
And the trivial fires of men,
Never to land again nor be regarded
As fearful, stupid, and unsure.

6 Jan 2019: "The Summer I Was Sixteen" by Geraldine Connolly

The turquoise pool rose up to meet us,
its slide a silver afterthought down which
we plunged, screaming, into a mirage of bubbles.
We did not exist beyond the gaze of a boy.

Shaking water off our limbs, we lifted
up from ladder rungs across the fern-cool
lip of rim. Afternoon. Oiled and sated,
we sunbathed, rose and paraded the concrete,

danced to the low beat of "Duke of Earl".
Past cherry colas, hot-dogs, Dreamsicles,
we came to the counter where bees staggered
into root beer cups and drowned. We gobbled

cotton candy torches, sweet as furtive kisses,
shared on benches beneath summer shadows.
Cherry. Elm. Sycamore. We spread our chenille
blankets across grass, pressed radios to our ears,

mouthing the old words, then loosened
thin bikini straps and rubbed baby oil with iodine
across sunburned shoulders, tossing a glance
through the chain link at an improbable world.

5 Jan 2019: "Little Father" By Li-Young Lee

I buried my father

in the sky.

Since then, the birds

clean and comb him every morning   

and pull the blanket up to his chin   

every night.

I buried my father underground.   

Since then, my ladders

only climb down,

and all the earth has become a house   

whose rooms are the hours, whose doors   

stand open at evening, receiving   

guest after guest.

Sometimes I see past them

to the tables spread for a wedding feast.

I buried my father in my heart.

Now he grows in me, my strange son,   

my little root who won’t drink milk,   

little pale foot sunk in unheard-of night,   

little clock spring newly wet

in the fire, little grape, parent to the future   

wine, a son the fruit of his own son,   

little father I ransom with my life.

4 Jan 2019: "Did I Miss Anything?" by Tom Wayman

Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours

     Everything. I gave an exam worth
     40 percent of the grade for this term
     and assigned some reading due today
     on which I’m about to hand out a quiz
     worth 50 percent

Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose

     Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
     a shaft of light suddenly descended and an angel
     or other heavenly being appeared
     and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
     to attain divine wisdom in this life and
     the hereafter
     This is the last time the class will meet
     before we disperse to bring the good news to all people  on earth.

Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?

     Everything. Contained in this classroom
     is a microcosm of human experience
     assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
     This is not the only place such an opportunity has been gathered

     but it was one place

     And you weren’t here

3 Jan 2019: "Barbie's Ferrari" by Lynne McMahon

Nothing is quite alien or recognizable at this speed,
Though there is the suggestion of curve, a mutant
Curvature designed, I suppose, to soften or offset
The stiletto toes and karate arms that were too
Angular for her last car, a Corvette as knifed as Barbie
Herself, and not the bloodred of Italian Renaissance.
This is attention. This is detail fitter to sheer
Velocity. For her knees, after all, are locked-
Once fitted into the driving pit, she can only accelerate
Into a future that becomes hauntingly like the past:
Nancy Drew in her yellow roadster, a convertible,
I always imagined, the means to an end
Almost criminal in its freedom, its motherlessness.
For Barbie, too, is innocent of parents, pressing
Her unloved breasts to the masculine wheel, gunning
The turn into the hallway and out over the maiming stairs,
Every jolt slamming her uterus into uselessness, sealed,
Sealed up and preserved, everything about her becoming
Pure Abstraction and the vehicle for Desire: to be Nancy,
To be Barbie, to feel the heaven of Imagination
Breathe its ether on your cheeks, rosying in the slipstream
As the speedster/roadster/Ferrari plummets over the rail
Into ocean of waxed hardwood below.To crash and burn
And be retrieved. To unriddle the crime. To be
Barbie with a plot! That's the soulful; beauty of it.
That's the dreaming child.
Not the dawn of Capital, or the factories of Hong Kong
Reversing the currency in Beijing. Not the ovarian
Moon in eclipse. Just the dreaming child, the orphan,
Turning in slow motion in the air above the bannister,
Less than nothing. It's the car she was born for.
It's Barbie you mourn for.

2 Jan 2019: "Bestiary for the Fingers of My Right Hand" by Charles Simic

According to a google search on "bestiary"

bes·ti·ar·y (/ˈbesCHēˌerē,ˈbēsCHēˌerē/) noun: bestiary; plural noun: bestiaries

a descriptive or anecdotal treatise on various real or mythical kinds of animals, especially a medieval work with a moralizing tone.

 

 

1.
Thumb, loose tooth of a horse.
Rooster to his hens.
Horn of a devil.  Fat worm
They have attached to my flesh
At the time of my birth.
It takes four to hold him down,
Bend him in half, until the bone
Begins to whimper.

Cut him off.  He can take care
Of himself.  Take root in the earth,
Or go hunting with wolves.

2.
The second points the way.
True way.  The path crosses the earth,
The moon and some stars.
Watch, he points further.
He points to himself.

3.
The middle one has backache.
Stiff, still unaccustomed to this life:

An old man at birth.  It's about something
That he had and lost,
That he looks for within my hand,
The way a dog looks
For fleas
With a sharp tooth.

4.
The fourth is mystery.
Sometimes as my hand
Rests on the table
He jumps by himself
As though someone called his name.

After each bone, finger,
I come to him, troubled.

5.
Something stirs in the fifth
Something perpetually at the point
Of birth.  Weak and submissive,
His touch is gentle.
It weighs a tear.
It takes the mote out of the eye.

1 Jan 2019: "Where I Was" by Dan Brown

I was in Princeton of all
Places. My ninth grade class
Was there on a field trip: the usual
Shephaerding from edifice
To edifice-a lot of gray
Stone-winding up, though,
With something a little out of the way;
The opportunity to view
A classic three-acter
At the U's own theater.

The Play I don;t remember much
About: your basis exercise
In wigs and bodices and such.
The memorable thing was
The curtain call. How the one
Coming out was a grim guy
In tweed and tie. How the lone
Lifting of his palm by
Itself extinguished the applause.
How he had "terrible news"-

But not the news I feared. Not
Where to go. Not how
To get there. Now what
To do when you got there-go
Sit against a wall, put
Your head down, clasp your hands
Behind your head, you might shut
Your eyes in case the world ends-
None of that. Maybe he
Was finding it decidedly.

Hard to get the words out,
But what the words amounted to
Wasn't the worst thing: not
Anything that had to do
With going up in a solar hell,
But rather with the President,
A motorcade, a hospital-
With how the evident extent
Of anybody's sudden death
Was elsewhere and over with.