Get That Poetry

A poem a day keeps the doctor away. A storage unit for my favorite poems.

[tapiwamugabe]

…forgive me, you said. I would have dry heaved the words Had i known i was a blunt knife cutting at the hands of time. Had i known i’d spend hours staring at empty skies. ‘If only i’d known’ is a prophet’s lament sittting in whale bile. Had God not abandoned me I’d be saying I adandoned God. Sometimes To cower is the bravest thing after all fear is what the wise dress in. Had i worn any i’d have spared you… waiting..

the apology - Tapiwa Mugabe, tapiwamugabe.tumblr.com

(via tapiwamugabe)

[getthatpoetry]

Moving Forward by Rainer Maria Rilke

The deep parts of my life pour onward, as if the river shores were opening out. It seems that things are more like me now, That I can see farther into paintings. I feel closer to what language can't reach. With my senses, as with birds, I climb into the windy heaven, out of the oak, in the ponds broken off from the sky my falling sinks, as if standing on fishes.

Rilke

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Nothing But Death by Pablo Neruda

There are cemeteries that are lonely, graves full of bones that do not make a sound, the heart moving through a tunnel, in it darkness, darkness, darkness, like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves, as though we were drowning inside our hearts, as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul. And there are corpses, feet made of cold and sticky clay, death is inside the bones, like a barking where there are no dogs, coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere, growing in the damp air like tears of rain. Sometimes I see alone coffins under sail, embarking with the pale dead, with women that have dead hair, with bakers who are as white as angels, and pensive young girls married to notary publics, caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead, the river of dark purple, moving upstream with sails filled out by the sound of death, filled by the sound of death which is silence. Death arrives among all that sound like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it, comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no finger in it, comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no throat. Nevertheless its steps can be heard and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree. I'm not sure, I understand only a little, I can hardly see, but it seems to me that its singing has the color of damp violets, of violets that are at home in the earth, because the face of death is green, and the look death gives is green, with the penetrating dampness of a violet leaf and the somber color of embittered winter. But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom, lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies, death is inside the broom, the broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses, it is the needle of death looking for thread. Death is inside the folding cots: it spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses, in the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out: it blows out a mournful sound that swells the sheets, and the beds go sailing toward a port where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral.

Neruda

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Woman Me by Maya Angelou

Your smile, delicate rumor of peace. Deafening revolutions nestle in the cleavage of your breasts Beggar-Kings and red-ringed Priests seek glory at the meeting of your thighs A grasp of Lions, A lap of lambs.

    Your tears, jeweled     strewn a diadem     caused Pharaohs to ride     deep in the bosom of the     Nile. Southern spas lash fast     their doors upon the night when     winds of death blow down your name     A bride of hurricanes,          A swarm of summer wind.

Your laughter, pealing tall above the bells of ruined cathedrals. Children reach between your teeth for charts to live their lives. A stomp of feet, A bevy of swift hands.

Maya Angelou

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Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may tread me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? 'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops. Weakened by my soulful cries. Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard 'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines Diggin' in my own back yard. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I'll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history's shame I rise Up from a past that's rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.

Maya Angelou

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Refusal by Maya Angelou

Beloved, In what other lives or lands Have I known your lips Your Hands Your Laughter brave Irreverent. Those sweet excesses that I do adore. What surety is there That we will meet again, On other worlds some Future time undated. I defy my body's haste. Without the promise Of one more sweet encounter I will not deign to die.

Maya Angelou

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At First Sight by Sierra DeMulder

When she stops kissing you with her mouth open, find the screw driver. Buy a newly cut shank of beef. Leave so much blood in the kitchen she has to ask what happened. when she stops calling you baby, hide the silverware between the couch cushions. Send her there to sleep. If she does not complain, let the sinks in the bathroom overflow. Bake the wedding photos in the dryer. Stand in the middle of your flood.  Call her name backwards, forwards. Wave your arms like your chest is a runaway. She is the plane you are crashing. When she does not reach for you, pretend it is the first time  you’ve met.

Sierra DeMulder

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I Knew a Woman by Theodore Roethke

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one: The shapes a bright container can contain! Of her choice virtues only gods should speak, Or English poets who grew up on Greek (I'd have them sing in a chorus, cheek to cheek). How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin, She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand; She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin; I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand; She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake, Coming behind her for her pretty sake (But what prodigious mowing we did make). Love likes a gander, and adores a goose: Her full lips pursed, the errant notes to seize; She played it quick, she played it light and loose; My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees; Her several parts could keep a pure repose, Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose (She moved in circles, and those circles moved). Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay: I'm martyr to a motion not my own; What's freedom for? To know eternity. I swear she cast a shadow white as stone. But who would count eternity in days? These old bones live to learn her wanton ways: (I measure time by how a body sways).

Roethke

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Night(This night, agitated by the growing storm) by Rilke

This night, agitated by the growing storm, how it has suddenly expanded its dimensions--, that ordinarily would have gone unnoticed, like a cloth folded, and hidden in the folds of time. Where the stars give resistance it does not stop there, neither does it begin within the forest's depths, nor show upon the surface of my face nor with your appearance. The lamps keep swaying, fully unaware: is our light lying? Is night the only reality that has endured through thousands of years?

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A flame is in my blood by Osip Emilevich Mandelstam

A flame is in my blood burning dry life, to the bone. I do not sing of stone, now, I sing of wood. It is light and coarse: made of a single spar, the oak’s deep heart, and the fisherman’s oar. Drive them deep, the piles: hammer them in tight, around wooden Paradise, where everything is light.

Mandelstam

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How to Eat a Poem by Eva Merriam

Don't be polite.

Bite in.

Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice that may run down your chin.

It is ready and ripe now, whenever you are. You do not need a knife or fork or spoon or plate or napkin or tablecloth.

For there is no core

or stem

or rind

or pit

or seed

or skin

to throw away.

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Love Song by Rainer Maria Rilke

How can I keep my soul in me, so that it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise it high enough, past you, to other things? I would like to shelter it, among remote lost objects, in some dark and silent place that doesn't resonate when your depths resound. Yet everything that touches us, me and you, takes us together like a violin's bow, which draws *one* voice out of two separate strings. Upon what instrument are we two spanned? And what musician holds us in his hand? Oh sweetest song.

Rilke

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Losing by Rainer Maria Rilke

Losing too is still ours; and even forgetting still has a shape in the kingdom of transformation. When something's let go of, it circles; and though we are rarely the center of the circle, it draws around us its unbroken, marvelous curve.

Rilke

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Rumi

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The Perm by Sierra DeMulder

The Perm

The first time my mother stood up to my father, she got her hair permed. He had told her not to, said it was a waste of my hard-earned money.

My father tells me this story while crying. He is softer now, a treadless tire. My mother came home from the salon, and I’ll be damned, if it didn’t look terrible. It killed me, Sierra, I swear to God.

The perm, this first mutter in a soundless room, the first swing of the bat only to find the pinata is a real dog. My mother cried for hours, didn’t speak for a week.

Now, thirty years later, I am a poet and I am telling this story as if it were mine. I am harvesting this splinter. This embarrassing toothache.

I am making my father drag his temper out of storage by the wrist. I am making my mother drive home from the salon over and over and over.

Sierra DeMulder

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Self Portrait by Shinji Moon

There are certain things about myself

that I romanticize, like the way I have Orion's belt on my chin

or the way my grandmother gave me her hands:

gift- wrapped and covered in flour

  Yesterday, I found a birthmark on my inner thigh

of a heart or spilt milk

and this morning I found that

there's nothing that a person can do

to make me feel more beautiful, than to

trace me like I hold

simpler lines

beneath me.

  It's so easy to fool myself into believing that yes,

of course there are constellations on my skin, or

freckles in the night, as if my body

is a pool that reflects the sky.

  But all of this

isn't me being a dreamer,

or a spilt-milk, heart-shaped  romantic.

  It's just me

trying to turn this husk of muscle and dirty fingernails

into something more,

  as something

that I can hold like

my grandmother's hands,

  as something

I can keep closer to me /

that my own flesh.

Shinji Moon

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Remembrance by Maya Angelou

Your hands easy weight, teasing the bees hived in my hair, your smile at the slope of my cheek. On the occasion, you press above me, glowing, spouting readiness, mystery rapes my reason When you have withdrawn your self and the magic, when only the smell of your love lingers between my breasts, then, only then, can I greedily consume your presence.

Maya Angelou