I wanna hear a poem

A poem posted daily.

[songsforgorgons]

“After Language” by Chaia Heller, from My Lover Is a Woman: Contemporary Lesbian Love Poems edited by Lesléa Newman (1996).

[astroblob]

Mary Karr, for rainy days. 

[jealousmetaphors]

How to Build an Owl

1.   Decide you must.

2.   Develop deep respect      for feather, bone, claw.

3.   Place your trembling thumb      where the heart will be:      for one hundred hours watch      so you will know      where to put the first feather.

4.   Stay awake forever.      When the bird takes shape      gently pry open its beak      and whisper into it: mouse.

5.   Let it go.

— Kathleen Lynch

[jealousmetaphors]

I Remember

By the first of August the invisible beetles began to snore and the grass was as tough as hemp and was no color--no more than the sand was a color and we had worn our bare feet bare since the twentieth of June and there were times we forgot to wind up your alarm clock and some nights we took our gin warm and neat from old jelly glasses while the sun blew out of sight like a red picture hat and one day I tied my hair back with a ribbon and you said that I looked almost like a puritan lady and what I remember best is that the door to your room was the door to mine.

— Anne Sexton

[jealousmetaphors]

In the Airport

A man called Dad walks by then another one does. Dad, you say and he turns, forever turning, forever being called. Dad, he turns, and looks at you, bewildered, his face a moving wreck of skin, a gravity-bound question mark, a fruit ripped in two, an animal that can't escape the field.

— Eleni Sikélianòs

[jealousmetaphors]

The Moon

You can take the moon by the spoonful or in capsules every two hours. It's useful as a hypnotic and sedative and besides it relieves those who have had too much philosophy. A piece of moon in your purse works better than a rabbit's foot. Helps you find a lover or get rich without anyone knowing, and it staves off doctors and clinics. You can give it to children like candy when they've not gone to sleep, and a few drops of moon in the eyes of the old helps them to die in peace.

Put a new leaf of moon under your pillow and you'll see what you want to. Always carry a little bottle of air of the moon to keep you from drowning. Give the key to the moon to prisoners and the disappointed. For those who are sentenced to death and for those who are sentenced to life there is no better tonic than the moon in precise and regular doses.

— Jaime Sabines Trans. W.S. Merwin

[jealousmetaphors]

Forgetfulness

Forgetfulness is like a song That, freed from beat and measure, wanders. Forgetfulness is like a bird whose wings are reconciled, Outspread and motionless, -- A bird that coasts the wind unwearyingly.

Forgetfulness is rain at night, Or an old house in a forest, -- or a child. Forgetfulness is white, -- white as a blasted tree, And it may stun the sybil into prophecy, Or bury the Gods.

I can remember much forgetfulness

— Hart Crane

[jealousmetaphors]

Five Ways to Kill a Man

There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man. You can make him carry a plank of wood to the top of a hill and nail him to it. To do this properly you require a crowd of people wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one man to hammer the nails home.

Or you can take a length of steel, shaped and chased in a traditional way, and attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears. But for this you need white horses, English trees, men with bows and arrows, at least two flags, a prince, and a castle to hold your banquet in.

Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind allows, blow gas at him. But then you need a mile of mud sliced through with ditches, not to mention black boots, bomb craters, more mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs and some round hats made of steel.

In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly miles above your victim and dispose of him by pressing one small switch. All you then require is an ocean to separate you, two systems of government, a nation's scientists, several factories, a psychopath and land that no-one needs for several years.

These are, as I began, cumbersome ways to kill a man. Simpler, direct, and much more neat is to see that he is living somewhere in the middle of the twentieth century, and leave him there.

— Edwin Brock

[jealousmetaphors]

Doing is Being

To have done’s not enough. To stuff yourself with doing — that’s the game. To name yourself each hour by what’s done, To tabulate your time at sunset’s gun And find yourself in acts You could not know before the facts You wooed from secret self, which much needs wooing, So doing brings it out, Kills doubt by simply jumping, rushing, running Forth to be The new-discovered me. To not do is to die, Or lie about and lie about the things You just might do some day. Away with that! Tomorrow empty stays If no man plays it into being With his motioned way of seeing. Let your body lead your mind – Blood the guide dog to the blind; So then practice and rehearse To find heart-soul’s universe, Knowing that by moving/seeing Proves for all time: Doing’s being!

— Ray Bradbury

[jealousmetaphors]

War Poet

I am the man who looked for peace and found My own eyes barbed. I am the man who groped for words and found An arrow in my hand. I am the builder whose firm walls surround A slipping land. When I grow sick or mad Mock me not nor chain me; When I reach for the wind Cast me not down Though my face is a burnt book And a wasted town.

— Sidney Keynes

[lifeinpoetry]

And I saw the anatomy of the word, the anatomy of the sleeping eye, of the bleeding star at the edge of implosion. Of the mouth as it prays against another mouth. Of the mouth remade into the smallest island of finches. Anatomy of the sea before the land fractured it. Anatomy of the ancient ferns, the reptilian eye of the dark form hovering between them. Anatomy of adagio and of the voice. Anatomy of the prayer in the book laid under the tongue. Anatomy of histories, of each other world entwining with this one— a diagram of light and dark matter stretched across the surface. Everything was veined, everything given shape and bone and muscle to fill it. Everything became mortal but I could hold it. I could hold it, and it held me. I heard each thing stir awake. And I knew the answer. Take this throat, its slender tangle. Then breathe into it.

Sara Eliza Johnson, “How the World Was Made,” Bone Map: Poems (via lifeinpoetry)

[soemily]

[jealousmetaphors]

Patience

'Success is the worst possible thing that could happen to a man like you,' she said, 'because the shiny shoes, and flattery and the self- lubricating slime of affluence would mean you’d never have to face your failure as a human being.'

There was a rude remark I could have made back to her right then and I watched it go by like a bright blue sailboat on a long gray river of silence, watching it until it disappeared around the bend

while I smiled and listened to her talk, thinking it was good to let myself be stabbed by her little spears, because I wanted to see what I was made of

besides fear and the desire to be liked by every person on the goddamn face of the earth —

To tell the truth, I felt a certain satisfaction in taking it,

letting her believe that I was just a little bird opening my mouth and swallowing the medicine she wanted to administer — a mixture of good advice combined with slow-acting poison.

Is it strange to say that there was something beautiful in the sight of her running wild, cut loose in an epileptic fit of telling the truth?

And anyway, she was right about me, that I am prone to certain misconceptions,

that I should never get so big or fat that I can’t look down and see my own naked dirty feet,

which is why I kept smiling and smiling as she talked —.

It was a beautiful day. I felt like crying.

I knew that if I could succeed at being demolished, I could succeed at anything.

— Tony Hoagland

[jealousmetaphors]

Death Is A Door

Death is only an old door Set in a garden wall; On gentle hinges it gives, at dusk When the thrushes call.

Along the linted are green leaves, Beyond the light lies still; Very willing and weary feet Go over that sill.

There is nothing to trouble any heart; Nothing to hurt at all. Death is only a quiet door In an old wall.

— Nancy Byrd Turner

[theoryoflostthings]

And I saw it didn’t matter who had loved me or who I loved. I was alone. The black oily asphalt, the slick beauty of the Iranian attendant, the thickening clouds—nothing was mine. And I understood finally, after a semester of philosophy, a thousand books of poetry, after death and childbirth and the startled cries of men who called out my name as they entered me, I finally believed I was alone, felt it in my actual, visceral heart, heard it echo like a thin bell. And the sounds came back, the slish of tires and footsteps, all the delicate cargo they carried saying thank you and yes. So I paid and climbed into my car as if nothing had happened— as if everything mattered—What else could I do?

Dorianne Laux, excerpt from After Twelve Days of Rain (via theoryoflostthings)

[apoemaday]

Abide

by Jake Adam York

Forgive me if I forget with the birdsong and the day’s last glow folding into the hands of the trees, forgive me the few syllables of the autumn crickets, the year’s last firefly winking like a penny in the shoulder’s weeds if I forget the hour, if I forget the day as the evening star pours out its whiskey over the gravel and asphalt I’ve walked for years alone, if I startle when you put your hand in mine, if I wonder how long your light

[jealousmetaphors]

Bridges

The arteries, red lane on lane, Cover the engineers' new maps: England lies lost to silence now: On bridges, where old roads cross The chasm of the new, the idlers Stand staring down. Philosophers Of the common run, some masticate pipe-stems, And seem not to hear the roar in Albion's veins, As though the quiet, rebegotten as they lean, survived Through them alone, its stewards and sustainers, For all these advancing and disappearing lives.

— Charles Tomlinson