Librarians with Attitude @librarianswithattitude - Tumblr Blog

Orchard of Knowing, by Paul Tran

#Paul Tran #Poet #poetry #poem #national poetry month

Haunted, by Nikita Gill

#poetry #poem #poet #Nikita Gill #Haunted

I woke up during a dream at a bad part getting in trouble for enjoying something I shouldn’t which is pretty typical because I have no self control and take advantage of all the pleasure I can like a listening to people sing when they think no one can hear them and having warm toes and eating a freshly plucked raspberry but this one is forbidden and I haven’t been carrying my backpack so I don’t have my notebook to write a poem in so this post on whatever social media platform will have to do

#pleasure #poem #poetry #dreams

Small Kindnesses, by Danusha Lameris

#poetry #poem #poems #reading #National poetry month #danusha lameris

By Alice Walker

#national poetry month #poem of the day #poetry #poem #poet #Alice Walker

Bullet Points by Jericho Brown

I will not shoot myself

In the head, and I will not shoot myself

In the back, and I will not hang myself

With a trashbag, and if I do,

I promise you, I will not do it

In a police car while handcuffed

Or in the jail cell of a town

I only know the name of

Because I have to drive through it

To get home. Yes, I may be at risk,

But I promise you, I trust the maggots

Who live beneath the floorboards

Of my house to do what they must

To any carcass more than I trust

An officer of the law of the land

To shut my eyes like a man

Of God might, or to cover me with a sheet

So clean my mother could have used it

To tuck me in. When I kill me, I will

Do it the same way most Americans do,

I promise you: cigarette smoke

Or a piece of meat on which I choke

Or so broke I freeze

In one of these winters we keep

Calling worst. I promise if you hear

Of me dead anywhere near

A cop, then that cop killed me. He took

Me from us and left my body, which is,

No matter what we’ve been taught,

Greater than the settlement

A city can pay a mother to stop crying,

And more beautiful than the new bullet

Fished from the folds of my brain.

—from The Guardian

#Jericho Brown #national poetry month #poem of the day #poetry #poem

ngalitzine

TWIN PEAKS | 1.01 — “Northwest Passage” (1990)

librarianswithattitude

Happy Easter.

#twin peaks #michael ontkean #kyle maclachlan #david lynch #dale cooper #agent cooper

yesterdaysprint

Eau Claire Leader, Wisconsin, January 31, 1937

#alive at the end of the world #Saeed Jones #NewYorker #New Yorker #poetry #poem

MYSTERIUM LUNAE

A poem for Sunday

By Colm Tóibín

Last night

I saw that the moon

Was empty in the sky.

The stars around did

What they do.

They are

Millions of miles

Away,

Or millions of years,

And are totally exhausted.

But the moon is blank,

Just a space to show

Where it might have

Been. We will tell

Whoever will attend

That the moon used to catch

Light from the sun

And waxed and waned:

Full, sickle, half-

Moon. And the songs:

“Blue Moon,” “Song to the Moon”

(From Rusalka),

“Moon River,” The Dark

Side of the Moon,

The Moon and the Melodies.

It was all the rage, once,

The moon.

It was a large step,

A sad step,

For mankind.

Soon, the sun will run

Out of hydrogen

And it will all

Be gone.

The disappearance

Of the moon

Is just the start.

I am working day and night

On my book,

Knowing it will

Be the final word

On the matter.

I will compose,

With aid from scientists,

A description in concise

Prose, of the time before the bang,

The gorgeous vacancy,

The pre-astral soup,

Gravity dancing like

A herring

On the griddle—oh,

And the sly almostness

Of atoms and particles,

And how long a neutron

Took to be certain

That it was not a proton,

And the war

Between infinity and

Eternity that would have

Gone on forever

Had the world,

Oozing immanence,

Not begun to roll,

With its built-in

Obsolescence,

Its sell-by date,

Its oomph, its ooh-la-la,

Its everything that

Is the case.

It is calm here

Now. Waves have

Stopped, of course.

The sea has settled

Down; soon it will

Be a flyover state.

There is

Nothing to compel

Its tides.

At gatherings, they read

Matthew Arnold’s poem

And marvel

At the lines about the

Sea being calm tonight.

What else is there?

But it wasn’t always calm.

I can swear to that.

I remember

Redondo Beach

And the waves high

And the sun

Going down

Over the horizon.

Strange, I have

No memory of the moon.

But it must have been there

Somewhere.

But, no matter what, you can

Look all you want—

The moon is in the past,

Like analogue,

Or the Western Seaboard,

Or the library at Alexandria,

Or sic transit gloria

Mundi, a lovely

Old saying

Long eclipsed

By more fashionable

Tongues that yet are

Speechless at

The vacancy

In the night sky.

They are

Howling at the

Thing not there,

That we want back

Now, or at least

Soon.

#Colm Tóibín #poetry #national poetry month #books #poem of the day #poem #poet

I SCARED A LIZARD AND A LIZARD SCARED ME, by ME

I’m sorry I

stepped off the patio

And too close to you

Hiding in the bushes.

When you scuttled away

And the leaves rustled loudly

I was startled and jumped back a little.

You were scared again

And the leaves rustled again

And I caught a glimpse of you

Staring back at me before

You got the hell out of there.

Oneness by Thich Nhat Hanh

The moment I die,

I will try to come back to you

as quickly as possible.

I promise it will not take long.

Isn’t it true

I am already with you,

as I die each moment?

I come back to you

in every moment.

Just look,

Feel my presence.

If you want to cry,

please cry.

And know

That I will cry with you.

The tears you shed

will heal us both.

Your tears are mine.

The earth I tread this morning

transcends history.

Spring and Winter are both present in the moment.

The young leaf and the dead leaf are really one.

My feet touch deathlessness,

and my feet are yours.

Walk with me now.

Let us enter the dimension of oneness

And see the cherry tree blossom in Winter.

Why should we talk about death?

I don’t need to die

to be back with you.

In Call Me by My True Names by Thich Nhat Hanh (1993)

#thich nhat hanh #poetry #poem #national poetry month #oneness #buddhism

Feeding the Worms, by Danusha Lameris

Ever since I found out that earth worms have taste buds

All over the delicate pink strings of their bodies,

I pause dropping apple peels into the compost bin, imagine

The dark, writhing ecstasy, the sweetness of apples

permeating their pores. I offer beets and parsley,

Avocado, and melon, the feathery tops of carrots.

I’d always thought theirs a menial life, eyeless and hidden,

Almost vulgar—though now, it seems, they bear a pleasure

So sublime, so decadent, I want to contribute however I can,

Forgetting, a moment, my place on the menu.

#danusha lemaris #feeding the worms #poem #poetry #national poetry month #April

i never saw my mother

walk on water but

i saw her wait for the bus

in the snow to pay the rent

we define holy differently

#poem #poetry #poems #national poetry month #joél leon #Twitter poem

Saddam Hussein in a ten year old’s mind.

I wrote a poem about Saddam Hussein when I was 10 years old. I grew up in a small, rural, conservative place so all of the flag waving, yellow-ribbon wearing and pro-troops rhetoric had it’s influence. I’m not saying I was wrong about him being a baddy, I’m just saying MAYBE things were more complicated than my 10-year old mind could have imagined.

It was published in an insert in our local, small town newspaper, something to do with the school. So that makes me a published poet, I guess.

#poetry #poem #poems #national poetry month