The Puissant Pen and the Venomous Ink

Poetry

[puissantpen]

The Heart of a Woman

The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn, As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on, Afar o'er life's turrets and vales does it roam In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home. The heart of a woman falls back with the night, And enters some alien cage in its plight, And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars. 1927 Georgia Douglas Johnson

[puissantpen]

And Then It Was Less Bleak Because We Said So

Today there has been so much talk of things exploding into other things, so much that we all become curious, that we all run outside in to the hot streets and hug. Romance is a grotto of eager stones anticipating light, or a girl whose teeth you can always see. With more sparkle and pop is the only way to live. Your confetti tongue explodes into acid jazz. Small typewriters that other people keep in their eyes click away at all our farewell parties. It is hard to pack for the rest of your life. Someone is always eating cold cucumber noodles. Someone will drop by later to help dismantle some furniture. A lot can go wrong if you sleep or think, but the trees go on waving their broken little hands.

Wendy Xu

[theheatherist]

Ok, usually I don’t post stuff that I have created, and it feels weird to be doing so now, but Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer have said that we should all be making art, even if its bad. Blame them if blame must be assigned.

I love spoken word poetry and the words for this poem were pestering my...

[puissantpen]

Overgrown Garden

Let these books grow around him. Amongst the clods of earth and words ancient fragrances of herbs and thoughts cling to the air, delicate for centuries.

Bookcases tended like a garden of light; pouring poetry where it is needed here, watering with prose read by lamplight there. Every night a nourishing rain floods the hollow places he wanders,

Waiting to be filled with meaning; he treads damp paths of words that lead to hidden forests beyond himself, beyond the borders of being dead, where minds grown still to be read.

Anthony Holness 

(published in Popshot Magazine)

[puissantpen]

Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on a riverbed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees. All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness. All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.

Mary Oliver

[puissantpen]

My real dwelling

My real dwelling Has no pillars And no roof either So rain cannot soak it And wind cannot blow it down!

Ikkyu

[puissantpen]

Fire

Sometimes there would be a fire and I would walk into it and come out unharmed and continue on my way, and for me it was just another thing to have done. As for putting out the fire, I left that to others who would rush into the billowing smoke with brooms and blankets to smother the flames. When they were through they would huddle together to talk of what they had seen-- how lucky they were to have witnessed the lusters of heat, the hushing effect of ashes, but even more to have known the fragrance of burning paper, the sound of words breathing their last.

Mark Strand

[puissantpen]

Autumn Song

Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf How the heart feels a languid grief      Laid on it for a covering,      And how sleep seems a goodly thing In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

And how the swift beat of the brain Falters because it is in vain,      In Autumn at the fall of the leaf      Knowest thou not? And how the chief Of joys seems-- not to suffer pain?

Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf How the soul feels like a dried sheaf      Bound up at length for harvesting,      And how death seems a comely thing In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

[puissantpen]

Autumn

1.

What is sometimes called a    tongue of flame or an arm extended flaming    is only the long red and orange branch of    a green maple in early September   reaching    into the greenest field out of the green woods  at the    edge of which the birch trees appear a little tattered   tired    of sustaining delicacy all through the hot summer   re-    minding everyone (in our family) of a Russian    song   a story by Chekov   or my father

2.

What is sometimes called a    tongue of flame or an arm extended   burning    is only the long red and orange branch of    a green maple in early September   reaching    into the greenest field out of the green woods   at the    edge of which the birch trees appear a little tattered   tired    of sustaining delicacy all through the hot summer   re-    minding everyone  (in our family) of a Russian    song  a story by Chekov or my father on    his own lawn   standing beside his own wood in    the United States of America   saying (in Russian)    this birch is a lovely tree   but among the others    somehow superficial

Grace Paley

[puissantpen]

November Night

Listen... With faint dry sound, Like steps of passing ghosts, The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees And fall.

Adelaide Crapsey

[puissantpen]

That time of year thou mayst in me behold (Sonnet 73)

That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou see'st the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west; Which by and by black night doth take away, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire, That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the deathbed whereon it must expire, Consumed with that which it was nourished by.      This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,      To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

William Shakespeare

[puissantpen]

The Quest

High, hollowed in green above the rocks of reason lies the crater lake whose ice the dreamer breaks to find a summer season.

"He will plunge like a plummet down far into hungry tides" they cry, but as the sea  climbs to a lunar magnet so the dreamer pursues the lake where love resides. 

Denise Levertov

[puissantpen]

Spilt Milk

Two soluble aspirins spore in this glass, their mycelia fruiting the water, which I twist into milkiness. The whole world seems to slide into the drain by my window.

It has rained and rained since you left, the streets black and muscled with water. Out of pain and exhaustion you came into my mouth, covering my tongue with your good and bitter milk.

Now I find you have cashed that cheque. I imagine you  slipping the paper under steel and glass. I sit here in a circle of lamplight, studying women of nine hundred years past.

My hand moves into darkness as I write, The adulterous woman lost her nose and ears; the man was fined. I drain the glass. I still want to return to that hotel room by the station

to hear all night the good trains coming and leaving.

Sarah Maguire

[puissantpen]

We Who Have Loved

We who have loved, alas! may not be friends, Too faint, or yet too fierce the stifled fire, -- A random spark -- and lo! our dread desire Leaps info flame, as though to make amends For chill, blank days, and with strange fury rends The dying embers of Love's funeral pyre. Electric, charged anew, the living wire A burning message through our torpor sends. Could we but pledge with loyal hearts and eyes A friendship worthy of the fair, full past, Now mutilate, and lost beyond recall, Then might a Phoenix from its ashes rise Fit for a soul flight; but we find, aghast, Love must be nothing if not all in all.

Corinne Roosevelt Robinson

[puissantpen]

Moon

Open the book of evening to the page where the moon, always the moon, appears

between two clouds, moving so slowly that hours will seem to have passed before you reach the next page

where the moon, now brighter, lowers a path to lead you away from what you have known

into those places where what you had wished for happens, its lone syllable like a sentence poised

at the edge of sense, waiting for you to say its name once more as you lift your eyes from the page

and close the book, still feeling what it was like to dwell in that light, that sudden paradise of sound.

Mark Strand

[puissantpen]

Autumn Day

Lord: it is time. The summer was immense. Lay your shadows on the sundials, and on the meadows let the winds go free.

Command the last fruits to be full; give them just two more southern days, urge them on to completion and chase the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Who has no house now, will never build one. Who is alone now, will long remain so, will stay awake, read, write long letters and will wander restlessly up and down the tree-lined streets, when the leaves are drifting.

Rainer Maria Rilke translated by Edward Snow

[puissantpen]

Tides

O patient shore, that canst not go to meet Thy love, the restless sea, how comfortest Thou all thy loneliness? Art thou at rest, When, loosing his strong arms from round thy feet, He turns away? Know'st thou, however sweet That other shore may be, that to thy breast He must return? And when in sterner test He folds thee to a heart which does not beat, Wraps thee in ice, and gives no smile, no kiss, To break long wintry days, still dost thou miss Naught from thy trust? Still wait, unfaltering,  The higher, warmer waves which leap in spring? O sweet, wise shore, to be so satisfied! O heart, learn from the shore! Love has a tide!

Helen Hunt Jackson