Good Poems
GregD -- Thursday, May 01, 2003 -- 12:25:42 AMPut up a good poem. Tell us what you like about it.
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Someone had earlier posted a poem about a father and daughter that had me in mind of this one that keeps coming back since I've had my own little 8 month-old.
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Egg
by C.G. Hanzlicek
I'm scrambling an egg for my daughter.
"Why are you always whistling?" she asks.
"Because I'm happy."
And it's true,
Though it stuns me to say it aloud,
There was a time when I wouldn't
Have seen it as my future.
It's partly a matter
Of who is there to eat the egg.
The self fallen out of love with itself
Through the tedium of familiarity,
Or this little self,
So curious, so hungry,
Who emerged from the woman I love,
A woman who loves me in a way
I've come to think I deserve,
Now that it arrives from outside me.
Everything changes, we're told,
And now the changes are everywhere:
The house with its morning light
That fills me like a revelation,
The yard with its trees
That cast a bit more shade each summer,
The love of a woman
That both is and isn't confounding,
And the love
Of this clamor of questions at my waist.
Clamor of questions,
You clamor of answers,
Here's your egg.
Oh, thanks, Greg ... now I have to explain to people here at work why my keyboard just shorted out due to excessive salt water dripping into it ... sniff, sniff ... God, that's a heartbreaker.
At the Smithville Methodist Church
by Stephen Dunn
It was supposed to be Arts & Crafts for a week,
but when she came home
with the "Jesus Saves" button, we knew what art
was up, what ancient craft.
She liked her little friends. She liked the songs
they sang when they weren't
twisting and folding paper into dolls.
What could be so bad?
Jesus had been a good man, and putting faith
in good men was what
we had to do to stay this side of cynicism,
that other sadness.
O.K., we said. One week. But when she came home
singing "Jesus loves me,
the Bible tells me so," it was time to talk.
Could we say Jesus
doesn't love you? Could I tell her the Bible
is a good book certain people use
to make you feel bad? We sent her back
without a word.
It had been so long since we believed, so long
since we needed Jesus
as our nemesis and friend, that we thought he was
sufficiently dead,
that our children would think of him like Lincoln
or Thomas Jefferson.
Soon it became clear to us: you can't teach disbelief
to a child,
only wonderful stories, and we hadn't a story
nearly as good.
On parent's night there were the Arts & Crafts
all spread out
like appetizers. Then we took our seats
in the church
and the children sang a song about the Ark,
and Hallelujah
and one in which they had to jump up and down
for Jesus.
I can't remember ever feeling so uncertain
about what's comic, what's serious.
Evolution is magical but devoid of heroes.
You can't say to a child
"Evolution loves you." The story stinks
of extinction and nothing
exciting happens for centuries. I didn't have
a wonderful story for my child
and she was beaming. All the way home in the car
she sang the songs,
occasionally standing up for Jesus.
There was nothing to do
but drive, ride it out, sing along
in silence.
Someone
by Walter de la Mare
Someone came knocking
At my wee, small door;
Someone came knocking,
I'm sure, sure, sure.
I listened, I opened,
I looked to left and right,
But naught there was a-stirring
In the still, dark night.
Only the busy beetle
Tap-tapping in the wall,
Only from the forest
The screech-owl's call,
Only the cricket whistling
While the dewdrops fall,
So I know not who came knocking,
At all, at all, at all.
Oh, I love that. I must read it to Anna.
Sharon Olds
What if God
And what if God had been watching when my mother
came into my bed? What would He have done when her
long adult body rolled on me like a
tongue of lava from the top of the mountain and the
tears jumped from her ducts like hot rocks and my
bed shook with the tremors of the magma and the
deep cracking of my nature across--
what was He? Was He a bison to lower his
thundercloud head and suck His own sex while He
watched us weep and pray to Him or
was He a squirrel, reaching down through the
hole she broke in my shell, squirrel with His
arm in the yolk of my soul up to the elbow,
stirring, stirring the gold? Or was He a
kid in Biology, dissecting me while she
held my split carapace apart so He could
firk out my oblong eggs one by one, was He a
man entering me up to the hilt while she
pried my thighs wide in the starry dark--
she said that all we did was done in His sight so
what was He doing as He saw her weep in my
hair and slip my soul from between my
ribs like a tiny hotel soap, did He
wash his hands of me as I washed my
hands of Him? Is there a God in the house?
Is there a God in the house? Then reach down and
take that woman off that child's body,
take that woman by the nape of the neck like a young cat and
lift her up and deliver her over to me.
From the sublime to the ridiculous..
The following is from the Washington Post Style Invitational contestthat asked readers to submit "instructions" for something (anything),written in the style of a famous person.
The winning entry was The Hokey Pokey (as written by W. Shakespeare).
O proud left foot, that ventures quick within
Then soon upon a backward journey lithe.
Anon, once more the gesture, then begin:
Command sinistral pedestal to writhe.
Commence thou then the fervid Hokey-Poke,
A mad gyration, hips in wanton swirl.
To spin! A wilde release from Heavens yoke.
Blessed dervish! Surely canst go, girl.
The Hoke, the poke -- banish now thy doubt
Verily, I say, 'tis what it's all about.
by William Shakespeare (Jeff Brechlin, Potomac Va.)
That one's always been a favorite -- thanks for posting it.
Oh, that's a good one, Jamie.
This was my favorite reading we used for our wedding ceremony:
From First Poems
Understand, I'll slip quietly
Away from the noisy crowd
When I see the pale
Stars rising, blooming over the oaks.
I'll pursue solitary pathways
Through the pale twilit meadows,
With only this one dream:
You come too.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
Oh, Jamie, that was wonderful! I'd never read "Snake" before. What a powerful poem.
(Hey, bc, you aren't a Montana girl, are you?)
I love this thread.
I always thought this was one of the funniest poems ever. One of my fraternity brothers was in the habit, when bored and tipsy at parties, of declaiming this at the top of his lungs. For some reason, people seemed to think this was a strange thing to do.
Love at Roblin Lake
Al Purdy
My ambition as I remember and
I always remember was always
to make love vulgarly and immensely
as the vulgar elephant doth
and immense reptiles did
in the open air openly
sweating and grunting together
and going
BOING BOING BOING
making
every lunge a hole in the great dark
for summer cottagers to fall into at a later date
and hear inside faintly (like in a football
stadium when the home team loses)
ourselves still softly
going
boing boing boing
as the vulgar elephant doth
and immense reptiles did
in the star-filled places of earth
that I remember we left behind long ago
and forgotten everything after
on our journey into the dark.
Oh, that's great. I'd love to hear him doing the BOINGs.
It's moving besides being funny, one of my favorite combinations.
(It's not beyond doubt that I declaimed this poem myself a time or two after partaking of the Old Falerian. Thus I can tell you that the BOINGs must be done in one's best baritone, practically in a shout. The rest of the lines should be projected so that people can hear you across the street, but the BOINGs need to practically rattle the windows. Also, it helps to be standing on a chair).
Hahahaha. Now I can hear it properly in my head. I love poems that read aloud well. This isn't funny one, but I would fall straight away in love with anyone who read it to me.
eyes
by Regie Gibson
unclothed
you are unconquerable
a smile slanted curved
a moon traveling your face
determined as an ounce of storm
laughing
you are green as southern summer
cotton and clay in your eyes
an arm flung vast and welcoming
an outstretched hand
an open palm
sleeping
you are as small as your mouth
round alive with scent of
slumbering earth
you are there and un-there
a mask of faces
sculpture and un-sculpted stone
a veiled visage of forethought
stretched between forms;
the diurnal finger which
touches me beneath my eyelids
May I be blatantly self-promotional for a moment? The poetry anthology I edited, The Pagan's Muse, is out, and while it's specifically aimed at Pagans, much of the subject matter -- nature, sex, grief, laughter -- is pretty universal. I was blown away by the quality of some of the work I got to publish.
Very cool, cj!
(Deleted message originally posted by Badger on Sunday, August 24, 2003 -- 06:10:49 PM.)
Oh, fantastic stuff, cj! (I am also tickled by 'People also bought books by: Silver Ravenwolf', but that's by the by.)
I didn't know this thread was here, so I'll share a poem I've had on my notice board for abut 8 years now, and which makes me dizzy with remembering all those who have been and gone in my life, and those who have affected me in any way:
The Uninvited, by Dannie Abse
They came into our lives unasked for.
there was light momentarily, a flicker of wings,
a dance, a voice, and then they went out
again, like a light, leaving us not so much
in darkness, but in a different place
and alone as never before
so we have been changed.
and our vision no longer what it was,
and our hopes no longer what they were;
so a piece of us has gone out with them also,
a cold dream subtracted without malice,
the weight of another world added also,
and we did not ask, we did not ask ever
for those who stood smiling
and with flowers before the open door.
We did not beckon them in, they came in uninvited,
the sunset pouring from their shoulders;
so they walked through us as they would through water,
and we are here, in a different place,
changed and incredibly alone,
and we did not know, we do not know ever.
That's haunting.
I was talking earlier today to a friend from my first online community, and we remembered this poem, which I had sent around because it reminded me so much of how things got online sometimes:
At the Party, W.H. Auden
Unrhymed, unrhythmical, the chatter goes:
Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.
Beneath each topic tunelessly discussed
The ground-bass is reciprocal mistrust.
The names in fashion shuttling to and fro
Yield, when deciphered, messages of woe.
You cannot read me like an open book.
I'm more myself than you will ever look.
Will no one listen to my little song?
Perhaps I shan't be with you very long.
A howl for recognition, shrill with fear,
Shakes the jam-packed apartment, but each ear
Is listening to its hearing, so none hear.
Oh, those are both wonderful poems. That Auden one reminds me of my office.
That's true, Marya, but Auden also wrote the funniest death poem I've ever read:
As the poets have mournfully sung
Death takes the innocent young
The rolling in money
The screamingly funny
And those who are very well hung
I first encountered it in a Travis McGee novel, and it led to the reading more Auden.
Lori, that made my morning. Must read more Auden.
The first tagline I ever had- well, actually it was an AOL "personal quote"- was "Thou shalt not live within thy means/Nor on plain water and raw greens." We drove to Massachusetts a couple of years ago and I read Auden to H most of the way, because he'd never read much of him. I am not the greatest poetry reader but we loved it.
The Hollow Man by TS Eliot
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
I think he's kind of melodramatic and not at all a nice person, but his use of language really gets me.
Found this a little over a year ago. Both my kids, all of their friends and dh & I have all played soccer for years. Kids are much better than us adults, of course. But the thing I like the most is watching adolescent boys and girls when they are totally into it. Completely and absolutely in the moment and playing w/ such a lack of self and such a complete abandonment of themselves and their surroundings to the game. It is a wonder to see and this poem reminded me of one perfect adult/kid game we played 2 years ago that was just like that. The young adolescent boys were just such a part of the whole game that it was as if nothing else existed for them at that moment in time.
A Boy Juggling a Soccer Ball
Christopher Merrill
after practice: right foot
to left foot, stepping forward and back,
to right foot and left foot,
and left foot up to his thigh, holding
it on his thigh as he twists
around in a circle, until it rolls
down the inside of his leg,
like a tickle of sweat, not catching
and tapping on the soft
side of his foot, and juggling
once, twice, three times,
hopping on one foot like a jump-roper
in the gym, now trapping
and holding the ball in midair,
balancing it on the instep
of his weak left foot, stepping forward
and forward and back, then
lifting it overhead until it hangs there;
and squaring off his body,
he keeps the ball aloft with a nudge
of his neck, heading it
from side to side, softer and softer,
like a dying refrain,
until the ball, slowing, balances
itself on his hairline,
the hot sun and sweat filling his eyes
as he jiggles this way
and that, then flicking it up gently,
hunching his shoulders
and tilting his head back, he traps it
in the hollow of his neck,
and bending at the waist, sees his shadow,
his dangling T-shirt, the bent
blades of brown grass in summer heat;
and relaxing, the ball slipping
down his back. . .and missing his foot.
He wheels around, he marches
over the ball, as if it were a rock
he stumbled into, and pressing
his left foot against it, he pushes it
against the inside of his right
until it pops into the air, is heeled
over his head--the rainbow!--
and settles on his extended thigh before
rolling over his knee and down
his shin, so he can juggle it again
from his left foot to his right foot
--and right foot to left foot to thigh--
as he wanders, on the last day
of summer, around the empty field.
--Christopher Merrill
From Motion: American Sports Poems, edited by Noah Blaustein. Copyright © 2001 by Christopher Merrill.