ABC of Famous Poets

[lucimay]

Mitchell, Joni





Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire

Cold blue steel out of money
One eye for the beat police
Sweet Fire calling
"You can't deny me
Now you know what you need"
Underneath the jungle gym
Hollow grey fire escape thief
Looking for sweet fire
Shadow of lady release

"Come with me
I know the way" she says
"It's down, down, down the dark ladder
Do you want to contact somebody first
Leave someone a letter
You can come now
Or you can come later"

A wristwatch, a ring, a downstairs screamer
Edgy-black cracks of the sky
"Pin cushion prick fix this poor bad dreamer"
"Money" cold shadows reply
Pawnshops crisscrossed and padlocked
Corridors spit on prayers and pleas
Sparks fly up from sweet fire
Black soot of lady release

"Come with me
I know the way" she says
"It's down, down, down the dark ladder
Do you want to contact somebody first
Does it really matter
If you come now
Or if you come on later?"

Red water in the bathroom sink
Fever and the scum brown bowl
Blue steel still begging
But it's indistinct
Someone's hi-fi drumming Jelly Roll
Concrete concentration camp
Bashing in veins for peace
Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire
Fall into Lady Release

"Come with me
I know the way" she says
"It's down, down, down the dark ladder
Do you want to contact somebody first
I mean what does it really matter
You're going to come now
Or you're going to come later"


[major points if you can tell me what this poem (song) is about ]

[dANdeLION]

I thought Q came after P.........

[ussusimiel]

[major points if you can tell me what this poem (song) is about]

Is heroin too obvious an answer?

[dANdeLION]

Suicide.

[ussusimiel]

Queyras, Sina

Acceptable Dissociations

1

Meanwhile the expressway’s hum, it roars into
Her, the expressway cargo and tree-lined, stretched
Radio towers, mowers its horns and hogs, its beef

And bread vans, hour after hour, laptop, radar
Detectors from New Mexico, Idaho potatoes, HoHos
And Cheetos, all organic grain-fed, pieces of chicken,

Pieces of cow, slices of pig, kernals of corn, diced carrot,
All packaged meals, she of drums, her mile after mile
Of interchange escape into itself rest stop, progress

[Ananda]

Yeah, I'd say shooting up. Thedesperation for and the release of the fix.

[lucimay]

I thought Q came after P.........

crap, i was going by last names...and i didnt remember what was prior to realize Q was where i should be. bah! LAST NAMES!

[major points if you can tell me what this poem (song) is about]

Is heroin too obvious an answer?

it's not obvious to most people i don't think but yeah. thats it.

Suicide.

in a manner of speaking cause that's what heroin addiction is.

Yeah, I'd say shooting up. Thedesperation for and the release of the fix.

yep. i guess there's more thinkin people out there than i realized!!

ok i'm gonna double post and continue on.

[lucimay]

been waiting to catch an R so i could post this!

Rich, Adrienne





Aunt Jennifer's Tigers

Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer's fingers fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

[sgt.null]

Gertrude Stein



America by Gertrude Stein

Once in English they said America. Was it English to them.
Once they said Belgian.
We like a fog.
Do you for weather.
Are we brave.
Are we true.
Have we the national colour.
Can we stand ditches.
Can we mean well.
Do we talk together.
Have we red cross.
A great many people speak of feet.
And socks.

[lucimay]

Thomas, Dylan




Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

[ussusimiel]

Uvavnuk

The great sea
frees me, moves me,
as a strong river carries a weed.
Earth and her strong winds
move me, take me away,
and my soul is swept up in joy.

[lucimay]

Villon, Francois



excerpt from The Debate Between Villon and His Heart
(Débat du cœur et du corps de Villon)

... I get the heartache, you the injury and pain
If you were just some poor crazy idiot
I'd be able to make excuses for you
You don't even care, all's one to you, foul or fair
Either your head's harder than a rock
Or you actually prefer misery to honor
Now what do you say to that?—
Once I'm dead I'll rise above it—
God, what comfort—What wise eloquence—
I've nothing more to tell you—I'll survive without it—

[sgt.null]

Oscar Wilde



REQUIESCAT by Oscar Wilde

Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.

All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.

Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.

Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest.

Peace, Peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life's buried here,
Heap earth upon it.

AVIGNON

[deer of the dawn]

Sioux warrior

I am the kit fox
I live in uncertainty
If there is anything difficult
If there is anything dangerous
That is mine.

[lucimay]

Yankevich, Leo





At a Suicide's Grave (1869-1897)

Here where this graveyard comes to a sudden end
you lie forgotten beside a crumbling wall,
yet sometimes at night a nova calls you friend,
and the moon itself recalls your rise and fall.

[sgt.null]

Lisa Zaran



Talking To My Father Whose Ashes Sit In A Closet And Listen by Lisa Zaran

Death is not the final word.
Without ears, my father still listens,
still shrugs his shoulders
whenever I ask a question he doesn't want to answer.

I stand at the closet door, my hand on the knob,
my hip leaning against the frame and ask him
what does he think about the war in Iraq
and how does he feel about his oldest daughter
getting married to a man she met on the Internet.

Without eyes, my father still looks around.
He sees what I am trying to do, sees that I
have grown less passive with his passing,
understands my need for answers only he can provide.

I imagine him drawing a breath, sensing
his lungs once again filling with air, his thoughts ballooning.

[ussusimiel]

Alvi, Moniza

Fish

I envied my wife her nightly visions.
She'd lay each one proudly on the bed

like a plump, iridescent fish,
and ask me to identify it.

Some nights I'd even manage to trap
my own by concentrating hard,

submerging the net into blue-black waters.
I'd place my catch on the rippling sheet.

So we'd have our own two fish, almost
indecent, nuzzling each other's mouths,

soul-fish, awkward in our hands,
hungry, as if our lives were a host

of crumbs to gulp in greedily.
They'd beat their tails very fast

until we could only see the one dream
moving between us, or feel stirring

one enormous fish, with our own lives
grieving, joyful, growing in its belly.

[sgt.null]

Charles Bukowski




To The Whore Who Took My Poems by Charles Bukowski

some say we should keep personal remorse from the
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn't you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems:
I'm not Shakespeare
but sometime simply
there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;
there'll always be mony and whores and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.

[lucimay]

oooo that lisa zaran poem is fabulous sarge!! right on!


Clifton, Lucille



Homage to my Hips

these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top

[sgt.null]

Helen Dunmore

All The Things You Are Not Yet by Helen Dunmore
for tess

Tonight there's a crowd in my head:
all the things you are not yet.
You are words without paper, pages
sighing in summer forests, gardens
where builders stub out their rubble
and plastic oozes its sweat.
All the things you are, you are not yet.

Not yet the lonely window in midwinter
with the whine of tea on an empty stomach,
not yet the heating you can't afford and must wait for,
tamping a coin in on each hour.
Not the gorgeous shush of restaurant doors
and their interiors, always so much smaller.
Not the smell of the newsprint, the blur
on your fingertips — your fame. Not yet

the love you will have for Winter Pearmains
and Chanel No 5 — and then your being unable
to buy both washing-machine and computer
when your baby's due to be born,
and my voice saying, "I'll get you one"
and you frowning, frowning
at walls and surfaces which are not mine —
all this, not yet. Give me your hand,

that small one without a mark of work on it,
the one that's strange to the washing-up bowl
and doesn't know Fairy Liquid for whiskey.
Not yet the moment of your arrival in taxis
at daring destinations, or your being alone at stations
with the skirts of your fashionable clothes flapping
and no money for the telephone.

Not yet the moment when I can give you nothing
so well-folded it fits in an envelope —
a dull letter you won't reread.
Not yet the moment of your assimilation
in that river flowing westward: rivers of clothes,
of dreams, an accent unlike my own
saying to someone I don't know: darling...