some of my favorite poems

[CrowSingsOver]

Resume by Dorothy Parker

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.


Homage to My Hips by Lucille Clifton

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!


I Shall Paint My Nails Red by Carole Satyamurti

Because a bit of color is a public service.

Because I'm proud of my hands.

Because it will remind me I'm a woman.

Because I will look like a survivor.

Because I can admire them in traffic jams.

Because my daughter will say ugh.

Because my lover will be surprised.

Because it is quicker than dyeing my hair.

Because it is a ten-minute moratorium.

Becuase it is reversible.


What are a few of your favorite poems?

 

[Guest]

Myself, or Tenochtitlan --by James Thomas Stevens


A painted people across the shores
where colours could not occupy
the same space without change.

Can a people remain separate,
affected, yet still individual?
Can I tell you of choirs
greater than your own,
previous to yours,
not here but there.

There, in a desert
with stones for a skyline.
The agave before the opera house,
witnessed voice
converted by passion.
And I didn't sound myself
after you'd carried me to your room.

Polyphonous the breathing,
while Mozart played on.
How continents come together
where histories overlap.

Monotonous rhythms
like sticks against stone
that were played years before
to appease a god or gods,
not to blind with musical virtuosity,
your culture against mine.

This preoccupation,
this return to understand
the music, the conquest.
My body against yours.

 

[CrowSingsOver]

I like that one a lot. It's meaning is clear to anyone who can open there mind up and the desert scenes are beautiful. I like the desert...but only if I don't have to be there! Too hot.

-Crow (heat wimp)

 

[Angeline]

Goethe

I know you won't believe this, but OT and I were recently discussing Goethe (really! and we weren't even in a cake!), so I was doing a little reading and found this wonderful excerpt from his epic Faust.

"What you don't feel, you will not grasp by art,
Unless it wells out of your soul
And with sheer pleasure takes control,
Compelling every listener's heart.
But sit - and sit, and patch and knead,
Cook a ragout, reheat your hashes,
Blow at the sparks and try to breed
A fire out of piles of ashes!
Children and apes may think it great,
If that should titillate your gum,
But from heart to heart you will never create.
If from your heart it does not come."

(from Faust I)

Senna Jawa, wherever you are--this is what you've been saying all along. Who knew you were a modern-day Goethe!

 

[Guest]

One of my favourites.........

COMING

On longer evenings,
Light, chill and yellow,
Bathes the serene
Foreheads of houses.
A thrush sings,
Laurel surrounded
In the deep bare garden,
Its fresh-peeled voice
Astonishing the brickwork.
It will be spring soon,
It will be spring soon-
And I, whose childhood
Is a forgotten boredom,
Feel like a child
Who comes on a scene
Of adult reconciling,
And can understand nothing
But the unusual laughter,
And starts to be happy.

Philip Larkin

 

[Angeline]

Philip Larkin

That was just--sigh--wonderful, GP besides timely. Thanks for posting it! I must get to know Philip Larkin.

 

[Rybka]

Here is one I found for the millenium change. I have grown fonder and fonder of it ever since. I wish it was more frequently known.

The Darkling Thrush

I LEANT upon a coppice gate,
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to me
The Century's corpse outleant,
Its crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind its death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervorless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead,
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited.
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
With blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew,
And I was unaware.

Thomas Hardy - December 31, 1900