Thanks and Also Giving Challenge

[Angeline]

So allow me to be sentimental briefly. (I'll get over it before you start gagging, I promise.) I don't know about you other poets, but this year--in spite of a few deeply crummy life events--has been pretty good for me. Much of that is related to the support I get here from all of you, not to mention laughter and friendship.

Tomorrow is, of course, Thanksgiving in the USA and I guess--in spite of a few deeply crummy national events--it's ok. To those whose family members and other loved ones are overseas, especially those in Iraq and other troubled places, I know we all wish them the best, no matter what our politics. Personally, I'm pro humanity.

Anyway, happy Thanksgiving America, thanks everybody else, and mostly thanks for poetry. It lifts me up on the worst days and makes the best ones even better.

Ok. Pollyanna moment over. Here's the challenge part--

Post poems in this thread that you love, that move you, that you'd like to share with other Literoticans. They can be your own poems, other Litsters', famous peoples', your dog's (ok, probably not your dog's but hey maybe karmadog's, lol), whatever.

Don't make my thread languish now. Get those poems in here.

A Year Older, No Wiser, But Ever Hopeful,
Ange

 

[perks]

I was too young
and that's pretty cliche
but there is nothing usual
about a marine
standing up to his daughter
to keep his granddaughter
in the family

three years of braces
and my first roses
16 for each year of my birth
god, my wedding
each bead on my dress
and every song
I've danced to

the clothes on my back
and all my other parts
the fact
that I can write this poem
with any sort of education

I cannot paint a picture
of you
your strength in my life
I can only know that there
is a God
because you exist

And after this year
where will God be
then?

 

[eagleyez]

Gary Snyder comes to mind

that call from the west.

happy thansgiving Angel-



For All

Ah to be alive
on a mid-September morn
fording a stream
barefoot, pants rolled up,
holding boots, pack on,
sunshine, ice in the shallows,
northern rockies.

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
cold nose dripping
singing inside
creek music, heart music,
smell of sun on gravel.

I pledge allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.

 

[Angeline]

Happy happy

Gary Snyder comes to mind

that call from the west.

happy thansgiving Angel-

That's a lovely choice birdman; I remember that poem. Put Turtle Island on the list.

Here's one for you. I read it recently and really liked it. I bet you will, too. Happy Thanksgiving to you.



The shape of your eyes

The shape of your eyes goes round my heart,
A round of dance and sweetness.
Halo of time, cradle nightly and sure
No longer do I know what I've lived,
Your eyes have not always seen me.
Leaves of day and moss of dew,
Reeds of wind and scented smiles,
Wings lighting up the world,
Boats laden with sky and sea,
Hunters of sound and sources of colour,
Scents the echoes of a covey of dawns
Recumbent on the straw of stars,
As the day depends on innocence
The world relies on your pure sight
All my blood courses in its glance.

~Paul Eluard (1926)

 

[snickertease]

Edit: moved to My thread

 

[jthserra]

Poety...

What always amazes me about poetry is the immense diversity in thought and experience you achieve (often quite by accident) in reading and writing it. I will list two of my favorite poems... one of them I first remember reading way back in the sixth grade (that's like 1966 or 67). The poem shocked me then and to this day it slaps me with its gruesome power.

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

-- Randall Jarrell


The second poem I read just recently in Far Beyond the Field, Haiku by Japanese Women compiled and translated by Makoto Ueda. The haiku by Katsura Nobuko has to be one of the most beautiful and intensely erotic poems I have ever read:


beyond the dark
where I disrobe
an iris in bloom

-- Katsura Nobuko


Stunning...


jim

 

[Angeline]

Forugh Farrokzhad

is a beautiful (in every sense) Iranian poet who died tragically in a car accident at only 32 (in 1967). I discovered her in an anthology about 20 years ago. My forthcoming book, One Window, is named after that first poem of hers I saw--Window. It just spoke to me, and I carried it in my wallet for all those years.

Here's one of her poems. It's a translation from Farsi, and a bit rough imo, but also (I think) very beautiful.

The Wall

With the cold moments of the past fleeting by,
Your wild eyes contained in your silent demeanor
build a wall around me
And I flee from you to a pathless path.
Until I see valleys on the moons dirt
Until I wash my body in the water fountains of light
In a colorful fog of a warm summer morning
I’ll fill my skirt with lilies from the fields
And hear the roar of roosters from the village rooftops
I’m fleeing from you to the very skirts of the valley
Where I’ll press my feet to the ground
Until they sip dewdrops of grass
I’m fleeing from you to a deserted beach
Where on the lost boulders beneath dark clouds
I’ll learn the twisting dance of the ocean’s hurricane
In a far off sunset, like wild doves
I’ll see fields, mountains, and the sky beneath my feet.
And in the midst of dry bushes I’ll hear
the blissful music of field birds.
I’m fleeing from you until I open the path
To the city of desires
And in that city…
The castle of dreams will have a heavy golden lock
But your eyes with their silent scream
Will blur my vision
Like your dark secrets that
Build a wall around me.
At last one day…
I’ll flee from the illusion of conceiving doubt
And I’ll radiate like a perfume from
the colorful flower of dreams
And I’ll diffuse into the wavy hair of night’s zephyr
And travel to the very beaches of the Sun
In a silent world, within an eternity of calmness.
I’ll gently rock on a bed of golden-colored clouds
That extends hand like rays toward the serene sky
As if playing a song.
It is there where I am happy and free
And I weave memories of this world
Because your bewitching eyes
Find my eyes
And blur my vision
Like your dark secrets
That build a wall around me.


Translation by Pari Kooshesh January 2003