Your Favorite Poem

[LadynStFreknBed]

I'd like to take some time to read some poetry this weekend. What I would really like to see is the favorite poem you have ever written. I'm interested in seeing the poems of which you are most proud or hold sentimental meaning.

I'll kick off the thread with the link to my favorite:

A Dream From Grandpa

This villanelle holds special meaning for me because it is about the recurring dream that I had for years after my grandfather's death.

So, please share. Please provide the poem or link and tell a little about why it is your favorite.

-Sheila

 

[Guest]

My favorites that I've written tend to change with my mood so I chose this one that is a short one as a reply to this thread. It makes me grin reading it now:

quick on the trigger

An artful intent puts
runners in stockings
snapped garters
makes a white
on black abstract
of a velvet Versace

Titled "quick on the trigger"
signed, Yours Truly.​

 

[champagne1982]

You

You are a wonder spoke softly,
lest the angels hear and steal you away,
to make heaven a better place.

You are a dream slept sweetly,
for the pain of living will not touch us,
such beauty is not the day's to spoil.

You are a melody sung early,
a note within the morning,
a song for birds to trill.

You soar them through the sky.

You are my heart heard beating,
sustaining me when you're not near,
a strength, a wonder spoke softly.
__________________________________

This is a favourite, since it's a gushie sentiment and I felt so very, very in love when I wrote it so that every time I read it, I echo back to that first flush of new love.
__________________________________

The Oil Change

He stood beside her,
Tin lizzy in human form,
Massaging her hubs,
With castor oil.
He slowly torqued,
Her grease nipples,
While she tugged,
His air hose,
And opened her brake,
Control valves.

He crawled beneath her,
Giving her chassis,
A twelve point
Inspection.
Her rack and pinion,
Steering nearly drove him,
Off the hoist,
When he heard,
The gears mesh,
Inside her transmission.

She purred when the key,
Was turned in her ignition.
The wetness coursed through
Hoses heated with,
Hydraulic fluids.
Pistons stroking in,
Tight cylinders, sucking,
Squeezing, banging, blowing.
Valves clamouring and splashing
In delightful synchronization.

His satisfaction is,
A job well done,
His reward a well,
Maintained exterior,
A clean interior,
And high viscosity oil.
Next time, maybe an,
Investment in,
Tire rotation,
Will be in order.
__________________________________

That's a fave because of the fun I had with it.
__________________________________

I've picked two of my perrenial favourites, although, I've never written a poem I wish I hadn't and they're all special to me in different ways. There are poems I would never let air in public, not that they're bad or embarassing, just that they are exercises and experiments and some are so personal that I don't need to foist them on readers since, most of the time, a reader will feel obligated to form an opinion on something they've read; for these little panty drawer gems to draw critique isn't required. They've served their purpose and their intended audience (me) learned from them.

I guess what I'm saying is that you could visit my Lit page and read anything there and find my fave poem.

 

[LadynStFreknBed]

Thank you, champ & neo. I really enjoyed what you shared.

 

[Angeline]

I change my mind all the time about my favorite poem. This is a poem I like a lot though. I sent it to New Yorker and the bastards rejected it. Probably too long for them in addition to me being um a poetry nobody. But I like it and it makes me feel like I'm in New York when I read it. Think it's ironic or prophetic that I wrote it before I moved to Maine?

Wanting Snow

i.
Wanting snow wanting
gray anticipation of harbinger
clouds that gather and loom
crackle dry air stinging

until
one flake
and then another
and then still more

fall and group
in floury masses,
filling the air
overtaking the sky

down
down

to grace the ground
in an illusion of purity
to punctuate branches
in complex simplicity

ii.
In fallen snow
life imitates art

white lines cross narrow surfaces
delicate as pen and ink illustrations
skate like a codex on the flight of birds

wider swaths curve to streetlamps
become strangely iridescent play
compelling pools of Sisley light

late at night when my city’s
blanketed expanse is contrasted
with black avenues

Steigliz is reborn
He stalks city streets
camera in hand he captures
the relentless ice.

iii.
Cities in snow are beautiful
sifted drifts rest against
wrought iron spike fences

deadly crystal stilettos
hang half-hid in gables

gargoyles perch bemused
in thin milk mustaches

All this motion
of architecture is rearranged
so that silence
is a map of single footsteps
louder than the clanging
of skyscrapers.

iv.
Early morning
is best for snow walking

silence and solitude
broken by ice
crunched by boots

and tiny peals of glass
where icicles fall

Now I am a steady hiss
of breath puffing pockets
in a gray wool scarf

later I’ll be a face in a window.
swaddled in hot chocolate
and Segovia.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

I'm thinking way, way too hard about this, but I'm going to put something up here eventually. What a nice idea!

bj

 

[Anschul]

I don't have the body of work that some of you have, and I've written a lot of sonnets, but still, this one, written as my son sent me journal entries from his year in northwest China, is my favorite:

Xining, China
by Anschul©

Close your eyes.
Listen.
Sounds like home, honking, clanging,
The dull hum of a million voices.
Breathe.
Smells like home, exhaust,
Food frying, smoking rancid grease.
Too many unbathed people.
Lick lips.
Tastes like...nowhere else.
It's even in the air. Bitter.
The air is thick and gray.
Visceral industrial waste.
Like old Bethlehem.
Open your eyes now and look.
Too crowded streets.
Trolleys. Buses. Too many cars.
Roads. Trains. Bridges. Skyscrapers.
Murals painted on endless concrete villages.
Mosques and temples and cathedrals
Side by side. But not.
Golden arches. Here too?
Many, many people.
Suits. Fashionable shoes. Hand-painted silk ties.
Fine dresses. Leather handbags.
Designer? Maybe.
Maybe not. Maybe made here.
Impossible to tell.
Beyond the skyline, mountains in all directions,
Shrouded in gray-brown air.
Smokestacks above miles of buildings
Making toys for American boys,
Fashions for American girls.
Blazing nights, awash with neon,
Blaring nightclubs, pounding music,
Carny barkers hawking American names.
New York Subway, Manhattan Transfer,
Gold Rush Club, Chicago Midway.
Women wait on every corner.
Scantily-clad, young but haggard.
Amid the hustle, bustle,
Children run with my every step.
When I stop, kneel at my feet
Gazing up with sad brown eyes,
Looking for, hoping for, yuan.
An apple? A banana? he pleads.
Looking at my shoes, A shine?
Speaking barely familiar words.
A puck? she offers, getting the word wrong.
You got money? I got time. Quick puck?
Broken English. But English.
Even the children.
Not the place of newsreels.
Different here, the real country.
Not what the leaders want America to see.
Fueled by American dollars,
The sleeping giant has awakened.

 

[The Mutt]

This poem came from a challenge on this forum; Winter as seen through a window.

I may have written poems more passionate, intimate or intricate, but this was a block of marble that lay on my heart until I carved a medallion out of it. I don't think I ever resisted writing a poem more, and I don't think I've ever honed a poem as much as I did this one.

In fact, I honed it again after I posted it. She wouldn't have stood for gray walls, and she smoked like a stove. Here's the final version:

The white of a newborn snow is illusion;
winter’s true color’s the dead gray of smoke,
in ominous plumes over black ice on highways,
of cigarette nights spent in longing’s cold bed.

The pale white of winter’s the color of absence;
a bone white square on a smoke-yellowed wall,
a diary’s page on her desk by my window,
the white of her lips where red kisses once played.

The year’s longest night heralds winter’s arrival;
the sun flees in tears from a frost-covered grave,
the moon veils its sorrow in clouds thick as woodsmoke,
as red embers fade to the still gray of ashes,

and snow palls the earth in a shroud of white linen
and turns hearts to marble, cold-blooded as thieves.

...
The Color of Absence