"People Like Us"

[rothslovechild.livejournal.com]

This is a poem Robert Bly wrote in tribute to his friend and fellow poet James Wright, and it's one of the most absolutely heartbreaking poems I've ever read.

(Forgive me, the formatting is a little bit messed up.)

"People Like Us"
by Robert Bly

There are more like us. All over the world
There are confused people, who can't remember
The name of their dog when they wake up, and people
Who love God but can't remember where

He was when they went to sleep. It's
All right. The world cleanses itself this way.
A wrong number occurs to you in the middle
Of the night, you dial it, it rings just in time

To save the house. And the second-story man
Gets the wrong address, where the insomniac lives,
And he's lonely, and they talk, and the thief
Goes back to college. Even in graduate school,

You can wander into the wrong classroom,
And hear great poems lovingly spoken
By the wrong professor. And find your soul,
And greatness has a defender, and even in death
you're safe.

Love in the Winds

[monkeydeathcar.livejournal.com]

When I am standing on a mountain crest,
Or hold the tiller in the dashing spray,
My love of you leaps foaming in my breast,
Shouts with the winds and sweeps to their foray;
My heart bounds with the horses of the sea,         
And plunges in the wild ride of the night,
Flaunts in the teeth of tempest the large glee
That rides out Fate and welcomes gods to fight.
Ho, love, I laugh aloud for love of you,
Glad that our love is fellow to rough weather,—         
No fretful orchid hothoused from the dew,
But hale and hardy as the highland heather,
Rejoicing in the wind that stings and thrills,
Comrade of ocean, playmate of the hills


By Richard Hovey (1864 - 1900)

because you can never have enough e.e. cummings

[thewondergirl.livejournal.com]

sometimes i am alive because with
me her alert treelike body sleeps
which i will feel slowly sharpening
becoming distinct with love slowly,
who in my shoulder sinks sweetly teeth
until we shall attain the Springsmelling
intense large togethercoloured instant


the moment pleasantly frightful


when,her mouth suddenly rising,wholly
begins with mine fiercely to fool
(and from my thighs which shrug and pant
a murdering rain leapingly reaches the
upward singular deepest flower which she
carries in a gesture of her hips)

--e.e. cummings

(no subject)

[seamusd.livejournal.com]

Philip Dacey

Form Rejection Letter

We are sorry we cannot use the enclosed.
We are returning it to you.
We do not mean to imply anything by this.
We would prefer not to be pinned down about this matter.
But we are not keeping--cannot, will not keep--what you sent us.
We did receive it, though, and our returning it to you is a sign of that.
It is not that we minded your sending it to us unasked.
That is happening all the time, they come when we least expect them, when we forget we have needed or might yet need them, and we send them back.
We send this back.
It is not that we minded.
At another time, there is no telling. . .
But this time, it does not suit our present needs.

We wish to make it clear it was not easy receiving it.
It came so encumbered.
And we are busy here.
We did not feel
we could take it on.
We know it would not have ended there.
It would have led to this, and that.
We know about these things.
It is why we are here.
We wait for it. We recognize it when it comes.
Regretfully, this form letter does not allow us to
elaborate why we send it back.
It is not what we wanted.

We hope this does not discourage you. But we would
not want to encourage you falsely.
it requires delicate handling, at this end.
If we had offered it to you,
perhaps you would understand.
But, of course, we did not.
You cannot know what your offering it meant to us,
And we cannot tell you:
There is a form we must adhere to.
It is better for everyone that we use this form.

As to what you do in the future,
we hope we have given you signs,
that you have read them,
that you have not misread them.
We wish we could be more helpful.
But we are busy.
We are busy returning so much.
It all comes so encumbered.
And there is no one here to help.
Our enterprise is a small one.
We are thinking of expanding.
We hope you will send something.

(no subject)

[seamusd.livejournal.com]

Philip Larkin

This Be the Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can.
And don't have any kids yourself.

---

The Trees

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

(no subject)

[seamusd.livejournal.com]

Yusef Komunyakaa

Work

I won't look at her.
My body's been one
Solid motion from sunrise,
Leaning into the lawnmower's
Roar through pine needles
& crabgrass. Tiger-colored
Bumblebees nudge pale blossoms
Till they sway like silent bells
Calling. But I won't look.
Her husband's outside Oxford,
Mississippi, bidding on miles
Of timber. I wonder if he's buying
Faulkner's ghost, if he might run
Into Colonel Sartoris
Along some dusty road.
Their teenage daughter & son sped off
An hour ago in a red Corvette
For the tennis courts,
& the cook, Roberta,
Only works a half day
Saturdays. This antebellum house
Looms behind oak & pine
Like a secret, as quail
Flash through branches.
I won't look at her. Nude
On a hammock among the elephant ears
& ferns, a pitcher of lemonade
Sweating like our skin.
Afternoon burns on the pool
Till everything's blue,
Till I hear Johnny Mathis
Beside her like a whisper.
I work all the quick hooks
Of light, the same unbroken
Rhythm my father taught me
Years ago: Always give
A man a good day's labor.
I won't look. The engine
Pulls me like a dare.
Scent of honeysuckle
Sings black sap through mystery,
Taboo, law, creed, what kills
A fire that is its own heart
Burning open the mouth.
But I won't look
At the insinuation of buds
Tipped with cinnabar.
I'm here, as if I never left,
Stopped in this garden,
Drawn to some Lotus-eater. Pollen
Explodes, but I only smell
Gasoline & oil on my hands,
& can't say why there's this bed
Of crushed narcissus
As if the gods wrestled here.

(from Neon Vernacular. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1993)

(no subject)

[seamusd.livejournal.com]

David Wojahn

Rajah in Babylon

We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof
--Psalm 137

Rajah doesn't like Nirvana but he seems
to tolerate Jimmy Cliff: "The Harder They Come"

is Rachael's little joke, and it's chuffing from her boom box
as Rajah paces, his planetary back-

and-forth, manic orbits, exactly like Rilke's
panther. The bars and his stripes run parallel

and fuse, head abob like a marionette's,
the snare drum of his paws on the cement.

He's fasted for three days and thinks that Rachael's
brought ten pounds of horse meat in her pail,

but his flared puzzled nostrils don't smell a thing
and Noelle bends down to the tranquilizer gun

while Rachael coos endearments meant
to slow him down so Noelle can get a decent shot.

Good Rajah Pretty Rajah Big Rajah-
Eyes wide, he turns, and Noelle aims and fires

and he shrieks and circles faster and we wait
while Jimmy croons that we can get it if we really want.

"Two minutes, tops," says Rachael, and by the time
the song is over he has wobbled and gone down.

He is one four-thousandth of the world's tigers.
To save them takes some drastic measures

and so the cage door's opened and we file
in, Bob and Noelle and Rachael

and me, and the tape slurs on to "Pressure Drop"
while Bob and Noelle strain to turn him on his back,

heaving till he's sprawling belly up,
the Maytals moaning as Rachael wipes

her brow and fumbles with the electro-jack,
a miniature land mine, a low-tech

bristle of hose and wire. The down-sheathed penis
sprouts, pink and man-sized in her rubber gloves

and now the Melodians lay down beside
the Rivers of Babylon. Oh the wicked

carried us away, captivity....The motor's
started, the penis clamped, the tiger

bright burning, his fearful symmetry
sprawled incandescent on the scat-pocked floor. Gingerly

I touch the ribs, the whorled sleeping flank,
stutter of heartbeat, Rachael scowling as she works,

and there we wailed as we / remembered Zion.
And slowly the liquid pearls the flask, churn

and sputter as Rachael grins. Buttermilk
gold, and there we wailed, it streaks

the beaker's glassy walls, brimming and bound
for dry-ice burial, for resurrection in the wild,

Sumatra and some sleeping tigress. By Babylon
we wailed. Applause and the Melodians

fade. The bright liquid flares. Oh Jerusalem,
in this strange land we sing our song.

(from The Falling Hour. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997)

Li-Young Lee

[amberleecarter.livejournal.com]

This Hour And What Is Dead

( Read more... )

Untitled, Kingsley Amis

[moireach.livejournal.com]

Things tell less and less:
The news impersonal
And from afar; no book
Worth wrenching off the shelf.
Liquor brings dizziness
And food discomfort; all
Music sounds thin and tired,
And what picture could earn a look?
The self drowses in the self
Beyond hope of a visitor.
Desire and those desired
Fade, and no matter:
Memories in decay
Annihilate the day.

There once was an answer:
Up at the stroke of seven,
A turn round the garden
(Breathing deep and slow),
Then work, never mind what,
How small, provided that
It serves another's good

But once is long ago
And, tell me, how could
Such an answer be less than wrong,
Be right all along?

Vain echoes, desist

-- Kingsley Amis

[Note: This poem was recently discovered among Amis' papers, previously unpublished.]

(no subject)

[awishfulthinker.livejournal.com]

For an English paper, I must write about Anne Sexton's life and analyze 3 of her poems. I was wondering if anyone could recommend me 3 poems of hers that are stylistically linked in some way.

(no subject)

[amberdawnpullin.livejournal.com]

A Person Who Eats Meat

A person who eats meat
wants to get his teeth into something
A person who does not eat meat
wants to get his teeth into something else
If these thoughts interest you for even a moment
you are lost

- Leonard Cohen