Leonard Cohen

[guitargrrl.livejournal.com]

two poems about poetry by him:



You tell me that silence
is nearer to peace than poems
but if for my gift
I brought you silence
(for I know silence)
you would say
This is not silence
this is another poem
and you would hand it back to me.

-Leonard Cohen



This is the only poem
I can read
I am the only one
can write it
I didn't kill myself
when things went wrong
I didn't turn
to drugs or teaching
I tried to sleep
but when I couldn't sleep
I learned to write
I learned to write
what might be read
on nights like this
by one like me

-Leonard Cohen

(no subject)

[agata.livejournal.com]

Fantasy and Conversation by Audre Lorde

Speckled frogs leap from my mouth
to drown in the coffee
between our wisdoms
and decisions

I could smile
and turn these frogs in to pearls
speak of love, our making
our giving.
And if the spell works
shall I break down
or build what is bropken
into a new house
shook with confusion

Shall I strike
before our magic
turns colour?

After Making Love

[skopparakringla.livejournal.com]

No one should ask the other,
"What were you thinking?"

No one, that is,
who doesn't want to hear about the past

and its inhabitants,
or the strange loneliness of the present

filled, even as it may be, with pleasure,
or those snapshots

of the future, different heads
on different bodies.

Some people actually desire honesty.
They must never have broken

into their own solitary houses
after having misplaced the key,

never seen with an intruder's eyes
what is theirs.

- Stephen Dunn

(no subject)

[eat-you-up.livejournal.com]

Rain, by Hone Tuwhare

I can hear you
making small holes
in the silence
rain

If I were deaf
the pores of my skin
would open to you
and shut

And I
should know you
by the lick of you
if I were blind

the something
special smell of you
when the sun cakes
the ground

the steady
drum-roll sound
you make
when the wind drops

But if I
should not hear
smell or feel or see
you

you would still
define me
disperse me
wash over me
rain

(no subject)

[oheunoia.livejournal.com]

Pursuit
by Stephen Dobyns

Each thing I do I rush through so I can do
something else. In such a way do the days pass -
a blend of stock car racing and the never
ending building of a gothic cathedral.
Through the windows of my speeding car, I see
all that I love falling away: books unread,
jokes untold, landscapes unvisited. And why?
What treasure do I expect in my future?
Rather it is the confusion of childhood
loping behind me, the chaos in the mind,
the failure chipping away at each success.
Glancing over my shoulder I see its shape
and so move forward, as someone in the woods
at night might hear the sound of approaching feet
and stop to listen, then, instead of silence
he hears some creature trying to be silent.
What else can he do but run? Rushing blindly
down the path, stumbling, struck in the face by sticks;
the other ever closer, yet not really
hurrying or out of breath, teasing its kill.

"A short history of dogma"

[theblankpaper.livejournal.com]

Light gathers moths
as saints swell churches.

The light blown out,
what moths remain
make doctrines of the dark,
and rest their wings
in ashes.

-Gene Fendt

just a piece from a larger work

[chillguru.livejournal.com]

"Our souls (which to advance their state
Were gone out) hung 'twixt her and me.
And whilst our souls negotiate there,
We like sepulchral statues lay;
All day, the same our postures were,
And we said nothing, all the day.
If any, so by love refin'd
That the soul's language understood,
And by good love were grown all mind,
Within convenient distance stood,
He (though he knew not which soul spake,
Because both meant, both spake the same)
Might thence a new concoction make
And part far purer then he came."

-from "The Ecstasy" by John Donne

e.e. cummings

[summerstarlight.livejournal.com]

l(a

le
af

fa
ll
s)

one
l
iness

♥