(no subject)

[bmente-inc.livejournal.com]

Hi, I have in mind a poem, and I can't recall the title or author. All I remember is one section, which I can only sketchily paraphrase -- it involved the thought or sight of the person the speaker is addressing being like trees thundering through their head, and a shock of electricity.

If this sounds familiar at all, please tell me what I'm trying to remember.

And a poem, from my only book of poetry:

THE TRIPLE FOOL - John Donne

I am two fooles, I know,
For loving, and for saying so
In whining Poëtry;
But where's that wiseman, that would not be I,
If she would not deny?
Then as th'earths inward narrow crooked lanes
Do purge sea waters fretfull salt away,
I thought, if I could draw my paines,
Through Rimes vexation, I should allay.
Griefe brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For, he tames it, that fetters it in verse.

But when I have done so,
Some man, his art and voice to show,
Doth Set and sing my paine,
And, by delighting many, frees againe
Griefe, which verse did restraine.
To Love, and Griefe tribute of verse belongs,
But not of such as pleases when'tis read,
Both are increased by such songs:
For both their triumphs so are published,
And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three;
Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee.

Love Poem

[chreebomb.livejournal.com]

Love Poem
by Audre Lorde

Speak earth and bless me with what is richest
make sky flow honey out of my hips
rigid as mountains
spread over a valley
carved out by the mouth of rain.

And I knew when I entered her I was
high wind in her forests hollow
fingers whispering sound
honey flowed
from the split cup
impaled on a lance of tongues
on the tips of her breasts on her navel
and my breath
howling into her entrances
through lungs of pain.

Greedy as herring-gulls
or a child
I swing out over the earth
over and over
again.

(no subject)

[junk-journal.livejournal.com]

The Task
by John Ashbery

They are preparing to begin again:
Problems, new pennant up the flagpole
In a predicated romance.

About the time the sun begins to cut laterally across
The Western hemisphere with its shadows, its carnival echoes,
The fugitive lands crowd under separate names.
It is the blankness that follows gaiety, and Everyman must depart
Out there into stranded night, for his destiny
Is to return unfruitful out of the lightness
That passing time evokes. It was only
Cloud-castles, adept to seize the past
And possess it, through hurting. And the way is clear
Now for linear acting into that time
In whose corrosive mass he first discovered how to breathe.

Just look at the filth you've made,
See what you've done.
Yet if these are regrets they stir only lightly
The children playing after supper,
Promise of the pillow and so much in the night to come.
I plan to stay here a little while
For these are moments only, moments of insight,
And there are reaches to be attained,
A last level of anxiety that melts
In becoming, like miles under the pilgrim's feet.

Removal of Neil Gaiman poem post (FYI)

[mehinda.livejournal.com]

I've just removed the Neil Gaiman post from lj_greatpoets after the moderators were contacted by spiderwords.com asking us to delete the protected content from our site. 

William Blake

[fariewolffriend.livejournal.com]

The Tiger, by William Blake

TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

(no subject)

[2much-estrogen.livejournal.com]

The Want Bone
Robert Pinsky

The tongue of the waves tolled in the earth's bell.
Blue rippled and soaked in the fire of blue.
The dried mouthbones of a shark in the hot swale
Gaped on nothing but sand on either side.

The bone tasted of nothing and smelled of nothing,
A scalded toothless harp, uncrushed, unstrung.
The joined arcs made the shape of birth and craving
And the welded-open shape kept mouthing O.

Ossified cords held the corners together
In groined spirals pleated like a summer dress
But where was the limber grin, the gash of pleasure?
Infinitesimal mouths bore it away,

The beach scrubbed and etched and picked it clean.
But O I love you it sings, my little my country
My food my parent my child I want you my own
My flower my fin my life my lightness my O.

Unfolding - Jim Daniels

[projectmatt.livejournal.com]

Unfolding

I grabbed her daily letter, clutched it
like the answer key to the ultimate final
then I sped down M-27 toward home,
one hand steering, the other struggling to tear
the envelope. Sheets folded in fat promise.
My eyes swayed into a metronome: paper, road,
paper, road. In three hours I'd be holding her
but I could have died
reading what she ate for breakfast.

My old dog was dying. Watching him
was like that love. I slept on the floor
curled around him the night he died.
You can't explain about your pets.
People just nod and change the subject.

What country were we living in,
hacking through the tangle of phone lines
and junk mail? We kept our hands in our pockets.
We wore each other's faces on our watches.

She joined me at college the next year
and we broke up two months later.
Five shoeboxes full of letters.
I kept them under my bed.
I still have my dog's collar.

Listen, all I can say is
she had oatmeal for breakfast!
Oatmeal! I could almost taste it.


-Jim Daniels

(found in Artful Dodge)

I found this appropriate :)

[jesuschrist-.livejournal.com]

Hymn by A. R. Ammons

I know if I find you I will have to leave the earth
and go on out
over the sea marshes and the brant in bays
and over the hills of tall hickory
and over the crater lakes and canyons
and on up through the spheres of diminishing air
past the blackset noctilucent clouds
where one wants to stop and look
way past all the light diffusions and bombardments
up farther than the loss of sight
into the unseasonal undifferentiated empty stark

And I know if I find you I will have to stay with the earth
inspecting with thin tools and ground eyes
trusting the microvilli sporangia and simplest
coelenterates
and praying for a nerve cell
with all the soul of my chemical reactions
and going right on down where the eye sees only traces

You are everywhere partial and entire
You are on the inside of everything and on the outside

I walk down the path down the hill where the sweetgum
has begun to ooze spring sap at the cut
and I see how the bark cracks and winds like no other bark
chasmal to my ant-soul running up and down
and if I find you I must go out deep into your
far resolutions
and if I find you I must stay here with the separate leaves