A Valediction of My Name In the Window

[22by7.livejournal.com]

I.

MY name engraved herein
Doth contribute my firmness to this glass,
Which ever since that charm hath been
As hard, as that which graved it was ;
Thine eye will give it price enough, to mock
The diamonds of either rock.


II.

'Tis much that glass should be
As all-confessing, and through-shine as I ;
'Tis more that it shows thee to thee,
And clear reflects thee to thine eye.
But all such rules love's magic can undo ;
Here you see me, and I am you.


III.

As no one point, nor dash,
Which are but accessories to this name,
The showers and tempests can outwash
So shall all times find me the same ;
You this entireness better may fulfill,
Who have the pattern with you still.

( continued )

-- John Donne.

Alligator Poem- Mary Oliver- 1992

[thoughtsonitall.livejournal.com]

I knelt down
at the edge of the water
and if the white birds standing
in the tops of the trees whistled any warning
I didn't understand,
I drank up to the very moment it came
crashing toward me,
it's tail flailing
like a bundle of swords,
slashing the grass,
and the inside of its cradle shaped mouth
gaping,
and rimmed with teeth--
and that's how I almost died
of foolishness
in beautiful Florida.
But I didn't.
I leaped aside, and fell,
and it streamed past me, crushing everything in its path
as it swept down to the water
and threw itself in,
and, in the end,
this isn't a poem about foolishness
but about how I rose from the ground
and saw the world as if for the second time,
the way it really is.
The water, that circle of shattered glass,
healed itself with a slow whisper
and lay back
with the back-lit light of polished steel,
and the birds, in the endless waterfalls of the trees,
shook open the snowy pleats of their wings, and drifted away,
while, for a keepsake, and the steady myself,
I reached out,
I picked the wild flowers from the grass around me--
blue stars
and blood-red trumpets
on long green stems--
for hours in my trembling hands they glittered
like fire.

( Poppies )

(no subject)

[seamusd.livejournal.com]

David Rivard

1966

Innocence? Soon as you try putting your finger on it
it zips off, a blur, like a slot car
plastered with oil and tire company decals,
like the low-slung Formula One winners that two boys,
thirteen, race over banked curves
and flats colored the tarmac gray of thunder clouds --
a track the olive-skinned boy built to mimic
the Daytona Grand Prix. Cool basement air,
ozone rasp of electric motors;
they hunch juicing the cars with black joysticks.

Across the room under old magazines is a book.
But the dark kid -- he's pudgy, his mother says "baby fat" --
well, he can't decide to tell his friend
about it. And beneath this debate with himself
swim images of sullen fashion models
from the book's trashy, softcore, uptown romances.
Words, vaguely glamorous, like valium,
coitus interruptus, pouting girls, naked, half-naked,
all riding surging currents of possessiveness
or shame or ache until they fuse, inevitably,
into need. The need he feels, however
confusing, for secret. So that he bursts out, laughing,
punching, happily blaming the other boy
when, at a crisscross, their sleek racers smash up.

Later, his friend, a sandy-haired wiseass,
stands near the workbench littered by airplane kits,
plastic carcasses. He fiddles with a crimped tube of epoxy.
Hung on a string, a camouflage-
coated B-52 banks above his head. Above a valley
and burning trucks and bodies, fires blending with sunlight
while the sun passes on to the next wilderness or pasture.
And, if only to buy that last line,
two boys smear the inside of a Stop & Shop bag with glue.
All right, says one, stick your head in.
Doesn't the darker boy tip his face to the sack?
Soon his chubby little heart seems to slam
not just in his chest but within the dim bag,
as, each long breath, the bag collapses and swells,
as if his heart pleads to punch out an opening, a hole.
Soon it does, soon
the fragrant and careless light streams in.



(from Torque, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988)

(no subject)

[seamusd.livejournal.com]

Wallace Stevens

Sunday Morning

1

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.
( Read more... )

Confessions of a Pseudo-Chicana, Liz Gonzalez

[chreebomb.livejournal.com]

Liz Gonzalez
CONFESSIONS OF A PSEUDO-CHICANA

Forgive me Our Lady Virgen of Guadalupe
for I have offended you.
It has been eight months since I last lit a votive
or ate a bowl of menudo. These are my sins:

I didn't taste chile until I was 18.
Mama raised us on Hamburger Helper and macaroni & cheese.
She never even made a pot of beans.

I learned how to make tortillas from Mrs. MacDougal
in Home Ec.
Mama still has the recipe.

In high school I bonged with Allman Brother look-alikes
and rocked out to Lynyrd Skynard
instead of suavecitoing to Malo & El Chicano.

After dancing at forty-nine weddings
I still don't know what the lyrics to Sabon A Mi mean.
(I can't even speak fluent Spanglish.)

Most of my friends who carry green cards
flew in from the blue-eyed countries.

The closest I got to a protest march
was rushing the gates at the Lilith fair.

My biggest sin -- I buy grapes. But only
organically grown from Wild Oats.

Forgive me Madre Maria.
I was brought up by a mama who thought Chicana
was a dirty word, and a grandma
who claims she's Italian.

Help me from turning into a vendida with blue contacts.

Help me remember that great grandpa's sweat
glistens on the metal of Santa Fe railroad tracks,

that good old boys brand and corral my cousins
like cattle they own and slaughter,

and inside a malquiladona Nina's
stitch arthritis into their fingers,
Tio's skin, eyes, lungs get fumigated with pesticides.
Madre Maria, instead of kindling candles with your image
to look cool,
I'll light the wick in remembrance of them.

a request + Roy Jacobstein

[orneryhipster.livejournal.com]

i'm looking for a poem about the Virgin Mary, but something non-devotional. i'd prefer something modern, edgy, even -gasp- feminist. ideas?


( A Form of Optimism - Roy Jacobstein )

Best Ofs

[dibeartach.livejournal.com]

Hullo all,
Was wondering, anyone who reads the following writers, what are their best poems in your opinion? Best-loved ones?
- Shamus Heaney, Percy Shelley, John Keats, WB Yeats, ST Coleridge, William Shakespeare, Ted Hughes, Robert Frost, William Wordsworth, Alexander Pope, Henry Longfellow, Banjo Patterson (spare me The Man from Snowy River) TS Eliot, Homer, William Blake, Alfred Tennyson, Ernest Hemmingway, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling.
Fishing for ideas, being the best of the best. Ifanyone has any other names to add, please do!

(no subject)

[phobiaofshae.livejournal.com]

Ending by Gavin Ewart

The love we thought would never stop
now cools like a congealing chop.
The kisses that were hot as curry
are bird-pecks taken in a hurry.
The hands that held electric charges
now lie inert as four moored barges.
The feet that ran to meet a date
are running slow and running late.
The eyes that shone and seldom shut
are victims of a power cut.
The parts that then transmitted joy
are now reserved and cold and coy.
Romance, expected once to stay,
has left a note saying GONE AWAY.