Sandburg & request
Jun. 29th, 2011 12:19 amAutumn Movement
Carl Sandburg
I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.
The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper
sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.
The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes,
new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind,
and the old things go, not one lasts.
Request: Poems about new love?
Carl Sandburg
I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.
The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper
sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.
The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes,
new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind,
and the old things go, not one lasts.
Request: Poems about new love?
no subject
Date: 2011-06-29 05:04 am (UTC)"Approximately Forever"
C. D. Wright
She was changing on the inside
it was true what had been written
The new syntax of love
both sucked and burned
The secret clung around them
She took in the smell
Walking down a road to nowhere
every sound was relevant
The sun fell behind them now
he seemed strangely moved
She would take her clothes off
for the camera
she said in plain english
but she wasn’t holding that snake
"Mirror, Mirror"
Spike Milligan
A young spring-tender girl
combed her joyous hair
'You are very ugly' said the mirror.
But,
on her lips hung
a smile of dove-secret loveliness,
for only that morning had not
the blind boy said,
'You are beautiful'?
"The Orange"
Wendy Cope
At lunchtime I bought a huge orange
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.
And that orange it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.
The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all my jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-29 05:04 am (UTC)Matthew Dickman
We fall in love at weddings and auctions, over glasses
of wine in Italian restaurants where plastic grapes hang
on the lattice, our bodies throb
in the checkout line, the bus stop, at basketball games
and we can’t keep our hands off each other
until we can—
so we turn to rubber masks and handcuffs,
falling in love again.
We go to movies and sit in the air conditioned dark
with strangers who are in love
with heroes like Peter Parker
who loves a girl he can’t have
because he loves saving the world in red and blue tights
more than he would love to have her ankles wrapped around
his waist or his tongue between her legs.
While we watch films
in which famous people play famous people
who experience pain,
the boy who sold us popcorn loves the girl
who sold us our tickets
and stares at the runs in her stockings
every night,
even though she is in love
with the skinny kid who sold her cigarettes at the 7-11,
and if the world had any compassion
it would let the two of them pass
a Marlboro Light back and forth
until their fingers eventually touched, their mouths
sucking and blowing.
If the world knew how
the light bulb loved the socket
then we would all be better off.
We could all dive head first into the sticky parts.
We could make sweat a religion
and praise the holiness of smelliness.
I am going to stop here,
on this dark night,
on this country road,
where country songs
come from, and kiss her, this woman, below the trees
which are below the stars,
which are below desire.
There is a music to it, I hear it.
Johnny Rotten, Biggie Smalls, Johan Sebastian Bach, I don’t care
what they say—
I loved you the way my mouth loves teeth,
the way a boy I know would risk it all for a purple dinosaur,
who, truth be known, loved him.
In the Midwest, fields of corn are in love
with a scarecrow, his potato-sack head
and straw body, hanging out among the dog-eared stalks
like a farm-Christ full of love.
Turning on the radio I hear
how AM loves FM the way my mother loved Elvis
whose hips all young girls loved, sitting around the television
in a poodle skirt and bobby socks.
He LOVED ME TENDER so much
that I was born after a long night of Black-Russians
and Canasta while “Jailhouse Rock” rocked.
Stamps love envelopes, the licking proves it—
just look at my dog
who obviously loves himself with an intensity
no human being could sustain, though you can’t say
we don’t try.
In High school I once cruised
a MacDonald’s drive-thru butt-naked
on a dare from a beautiful Sophomore,
only to be swallowed up by a grief
born from super-size or no super-size.
Years later I met a woman
named Heavy Metal Goddess
at a party where she brought her husband,
leading him through the dance floor by a leash,
while in Texas cockroaches love with such abandon
that they wear their skeletons on the outside.
Once a baby lizard loved me so completely,
he moved into my apartment and died of hunger.
No one loves war,
but I know a man
who loves tanks so much he wishes he had one
to pick up the groceries, drive his wife to work,
drop his daughter off at school with her Little Mermaid
lunch box, a note hidden inside
next to the apple, folded
with a love that can be translated into any language: I HOPE
YOU DO NOT SUFFER.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-29 05:05 am (UTC)"your airplanes"
Rachel McKibbens
I.
over breakfast,
my father asks what you see in me.
I bite the inside of my cheek,
shove a forkful of pancakes into my mouth,
notice the salt shaker eyeing my wounds.
II.
you launch "I love yous"
from a Brooklyn fire escape.
they travel 3,000 postcard miles
and collapse into my ear, exhausted.
I pinch their noses,
breathe new life into their lungs,
fold them into airplanes,
send them back to you
and wait.
III.
there isn't a building
taller than two stories
here in Orange County.
not a single fire escape.
no point in jumping.
the worst that could happen
is a broken leg or heart.
this is why the sad kids get
so goddamn creative around here.
the mayor's son rigged his noose
to raise with the garage door
when the Mercedes came home.
a nine-year old leapt into the lion's cage
at Prentice Park Zoo after
her dog was hit by a car.
IV.
on our wedding day,
when I tell you "I do,"
it's because I do.
it's because you understand
how ten-thousand dollar apologies
still keep fathers worthless,
it's because my ribcage expands
every time I think of you,
it's for all the things
you see in me
and pretend
not to notice.
e.e. cummings, 'I like my body when it is with your'
Date: 2011-06-29 08:29 am (UTC)body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh… And eyes big love-crumbs,
and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you so quite new
by e.e. cummings
Bob Hicok, 'Solstice: voyeur'
Date: 2011-06-29 09:08 am (UTC)I watched the young couple walk into the tall grass and close
the door of summer behind them, their heads floating
on the golden tips, on waves that flock and break like starlings
changing their minds in the middle of changing their minds,
I saw their hips lay down inside those birds, inside the day
of shy midnight, they kissed like waterfalls, like stones
that have traveled a million years to touch, and emerged
hybrid, some of her lips in his words, all of his fists
opened by trust like morning glories, and I smelled green
pouring out of trees into grass, grass into below, I stood
on the moment the earth changes its mind about the sun,
when hiding begins, and raised my hand from the hill
into the shadows behind the lovers, and contemplated
their going with my skin, and listened to the grass
in wind call us home like our mothers before dark.
by Bob Hicok