Poets

[Sahara]

The most obvious Poe/Planets reference is "No doubt, no pain, come ever again" -- comes from Eulalie by Poe ["Now doubt now pain come never again"] -- that was the one that made me fall off my chair.

Some others: "Into the seas that have no shores" -- "Looking up at skies on fire" relates to "Mountains toppling evermore into seas without a shore" and "Surging unto skies of fire", both from Poe's Dream-Land.

And: "The bright light is lying down, the Earth and the sea and the sky is at rest with the ocean" -- apparently from a poem called Serenade that's not in my big book of Poe, but Serenade goes like this: "The wearied light is lying down, and eather, and stars, and sea are rendolent with sleep".

There's also a theory that "like a heartbeat drives you mad" in Dreams comes from the Tell Tale Heart.

Check out www.inspiredangel.com, it's interesting.

[Sahara]

Something of mine own...

REAL FICTION
Been scheming my schemes,
I’ve been dreaming my dreams,
Been thinking these thoughts that remind me of you.
I don’t need a reason –
It’s psycho-hunt season,
Discover a world where nobody’s true.
There’s the good and the bad,
The guilty, the sad,
And we all have to pay for our crimes.
There’s always a fight;
It’s tough being right
And I feel like I’m wasting my time.
By the time I get near
You’ll have all disappeared;
I trust in a twist of the knife,
But it’s all just the same,
To you it’s a game,
It’s a game that you’ve played all your life.
My blade shining bright:
I’m a thief in the night
And your soul is what I’ve come to steal;
The sorrow, the pain,
The sting of the rain,
Who said this was part of the deal?
Torn up at the roots
I’m just jumping through hoops
As I dance like a puppet on strings,
Even monsters need names,
I’m a lion being tamed,
For your rod I no longer have wings.
Blood’s all you lack
When you’re stabbed in the back,
They say that true friendship is rare.
But I live without fear
And I’ll always be here,
I guess nobody said life was fair.


August 2004

[ragandbone]

I really love this thread, but work has mademe into a hit and run poster, unable to keep up with the discussion. I wanted to post some favortie merwin poems, and I have had trouble finding the ones I want anywhere but in my books. I guess I will have to resort ot typing. Sigh.

Jyqm, I really like your "Water Damage" piece!
I have been skipping around, and I need togo back and see what other original work I missed.

Here is a poem by Jack Gilbert:
The Great Fires

Love is apart from all things.
Desire and excitement are nothing beside it.
It is not the body that finds love.
What leads us there is the body.
What is not love provokes it.
What is not love quenches it.
Love lays hold of everything we know.
The passions which are called love
also change everything to a newness
at first. Passion is clearly the path
but does not bring us to love.
It opens the castle of our spirit
so that we might find the love which is
a mystery hidden there.
Love is one of many great fires.
Passion is a fire made of many woods,
each of which gives off its special odor
so we can know the many kinds
that are not love. Passion is the paper
and twigs that kindle the flames
but cannot sustain them. Desire perishes
because it tries to be love.
Love is eaten away by appetite.
Love does not last, but it is different
from the passions that do not last.
Love lasts by not lasting.
Isaiah said each man walks in his own fire
for his sins. Love allows us to walk
in the sweet music of our particular heart.

[Jyqm]

Originally Posted by ragandbone

I really love this thread, but work has mademe into a hit and run poster, unable to keep up with the discussion. I wanted to post some favortie merwin poems, and I have had trouble finding the ones I want anywhere but in my books. I guess I will have to resort ot typing. Sigh.

Jyqm, I really like your "Water Damage" piece!

Thanks! I tend to feel a little embarrassed by it, but I might be a little too close to it to really judge it on its own merits.

If you post the names of the Merwin poems you want, I can try searching around for them as well. You never know what might turn up if you have multiple people looking!

Most of Tom Waits' early songs are practically beat poems:

The Ghosts of Saturday Night
(After Hours at Napoleone's Pizza House)

A cab combs the snake,
Tryin' to rake in that last night's fare,
And a solitary sailor
Who spends the facts of his life
like small change on strangers...

Paws his inside P-coat pocket
for a welcome twenty-five cents,
And the last bent butt from a package of Kents,
As he dreams of a waitress with Maxwell House eyes
And marmalade thighs with scrambled yellow hair.

Her rhinestone-studded moniker says, "Irene"
As she wipes the wisps of dishwater blonde from her eyes

And the Texaco beacon burns on,
The steel-belted attendant with a 'Ring and Valve Special'...
Cryin' "Fill'er up and check that oil"
"You know it could be a distributor and it could be a coil."

The early mornin' final edition's on the stands,
And that town cryer's cryin' there with nickels in his hands.
Pigs in a blanket sixty-nine cents,
Eggs - roll 'em over and a package of Kents,
Adam and Eve on a log, you can sink 'em damn straight,
Hash browns, hash browns, you know I can't be late.

And the early dawn cracks out a carpet of diamond
Across a cash crop car lot
filled with twilight Coupe Devilles,
Leaving the town in a-keeping
Of the one who is sweeping
Up the ghost of Saturday night...

[ragandbone]

Sibyl

Your whole age sits betwen what you hear
and what you write

When you think you'e getting younger
it's the voice coming closer
but only to you

so much of your words
is the words
once they've come out of the ground
and you've written them down
on petals
if it's spring

the same wind that tells you everything at once
unsititches your memory
you try to write faster than the thread is pulled
you write straight onto the air
if its summer

with your empty needle

straight onto a face if there's light enough
straight onto hands
if it's autumn

[Jyqm]

Originally Posted by takenbythesky

I was quite struck by this; most of the class hated it, did not care to discuss it, and did not care to absorb it.

Why is that? Did anyone give reasons for disliking it?

thanks for the compliments on my stuff!

[Jyqm]

Here's something I wrote just now:

Insomnia

In the kitchen, hollow-heavy eyes
burn—the world glows grey
again.

Out the window, charcoal birch trees
watch again—and thick-tongued dirt
digs deep into ash-mouthed skin—
and fog-caked hair

East across the still steel lake—which hums,
the mountain defines itself
line by line—
draws itself
against the blue dispersing haze—
as yesterday’s

—and down unceasing pulsing alleys scratched
scratched record birdsong
echoes—I wish that it were night
—again.

1.2.2006

[ragandbone]

Originally Posted by Jyqm

Here's something I wrote just now:

the mountain defines itself
line by line—

I like that a lot.
***

Here is one of my favorites from poet/novelist/folksinger lyricist Leonard Cohen…
"Last Year's Man"

The rain falls down on last year's man,
that's a jew's harp on the table,
that's a crayon in his hand.
And the corners of the blueprint are ruined since they rolled
far past the stems of thumbtacks
that still throw shadows on the wood.
And the skylight is like skin for a drum I'll never mend
and all the rain falls down amen
on the works of last year's man.
I met a lady, she was playing with her soldiers in the dark
oh one by one she had to tell them
that her name was Joan of Arc.
I was in that army, yes I stayed a little while;
I want to thank you, Joan of Arc,
for treating me so well.
And though I wear a uniform I was not born to fight;
all these wounded boys you lie beside,
goodnight, my friends, goodnight.

I came upon a wedding that old families had contrived;
Bethlehem the bridegroom,
Babylon the bride.
Great Babylon was naked, oh she stood there trembling for me,
and Bethlehem inflamed us both
like the shy one at some orgy.
And when we fell together all our flesh was like a veil
that I had to draw aside to see
the serpent eat its tail.

Some women wait for Jesus, and some women wait for Cain
so I hang upon my altar
and I hoist my axe again.
And I take the one who finds me back to where it all began
when Jesus was the honeymoon
and Cain was just the man.
And we read from pleasant Bibles that are bound in blood and skin
that the wilderness is gathering
all its children back again.

The rain falls down on last year's man,
an hour has gone by
and he has not moved his hand.
But everything will happen if he only gives the word;
the lovers will rise up
and the mountains touch the ground.
But the skylight is like skin for a drum I'll never mend
and all the rain falls down amen
on the works of last year's man.

[Jyqm]

You didn't really think I was gonna let this thread die, did you? Here's "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats, though it really should be read not all aligned to the left like this (click the link for a much better experience):

1.

MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, 5
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 10

2.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South, 15
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim: 20

3.

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, 25
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. 30

4.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night, 35
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. 40

5.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; 45
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;
And mid-May’s eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. 50

6.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 55
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod. 60

7.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 65
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 70

8.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toil me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades 75
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep? 80

[JazmenFlowers]

I finally found this thread. although I can't find the one I created a couple weeks ago.

my latest.

I only meant well
These are the words that
Fell from your lips
As I stared into your
Vacant eyes
Drowning in the
Words you pronounced
With such ignorance
As usual (but I did not say)

You stood before me
With such admiration
For your own strength
As you tore down
What was left of happy moments
I clung to
Ignorance truly is not bliss

I wanted to rip
Out your tongue
And swallow your pride

This isn’t what I need
These are the last words that
Fell from your lips

But you still speak those words
To me each time I try to love

[BlackWidow]

Originally Posted by JazmenFlowers

I finally found this thread. although I can't find the one I created a couple weeks ago.

my latest.

I only meant well
These are the words that
Fell from your lips
As I stared into your
Vacant eyes
Drowning in the
Words you pronounced
With such ignorance
As usual (but I did not say)

You stood before me
With such admiration
For your own strength
As you tore down
What was left of happy moments
I clung to
Ignorance truly is not bliss

I wanted to rip
Out your tongue
And swallow your pride

This isn’t what I need
These are the last words that
Fell from your lips

But you still speak those words
To me each time I try to love

that was great....sad too.
who did that to you?I will beat his ASS!!

[ragandbone]

This is beauty from pain...thanks for sharing it.

The last line makes me cry. BlackWidow might have the right idea—shall we form a posse?

Originally Posted by JazmenFlowers

I finally found this thread. although I can't find the one I created a couple weeks ago.

my latest.

I only meant well
These are the words that
Fell from your lips
As I stared into your
Vacant eyes
Drowning in the
Words you pronounced
With such ignorance
As usual (but I did not say)

You stood before me
With such admiration
For your own strength
As you tore down
What was left of happy moments
I clung to
Ignorance truly is not bliss

I wanted to rip
Out your tongue
And swallow your pride

This isn’t what I need
These are the last words that
Fell from your lips

But you still speak those words
To me each time I try to love

[ragandbone]

Here's an old one of mine:

Where You will find me, When You Look Again


I.
I am low in the grass, in the belly of a meadow
watching the flutter of lustrous wings:
thin wisps of heart-shaped color,
more air than substance.
Foxtails prick my ankles,
the air hums, and I become a hot breeze
that touches your hair.

II.
A highway stretches into darkness,
pulled tight by a white cord.
The moon is full upon your lap,
and breathes with you.
Stop, and face the trees: we'll sing ourselves
into the night sky

III.
I am toe-to-foam at Second Beach,
now lying in a floating driftwood forest.
I am scattered like a sea bottom:
bits of glass becoming round, smooth,
cool, and unable to cut.
You reach down and gather me up.

[JazmenFlowers]

^^^
love it. my favorite kind of poetry. so visually lush.

reminds me of Fern Hill.

[JazmenFlowers]

...I could kick myself for not dating all my poems.

Growth Spurt (dear _____)

it was bound to happen
for it is written in my history
and I apologize for making you
uncomfortable
it was never my intention to make you feel
like you've lost touch with my heart

I see you speaking to God on occasion
and I wonder, as I see your lips whisper,
if you are asking for a better job, a better car
or a better me
since suddenly the taste of chocolate
is all that makes you smile
it was never my intention to be
the reason you pray

it was bound to happen, you know
a child stumbles through years of fear
and painful heartbeats
until you stand before me with arms
outstretched and longing to be filled
it was never my intention to force you
to pretend