*Poem of the day thread

[DotCommunist]

Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars) by Muriel Rukeyser

I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.
Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,
Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,
We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,
To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.

I lived in the first century of these wars.

 

[hitmouse]

Poem by Lisa Luxx written after a visit to one of the Filton 18:

 

[hitmouse]

Love Letter from the Afterlife
Andrea Gibson, 1975-2025

My love, I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined. So close you look past me when wondering where I am. It’s Ok. I know that to be human is to be farsighted. But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living. Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive? Ask me the altitude of heaven, and I will answer, “How tall are you?” In my back pocket is a love note with every word you wish you’d said. At night I sit ecstatic at the loom weaving forgiveness into our worldly regrets. All day I listen to the radio of your memories. Yes, I know every secret you thought too dark to tell me, and love you more for everything you feared might make me love you less. When you cry I guide your tears toward the garden of kisses I once planted on your cheek, so you know they are all perennials. Forgive me, for not being able to weep with you. One day you will understand. One day you will know why I read the poetry of your grief to those waiting to be born, and they are all the more excited. There is nothing I want for now that we are so close I open the curtain of your eyelids with my own smile every morning. I wish you could see the beauty your spirit is right now making of your pain, your deep seated fears playing musical chairs, laughing about how real they are not. My love, I want to sing it through the rafters of your bones, Dying is the opposite of leaving. I want to echo it through the corridor of your temples, I am more with you than I ever was before. Do you understand? It was me who beckoned the stranger who caught you in her arms when you forgot not to order for two at the coffee shop. It was me who was up all night gathering sunflowers into your chest the last day you feared you would never again wake up feeling lighthearted. I know it’s hard to believe, but I promise it’s the truth. I promise one day you will say it too– I can’t believe I ever thought I could lose you.

 

[Aladdin]

​

Shakespeare
Sonnet 29

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

 

[JimW]

Del mito

Mi madre me contó que yo lloré en su vientre.
A ella le dijeron: tendrá suerte.

Alguien me habló todos los días de mi vida
al oído, despacio, lentamente.

Me dijo: ¡vive, vive, vive!
Era la muerte.


On myth

My mother told me that I cried in her womb.
They said to her: he'll be lucky.

Someone spoke to me all the days of my life,
into my ear, slowly, taking their time.

Said to me: live, live, live!
It was death.

Jaime Sabines

 

[Yossarian]

you once said permanence
was a myth we inherited
from poets and undertakers.

i winced,
counting each grain of your coffin
like the constellations
you named Cassiopeia
over and again

ready to murmur and retrace
all our forgotten tomorrows.

- PS Conway

 

[hitmouse]

Joseph Conway, FLAG 2025:

 

[nottsgirl]

Matsuo Bashō

The early summer rain.

Gathering it and fast

Mogami River.

 

[nottsgirl]

Jennifer Wong – Koi​

Among heart-shapes leaves

The white fish gleams, red tail

Soft lotuses sleep.

 

[nottsgirl]

The broom upside down​

Chris Beckett

in another room, is meant to work
its magic through the paper door
and make your guests uneasy
so they drink up quickly and depart.
I think it never works: the more
you pray for rain, however much
you yearn a friend who’s gone,
the further he will travel
in the dark, not looking at the colour
of emotion in your eyes. It’s best
you beg your guests to stay
a little longer, apologise the wine
is finished, tell the clouds that rain
would ruin you and set your broom
back on its head to brush the dust
from temple steps, sweep leaves
from your sad walk to the cemetery
and wait, just wait for everyone
to leave or someone to come back.

 

[deeyo]

The Armada

Long, long ago​

when everything I was told was believable
and the little I knew was less limited than now,
I stretched belly down on the grass beside a pond
and to the far bank launched a child's armada.

A broken fortress of twigs,​

the paper-tissue sails of galleons,
the waterlogged branches of submarines -
all came to ruin and were on flame
in that dusk-red pond.
And you, mother, stood behind me,
impatient to be going,
old at twenty-three, alone,
thin overcoat flapping.

How closely the past shadows us.​

In a hospital a mile or so from that pond
I kneel beside your bed and, closing my eyes,
reach out across forty years to touch once more
that pond's cool surface,
and it is your cool skin I'm touching;
for as on a pond a child's paper boat
was blown out of reach
by the smallest gust of wind,
so too have you been blown out of reach
by the smallest whisper of death,
and a childhood memory is sharpened,
and the heart burns as that armada burnt,
long, long ago.

Brian Patten, 1946-2025​

​

(tim put this poem in the 'rip' thread of b.p. last week.
i wanted it to be the poem of today in memory of my mother, who died one year ago.)

 

[bluescreen]

Ode to Those Who Block Tunnels and Bridges
Sam Sax

teach us there can be movement
in stillness. in every broken syllable
of traffic a syllabus that says
while you are suffering we are all
going to be unwell—let us
instead distill business as usual
down to the speed of a tree eating
light. as usual, business is built
from freight trains and warships
even when ‘it’s just coffee.’
these bridges should only connect
the living, so when the living turn
again toward death worship
it’s time to still the delivery of plastics
and red meats to the galas of venture
capital. to reject our gods if they are
not the gods who teach us all that comes
from dirt returns to it holy—
the holiest word i know is no.
no more money for the endless
throat of money. no more
syllogisms that permission
endless suffering. no more.
and on the eighth day of a holiday
meant to represent a people
fighting occupation my teachers
who stretch a drop of oil into a week
of light take each other’s arms
across eight bridges of this settler colony
singing prayers older than any country
as the chevron burns in the distance.
o stilted vernacular of life—
o pedagogs of the godly pausing—
what mycelia spreads its speaking
limbs beneath the floors of our cities.
the only holy land i know
is where life is. in the story
i was taught alongside my first
language it takes god six days
to make the terrible world
and on seventh day he rested
and on the eighth we blocked traffic.

Ode to Those Who Block Tunnels and Bridges

teach us there can be movement / in stillness. in every broken syllable

poets.org

 

[weltweit]

I don't know many poems, especially long ones.
Here is a short attempt though:

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear
Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair
Fuzzy Wuzzy wuznt fuzzy wuz e

 

[deeyo]

I don't know many poems, especially long ones.
Here is a short attempt though:

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear
Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair
Fuzzy Wuzzy wuznt fuzzy wuz e

could have gone in

Thread 'Short poems that aren't grim, please'

Mar 12, 2015

Not necessarily happy ones, but non-depressing ones. But not ones that are saccharine enough to be found in a Hallmark card.
They have to be short enough to fit on the back of a postcard.
Like this one by Marianne Moore:

A Jelly-Fish
Visible, invisible,
a fluctuating charm
an amber-tinctured amethyst
inhabits it, your arm
approaches and it opens
and it closes; you had meant
to catch it and it quivers;
you abandon your intent

Let's have your suggestions, if you please.

• Orang Utan
• Replies: 208
• Forum: books, films, TV, radio & writing

• 

too.

 

[Yossarian]

To the Reader

As you read, a white bear leisurely
pees, dyeing the snow
saffron,

and as you read, many gods
lie among lianas: eyes of obsidian
are watching the generations of leaves,

and as you read
the sea is turning its dark pages,
turning
its dark pages.

- Denise Levertov