The poetry thread

Miscellaneous
93

A strikingly fitting poem for our time.

The Second Coming

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

1 Like
94

-No Time For The Homeless-

By Rodney Southworth

I’m out for a stroll when a man asks of me,
do you have but a dollar?
I say, what do you need?
He gives this a thought then proclaims to me,

I don’t need a bottle
but I could twist a lid.

Don’t need a vacation,
I just had a trip.

Don’t need chapstick,
I can deal with cracked lips.

Don’t need a lover,
at least not to live.

Don’t need you to care,
I prefer that you did.

I don’t really need much,
to only get by.

So I give him a dollar his next words I near cry.

I could do with a nickel,
I could sure use a dime,
what’s greater than gold,
you gave me your time.

1 Like
95

“Insomnia” -Elizabeth Bishop

The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she’s a daytime sleeper.

By the Universe deserted,
she 'd tell it to go to hell,
and she’d find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the well

into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me.

96

“Who Says Words With My Mouth” -Rumi

All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.

This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I’ll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I’m like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?

Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

This poetry, I never know what I’m going to say.
I don’t plan it.
When I’m outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

1 Like
98

–Fresh Pigeon poo–
by Rodney Southworth

There was an old man with creaky old bones,
his dusty old brain forgot all he’d known.

His very best friend was a big round stone,
who up on a hill enjoyed being alone.

Everyday the old man would climb up the hill,
all of his problems to the stone he would spill.

The stone never gave an opinion nor judged,
it just sat and listened it never budged.

There were pigeons around, the stone had problems too,
everyday on the stone splattered fresh pigeon poo.

The old man only spoke of his creaky old bones,
his dusty old brain never cared for the stone.

He even fed birds that on the stone pooped,
throwing seeds without care and down the birds swooped.

Now a few pigeon turds was not a big matter,
it was day after day that built up the splatter.

The poop piled high and the old stone would shake,
late in the night it rolled towards the big lake.

Rolled slow then fast down the hill off the bluff,
away from the pigeons the old stone had enough.

The next day the old man came to call on the stone,
though to his dismay he was all alone.

At the top of the hill the stone’s not to be found,
left in it’s place was a note on the ground.

It was for the man with the creaky old bones,
and the dusty old brain that forgot all he’d known.

I’m gone wrote the stone and not by mistake,
there’s just so much crap an old stone can take.

99

Epitaph
By Merrit Malloy

When I die
Give what’s left of me away
To children
And old me that wait to die.

And if you need to cry,
Cry for your brother
Walking the street beside you.
And when you need me,
Put your arms
Around anyone
And give them
What you need to give to me.

I want to leave you something,
Something better
Than words
Or sounds.

Look for me
In the people I’ve known
Or loved,
And if you cannot give me away,
At least let me live on in your eyes
And not your mind.

You can love me most
By letting
Hands touch hands,
By letting bodies touch bodies,
And by letting go
Of children
That need to be free.

Love doesn’t die,
People do.
So, when all that’s left of me
Is love,
Give me away.

2 Likes
100

That’s so fine.

1 Like
101

Lady Lazarus

BY SYLVIA PLATH

I have done it again.

One year in every ten

I manage it——

A sort of walking miracle, my skin

Bright as a Nazi lampshade,

My right foot

A paperweight,

My face a featureless, fine

Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin

O my enemy.

Do I terrify?——

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?

The sour breath

Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh

The grave cave ate will be

At home on me

And I a smiling woman.

I am only thirty.

And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.

What a trash

To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.

The peanut-crunching crowd

Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot——

The big strip tease.

Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands

My knees.

I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.

The first time it happened I was ten.

It was an accident.

The second time I meant

To last it out and not come back at all.

I rocked shut

As a seashell.

They had to call and call

And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying

Is an art, like everything else.

I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.

It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.

It’s the theatrical

Comeback in broad day

To the same place, the same face, the same brute

Amused shout:

‘A miracle!’

That knocks me out.

There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge

For the hearing of my heart——

It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge

For a word or a touch

Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.

So, so, Herr Doktor.

So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,

I am your valuable,

The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.

I turn and burn.

Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash—

You poke and stir.

Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——

A cake of soap,

A wedding ring,

A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer

Beware

Beware.

Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air.

102

–Unwitting Mimes–
by Rodney Southworth

This great big universe
can make you feel small.
Are we matter that matters
or do we matter at all?

If your life is meaningless
then so is mine.
Let’s be meaningless together,
just to pass the time.

If I accomplish nothing,
and so do you.
We could combine our efforts,
get nothing times two.

We could solve mysteries,
ones most complex.
Inconsequential conundrums,
such as porcupine sex.

Find altruistic ways to waste time,
give photography tips to the blind.
Teach mutes to sing in perfect time,
make them the deaf’s unwitting mimes.

Open a burger joint,
for starving vegetarians.
Write story books,
for illiterate children.

Together we matter,
possibilities are endless.
There’s much we can’t do,
alone without friendship.

1 Like
103

“Dancing of Sounds”
By Dejan Stojanovic

There is a moonlight note
In the Moonlight Sonata;
There is a thunder note
In an angry sky.

Sound unbound by nature
Becomes bounded by art.
There is no competition of sounds
Between a nightingale and a violin.

Nature rewards and punishes
By offering unpredictable ways;
Art is apotheosis;
Often, the complaint of beauty.

Nature is an outcry,
Unpolished truth;
The art—a euphemism—
Tamed wilderness.

2 Likes
104

Late Fragment

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

–Raymond Carver (one of the last poems he wrote)

The words “even so” are at the heart of the poem, I think.

1 Like
105

Grand Silhouettes
by Rodney Southworth

In greyish-brown air,
the north hills are beset.

Grand Wasatch to the east,
appears mere silhouettes.

Looking south to the point,
of far sights I’m bereft.

Oquirrh heights belied,
by views abstruse out west.

Hazy skies cheat my eyes,
as grime robs my breath.

Coughing and choking,
pain tortures my chest.

I teeter then fall,
with my life near arrest.

There I die where I lie,
beneath grand silhouettes.

106

Franklin Pierce Adams, a columnist at the New York Evening Mail, who in 1910 wrote a poem called “That Double Play Again.” It eventually became known as “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon.”

These are the saddest of possible words
”Tinkers to Evers to Chance”
Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds
”Tinkers to Evers to Chance”
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble
Making a Giant hit into a double
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble
”Tinkers to Evers to Chance.”

A gonfalon, in case you were wondering, is a pennant or flag, usually with streamers.

3 Likes
107

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they’re forever banned?

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind

Yes, and how many years must a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?
And how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn’t see?

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind

Yes, and how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
And how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take 'til he knows
That too many people have died?

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind

2 Likes
108

Once the religious, the hunted and weary
Chasing the promise of freedom and hope
Came to this country to build a new vision
Far from the reaches of Kingdom and pope

Like good Christians some would burn the witches
Later some got slaves to gather riches

But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands, to court the wild
But she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light

And once the ties with the crown had been broken
Westward in saddle and wagon it went
And till the railroad linked ocean to ocean
Many the lives which had come to an end

While we bullied, stole and bought a homeland
We began the slaughter of the red man

But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
But she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light

The Blue and Grey they stomped it
They kicked it just like a dog
And when the war was over
They stuffed it just like a hog

And though the past has its share of injustice
Kind was the spirit in many a way
But its protectors and friends have been sleeping
Now it’s a monster and will not obey

The spirit was freedom and justice
And its keepers seemed generous and kind
Its leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they won’t pay it no mind
Cause the people grew fat and got lazy
Now their vote is a meaningless joke
They babble about law and order
But it’s all just an echo of what they’ve been told

Yeah, there’s a monster on the loose
It’s got our heads into the noose
And it just sits there watchin’

The cities have turned into jungles
And corruption is stranglin’ the land
The police force is watching the people
And the people just can’t understand
We don’t know how to mind our own business
'Cause the whole world’s got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who’s the winner we can’t pay the cost

‘Cause there’s a monster on the loose
It’s got our heads into the noose
And it just sits there watchin’

America, where are you now
Don’t you care about your sons and daughters
Don’t you know we need you now
We can’t fight alone against the monster

America, where are you now
Don’t you care about your sons and daughters
Don’t you know we need you now
We can’t fight alone against the monster

1 Like