Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts

Monday, September 19, 2022

❤❤Memorial Day BY MICHAEL ANANIA

 

It is easily forgotten, year to
year, exactly where the plot is,
though the place is entirely familiar—
a willow tree by a curving roadway
sweeping black asphalt with tender leaves;

damp grass strewn with flower boxes,
canvas chairs, darkskinned old ladies
circling in draped black crepe family stones,
fingers cramped red at the knuckles, discolored
nails, fresh soil for new plants, old rosaries;

such fingers kneading the damp earth gently down
on new roots, black humus caught in grey hair
brushed back, and the single waterfaucet,
birdlike upon its grey pipe stem,
a stream opening at its foot.

We know the stories that are told,
by starts and stops, by bent men at strange joy
regarding the precise enactments of their own
gesturing. And among the women there will be
a naming of families, a counting off, an ordering.

The morning may be brilliant; the season
is one of brilliances—sunlight through
the fountained willow behind us, its splayed
shadow spreading westward, our shadows westward,
irregular across damp grass, the close-set stones.

It may be that since our walk there is faltering,
moving in careful steps around snow-on-the-mountain,
bluebells and zebragrass toward that place
between the willow and the waterfaucet, the way
is lost, that we have no practiced step there,
and walking, our own sway and balance, fails us.

Wednesday, July 6, 2022

How could I have known I would need to remember your laughter, Lauren K. Alleyne

 

How could I have known I would need to remember your laughter,

Lauren K. Alleyne

the way it ricocheted—a boomerang flung 
from your throat, stilling the breathless air.

How you were luminous in it. Your smile. Your hair 
tossed back, flaming. Everyone around you aglow.

How I wanted to live in it those times it ignited us 
into giggles, doubling us over aching and unmoored

for precious minutes from our twin scars—
the thorned secrets our tongues learned too well

to carry. It is impossible to imagine you gone, 
dear one, your laugh lost to some silence I can’t breach,

from which you will not return.

for Fay Botham (May 31, 1968–January 10, 2021)

Tuesday, May 3, 2022

Dealing with modern reality

 ⚡ I want to

I want to not
I want to
I want not to
I want to
I don't want to
I want to
Not-I wants to
I want to.
Yes, I want to

Wednesday, October 28, 2020

THE STONEMASON by Yahya Hassan

 THE STONEMASON

THE MAN IN THE NEIGHBOURING CELL WAS A STONEMASON
HE DREAMED OF CARVING SCULPTURES
BUT WAS EMPLOYED TO CUT COBBLESTONES AND GRAVESTONES
HE ENDED UP CUTTING HIS EX-WIFE HALF DEAD
BECAUSE SHE REFUSED HIM ACCESS TO THE CHILD
NOW SHE VISITS HIM ONCE A WEEK
AND SHE TAKES THE CHILD WITH HER

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

Dada poem

 Really nice to see how you feel Luke buck.

The baby voted for the good of the workers.

You do mind if I call your sister or daughter cute.

The baby is the Archie version of the country in the world.


It is the best of the best.

I thought I was a red flag in the middle of the workers.

You can shave a Chewbacca.

It is a good rebellion and you can not get what you wanted.


It's not get what you're saying.

I'm missing you can live like a new one for a Chewbacca.

If I thought it would have to know about questioning everything else,

The baby voted up for a few months and 1 months later I thought it wasn't the country that was weird.

Tuesday, October 6, 2020

Dada poem

 Really good to see how to be the best Sabrina

It was a red flag in the best of the country.

You do mind if I call your sister or daughter cute?

You can shave a Chewbacca.


It was a red flag in the best of the country in the best city.

If you really believe that you can live like however you want,

I thought it would be hard like Kirk vs Picard.

The only pre Islamic Arabs did what you wanted to do with star wars.

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Certificate of Live Birth

 


Certificate of Live Birth

You arrive on a Friday, with hail & vast
moving grey above small window
of white light, as a wound
which might be a passing through
of particulate ultra violet waiting
to arrive in sight, our adjectival
see. will it be violent, our photographic
ring around the light?

we inviolate what we can’t see,
revelate its arrival with our question:
boy or girl?

please, let the unseen speak in me.
there are stellar nurseries we cannot grimace.
i am a certificate of a bright somewhere.
you are a poem passing through
the membranes i have moved, mountainous you,
head up-of the interrogative blue

Friday, July 31, 2020

Sumer is i-cumin in BY ANONYMOUS

Sumer is i-cumin in

BY ANONYMOUS
Sing, cuccu, nu. Sing, cuccu.
Sing, cuccu. Sing, cuccu, nu.

Sumer is i-cumin in—
Lhude sing, cuccu!
Groweth sed and bloweth med
And springth the wude nu.
Sing, cuccu!

Awe bleteth after lomb,
Lhouth after calve cu,
Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth—
Murie sing, cuccu!
Cuccu, cuccu,
Wel singes thu, cuccu.
Ne swik thu naver nu!

Notes:
a 14th century English round

July in Washington BY ROBERT LOWELL

July in Washington

The stiff spokes of this wheel
touch the sore spots of the earth.

On the Potomac, swan-white
power launches keep breasting the sulphurous wave.

Otters slide and dive and slick back their hair,
raccoons clean their meat in the creek.

On the circles, green statues ride like South American
liberators above the breeding vegetation—

prongs and spearheads of some equatorial
backland that will inherit the globe.

The elect, the elected . . . they come here bright as dimes,
and die dishevelled and soft.

We cannot name their names, or number their dates—
circle on circle, like rings on a tree—

but we wish the river had another shore,
some further range of delectable mountains,

distant hills powdered blue as a girl’s eyelid.
It seems the least little shove would land us there,

that only the slightest repugnance of our bodies
we no longer control could drag us back.

Wednesday, July 15, 2020

From “YOU DA ONE” BY JENNIFER TAMAYO

From “YOU DA ONE”

At the airport, we all take a shot of aguardiente
because we all had each other’s faces
When I saw my brother I saw my face
I saw my grandmother I saw my face
I saw my aunt I saw my stupid face
On the way up the mountain I saw my face in a pile of trash
I saw my face in the mule’s ass
I saw my lover I saw my face but it was white & weary
I saw my brother again and there was my face;
               my other brother, my other face
I saw my face in the American Apparel ivory chiffon blouse
I brought for this occasion
In the occasion I saw my face, I did

I saw my face in the pankekes the next morning
My face was in the talk of death
My face was in her teeth, the pavement, etc.,
There was a jail cell at the Museo Nacional, I saw my face
A woman flowercunted & crosslegged, my face & my face
Everywhere my face like I didn’t have one
Botero’s asses all my faces
I took down notes when it came to torture
& the inquisition and saw my face in the leather swing set
Clavicle spikerest & eye ruptrest
Faces, I suppose, are a type of torture
to look like one but never be one

Wednesday, July 8, 2020

Nicholas Mercier Coulombe Jun 2017 Rock paper scissors lizard spock


rock smashes scissors
break our swords
Scissors cut paper
tear up our poetry
paper covers rock.
shielded by policy

we have our voices.
all rock, all scissor, all paper.
all spock, all lizard
we do not play games, we Speak.
We throw spock hands like Gang signs
spit parsel tongue at pride haters
we write love letters to revolution
We cut red tape with our long fuzes
Hit rock bottom, more bass in our
Voices than god knows what to do with
So we tell him exactlly where it should go.

Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock

They hold their pens like scissors
carving history books into erasure poems

We would swing our pens like swords.
But no leader we trust has been elected yet.

We would have a leader to guide us
But snakeoil salesmen plague our trenches.

There would be no snakeoil salesmen if
we had a stable government

We would have a stable government
but the stability was sharpied out of our history books.

And To history, loud voices sound
like the fires of god.
And are we not the voices with more bass then God knows what to do with.
without words on the wind,
There is no flame
so aren't we fire.

We all have tealights waiting in cold oven hearts.
stone hearths begging for Ignition
eager for bootleg promises of warmth
The orange rhetoric of our future
no warmer than tinders logo.
or a video recording of a fireplace
flickering on a flatscreen at best buy.
We are distracted constantly.
misdirected by Houses of paper cards
origami swans we don't dare unfold
Staying ignorant of the tire track liner inside.
origami swans are so much more beautiful
when they have secrets, right?

I have a matchstick
watch me strike it lit
flare this paper swan into a pheonix.
And hold it in my fist.
there will be fire.
and it will not be a metaphor
But It will be a revolution
And it will be a pheonix
and the pheonix WILL be a metaphor

The Rabbi at Temple Beth El
said when a mans consumed by gods fire
it is a severance from faith, a spiritual death.
what have we done
if not lost faith in our government?
Been consumed by the fires of god.
and why not tattoo pheonix feathers
on our backs?
at least this death gave us warmth.
a home in the world's ashes.

I stared at the dragons fire that stormed towards me
thanked it for the oppurtunity
to walk out of this world
holding dragons eggs
Like Daneris Tygareon
and they will be real dragons.
incubated by REAL fire
despite this crumbling cataclysm
you call a great america.
Spock handed Lizards larger and louder
with all the rocks
paper and scissors they need
to set the world on fire.
To Finally see something beautiful be born.
A Home that keeps them warm.


Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Singularity Marissa Davis

Singularity


Marissa Davis
after Marie Howe

              in the wordless beginning

iguana & myrrh

magma & reef          ghost moth

& the cordyceps tickling its nerves

& cedar & archipelago & anemone

dodo bird & cardinal waiting for its red

ocean salt & crude oil         now black

muck now most naïve fumbling plankton

every egg clutched in the copycat soft

of me unwomaned unraced

unsexed          as the ecstatic prokaryote

that would rage my uncle’s blood

or the bacterium that will widow

your eldest daughter’s eldest son

my uncle, her son           our mammoth sun

& her uncountable siblings         & dust mite & peat

apatosaurus & nile river

& maple green & nude & chill-blushed &

yeasty keratined bug-gutted i & you

spleen & femur seven-year refreshed

seven-year shedding & taking & being this dust

& my children & your children

& their children & the children

of the black bears & gladiolus & pink florida grapefruit

here not allied but the same        perpetual breath

held fast to each other as each other’s own skin

cold-dormant & rotting & birthing & being born

in the olympus           of the smallest

possible once before once

Copyright © 2020 by Marissa Davis. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 1, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.

Monday, February 17, 2020

Random words

Genesis of the world as we know it,and the only way to think that you can understand the importance of having fun! Science is a pronoun! So did the Chinese and Japanese! We are only one! You can see the mind of Vishnu. Where is your proof of the masculinity and Japanese government. Where did that come with subtitles? We are making a war on the phone with me alone, and the YouTube video of dialectical materialism!

Saturday, February 8, 2020

Cats at Their Bowls Lapping by Donal Mahoney

Cats at Their Bowls Lapping


Cats At Their Bowls Lapping


This time there’s a postscript:
“If ever I cook dinner for you,
it will be Coquilles St. Jacques
and Jefferson Davis Pie.”

Imagine Angela,
after all these years, 
rising and gliding
to check on my pie,

wouldn’t that be something?
Angela, come to Chicago,
and bring all of your cats.
I’ll watch those cats

in your lap napping,
you in my lap napping,
the cats at their bowls lapping,
and I in my chair laughing.

Angela, bring all of your cats
and come to Chicago
to make Coquilles St. Jacques
and Jefferson Davis Pie.


Donal Mahoney

the bear hunt by lincoln

The Bear Hunt

A wild-bear chace, didst never see?
Then hast thou lived in vain.
Thy richest bump of glorious glee,
Lies desert in thy brain.

When first my father settled here,
’Twas then the frontier line:
The panther’s scream, filled night with fear
And bears preyed on the swine.

But woe for Bruin’s short lived fun,
When rose the squealing cry;
Now man and horse, with dog and gun,
For vengeance, at him fly.

A sound of danger strikes his ear;
He gives the breeze a snuff;
Away he bounds, with little fear,
And seeks the tangled rough.

On press his foes, and reach the ground,
Where’s left his half munched meal;
The dogs, in circles, scent around,
And find his fresh made trail.

With instant cry, away they dash,
And men as fast pursue;
O’er logs they leap, through water splash,
And shout the brisk halloo.

Now to elude the eager pack,
Bear shuns the open ground;
Through matted vines, he shapes his track
And runs it, round and round.

The tall fleet cur, with deep-mouthed voice,
Now speeds him, as the wind;
While half-grown pup, and short-legged fice,
Are yelping far behind.

And fresh recruits are dropping in
To join the merry corps:
With yelp and yell,—a mingled din—
The woods are in a roar.

And round, and round the chace now goes,
The world’s alive with fun;
Nick Carter’s horse, his rider throws,
And more, Hill drops his gun.

Now sorely pressed, bear glances back,
And lolls his tired tongue;
When as, to force him from his track,
An ambush on him sprung.

Across the glade he sweeps for flight,
And fully is in view.
The dogs, new-fired, by the sight,
Their cry, and speed, renew.

The foremost ones, now reach his rear,
He turns, they dash away;
And circling now, the wrathful bear,
They have him full at bay.

At top of speed, the horse-men come,
All screaming in a row,
“Whoop! Take him Tiger. Seize him Drum.”
Bang,—bang—the rifles go.

And furious now, the dogs he tears,
And crushes in his ire,
Wheels right and left, and upward rears,
With eyes of burning fire.

But leaden death is at his heart,
Vain all the strength he plies.
And, spouting blood from every part,
He reels, and sinks, and dies.

And now a dinsome clamor rose,
’Bout who should have his skin;
Who first draws blood, each hunter knows,
This prize must always win.

But who did this, and how to trace
What’s true from what’s a lie,
Like lawyers, in a murder case
They stoutly argufy.

Aforesaid fice, of blustering mood,
Behind, and quite forgot,
Just now emerging from the wood,
Arrives upon the spot.

With grinning teeth, and up-turned hair—
Brim full of spunk and wrath,
He growls, and seizes on dead bear,
And shakes for life and death.

And swells as if his skin would tear,
And growls and shakes again;
And swears, as plain as dog can swear,
That he has won the skin.

Conceited whelp! we laugh at thee—
Nor mind, that now a few
Of pompous, two-legged dogs there be,
Conceited quite as you.

Why is truth not allowed to exist anymore?

 Why is truth not allowed to exist anymore? Why is basic reality banned from our lives? Nobody believes in basic logic anymore! Truth judges...