Since I'm feeling under the weather, I'm not going to be able to make the POETRY NIGHT (see Jesi's post below!!). In the spirit of sharing poems, however, here are a couple by a remarkable poet I just stumbled onto. Edgell Rickword (1898-1982), like Wilfred Owen, Edward Thomas, and Isaac Rosenberg, fought in the trenches in WWI. Unlike them, though, he survived. I've only read a few of his poems so far, but I'm going to hunt down the rest. I love both of these, though they're about very different experiences -- death and love, darkness and light. (I hope you'll share more poems that you've written or read.)
"Trench Poets"
I knew a man, he was my chum,
but he grew blacker every day,
and would not brush the flies away,
nor blanch however fierce the hum
of passing shells; I used to read,
to rouse him, random things from Donne -
like "Get with child a mandrake-root."
But you can tell he was far gone,
for he lay gaping, mackerell-eyed,
and stiff, and senseless as a post
even when that old poet cried
"I long to talk with some old lover's ghost."
I tried the Elegies on day,
But he, because he heard me say:
"What needst thou have no more covering than a man?"
grinned nastily, and so I knew
the worms had got his brains at last.
There was one thing that I might do
to starve the worms; I racked my head
for healthy things and quoted Maud.
His grin got worse and I could see
he sneered at passion's purity.
He stank so badly, though we were great chums
I had to leave him; then rats ate his thumbs.
"Intimacy"
Since I have seen you do those intimate things
That other men but dream of; lull asleep
The sinister dark forest of your hair
And tie the bows that stir on your calm breast
Faintly as leaves that shudder in their sleep;
Since I have seen your stocking swallow up,
A swift black wind, the flame of your pale foot,
And deemed your slender limbs so meshed in silk
Sweet mermaid sisters drowned in their dark hair
I have not troubled very much with food
And wine has seemed like water from a well;
Pavements are built of fire, grass of thin flames;
All other girls grow dull as painted flowers,
Or flutter harmlessly like coloured flies
Whose wings are tangled in the net of leaves
Spread by frail trees that grow behind the eyes.
"I bargained with Life for a penny,
And Life would pay no more,
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store.
For Life is a just employer,
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.
I worked for a menial’s hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have willingly paid."
~Jessie Belle Rittenhouse (1869–1948)
Posted by: SweetWill at October 11, 2006 01:03 PMI discovered this poem today, and something about the fantastic elements in it I liked even though it actually plays out more like a conversation than a rhyming poem. Hope you all enjoy.
------------------------------------------------
Love Song of Night and Day
by Jenny Scott
Wrap yourself in your best bright clothes, your red and purple scarves of silk.
Run with me to the festival, where we will dance until sunrise.
The dwarves will beat their funny drums of zebra skins and hollowed trees,
while stiltwalkers perform, and the musician blows his bamboo flute.
And late in the night, the poets and storytellers entertain,
delight us with their dancing words, as we listen, clapping by the fire.
Enchant me with your tale-telling. Tell about Tree, Grass, River, and Wind.
Tell why Truth must fight with Falsehood, and why Truth will always win.
I will tell my father's stories: how the giant mantis fooled Death
by holding still as a felled tree; how the elephants trampled
the leopard cub, and its father, though he knew, killed nine goats instead;
how pirates gambled with a djinn and lost the thing more dear than gold.
Tonight we'll eat a farewell feast. Cold corn porridge is not enough.
Let's peel papayas, pineapples, and mangoes, drink coconut milk,
and bake bananas. We'll dine on crocodiles, wild birds, and turtles,
perhaps a hippopotamus--if only you can catch it first.
I'll build a palace made of stone. Two hippo-headed guards will serve,
and tigers carry in your meals. I'll capture flying zebras
for your steeds, and fill the stable with every kind of unicorn.
Butterflies and salamanders will decorate your garden.
I'll strand long strings of beads for you, blue, the color only kings may wear.
I'll carve a soapstone lioness, a wooden box to lock it in,
girded with sapphire amulets, ostrich feathers, ivory.
These things will protect you while I'm gone, remind you of my love for you.
Your voice resounds like a songbird's, every word is a sweet, soft song.
When you run you're graceful and swift, sleek as a powerful panther.
Mysterious chameleon, you're a thousand women at once,
sharp and strong as a lioness, yet gentle as a striped gazelle.
On this our last day together, let us walk across the grasslands.
Hold my hand and let's walk slowly, seeing everything as children.
Let's walk on the Daraja Plains, where leopards hang from trees, dosing,
tasseled tails swaying in the shade, near villages of tree-dwelling elves.
Glorious, to walk again across the savannah with my beloved.
A lion walks commandingly, a general among his troops,
camped the night before a battle. A snake, colorful and coiled, loops
around his bough, mischievous, hanging over the village path.
We'll find termites in their nests, hard tall towers above the plains,
and point-eared cats, taking their turns, guarding their many entrances.
We'll find the basket-nests of birds hanging from the acacia tree.
Rhinoceroses and dragons for once will let us walk in peace.
When lightning tears the sky's dark cloak and heaven's bird beats the water
on the muddy plains with its big wings, termites and frogs escape their homes
toward the lamps in the nearest village. Spiders dry themselves indoors,
the spotted lizards that never fall from ceilings suddenly appear.
In the forest, fires light the sky as the black clouds unfold their weight.
The black-and-white sacred monkey holds her children to her, and waits.
Love, like lightning hits suddenly. It sparks the heart with blows of light,
its fire extending, bends, expands, beats and breaks your hiding places.
* * *
Remember when we were children, herding the sheep together,
leading them over the grassy hills with long sticks. Your silly songs
made me laugh, and in the evening, you'd enchant me with your stories,
lying on your back beside me. Even then my heart was yours.
I remember your sacred rites. You were so funny, so grown up,
so stiff and serious, all arms and elbows. You went in a girl,
but you returned a warrior. You marched back with the others--
your hair was cut, your eye tattooed with the red triangle of war.
Tomorrow I must go, my love. I will tattoo my head with braids.
My shield will bear a shining sun so you will always be with me.
Inlaid with gold, it will shine like glowing embers. I will return
with lizard skins for your sandals. Paint your eyes black and wait for me.
I am the sun, you are the moon. Wherever you lead I will go,
following across the wide sky, as long as I live and you love.
Sun follows Moon until she tires, then carries her until she's strong
and runs ahead of him again. I'll carry you, too, my beloved.
My love, we are not Sun and Moon. Instead we are like day and night.
The old ones say Day is a woman, who works only while it is light.
She herds her goats and catches fish, fills her fields with golden corn,
shows her children what is just and protects them from the cobra.
Day loves Night, who works in darkness, walking through heaven's milky sky
collecting stars with his quick arms, piling them into a basket
like a child collecting lizards and piling them into her pot
until the pot overflows with lizards, 'til the basket overflows with light.
Night wears a black cloak lined with fire, studded inside with gleaming stars.
At dawn and dusk he spies his love. Across the rolling hills of sky,
they glimpse each other--so briefly. They throw each other kisses, cry.
Their tears spill over Jamuraa. Mixed with blood, they wash everything red.
But once, with a magician's help, Time was stopped and Day stood still.
Night spread over Jamuraa, wrapped Day in his dark cloak and held her.
In their miraculous embrace, the two became as One. Until
pulled from Day's arms, Night sank, commanded by the western horizon that always beckons him to come.
I won't give up hope, my love.
Our love is like the river in the summer season of long rains:
For a little while it spilled its banks, flooding the crops in the fields.
But soon it will evaporate with the dry heat. Like Day from Night,
I'll live my life apart from you, just glimpsing you across the sky,
because you cannot change, my dear, and nor can I.
And there you sat upon those rocks
All mermaid clad and gingery locks
And curious I was as I peered again
Searching beyond the limiting din
Of pastors and teachers and hullabaloo
To latch onto an ism accepting of you
For I had never seen a mermaid before
Most certainly not this far from the shore
And I won’t recall if you come hitherly stared
I’ll only remember those steps that I dared
To chance a moment with no thoughts of woo
Just to be in the air around you
And we talked and laughed all summer long
Carving a friendship in a tree with a song
Or yonder we sat in a faraway field
No trinkets to barter, no tokens to yield
Til reluctant we’d turn to respective houses
We poetical spirits with practical spouses
And now that you’ve wandered nowhere to be seen
Shorter are the times and long between
Of my thoughts of you and our mad connection
Like sister and brother with a blood convention
There is more to love than the heart arouses
For poetical spirits with practical spouses
Nic I was mesmerized by the Jenny Scott poem. If you have some more of her work, I would like to peruse it if I could. I looked a little on the Internet, but I only found one poem.
Posted by: Jim at October 13, 2006 10:57 AMWas it a different one, Jim? And yes, I thought there was something captivating about it too. That's the first thing I'd ever seen by her, and the first I'd ever heard of her. I'll try and track down the link to post on here; the site I took it from had it printed in pink and blue as a conversation between a boy and a girl.
Posted by: nic at October 13, 2006 03:15 PMHere's the one I found.
Jenny Scott
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just Another Over-Easy Two-Strip Sizzle
She was in a January mood,
a matted-grass lawn-popsicle funk,
a sliced-icy star-spiked night in a
freeze-yer-pipes kinda way.
He was her French toast man,
her cocoa on the stove,
her fluffed-up warm biscuit
with a dab a jam.
Her syrupy you-know-what.
They were jelly-jam tart and
pecan petunia, went together
like a window and a breeze.
And in the cool radish of a leftover day
he took her pea-pumpkin hand,
and they strode horselike, all trotty,
through the julep afternoon,
sittin' higher than horseflies
in the buzzy golden dandelion of June.
Copyright 1997, Jenny Scott
Jenny Scott's poems have appeared in Point No Point, Duelist Online, and Magic: The Gathering
Mirage. She has also published interviews and articles. She lives on a Puget Sound island with two
cats, an artist, a beagle, and the knowledge that Oprah's enthusiasm for book clubs will surely wane
before her first poetry collection is published. Her e-mail address is Seaserif@aol.com.
He is Leanan-sidhe.(‘midlife crisis’)
Leanan-sidhe.
Celtic charmer.
Seeks more wisdom.
Finds all strength.
Leanan-sidhe.
Succubus.
Blinds the poet.
Bends the warrior.
She is gone.
But myth remains.
She reappears.
Guise is strange.
She’s a he.
And he is her.
To seek not wisdom.
To find not strength.
His life is lived.
Wisdom found.
Strength was wasted.
Again alone.
And so he seeks
To find his youth.
Which long ago drained and abused.
And so reappears Leanan-sidhe.
Leanan-sidhe.
Poised and wise.
Drains the soul
from sweet young minds.
Never love.
Never lust.
Just a remedy
For time long lost.
Not a thought
Of what he does.
Leanan-sidhe.
Incubus.
I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.
As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.
As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.
Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.
His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me.
I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.
The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.
My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice.
My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely.
Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.
My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies.
Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether.
"Song of Solomon"
Posted by: M. Cautrell at October 17, 2006 06:01 AMThe world is round-o, round-o
A ball beneath my feet
The world is round-o, round-o
Just like a friggin' beet
--Alobar
If I could bring myself to respect or care,
your intellect might make you giant,
but I know the cruel way in which you ridicule
those whom you think cannot hear.
And I don't see you as the kind of person
who needs to put others below
in order to feel superior,
so I have to figure you as some sort of...
and your tininess delights me
This is my anthem-Angela.
Homework! Oh, Homework!
I hate you! You stink!
I wish I could wash you away in the sink,
if only a bomb
would explode you to bits.
Homework! Oh, homework!
You're giving me fits.
I'd rather take baths
with a man-eating shark,
or wrestle a lion
alone in the dark,
eat spinach and liver,
pet ten porcupines,
than tackle the homework,
my teacher assigns.
Homework! Oh, homework!
you're last on my list,
I simple can't see
why you even exist,
if you just disappeared
it would tickle me pink.
Homework! Oh, homework!
I hate you! You stink!
----------------------------------------------
~"Homework! Oh, Homework!" Jack Prelutsky 1984 book The New Kid On The Block p.54-55
Ok, it has to be done...and yes I realize it's tastless.
Private Play
When I was a little boy
Snuggled safe in bed
They said I should play with my soldiers
If I wanted to get ahead
I looked down at my soldiers
Generals and Majors and said
Sod the higher orders
(And I played with my privates instead!)
and thats why I rarely reply.
Posted by: J Bennett at October 17, 2006 11:15 PMI hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
Alfred Tennyson - 1850
Posted by: Midir the Proud at October 17, 2006 11:32 PMThe peace of joys,
The peace of lights,
The peace of consolations.
The peace of souls,
The peace of heaven,
The peace of the virgins.
The peace of the fairy bowers,
The peace of the peacefulness,
The peace of everlasting.
The Gardener
Like the tulips
Dormant and cold
Beneath the leaves
Which lay in wait
For years and years
They rise with the sun
Without the love
Of honest arms
Until the day
They reappear
Brushed away every care
And swept away those brittle leaves
Along the shore
Of their lost home.
The tender arms
warmed the cold
And so again they came.
When life had shrugged the purple away.
When years of brittle leaves
held them at bay
“Tulip, you seem old.
You have grown thin and weary.
I will care again
through this uncertain journey “
And so, a simple feeling.
Without the need.
For other minds and
meddling leaves.
He was not a gardener.
Not yet wise.
But the arms
tried and tried
He raised them up
To the sun
Made them strong
Made them run
Bloomed the same
In many ways
Until the mistakes, the trials
the brittle, meddling leaves
America
Allen Ginsberg
America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.
I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1935 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
"I Am a Book I neither Wrote nor Read"
-- Delmore Schwartz
I am a book I neither wrote nor read,
A comic, tragic play in which new masquerades
Astonishing as guns crackle like raids
Newly each time, whatever one is prepared
To come upon, suddenly dismayed and afraid,
As in the dreams which make the fear of sleep
The terror of love, the depth one cannot leap.
How the false truths of the years of youth
have passed!
Have passed at full speed like trains which
never stopped
There where I stood and waited, hardly aware,
How little I knew, or which of them was the one
To mount and ride to hope or where true hope
arrives.
I no more wrote than read that book which is
The self I am, half-hidden as it is
From one and all who see within a kiss
The lounging formless blackness of an abyss.
How could I think the brief years were enough
To prove the reality of endless love?
Mrs. Robinson Plagiarism
Modern day Paidagogos.
Institutional slave.
Circumcise the virgin
Maintain the day parade.
Modern day Paidagogos
In your new ivory tower.
Whip the sick.
Guide to mislead.
When your wisdom is no longer a need.
Stripped down of all its creed.
You are but a slave.
Modern day Paidagogos.
Who now is the teacher?
Your peak is peaked.
Slave you slave!
When wisdom is porn.
Discard the husks.
Modern Day Paidagogos.
Politician in plaid.
Politico appointee.
No better than a congressman.