Poems thread

Post an interesting poem below. Comments are ok, too.

"Shopping Urban"

Flip-flopped, noosed in puka beads, my daughter
breezes through the store from headband to toe ring,
shooing me away from the bongs,
lace thongs, and studded dog collars.
And I don't want to see her in that black muscle tee
with SLUT stamped in gold glitter
shrink-wrapped over her breasts,
or those brown and chartreuse retro-plaid
hip-huggers ripped at the crotch.

There's not a shopper here a day over twenty
except me and another mother
parked in chairs at the dressing room entrance
beyond which we are forbidden to go.
We're human clothes racks.
Our daughters have trained us
to tamp down the least flicker of enthusiasm
for the nice dress with room to grow into,
an item they regard with sullen, nauseated,
eyeball-rolling disdain.

Waiting in the line for a dressing room,
my daughter checks her cleavage.
Her bellybutton's a Cyclops eye
peeking at other girls' armloads of clothes.
What if she's missed something—
that faux leopard hoodie? those coffee-wash flares?
Sinking under her stash of blouses,
she's a Shiva of tangled sleeves.

And where did she dig up that new tie-dyed
tank top I threw away in '69,
and the purple wash 'n' wear psychedelic dress
I washed and wore
and lost on my Grand Tour of Europe,
and my retired hippie Peace necklace
now recycled, revived, re-hip?

I thought they were gone—
like the tutus and tiaras and wands
when she morphed from ballerina
to fairy princess to mermaid to tomboy,
refusing to wear dresses ever again.
Gone, those pastel party dresses,
the sleeves, puffed water wings buoying her up
as she swam into waters over her head.

by Jane Shore

I also like this:

Wading Out

We're crossing an open field, sweating in December's heat,
with First Squad covering from the brush to our left;
and I could be shot dead by a sniper, easily, this
could be the ground where I bleed out in ninety seconds,
but it won't be. There's a patch of still water
I'm about to walk into as I always do,
with too much adrenaline and momentum in my stride,
as my boots sink ankle deep and still I slog forward,
M4 held up over my head, though Fiorillo
sinks up to his knees off to my right—he backs up,
makes it out of the septic runoff I'm up to my thighs in,
the stench filling my nostrils now, and it's funny enough
to laugh at once the mission's over, Turner running in to swim,
but no one's laughing anymore and the months are turning
into years gone by and still I'm down there slogging
deeper into the shit, shoulder deep, my old platoon
with another year of bullets and mortars and missions
dragging them further in, my lieutenant so far down
I can't reach him anymore, my squad leader hunting
for the souls that would mark him and drag him under
completely, better than any bottle of whiskey,
and I keep telling myself that if I walk far enough
or long enough someday I'll walk out on the other side.
But will Jax and Bosch and my lieutenant make it out, too?
If one day we find ourselves poolside in California,
the day as bright as this one, how will we hose ourselves off
to remove the stench, standing around a barbecue
talking football—how will we do that?

Brian Turner

Edited to add the poet's name

That doesn't rhyme either.

Gecko

Blessed be the morning
of childhood when
I found myself
sister to the gecko
acrobat.
On the wall of the room
utterly at ease
just like me
tumbler
on the edge of the planet.

Astrid Cabral

Navajo Windtalkers speak your name in reverent tones.

I'll try to take that personally; thanks.

A Flow of Army Ants

They came.
No one knew from where.
Legions and legions:
minuscule steps
minute blades. . .
They came without warning
like so many other cataclysms.
Cunning in the pitch-black night
they came to disembowel Surinam cherries
and strip bare the mango trees.
They came in a rage,
slow but treacherous.
The muffled sound
of the crunching of the stalks
came to us beneath our sheets.
With the trembling of the leaves
there also came to me
my fear of their scissors
cutting my nails and body hair
eyelashes eyebrows my very curls
my nightgown lacework, all snipped to bits.
I could see myself in little pieces
dragged off by force by that
crackling, greenish flow,
crawling down the drowned backyard
on my way to the frying pan of the ants
hidden in the realms of hell.

Astrid Cabral

Salon

She sat before a "hair technician" who talked with his hands, that is,
he wasn't paying attention to her hair, which he parted and sheaved
and tied into a dozen tiny bundles.

To discourage deer or other animals, scatter hair around your garden.

Imagine her scalp sowed with rice seedlings, blonde shoots
shaped like Ys, bound with purple rubber bands.

Worse than a hair in your soup, is a long one pulled
from a bite of meat.

She was polite, though the man wasn't worth it, and foul water
stirred under her "nice" membrane.

Hair is an outgrowth of dead skin, keratins, proteins, chains
of amino acids also found in hooves, feathers, teeth.

It was her first dance, first date, first time she had her hair done.
She stood in the shower, distraught, ripping out the little plants.

That it continues to grow after death is a myth.

She thought she would die, would rather be dead than dance
with such hair.

It is true when a girl sinks, her hair spreads like a flower
across water, the last of her to go under.

--by Sarah Gorham

I like "Salon" because it reminds me of being 14 and getting ready to go to a formal school dance; my mom tried to help me do something fancy with my hair, but I was stressed out about looking good enough, and wasn't satisfied with anything. I had chosen a very modestly-cut dress, and suddenly realized how out of place I'd look with my peers. I hoped my date wouldn't be disappointed. Anyway, dashing Phil danced with me-- Phil with his saucily flipped green tie, sparkling eyes and ruddy youthful countenance.

What an odd poem. Strangely compelling, and I hate poetry.

Yes, I agree that it's odd and compelling-- some complex imagery there.

I don't like all poetry, either, but there are some pieces that pack a punch.

"A Rainy Country"

"Je suis comme le roi d'un pays pluvieux"
—Baudelaire

The headlines and feature stories alike
leak blood all over the breakfast table,
the wounding of the world mingling
with smells of bacon and bread.

Small pains are merely anterooms for larger,
and every shadow has a brother, just waiting.
Even grace is sullied by ancient angers.
I must remember it has always been like this:

those Trojan women, learning their fates;
the simple sharpness of the guillotine.
A filigree of cruelty adorns every culture.
I've thumbed through the pages of my life,

longing for childhood whose failures
were merely personal, for all
the stations of love I passed through.
Shadows and the shadow of shadows.

I am like the queen of a rainy country,
powerless and grown old. Another morning
with its quaint obligations: newspaper,
bacon grease, rattle of dishes and bones.

-Linda Pastan

My Father Swearing

Bitch, he’d say, always, when he could not work the wood his way,
bitch, as if there were a goddess of all his troubles, grinning,
a woman at the wellspring who skewed the nail, split the joist,
drove his hefted hopes deep into the ground,
bitch, his woe, his wound, his eldest curse.

And we would gather, hidden, my brothers and I,
huddled like shepherds by the door to the shed
to hearken to the litany surely to follow, the dam that would burst,
his power and rage, hammer and tongue.

Bastard then, predictably, and a marriage was made,
like an Adam come lately to a paradise of swearing,
the bitch and the bastard driven out of the garden
to bedevil him further, to beat the bejesus,
like a two-headed god, both mouths washed out with soap,
come to witness, come to share in the blame.

Then son of a bitch, and it all became clear,
a family, procreation, the Gilgamesh epic,
a new generation gathered against him,
and we were the children and he was the father
as he battered the wood, the precision gone out,
gone into the word, the word become flesh.

Then, always, incarnate, the rhythm established,
a flurry, a billingsgate of bitch of a bitch,
and bitch of a bastard, and son of a bitch of a bitch
of a bastard. There structure was born,
prepositional phrases, like blue Chinese lanterns hung out
beneath the moon, this swearing to God, this awful begatting.

We broke at that point, skedaddled, running off to the lilacs,
covering our mouths for fear we’d be heard,
to say in that darkness what was forbidden in the light,
a language mixed with laughter lifting up between the trees,
a forefathers’ song, the words that made the world.

-- John Hodgen

Good stuff. Thanks!
That Iraq one especially.

montereyjack-- yeah, I was pretty amazed by the impression left by that one, too.

Gift

All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags;
and we all do fade as a leaf
—Isaiah 64:6

After my mother's father died,
she gave me his morocco Bible.
I took it from her hand, and saw
the gold was worn away, the binding
scuffed and ragged, split below the spine,
and inside, smudges where her father's
right hand gripped the bottom corner
page by page, an old man waiting, not quite
reading the words he had known by heart
for sixty years: our parents in the garden,
naked, free from shame; the bitterness of labor;
blood in the ground, still calling for God's
curse—his thumbprints fading after the flood,
to darken again where God bids Moses smite
the rock, and then again in Psalms, in Matthew
every page. And where Paul speaks of things
God hath prepared, things promised them who wait,
things not yet entered into the loving heart,
below the margin of the verse, the paper
is translucent with the oil and dark
still with the dirt of his right hand.

Brooks Haxton

One Must Divorce Oneself

:from the trouble. From the woman
walking out with the box of herself
from the man. That rattle
on the backseat. From
the man's ache as he lights
the stove and the stalled
whatwhatwhat begins
to stew. From the dog
wagging from one
to the other: who
who who
holds the leash
to the former life?

Nance Van Winckel

Yesterday I saw a bumper sticker that read: "We're staying together for the cats."

Edited by: starflyer's feline secretary

"Cosmopolitan greetings" by Allen Ginsberg

Stand up against governments, against God.

Stay irresponsible.

Say only what we know & imagine.

Absolutes are coercion.

Change is absolute.

Ordinary mind includes eternal perceptions.

Observe what's vivid.

Notice what you notice.

Catch yourself thinking.

Vividness is self-selecting.

If we don't show anyone, we're free to write anything.

Remember the future.

Advise only yourself.

Don't drink yourself to death.

Two molecules clanking against each other requires an observer to become
scientific data.

The measuring instrument determines the appearance of the phenomenal
world after Einstein.

The universe is subjective.

Walt Whitman celebrated Person.

We Are an observer, measuring instrument, eye, subject, Person.

Universe is person.

Inside skull vast as outside skull.

Mind is outer space.

"Each on his bed spoke to himself alone, making no sound."

First thought, best thought.

Mind is shapely, Art is shapely.

Maximum information, minimum number of syllables.

Syntax condensed, sound is solid.

Intense fragments of spoken idiom, best.

Consonants around vowels make sense.

Savor vowels, appreciate consonants.

Subject is known by what she sees.

Others can measure their vision by what we see.

Candor ends paranoia.

Profound... Lots of smashing lines in this.

I like:

Notice what you notice.

Catch yourself thinking.

...

Candor ends paranoia.

A Men's Choir

The voice one has when
talking to small children
and large dogs
is not the same
as that at the barber's
or from the lectern.
It comes from another life
from far, far away
one that maybe never existed

whereas the voice
one has
when caressing a woman's breast
or belly
is a third voice
that comes from a third world
(green warm moist shadow under
huge ferns, marshland, and
huge birds that fly up).
And there are many, many more.

Not my own voice—
and not exactly that of anyone else.
Is there such a thing as
the voices in between?
I recall your foot
still warm with morning.
I imagine
they must be like that.
And if one could hear
all the voices at the same time
one would get the impression
of a men's choir
defiantly executing
a breakneck series of dissonances.

by Lars Gustafsson
(translated from Swedish)

Two Poems

Spring

My feelings just took a turn for the better
While thinking of white flowers turning into strawberries,
Of clover turning into bees, of crowds of wisteria
Swelling and swelling.

People often think I have a friendly dog, but it is just me:
My wide arm-span for folding tablecloths, my feet that seem worn
Not just by me, but many.

I had this feeling once before, when I was walking through rain
And wet leaves in shoes that were red and navy.
Much of me hadn't been tried out, and I liked that.

Annulment

I've ruined my marriage, but still I enjoy the hum of nature,
And the pleasure of greeting a kindly pedestrian
When I have the chance.

Make no mistake, I'm fond of my bungalow.
Returning home at night, I can't resist waltzing a bit
With my valise. I let my right foot go first,
Since it's my favorite.

I live a quiet life, thinking of what to say,
Heeding the call of the wild, removing my sunglasses in tunnels.
I never refreeze, though I may try it one day.

By Angela Ball