Poetry Corner

Ahem

The pointy birds - all pointy, pointy,

The Pope's Penis by Sharon Olds

It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate clapper at the center of a bell.
It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a halo of silver sweaweed, the hair swaying in the dark and the heat
-- and at night while his eyes sleep, it stands up in praise of God.

the poem is alot longer and great, you should find more sharon olds

This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn't what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.


Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.
-Margaret Atwood

Bricks aren't round or good to eat,
I once met a bloke called Pete,
Tables mostly have four legs,
Coats are hung on hooks or pegs.

Could I be killed by rancid peas?
Or beaten up by purple cheese?
What if blue looked just like red?
A shed for bikes is called a bike shed.

Living fish are usually wet,
I haven't eaten Muesli yet,
Trees are made from lots of sticks,
Have you had your Weetabix?

There's a man in a pitch black hat
And his underwear's made of mud
He jumps like a pouncing cat
And he lands with a sickening thud
His head is surrounded by ravens
The plague has progressed to his heart
Best that you meet him clean shaven
Cos his razor is not kept sharp
And he's wearing a wooden overcoat

He's known in the underworld
He lives in the undergrowth
And he's knowingly undersold
Though he's never been under oath
His devil's are arrayed in armies
And his angels will fix the fight
He'll shape you like origami
And throw you away at night
And he's wearing a wooden overcoat

His house is a damp museum
And all of his servants worms
Mating in mausoleums
Licking the floor for germs
And his cabinet's full of wonders
There's specimens everywhere
He's negative six feet under
And has to submerge for air
And he's wearing a wooden overcoat

Don't ever act too humble
Don't eat away thy heart
He's tearing apart each dungeon
His tail's an evil dart
And he's wearing a wooden overcoat

J.W. Harding

(my favourite thing ever - set to music, but a poem nonetheless)

Andy Goram Broke My Heart by Will Ferguson

It’s artificial to stop the ball
at this point.
But Goram does: in a minute.
The goal’s already shelved, the ball relaxed
after its blaat through November’s
stubborn air, filed
in its sleeve of net.
Already shelved, when the lump of skin
hits it: Goram.
Time stopped as a vector:
all motion, no direction, a sequence
of unitary incidents staring
at the full, stop second:
blaat, shelved, lump, disappointment.
The trick was ‘don’t tell gravity’;
how it pulls from-to the inevitable,
toward a net of comfort, the habitual
dwelling. Goram didn’t tell gravity,
leapt and landed, a dumb thud of skin
on ground; the ball resting,
safe
from its shelf.
A language my children
(my memory’s trickery)
can’t understand or even begin to
graze its meaning; like light
peeking through pock-marks
in pit-dark curtains, they’re unable
to source or context it.

summer

every minute
of every day
is endless
and too short.
every glance i find
every man
i hide from
feels like
the end of the road.
so i take it off
and put it on.
i take it off
and put it on.
i let him watch
and go on
and on.
i let him watch
i pose
i arch myself
over my doubts
shortcomings
surely turn someone on.

all of you
please find the heights of my regard
the lengths to which i would go
for you.
all of you
please listen when i sing your praises
i can't help but see your faces
in these late hours.
all of you
please see the limits of my charms
and carry them with you
carry me with you
take me on.
all of you
please, even though i don't know how
to show you
take me on.
please take me on.

a catalogue of emergencies which i will feign to help you bail on an annoying friend

-My roommate lit my cat on fire and stole my car.
-I have been kidnapped by Nazis. For ransom they are demanding the hair of an ex punk girl.
-Werewolves have stolen my wardrobe and I am naked in the middle of South Congress.
-I am drowning. Come get me.
-Mars is entering the seventh house and my self destructive proclivities are becoming more pronounced so I need you to remove this scotch bottle from my mouth if you've got a minute to spare.

catalog, obviously

For the man with the erection lasting more than four hours
He’s supposed to call his doctor, but for now he’s the May King
	with his own maypole.
He’s hallelujah, he’s glory hole. The world has more women than
	he can shake a stick
at. The world is his brickbat, no conscience to prick at, all of us
	Germans he can ich
liebe dich at. He’s Dick and Jane. He’s Citizen Kane. He’s Bob Dole.
He’s Peter the Great. He’s a tsar. He’s a clown car with an extra car.
Funiculí, Funilucá. He’s an organ donor. He works pro boner.
	He’s folderol.
He’s fiddlesticks. He’s the light left on at Motel 6. He’s free-for-alls.
He’s Viagra Falls. He’s bangers and mash. He’s balderdash.
	He’s a wanker.
He’s got his own anchor. He’s whack-a-doodle. King Canoodle.
	He’s a pirate, Long John
Silver, walking his own plank. He has science to thank. He’s in 
	like Flynn. He’s Gunga Din.,
holding his breath, cock of the walk through the valley of the
	shadow of death. He’s Icarus,
hickery dickarous, the mouse run up the clock. He’s shock and awe.
	He’s Arkansas.
He’s the package, the deal, the Good Housekeeping Seal.
	He’s Johnson & Johnson.
He’s a god now, the talk of the town. He’s got no place too go
	but down. 
—John Hodgen

TO go. sorry for fucking up last line.

what is this? a work in progress? I dunno:

Infinite Streets

birdwings slap in the square
and a distant mothering cry
echoes through canyons of stone

then there, unexpected,
a blast of grass untouched
beside the black canal

We quarreled that morning,
For he was sixty-five, and I was thirty,
And I was nervous and heavy with the child
Whose birth I dreaded.
I thought over the last letter written me
By that estranged young soul
Whose betrayal of me I had concealed
By marrying the old man.
Then I took morphine and sat down to read.
Across the blackness that came over my eyes
I see the flickering light of these words even now:
"And Jesus said unto him, Verily
I say unto thee, To-day thou shalt
Be with me in paradise."

Jonas Keene thought his lot a hard one
Because his children were all failures.
But I know of a fate more trying than that:
It is to be a failure while your children are successes.
For I raised a brood of eagles
Who flew away at last, leaving me
A crow on the abandoned bough.
Then, with the ambition to prefix
Honorable to my name,
And thus to win my children's admiration,
I ran for County Superintendent of Schools,
Spending my accumulations to win-- and lost.
That fall my daughter received first prize in
Paris For her picture, entitled, "The Old Mill"--
(It was of the water mill before Henry Wilkin put in steam.)
The feeling that I was not worthy of her finished me.

a catalogue of emergencies which i will feign to help you bail on an annoying friend

-My roommate lit my cat on fire and stole my car.
-I have been kidnapped by Nazis. For ransom they are demanding the hair of an ex punk girl.
-Werewolves have stolen my wardrobe and I am naked in the middle of South Congress.
-I am drowning. Come get me.
-Mars is entering the seventh house and my self destructive proclivities are becoming more pronounced so I need you to remove this scotch bottle from my mouth if you've got a minute to spare.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, June 17, 2009 5:12 AM (9 months ago) Bookmark

holy fuck talk about a time and a place

and a terribly formed "poem"

The Skull Ring - Chelsey Minnis

I am very excited about the skull ring.
I didn't know anyone would think
I wanted a silver skull ring.
Now, when I am rude to those who oppose me,
I can just look down at the skull ring.
It has ruby chips in the eyes!
Ruby chips like the nasty flame in my own eyes
when I am insulted or reviled.
No one will dare oppose me now
in my own hometown.
For a very long time I have avoided rings
because none of them seemed right for me.
A skull ring is actually a good complement
to my diabolical will.
Thank you very much for the skull ring.

Hot damn I love this opening couplet from Speech by Walter de la Mare; it's perfect -

The robin's whistled stave
Is tart as half-ripened fruit;

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

popular yes, but my favorite.

https://i.imgur.com/MtGyqmY.png

drunk hoos appears to have left sober hoos a present in the rolling drafts doc

http://i.imgur.com/7iquddC.png

A+ Berryman tweets

hoosteen bores me, with his plights and gripes as bad as achilles

lol ty tho

http://i.imgur.com/M1h3fj1.jpg

that is a gr-r-reat poem

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DoqNoVKXoAA4tOq.jpg

Thought the revive would be because today is NATIONAL POETRY DAY

probably why it popped on my feed earlier.

is that a Limmy

of course it's a Limmy, I don't even need to ask

Robert Florence "most popularly known for starring in the popular BBC comedy sketch show Burnistoun" he's probably very bad, everyone from the comedy world is!

I really like this poem by Alberto Ríos

It is blunt, but lovely. And both an elegy and benediction. It reminds me a little of Larkin's 'High Wires'

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/house-called-tomorrow

A House Called Tomorrow
Alberto Ríos, 1952
You are not fifteen, or twelve, or seventeen—
You are a hundred wild centuries

And fifteen, bringing with you
In every breath and in every step

Everyone who has come before you,
All the yous that you have been,

The mothers of your mother,
The fathers of your father.

If someone in your family tree was trouble,
A hundred were not:

The bad do not win—not finally,
No matter how loud they are.

We simply would not be here
If that were so.

You are made, fundamentally, from the good.
With this knowledge, you never march alone.

You are the breaking news of the century.
You are the good who has come forward

Through it all, even if so many days
Feel otherwise. But think:

When you as a child learned to speak,
It’s not that you didn’t know words—

It’s that, from the centuries, you knew so many,
And it’s hard to choose the words that will be your own.

From those centuries we human beings bring with us
The simple solutions and songs,

The river bridges and star charts and song harmonies
All in service to a simple idea:

That we can make a house called tomorrow.
What we bring, finally, into the new day, every day,

Is ourselves. And that’s all we need
To start. That’s everything we require to keep going.

Look back only for as long as you must,
Then go forward into the history you will make.

Be good, then better. Write books. Cure disease.
Make us proud. Make yourself proud.

And those who came before you? When you hear thunder,
Hear it as their applause

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D3YMsJDW0AAQdwz.jpg:large

came across a xerox of frank o’hara’s “personism: a manifesto” going through some old papers.

i love this man. he is so very otm

Married woman laughing
Is not laughing
Is crying for days

Gahhhh