what's your poem?

I'm a Yorkshire Minimalist
I'm a Yorkshire minimalist, and I say nowt,
If I've got emotions, I don't let em out,
My response to joy, is a self defeated shrug,
If I won the lottery, I would not kiss or hug,
Cause I'm a Yorkshire minimalist, and I say nill,
And talky, talky, talky, talky, it really makes me ill,
Reet, thou knows, shutup, nowt, glum.

The Surrealist Postman
Our surrealist postman,
Comes down the street on a zebra,
Not a real zebra of course,
That would be silly,
Paper mache zebra that's not silly,

Our surrealist postman,
Doesn't post the letters through the letter box,
He makes Blackpool Tower from them,
Not a real Backpool Tower of course,
That would be silly,

Our surrealist postman,
His hat is made of cheese,
Lovely lovely cheese,
Not real cheese of course,
That would be silly.

& now for some POET VS LANDSCAPE : FITE! intensity -

Dialectic of Mud (Richard Reeve)

Cleft mud, the bludgeoned flexures slumped and rain-mashed into a tree-selfless
    ooze,
a grist, rising out of perpetual stump-blitz: the gnawed, upchurned nuggets sunk
down its dephysical mush. Wood-gristle, leaf-scalp, each plump sump scoffing
    leached

bone and skin squashed under its blanked of rot, sand duck-pressed; or swan-suck,
upending the end-up, twice-dead pews of branch or root pushed out of the swirled
    sludge
stalled under a cooped air, bubbles globed by an eye-skim glinting in the sombre

of a drizzle sapped from moss or wood, rushes kinked by the flung wind, the
    hollowing
water-rock¾nothing is a name, wrung from a stick's evanescence, stone-suckled
the saw-mouthed river, slivering hips of land, dunks life and log alike down its
    gravel

throat, from the forest bed heaved out in one blind ritual, neither total
    replenishment
nor the absolute decay of animal death, itself effecting always that incidental pulse
by which seasons flourish in the vacuole of language: tor-oblique, rooted in the
    ground-

down granite blurting silt through calcite beaks; and yet there also at once
    uprooted,
withdrawing into kahikatea, matai. Mud clenched in the tight guts of a feeding
    pukeko,
stoles of moss hushing a snapped totara trunk, an arboreal graveyard, worm-
    house,

all these are merest inklings of the aboriginal nature: presence at all points
    pervasive
which is yet to some an inadmissable fiction, where the deer-slicked lake
    disembodies
its vowel silence, made consonant in the clicking jaw, there decocting its
    excrescent

particulars as that absolute faith the hoofs of taste or touch yield to a pool-dark
    sky:
wing-stopped water, footsteps tracked through a swamp, for every such incidence
there existing beneath its context the ur-character of world immanent as
    undisclosed

grit siphoned through the veins of a reed: the crushed stump mopped by a boot
    sole,
for all its lacerated pulp, not less consumnate than churned bog, being merely one
further step in a marsh-devolution, sandfly-embroiled, by which the crops of
    tussock

are finitude exacted from the quern slush rupturing and grinding down sods of
    earth.
Time is the neck-wound on a bolting doe. Wanderer of sopped thickets, a glad
    blowfly
invests in dung, in the valve of a dead tree possums suck the grooved ears of
    litter-

it is not enough to declare such things dependent on some glib antediluvian
    framework
by which a world is strapped down, conferred the weight and colour of its
    shadows,
the single colossal imperative of shale or ice-gripped schist assumed as spry
    rhetoric

scored from a palimpsest of premeditated meaning, and under every chiselled
    buttress
some axiom to be scraped out from among the lichen. As in the grip of first
    awakenings
Fiordland takes hold of its dimensions, a grave, the brunt of its existence
    unknowable

it terms presuming the coterie of principles, or seeking to reduce the gravitas of
    muck
into swilled compounds, as if the inexorable status endorsed by misplaced paws or
    feet
might somehow prove explicable beyond what is simply there, light-coelom, a
    bruise:

out of nothing the thing writes itself, its cowled wings or sky-brushed foliage laid
    bare
where called into being, the thigh and shoulder of the ground determining its
    utterance
without recourse to alternatives; cracked and stippled and wrung the factual
    monolith

lays down its seal, inscribing its quidditas as slush, slipped stone, a feather, the this
for which a rat is earth swallowing earth swallowing earth, a breath of bellbirds
    interrogates
the shying silence, along the wave-crinkled outline of a bushed beach unfaltering
    rock

rocks to the pendant wind. Bleached and bent, a tusk of barren wood guts the
    twilight.
Twilight, dense, unswerving, swills mud the shut floor of the forest, the larval
    moon
burrowing its way downward through a node of scratched shade puncturing the
    gleam.

I am actual among the leaf. Singular and unavailing, I grip in the dry stack of my
    paws
grub-tongue, a fern's genital fist, the resonance and impunity of mud
    undifferentiated
save in the specimen of my understanding, the pubic grind of a stone, mossed
    kneecaps,

each such nominal stricture traducing the protean earth, carving supercilious steps
    into
what otherwise ever evades meaning, is manifest yet never singularised in that
    hiatus
of human dogma except as despair, the One: the unsegmented, unenlightened
    whole.

My nails make leaves, my teeth a swan's chewed feathers. I suppurate the heaped
    soil
of human history, holding clods of ripe rot in the plinth of my hands; I rummage
    the lived
and the sipped floor, an earther of bark, my bare thumbs toeing the sloughed
    sleeves

of trees lifted and wrenched by a herd of winds trampling flat the ruffled sticks of
    rock.
All is ecstasis. Cloud-shadows travelling across a blown lake, the moving darkness,
the cold stream slicing through a forest, the tendons sprung in my consecrating
    palms.

I want to put in some Geoffrey Hill but have to go home to get it.

But loooking forward to printing this all out and reading it in bed!

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
Like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

-- Pablo Neruda

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house-, and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon,-
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled,
gave back my too-sudden image. Who knows?
perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening...

-- Ranier Maria Rilke

“The air is not so full of flies in summer as it is at all times of invisible devils, this Paracelsus stiffly maintains…” -- Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy

You can be walking down a street
in rush hour and out of nowhere
that awful fluttering arrives—that shadow

with its perfect aim singling you out
on the sidewalk. Without warning,
those wide wings can swoop down,

those talons haul you by the scruff
out of the narrow canyon of your ways.
Even in the crowded grocery store,

some demon that you never see
can attack again and leave you
weaving slowly up and down an aisle

like someone without a list,
lost behind a heavy shopping cart
in a maze of labels.

Half-way home when your car stops
along the highway and the door
swings open on the frozen field

you can fall out of yourself
with a snap—your grip
no better than a defective seatbelt

You once thought you were as safe
as the good china locked in your cabinet,
but nothing can save you.

Wherever you hide, the wolf
sniffs you out. He huffs and puffs
at all your walls, like so much straw.

Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness.

Four o'clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
There's something laughable about this,

The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)

High and preposterous and seperate--
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,

One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can't come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.

(philip larkin)

for Professors Richard Hoggart & Leon Cortez
I
, ay ay!...stutterer Demosthenes
gob full of pebbles outshouting seas -

4 words only of mi ’art aches and…. ‘Mine’s broken,
you barbarian, T.W.!’ He was nicely spoken.
‘Can’t have our glorious heritage done to death!’

I played the drunken porter in Macbeth.

‘Poetry’s the speech of kings. You’re one of those
Shakespeare gives the comic bits to: prose!
All poetry (even Cockney Keats?) You see
’s been dubbed by [s] into RP,
Received pronunciation, please believe [s]
your speech is in the hands of the Receivers.’

‘We say [s] not [uz], T.W.!’ That shut my trap.
I doffed my flat a’s (as in ‘flat cap’)
my mouth all stuffed with glottals, great
lumps to hawk up and spit out... E-nun-ci-ate!

II
So right, yer buggers, then! We’ll occupy
your lousy leasehold Poetry.

I chewed up Littererchewer and spat the bones
into the lap of dozing Daniel Jones,
dropped the initials I’d been harried as
and used my name and own voice: [uz] [uz] [uz],
ended sentences with by, with, from,
and spoke the language that I spoke at home.
R.I.P. RP. R.I.P. T.W.
I’m Tony Harrison no longer you.

You can tell the Receivers where to go
(and not aspirate it) once you know
Wordworth’s matter/water are full rhymes,
[uz] can be loving as well as funny.

My first mention in the Times
automatically made Tony Anthony.

(although this is also set to music)

Living At The End Of A Dream

Do you remember how it felt living adventure with you?
Do you remember how it felt searching for treasure with you?
I remember when we were young
I remember when we all we knew was fun
We were young
I am in love with you
But I can't envisage you

Living At The End Of A Dream

Do you remember how it felt living adventure with you?
Do you remember how it felt searching for treasure with you?
I remember when we were young
I remember when all we knew was fun
We were young
I am in love with you
But I can't envisage you

That's when I realise we're living at the end of a dream

I can still remember the in between days without you
I can still remember the isolation felt without you
I remember when the cousins were younger as well
We went a long way to see
His progressive university
I am in love with you
But I can't envisage you

Finally I see that we're living at the end of a dream

Can you still remember the nights I was dreaming of you?
(Make a wish now and make every dream come true)
Do you still remember the strangers we grew to love with you?
(We could take in all who travelled, all who dreamed, all Butskellites)
Conservative, consensualist
Loyal and collectivist
Call of the wild
Wise man's child
Call of the wild
Wise man's child

That's why I see ourselves living at the end of a dream

The day boy at the public school goes home
(We saw him just five years ago)
John Lydon on his mind
Mark E. Smith on a late evening drive
Time mistaken, three places at once
And we are number one

We are the first subject, Weimar Republic Mark 2
We are the past object, past tense, we know that it's true
One last summer holds us in
But when the winter comes and the flowers die
We'll know the reason why
And we'll walk in the snow
We might be the last to know

But we will see: we're living at the end of a dream

--Ki no Tsurayuki

i like the "spleen" poems from "les fleurs du mal", "le bateau ivre", lots of mallarme, yeats, wordsworth, and others...

Thunder goes BOOM,
and rain says PITTER-PAT.
The car goes VAROOM,
and the mole goes SPLAT.

'A boy at odds in the house, lonely among brothers.' But I, who had none, fostered a strangeness; gave myself to unattainable toys.

Candles of gnarled resin, apple branches, the tacky mistletoe. 'Look' they said, and again 'look.' But I ran slowly; the landscape flowed away, back to its source.

In the schoolyard, in the cloakrooms, the children boasted of their scars of dried snot; wrists and knees garnished with impetigo.

- from Mercian Hymns (no 6) by Geoffrey Hill

increasingly oftennow
you reach into your handbag
(the one I bought some xmasses ago)
and bringing forth
a pair of dead cats
skinned and glistening
like the undersides of tongues
or old elastopasts
sticky with earwigs
you hurl them at my eyes
and laugh cruellongly
why?
even though we have grown older together
and my kisses are little more than functional
i still love you
you and your strange ways

-Roger Mcgough

Lament for a Lost Dinner Ticket

by Margaret Hamilton.

See ma mammy
See ma dinner ticket
A pititnma
Pokit an she pititny
Washnmachine.

See thon burnty
up wherra firwiz
Ma mammy says
Am no tellnyagain
Noty playnit
A jis wenty eat ma
Pokacrisps furma dinner
Nabigwomdoon...

The wummin sed
Aver near clapsed
Jistur heednur
Wee wellies stikinoot.

They sed wot heppind ?
N'men ma belly
Na bedna hospital
A sed a pititnma
Pokit an she petitny washnmachine.

They sed Ees thees chaild eb slootly
Non verbal
A sed Ma Bumsair
Nwenty sleep

I wanna jam the jack plug of my guitar into my vein and scream feedback out of my mouth. I wanna break my fingers on the distorted chord of rocknrollrevolution and watch the blood run down over the fret board and drip off the neck into a pool around my sneakers. I want my guitar to howl like a banshee siren and wrap myself around the mic stand like a snake spitting out the words sucked from the deepest cut of my heart I wanna dive into the broken arms of the non believers and break my nose on the hard wood floor yet still get up dancing like a spastic out into the street and crawl into the gutter of love and drink the holy rain that falls on my face in the Rock and Roll morning.

G.K

Real Good - Iain Mills

Cross fae the left,
Zinedine Zidane steadies himsel
An Zazou! Baw's in the net!
Fifty thoosan folk leapin fae seats,
Fists punchin the soggy Glesca err,
Aw roarin in ther ain tongues,
Giein it 'Ole!', 'Achtung!' an
"Guan yerself Son!"

But nae tummlin his wulkies
Tae celebrate,
Nae haunstauns ower the grass,
Jist the great man grinning fit tae split
His baldy heid,
An the hale place gaun mental!

by Philip Larkin

What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose
It's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,
And you keep on pissing yourself, and can't remember
Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,
They could alter things back to when they danced all night,
Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?
Or do they fancy there's really been no change,
And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,
Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming
Watching the light move? If they don't (and they can't), it's strange;
Why aren't they screaming?

At death you break up: the bits that were you
Start speeding away from each other for ever
With no one to see. It's only oblivion, true:
We had it before, but then it was going to end,
And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour
To bring to bloom the million-petalled flower
Of being here. Next time you can't pretend
There'll be anything else. And these are the first signs:
Not knowing how, not hearing who, the power
Of choosing gone. Their looks show that they're for it:
Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines -
How can they ignore it?

Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms
Inside you head, and people in them, acting
People you know, yet can't quite name; each looms
Like a deep loss restored, from known doors turning,
Setting down a lamp, smiling from a stair, extracting
A known book from the shelves; or sometimes only
The rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning,
The blown bush at the window, or the sun's
Faint friendliness on the wall some lonely
Rain-ceased midsummer evening. That is where they live:
Not here and now, but where all happened once.
This is why they give

An air of baffled absence, trying to be there
Yet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leaving
Incompetent cold, the constant wear and tear
Of taken breath, and them crouching below
Extinction's alp, the old fools, never perceiving
How near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet:
The peak that stays in view wherever we go
For them is rising ground. Can they never tell
What is dragging them back, and how it will end? Not at night?
Not when the strangers come? Never, throughout
The whole hideous inverted childhood? Well,
We shall find out.

Razors pain you
Rivers are damp
Acids stain you
And drugs cause cramp
Guns aren't lawful
Nooses give
Gas smells awful
You might as well live

I had this pinned up by my bed for a very long time. I find something very comforting about it. It might be flippant and crass without that title. But that somehow makes it more personal and more immediate.

Michel Desnos - I've dreamed of you so much ("J'ai tant reve de toi")

I've dreamed of you so much that you're losing your reality.
Is it already too late for me to embrace your literal, living and breathing physical body and to kiss that mouth which is the birthplace of that voice which is so dear to me?

I've dreamed of you so much that my arms--which have become accustomed to lying crossed upon my own chest after attempting to encircle your shadow--might not be able to unfold again to embrace the contours of your literal form, perhaps

So that coming face-to-face with the actual incarnation of what has haunted me and ruled me and dominated my life for so many days and years
Might very well turn me into a shadow.

Oh equilibriums of the emotional scales!

I've dreamed of you so much that it might be too late for me to ever wake up again.
I sleep on my feet, body confronting all the usual phenomena of life and love and yet when it comes to you--you, the only being on the planet who matters to me now--
I can no more touch your face and lips than I can those of the next random passerby.

I've dreamed of you so much, have walked and talked and slept so much with your phantom presence that perhaps the only thing left for me to do now
Is to become a phantom among phantoms, a shadow a hundred times more shadowy than that shifting shape which moves and which will go on moving, stepping lightly and happily across the sundial of your life.

"J'ai tant reve de toi"

J'ai tant rêvé de toi que tu perds ta réalité.
Est-il encore temps d'atteindre ce corps vivant et de baiser sur cette bouche la naissance de la voix qui m'est chère ?
J'ai tant rêvé de toi que mes bras habitués, en étreignant ton ombre, à se croiser sur ma poitrine ne se plieraient pas au contour de ton corps, peut-être.
Et que, devant l'apparence réelle de ce qui me hante et me gouverne depuis des jours et des années, je deviendrais une ombre sans doute.

O balances sentimentales.
J'ai tant rêvé de toi qu'il n'est plus temps sans doute que je m'éveille. Je dors debout, le corps exposé à toutes les apparences de la vie et de l'amour et toi, la seule qui compte aujourd'hui pour moi, je pourrais moins toucher ton front et tes lèvres que les premières lèvres et le premier front venus.
J'ai tant rêvé de toi, tant marché, parlé, couché avec ton fantôme qu'il ne me reste plus peut-être, et pourtant, qu'à être fantôme parmi les fantômes et plus ombre cent fois que l'ombre qui se promène et se promènera allègrement sur le cadran solaire de ta vie.

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

'Twas about seven o'clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clods seem'd to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem'd to say-
"I'll blow down the Bridge of Tay."

When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers' hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say-
"I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay."

But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

So the train sped on with all its might,
And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sught,
And the passengers' hearts felt light,
Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,
With their friends at home they lov'd most dear,
And wish them all a happy New Year.

So the train mov'd slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
The Storm Fiend did loudly bray,
Because ninety lives had been taken away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

As soon as the catastrophe came to be known
The alarm from mouth to mouth was blown,
And the cry rang out all o'er the town,
Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down,
And a passenger train from Edinburgh,
Which fill'd all the peoples hearts with sorrow,
And made them for to turn pale,
Because none of the passengers were sav'd to tell the tale
How the disaster happen'd on the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of thSilv'ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.

William Topaz McGonagall

Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But today,
Today we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
And today we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers
They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For today we have naming of parts.

Match (mat.ch) n-es 1. An arrangement
of a marriage: We agreed to the match
without understanding what it meant.
2. An engagement in a game or a contest
in which two people oppose or compete
with each other: A couple with nothing
in common but the outcome of the match.
3. A pair of opposites (that attract). —
v. matched, matching, matches. 1. To see
a similarity; to cause to correspond:
to liken. 2. To flip coins, and compare
the faces in a game of chance. 3. To join
two pieces of wood, tongued and grooved
to fit. 4. To secure; to hold together;
to form a bond.

Match (mat.ch) n-es 1. An article that
is manufactured for the express purpose
of starting a fire; usually a splinter
of wood or cardboard coated with a thin
combustible substance at the tip that
ignites it by friction: "The quick, sharp
scratch, / and blue spurt of a lighted
match." —Browning. 2. The evolution
of energy from heat to light 3. Love.

Warren Slesinger

i sing of Olaf glad and big
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or

his wellbelovéd colonel(trig
westpointer most succinctly bred)
took erring Olaf soon in hand;
but--though an host of overjoyed
noncoms(first knocking on the head
him)do through icy waters roll
that helplessness which others stroke
with brushes recently employed
anent this muddy toiletbowl,
while kindred intellects evoke
allegiance per blunt instruments--
Olaf(being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag
upon what God unto him gave)
responds,without getting annoyed
"I will not kiss your fucking flag"

straightway the silver bird looked grave
(departing hurriedly to shave)

but--though all kinds of officers
(a yearning nation's blueeyed pride)
their passive prey did kick and curse
until for wear their clarion
voices and boots were much the worse,
and egged the firstclassprivates on
his rectum wickedly to tease
by means of skilfully applied
bayonets roasted hot with heat--
Olaf(upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
"there is some shit I will not eat"

our president,being of which
assertions duly notified
threw the yellowsonofabitch
into a dungeon,where he died

Christ(of His mercy infinite)
i pray to see;and Olaf,too

preponderatingly because
unless statistics lie he was
more brave than me:more blond than you.

plastic, stacked on the
newspaper vending machine...
his winter headband

holding back wild hair,
needing a shave yesterday...
he fixes me with

his high-voltage, sky-
blue eyes, with pin-point pupils,
on this rainy, grey

sunday morning, and
asks me; "what's happening, man?"
all i can manage

at this early hour
is a sort of soundless croak,
and i squat down to

wait for the bus... he
asks me where im going, and
i tell him; "...to work."

...he asks me what i
do, and i tell him ...he says
he "likes my jacket."

i tell him; "its a
poncho." "oh, yeah", he says, "a
poncho, right." ...he lights

a cigarette and
walks into the street looking
for the bus... then a

pidgeon lands on the
curb, and starts drinking from an
oily puddle

in the gutter ...he
reaches into his bundle
and pulls out a bag

of broken cookies
and tosses them to the bird
...more birds land and eat

...he calls and coos to
them softly ...i watch them peck
at the crumbs and then

walk over to his
feet... i picture him bending
down and scooping one

up and twisting its
head, breaking its neck, and then
stuffing it into

his bundle for a
meal later... instead, he stands
with one arm outstretched,

his finger pointing,
waiting for one to perch on
his nicotine stained

didjit... they ignore
him more successfully then
i was able to...

the bus arrives, and
we board... about thirteen blocks
later, he gets off,

and as he exits
from the mechanical doors,
clutching his bundle,

shoulders hunched against
the rain, patting himself down
for another smoke,

and dry match, i hear
the sound of church bells tolling
at 'queen of angels'

-- stosh machek

"April Fool Birthday Poem For Grandpa"

Today is your
birthday and I have tried
writing these things before,
but now
in the gathering madness, I want to
thank you
for telling me what to expect
for pulling
no punches, back there in that scrubbed Bronx parlor
thank you
for honestly weeping in time to
innumerable heartbreaking
italian operas for
pulling my hair when I
pulled the leaves off the trees so I'd know how it feels,
we are
involved in it now, revolution, up to our
knees and the tide is rising, I embrace
strangers on the street, filled with their love and
mine, the love you told us had to come or we
die, told them all in that Bronx part, me listening in
spring Bronx dusk, breathing stars, so glorious
to me your white hair, your height your fierce
blue eyes, rare among italians, I stood
a ways off listening as I pour out soup
young men with light in their faces
at my table, talking love, talking revolution
which is love, spelled backwards, how
you would love us all, would thunder your anarchist wisdom
at us, would thunder Dante, and Giordano Bruno, orderly men
bent to your ends, well I want you to know
we do it for you, and your ilk, for Carlo Tresca
for Sacco ad Vanzetti, without knowing
it, or thinking about it, as we do it for Aubrey Bearsley
Oscar Wilde (all street lights
shall be purple), do it
for Trotsky and Shelley and big/dumb
Kropotkin
Eisenstein's Strike people, Jean Cocteau's ennui, we do it for
the stars over the Bronx
that they may look on earth
and not be ashamed.

******
"Song For Baby-O, Unborn"

Sweetheart
when you break thru
you’ll find
a poet here
not quite what one would choose.

I won’t promise
you’ll never go hungry
or that you won’t be sad
on this gutted
breaking
globe

but I can show you
baby
enough to love
to break your heart
forever

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
-the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other:then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

Where are the lyrics about pink elephant flying through marshmallow skies?
Where are the nursery-rhyme-like melodies?
Where are the mellotrons?

A Martian Writes A Postcard Home.

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings -

they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.

I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.

Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:

then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.

Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the property of making colours darker.

Model T is a room with the lock inside -
a key is turned to free the world

for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.

But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.

In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.

If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep

with sounds. And yet they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.

Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room

with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises

alone. No one is exempt
and everyone's pain has a different smell.

At night when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs

and read about themselves -
in colour, with their eyelids shut.

-- Craig Raine

[poem snipped]

Oh coolness! I remember back in high school, in one of my English classes, we almost spent the whole period just going over this one poem. We dissected it to where there was absolutely nothing left of it. I wish I could remember what it ended up meaning, but I do know we spent an awful lot of time discussing what the colors red and white signify, as well as the possible symbolism behind the rainwater being on the wheelbarrow so close to chickens.

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments of princes
Shall outlive this powerful rhyme.
But you shall shine more bright in its contents
Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.
WHen wastefuk wars shall statues overturn
And broils root out the work of masonary,
Nor Mars his sword, nor wars' quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all oblivious emnity
shall you pace forth - our praise shall still find room.
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
SO, till the judgement that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lover' eyes.

Eveeryone go aaah!

a fish hook,
an open eye

- Margaret Atwood

No use, you walk backwards,
admiring your own footprints

- M.A

a better one...

grey rain the day
the man said when I die
let it rain that day
whenever it rains then
is grey to whomever
time says goodbye

who set the man singing
said the man who died
said grey the man is grey
said grey the rain is dead
goodbye said the rain

whenever the man is singing then
in a grey raincoat time says die
wring out the rain
ring it out that day
save the grave for whomever the man said
save the rain for a gay day
sing it whenever said the grey
die sighs the rain
goodbye whenever

-Colin Morton

The following was written by one of my students, a 12 year-old kid from New York whom I taught via Skype. I provide it verbatim:

The Look

This look I see too much,
Out of confusion
And bewilderment.

From people who,
Cannot comprehend,
The stories of those,
Who can suppress.

This look I find unbearable,
The look
From those who may
Be forgetful.

I still do not understand,
What is the cause of
This unmistakable glance.

I sometimes wonder what he's up to now. Hopefully writing poetry.

After the leaves have fallen, we return
To a plain sense of things. It is as if
We had come to an end of the imagination,
Inanimate in an inert savoir.

It is difficult even to choose the adjective
For this blank cold, this sadness without cause.
The great structure has become a minor house.
No turban walks across the lessened floors.

The greenhouse never so badly needed paint.
The chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side.
A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition
In a repetitiousness of men and flies.

Yet the absence of the imagination had
Itself to be imagined. The great pond,
The plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves,
Mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence

Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see,
The great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this
Had to be imagined as an inevitable knowledge,
Required, as a necessity requires.

I was expecting 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'.

O commemorate me where there is water,
Canal water, preferably, so stilly
Greeny at the heart of summer. Brother
Commemorate me thus beautifully
Where by a lock niagarously roars
The falls for those who sit in the tremendous silence
Of mid-July. No one will speak in prose
Who finds his way to these Parnassian islands.
A swan goes by head low with many apologies,
Fantastic light looks through the eyes of bridges -
And look! a barge comes bringing from Athy
And other far-flung towns mythologies.
O commemorate me with no hero-courageous
Tomb - just a canal-bank seat for the passer-by.

Its hard to read any poetry not written by irish tbh

love that one so much i moved to the canal in question tbh

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50986/paradoxes-and-oxymorons

A FOOTFALL TAPPING SECRECIES OF STONE

kavanagh stop it

As I wend to the shores I know not,
As I list to the dirge, the voices of men and women wreck’d,
As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me,
As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer,
I too but signify at the utmost a little wash’d-up drift,
A few sands and dead leaves to gather,
Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift.

O baffled, balk’d, bent to the very earth,
Oppress’d with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,
Aware now that amid all that blab whose echoes recoil upon me I have not once had the least idea who or what I am,
But that before all my arrogant poems the real Me stands yet untouch’d, untold, altogether unreach’d,
Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows,
With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written,
Pointing in silence to these songs, and then to the sand beneath.

I perceive I have not really understood any thing, not a single object, and that no man ever can,
Nature here in sight of the sea taking advantage of me to dart upon me and sting me,
Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

love these, keep em comin

I have a feeling I’ve already shared this here, but:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50986/paradoxes-and-oxymorons

Ha! Yes! I already have

I got this one via Poetry Daily, I don't know that it's a "favorite" but it's one that stuck with me.

https://poems.com/poem/juvenilia/#featured-poet

“This Dark Apartment”, James Schuyler, 1980

Coming from the deli
a block away today I
saw the UN building
shine and in all the
months and years I’ve
lived in this apartment
I took so you and I
would have a place to
meet I never noticed
that it was in my view.

I remember very well
the morning I walked in
and found you in bed
with X. He dressed
and left. You dressed
too. I said, “Stay
five minutes.” You
did. You said, “That’s
the way it is.” It
was not much of a surprise.

Then X got on speed
and ripped off an
antique chest and an
air conditioner, etc.
After he was gone and
you had changed the
Segal lock, I asked
you on the phone, “Can’t
you be content with
your wife and me?” “I’m
not built that way,”
you said. No surprise.

Now, without saying
why, you’ve let me go.
You don’t return my
calls, who used to call
me almost every evening
when I lived in the coun-
try. “Hasn’t he told you
why?” “No, and I doubt he
ever will.” Goodbye. It’s
mysterious and frustrating.

How I wish you would come
back! I could tell
you how, when I lived
on East 49th, first
with Frank and then with John,
we had a lovely view of
the UN building and the
Beekman Towers. They were
not my lovers, though.
You were. You said so.

i always post this and im never sorry:

The day dawns, with scent of must and rain,
Of opened soil, dark trees, dry bedroom air.
Under the fading lamp, half dressed -- my brain
Idling on some compulsive fantasy --
I towel my shaven jaw and stop, and stare,
Riveted by a dark exhausted eye,
A dry downturning mouth.
It seems again that it is time to learn,
In this untiring, crumbling place of growth
To which, for the time being, I return.
Now plainly in the mirror of my soul
I read that I have looked my last on youth
And little more; for they are not made whole
That reach the age of Christ.

Below my window the wakening trees,
Hacked clean for better bearing, stand defaced
Suffering their brute necessities;
And how should the flesh not quail, that span for span
Is mutilated more? In slow distaste
I fold my towel with what grace I can,
Not young, and not renewable, but man.

i have only made one poem, in 2013, but it's pretty epic. i fed Alan Ginsberg's 'Howl' into every language on Google translate and finally back to English like a game of telephone:

Radyositi most.
Music is dead.
During the next few years.

The

Emergency Aluminium and Sphinx.
? And ideas.
First, JP, Ashtrays "Our children ... -.
Lower stairs crying. Call Baby reply
I do not know.
Or not. Before? Sugar shock! Do you want to! Has
You're looking for swimming!
10 point box.
Pain and movement.
Add module to stand BlackBerry.
?
Technology in the future. I remember the blood.
Money! Rufus is 10 centimeters! Perched book.
Taking the kanibais public smoking volcano.
Moore, thousands window blind Black Tower.
A music moloki.
You will spend and Malta.
For Akron.
Welcome to the olive bar pressure.
Bank espirito Santa moloki.
Hydrogen ears cool! Moloki.
To
Download Black Angels photography.
I do not have sex before another busy?
March gray in my life.
The entire staff. Fear of the water.
Jam! Contact your system with great sea! Light
Sony Ericsson Download Paradise!
Or not. First of all, I am not a robot or a financial institution.
Action! International trade and human rights? Courses abroad.
A Hardworking.
Mountain road timber radio bar or not.
If you are in London for a long time?
Zion I jineunghyeongneun? He said,? U.S.. It.
Water!
Gold Service? Light! While there are many reasons to search.
Skip
A. Changing the river? Torrent
This is very important! He knows! You will not be disappointed. Decades, animals, and the idea of ​​suicide.
I'm sure it will be as a new song! Ads.
Ventilation water? Jerusalem Jerusalem gallon.
I do not know? Did you know? Bad
Cherry Beach water groups.

wait that's not all of it, here's the whole thing:

Michigan თაობის Furthermore, as frenezo ეს khomeini (Raw) market
We Nirvana.
Serkan art agadoj frenezo.
Defina.
Paradizo მემშიერიბაზარზე Bruno Crazy Hippie angel.
Michigan City, with khomeini შიშველიისტერიული as frenezo.
We Nirvana.
On Tuesday, the stock agadoj frenezo serkan.
Defina.
But it is poor milk Marketing Madness angel, our thirst malnate beauty paradizo Bruno.
Drum surexite.
Kouture.
Selection
Pre-sized entertainment.
Racing at night.
Poverty and beverages, clothing.
Welcome to the Magic of Winter Debris.
Panorama of Armenia.
Blue Angel and it forget.
Hit Bishop Street.
Cold heart failure.
Science and SRS tragedy of war.
The song was published online.
Warning Skull
Conflicts and save time.
Have you ever heard of a Box.
Results Brad.
Marijuana, New York.
Emissyons TV and Beverage (I), died looking for.
Christmas Eve night the body.
Drugs, alcohol, and his son, Lao groups.
Hengelo.
The light.
Patterson, CA Canada, to encourage positive thinking in Missouri.
Photo.
The drinking green areas and trees flying dream.
Ennessa teahead neon.
Pressure sensors, potatoes, sun, photography, trees.
Brooklyn Winter neukkyeotdagva.
News
Limited battery life.
Children bronka albnzidrin fear of the wheel.
Earthquake, fire, black religion.
Light Mountain Park apologize.
Bekkford water.
Fugazza beer.
Ⅱ music died.
Ωρες Bell Auto Group 70
Museum Brooklyn Bridge (Brooklyn Bridge).
Deregister.
However, the
Development riveyara small and yakketayakking.
The poor, sick humor and fun and action.
Seven days and seven nights, and lots of restaurants.
CPS.
New Jersey.
President Treasurer of Atlantic City.
Ryan bones, headaches, sweating.
I really blue, black.
Turn, Food and Rural Development Center.
Nokia Mobile Phone.
Tobacco and discomfort.
Farmers evening.
- San Juan (San Juan), your feelings.
Enstenktivman grace.
State Idaho Street, Los Angeles, Italy.
Angel Eyes Romania.
Local Baltimore.
Group
Buying, downloading, Oklahoma.
Of the way the winter.
Jazz, Houston, thirst, sex, and so on.
Spain and elsewhere.
Africa yet.
Mexican volcano.
Wash and extrapolasyon high.
Chicago
West Bank, jaw, small eyes ef.bi. Intelligence ..
Make sure my skin.
At the end of the course.
Products
Capital
(Square (unirey also updated)) super pryoritizatyon European (EU).
Siren Rama.
Motherboard, melting, staten Island Fairy.
Clear water, white shirt, then.
Carriage return, then
Police said.
Unfortunately, development of the village.
Needle
For example, one of the most important links.
Laos - A man and Wavelength half signature.
Santander Drying.
I cried.
Navastinere complaint arteries and veins leading safety.
Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea.
Today, tomorrow, and the courage.
Information and communication Seeds're park.
To
Dr. Marina virus.
Tomb angels young.
Games
Damage in humans.
Less.
They are annoying.
Holiday best.
Bottle of beer.
Southwest and area - based wax.
Powder charge will not be reflected in Northern Europe.
John Flower mysterious package.
Malaysia
In some cases, it may be cold and dark.
Red Rider is not easy.
Area and kill nudeugva white.
Theft, prostitution, and especially in North Carolina Welcome to the night.
Welcome to Denver victory.
Food -.
Metro Cinema, mountains and caves.
Waitress Rita food.
(Nutmeg) solipsizmom died Tues
The woman
End
Family, business, bankruptcy, New York (Manhattan).
Iron altvkai a threat?
Entertainment and government.
On the night of the crime.
Then the door.
Heat
Suicide reporter Clive large banks.
Blue moon.
Forget
For example, cancer, guinea pigs, sheep fat.
Rio ball.
But endiskutabl and Onions.
Weak financial system.
Light and air.
Rogge opened.

Taj 6 train crash Harlem.
Orange County Fair.
At night, he said.
Morning clouds yellow.
Health sector programs in an attempt to reduce everything to heart.
What is the best sex.
Meat, eggs, hot
Soon
At the time, every day.
Add
Mammals Shangri well.
I know some things.

Madison, New Jersey.
Storm and Reggae.
November Nitroglycerin and advertising.
And so, whether or arm or LG HDTV PM.
Only one small problem.
Brooklyn Bridge (Brooklyn Bridge).
(China), China, and in the spirit world.
Prosekutors, he said, and then try again.
Metro good singer or small boxes.
Passaik books on birds and land.
Dance Platinum broken leg.
Jazz Germany nastaljeia the 1930 average.
VC sositara blood and screaming.
Fryable
Post
Maribor Castle Jazz and fish skull helmet.
72 countries at a price.
Knowledge and interest.
He died in Denver;
Denver, courage, faith, country.
Denver, Denver, Colorado today.
Listen
Church knees weak and broken lights.
And emotional pain.
Monday
Niryatanakaridera.
In the heart of the importance of beauty.
Beautiful monster.
Rocky Mountain, Buddha, and Mexican parents, and evaluation.
Some black kalkareous Pacific.
See deep 德朗 哈佛.
Skills and self - hipnosis.
Baker Cancer Group.
Energy, New York, potatoes, university later.
Granite mikrovave.
Vest immediately die.
Cut ears to the brain white matter.
Pentilenetetrazol. Island energy independent.
4 hearts bath.
Nissan.
Notes and world - renowned theme ().
Now etourdri.
Hair, blood and tears.
Madtovns inch camera died.
Wednesday
Iceland, lemon and spices conference.
Feelings Housing Bank.
Dream - to live in a nightmare.
The second term
******.
Message bedroom window.
Stone furniture vallarta, the number of Accidents.
The second part of the small yellow rules.
Pakistani clothes.
My favorite Statement of defense.
In time, the knife and society.
Accessories for Pets.
Suddenly the fish.
Release of chemical windows.
Vibration
Photo: time and space.
The President and the Prime Minister, one of the objectives to be clear, there are two angels.
Language development can be blocked.
Government calls.
Every time.
Change pvoz and female beauty.
Information and information, but declined.
Especially
A vast desert.
My skin is not serious.
Game
Kingdom and promote jazz and modern clothes.
American free market.
Owen sabatshthani earthquake.
Radyositi most.
Music is dead.
During the next few years.

The

Emergency Aluminium and Sphinx.
? And ideas.
First, JP, Ashtrays "Our children ... -.
Lower stairs crying. Call Baby reply
I do not know.
Or not. Before? Sugar shock! Do you want to! Has
You're looking for swimming!
10 point box.
Pain and movement.
Add module to stand BlackBerry.
?
Technology in the future. I remember the blood.
Money! Rufus is 10 centimeters! Perched book.
Taking the kanibais public smoking volcano.
Moore, thousands window blind Black Tower.
A music moloki.
You will spend and Malta.
For Akron.
Welcome to the olive bar pressure.
Bank espirito Santa moloki.
Hydrogen ears cool! Moloki.
To
Download Black Angels photography.
I do not have sex before another busy?
March gray in my life.
The entire staff. Fear of the water.
Jam! Contact your system with great sea! Light
Sony Ericsson Download Paradise!
Or not. First of all, I am not a robot or a financial institution.
Action! International trade and human rights? Courses abroad.
A Hardworking.
Mountain road timber radio bar or not.
If you are in London for a long time?
Zion I jineunghyeongneun? He said,? U.S.. It.
Water!
Gold Service? Light! While there are many reasons to search.
Skip
A. Changing the river? Torrent
This is very important! He knows! You will not be disappointed. Decades, animals, and the idea of ​​suicide.
I'm sure it will be as a new song! Ads.
Ventilation water? Jerusalem Jerusalem gallon.
I do not know? Did you know? Bad
Cherry Beach water groups.

Stripped nude, my soul,
on a windswept jetty,
the exhiliration of emptiness
no longer obtains.

This cruel December, my thoughts
as bare as the Atlantic.

I got this one via Poetry Daily, I don't know that it's a "favorite" but it's one that stuck with me.

https://poems.com/poem/juvenilia/#featured-poet

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 3 January 2024 01:11 (yesterday)

My favourite poem of all time is "Long Distance II" by Tony Harrison.

Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles her side of the bed
and still went to renew her transport pass.

You couldn't just drop in. You had to phone.
He'd put you off an hour to give him time
to clear away her things and look alone
as though his still raw love were such a crime.

He couldn't risk my blight of disbelief
though sure that very soon he'd hear her key
scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief.
He knew she'd just popped out to get the tea.

I believe life ends with death, and that is all.
You haven't both gone shopping; just the same,
in my new black leather phone book there's your name
and the disconnected number I still call.