The Poetry Only Thread

[terns]

Long ago there was a time I knew
That to follow a singular genius
Required a branching of minds
And a forking of tongues,
A closing of eyes
And a wish
To stand in shadow.
Hello.
I know nothing at all.

terns

[Searcher08]

James Elroy Flecker


THE GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND

We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little further: it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow,
Across that angry or that glimmering sea,

White on a throne or guarded in a cave
There lives a prophet who can understand
Why men were born: but surely we are brave,
Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells
When shadows pass gigantic on the sand,
And softly through the silence beat the bells
Along the Golden Road to Samarkand.

We travel not for trafficking alone;
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.

[Searcher08]

Where Water Forgives the Same

We travel where water forgives the same as our aching hearts
In winds where most everything can drift away
Into soothing emotions that sing softly against our skin
As the years brush against harsh words
Colored in disarray

When we eagerly turn our faces to where the sun does shine
Like flowers our hearts will bloom unexpectedly
With strong stems planted deeply within balanced ground
We can cast aside harsh words that rest
On waves of misery

Our world contains many boundaries people cross as they may
Often they cannot even see where these lines begin
We must remember no matter the color of harsh words
If our faces are turned to light and balance
Disarray may cross but not win

Copyright *Neva Flores @2011

[fruhmenschen]

Here is something Serpico the Cop wrote yesterday.
http://frankserpico.blogspot.com/

see his blogspot for full poesy

Official Frank Serpico Blog
Wednesday, May 04, 2011

OSAMA IS DEAD
GERONIMO? One of America's greatest warriors?
Gung Ho assassins?
Yes, Ben Laden the man is dead, riddled with hate.
The same hate that brought about 911.

Be not proud America.
Who will bring US to Justice?
The Peoples History of the United States speaks volumes of injustice.
Two wars for a cause that never was.

Who will make for peace? WHEN?
Any fool can hate, any fool can kill.
Who will save the children?
Lies can not blind children orphaned by war

When will love replace hate?
Truth replace lies?
wisdom replace ignorance?
Humility replace arrogance?
Peace replace power and war?

Why do a people who want to bring peace to the world
create the most weapons of mass destruction?
Who will make for peace?
If not you, WHO

"This is who we are"
Who are we then?
The Peoples history bears witness to who we are.
But, who will we become?
What are we becoming?

The cause of JUSTICE
Is not just for US

Yes, Ben Laden is dead
Or is HE

[The Consul]

REPOSE OF THE DISPOSED

After they buried him
His body was stolen
& later recovered sans hands

The left was kept in a glass box
At the center of a golden cathedral
The right was kept in a vault
Beneath a jagged and mysterious mountain

As the years passed the people forgot
All the death and torture he caused
All the people who disappeared
-Instantly leaving behind nothing
But a broken cup or a drop of blood

The masses proceed in reverence round the left
Dreaming revolution might make them rich
The rulers convene in homage to the right
Holding out hope to smother yet the poor

As the body goes to dust new miracles are assigned
By the banker priest keepers of the hands
To a man that never lived in a land
That could only absolve her sins by praying

to the hands and the flags
For honor, courage and country
For amnesia, freedom from justice
the totally perfect hormone cocktail

And a blindfold at the firing squad pole

- Doctor Igor Shitpansky

[The Hundredth Idiot]

The conditions of a solitary bird are five:

the first, that it flies to the highest point;

the second, that it does not suffer for company, not even of its own kind;

the third, that it aims its beak to the skies;

the fourth, that it does not have a definite colour;

the fifth, that it sings very softly.

Dichos de Luz y Amor

- San Juan de la Cruz

[justdrew]

Star-steadfast eyes that pierce the smouldering haze
Of Life and Thought, whose fires prismatic fuse
The palpitating mists with magic hues
That stain the glass of Being, as we gaze,
And mark in transit every mood and phase,
Which, sensitive, doth take or doth refuse
The Lights and shadows Time and Love confuse,

When, lost in dreams, we thread their wandering maze.
Fledged, too, art thou with plumes on brow and breast
To bear thee, brooding o'er the depths unknown
Of human strife, and wonder, and desire;
And silence, wakened by thy horn alone,
Behind thy veil behold a heart on fire,
Wrapped in the secret of its own unrest.

—Walter Crane, 1907

[Stephen Morgan]

When evening cools the yellow stream,
And shadows stalk the jungle’s ways,
Zimbabwe’s palace flares ablaze
For a great King who fears to dream.

For he alone of all mankind
Waded the swamp that serpents shun;
And struggling toward the setting sun,
Came on the veldt that lies behind.

No other eyes had vented there
Since eyes were lent for human sight—
But there, as sunset turned to night,
He found the Elder Secret’s lair.

Strange turrets rose beyond the plain,
And walls and bastions spread around
The distant domes that fouled the ground
Like leprous fungi after rain.

-- The Outpost, HP Lovecraft

[Harvey]

Schrödinger's Cat Preaches to the Mice
by Gwen Harwood

Silk-whispering of knife on stone,
due sacrifice, and my meat came.
Caressing whispers, then my own
choice among laps by leaping flame.

What shape is space? Space will put on
the shape of any cat. Know this:
my servant Schrödinger is gone
before me to prepare a place.

So worship me, the Chosen One
in the great thought-experiment.
As in a grave I will lie down
and wait for the divine event.

The lid will close. I will retire
from sight, curl up and say Amen
to geiger counter, amplifier,
and a cylinder of HCN.

When will the geiger counter feel
decay, its pulse be amplified
to a current that removes the seal
from the cylinder of cyanide?

Dead or alive? The case defies
all questions. Let the lid be locked.
Truth, from your little beady eyes,
is hidden. I will not be mocked.

Quantum mechanics has no place
for what's there without observation.
Classical physics cannot trace
spontaneous disintegration.

If the box holds a living cat
no scientist on earth can tell.
But I'll be waiting, sleek and fat.
Verily, all will not be well

If, to the peril of your souls,
you think me gone. Know that this house
is mine, that kittens by mouse-holes
wait, who have never seen a mouse.

[The Consul]

"When the world is reduced to a single dark wood for our four eyes' astonishment, - a beach for two faithful children, - a musical house for one pure sympathy, - I shall find you.

Should there be here below but a single old man, handsome and calm in the midst of "incredible luxury", I shall be at your feet.

Should I have realized all your memories, - should I be the one who can bind you hand and foot, - I shall strangle you."

- Rimbaud

[Searcher08]

Resting under cedars

I saw you resting dead today
A waterbottle just out of reach
were you holding it for Momma?
Now, no need to thrist...
with large stains of blood-rust
seeping through your shirt
Your face DaVinci painted and winged
like cherubs in Renaissance times
your curls small
dark soft clouds
haloed around you
I held you for a second
though embracing only angel air
you wore pale blue sky
and a highway boulder of black bitumen
a ready gravestone,
crushed your little foot
Time on your face lay bomb-clock stopped
Your eyes half-open enigmatic
alive with ghosts and hollow ghosting dreams
and on these half-closed
small child eyes
written in
deaths
delicate
scything
copperplate
a footnote entry in this years
Book of War

[Lottie McLotsaluck]

Breathing, you invisible poem!
World-space constantly in pure
interchange with our own being. Counterpoise,
wherein I rhythmically happen.

Solitary wave,
whose gradual sea I am;
most sparing you of all possible seas,-
winning of space.

How many of these places in space have already been
within me. Many a wind
is like a son to me.

Do you know me, you air, still full of places once mine?
You onetime smooth rind,
rondure and leaf of my words.

R.M. Rilke from Sonnets to Orpheus

[Lottie McLotsaluck]

Dearest Foxxy,

I am in a crate,
the crate that was ours,
full of white shirts and salad greens,
the icebox knocking at our delectable knocks,
and I wore movies in my eyes,
and you wore eggs in your tunnel,
and we played sheets, sheets, sheets
all day, even in the bathtub like lunatics.
But today I set the bed afire
and smoke is filling the room,
it is getting hot enough for the walls to melt,
and the icebox, a gluey white tooth.

I have on a mask in order to write my last words,
and they are just for you, and I will place them
in the icebox saved for vodka and tomatoes,
and perhaps they will last.
The dog will not. Her spots will fall off.
The old letters will melt into a black bee.
The nightgowns are already shredding
into paper, the yellow, the red, the purple.
The bed-well, the sheets have turned to gold-
hard , hard gold, and the mattress
is being kissed into a stone.

As for me my dearest Foxxy,
my poems to you may or may not reach the icebox
and its hopeful eternity,
for isn't yours enough?
The one where you name
my name right out in P.R.?
If my toes weren't yielding to pitch
I'd tell the whole story-
not just the sheet story
but the belly-button story,
the pried-eyelid story,
the whiskey-sour-of-the-nipple story-
and shovel back our love where it belonged.

Despite my asbestos gloves,
the cough is filling me with black,
and a red powder seeps through my veins,
our little crate goes down so publicly
and without meaning it, you see,
meaning a solo act,
a cremation of the love,
but instead we seem to be going down
right in the middle of a Russian street,
the flames making the sound of
the horse being beaten and beaten,
the whip adoring its human triumph
while the flies wait, blow by blow,
straight from United Fruit, Inc.

Love Letter Written In A Burning Building. RIP Anne Sexton, d. 4 Oct 1974, 38 years ago today

[stefano]

The Law - Jacob Bacharach

As a general rule I’m not the sort of man
who thinks our world’s best served by putting other
men into jail. This one Jewish brother
who got famous later on, he said, I stand
with the least of you, the whores and lepers and
the murderers and thieves. Of course, his mother
knew who he hung out with. She discovered
that’s what mattered when the Roman cops ran
into the garden and hauled him out and strung
him up; shouldn’t one of them, at least,
have spent at least one night on a concrete floor?
The question outlived her son’s name on her tongue.
Did he deserve to die like some dumb beast?
Even the beasts—even then—got more.

[Jerky]

A few of my own, starting with

Right (2012)

Right
the Cain-Hand, Abel slew.
Left
Behind.
Left
Holding the bag.
Right
the thing that Might makes.
Right.
Not asked for.
Taken.