Poetry
Poetry
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/30/05
Poetry#0
Posted: 6/22/05 at 6:37pm
What's your favourite poem?
Mine is Lullaby by Rosemary Norman
Go to sleep, Mum
I won't stop breathing
suddenly, in the night.
Go to sleep, I won't
climb out of my cot and
tumble downstairs.
mum, I won't swallow
the pills the doctor gave you or
put hairpins in electic
sockets, just go to sleep.
I won't cry
when you take me to school
and leave me:
I'll be happy with the other children
my own age.
Sleep, Mum, sleep.
I won't
fall in the pond, play with
matches,
run under a lorry or even
consider
sweets from strangers.
No, I won't
give you a lot of lip,
not like some.
I won't sniff glue,
fail my exams,
get myself/
my girlfriend pregnant.
I'll work hard and get a steady
really worthwhile job.
I promise, go to sleep.
I'll never forget
To drop in, phone, write
and if
I need any milk, I'll yell.
Joined: 12/31/69
re: Poetry#1
Posted: 6/22/05 at 6:50pm
I read one last night by Federico Garcia Lorca...
Cogida and death
At five in the afternoon.
It was exactly five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheet
at five in the afternoon.
A frail of lime ready prepared
at five in the afternoon.
The rest was death, and death alone.
The wind carried away the cottonwool
at five in the afternoon.
And the oxide scattered crystal and nickel
at five in the afternoon.
Now the dove and the leopard wrestle
at five in the afternoon.
And a thigh with a desolated horn
at five in the afternoon.
The bass-string struck up
at five in the afternoon.
Arsenic bells and smoke
at five in the afternoon.
Groups of silence in the corners
at five in the afternoon.
And the bull alone with a high heart!
At five in the afternoon.
When the sweat of snow was coming
at five in the afternoon,
when the bull ring was covered with iodine
at five in the afternoon.
Death laid eggs in the wound
at five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon.
At five o'clock in the afternoon.
A coffin on wheels is his bed
at five in the afternoon.
Bones and flutes resound in his ears
at five in the afternoon.
Now the bull was bellowing through his forehead
at five in the afternoon.
The room was iridiscent with agony
at five in the afternoon.
In the distance the gangrene now comes
at five in the afternoon.
Horn of the lily through green groins
at five in the afternoon.
The wounds were burning like suns
at five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon.
Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon!
It was five by all the clocks!
It was five in the shade of the afternoon!
re: Poetry#2
Posted: 6/22/05 at 7:06pm
I love the poetry of Marilyn Nelson. Here are a few I already had typed up.
Wild Pansies
by Marilyn Nelson
I rested in my mother’s womb,
a lily on the pond.
Gentle waves moved the water;
I rocked, held by a twisted cord
of roots.
From the moment I was planted there
I thought about learning to walk
8 more than nine months before I was born.
I listened to the voices
of the water around me;
sometimes I thought a storm
was really three hearts
13 beating as one.
I grew from a bundle of jelly-eggs
into a tadpole nosing the water weeds.
Then I was the size of a rainbow trout,
17 and then I was me.
I jumped up the falls
of the birth canal
and knew, as my body
hit the sunlight,
what it would feel like to fly.
But when I got to the top
24 I could breathe water no more.
Before I drew dry air
for the first time
into my lungs
28 I said to myself, Remember
How the pine trees
shadowed the water
when evening came.
How the sunset was reflected
How the wild pansies
34 grew along the shore.
Mama’s Promise
by Marilyn Nelson
I have no answer to the blank inequity
of a four-year-old dying of cancer.
I saw her on TV and wept
4 with my mouth full of meatloaf.
I constantly flash on disasters now;
red lights shout Warning. Danger.
everywhere I look.
I buckle him in, but what if a car
with a grille like a sharkbite
roared up out of the road?
11 I feed him square meals,
but what if the fist of his heart
should simply fall open?
I carried him safely
as long as I could,
but now he's a runaway
on the dangerous highway.
Warning. Danger.
20 I've started to pray.
But the dangerous highway
curves through blue evenings
when I hold his yielding hand
and snip his minuscule nails
with my vicious-looking scissors.
I carry him around
27 like an egg in a spoon,
and I remember a porcelain fawn,
a best friend's trust,
my broken faith in myself.
It's not my grace that keeps me erect
as the sidewalk clatters downhill
33 under my rollerskate wheels.
Sometimes I lie awake
troubled by this thought:
It's not so simple to give a child birth;
you also have to give it death,
38 the jealous fairy's christening gift.
I've always pictured my own death
as a closed door,
a black room,
a breathless leap from the mountaintop
with time to throw out my arms, lift my head,
and see, in the instant my heart stops,
45 a whole galaxy of blue.
I imagined I'd forget,
in the cessation of feeling,
while the guilt of my lifetime floated away
like a nylon nightgown,
50 and that I'd fall into clean, fresh forgiveness.
Ah, but the death I've given away
is more mine than the one I've kept:
from my hands the poisoned apple,
54 from my bow the mistletoe dart.
Then I think of Mama,
her bountiful breasts.
When I was a child, I really swear,
Mama's kisses could heal.
I remember her promise,
60 and whisper it over my sweet son's sleep:
When you float to the bottom, child,
like a mote down a sunbeam,
you'll see me from a trillion miles away:
my eyes looking up to you,
65 my arms outstretched for you like night.
Dusting
by Marilyn Nelson
Thank you for these tiny
particles of ocean salt
pearl-necklace viruses,
winged protozoans:
for the infinite,
intricate shapes
of submicroscopic
living things.
For algae spores
and fungus spores,
bounded by vital
mutual genetic cooperation,
spreading their
inseparable lives
from equator to pole.
My hand, my arms,
make sweeping circles.
Dust clims the ladder of light.
For this infernal, endless chore,
for theses eternal seeds of rain:
Thank you. For dust.
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/3/05
re: Poetry#3
Posted: 6/22/05 at 7:17pm
maggie and millie and molly and may
e.e. cummings
maggie and millie and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)
and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and
millie befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;
and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and
may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.
for whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea.
re: Poetry#4
Posted: 6/22/05 at 8:27pm
Pablo Neruda - Love Sonnet XVII
I do not love you as if you were a salt rose, topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the propogates fire.
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you simply, without pretensions or pride;
I love you because I know no other way of loving
than this: where there is neither I, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.
*Note: I did this from memory, please forgive any errors.
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/30/05
re: Poetry#5
Posted: 6/22/05 at 8:30pm
Unrelated Incidents by Tom Leaonard
this is thi
six a clock
news thi
man said n
thi reason
a talk wia
BBC accent
iz coz yi
widny wahnt
mi ti talk
aboot thi
trooth wia
voice lik
wanna yoo
scruff. if
a toktaboot
thi trooth
lik wanna yoo
scruff yi
widny thingk
it wuz troo.
jist wanna yoo
scruff tokn.
thirza right
way ti spell
ana right way
to tok it. this
is me tokn yir
right way a
spellin. this
is ma trooth.
yooz doant no
thi trooth
yirsellz cawz
yi canny talk
right. this is
the six a clock
nyooz. belt up.
It's meant to force you into a scottish accent (i think)... just makes me smile!
Joined: 12/31/69
Joined: 12/31/69
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/30/05
re: Poetry#8
Posted: 6/22/05 at 9:11pmthen you're not allowed to read it... i don't make the rules i just break them lol
Joined: 12/31/69
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