Official TRF Poetry Appreciation Thread™ (redux)

[Blue J]

There are some wonderful choices in here already (I've exhausted my likes but I'll be back, ha)! I'll try to post some of my favourites by poets who aren't yet represented in the thread.

 

 

 

Message - Allen Ginsberg

 

Since we had changed

rogered spun worked

wept and pissed together

I wake up in the morning

with a dream in my eyes

but you are gone in NY

remembering me Good

I love you I love you

& your brothers are crazy

I accept their drunk cases

It's too long that I have been alone

it's too long that I've sat up in bed

without anyone to touch on the knee, man

or woman I don't care what anymore, I

want love I was born for I want you with me now

Ocean liners boiling over the Atlantic

Delicate steelwork of unfinished skyscrapers

Back end of the dirigible roaring over Lakehurst

Six women dancing together on a red stage naked

The leaves are green on all the trees in Paris now

I will be home in two months and look you in the eyes

 

I love Allen Ginsberg!

 

I went to see him read twice, and I got to meet him and talk with him a bit, in 1993.

[bean-tor]

The Cinnamon Peeler - Michael Ondaatje

 

 

If I were a cinnamon peeler

I would ride your bed

and leave the yellow bark dust

on your pillow.

 

Your breasts and shoulders would reek

you could never walk through markets

without the profession of my fingers

floating over you. The blind would

stumble certain of whom they approached

though you might bathe

under rain gutters, monsoon.

 

Here on the upper thigh

at this smooth pasture

neighbour to your hair

or the crease

that cuts your back. This ankle.

You will be known among strangers

as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

 

I could hardly glance at you

before marriage

never touch you

--your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.

I buried my hands

in saffron, disguised them

over smoking tar,

helped the honey gatherers...

 

When we swam once

I touched you in water

and our bodies remained free,

you could hold me and be blind of smell.

You climbed the bank and said

 

this is how you touch other women

the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.

And you searched your arms

for the missing perfume

 

and knew

 

what good is it

to be the lime burner's daughter

left with no trace

as if not spoken to in the act of love

as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

 

You touched

your belly to my hands

in the dry air and said

I am the cinnamon

peeler's wife. Smell me.

[bean-tor]

There are some wonderful choices in here already (I've exhausted my likes but I'll be back, ha)! I'll try to post some of my favourites by poets who aren't yet represented in the thread.

 

 

 

Message - Allen Ginsberg

 

Since we had changed

rogered spun worked

wept and pissed together

I wake up in the morning

with a dream in my eyes

but you are gone in NY

remembering me Good

I love you I love you

& your brothers are crazy

I accept their drunk cases

It's too long that I have been alone

it's too long that I've sat up in bed

without anyone to touch on the knee, man

or woman I don't care what anymore, I

want love I was born for I want you with me now

Ocean liners boiling over the Atlantic

Delicate steelwork of unfinished skyscrapers

Back end of the dirigible roaring over Lakehurst

Six women dancing together on a red stage naked

The leaves are green on all the trees in Paris now

I will be home in two months and look you in the eyes

 

I love Allen Ginsberg!

 

I went to see him read twice, and I got to meet him and talk with him a bit, in 1993.

 

Ahh that is amazing! Ginsberg is my very favourite! I would love to hear about your experiences if you care to share :)

[goose]

The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit

By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,

 

What a great line!

[bean-tor]

The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit

By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,

 

What a great line!

 

"Useless to think you'll park and capture it / More thoroughly" pretty well sums up my approach to living

[goose]

The Hunters in the Snow - William Carlos Williams

 

The over-all picture is winter

icy mountains

in the background the return

from the hunt it is toward evening

from the left

sturdy hunters lead in

their pack the inn-sign

hanging from a

broken hinge is a stag a crucifix

between his antlers the cold

inn yard is

deserted but for a huge bonfire

that flares wind-driven tended by

women who cluster

about it to the right beyond

the hill is a pattern of skaters

Brueghel the painter

concerned with it all has chosen

a winter-struck bush for his

foreground to

complete the picture

 

http://www.obestpaintings.com/images/Pieter%20Bruegel%20the%20Elder/The_Hunters_in_the_Snow_(Winter)_1565_3185.jpg

Edited December 9, 2015 by goose

[blueschica]

Postscript - Seamus Heaney

 

 

And some time make the time to drive out west

Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,

In September or October, when the wind

And the light are working off each other

So that the ocean on one side is wild

With foam and glitter, and inland among stones

The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit

By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,

Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,

Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads

Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.

Useless to think you'll park and capture it

More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,

A hurry through which known and strange things pass

As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways

And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

 

I love Heaney's writings! I saw him once in the public library where I used to work. Literally just saw him, like across the room. (Long story. He had an ongoing relationship with a college in our town and was visiting; he came in with another professor. Of course, patrons were stacked at the desk like 5 people deep that day and I couldn't even like wave hi or holler 'love your work' or something stupid.) It still is kind of cool to remember, though.

[goose]

The Cinnamon Peeler - Michael Ondaatje

 

 

If I were a cinnamon peeler

I would ride your bed

and leave the yellow bark dust

on your pillow.

 

Your breasts and shoulders would reek

you could never walk through markets

without the profession of my fingers

floating over you. The blind would

stumble certain of whom they approached

though you might bathe

under rain gutters, monsoon.

 

Here on the upper thigh

at this smooth pasture

neighbour to your hair

or the crease

that cuts your back. This ankle.

You will be known among strangers

as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

 

I could hardly glance at you

before marriage

never touch you

--your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.

I buried my hands

in saffron, disguised them

over smoking tar,

helped the honey gatherers...

 

When we swam once

I touched you in water

and our bodies remained free,

you could hold me and be blind of smell.

You climbed the bank and said

 

this is how you touch other women

the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.

And you searched your arms

for the missing perfume

 

and knew

 

what good is it

to be the lime burner's daughter

left with no trace

as if not spoken to in the act of love

as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

 

You touched

your belly to my hands

in the dry air and said

I am the cinnamon

peeler's wife. Smell me.

Excuse me while a go take a cold shower.

[bean-tor]

Postscript - Seamus Heaney

 

 

And some time make the time to drive out west

Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,

In September or October, when the wind

And the light are working off each other

So that the ocean on one side is wild

With foam and glitter, and inland among stones

The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit

By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,

Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,

Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads

Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.

Useless to think you'll park and capture it

More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,

A hurry through which known and strange things pass

As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways

And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

 

I love Heaney's writings! I saw him once in the public library where I used to work. Literally just saw him, like across the room. (Long story. He had an ongoing relationship with a college in our town and was visiting; he came in with another professor. Of course, patrons were stacked at the desk like 5 people deep that day and I couldn't even like wave hi or holler 'love your work' or something stupid.) It still is kind of cool to remember, though.

 

That's a nice story, though it's too bad that you didn't have a chance to interact with him! Still, I'd be thrilled to have just seen him in the same room, so I think your experience was pretty darn cool! :)

[bean-tor]

The Cinnamon Peeler - Michael Ondaatje

 

 

If I were a cinnamon peeler

I would ride your bed

and leave the yellow bark dust

on your pillow.

 

Your breasts and shoulders would reek

you could never walk through markets

without the profession of my fingers

floating over you. The blind would

stumble certain of whom they approached

though you might bathe

under rain gutters, monsoon.

 

Here on the upper thigh

at this smooth pasture

neighbour to your hair

or the crease

that cuts your back. This ankle.

You will be known among strangers

as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

 

I could hardly glance at you

before marriage

never touch you

--your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.

I buried my hands

in saffron, disguised them

over smoking tar,

helped the honey gatherers...

 

When we swam once

I touched you in water

and our bodies remained free,

you could hold me and be blind of smell.

You climbed the bank and said

 

this is how you touch other women

the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.

And you searched your arms

for the missing perfume

 

and knew

 

what good is it

to be the lime burner's daughter

left with no trace

as if not spoken to in the act of love

as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

 

You touched

your belly to my hands

in the dry air and said

I am the cinnamon

peeler's wife. Smell me.

Excuse me while a go take a cold shower.

 

I know, right?! And to think this was required reading for my grade 11 English class :o

[gypsy muse]

Wow, that's deep. I don't know if I like it or not.

[Blue J]

Would this be an appropriate place to post one's own writing? Or would that be a presumptuous move? (I think it might be. But I thought I'd throw the question out there). Edited January 2, 2016 by Blue J

[goose]

Frost At Midnight - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 

 

The Frost performs its secret ministry,

Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry

Came loud--and hark, again loud as before.

The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,

Have left me to that solitude, which suits

Abstruser musings : save that at my side

My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.

'Tis calm indeed so calm, that it disturbs

And vexes meditation with its strange

And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,

This populous village Sea, and hill, and wood,

With all the numberless goings-on of life,

Inaudible as dreams the thin blue flame

Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not ;

Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,

Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.

Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature

Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,

Making it a companionable form,

Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit

By its own moods interprets, every where

Echo or mirror seeking of itself,

And makes a toy of Thought.

Edited January 3, 2016 by goose

[goose]

Spellbound - Emily Jane Brontë

 

 

The night is darkening round me,

The wild winds coldly blow;

But a tyrant spell has bound me

And I cannot, cannot go.

 

The giant trees are bending

Their bare boughs weighed with snow.

And the storm is fast descending,

And yet I cannot go.

 

Clouds beyond clouds above me,

Wastes beyond wastes below;

But nothing drear can move me;

I will not, cannot go.

[goose]

The Sky Is Low, The Clouds Are Mean - Emily Dickinson

 

 

The sky is low, the clouds are mean,

A travelling flake of snow

Across a barn or through a rut

Debates if it will go.

 

A narrow wind complains all day

How some one treated him;

Nature, like us, is sometimes caught

Without her diadem.

[Tombstone Mountain]

10:13 pm January 10, 2016

 

Poetic Turd

by

Tombstone Mountain

 

http://www.ancient-origins.net/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/Cuneiform-inscription-by-Xerxes-the-Great_0.jpg?itok=H001xLa3

 

Take the chisel,

and here's a hammer.

Take my words,

set them in stone.

Make new cuneiform,

a language all its own.

 

Only those who think the deepest thoughts,

can decipher the code.

Shake my world, see my soul.

It's hiding in the snow-globe of memories I've made,

my own vault of gold.

 

 

Peer into my mind.

What do you see?

A wasteland of promise?

A womb filled with inert and tiny seeds?

 

Look! It's Narcissus drinking from the stream.

He's come alive from the wall of a cave.

Prehistoric man's cinema,

the ancient world's museum of petroglyphic dreams

 

He can't look up for he's afraid to squander

the image of perfection found on the surface of the water.

 

The image is one of wonder and youth.

 

It creates ripples of arrogance.

Before they hit the muddy bank they disappear,

floating over the grass and into the wind.

 

Am I like Narcissus?

Conquering the cosmos in my dreams?

For in my mind it feels as such.

 

In reality I know,

those dreams don't add up to much.

http://mythlovestories.com/echo04L.jpg

Edited January 11, 2016 by Tombstone Mountain

[Blue J]

Thanks for posting, Tombstone.

 

I saw the title, 'Poetic Turd', and I thought it might not be a serious piece...haha.

 

But bravo!

[Fridge]

I'm a big fan of Charles Baudelaire...........

 

Her Hair

 

O fleece that down her nape rolls, plume on plume!

O curls! O scent of nonchalance and ease!

What ecstasy! To populate this room

With memories it harbours in its gloom,

I'd shake it like a banner on the breeze.

 

Hot Africa and languid Asia play

(An absent world, defunct, and far away)

Within that scented forest, dark and dim.

As other souls on waves of music swim,

Mine on its perfume sails, as on the spray.

 

I'll journey there, where man and sap-filled tree

Swoon in hot light for hours. Be you my sea,

Strong tresses! Be the breakers and gales

That waft me. Your black river holds, for me,

A dream of masts and rowers, flames and sails.

 

A port, resounding there, my soul delivers

With long deep draughts of perfumes, scent, and clamour,

Where ships, that glide through gold and purple rivers,

Fling wide their vast arms to embrace the glamour

Of skies wherein the heat forever quivers.

 

I'll plunge my head in it, half drunk with pleasure —

In this black ocean that engulfs her form.

My soul, caressed with wavelets there may measure

Infinite rocking in embalmed leisure,

Creative idleness that fears no storm!

 

Blue tresses, like a shadow-stretching tent,

You shed the blue of heavens round and far.

Along its downy fringes as I went

I reeled half-drunken to confuse the scent

Of oil of coconuts, with musk and tar.

 

My hand forever in your mane so dense,

Rubies and pearls and sapphires there will sow,

That you to my desire be never slow —

Oasis of my dreams, and gourd from whence

Deep-draughted wines of memory will flow

Edited January 11, 2016 by Fridge

[Tombstone Mountain]

Thanks for posting, Tombstone.

 

I saw the title, 'Poetic Turd', and I thought it might not be a serious piece...haha.

 

But bravo!

Thanks dude. Appreciate it.

[goose]

I'm a big fan of Charles Baudelaire...........

 

Her Hair

 

O fleece that down her nape rolls, plume on plume!

O curls! O scent of nonchalance and ease!

What ecstasy! To populate this room

With memories it harbours in its gloom,

I'd shake it like a banner on the breeze.

 

Hot Africa and languid Asia play

(An absent world, defunct, and far away)

Within that scented forest, dark and dim.

As other souls on waves of music swim,

Mine on its perfume sails, as on the spray.

 

I'll journey there, where man and sap-filled tree

Swoon in hot light for hours. Be you my sea,

Strong tresses! Be the breakers and gales

That waft me. Your black river holds, for me,

A dream of masts and rowers, flames and sails.

 

A port, resounding there, my soul delivers

With long deep draughts of perfumes, scent, and clamour,

Where ships, that glide through gold and purple rivers,

Fling wide their vast arms to embrace the glamour

Of skies wherein the heat forever quivers.

 

I'll plunge my head in it, half drunk with pleasure —

In this black ocean that engulfs her form.

My soul, caressed with wavelets there may measure

Infinite rocking in embalmed leisure,

Creative idleness that fears no storm!

 

Blue tresses, like a shadow-stretching tent,

You shed the blue of heavens round and far.

Along its downy fringes as I went

I reeled half-drunken to confuse the scent

Of oil of coconuts, with musk and tar.

 

My hand forever in your mane so dense,

Rubies and pearls and sapphires there will sow,

That you to my desire be never slow —

Oasis of my dreams, and gourd from whence

Deep-draughted wines of memory will flow

Saucy!

[goose]

So...last week we had to put a dog down. The thing is, we are all ok, but our other dog is a shell of his former self. The two dogs were from the same littler, and had literally never spent more than a few hours apart. He has no idea how to be alone, and nothing can console him. It made me think of this classic Auden poem...

 

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

 

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

 

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

 

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

[x1yyz]

Someone gave me a poem today. It is a thing of incredible beauty, and I treasure it so.

[Tombstone Mountain]

So...last week we had to put a dog down. The thing is, we are all ok, but our other dog is a shell of his former self. The two dogs were from the same littler, and had literally never spent more than a few hours apart. He has no idea how to be alone, and nothing can console him. It made me think of this classic Auden poem...

 

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

 

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

 

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

 

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Rocket Sauce certified buddy. Excellent!

[goose]

Autobiographia Literaria - Frank O'Hara

 

When I was a child

I played by myself in a

corner of the schoolyard

all alone.

 

I hated dolls and I

hated games, animals were

not friendly and birds

flew away.

 

If anyone was looking

for me I hid behind a

tree and cried out "I am

an orphan."

 

And here I am, the

center of all beauty!

writing these poems!

Imagine!

[blueschica]

Autobiographia Literaria - Frank O'Hara

 

When I was a child

I played by myself in a

corner of the schoolyard

all alone.

 

I hated dolls and I

hated games, animals were

not friendly and birds

flew away.

 

If anyone was looking

for me I hid behind a

tree and cried out "I am

an orphan."

 

And here I am, the

center of all beauty!

writing these poems!

Imagine!

 

I'm glad he found a happy ending for himself!