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Index »
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Poetry Forum
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Page: Previous 1, 2, 3 ... 67, 68, 69 ... 210, 211, 212 Next |
oldviolin
Location: esse quam videri Gender:
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Posted:
Jun 21, 2012 - 9:18pm |
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oldviolin
Location: esse quam videri Gender:
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Posted:
Jun 13, 2012 - 7:34am |
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Belief is a murmur in the heart of truth Projecting our faith in so knowing our proof At one with the innocence and calamity of youth But a pilgrim in search of full sails...
b
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oldviolin
Location: esse quam videri Gender:
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Posted:
Jun 13, 2012 - 6:45am |
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Dogs And Wolves
Across eternity, across its snow, I see my unwritten poems: I see the spoor of their paws dappling the august whiteness of the snow: bristles raging, bloody-tongued, lean greyhounds and wolves, leaping over the dykes, running under the shade of the trees of the wilderness, taking the narrow defile of glens, making for the steepness of windy mountains; their baying yell shrieking across the hard barenesses of the terrible times, their everlasting barking in my ears, their hot onrush seizing my mind; career of wolves and eerie dogs swift in pursuit of the quarry, through the forests without veering, over the mountain tops with sheering; the mild mad dogs of my poetry, wolves in chase of loneliness, loveliness of soul and face, a white deer over hills and plains, the deer of your gentle beloved beauty, a hunt without halt, without respite.
Translation from Gaelic
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ScottN
Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary Gender:
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Posted:
Jun 13, 2012 - 6:34am |
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Now you'd be three, I said to myself, seeing a child born the same summer as you.
Now you'd be six, or seven, or ten. I watched you grow in foreign bodies.
Leaping into a pool, all laughter, or frowning over a keyboard, but mostly just standing, taller each time.
How splendid your most mundane action seemed in these joyful proxies. I often held back tears.
Now you are twenty-one. Finally, it makes sense that you have moved away into your own afterlife.
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Red_Dragon
Location: Dumbf*ckistan
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Posted:
Jun 5, 2012 - 3:09pm |
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fuzzy wrote:The soul wishes to rise Out of the filthy dust Wanting no compromise Nothing that can rust
A prayer reaches the lips Falling short, making no sound Watching the moon eclipse Darkness descend all around
Wishing upon a dying star Victim of a cosmic choke So dark is the night So dark is the night
f
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oldviolin
Location: esse quam videri Gender:
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Posted:
Jun 3, 2012 - 3:51pm |
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Sonnet XCIV: They That Have Power to Hurt and Will Do None
They that have power to hurt and will do none, That do not do the thing they most do show, Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow: They rightly do inherit heaven's graces And husband nature's riches from expense; They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others but stewards of their excellence. The summer's flower is to the summer sweet Though to itself it only live and die, But if that flower with base infection meet, The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
William Shakespeare
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Antigone
Location: A house, in a Virginian Valley Gender:
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Posted:
Jun 3, 2012 - 8:27am |
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Ogden Nash was one of my mother's favorite poets and this is one of my favorite poems by him.
Are You a Snodgrass, Too?
It is possible that the most individual and international, social and economic collisions Result from humanity's being divided into two main divisions. Both of which are irreconcilable. And neither is by the other beguilable Their lives are spent in mutual interference And yet you cannot tell them apart by their outward appearance. Instead the only way in which you are able to tell one group from the other Is to observe them at the table. Because the only visible way in which one group from the other varies, Is in the treatment of the cream and sugar on cereal and berries. Group A, which we will call the Swozzlers Because it is a very suitable name I deem First applies the sugar, then swozzles it all over the place Pouring on the cream; And as fast as they pour the sugar on, they swozzle it away but such thriftlessness means nothing to ruthless egotists like they. They just continue to scoop and swozzle and swozzle and scoop, Until there is nothing left for the Snodgrasses or second group. A Snodgrass is a kind handsome intelligent person Who pours on the cream first And then deftly sprinkles the sugar over the cereal or berries After they have been properly immersed, Thus assuring himself that the sugar will remain on the cereal and berries Where it can do some good—which is his wish Instead of being swozzled away to the bottom of the dish. The facts of the case for the Snodgrasses are so evident That it is ridiculous to debate them. But this is unfortunate for the Snodgrasses as it only causes The sinister and vengeful Swozzlers all the more to hate them. Swozzlers are irked by the superior Snodgasses' intelligence and nobility, And they lose no opportunity of inflicting on them every kind of incivility. If you have read that somebody has been run over by an automobile, You may be sure that victim was a Snodgrass and a Swozzler was at the wheel. Swozzlers start wars and Snodgrasses get killed in them. Swozzlers sell waterfront lots and Snodgrasses get malaria when they try to build in them. Swozzlers invent fashionable diets and drive Snodgrasses crazy With tables of vitamins and calories Swozzlers go to Congress and think up new taxes And Snodgrasses pay their salaries. Swozzlers bring tigers back alive and Snodgrasses get eaten by anacondas; Snodgrasses are depositors and Swozzlers are absconders. Swozzlers hold straight flushes and Snodgrasses hold four of a kind. Swozzlers step heavily on the toes of Snodgrasses' shoes as soon as they are shined. Whatever achievements Snodgrasses achieve, Swozzlers always top them; Snodgrasses say stop me if you've heard this one And Swozzlers stop them. Swozzlers are teeming with useful tricks of the trade That are not included in a standard university curricula. The world in general is their oyster, And the Snodgrasses in particular. So I hope that for your sake dear reader that you are a Swozzler, But I hope for everybody's that you're not. And I also wish that everybody else was a nice amiable Snodgrass too, Because then Life would be just one sweet, harmonious mazurka or gavotte.
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ScottN
Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary Gender:
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Posted:
Jun 2, 2012 - 9:41am |
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I spent seven hours yesterday at my daughter's house helping her expand their garden by at least ten times. We dug up sod by the shovelful, shook off the dirt as best we could; sod into the wheelbarrow and off to the pile at the edge of the yard. Then all that over and over again. Five hours total work-time, with time out for lunch and supper. By the time I got home I knew all too well that seventy-two is not thirty-five; I could barely move.
I got to quit earlier than Nadine. She told me I'd done enough and that I should go get a beer and lie down on the chaise lounge and cheer her on, which is what I did.
All this made me remember my father forty years ago helping me with my garden. My father's dead now, and has been dead for many years, which is how I'll be one of these days too. And then Nadine will help her child, who is not yet here, with her garden. Old Nadine, aching and sore, will be in my empty shoes, cheering on her own.
So it goes. The wheel turns, generation after generation, around and around. We ride for a little while, get off and somebody else gets on. Over and over, again and again.
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helenofjoy
Location: Lincoln, Nebraska Gender:
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Posted:
May 26, 2012 - 8:30pm |
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fuzzy wrote:6er
Always was a sinner Never could deliver Coming late for dinner Really not a pleaser Could i just remember First time that i loved her Bring it all together Make me a believer Only nails and hammer Pounding pounding harder Until the blood splatter Tell me what's the matter Could i just remember Fall in love all over Feel the feeling dearer Drown my soul forever Ears are getting bigger Guess i'm getting older Drifting down the river Poisoning my liver...
Really a great SONG!!!
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oldviolin
Location: esse quam videri Gender:
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Posted:
May 26, 2012 - 8:12pm |
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Company Policy
My mission statement was a pencil sharpener and a treehouse
Now days I just wing it
thank you
b
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Umberdog
Location: In my body. Gender:
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Posted:
May 25, 2012 - 8:09pm |
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The worst thing about it is the food. Vegetables boiled to a gray sheen... mushy, flavorless, and vitamin-free. Served to grandmothers that stare at walls and cry at memories; filled with the phantoms of friendlier times. Where Elvis Presley still lives and echoes down the halls embittering old men defiled by time, trying to gum their flavorless chicken-fried steak into submission... with the promise of a bit of custard tasting like scorched eggs.
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ScottN
Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary Gender:
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Posted:
May 23, 2012 - 9:02am |
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| Who knows what I might find on tables under the maple trees— perhaps a saucer in Aunt Lois's china pattern to replace the one I broke the summer I was thirteen, and visiting for a week. Never in all these years have I thought of it without a warm surge of embarrassment.
I'll go through the closets and cupboards to find things for the auction. I'll bake a peach pie for the food table, and rolls for the supper, Grandma Kenyon's recipe, which came down to me along with her legs and her brooding disposition. "Mrs. Kenyon," the doctor used to tell her, you are simply killing yourself with work." This she repeated often, with keen satisfaction.
She lived to be a hundred and three, surviving all her children, including the one so sickly at birth that she had to carry him everywhere on a pillow for the first four months. Father suffered from a weak chest — bronchitis, pneumonias, and pleurisy — and early on books and music became his joy.
Surely these clothes are from another life— not my own. I'll drop them off on the way to town. I'm getting the peaches today, so they'll be ripe by Saturday. |
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samiyam
Location: Moving North
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Posted:
May 22, 2012 - 9:53am |
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I still can’t get it right I don’t know. I still can’t get it right, the way those dirt roads cut across the flats and led to shacks where hounds and muddy shoats skulked roundabouts. Describing it sounds trite as hell, the good old South I love to hate. The truth? What’s that? How should I know? I stayed inside too much. I learned to boast of stupid things. I kept my ears shut tight, as we kept doors locked, windows locked, the curtains drawn. Now I know why. The dark could hide things from us. Dark could see what we could not. Sometimes those dirt roads shocked me, where they ended up: I watched a dog die in the ditch. The man who shot him winked at me.
~ Kathryn Stripling Byer ~
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oldviolin
Location: esse quam videri Gender:
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Posted:
May 11, 2012 - 7:03am |
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Children And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, 'Speak to us of Children.' And he said: Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable. Khalil Gibran
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oldviolin
Location: esse quam videri Gender:
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Posted:
May 11, 2012 - 6:44am |
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Child DevelopmentAs sure as prehistoric fish grew legs and sauntered off the beaches into forests working up some irregular verbs for their first conversation, so three-year-old children enter the phase of name-calling.
Every day a new one arrives and is added to the repertoire. You Dumb Goopyhead, You Big Sewerface, You Poop-on-the-Floor (a kind of Navaho ring to that one) they yell from knee level, their little mugs flushed with challenge. Nothing Samuel Johnson would bother tossing out in a pub, but then the toddlers are not trying to devastate some fatuous Enlightenment hack.
They are just tormenting their fellow squirts or going after the attention of the giants way up there with their cocktails and bad breath talking baritone nonsense to other giants, waiting to call them names after thanking them for the lovely party and hearing the door close.
The mature save their hothead invective for things: an errant hammer, tire chains, or receding trains missed by seconds, though they know in their adult hearts, even as they threaten to banish Timmy to bed for his appalling behavior, that their bosses are Big Fatty Stupids, their wives are Dopey Dopeheads and that they themselves are Mr. Sillypants. Billy Collins
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ScottN
Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary Gender:
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Posted:
May 10, 2012 - 12:41pm |
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The Unknowable Who had children. Who died. Who found himself lucky after thirty years and stumbling home realised it was a simple error. Who ruled behind the scenes in the Department of Misinformation, who was later conscripted to underwrite Armageddon. Whose hand was lost in a sawmill and was met again as the strange dust of a new-found galaxy. Who migrated to the other world but came home to bury the dog. Who divorced and died of alcoholism in the country town where destiny misplaced him. Who topped high school, failed everything else twice, married money, then slept through the death of three children. Who was invisible, became a wall, became a street, entered real estate, bought a city, retired into owning world opinion. Who saw his son indicted for reluctance, shackled and maimed, blamed for the colour of the sky. Who inscribed his name in the old script, the one no one reads anymore, the one where things inscribe themselves so what they are reads itself back in us. Who was my shadow when daylight was.
Peter Boyle
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samiyam
Location: Moving North
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Posted:
May 8, 2012 - 4:58am |
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Repotting
by Lynne Sharon Schwartz The healthy plant outgrows its pot the way a healthy child outgrows its clothes. Don't let it suffer constriction. Spread the Sports or Business section of the New York Times on the dining room table. Find a clay pot big enough for fresh growth. In the bottom place pebbles and shards from a broken pot for drainage. Add handfuls of moist black potting soil, digging your hands deep in the bag, rooting so the soil gets under your fingernails. Using a small spade or butter knife, ease the plant out of its old pot with extreme care so as not to disturb its wiry roots.
The plant is naked, suspended from your hand like a newborn, roots and clinging soil exposed. Treat it gently. Settle it into the center of the new pot, adding soil on the sides for support—who isn't shaky, moving into a new home ? Pack more soil around the plant, tapping it down till you almost reach the rim. Flounce the leaves as you would a skirt. Then water. Place the pot back on the shelf in the sunlight. Gather the Sports section around the spilled soil and discard. Watch your plant flourish. You have done a good and necessary deed.
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Umberdog
Location: In my body. Gender:
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Posted:
May 2, 2012 - 12:39pm |
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For a Five-Year Old A snail is climbing up the window-sill Into your room, after a night of rain. You call me in to see and I explain That it would be unkind to leave it there: It might crawl to the floor; we must take care That no one squashes it. You understand, And carry it outside, with careful hand, To eat a daffodil. I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails: Your gentleness is moulded still by words From me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds, From me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed Your closest relatives, and who purveyed The harshest kind of truth to many another. But that is how things are: I am your mother, And we are kind to snails. ~ Fleur Adcock
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Antigone
Location: A house, in a Virginian Valley Gender:
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Posted:
Apr 30, 2012 - 6:00pm |
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ScottN wrote:When Intimacy Changes into Indifference Time just flows past And you never notice Till subtle changes come bubbling to the surface; When intimacy turns into indifference. Time just flows past And you never notice Till your close friends just drift away; When intimacy turns into indifference. Time just flows past And you never notice Till people who supported you in tough times just disappear; When intimacy turns into indifference. Time just flows past And you never notice Till one's cross feels too heavy; When intimacy turns into indifference. Jasbir Chatterjee
Wow ... just ... wow ...
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ScottN
Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary Gender:
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Posted:
Apr 30, 2012 - 5:50pm |
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When Intimacy Changes into Indifference Time just flows past And you never notice Till subtle changes come bubbling to the surface; When intimacy turns into indifference. Time just flows past And you never notice Till your close friends just drift away; When intimacy turns into indifference. Time just flows past And you never notice Till people who supported you in tough times just disappear; When intimacy turns into indifference. Time just flows past And you never notice Till one's cross feels too heavy; When intimacy turns into indifference.
Jasbir Chatterjee
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