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oldviolin

oldviolin Avatar

Location: esse quam videri
Gender: Male


Posted: Oct 10, 2023 - 3:10pm

If I Could Tell You

Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose all the lions get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.

WH Auden







ScottN

ScottN Avatar

Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary
Gender: Male


Posted: Oct 8, 2023 - 9:13pm

As imperceptibly as Grief

As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away—
Too imperceptible at last,
To seem like Perfidy—
A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon—
The Dusk drew earlier in—
The Morning foreign shone—
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest, that would be gone—
And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful.

Emily Dickinson
oldviolin

oldviolin Avatar

Location: esse quam videri
Gender: Male


Posted: Oct 3, 2023 - 10:18am


Oranges

Oh, how perfect death
computes an orange wind
that glows from your footsteps,

and you stop to die in
an orchard where the harvest
fills the stars.

Richard Brautigan





ScottN

ScottN Avatar

Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary
Gender: Male


Posted: Sep 16, 2023 - 5:26am

Chorus

Listen: there are those of us from somewhere else,
the names of birthplaces, of hometowns,
under our skin, tattoos always felt, never seen.
We live here now, though we always meant to leave.

And there are those of us who were born here,
passing the landmarks of our lives so often
we don’t think about them. We never meant to stay.
This place was marked as just for now, as stepping stone,
as temporary on our well-drawn maps.
But for one reason or another, years pass
and we find ourselves hot-stepping with jobs and kids
and this and that and a million little possessions.

Now, the kids say they want to move away. They point
their faces the same directions our faces used to point.
We’ll let them go, of course, knowing more of them
than they think will come back, and that various wayfarers
too will stop for lunch and find themselves
staying for years’ worth of dinners. They will all
find themselves here with the earth spreading
out around them, whispering a welcome
they will be more than a little surprised to hear.

oldviolin

oldviolin Avatar

Location: esse quam videri
Gender: Male


Posted: Aug 27, 2023 - 3:21pm

To A Skylark

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run;
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of Heaven,
In the broad day-light
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,

Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflow'd.

What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a Poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and 
fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden
In a palace-tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love,
which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aëreal hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embower'd
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflower'd,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves:

Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awaken'd flowers,
All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, Sprite or Bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus Hymeneal,
Or triumphal chant,
Match'd with thine would be all
But an empty vaunt,
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest: but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

oldviolin

oldviolin Avatar

Location: esse quam videri
Gender: Male


Posted: Aug 24, 2023 - 6:10pm


between walls
the back wings
of the
 
hospital where
nothing
 
will grow lie
cinders
 
in which shine
the broken
 
pieces of a green
bottle


William Carlos Williams
 
 


ScottN

ScottN Avatar

Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary
Gender: Male


Posted: Aug 6, 2023 - 7:07am

 

INCIPIT

Billy Collins

 

Too bad this poem wasn’t written
in a 12th-century monastic scriptorium
because it would have begun
with a much bigger T,
which would loom over the smaller letters,
their tiny serifs fluttering in the breeze.

The big letter might even be inside
an illuminated scene,
perhaps showing in gold two monkeys,
or six younger ones, hanging
from the crossbar of the T
with vines and flowers growing all around.

More likely, you’d be treated to
the reminder of a skull,
a sheep and shepherd combo,
or the Cross itself, empty now,
with a long winding shroud
draped over its outstretched arms.

 

But I’d hate to spend my days
hidden under a brown cowl,
writing with a bony, arthritic hand
at a long table of other hooded figures,
then washing down a crust of bread
with medieval water from a dented goblet.

I’d miss my silver car and my stereo
and my wife, who cooks us Cajun shrimp,
so never mind—the plain letter T will do.
Plus, I love being stuck here
in the science fiction of my 21st-century life
even with all the dying around me,

the planet now barely able to spin,
and my pen slithering off into oblivion.

lily34

lily34 Avatar

Location: GTFO
Gender: Female


Posted: Jul 31, 2023 - 8:28am

 ScottN wrote:

After Our Daughter’s Wedding

While the remnants of cake
and half-empty champagne glasses
lay on the lawn like sunbathers lingering
in the slanting light, we left the house guests
and drove to Antonelli’s pond.
On a log by the bank I sat in my flowered dress and cried.
A lone fisherman drifted by, casting his ribbon of light.
“Do you feel like you’ve given her away?” you asked.
But no, it was that she made it
to here, that she didn’t
drown in a well or die
of pneumonia or take the pills.
She wasn’t crushed
under the mammoth wheels of a semi
on highway 17, wasn’t found
lying in the alley
that night after rehearsal
when I got the time wrong.
It’s animal. The egg
not eaten by a weasel. Turtles
crossing the beach, exposed
in the moonlight. And we
have so few to start with.
And that long gestation—
like carrying your soul out in front of you.
All those years of feeding
and watching. The vulnerable hollow
at the back of the neck. Never knowing
what could pick them off—a seagull
swooping down for a clam.
Our most basic imperative:
for them to survive.
And there’s never been a moment
we could count on it.





ScottN

ScottN Avatar

Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary
Gender: Male


Posted: Jul 31, 2023 - 8:24am

After Our Daughter’s Wedding

While the remnants of cake
and half-empty champagne glasses
lay on the lawn like sunbathers lingering
in the slanting light, we left the house guests
and drove to Antonelli’s pond.
On a log by the bank I sat in my flowered dress and cried.
A lone fisherman drifted by, casting his ribbon of light.
“Do you feel like you’ve given her away?” you asked.
But no, it was that she made it
to here, that she didn’t
drown in a well or die
of pneumonia or take the pills.
She wasn’t crushed
under the mammoth wheels of a semi
on highway 17, wasn’t found
lying in the alley
that night after rehearsal
when I got the time wrong.
It’s animal. The egg
not eaten by a weasel. Turtles
crossing the beach, exposed
in the moonlight. And we
have so few to start with.
And that long gestation—
like carrying your soul out in front of you.
All those years of feeding
and watching. The vulnerable hollow
at the back of the neck. Never knowing
what could pick them off—a seagull
swooping down for a clam.
Our most basic imperative:
for them to survive.
And there’s never been a moment
we could count on it.

Antigone

Antigone Avatar

Location: A house, in a Virginian Valley
Gender: Female


Posted: Jul 4, 2023 - 12:18pm

THE WORK OF HAPPINESS
by May Sarton

I thought of happiness, how it is woven
Out of the silence in the empty house each day
And how it is not sudden and it is not given
But is creation itself like the growth of a tree.
No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark
Another circle is growing in the expanding ring.
No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark,
But the tree is lifted by this inward work
And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.

So happiness is woven out of the peace of hours
And strikes its roots deep in the house alone:
The old chest in the corner, cool waxed floors,
White curtains softly and continually blown
As the free air moves quietly about the room;
A shelf of books, a table, and the white-washed wall —
These are the dear familiar gods of home,
And here the work of faith can best be done,
The growing tree is green and musical.

For what is happiness but growth in peace,
The timeless sense of time when furniture
Has stood a life’s span in a single place,
And as the air moves, so the old dreams stir
The shining leaves of present happiness?
No one has heard thought or listened to a mind,
But where people have lived in inwardness
The air is charged with blessing and does bless;
      Windows look out on mountains and the walls are kind.

Antigone

Antigone Avatar

Location: A house, in a Virginian Valley
Gender: Female


Posted: Jun 25, 2023 - 9:00am

Writing poems in hot weather
ScottN

ScottN Avatar

Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary
Gender: Male


Posted: Jun 22, 2023 - 5:22am

The Arrival of the Past

You wake wanting the dream
you left behind in sleep,
water washing through everything,
clearing away sediment
of years, uncovering the lost
and forgotten. You hear the sun
breaking on cold grass,
on eaves, on stone steps
outside. You see light
igniting sparks of dust
in the air. You feel for the first
time in years the world
electrified with morning.

You know something has changed
in the night, something you thought
gone from the world has come back:
shooting stars in the pasture,
sleeping beneath a field
of daisies, wisteria climbing
over fences, houses, trees.

This is a place that smells
like childhood and old age.
It is a limb you swung from,
a field you go back to.
It is a part of whatever you do.

oldviolin

oldviolin Avatar

Location: esse quam videri
Gender: Male


Posted: Jun 19, 2023 - 8:34am

 ScottN wrote:

There Comes the Strangest Moment

There comes the strangest moment in your life,
when everything you thought before breaks free—





oldviolin

oldviolin Avatar

Location: esse quam videri
Gender: Male


Posted: Jun 19, 2023 - 7:51am

theadmfreebird

theadmfreebird Avatar

Location: PIACENZA (ITALIA)


Posted: Jun 19, 2023 - 1:44am

so come on.... 

theadmfreebird

theadmfreebird Avatar

Location: PIACENZA (ITALIA)


Posted: Jun 19, 2023 - 1:43am

when I wrote this song, the clock is stopped. Poetry don't need time. Goodbye to every listeners 

ScottN

ScottN Avatar

Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary
Gender: Male


Posted: Jun 18, 2023 - 8:00pm

There Comes the Strangest Moment

There comes the strangest moment in your life,
when everything you thought before breaks free—
what you relied upon, as ground-rule and as rite
looks upside down from how it used to be.

Skin’s gone pale, your brain is shedding cells;
you question every tenet you set down;
obedient thoughts have turned to infidels
and every verb desires to be a noun.

I want—my want. I love—my love. I’ll stay
with you. I thought transitions were the best,
but I want what’s here to never go away.
I’ll make my peace, my bed, and kiss this breast…

Your heart’s in retrograde. You simply have no choice.
Things people told you turn out to be true.
You have to hold that body, hear that voice.
You’d have sworn no one knew you more than you.

How many people thought you’d never change?
But here you have. It’s beautiful. It’s strange.

GeneP59

GeneP59 Avatar

Location: On the edge of tomorrow looking back at
Gender: Male


Posted: May 5, 2023 - 9:29am

Me, me me me me!
Not you but Me!
Only Me.
Can’t be you.
Can’t be anyone else but Me.
Cause it’s Me Time.
Me, me me me me!



What? Too much sugar today?  
oldviolin

oldviolin Avatar

Location: esse quam videri
Gender: Male


Posted: May 4, 2023 - 9:23pm

Amazing poems, Scott {#Good-vibes}

and

Each time my father had a choice, he chose
the world he already knew, holding still
till what he wanted looked like what he had.

dang
ScottN

ScottN Avatar

Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary
Gender: Male


Posted: May 4, 2023 - 5:38am

Kindred Spirit

My father doesn’t say ghost, though I know
he’s haunted. Instead he says, When they let
Uncle Marion out of that hospital, he didn’t
even move the same. He said they tried to take
his stories. He loves his fifteen uncles fiercely.
Nearly all of them drank, did time in prison
or mental hospitals, died before forty.

When Marion was twenty; a judge offered him
the navy or prison. He couldn’t swim,
so he ran away. Then, prison or the army.
Marching hurt his feet. The third time,
he picked prison and was out in six months.
I never liked to hear folks call him crazy,
my father says. He couldn’t help how he was.

What I know about my father tells me why
he loves these men—the troubles they ran from
and to, stories they lived without learning
what they meant—and why he mourns.
Each time my father had a choice, he chose
the world he already knew, holding still
till what he wanted looked like what he had.

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