Printable View
The Best Poems Cut
The best poems
Cut like the sharpest sword
In the Zen
Master's hand
Arching so swiftly,
Slicing through one's body of emotions,
You don't even feel it
... until
It's laid bare the guts of a life time
Leaving the blood of tears
Flowing passionately into the
Earth of your soul
- David Imur
In the Basement of the Goodwill Store
In musty light, in the thin brown air
of damp carpet, doll heads and rust,
beneath long rows of sharp footfalls
like nails in a lid,
an old man stands
trying on glasses, lifting each pair
from the box like a glittering fish
and holding it up to the light
of a dirty bulb.
Near him, a heap
of enameled pans as white as skulls
looms in the catacomb shadows,
and old toilets with dry red throats
cough up bouquets of curtain rods.
You've seen him somewhere before.
He's wearing the green leisure suit
you threw out with the garbage,
and the Christmas tie you hated,
and the ventilated wingtip shoes
you found in your father's closet
and wore as a joke. And the glasses
which finally fit him, through which
he looks to see you looking back
two mirrors which flash and glance
are those through which one day
you too will look down over the years,
when you have grown old and thin
and no longer particular,
and the things you once thought
you were rid of forever
have taken you back in their arms.
- Ted Kooser
Pig at the Mexican Orphanage
Either it's all okay or none of it is,
like the lonely black-and-white sow with the bristly face,
her sty filled with rotting corn cobs
and the deep irremediable odor of pigshit
halfway up the hill behind the orphanage.
Past the yard where kids congregate
by swings and slides. Past pens
of bleating goats and the busy hen-house,
I stopped to talk.
Pig you stink and I have no children,
I said. She snorted in acknowledgment
and came close, her wet snout
with its damp, snuffly nostrils like two black tunnels.
Perhaps if I had a grass wand
I could turn her back into a princess
and avert her fate of becoming carnitas or jambon.
Perhaps if I dared to scratch behind her ears.
There are those whose pens
are definite and wooden, and others
whose only cage is the leaden sky
of their own mind.
Look here, in the exact center of my
divided heart where the blood
is always busy, rushing and returning,
where old questions lie
like quartered rotten potatoes
flung on the compost heap
to spring back new again and whole.
Tell me: when they weigh my heart
against the feather of truth
will it crash the scales like a hammer
to the back of a pig's skull
or float straight up to Heaven
like the shrieks of these children
which reach me, faintly, no matter
how high I climb? Bright sparks
from the welder's arc, they know the language
of foot and soccer ball, frijoles y tortillas, just as I know
abandoned may mean alone, desolate, bereft-
or finally free to feel everything.
- Allison Luterman
Anthropology of an American Guy
Since fourteen I’ve had a thing
for girls and anthropology
so don’t go blaming me
for my crazy audio book fling
with Hilary Hamann’s Anthropology
Of An American Girl
or the way her words made my heart twirl
my mind in full bow to her incarnation Evie
who is so full of poetry
that every time she thinks or speaks
she transports me across the line
from novel to poetry;
with no apology let me like Hilary
wax poetic, polemic, and erotic
weaving threads of voice quixotic
voices that capture American character
and rupture the lack of the latter.
Writers like you capture intimacy with rapture
attract spoken word artists and actors
who clamor for a shot to voice the lines
birthed in your signature mindstuff.
The way you dreamed up Jack, Rob, Mark and Rourke
ploughing up the fucked up American male psyche
making such an exquisite fuss over the wreckage
daring to love us guys with such improbable tenderness,
and ample measure of erotic suggestiveness
that we circle your protagonist like Jupiter’s moons.
We are nothing but water all this rock hard masculinity
and you writer are the sea calling us home to spawn
in your quintessential imagination
where we have no choice;
we are nothing but the offspring
of the vivid eye of your mind
and soon you will abandon us nearly entirely,
you’ll fall for someone else, you can’t help it.
You might think of us, your male progeny
like protective whales or killer sharks
abandoned forever to the placenta sea of your afterbirth
but in reality off your pages we will breach
stunning and haunting feminine readers in our reach,
our male plumage daringly distinctive
our character and strength irrepressible
and our flaws fatally attractive.
- Brian McSweeney
First Kiss
August 2nd, First Kiss.
I found it written on a scrap of paper, in an old file.
Who was she, what year was it? Wanted to throw it away.
What was the anticipation and wonder
I felt at that moment?
Wondering in my head.
Why do I forget the kiss, but am attached
to the piece of paper?
What other scraps are waiting to be discovered?
A mosaic of moments happy and sad,
filling boxes and drawers.
I notice dreamy romantic music has kept me here,
wallowing in an old affair,
I recycle the scrap of my life.
- Brian Martens
Poem presented graphically.
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
The Moment
To write down all I contain at this moment
I would pour the desert through an hour-glass,
The sea through a water-clock,
Grain by grain and drop by drop
Let in the trackless, measureless, mutable seas and sands.
For earth's days and nights are breaking over me,
The tides and sands are running through me,
And I have only two hands and a heart to hold the desert and the sea.
What can I contain of it? It escapes and eludes me,
The tides wash me away,
The desert shifts under my feet.
- Kathleen Raine
Rain & Rachamim
I love the rain.
Makes me think of rachamim, of the Divine well spring of compassion.
Nothing better than falling asleep to the rain
the quite rumble on the roof
like a cat purring on your lap
the gurgle of the gutters - the sound of all things wet and soggy outside
while we are warm under the covers
inside.
How lucky we are to have a roof over our heads
so that we can enjoy the rain and
so many other things –
Thank you God for the rain and our roofs
our shelter
from the storm.
Let your rachamim fall on all your creatures,
spread over us a shelter of rachamim
of compassion and
- George Gittleman
Rain and Rachamin graphically illustrated.
Lower portion of image is a modification of Susan Danko's art work.
Sometimes The Problem
Sometimes the problem cannot be solved
no matter what.
It sits there like a granite block a mile high
and glares at you
grinning clown-faced at all your efforts
and your clever approaches, whatever.
At your wild ideas
and your desperate desires
and raging rages
Nope, all go to naught. Nothing.
T'will not be moved. No way.
Then you think, what will it matter anyway
give or take a few decades, to anyone, anyhow,
your miserable obsessed affliction?
Might as well let it go.
Only after you've screamed your brains to sleep
and cussed your guts out
comes the unguarded moment when
you give it up to the Universe
released like a hawk long held prisoner
a found freedom in the wind.
Then the good stuff really gets rolling:
incalculable eons of incandescent stardust,
blasted supernovas and black holes
blackholing
and the Gods and the microns
and the neutrons and all twelve dimensions
and the blooming Johnny Jumpups on the back porch
and your Grandchild's smile
had the answer all along
'Natch.
- L.K. Potts
Boddhisattva Vowhttps://www.factzoo.com/sites/all/im...woodpecker.jpg
See more about the ivory billed woodpecker here
"I want to come back
as the disabled child
of someone like Vladimir Putin
to awaken his heart of compassion.
"Then I'll be reborn
as a maybe extinct species -
like an ivory billed woodpecker;
I'll fly to Washington
or wherever I want
to bring the good news of our return.
"Or maybe I'll just be
a breath of wind touching
the world with hope and healing."
This is what Sue said.
I say
she hears the cries of the world.
Om Tara tutare ture swaha!
- Larry Robinson
Ikkyu says
Ikkyu says, "Humans are endowed with the stupidity of horses and cattle."
I think Ikkyu is full of shit.
Humans are endowed with a stupidity all their own.
Horses and cattle know what to do.
They do it well.
He is right about poetry as a work out of hell.
We ought to know.
Phenomena experience themselves as themselves.
They don't need poetry.
We are looking at a mystery here.
How do these things have such an obstinancy and yet are dependent on my consciousness?
When I practice fishing with two teenagers
poetry never occurs to me.
But later it does.
I can go over the whole day.
Hooray! That's what being human is all about.
It is just as much a weakness as a strength.
You say a language is (a wild system born with us.)
I agree.
It is wilder than wild.
If we were just wild we wouldn't need language.
Maybe we are beyond wild.
That makes me feel better.
- Doc Dachtler
Luna espejo
Mi amigo me dijo
que más que todo
la luna está hecha de vidrio
por lo cual cuando llena
tanto refleja la luz del sol.
Lo que yo creo es que
la luna es el escorial
de todo espejo roto en la Tierra
por accidente tal vez
o por rabia
cuando preguntándoles
- espejo, espejo en la pared . . . -
no nos agradan sus respuestas.
- Rafael Jesús González 2014
Mirror Moon
My friend told me
that more than anything
the moon is made of glass
for which when full
she reflects so much light of the sun.
What I believe is that
the moon is the dump-heap
of all the mirrors broken on the Earth
by accident perhaps
or through rage
when asking them,
"mirror, mirror on the wall . . ."
their answers do not please us.
- Rafael Jesús González
Let me make this perfectly clear
I have never written anything because it is a poem.
This is a mistake you always make about me,
A dangerous mistake. I promise you
I am not writing this because it is a Poem.
You suspect this is a posture or an act.
I am sorry to tell you it is not an act.
You actually think I care if this
Poem gets off the ground or not. Well
I don't care if this poem gets off the ground or not
And neither should you.
All I have ever cared about
And all you should ever care about
Is what happens when you lift your eyes from this page.
Do not think for one minute it is the Poem that matters.
It is not the Poem that matters.
You can shove the Poem.
What matters is what is out there in the large dark
And in the long light,
Breathing.
Out there in the large dark and in the long light is the breathless Poem,
As ruthless and beautiful and amoral as the world is,
As nature is.
In the end there's just me and the bloody Poem and the murderous
Tongues of the trees,
Their glossy green syllables licking my mind (the green
Work of the Wind)
Out there in the night between two trees is the Poem saying;
Do not hate me
Because I peeled the veil from your eyes and tore your world
To shreds, and brought
The darkness down upon your head. Here is a book of tongues,
Take it. (Dark leaves invade the air.)
Beware! Now I know a language so beautiful and lethal
My mouth bleeds when I speak it.
- Gwendolyn MacEwen
What to do when the answers leave you
To begin with, be still.
For the first few
minutes, do not say
a word about what
you have lost.
Leave your bed and walk the house.
Nod silently to the chipped cups
and the darkened grout;
calmly acknowledge the rug where it frayed,
and the tea-stained,
should’ve-been-washed curtains.
Now carefully bring out
the torn eagerness
of love, laid
too soon at his feet,
and the dried iris at
your own. See it still
infused with color.
Though you want to
sweep it up, cast it out,
don’t. Instead, not its
beauty in death.
Feel the whole room
of your body,
the mind’s cutlery
entrapped in the skull,
its ache to receive news
of life on other planets.
Tell it the answers
proved unfaithful at last,
that you would rather
have real questions any day.
Act as if you believe this.
- Kate Willens
A "real" question,
Could the line:
Instead, not its
beauty in death.
be:
Instead, note its
beauty in death.
?
Reminder
Yesterday, after days of rain,
the magnolia in full bloom,
open without reservation,
to the soft sweep of afternoon
sunlight,
stopped me in my tracks
and cleansed me with laughter.
Today I drag dark clouds
again around with me
like a moldy sweater,
and off the porch the
magnolia
again communicates
With the soft rain, ready
To let go of every
precious petal
when necessary.
Tomorrow there maybe
no magnolia,
or no me to witness it.
And this recognition
inflates a sadness in
my chest, a tight balloon,
filled with deep gratitude
and joy.
When I exhale
everything is
suddenly
available.
- Barry Vesser
If You Knew
What if you knew you’d be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line’s crease.
When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn’t signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won’t say Thank you, I don’t remember
they’re going to die.
A friend told me she’d been with her aunt.
They’d just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt’s powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.
How close does the dragon’s spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?
- Ellen Bass
Of What’s Left To Come
Contemplate the days,
Not the ones past,
But those yet to come.
How many remain?
On this earth
In this body
Underneath this sky?
What we deny
Diminishes us
As Death will come
Why not
Embrace death now
As a wise old friend
Let Death
Strip you of your pretense
Awaken your humanity
Humble you in its mystery
Why wait?
Allow Death’s inevitability
To arouse your secret longing for life
And move you to courageous acts of living
What do you have to lose?
But the partial death
you call life
Don’t wait. Don’t hesitate
All that we love will die
Dear Friend,
Please
Come closer
Help me to love this life
While I still can
- Forest Fein
Thank you, Larry.
Life Light
Life. a flame, a flicker,
a slow-burning ember,
a blazing fire,
precious in every form.
You.
Me.
We are.
Open to your self
like a flower to the sun
before fading days come
and life is done.
This moment is...
gone,
now new.
Feel, hear, see, smell life,
It will be over some day.
What did you come to say?
Be it, share it
through every cell
that shimmers with life light, divine.
©2004 Star Kissed Shadows, Sher Lianne Christian
It will be over some day. What did you come to say? Be it, share it through every cell
that shimmers with life light, divine.
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
The Cornerstone
Imagine the tale a mute stone speaks:
I stood strong at a corner
And on my shoulders a temple upbore.
Sighings and singings of love filled my days
And fed me the strength to stand
Under the weight of that heavy house
The home of him who holds the world in his hand.
Deep in the womb of night when Wyrd brushed by,
I listened oft to ancient tales told by monks
And written on scrolls with marks that spoke.
Thus in the day and in the night I was never alone,
But my goodly thanes, the men of God,
Comforted and upheld me with their praisings and tellings.
And then the Dark Doomer, Woeful Wyrd,
Struck in the night when the waves were wild
And the wind came cold, covering the world in gloom.
Striders of the Deep, the Deadly Danes,
Under the shield of the wailing wind,
Strode up the path and pillaged my temple.
Raging and foaming they felled my last thane,
Made my roof ashes, and now I uphold only silence.
Amid rank weeds I lie in the rubble
Waiting for that which can never return.
I remember the tales of the scrolls and good priests,
Stopped up as dust and scattered as ashes—
And wish I could tell them;
But I am a stone
And silent forever.
- Ed Thompson
Field Trip
You let me out, Lord.
I thank you for that.
Only for an afternoon
but you took me on a field trip to Paradise.
Long ago, you set a path for me
which I have followed faithfully.
The path became a rut,
then a trench and then a ditch.
The ditch became a chasm,
which has now become a canyon.
You held me there like the pupa inside a cocoon
until my eyes had adjusted to a new light.
You lead me to a Ridge overlooking the valley
and showed me the possibilities below.
There in a theater of oaks and grasses
you caused me to unfold my new reality.
The air around was spiced and cool
but your face impersonated a blazing sun.
The others took shelter in the shade of trees
and you tried to bring in a cooling wind.
Still my energy melted away like a once proud candle
or yesterday's ice cream pie.
You want me to speak to all assembled
the words of poetry you allowed me to write.
But before I could finish
I faltered, I failed.
You brought me here to show me
what I can no longer physically do?
Now I see the extent of your cruelty.
Then you said to me, "Open your other eyes and
see the one who stands beside you and loves you most
and steps forward to finish speaking the verse you wrote."
Thank God, Lord, you brought me to this field to see
my Paradise.
- Donald Morris
On the first morning of the world
God gave himself a gift —
an anonymous gift
called wakefulness.
He didn't ask
for anything.
He didn't ask for it.
Like all gifts it was terrible.
Imagine the burden of stars.
Imagine
the burden of mountains,
the burden of hearts.
Imagine a birthday
on which none of your friends
or distant relatives or parents
were present,
a birthday on which everyone
else was present
including the dead
(or only the dead!) —
imagine now
the burden of other times
you carry.
They have showered you with gifts
and left all the cake
on your plate.
They left early,
too soon —
so soon.
How could you make out a particular face
from this general sea of faces?
How could you write one thank-you note?
At night the shame would be vast.
- Zachary Horvitz
Once Only
almost at the equator
almost at the equinox
exactly at midnight
from a ship
the full
moon
in the center of the sky.
- Gary Snyder
Sappa Creek near Singapore
March 1958
The Love of Morning
It is hard sometimes to drag ourselves
back to the love of morning
after we've lain in the dark crying out
O God, save us from the horror . . . .
God has saved the world one more day
even with its leaden burden of human evil;
we wake to birdsong.
And if sunlight's gossamer lifts in its net
the weight of all that is solid,
our hearts, too, are lifted,
swung like laughing infants;
but on gray mornings,
all incident - our own hunger,
the dear tasks of continuance,
the footsteps before us in the earth's
beloved dust, leading the way - all,
is hard to love again
for we resent a summons
that disregards our sloth, and this
calls us, calls us.
- Denise Levertov
The Time Will Come
The time will come when
I know
it’s the last time.
The sun will shine or not
and I will know
that tomorrow for me
is only now.
How will I be, I wonder,
with that knowing?
Will it be so very sad that
I cannot let it in and
will I scream inside while
drinking coffee from my favorite cup?
Or will I just let it happen?
Let the moments pass as they do
(as they must)
All while talking about how
Your hair looks in the sunlight
Thinking about the laundry
Waiting to be done at home.
- Cynthi Stefenoni
The Day Will Come
And the day will come when you hit the switch, but the room will remain dark.
Your computer will not hum, your monitor will not glow, and you will have no flashing games to play.
The gas pump will remain silent, and you will be forced to walk.
If you don’t know how to start a fire, you will be cold.
If you are wealthy, you will be greatly inconvenienced.
If you live under a bridge, you will not notice the difference.
- Armando Garcia
Waters Of March lyrics
É pau, é pedra, [A stick, a stone,]
é o fim do caminho [It's the end of the road,]
É um resto de toco, [It's the rest of a stump,]
é um pouco sozinho [It's a little alone]
A stick, a stone,
It's the end of the road,
It's feeling alone
It's the weight of your load
It's a sliver of glass,
It's life, it's the sun,
It's night, it's death,
It's a knife, it's a gun
A flower that blooms,
A fox in the brush,
A knot in the wood,
The song of a thrush
The mystery of life
The steps in the hall
The sound of the wind
And the waterfall
It's the moon floating free,
It's the curve of the slope,
It's an ant, it's a bee,
It's a reason for hope
And the river bank sings
Of the waters of March,
It's the promise of spring,
It's the joy in your heart
É o pé, é o chão, [The foot, the ground,]
é a marcha estradeira [The flesh and the bone,]
Passarinho na mão, [The beat of the road,]
pedra de atiradeira [A slingshot's stone]
É uma ave no céu, [A fish, a flash,]
é uma ave no chão [A silvery glow,]
É um regato, é uma fonte, [A fight, a bet,]
é um pedaço de pão [The range of a bow]
É o fundo do poço, [The bed of the well,]
é o fim do caminho [The end of the line,]
No rosto o desgosto, [The dismay in the face,]
é um pouco sozinho [It's a little alone]
A spear, a spike,
A stake, a nail,
It's a drip, It's a drop,
It's the end of the tale
A dew on the leaf
In the morning light
The shot of a gun
In the dead of the night
A mile, a must,
A thrust, a bump,
It's the will to survive
It's a jolt, it's a jump
A blueprint of a house,
A body in bed,
The car stuck in the mud,
It's the mud, it's the mud
A fish, a flash
A wish, a wink
It's a hawk, it's a dove
It's the promise of spring
And the river bank sings
Of the waters of March,
It's the end of despair
It's the joy in your heart
É pau, é pedra, [A stick, a stone,]
é o fim do caminho [It's the end of the road,]
É um resto de toco, [It's the rest of a stump,]
é um pouco sozinho [It's a little alone]
É uma cobra, é um pau, [A snake, a stick,]
é João, é José [It is John, it is Joe,]
É um espinho na mão, [It's a thorn in your hand]
é um corte no pé [and a cut in your toe]
São as águas de março [And the riverbank talks]
fechando o verão [Of the waters of March,]
É a promessa de vida [It's the promise of life]
no teu coração [It's the joy in your heart]
A stick, a stone,
It's the end of the road,
The stump of a tree,
It's a frog, it's a toad
A sigh of breath,
A walk, a run,
A life, a death,
A ray in the sun
And the riverbank sings
Of the waters of march
It's the promise of life,
It's the joy in your heart
São as águas de março [And the riverbank talks]
fechando o verão [Of the waters of March,]
É a promessa de vida [It's the promise of life]
no teu coração [It's the joy in your heart]
É pau, é pedra, [A stick, a stone,]
é o fim do caminho [It's the end of the road,]
É um resto de toco, [It's the rest of a stump,]
é um pouco sozinho [It's a little alone]
É pau, é pedra, [A stick, a stone,]
é o fim do caminho [It's the end of the road,]
É um resto de toco, [It's the rest of a stump,]
é um pouco sozinho [It's a little alone]
- Antonio Carlos Jobim
" ... you put the load right on me." ~ Robbie Robertson
"It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it." ~ Lena Horne
Why Regret?
Didn't you like the way the ants help
the peony globes open by eating the glue off?
Weren't you cheered to see the ironworkers
sitting on an I-beam dangling from a cable,
in a row, like starlings, eating lunch, maybe
baloney on white with fluorescent mustard?
Wasn't it a revelation to waggle
from the estuary all the way up the river,
the kill, the pirle, the run, the rent, the beck,
the sike barely trickling, to the shock of a spring?
Didn't you almost shiver, hearing book lice
clicking their sexual dissonance inside an old
Webster's New International, perhaps having just
eaten of it izle, xyster, and thalassacon?
Forget about becoming emaciated. Think of the wren
and how little flesh is needed to make a song.
Didn't it seem somehow familiar when the nymph
split open and the mayfly struggled free
and flew and perched and then its own back
broke open and the imago, the true adult,
somersaulted out and took flight, seeking
the swarm, mouth-parts vestigial,
alimentary canal come to a stop,
a day or hour left to find the desired one?
Or when Casanova took up the platter
of linguine in squid's ink and slid the stuff
out the window, telling his startled companion,
"The perfected lover does not eat."
Didn't you glimpse in the monarchs
what seemed your own inner blazonry
flapping and gliding, in desire, in the middle air?
Weren't you reassured to think these flimsy
hinged beings, and then their offspring,
and then their offspring's offspring, could
navigate, working in shifts, all the way to Mexico,
to the exact plot, perhaps the very tree,
by tracing the flair of the bodies of ancestors
who fell in this same migration a year ago?
Doesn't it outdo the pleasure of the brilliant concert
to wake in the night and find ourselves
holding hands in our sleep?
- Galway Kinnell