Daily Poems
[quote] Listen, youwho transformed your anguish
into healthy awareness,
put your voice
where your memory is.
You who swallowed
the afternoon dust,
defend everything you understand
with words.
You, if no one else,
will condemn with your tongue
the erosion each disappointment brings.[/quote] [quote]You, who saw the images
of disgust growing,
will understand how time
devours the destitute;
you, who gave yourself
your own commandments,
know better than anyone
why you turned your back
on your town’s toughest limits.
Don’t hush,
don’t throw away
the most persistent truth,
as our hard-headed brethren
sometimes do.
Remember well
what your life was like: cloudiness,
and slick mud
after a drizzle;
flimsy windows the wind
kept rattling
in winter, and that
unheated slab dwelling
where coldness crawled
up in your clothes.[/quote] [quote]Tell how you were able to come
to this point, to unbar
History’s doors
to see your early years,
your people, the others.
Name the way
rebellion’s calm spirit has served you,
and how you came
to unlearn the lessons
of that teacher,
your land’s omnipotent defiler.
Remember how,
from the first emptiness,
you started saving yourself,
and ask yourself what,
after all,
these words are good for
in this round hour now
where your voice strikes time.[/quote] [quote]And when, in the city in which I love you,
even my most excellent song goes unanswered,
and I mount the scabbed streets,
the long shouts of avenues,
and tunnel sunken night in search of you….
That I negotiate fog, bituminous
rain ringing like teeth into the beggar’s tin,
or two men jackaling a third in some alley
weirdly lit by a couch on fire, that I
drag my extinction in search of you…. [/quote] [quote]Past the guarded schoolyards,
the boarded-up churches, swastikaed
synagogues, defended houses of worship, past
newspapered windows of tenements, among the violated,
the prosecuted citizenry, throughout this
storied, buttressed, scavenged, policed
city I call home, in which I am a guest….
A bruise, blue
in the muscle, you
impinge upon me.
As bone hugs the ache home, so
I’m vexed to love you, your body
the shape of returns, your hair a torso
of light, your heat
I must have, your opening
I’d eat, each moment
of that soft-finned fruit,
inverted fountain in which I don’t see me. [/quote]
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Free Poems
[quote]Li-Young, don’t feel lonelywhen you look up
into great night and find
yourself the far face peering
hugely out from between
a star and a star. All that space
the nighthawk plunges through,
homing, all that distance beyond embrace,
what is it but your own infinity.
And don’t be afraid
when, eyes closed, you look inside you
and find night is both
the silence tolling after stars
and the final word
that founds all beginning, find night,
abyss and shuttle,
a finished cloth
frayed by the years, then gathered
in the songs and games
mothers teach their children.[/quote] [quote]Look again
and find yourself changed
and changing, now the bewildered honey
fallen into your own hands,
now the immaculate fruit born of hunger.
Now the unequaled perfume of your dying.
And time? Time is the salty wake
of your stunned entrance upon
no name.[/quote] [quote]One man and one woman park the government Jeep
on the gravel shoulder of the Grand River watershed.
Paired, they walk chest-high through Queen Anne’s lace,
lime-tufted burdock, to a barbed-wire fence, growing
into the flesh of the Bauman tree line.
He steps it down for her. She climbs over him
into the automatic quiet of the Hogsback Woods.
Stiff rubber boots, stiff rubber gloves—
Nothing is pliable, a ridge between them
squeaking slightly as they trudge.[/quote] [quote]Or snow melt. An ephemeral creek is not a snack-sized river;
won’t become a river given a little time.
It’s a hydrologic imperfection, a profound
coupling of aquatic and terrestrial systems:
a horizon of water and dirt.
One man and one woman
in simulated conditions with limited supply
have gone on ahead, heading out too early
it is still pitch dark.
The headwater of Cruickston Creek—
a tiny region of wet function in the spongy lungs
of unlogged spruce, of juvenile seep-ins
of field tiles from Jim Dam’s cash crop gunning
the flow of standing water into a steep
dredged down ditch.[/quote] [quote]A stilling pool, a firstborn, a float
to mark it, a little science dot, a candled egg
upstream with translucent salamanders
speckling like a new flashlight shone on them.
The optic nerve, a second spring is born. She
senses the join between things and persons
as distance, the rusted wire bites
the creek’s full tilt, its high quantity of silt
transportation; there’s a sweet spot near the bottom
of a perennial stream she gives them
the biggest pool of light.[/quote]
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Random Poem
[quote]Before you know what kindness really isyou must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.[/quote] [quote]Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.[/quote]
[quote]Oh to drown in the scent of books
And to vividly imagine details in every corner and crook
The musky smell and creaky wooden floor
The cobwebs on bookshelves and the sliding doors
Fingers grazing the hard bookcase
Dust on my fingers from the rims I trace
Echoed footsteps through the room
The letters and dried flowers and the ***** broom
The attic window and ascending stairs
Feather quills on sill and decor pairs
Texts and symbols drafted on vellum pages
As my mind drifted to the little cages
The cages that bore Canary too yellow
That with me gazed at the colors and along grew mellow[/quote]
[quote]It’s been a bit
Since I’ve had words that fit
Rhyming and cadence, or meter
If that makes sense
But unlike an open register
This feeling makes no sense At all
Why do I feel.. undeniable but yet so small
So short despite the fact that I’m average height
Unwanted yet charismatic
Alone but with so many friends near and far all at once
What is this?
I can’t make heads or tails of this
Now I know how two face feels before a crime
Let fate decide
But why? Where has this arisen from?[/quote]
[quote]The lazy dog jumped over the bridge
So, the old man grabbed a beer from the fridge
The dog swam through the river
The man had packages to deliver
Soon the sun went away
Then the dog reached the bay
The man passed out
Beyond drunk no doubt
He floated down the stream
Until the light shined from a moonbeam
The dog saved the man
So, they made a plan
So, they sailed the seas
The dop captain and me[/quote]
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English Small Poems
[quote] Though I’m not in jail it all just feels the sameWaking up depressed told just not to complain
A shotgun to my head i feel like Curt Cobain
Not a literal sense, but the context sustains
I don’t want money, success, not even some fame
I just want to learn to play this game
Each day it gets hard i just keep breathing
Wondering how the **** this happened, it feels like treason
From a comical skeptic to a reliable source
I question the water that was gave to the horse
Viewed as a sinner but always in doubt
“Read from the scripture and figure it out”
Nightmares keeping me awake like a proxy
SO many bad thoughts I wish I could get off me
Do your 12 steps Bob, everything is kosher
Yet I wake every night screaming still sober
A stranger does the same, and everyone wants to know her
A technicality set, a glimpse for closure
Different from most but related to some
I feel alone but second to none
Shaking again always be the **** up
“drinkings a sin” Always press my luck up
Some things I will never understand
But if it doesn’t change I will be[/quote] [quote]Can I help you dear child?
You look lost.
Is there something you need?
A drink, some food?
Why are your eyes so hollow?
What is it that you’ve seen?
I cannot help you if you do not speak.
Come here, let me sit you down,
Nothing can hurt you, not in this town.
Please don’t look at me in that way,
I come in peace, what have you to say?[/quote]
[quote]I am not sure if it’s possible for me to be fun. Or at least the definition of fun that everyone else around me seems to have
I don’t want to drink or do drugs and stay up late
I want to go to sleep at a decent time and wake up and play Animal Crossing and do some things around the house and then go for a walk [/quote]
[quote]there was always this pound
in my chest
as the dust and the breeze settles,
as the sweat slithers sidewards,
as the world around me comes to a
halt.
i’ve never liked running.
not when the destination is
nothing but an illusion
just to give me the satisfaction
that my feet lead me to somewhere in this oblivion.
i’ve never liked running.
my lungs were weak
(at least that’s what mom told me)
yet i latch onto your chase[/quote]
[quote]i’ve never liked running
but for you: until the
soles of my shoes thin out,
the oxygen in my lungs run out.
the world around me blurs out.
for you:
i would run
and run
run run run run ruin
put i in run and now i’m looking at your face
wondering how did we end up
in this haste, this chase
so indulge me:
how do i pace
myself within this space
i’ve never liked running
because again, i fall
behind my own weak [/quote]
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Best Small & Mini Poems
[quote]There are actual peoplehalf woman half man
running mornings and
dream people in movies
half language half light.
Tomorrow is John’s funeral.
The sadness of summer, the silence of winter
you can’t sum it up in one more metaphor.
So don’t complain about the epoch you live in.
Go to Big Hidden Lake and jump in! [/quote]
[quote]I don’t need help changing my tire
I need your political support
to put out this fire
set by the angry mob of course
and there’s no way I can force
you to see from the high horse
you gained from light chores
so keep your random acts of kindness
as long as you cure your blindness
I think we could find this
more profound niceness
embedded within the social construct
so kindness is required and not luck
because our intermittent charity
won’t achieve economic parity
making our situation scarily
here to stay apparently
so don’t tell me to be civil
from behind the American sigil
that sits on a swivel[/quote]
[quote] with **** symbols
and those that swindle
a nation of marks
pushing shopping carts
in a lockstep art
dividing us from the heart
so even if you mow my yard
we’ll still be miles apart
separated by a canyon of cordiality
that a river of oppression runs through
carrying away our ordeal reality
as fast as guns do
when they’re held by the sightless
who convince themselves they’re righteous
through random acts of kindness.[/quote]
[quote]god you self-righteous, idealistic ****
I don’t like your old poetry
it all feels too cheesey— and it’s overly emotional
write something fresh, publish something better
get the anger out (you can’t bottle it up)
if you’re going to explode then do it through a pen
or at least, leave yourself out of it
there’s so much wrong in this world
write about that
I know you have at least 10 poems
angry, political ones
just sitting in your notes app
waiting to be jolted to life
pull the lever, Dr. Frankenstein
This Monster Kills Fascists.[/quote]
[quote]What if the best poem ever written has never been read
The best soliloquy in history never once said
What if the best song ever played had never been danced to
Simply because we weren’t given the chance to
Save every draft and treasure your trash
One day they may be discerned from the ash
You could be the next Emily, I the next Poe
And like most famished artists
we’ll never know [/quote]
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