Favourite Pomes

[DayDrinker]

More Often Than Sometimes – Shane Koyczan

If I knew what I know now then,
way back when we first met,
I'd point to the sunset and say,
“I drew that for you.
Every now and then you can catch it wrinkling in the rain.”
See, I can talk a good game from the stage,
but if you want to gauge the romantic things said when we're messing up the bed,
the best I can give you is,
“Oh my god,
we're totally humping.”
Regardless,
there's something beautiful about stating the obvious.

All of us do it in those moments when we can't believe it we have to say it.
It's like pinching yourself to make sure you're awake.
Take for example something as simple as touching someone;
we so often say, “You're so soft”.
And the person that touched them last may have said it for the twenty-eighth time;
but today,
I'm number twenty-nine.
And I'm not saying it for her benefit; I'm saying it for mine.
Because there's almost seven billion people in the world,
half of which are men, the number of them is 3.5 billion…
Pretty fucking cool that I was number twenty-nine.
And once upon a time I was first in line for a girl with freckles and strawberry blonde hair.
We loved like an electric chair hooked up to a nuclear power plant and plugged into the sun,
and everything we did had never been done.
I woke up with a smile the next morning that told the world
“I'm number one.”

I think of her more often than sometimes.
And if she ever hears this,
I want her to know that our first kiss tasted like pepper.
I met her on June 27th.
That year it was Yellowknife's first day of continual light
and despite the sun not setting that night we each went home alone,
Even though our parents told us, “Be home before dark.”
We could've stayed out for weeks.
Could've watched the way the sun leaks like liquid over the horizon, casting shadows over all the right places of a bargain bin where love was 75% off, and we were collectively 25 cents away from forever.
There are times in the North
when the sun never sets.
And it gets confusing when we ask ourselves questions like,
“Is it too late,
or too early?”
More often than sometimes we didn't care.
We loved like two games of solitaire waiting to be played by one another.
Her mother once asked me, “do you love her?”
And I told her if there were one million teachers breathing down my neck telling me that the answer is no,
I would say yes.
I guess that was enough for her,
because that girl's father palmed me a condom and wished me a happy birthday.
Even now there's no way to tell… was that awkward, or creepy?

We loved like two hit-men hell-bent on assassinating regret.
Her orgasm a wet gremlin multiplying itself into another.
Her younger brother knocked on the door asking, “What are you guys doing in there?”
And somewhere amid the awesome and the amazing we replied in unison,
“Studying.”
And technically we were.
I wrote notes on her skin in flesh toned permanent ink that would sink and set inside as I tried to underline the important parts of her:
Bellybutton,
birthmark,
collarbone.
Wrote notes explaining that hers felt like silk stretched over stone.
I said, “You're so soft.”
She smiled and said, “Duh.”
Followed by, “my bellybutton is not an erogenous zone.”
And I said, “I hate that word,” and she asked, “Which one?” and I said, “Erogenous.”
I told her, “There's beauty in the obvious, and your bellybutton,
that's where you started, it's where cells divided and grew into you
So let me do what students do best, you can test me later but right now let me study.”
She smiled and said,
“You're lucky this is a take-home test, boy.”

I think of the beauty in the obvious,
the way it forces us to admit how it exists.
The way it insists on being pointed out like a bloody nose, or how every time it snows there's always someone around to say,
“It's snowing.”
But the obvious isn't showing off,
it's simply reminding us that time passes,
and somewhere along the way we grow up.
Not perfect,
but up and out.
It teaches us something about time, that we are all ticking and tocking.
Walking the fine line between days and weeks, as if each second speaks of years, and each month has ears listening to forever, but never hearing anything beyond centuries swallowed up by millenniums, as if time was calculating the sums needed to fill the empty belly of eternity.
We so seldom
understand each other.
But if understanding is neither here nor there, and the universe is infinite,
understand that no matter where we go we will always be smack dab in the middle of nowhere.

All we can do is share some piece of ourselves,
and hope that it's remembered.
Hope that we meant something to someone.
My chest is a cannon that I have used to take aim and shoot my heart upon this world.
I love the way an uncurled fist becomes a hand again,
because when I take notes, I need it to underline the important parts of you:
Happy,
sad,
lovely.

Battle cry ballistic like a disaster, a lipstick earth-quaking and taking out the monuments of my hollow yesterdays.
We'll always have the obvious.
It reminds us who and where we are, it lives like a heart shape, like a jar that we hand to others and ask, “Can you open this for me?”
We always get the same answer:
“Not without breaking it.”
More often than sometimes, I say go for it.

[Tift]

The Armadillo
By Elizabeth Bishop

for Robert Lowell

This is the time of year
when almost every night
the frail, illegal fire balloons appear.
Climbing the mountain height,

rising toward a saint
still honored in these parts,
the paper chambers flush and fill with light
that comes and goes, like hearts.

Once up against the sky it's hard
to tell them from the stars—
planets, that is—the tinted ones:
Venus going down, or Mars,

or the pale green one. With a wind,
they flare and falter, wobble and toss;
but if it's still they steer between
the kite sticks of the Southern Cross,

receding, dwindling, solemnly
and steadily forsaking us,
or, in the downdraft from a peak,
suddenly turning dangerous.

Last night another big one fell.
It splattered like an egg of fire
against the cliff behind the house.
The flame ran down. We saw the pair

of owls who nest there flying up
and up, their whirling black-and-white
stained bright pink underneath, until
they shrieked up out of sight.

The ancient owls' nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down,

and then a baby rabbit jumped out,
short-eared, to our surprise.
So soft!—a handful of intangible ash
with fixed, ignited eyes.

Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!
O falling fire and piercing cry
and panic, and a weak mailed fist
clenched ignorant against the sky!

[Tift]

A Woman Speaks
By Audre Lorde

Moon marked and touched by sun 
my magic is unwritten
but when the sea turns back
it will leave my shape behind. 
I seek no favor
untouched by blood
unrelenting as the curse of love 
permanent as my errors
or my pride
I do not mix
love with pity
nor hate with scorn
and if you would know me
look into the entrails of Uranus 
where the restless oceans pound.

I do not dwell
within my birth nor my divinities 
who am ageless and half-grown 
and still seeking
my sisters
witches in Dahomey
wear me inside their coiled cloths 
as our mother did
mourning.

I have been woman
for a long time
beware my smile
I am treacherous with old magic 
and the noon's new fury
with all your wide futures 
promised
I am
woman
and not white.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/gtZen1T.jpg?1[/img]

Audre Lord 1934-1992
self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,”

[Tift]

By The Sea
By Emily Dickinson

I started Early – Took my Dog –
And visited the Sea –
The Mermaids in the Basement
Came out to look at me –

And Frigates – in the Upper Floor
Extended Hempen Hands –
Presuming Me to be a Mouse –
Aground – upon the Sands –

But no Man moved Me – till the Tide
Went past my simple Shoe –
And past my Apron – and my Belt
And past my Boddice – too –

And made as He would eat me up –
As wholly as a Dew
Upon a Dandelion's Sleeve –
And then – I started – too –

And He – He followed – close behind –
I felt His Silver Heel
Upon my Ancle – Then My Shoes
Would overflow with Pearl –

Until We met the Solid Town –
No One He seemed to know –
And bowing – with a Mighty look –
At me – The Sea withdrew –

[Tift]

After An Illness, Walking the Dog
By Jane Kenyon

Wet things smell stronger,
and I suppose his main regret is that
he can sniff just one at a time.
In a frenzy of delight
he runs way up the sandy road—
scored by freshets after five days
of rain. Every pebble gleams, every leaf.

When I whistle he halts abruptly
and steps in a circle,
swings his extravagant tail.
Then he rolls and rubs his muzzle
in a particular place, while the drizzle
falls without cease, and Queen Anne’s lace
and Goldenrod bend low.

The top of the logging road stands open
and light. Another day, before
hunting starts, we’ll see how far it goes,
leaving word first at home.
The footing is ambiguous.

Soaked and muddy, the dog drops,
panting, and looks up with what amounts
to a grin. It’s so good to be uphill with him,
nicely winded, and looking down on the pond.

A sound commences in my left ear
like the sound of the sea in a shell;
a downward, vertiginous drag comes with it.
Time to head home. I wait
until we’re nearly out to the main road
to put him back on the leash, and he
—the designated optimist—
imagines to the end that he is free.

[Tift]

The Late Wisconsin Spring
By John Koethe

Snow melts into the earth and a gentle breeze 
Loosens the damp gum wrappers, the stale leaves 
Left over from autumn, and the dead brown grass. 
The sky shakes itself out. And the invisible birds 
Winter put away somewhere return, the air relaxes, 
People start to circulate again in twos and threes. 
The dominant feelings are the blue sky, and the year. 
—Memories of other seasons and the billowing wind; 
The light gradually altering from difficult to clear
As a page melts and a photograph develops in the backyard. 
When some men came to tear down the garage across the way 
The light was still clear, but the salt intoxication 
Was already dissipating into the atmosphere of constant day 
April brings, between the isolation and the flowers. 
Now the clouds are lighter, the branches are frosted green, 
And suddenly the season that had seemed so tentative before 
Becomes immediate, so clear the heart breaks and the vibrant 
Air is laced with crystal wires leading back from hell. 
Only the distraction, and the exaggerated sense of care 
Here at the heart of spring—all year long these feelings
Alternately wither and bloom, while a dense abstraction 
Hides them. But now the mental dance of solitude resumes, 
And life seems smaller, placed against the background 
Of this story with the empty, moral quality of an expansive 
Gesture made up out of trees and clouds and air.

The loneliness comes and goes, but the blue holds, 
Permeating the early leaves that flutter in the sunlight 
As the air dances up and down the street. Some kids yell. 
A white dog rolls over on the grass and barks once. And 
Although the incidents vary and the principal figures change, 
Once established, the essential tone and character of a season 
Stays inwardly the same day after day, like a person’s. 
The clouds are frantic. Shadows sweep across the lawn 
And up the side of the house. A dappled sky, a mild blue 
Watercolor light that floats the tense particulars away 
As the distraction starts. Spring here is at first so wary, 
And then so spare that even the birds act like strangers, 
Trying out the strange air with a hesitant chirp or two, 
And then subsiding. But the season intensifies by degrees, 
Imperceptibly, while the colors deepen out of memory, 
The flowers bloom and the thick leaves gleam in the sunlight 
Of another city, in a past which has almost faded into heaven. 
And even though memory always gives back so much more of 
What was there than the mind initially thought it could hold, 
Where will the separation and the ache between the isolated 
Moments go when summer comes and turns this all into a garden? 
Spring here is too subdued: the air is clear with anticipation, 
But its real strength lies in the quiet tension of isolation 
And living patiently, without atonement or regret,
In the eternity of the plain moments, the nest of care 
—Until suddenly, all alone, the mind is lifted upward into 
Light and air and the nothingness of the sky, 
Held there in that vacant, circumstantial blue until,
In the vehemence of a landscape where all the colors disappear, 
The quiet absolution of the spirit quickens into fact, 
And then, into death. But the wind is cool. 
The buds are starting to open on the trees.
Somewhere up in the sky an airplane drones.

[Tift]

The True Born Englishman is a satirical poem published in 1701 by Daniel Defoe
defending the then King of England William, who was Dutch-born, against xenophobic attacks
by his political enemies, and ridiculing the notion of English racial purity

from The True Born Englishman
By Daniel Defoe

Thus from a mixture of all kinds began,
That het’rogeneous thing, an Englishman:
In eager rapes, and furious lust begot,
Betwixt a painted Britain and a Scot.
Whose gend’ring off-spring quickly learn’d to bow,
And yoke their heifers to the Roman plough:
From whence a mongrel half-bred race there came,
With neither name, nor nation, speech nor fame.
In whose hot veins new mixtures quickly ran,
Infus’d betwixt a Saxon and a Dane.
While their rank daughters, to their parents just,
Receiv’d all nations with promiscuous lust.
This nauseous brood directly did contain
The well-extracted blood of Englishmen.

Which medly canton’d in a heptarchy,
A rhapsody of nations to supply,
Among themselves maintain’d eternal wars,
And still the ladies lov’d the conquerors.

The western Angles all the rest subdu’d;
A bloody nation, barbarous and rude:
Who by the tenure of the sword possest
One part of Britain, and subdu’d the rest
And as great things denominate the small,
The conqu’ring part gave title to the whole.
The Scot, Pict, Britain, Roman, Dane, submit,
And with the English-Saxon all unite:
And these the mixture have so close pursu’d,
The very name and memory’s subdu’d:
No Roman now, no Britain does remain;
Wales strove to separate, but strove in vain:
The silent nations undistinguish’d fall,
And Englishman’s the common name for all.
Fate jumbled them together, God knows how;
What e’er they were they’re true-born English now.

The wonder which remains is at our pride,
To value that which all wise men deride.
For Englishmen to boast of generation,
Cancels their knowledge, and lampoons the nation.
A true-born Englishman’s a contradiction,
In speech an irony, in fact a fiction.
A banter made to be a test of fools,
Which those that use it justly ridicules.
A metaphor invented to express
A man a-kin to all the universe.

For as the Scots, as learned men ha’ said,
Throughout the world their wand’ring seed ha’ spread;
So open-handed England, ’tis believ’d,
Has all the gleanings of the world receiv’d.

Some think of England ’twas our Saviour meant,
The Gospel should to all the world be sent:
Since, when the blessed sound did hither reach,
They to all nations might be said to preach.

’Tis well that virtue gives nobility,
How shall we else the want of birth and blood supply?
Since scarce one family is left alive,
Which does not from some foreigner derive.

[Tift]

On Stella's Birth-day
By Jonathan Swift (c.1727)

     Stella this Day is thirty four,
(We won't dispute a Year or more)
However Stella, be not troubled,
Although thy Size and Years are doubled,
Since first I saw Thee at Sixteen
The brightest Virgin of the Green,
So little is thy Form declin'd
Made up so largely in thy Mind.
Oh, would it please the Gods to split
Thy Beauty, Size, and Years, and Wit,
No Age could furnish out a Pair
Of Nymphs so gracefull, Wise and fair
With half the Lustre of Your Eyes,
With half thy Wit, thy Years and Size:
And then before it grew too late,
How should I beg of gentle Fate,
(That either Nymph might have her Swain,)
To split my Worship too in twain.

[Tift]

Phenomenal Woman
By Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size 
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips, 
The stride of my step, 
The curl of my lips. 
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman, 
That’s me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please, 
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees. 
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees. 
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes, 
And the flash of my teeth, 
The swing in my waist, 
And the joy in my feet. 
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Men themselves have wondered 
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them, 
They say they still can’t see. 
I say,
It’s in the arch of my back, 
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed. 
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud. 
When you see me passing,
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels, 
The bend of my hair, 
the palm of my hand, 
The need for my care. 
’Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

[Vaughan]

Bullies don't rule – Simon Hamill

Can you remember when we were at school,
There was always a bully or two.
Hiding behind their so called friends
Just waiting to pick on you.
Things haven't really changed that much,
Bullies still out there being mean.
But they haven't got friends to back them up
They hide behind a computer screen.
How sad their lives must really be,
When it's trolling that gives them their kick.
Cowards and bullies are what they are,
What they do,just makes me feel sick.
When we write,we write for fun,
And we know what we write,
Doesn't suit everyone.
But we won't put up with ridicule and doubt
From some sad bully,
Who doesn't know what their talking about.

[Tift]

Interview
By Dorothy Parker

The ladies men admire, I’ve heard,
Would shudder at a wicked word.
Their candle gives a single light;
They’d rather stay at home at night.
They do not keep awake till three,
Nor read erotic poetry.
They never sanction the impure,
Nor recognize an overture.
They shrink from powders and from paints …
So far, I’ve had no complaints.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/H5TiJvX.jpg?2[/img]

[JessiCapri]

“Love Sonnet XI” by Pablo Neruda

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

[Tift]

Almost all of Emily Dickinson's poetry was first
published after her death (1830-1886); her poems
were found in her private papers and very few, if any,
had titles.  They are short, concise and mainly consider
love, time, life, nature (birds in particular) and death
Even some erotic poetry.

The first of these could be called Experience, the other two
speak for themselves.  She has been likened to
William Blake as being a “sect of one.”

I stepped from plank to plank
  So slow and cautiously;
The stars about my head I felt,
  About my feet the sea

I knew not but the next
  Would be my final inch, –
This gave me the precarious gait
  Some call experience.

===============================

Proud of my broken heart since thou didst break it
  Proud of the pain I did not feel til thee,
Proud of my night since thou with moons dost slake it,
  Nor to partake thy passion, my humility.

=====================================

This is my letter to the world,
  That never wrote to me, –
The simple news that Nature told,
  With tender majesty.

Her message is committed
  To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
  Judge tenderly of me !

[Tift]

A few fragments of WB Yeats which ring true;
simple statements said in a way that only
poets can.   About woman and controlling man,
about fools and how life is so precarious.

“I could have warned you, but you are young,
So we speak a different tongue.”

from On Woman

May God be praised for woman
That gives up all her mind,
A man may find in no man
A friendship of her kind
That covers all he has brought
As with her flesh and bone,
No quarrels with a thought
Because it is not her own.

To a Poet, who would have me Praise certain
  Bad Poets, Imitators of His and Mine

You say,as I have often given tongue
In praise of what another's said or sung,
'Twere politic to do the like by these;
But was there ever dog that praised his fleas ?

Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors

What they underook to do
They brought to pass;
All things hang like a drop of dew
Upon a blade of grass

[Tift]

Passing
By Staceyann Chin

Downtown Brooklyn is easy for me
long sheer skirts do little to hide my open legged stride
see-through button-down sleeveless blouses hug my bodice
so tight my nipples are barely concealed
by the carefully chosen push-up bra from Macy's

see, I'm a femme
a real lipstick lesbian
so I can pass—
smelling like a straight girl in my Victoria's Secret
satin panties pressing against the men who walk alongside me
passing—the way my yellow-skinned grandmother passed
as white women sat in judgment

on plantation stools overlooking fields
of cotton and sugarcane sweetened by gallons
of Black blood and sweat running down thick
between the full breasts of the women
who lay still as blue-eyed men pierced their hearts deep
through the folds joining their legs

it's Jay Street-Borough Hall
and my friend is in trouble
someone takes the time to notice
that the young boy is really a young girl
and the red, white, and blue jacket is not enough
to cover the tattoo on her belly
two naked women wrapped around each other
like pretzels that came out different from the rest

it takes two minutes for them to break two ribs
              one for her lover who passes all the time
              the other she keeps for herself
              and as those bones set
her sorrow breaks wide open
because she knows SHE can never pass
she knows that butch bodies are too strong
too strange, too dark
like those bronze bodies that smell
too thickly of rebellions and revolutions
                            and we know that revolutions take time
and sacrifice and lives to turn this world around

sometimes it makes me angry
that they think I look like them
so they can convince themselves I am okay
but I hasten to show them the tangled wool between my thighs

and I am quick to remind them
that the funk from me only rises
when my woman touches me
that I can only come
when she calls my name

we need to let them know
we do not wish to pass as semi-white
or almost straight
or nearly normal
so we can hold down corporate jobs
stroking narrow-minded dicks
so we can be invited to family dinners
to disown our brothers and sisters who cannot pass
who will not pass

we must let them know
that after the broken bones have healed
that we will still be here
that long after the bruised hearts have ceased to hurt
we will still be here and long,
long after our mothers no longer weep
we will still be here
still gay
still Black
still survivors in the face of this blatant bigotry
that will one day force us to lace arms and strike back

[Author]

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