poems i like
You made crusty bread rolls by Gary Johnson
You made crusty bread rolls filled with chunks of brieAnd minced garlic and drizzled with olive oilAnd baked them until the brie was bubblyAnd we ate them thoughtfully, our legs coiled Together under the table And then salmon with dillAnd lemon and whole-wheat cous cousBaked with garlic and fresh ginger, and a hillOf green beans and carrots roasted with honey and tofu.it was beautiful, the candles and linens and silver,The winter sun setting on our snowy street,Me with my hand on your leg, you, my lover,In your jeans and green T-shirt and beautiful feet. How simple life is. We buy a fish. We are fed. We sit close to each other, we talk and then we go to bed.
You made crusty bread rolls filled with chunks of brieAnd minced garlic and drizzled with olive oilAnd baked them until the brie was bubblyAnd we ate them thoughtfully, our legs coiled Together under the table And then salmon with dillAnd lemon and whole-wheat cous cousBaked with garlic and fresh ginger, and a hillOf green beans and carrots roasted with honey and tofu.it was beautiful, the candles and linens and silver,The winter sun setting on our snowy street,Me with my hand on your leg, you, my lover,In your jeans and green T-shirt and beautiful feet. How simple life is. We buy a fish. We are fed. We sit close to each other, we talk and then we go to bed.
THE BACKLASH BLUES by Langston Hughes
Mister Backlash, Mister Backlash, Just who do you think I am? You raise my taxes, freeze my wages, Send my son to Vietnam. You give me second class houses, Second class schools. Do you think that colored folks Are just second class fools?
When I try to find a job To earn a little cash, All you got to offer Is a white backlash.
But the world is big, Big and bright and round-- And it's full of folks like me who are Black, Yellow, Beige, and Brown.
Mister Backlash, Mister Backlash, What do you think I got to lose? I'm gonna leave you, Mister Backlash,Singing your mean old backlash blues.
You're the one Will have the blues. not me-- Wait and see!
Mister Backlash, Mister Backlash, Just who do you think I am? You raise my taxes, freeze my wages, Send my son to Vietnam. You give me second class houses, Second class schools. Do you think that colored folks Are just second class fools?
When I try to find a job To earn a little cash, All you got to offer Is a white backlash.
But the world is big, Big and bright and round-- And it's full of folks like me who are Black, Yellow, Beige, and Brown.
Mister Backlash, Mister Backlash, What do you think I got to lose? I'm gonna leave you, Mister Backlash,Singing your mean old backlash blues.
You're the one Will have the blues. not me-- Wait and see!
ElmBY SYLVIA PLATHFor Ruth Fainlight
I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root: It is what you fear.I do not fear it: I have been there.
Is it the sea you hear in me, Its dissatisfactions?Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?
Love is a shadow.How you lie and cry after itListen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.
All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously,Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf, Echoing, echoing.
Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons? This is rain now, this big hush.And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic.
I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets. Scorched to the rootMy red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires.
Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs. A wind of such violenceWill tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.
The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me Cruelly, being barren.Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.
I let her go. I let her goDiminished and flat, as after radical surgery. How your bad dreams possess and endow me.
I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps outLooking, with its hooks, for something to love.
I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me;All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.
Clouds pass and disperse.Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? Is it for such I agitate my heart?
I am incapable of more knowledge. What is this, this faceSo murderous in its strangle of branches?——
Its snaky acids hiss.It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults That kill, that kill, that kill.
I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root: It is what you fear.I do not fear it: I have been there.
Is it the sea you hear in me, Its dissatisfactions?Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?
Love is a shadow.How you lie and cry after itListen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.
All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously,Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf, Echoing, echoing.
Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons? This is rain now, this big hush.And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic.
I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets. Scorched to the rootMy red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires.
Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs. A wind of such violenceWill tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.
The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me Cruelly, being barren.Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.
I let her go. I let her goDiminished and flat, as after radical surgery. How your bad dreams possess and endow me.
I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps outLooking, with its hooks, for something to love.
I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me;All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.
Clouds pass and disperse.Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? Is it for such I agitate my heart?
I am incapable of more knowledge. What is this, this faceSo murderous in its strangle of branches?——
Its snaky acids hiss.It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults That kill, that kill, that kill.
William Carlos Williams, “Pastoral”
When I was youngerit was plain to meI must make something of myself.Older nowI walk back streetsadmiring the housesof the very poor:roof out of line with sidesthe yards clutteredwith old chicken wire, ashes,furniture gone wrong;the fences and outhousesbuilt of barrel stavesand parts of boxes, all,if I am fortunate,smeared a bluish greenthat properly weatheredpleases me best of all colors.
No onewill believe thisof vast import to the nation.
When I was youngerit was plain to meI must make something of myself.Older nowI walk back streetsadmiring the housesof the very poor:roof out of line with sidesthe yards clutteredwith old chicken wire, ashes,furniture gone wrong;the fences and outhousesbuilt of barrel stavesand parts of boxes, all,if I am fortunate,smeared a bluish greenthat properly weatheredpleases me best of all colors.
No onewill believe thisof vast import to the nation.
Variation on the Word Sleep by Margaret Atwood
I would like to watch you sleeping, which may not happen.I would like to watch you, sleeping. I would like to sleep with you, to enter your sleep as its smooth dark wave slides over my headand walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves with its watery sun & three moons towards the cave where you must descend, towards your worst fear
I would like to give you the silver branch, the small white flower, the one word that will protect you from the grief at the center of your dream, from the grief at the center. I would like to follow you up the long stairway again & becomethe boat that would row you backcarefully, a flamein two cupped hands to where your body lies beside me, and you enter it as easily as breathing in
I would like to be the airthat inhabits you for a momentonly. I would like to be that unnoticed& that necessary.
I would like to watch you sleeping, which may not happen.I would like to watch you, sleeping. I would like to sleep with you, to enter your sleep as its smooth dark wave slides over my headand walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves with its watery sun & three moons towards the cave where you must descend, towards your worst fear
I would like to give you the silver branch, the small white flower, the one word that will protect you from the grief at the center of your dream, from the grief at the center. I would like to follow you up the long stairway again & becomethe boat that would row you backcarefully, a flamein two cupped hands to where your body lies beside me, and you enter it as easily as breathing in
I would like to be the airthat inhabits you for a momentonly. I would like to be that unnoticed& that necessary.
Yoko Ono, Grapefruit
I dwell in Possibility – A fairer House than Prose – More numerous of Windows – Superior – for Doors –
Of Chambers as the Cedars – Impregnable of eye – And for an everlasting Roof The Gambrels of the Sky –
Of Visitors – the fairest – For Occupation – This – The spreading wide my narrow Hands To gather Paradise –
~Emily Dickinson
Of Chambers as the Cedars – Impregnable of eye – And for an everlasting Roof The Gambrels of the Sky –
Of Visitors – the fairest – For Occupation – This – The spreading wide my narrow Hands To gather Paradise –
~Emily Dickinson
"When Death Comes," by Mary Oliver
When death comeslike the hungry bear in autumn;when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;when death comeslike the measle-pox when death comeslike an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everythingas a brotherhood and a sisterhood,and I look upon time as no more than an idea,and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a flower, as commonas a field daisy, and as singular, and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,tending, as all music does, toward silence, and each body a lion of courage, and somethingprecious to the earth. When it's over, I want to say all my lifeI was a bride married to amazement.I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it's over, I don't want to wonderif I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world
When death comeslike the hungry bear in autumn;when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;when death comeslike the measle-pox when death comeslike an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everythingas a brotherhood and a sisterhood,and I look upon time as no more than an idea,and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a flower, as commonas a field daisy, and as singular, and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,tending, as all music does, toward silence, and each body a lion of courage, and somethingprecious to the earth. When it's over, I want to say all my lifeI was a bride married to amazement.I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it's over, I don't want to wonderif I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world
from "I Sing the Body Electric" - Walt Whitman4I have perceiv'd that to be with those I like is enough,To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then? I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea. There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well,All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.
[Didn’t Sappho say her guts clutched up like this?]BY MARILYN HACKERDidn’t Sappho say her guts clutched up like this?Before a face suddenly numinous,her eyes watered, knees melted. Did she lactate again, milk brought down by a girl’s kiss? It’s documented torrents are unloosedby such events as recently producednot the wish, but the need, to consume, in us, one pint of Maalox, one of Kaopectate.My eyes and groin are permanently swollen, I’m alternatingly brilliant and witless—and sleepless: bed is just a swamp to roll in. Although I’d cream my jeans touching your breast, sweetheart, it isn’t lust; it’s all the restof what I want with you that scares me shitless.