posted February 21, 2013 03:01 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by mirage29:

[b]ADDED -- 2/20/2013 Wednesday 1020pm

Oh! Cancer/Scorpio726.... h:no! My oops!

So Sorry-- I was mixing up Sylvia Plath with Anne Sexton!!

(A long while ago I looked at her chart, and the charts for her two daughters, Linda & Joy.

Had a biographical book about her next to Sylvia Plath on my home library shelves. With nearly all my reference books packed in moving boxes now, I feel as though my BRAINS are missing--yikes! So VERY sorry for my confusion... [/B]

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posted February 23, 2013 03:40 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cancer/Scorpio729:
Kindness
By Sylvia Plath

Kindness glides about my house.
Dame Kindness, she is so nice!
The blue and red jewels of her rings smoke
In the windows, the mirrors
Are filling with smiles.

What is so real as the cry of a child?
A rabbit's cry may be wilder
But it has no soul.
Sugar can cure everything, so Kindness says.
Sugar is a necessary fluid,
Its crystals a little poultice.

O kindness, kindness
Sweetly picking up pieces!
My Japanese silks, desperate butterflies,
May be pinned any minute, anesthetized.

And here you come, with a cup of tea
Wreathed in steam.
The blood jet is poetry,
There is no stopping it.
You hand me two children, two roses.

---

posted March 01, 2013 04:45 AM            

I am Vertical
By Sylvia Plath

But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them --
Thoughts gone dim.

It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

Been reading some Frieda Hughes as well, quite like this one:

My Mother
Frieda Hughes

They are killing her again,
She said she did it
One Year in every ten,
But they do it annually, or weekly,
Some do it daily,
Carrying her death around in their heads,
And practising it. She saves them
The trouble of their own;
They can die through her
Without ever making
The decision. My buried mother
Is up-dug for repeat performances.

Now they want to make a film
For anyone lacking the ability
To imagine the body, head in oven,
Orphaning children. Then
It can be rewound
So they can watch her die
Right from the beginning again.

The peanut-eaters, entertained
At my mother’s death, will go home,
Each carrying their memory of her,
Lifeless - a souvenir.
Maybe they’ll buy the video.
Watching someone on TV
Means all they have to do
Is press pause
If they want to boil a kettle,
While my mother holds her breath on screen
To finish dying after tea.

The filmmakers have collected
The body parts.
They want me to see.
But they requiere dressings to cover the joints
And disguise the prosthetics
In their remake of my mother.
They want to use her poetry
As stichting and sutures
To give it credibility.
They think I should love it-
Having her back again, they think
I should give them my mother`s words
to fill the mouth of their monster,
Their Sylvia Suicide Doll.
Who will walk and talk
And die at will,
And die, and die
And forever be dying.

posted March 08, 2013 03:53 AM            

Mirage29: After reading your reply I watched that movie. I like it a lot.

This is a poem in the book February Flowers by Fan Wu. It conjures a lovely image in my imagination.

posted March 12, 2013 12:08 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by 12muddy:
I see you, in the morning glow
Pondering, eyes cast low
On tip toe, I past by you
Not wanting to disturb the grass
And the sleeping dew.

---

posted March 17, 2013 06:09 AM            

=D

I'm glad you like that poem. In the book, the main protagonist wrote it to express her feelings for another girl, after that girl sneaked into her room on an early morning and danced. The protagonist was in awe to discover another side of her cynical, worldly and calculative companion.

--------

Bird - Pablo Neruda

It was passed from one bird to another,
the whole gift of the day.
The day went from flute to flute,
went dressed in vegetation,
in flights which opened a tunnel
through the wind would pass
to where birds were breaking open
the dense blue air -
and there, night came in.

When I returned from so many journeys,
I stayed suspended and green
between sun and geography -
I saw how wings worked,
how perfumes are transmitted
by feathery telegraph,
and from above I saw the path,
the springs and the roof tiles,
the fishermen at their trades,
the trousers of the foam;
I saw it all from my green sky.
I had no more alphabet
than the swallows in their courses,
the tiny, shining water
of the small bird on fire
which dances out of the pollen.

posted June 24, 2013 07:12 AM            

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
~James Wright

*

Peeling an Orange

Between you and a bowl of oranges I lie nude
Reading The World’s Illusion through my tears.
You reach across me hungry for global fruit,
Your bare arm hard, furry and warm on my belly.
Your fingers pry the skin of a naval orange
Releasing tiny explosions of spicy oil.
You place peeled disks of gold in a bizarre pattern
On my white body. Rearranging, you bend and bite
The disks to release further their eager scent.
I say “Stop, you’re tickling,” my eyes still on the page.
Aromas of groves arise. Through green leaves
Glow the lofty snows. Through red lips
Your white teeth close on a translucent segment.
Your face over my face eclipses The World’s Illusion.
Pulp and juice pass into my mouth from your mouth.
We laugh against each other’s lips. I hold my book
Behind your head, still reading, still weeping a little.
You say “Read on, I’m just an illusion,” rolling
Over upon me soothingly, gently unmoving,
Smiling greenly through long lashes. And soon
I say “Don’t stop. Don’t disillusion me.”
Snows melt. The mountain silvers into many a stream. The oranges are golden worlds in a dark dream.
~Virginia Adair

*

Proem

posted August 12, 2013 11:26 AM            

* I loved reading through all the previous posts, such a beautiful collection of varied tastes in poetry.

posted August 17, 2013 06:03 AM            

I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
There's nothing more to say.
The poem ends,
Soft as it begin-
I loved my friend.

posted August 24, 2013 06:15 PM            

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

posted August 26, 2013 07:28 PM            

To clasp you now and feel your head close-pressed,
Scented and warm against my beating breast;

To whisper soft and quivering your name,
And drink the passion burning in your frame;

To lie at full length, taut, with cheek to cheek,
And tease your mouth with kisses till you speak

Love words, mad words, dream words, sweet senseless words,
Melodious like notes of mating birds;

To hear you ask if I shall love always,
And myself answer: Till the end of days;

To feel your easeful sigh of happiness
When on your trembling lips I murmur: Yes;

It is so sweet. We know it is not true.
What matters it? The night must shed her dew.

posted August 30, 2013 04:31 AM            

Nikki Giovanni

I was born in the congo
I walked to the fertile crescent and built
the sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
that only glows every one hundred years falls
into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad

I sat on the throne
drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to europe
to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is nefertiti
the tears from my birth pains
created the nile
I am a beautiful woman

I gazed on the forest and burned
out the sahara desert
with a packet of goat's meat
and a change of clothes
I crossed it in two hours
I am a gazelle so swift
so swift you can't catch me

For a birthday present when he was three
I gave my son hannibal an elephant
He gave me rome for mother's day
My strength flows ever on

My son noah built new/ark and
I stood proudly at the helm
as we sailed on a soft summer day
I turned myself into myself and was
jesus
men intone my loving name
All praises All praises
I am the one who would save

I sowed diamonds in my back yard
My bowels deliver uranium
the filings from my fingernails are
semi-precious jewels
On a trip north
I caught a cold and blew
My nose giving oil to the arab world
I am so hip even my errors are correct
I sailed west to reach east and had to round off
the earth as I went
The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid
across three continents

I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal
I cannot be comprehended except by my permission

posted August 31, 2013 07:19 AM            

So good! Thank you, people.

posted August 31, 2013 07:29 AM            

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

^ Isn't that so brilliant?

Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

posted September 23, 2013 10:02 AM            

Someone is always falling in love with you:
men and women, infants and children,
octogenarians and adolescents.
A tenant of heaven-haven on the pearly doorstep
hopes you will wave your hand in passing.
Where you stood just now a white bird
has flown into a ponderosa pine
and a black bee hovers in a bush of yellow flowers.

People would like to discuss you, but hold back.
Mystery is a fragile substance, too easy to tear.
Several persons, however, have noticed that you are followed
not by the usual shadow but by a shaft of sunlight.
Even on a day of fog or light rain.
Even after sunset.

posted October 13, 2013 12:31 PM            

WERE I as base as is the lowly plain,
And you, my Love, as high as heaven above,
Yet should the thoughts of me your humble swain

Ascend to heaven, in honour of my Love.
Were I as high as heaven above the plain,
And you, my Love, as humble and as low
As are the deepest bottoms of the main,
Whereso’er you were, with you my love should go.

Were you the earth, dear Love, and I the skies,
My love should shine on you like to the sun,
And look upon you with ten thousand eyes
Till heaven wax’d blind, and till the world were done.

posted December 18, 2013 11:39 AM            

"i thank You God for most this amazing"
from his book "XAIPE"

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:
for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;
and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;
this is the birth day of life
and of love and wings:
and of the gay great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-- lifted from the no
of all nothing-- human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axH9A28CTjw&list=PLF4ECB06FE2FA064D

posted December 26, 2013 04:50 PM            

Not in marble palaces
not in months, no, nor in ciphers,
never touching ground:
in weightless, fragile worlds
we have lived together.

Time was beaten out,
but hardly by minutes:
one minute was a hundred years,
one life, one love.

Roofs sheltered us,
less than roofs, clouds;
less than clouds, heavens;
even less, air, nothing.

Crossing oceans
formed out of twenty years,
ten yours and ten mine,
we arrived at the
golden beads of a necklace,
clear islands, deserted,
without flowers, without bodies;
a harbor, so tiny,
made of glass,for a love
that in itself was enough
for the largest longing,
and we asked neither ships
nor time for help.

Opening
enormous tunnels
in grains of sand,
we discovered the mines
of flames and of chance.

And everything
hanging from that thread
that held up...what?

That's why our life
doesn't appear to be lived:
slippery, evasive,
it left behind neither wakes
nor footprints, if you want
to remember it, don't look
where you always look for traces
and recollections.

Don't look at your soul,
your shadow or your lips.

Look carefully into the palm
of your hand, it's empty.
~Pedro Salinas