Poem a Day 18/09/11

Today's poem of the day.

My Papa's Waltz
Theodore Roethke


The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

Poem a Day 17/09/11

A fantastically sensual poem:

Drunk as drunk
Pablo Neruda

Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it - our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal -
Over the sky's hot rim,
The day's last breath in our sails.

Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowsy and tangled together
We drifted for months and woke
With the bitter taste of land on our lips,
Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime
And the sound of a rope
Lowering a bucket down its well. Then,
We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,
And lay like fish
Under the net of our kisses.

Poem a Day 16/09/11

Another great poem today and i will resist the urge to capitalise his name.


Since feeling is first
e.e.cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom,

lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

Poem a Day 15/09/11

Today's poem is a really well known one but justifiably so. I'll let the poem do the talking.

I know why the caged bird sings
Maya Angelou

The free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with fearful trill
of the things unknown
but longed for still
and is tune is heard
on the distant hill for the caged bird
sings of freedom

The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn
and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

Poem a Day 14/09/11

So here's the first poem of my poem a day. I hope you enjoy it.

Bosnia Tune
Joseph Brodsky




As you pour yourself a scotch,
crush a roach, or check your watch,
as your hand adjusts your tie,
people die.

In the towns with funny names,
hit by bullets, caught in flames,
by and large not knowing why,
people die.

In small places you don't know
of, yet big for having no
chance to scream or say good-bye,
people die.

People die as you elect
new apostles of neglect,
self-restraint, etc. - whereby
people die.

Too far off to practice love
for thy neighbor/brother Slav,
where your cherubs dread to fly,
people die.

While the statues disagree,
Cain's version, history
for its fuel tends to buy
those who die.

As you watch the athletes score,
check your latest statement, or
sing your child a lullaby,
people die.

Time, whose sharp blood-thirsty quill
parts the killed from those who kill,
will pronounce the latter tribe
as your tribe.

Poem a Day - Day one

So the idea here was that i love poetry and wanted even more of an excuse to read some. I will hopefully cover some classics but also unearth some lesser-known poets and their poems for you. There should be a real range of nationalities, eras and subject matter the only unifying element will be their quality. I hope you enjoy them and am very welcome to suggestions, share the knowledge.

four a.m

Your eyes open to darkness.

The fan sounds like sheets of rain crashing down on the streets outside,
the electricity surging is the thunder rumbling
until its zenith
where it claps,
punctuating the rain's whirring.

The heat crouches on you,
dormant,
like your back is to a fire, until the wind whispers past,
stroking you,
fleetingly,
with its fingers,
a tide crashing up the beach of your back only to sweep away again.

The fan halts the bead of sweat that runs down the indentation of your spine, a but-once running river, but only for a second before it may again pick its way down.

In a bath, darkly

When submerged you hear only your heart in your ears as if it has moved there, you don't feel any point of contact, the beauty of disconnected floating, an achievable flight, the nose poised above the water, your chest can't swell as the pressure of the water constricts like a belt, you must breathe in shallowly to avoid floating up too far. Then carefully, turning the plug's valve with your foot the water drains away slowly. You feel like a skin of water is pulling you down like clingfilm, your face breaks the surface as if it were your original crowning moment seeing the world for the very first time and a wave of pleasure of tenderness of sensitivity crashes through your body like waking at once from a dream you try not to laugh out in joy in ecstasy, you are so delicate at this moment in this moment, a single exhalation will ruin the feeling of asphyxiation, the sweet asphyxiation, your eyes which had only been able to sense the candle-light when submerged are now given the opportunity to open but you concentrate all your sensory action on touch on feel on pleasure through this masochism. Shallow breaths are necessary to prolong your drowning as you are weighed down paradoxically by the lack of water that seems to go on forever, you are pinned to the bottom of the bath, you cannot move, do not want to for the weight of the universe is not only pressing down on your chest but pulling you as well, as satan fell to pandemonium you are being pulled by some insatiable force and again you are floating, in stasis, but not drifting this time you are stuck, lost in transit. The water below you leaves and your breath cannot keep you off the surface of the bath now and you thud back into the world, your eyes can again open to these familiar surroundings and you are free to breathe again, the water around your shoulders slowly trickles past you until you undam it and let it flow freely to the plug.

untitled poem ii

I promised myself that i wouldn't post this until i understood it all but it was pointed out to me that some of the beauty was in the fact that not even the author understood it all. It seems i wrote it in an existential crisis. As always i would love to hear comments on how you might change it so i can improve my writing.

What if this all is a cover-up, what if none of this is real?
There are rules and regulations
Unnecessary to feel
The body doesn’t exist all people are actors, no-one dies or is hurt.
The laws are to limit our thinking
Words have been banned
How difficult would it be to lie about history
If it had been planned
Any sense of truth is easily obliterated
Everything is mitigated by the inexplicity, my nonexperience
Cogito ergo I know nothing except that sum
People could lie, all too easily
Real pleasure is out there
Untapped to my brain unfeasibly
But I’ve never heard of it
I have no grasp of its nectar
Of the things outside this bubble in which my life is cast
Some things get through
Smuggled in from the real world
They have to let it be
Or the mystery is unfurled.
The rules can be broken, without punishment
Those who you hear about are just tempting you
They are corporation sent.
Is life an audition for some greater purpose
If I succumb to their ways do I win or I lose
If I think for myself do I shine or do I bruise.
The things that I know are things that I’ve learnt
But who chose those things,
We learn of non-democracies
Are told how we have it good
Is that just their way of decreasing our livinghood?

untitled poem

I feel it might be a little Kubla Kahn to write up a dream but i feel it's strangely haunting like the opening passages of Notes from the Underground (and yes, i flatter myself by that comparison with Dostoevsky) and it expresses a feeling i am attached to quite well. Of course i would love to hear some comments on how people would alter it.

He traipses along the platform,

the day receives the sun,
with a briefcase in his hand
he trudges on.

Few notice that the case is cuffed to his left wrist,
fewer that it carries only water.

The water changes state
depending where he is.
Sometimes it's steam and barely hinders
but as ice it's cold and heavy
and it encumbers every moment.

But this case, it has a faulty clasp
so people can sometimes open it,
sometimes it just knocks something he walks by
then everything
                    pours
                           out.

In the shallows of the day
and the shadows of a train
he does not want people to see the contents of his case
so he scrambles picking up shards of ice that have shattered in this place.

But his left hand is hindered by the empty box
so he scrambles and he dwindles with his right.

It is his burden to bear
but even if he were unshackled
he would again bind himself.

Although he hates the contents
he knows his die is cast
so he picks it up again as the controller ambles past.

Though it is hard and hinders him
as he must take it everywhere,
the alternative is living without it
and that he could not bear.

For the guilt would eat him just as surely as Lady Macbeth saw a spot,
and the pain itself is comfort that he can pay his lot.
For forgetting is worse than hindrance;
freedom worse than pain,
for if you forget
or lay the memory down
the moment that it comes back
is worse than the combined hell of the perpetual case sodden by the rain.

"awesome like ten million hotdogs, Sir"

So when i wrote this i hadn't written any poetry properly for a long time. i would say i was rusty so i had an excuse but i don't want one. Art should be collaborative i think. Art is collaborative even if only one person writes it. i fear and relish your comments but i like the immediacy of this form and the pressure it puts on the poem - if i can call it that, it's more of an imagination dump.

Carriages lined with people
With stories of their own.
The world expands in my head
As they make their way home, to work, to family, to friends
To the ends of the line
And time passes time
In this underground line
Where my eyes open to the awesome size of the world,
"Awesome like ten million hotdogs, Sir."

My score of years
Is nothing here
My own insignificance pales against theirs
Their love affairs, their joking dares, their unawares.
We are follicles of hairs on the head of the city
Alone nothing but together pretty.
Or ugly. Or something
Less much less than i could fathom.
I am insignificant at best.

first post

Well hello there. I guess you like poetry if you're here. I'll be doing a mixture here of my own stuff (which will include some prose too) and a poem a day so if you're into that or want to post any of your poems in comments that's great too. The world needs more poetry so it would be wonderful if you want to get involved, just comment on this post with your poem or your recommendations for poem a day and i'll have a look and if i like it i will post it in its own post.
This isn't a serious poetry domain all i ask is you enjoy poetry, express your opinions and have fun with it.