What Poetry Moved You?

[oropesa]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/joybartolo/lets.jpg

[lemon]

se mai foco per foco non si spense

 

since fire is never quenched with fire,

nor rivers ever dried by the rain,

but a thing’s always increased by its like,

and sometimes its opposite makes it blaze higher,

 

love, who have power over my thoughts,

and nourish one soul in two bodies,

why do you there obey a different rule,

making desire weaken by desire?

 

perhaps like the great falls along the nile

that deafen those around with their vast roar,

or the sun that dazzles those who gaze too hard,

 

so desire that is not in tune with itself,

unrestrained in its object, comes to grief,

and by spurring hard its speed is slowed.

 

48, the canzoniere. side effects of sheer holy week idleness.

[burn4me]

Dragon Tears

 

Dragon's eyes,

Gold and bright,

Shining out

Into the night.

Fire rising

Through the mist,

Lighted by

The sun's first kiss.

 

People fleeing,

Full of terror,

Except one girl

With golden hair.

 

Brave is she,

Strong and bold.

Never bound

To any hold.

 

Scales of green and gold,

Glittering blue

In the morn,

Shining through.

 

"Brave are you,

Not to fear me." says he.

"I will not harm you

You may go free."

 

His golden tears

Fell all around.

Dripping softly

to the ground.

 

"Why do you cry,

Oh Dragon sir,"

The maiden asked

To be quite sure.

 

"Oh, maiden,

You do not need

To know the problems

Of this weed."

 

"But, oh, sweet dragon, "

She touched his nose,

"where there are weeds,

A flower grows."

 

"Ah, but maiden,"

He gazed from above.

"When I looked at you,

I fell in love."

 

 

Tiffany Castle

Edited March 22, 2008 by burn4me

[burn4me]

A Dragon's Fate

 

From shadows he flies on dragons wings

searching, the world for his mate

With every glance his heart dies more

Is he the last ? Is this his Fate?

 

To die and never to have loved

never to touched or be embraced

To continues he has tried

for he is the last of his race

 

Atop a mountain he has flown

and one last look he takes

But there is nothing, no one, there

even emptiness has gone

 

Lifting his wings to the sky

a loud moaning roar he makes

His heart crying out in sadness

not a single route to take

 

Now he knows that he has failed

in this lonely world of pain

Ending all would be too sweet

as there is nothing more to gain

 

Lowly dragon once so proud

has fallen so far from grace

If only someone knew his heart

or the pain upon his face

 

Then in the night comes a rustle

the flapping of distant wings

Yet, at first he does not hear it

he is thinking of other things

 

She was searching the world over

so hard looking for her mate

He cannot believe it's happening

could this truly be his fate?

 

She flaps her wings on the mountain

his cries of pain she has heard

And she smiled at him so sweetly

there is no need to say a word

 

He enfolds her in his wings

giving her a warm embrace

His listens to his heart sings

the survival of their race

Edited March 22, 2008 by burn4me

[burn4me]

Riding Dragons

 

 

 

The buses of reality

Fight the dragons in my dreams

The noise of screeching tyres

Drown the mighty lizards screams

Sunlight passes through my guise

Of fearless knight in black

And leaves me riding my bicycle

Down dusty concrete tracks.

 

My Dragon, once proud and mighty

Turns to rusting in the shed

A sad and lonely end for one

Who has countless battles led.

A victory for reality,

But my dragon is not dead,

And I with him still lead battles,

But only in my head.

 

Time cannot take my fantasies

Just put them in their place

What if a dragon rider is needed?

I should keep them just in case

 

 

Tansy Pye

[oropesa]

"Thing Language" by Jack Spicer

 

(i love this one. so powerful. hynoptic. the way poetry's meant to be)

 

-----------

 

Thing Language

 

 

This ocean, humiliating in its disguises

Tougher than anything.

No one listens to poetry. The ocean

Does not mean to be listened to. A drop

Or crash of water. It means

Nothing.

It

Is bread and butter

Pepper and salt. The death

That young men hope for. Aimlessly

It pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. No

One listens to poetry.

 

 

 

Jack Spicer

[naked_angel]

one can't

have it

 

both ways

and both

 

ways is

the only

 

way i

want it.

- a.r. ammons

[oropesa]

Men with the heads of eagles

no longer interest me

.....

 

I search instead for the others,

the ones left over,

the ones who have escaped from these

mythologies with barely their lives;

they have real faces and hands, they think

of themselves as

wrong somehow, they would rather be trees.

 

--Margaret Atwood

[oropesa]

The Kiss

 

 

My mouth blooms like a cut.

I've been wronged all year, tedious

nights, nothing but rough elbows in them

and delicate boxes of Kleenex calling crybaby

crybaby , you fool!

 

Before today my body was useless.

Now it's tearing at its square corners.

It's tearing old Mary's garments off, knot by knot

and see--Now it's shot full of these electric bolts.

Zing! A resurrection!

 

Once it was a boat, quite wooden

and with no business, no salt water under it

and in need of some paint. It was no more

than a group of boards. But you hoisted her, rigged her.

She's been elected.

 

My nerves are turned on. I hear them like

musical instruments. Where there was silence

the drums, the strings are incurably playing. You did this.

Pure genius at work. Darling, the composer has stepped

into fire.

 

 

--Anne Sexton

[lemon]

the autumn night

is long only in name --

we've done no more

than gaze at each other

and it's already dawn.

 

- lines from a tanka by ono no komachi... my preferred translation of her work.

[oropesa]

by Luis Omar Salinas

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/joybartolo/aztec_angel.jpg

[oropesa]

The Warning

 

 

For love — I would

split open your head and put

a candle in

behind the eyes.

 

Love is dead in us

if we forget

the virtues of an amulet

and quick surprise.

 

 

—Robert Creeley

[lemon]

whatever varied and strange thing

may exist in whatever foreign land,

i truly think it most

resembles me: to such i’m come, love.

there where the day is born,

flies a bird, alone without a mate,

that rises from self-willed

death, and is reborn to life.

so is my desire

found alone, and so it turns to the heights

of noble thought, towards the sun,

and so it is destroyed,

and so returns to its first state:

it burns, and dies, and regains its strength,

able to live again as the phoenix does.

 

135, the canzoniere... indeed as the phoenix does

[lemon]

oda a la soledad

 

oh, soledad, hermosa

palabra, hierbas

silvestres

brotan entre tus silabas!

pero eres solo palida

palabra, oro

falso,

moneda traidora!

yo describi la soledad con letras

de la literatura,

le puse la corbata

sacada de los libros,

la camisa

del sueno,

pero

solo la conoci cuando fui solo.

bestia no vi ninguna

como aquella;

se parece

y a la mosca

de los estercoleros,

pero en sus patas de camello tiene

ventosas de serpiente submarina,

tiene una pestilencia de bodega

 

 

ode to solitude

 

o solitude, beautiful

word: crab-

grass

grows between your syllables!

but you are only a pale

word, fool's

gold

and counterfeit coin!

i painted solitude in literary

strokes,

dressed it in a tie

i had copied from a book,

and the shirt

of sleep

but

i first really saw it when i was by myself

i'd never seen an animal

quite like it:

it looks like

a hairy spider

or the flies

that hover over dung

and its camel paws have

suckers like a deep-sea snake

it stinks like a warehouse piled high

 

neruda is always more enchanting in his own tongue.

[naked_angel]

maggie and milly and molly and may

e.e. cummings

 

maggie and milly and molly and may

went down to the beach(to play one day)

 

and maggie discovered a shell that sang

so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

 

milly befriended a stranded star

whose rays five languid fingers were;

 

and molly was chased by a horrible thing

which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

 

may came home with a smooth round stone

as small as a world and as large as alone.

 

for whatever we lose(like a you or a me)

it's always ourselves we find in the sea