Today's poet

[freckle]

For Desire

Give me the strongest cheese, the one that stinks best;
and I want the good wine, the swirl in crystal
surrendering the bruised scent of blackberries,
or cherries, the rich spurt in the back
of the throat, the holding it there before swallowing.
Give me the lover who yanks open the door
of his house and presses me to the wall
in the dim hallway, and keeps me there until I'm drenched
and shaking, whose kisses arrive by the boatload
and begin their delicious diaspora
through the cities and small towns of my body.
To hell with the saints, with martyrs
of my childhood meant to instruct me
in the power of endurance and faith,
to hell with the next world and its pallid angels
swooning and sighing like Victorian girls.
I want this world. I want to walk into
the ocean and feel it trying to drag me along
like I'm nothing but a broken bit of scratched glass,
and I want to resist it. I want to go
staggering and flailing my way
through the bars and back rooms,
through the gleaming hotels and weedy
lots of abandoned sunflowers and the parks
where dogs are let off their leashes
in spite of the signs, where they sniff each
other and roll together in the grass, I want to
lie down somewhere and suffer for love until
it nearly kills me, and then I want to get up again
and put on that little black dress and wait
for you, yes you, to come over here
and get down on your knees and tell me
just how ****ing good I look

- Kim Addonizio


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSDG8hhyEes

[freckle]

Doubt shall not make an end of you

Doubt shall not make an end of you
nor closing eyes lose your shape
when the retina's light fades;
what dawns inside me will light you.
In our public lives we may confine ourselves to darkness,
our nowhere mouths explain away our dreams,
but alone we are incorruptible creatures,
our light sunk too deep to be of any social use
we wander free and perfect without moving
or love on hard carpets
where couples revolving round the room
end found at its centre.
Our love like a whale from its deepest ocean rises -
I offer this and a multitude of images
from party rooms to oceans,
the single star and all its reflections;
being completed we include all
and nothing wishes to escape us.
Beneath my hand your hardening breast agrees
to sing of its own nature,
then from a place without names our origin comes shivering.
Feel nothing separate then,
we have translated each other into light
and into love go streaming.

Brian Patten

THis is beautiful , i love the imagery of the last three lines (they would be great marriage vows in my universe!)...i think the whole poem reflects the paradox of love and seperation and the rallying against it...well thats my interepretation!....

[freckle]

Alf I enjoyed the Donne choice...particularly liked the following lines....

"Only our love hath no decay;
This no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday,
Running it never runs from us away,
But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day. "

and ....

"When bodies to their graves, souls from their graves remove."

[nippersmith]

For Desire

Give me the strongest cheese, the one that stinks best;
and I want the good wine, the swirl in crystal
surrendering the bruised scent of blackberries,
or cherries, the rich spurt in the back
of the throat, the holding it there before swallowing.
Give me the lover who yanks open the door
of his house and presses me to the wall
in the dim hallway, and keeps me there until I'm drenched
and shaking, whose kisses arrive by the boatload
and begin their delicious diaspora
through the cities and small towns of my body.
To hell with the saints, with martyrs
of my childhood meant to instruct me
in the power of endurance and faith,
to hell with the next world and its pallid angels
swooning and sighing like Victorian girls.
I want this world. I want to walk into
the ocean and feel it trying to drag me along
like I'm nothing but a broken bit of scratched glass,
and I want to resist it. I want to go
staggering and flailing my way
through the bars and back rooms,
through the gleaming hotels and weedy
lots of abandoned sunflowers and the parks
where dogs are let off their leashes
in spite of the signs, where they sniff each
other and roll together in the grass, I want to
lie down somewhere and suffer for love until
it nearly kills me, and then I want to get up again
and put on that little black dress and wait
for you, yes you, to come over here
and get down on your knees and tell me
just how ****ing good I look

- Kim Addonizio


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSDG8hhyEes

Hi Freckle, I love your signature, adopted from the Sorley poem which I posted, which is so powerful and yes, for me too the poem crystallises the essence and spirit of running across tracts of land accompanied only by the elements. It feels quite primal doesn't it? The poem you have posted by Adonnizio strips the subject bare and focuses on passion also. The poems have something in common though separated by almost a century? I also love the youtube clip of Maria Callas, excellente. Nipper

[nippersmith]

The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin

That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence
The river's level drifting breadth began,
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.

All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept
For miles inland,
A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.
Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and
Canals with floatings of industrial froth;
A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped
And rose: and now and then a smell of grass
Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth
Until the next town, new and nondescript,
Approached with acres of dismantled cars.

At first, I didn't notice what a noise
The weddings made
Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys
The interest of what's happening in the shade,
And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls
I took for porters larking with the mails,
And went on reading. Once we started, though,
We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls
In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,
All posed irresolutely, watching us go,

As if out on the end of an event
Waving goodbye
To something that survived it. Struck, I leant
More promptly out next time, more curiously,
And saw it all again in different terms:
The fathers with broad belts under their suits
And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;
An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms,
The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes,
The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres that

Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.
Yes, from cafés
And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed
Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days
Were coming to an end. All down the line
Fresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round;
The last confetti and advice were thrown,
And, as we moved, each face seemed to define
Just what it saw departing: children frowned
At something dull; fathers had never known

Success so huge and wholly farcical;
The women shared
The secret like a happy funeral;
While girls, gripping their handbags tighter,
staredAt a religious wounding. Free at last,
And loaded with the sum of all they saw,
We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.
Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast
Long shadows over major roads, and for
Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem

Just long enough to settle hats and say
I nearly died,
A dozen marriages got under way.
They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
- An Odeon went past, a cooling tower, And
someone running up to bowl - and none
Thought of the others they would never meet
Or how their lives would all contain this hour.
I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:

There we were aimed. And as we raced across
Bright knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail
Travelling coincidence; and what it held
stood ready to be loosed with all the power
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.

[stevefoster]

A long un in the hills
Forget pills and Rupert Murdoch
Finish with Dandelion and Burdock
Also, forget all other posters
Get yerself some veggie Samosas

freckle inspired

[The devil's own]

Right first post on this thread as I have in the past not really cared for poetry, but I read two little things today that I felt deserved a repost on here. Not sure if they class as poetry or not, and no idea who they are by but here goes....

Losing pieces

Talked my head off
Worked my tail off
Cried my eyes out
Walked my feet off
Sang my heart out
So you see,
There's not really much left off me.

And.....

I don't like the memories
because the tears come easily,
and once again
I break my promise
to myself for this day.
It's a constant battle.
A war between remembering, and forgetting.

Hope someone likes them as much as I did. For all i know they may be snippets of a larger piece of work, or lyrics from a song. If anyone knows where they originally came from please point me in the right direction.

Thanks

Michael

[freckle]

I haven't been here on yonks, been reading stuff and enjoying it but in all honesty marathon training is taking its toll and i keep falling asleep early! steve i loved your little samosa poem,thankyou! i am finding that i crave different foods after each long run, this week I have mostly been eating roast dinners! conan 187 i enjoyed your excerpts just haven't tracked them down yet, always good to see new folk on here...

on a different note...liked this anon poem

Ticker tape
Into the ether
I fall
What is real?
These conversations with people
I may never meet?
Who never have to deal
With PMT, a bad day at work
And flatulence
Any monkey can garner
A matrix of illusion
Via the latest social networking media
But what I need is far more real
Yet frustratingly intangible
Who after all...
can read the obselete?

[Masham Man]

March, How mild thy genial
Hours,
Soft azure skies, and gilded
Showers,
The blaze of lights, the deepening
Shade
Tints that flush the cloud and
Fade;
Now the young wheat's transient
Gleam,
Where sunlight, chasing shadows
Stream.

A poem from the Ripon Gazette

[Hes]

Just been catching up on the poetry thread...its been absolutely ages! This is very appropriate for today as we saw loads of yellowhammers on our bike ride. I like your offering from the Ripon Gazette MM.

Loved the 'Heather' poem MM

With the Midgeley Moor race on the horizon it will be a chance to get up close and personal with heather


The Yellowhammer


When shall I see the white-thorn leaves agen,
And yellowhammers gathering the dry bents
By the dyke side, on stilly moor or fen,
Feathered with love and nature's good intents?
Rude is the tent this architect invents,
Rural the place, with cart ruts by dyke side.
Dead grass, horse hair, and downy-headed bents
Tied to dead thistles--she doth well provide,
Close to a hill of ants where cowslips bloom
And shed oer meadows far their sweet perfume.
In early spring, when winds blow chilly cold,
The yellowhammer, trailing grass, will come
To fix a place and choose an early home,
With yellow breast and head of solid gold.

John Clare