Your Favorite Poems

[Mauve_All]

Words
by Sylvia Plath

Axes
After whose stroke the wood rings,
And the echoes!
Echoes traveling
Off from the center like horses.

The sap
Wells like tears, like the
Water striving
To re-establish its mirror
Over the rock

That drops and turns,
A white skull,
Eaten by weedy greens.
Years later I
Encounter them on the road----

Words dry and riderless,
The indefatigable hoof-taps.
While
From the bottom of the pool, fixed stars
Govern a life.

[journey]

Christians

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not shouting "I'm clean livin'."
I'm whispering "I was lost,
Now I'm found and forgiven."

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I don't speak of this with pride.
I'm confessing that I stumble
and need Christ to be my guide.

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not trying to be strong.
I'm professing that I'm weak
And need His strength to carry on.

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not bragging of success.
I'm admitting I have failed
And need God to clean my mess.

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not claiming to be perfect,
My flaws are far too visible
But, God believes I am worth it.

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I still feel the sting of pain.
I have my share of heartaches
So I call upon His name.

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not holier than thou,
I'm just a simple sinner
Who received God's good grace, somehow


 - Maya Angelou

[sisterofyu]

On Children
 
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let our bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.


Kahlil Gibran

[sisterofyu]

Christians

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not shouting "I'm clean livin'."
I'm whispering "I was lost,
Now I'm found and forgiven."

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I don't speak of this with pride.
I'm confessing that I stumble
and need Christ to be my guide.

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not trying to be strong.
I'm professing that I'm weak
And need His strength to carry on.

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not bragging of success.
I'm admitting I have failed
And need God to clean my mess.

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not claiming to be perfect,
My flaws are far too visible
But, God believes I am worth it.

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I still feel the sting of pain.
I have my share of heartaches
So I call upon His name.

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not holier than thou,
I'm just a simple sinner
Who received God's good grace, somehow


 - Maya Angelou

keekee very nice...Happy Holidays to you and all the poetry buddies posting in this thread

[Axls Rocket Queen]

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead.
Put cr?pe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantel the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.


W.H. Auden

[Mauve_All]

Siren Song
by Margaret Atwood

This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:

the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see the beached skulls

the song nobody knows
because anyone who has heard it
is dead, and the others can't remember.

Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?

I don'y enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical

with these two faethery maniacs,
I don't enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique

at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.

[JohnMorrison73]

anything from morrison

[Mauve_All]

pity this busy monster,manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim(death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
--electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange;lenses extend

unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? A world of made
is not a world of born--pity poor flesh

and trees,poor stars and stones,but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical
ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if--listen:there's a hell
of a good universe next door;let's go

e.e. cummings
1944

[journey]

The Infinite
   
 
It was always dear to me, this solitary hill,
and this hedgerow here, that closes out my view,
from so much of the ultimate horizon.
But sitting here, and watching here, in thought,
I create interminable spaces,
greater than human silences, and deepest
quiet, where the heart barely fails to terrify.
When I hear the wind, blowing among these leaves,
I go on to compare that infinite silence
with this voice, and I remember the eternal
and the dead seasons, and the living present,
and its sound, so that in this immensity
my thoughts are drowned, and shipwreck seems sweet
to me in this sea.

 - Giacomo Leopardi
 
 

[GNRreunioneventually]

a pussy is a mythical creature
covered and layered in hair
look like the face of a preacher
smells like the ass of a bear

i made that one up. My friends thought it was funny

heres one my friend made up while high

gose in dry comes out wet
the longer its in the better it gets
when it comes out it drips and sags
stop thinkin sex its a fuckin tea bag!

i got many more

[sisterofyu]

Oh

It is snowing and death bugs me
as stubborn as insomnia.
The fierce bubbles of chalk,
the little white lesions
settle on the street outside.
It is snowing and the ninety
year old woman who was combing
out her long white wraith hair
is gone, embalmed even now,
even tonight her arms are smooth
muskets at her side and nothing
issues from her but her last word - "Oh." Surprised by death.

It is snowing. Paper spots
are falling from the punch.
Hello? Mrs. Death is here!
She suffers according to the digits
of my hate. I hear the filaments
of alabaster. I would lie down
with them and lift my madness
off like a wig. I would lie
outside in a room of wool
and let the snow cover me.
Paris white or flake white
or argentine, all in the washbasin
of my mouth, calling, "Oh."
I am empty. I am witless.
Death is here. There is no
other settlement. Snow!
See the mark, the pock, the pock!

Meanwhile you pour tea
with your handsome gentle hands.
Then you deliberately take your
forefinger and point it at my temple,
saying, "You suicide bitch!
I'd like to take a corkscrew
and screw out all your brains
and you'd never be back ever."
And I close my eyes over the steaming
tea and see God opening His teeth.
"Oh." He says.
I see the child in me writing, "Oh."
Oh, my dear, not why.


Anne Sexton

[journey]

The Tunnel

Tonight, nothing is long enough
time isn't
Were there a fire
it would burn now
Were there a heaven
I would have gone long ago
I think that light
is the final image
But time reoccurs
love -- and an echo
A time passes
love in the dark

 - Robert Creeley

[Red_Locks]

I stole this one from a postsecret website..so whoever wrote it.. it's not really a poem..but I like it anyway

fuck the poets of the past, my friends.
there are no beautiful suicides
just cold corpses with shit in their pants
& the end of the gifts.

[/i]

If anyone knows who wrote it..whether there is more..show meeeee

[MCT]

The Fly

Little Fly,
Thy summer's play
My thoughtless hand
Has brush'd away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance,
And drink, & sing;
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength & breath,
And the want 
Of thought is death;

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live
Or if I die.
 
--William Blake--

[Jessica]

To My Son
by Baruyr Sevag
(1924-1971)
* translated from Armenian by Shant Norashkharian *

    Whether with me, or without me, my dearest one, you will still grow,
    With my help or without my help, you will someday still understand,
    The way one must live in this life, the way one must look at this life,
    The things that are cheap in this world, and the priceless things of this world.
    Neither do I tolerate nor respect those who lecture to me,
    I have always abhorred, my son, the flat sermons or the sharp ones.
    But if I am, my dearest one, now reading a lecture to you,
    It is only because often, very often in a man's life,
    If time itself has a large share, the century has a large share,
    The way he has chosen himself, has no little effect as well.
    Perhaps like me you will also be surrounded often with this:
    Often as I looked around me, I felt envy for those people,
    Whose life passes so easily - as if it were a gravel way,
    Without any barrier or wall, like a ruler so flat and straight,
    School and then - soon a Pooh-Bah, influential big bell ringer,
    And his warm place is then secured...You cannot live in this manner!
    I would not want, that your life be like that a flat gravel way.
    Don't pass over the asphalt road, you must prefer to build a road!

* * *

    Live peacefully always with love, but do not flee from suffering;
    It clears the eye from the eye's dust, it cleans the soul from the soul's rust.
    One does not die from suffering, but one becomes yet stronger,
    Later the heart that's recovered will bear its pain more easily.
    Ah, do not mew! Your father has never endured the ones who mew...
    It's much better, my son that you water your eyes with bitter tears
    And continue on your own way. Let it be full of many stones,
    But if inside your soul there is longing for good, kindness and love,
    You will not tire, but you will walk and you will rise up the mountain.
    For that someone needs a spirit, for that there is no need for wings.

* * *

    You must be kind in everything, which kind person died from hunger?
    There's no exile for what is true - why keep silent against the lies?
    Yet around us there are people, who bend their waists when it's needed,
    Who go ranting when it's needed, shut up or smile when it's needed,
    They point fingers when it's needed...Don't be in life so immature,
    You, understand, now from this head, do not forget, never, my son:
    That kindness is only that which never changes no matter what,
    It has white face; but yet never seven or eight colored linings...

* * *

    Do not complain; you remember? "Days of failure...come but then leave"...
    Do not complain. If you have been after goodness, reach it yourself...
    Do not complain, but do not read life as if it were just a book,
    Just like a book, far from yourself, as if reading about strange men...
    Be always proud, not arrogant (only vain men are arrogant,
    Your father used only this way to sort out the wise from the fool).
    Be proud always like your father, for not ruining anyone's home,
    For not breaking any kind word, for not jailing any kind mind,
    That you have walked straight in your life, and if you have heard them often,
    It is only for the reason that the petty business has thrown
    In the market often only every kind of trivial rabble,
    But you have no trivialities, you don't even have fake money...

* * *

    You are still young, you don't know yet, how one must look at life itself.
    You are still young. When you grow up, and become a mature adult,
    My advices to you perhaps will seem so old and so useless,
    Perhaps in life there will not be so many wounds and shortcomings.
    Ah, may God give! I never dream of anything else in this life
    (The blind, my son, as you well know, only desires a pair of eyes).
    My advices, let them be old...the flower dies only that way,
    When on the tree in the summer it turns to a ripe piece of fruit.
    For the sake of the coming fire, I am ready to burn today,
    For the sake of tomorrow's truth, let me today be in error...

* * *
Translation Copyright 1996 by Shant Norashkharian

[Mauve_All]

The Windows
by Constantine P. Cavafy

In these darkened rooms, where I spend
oppresive days, I pace to and fro
to find the windows. -- When a window
opens, it will be a consolation. --
But the windows cannot be found, or I cannot
find them. And maybe it is best that I do not find them.
Maybe the light will be a new tyranny.
Who knows what new things it will reveal.

[Lolita]

The Enemy


My youth has been nothing but a tenebrous storm
Pierced now and then by rays of brilliant sunshine
Thunder and rain have wrought so much havoc
That very few ripe fruits remain in my garden

I have already reached the autumn of my mind
And I must set to work with the spade and the rake
To gather back the inundated soil
In which the rain digs holes as big as graves

And who knows whether the new flowers I dream of
Will find in this earth washed bare like the strand
The mystic aliment that would give them vigor?

Alas! Alas! Time eats away our lives
And the hidden Enemy who gnaws at our hearts
Grows by drawing strength from the blood we lose!

 - Charles Baudelaire

[anythinggoes]

A feast of Friends

Wow, I?m sick of doubt
Live in the light of certain South
Cruel bindings
The servants have the power
Dog men and their mean women
Pulling poor blankets over our sailors
I?m sick of dour faces
Staring at me from the T.V. Tower
I want roses in my garden bower; dig?
Royal babies, rubies
Must now replace aborted
Strangers in the mud
These mutants, blood meal
for the plant that?s plowed

They are waiting to take us into the severed garden
Do you know, how pale and wanton thrillful
Comes death in a strange hour
Unannounced, unplanned for
like a scaring over-friendly guest you?ve brought to bed
Death makes angels of us all and gives us wings
Where we had shoulders, smooth as ravens claws

No more money, no more fancy dress
This other kingdom seems by far the best
Until it?s other jaw reveals incest
And loose obidience to a vegetable law

I will not go
Prefer a feast of friends
To the giant family

[Mauve_All]

^^ wow, Morisson
 

[sesor]

We Sailed Through Endless Skies,
Stars Shined Like Eyes,
The Black Night Sighs.
The Moon In Silver Trees,
Falls Down In Tears,
Light Of The Night.
The Earth A Purple Blaze,
Of Saphire Haze,
In Orbital Ways.

While Down Below The Trees,
Bathed In Cool Breeze,
Silver Starlight,
Breaks Down From Night.
And So We Pass On By,
The Crimson Eye,
Of Great God Mars,
As We Travel The Universe.