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Thread: Your Favorite Poems from fellow Lit-Netters

  1. #181
    Something's gotta give PrinceMyshkin's Avatar
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    Letting in the Ghosts, by Firefangled


    The house at midnight hums with consonants.
    Particularly the air-handler’s lay
    soothes me as seasons pass the windows―
    summer slowly and winter’s frozen tracks―
    I bless the steadiness of ems and ars.

    Falls are less unruffled, they tic-toc on
    gables, like some anachronistic clock,
    a quick knocking in counterpoint, as oaks
    forgo acorns in incessant metronomic drops,
    and blown leaves brush against the windowpanes.

    When in April comes the hour between the days,
    a lull with lilacs from the dead ground grows
    and through the open windows lets the ghosts in,
    a redolence in all the rooms, almost seen
    in moonlight―hyacinth, peony and rose.



    © Copyright 2010

    Firefangled

  2. #182
    King of Dreams MorpheusSandman's Avatar
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    Yeah, FF's masterpiece definitely deserves to be mentioned here.
    "As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being." --Carl Gustav Jung

    "To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due." --Neil Gaiman; The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists

    "I'm on my way, from misery to happiness today. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh" --The Proclaimers

  3. #183
    Something's gotta give PrinceMyshkin's Avatar
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    Ashes To Ashes (Pompeii/Hiroshima) by Hillwalker

    Ashes To Ashes (Pompeii/Hiroshima)
    ASHES TO ASHES

    I [Pompeii]

    Raddled with wine I stagger home, each step less sure;
    the vibrant sound of Vulcanalia expands
    and echoes off the tilting walls and heaving floor.

    Outside the House of Fauns the brothel-keeper stands
    watching mottled moon flame red across the sea;
    the wrath of Jove a haemorrhage upon our lands.

    My sight adrift, seeks flight, in panic, for Capri;
    that sacred haven on blue Sorrento bay,
    while dusk invades in ranks of cloud from Napoli.

    The cateyes in the cobbles barely light the way;
    oil lamps sputter, wind chimes frenzied in the breeze.
    I touch the phallus set in stone and stoop to pray.

    The stir of crickets threshing in the olive trees
    too strident. I draw the drapes. In looming dark,
    a broth of coiling fireglow flares across the frieze.

    The rattle of the dog chains stilled; no howl, no bark;
    in my corner, bowels voided, crouching low;
    outside the world grows calloused, Pluto makes his mark.

    My prayers snuffed out, remorse abandoned long ago,
    my body lies oblivious, enshrouded;
    eyes drowned in blossom, endless flakes of endless snow.



    II [Hiroshima]

    Monday August 6
    1945 a d
    8:15 a.m.

    A bright new week
    white blouse washed and pressed for school
    birdsong on the breeze

    Roll call and sirens
    stifled thunder cracks the walls
    we all rush outside

    A death rose blooms high
    hushed shadows then blaring heat
    then hollowed silence

    The world fills with white
    blizzards of cherry blossom
    drifting still drifting

    My sandals melting
    oleanders reaching out
    withered and blooming

    My hair band slips off
    a white smile fringed with cropped hair
    my scalp still attached

    Kyoko burnt black
    I search for her red barrette
    then her eyes open

    In class we drew cranes
    white birds like folded paper
    now wingless and scorched

    My frayed handkerchief
    holds two embroidered goldfish
    red braids coiled in white

  4. #184
    Registered User Delta40's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Silas Thorne View Post
    Tongues of sharp-winged sadness take me.
    Unkempt, unsandalled and unclean,
    I wander whirlpools in the waiting dark,
    following false beacons
    that bold and bitter moonlight
    burn before me.
    I can't believe I have never noticed this thread! I miss reading Silas Thorne
    Before sunlight can shine through a window, the blinds must be raised - American Proverb

  5. #185
    Something's gotta give PrinceMyshkin's Avatar
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    Ditto. I don't recall if I've commented on this particular poem before but it's a marvel of forceful economy. Bravo!

  6. #186
    Something's gotta give PrinceMyshkin's Avatar
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    "Bangkok" by lallison

    Bangkok
    I have loved her,
    cleaved from the rice fields and now sprawling endlessly,
    a muddy river flowing through her belly,
    now tinged with red.

    I have been held by her well into the morning,
    dreamed of nothing else but her decaying breath,
    and the flower markets bustling through the night
    on the verge of closing.

    I have spent endless hours wandering the alleys,
    discovering her exotic secrets,
    and I have felt inside her a tangible suffering,
    the wasting lives, and the coming violence.

    But this is a land of free people
    who will not listen to dictation.
    And if she must paint herself once more
    then let her color be red

    just as a single staff colored the Nile.
    A single crimson bead now rests on my fingertip
    as dusk refracts towering silhouettes against a fiery horizon,
    and a ruby net trolls through the Andamon sea.

    She is no stranger to storm.
    When lightning cracks her sky, it shatters the towers,
    the monsoons tumble and rise in the streets,
    and the city trembles, alive.

    In such a place, one must not acknowledge fear
    or tears to regret the lives that could be,
    once lost, lost forever, but the vibrancy of a golden dream
    dances with bats along the canal tunnels.

    Awash against her flooded riverbanks, what little hope can we have
    when backs are bent and bodies graying in the streets?
    Only that quiet red light lifting over the city at dawn, the fleeting knowledge
    that we have tried and lived our lives as they should be.

    And when finally that day should come
    let her sit and dictate my color to me
    and she must know from where comes the crimson bead on my finger,
    and see how I have crushed it against my cheek.

  7. #187
    All are at the crossroads qimissung's Avatar
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    Very good choices, Prince!
    "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its' own reason for existing." ~ Albert Einstein
    "Remember, no matter where you go, there you are." Buckaroo Bonzai
    "Some people say I done alright for a girl." Melanie Safka

  8. #188
    Something's gotta give PrinceMyshkin's Avatar
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    Polyglot, by Hack

    I never learned to ask,
    "How are things in your grandmother's village?"
    in any foreign tongue.

    I can say,
    "Show me your hands, or I will kill you."
    in several languages.

    But, somehow, it is not the same.

  9. #189
    Something's gotta give PrinceMyshkin's Avatar
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    "I CANNOT HATE," by Hillwalker



    I CANNOT HATE

    The spear of dawn serrates the sleeping hillside
    smearing lurid spills of light across its darkened pelt;
    this haze like steaming perspiration,
    undercurrents deep beneath its sleek and heaving flanks
    throw ripples through the rock,
    a stamp-mark on the coal dust,
    horns caged in by twisted towers
    framed by ragged beams of daybreak.

    My father sprang intact from these cold rocks
    and now lies fossilised in those same strata that gave birth to him,
    embedded in the darkest tomb a man could choose,
    no breathing space in there,
    his corpse impressed from toil then crushed by time.

    I cannot hate these hills outside my window
    any more than I can hate the waxing sun,
    although its light brings suffering to each new day.

    To hate those hard, black mountains,
    curse that glinting devil with its drooling maw,
    its sharded teeth and gloating grin,
    is to deny my father dignity;
    his choice to scrape and claw his living
    from those cherished rocks.

    I cannot hate these hills outside my window
    any more than I can hate his stubborn pride,
    his split black nails and gritty tide mark,
    blisters blue from blast not friction,
    heaps of rusted slag piled high with cold despair,
    the waste, the tainted streams,
    the gravity of air.


    A continent away
    another mountain, barren, treeless,
    scarred by craters
    pestilent with jagged bones and rotting flesh and bright red clay;
    an alien landscape scalded white with heat and hatred.

    That hot white sun a galaxy away,
    a sun that scorches every breath
    and burns each shadow into glaring light
    and etches tear-stains in the bitter salt;
    its touch as sharp as any gutting blade.

    I cannot hate the villages;
    he wrote and told me all about them, see;
    the stench of burning dung and garbage,
    peasant farmers smoking flimsy roll-ups,
    playing dominoes ‘til sunset,
    watching football on their satellite tvs.

    They did not choose to lose their fields to battle,
    had no wish to watch a war outside their door.
    Their hills are just as innocent as ours;
    they had no choice but watch him suffer,
    writhe with muted fury
    as their valleys carried back and forth the echo of explosion,
    shredding pity in a screech of helpless desolation.

    I cannot even hate this war that made me proud to be a mother;
    why demean the boy’s ambition,
    fighting for another’s freedom that was never his to sanction?

    Torn to dust beneath an alien desert sun:
    the tainted scent of war deodorised
    then helicoptered here from Helmand.
    brought back home inside a flag-decked coffin;
    surely better that
    than held to ransom in a coal mine,
    ever out of reach but never out of sight.

  10. #190
    Metamorphosing Pensive's Avatar
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    Along Comes Charlie by Jerrybaldy

    I once knew a girl, called Dill
    who loved to slap strangers on the face.
    That was her thing,
    she would slap them, then giggle like a little girl.
    She wasn't pretty, though I think she once was.
    Slapping was after all, a dangerous past time.
    Her face was a mass of scars
    Old yellow ones and angry new red ones.
    But I loved her.
    I loved to stamp on strangers feet.
    That was my thing.
    She called me stampy.
    I never called her slapper.
    We were a perfect match.
    On the street, or in the mall, we approached strangers,
    Dill slapped them and while they gasped,
    I trampled their toes.
    We lived together during these happy days.
    But we took a few hidings.
    We were never intimate.
    If I ever tried, Dill would slap my face
    and I would crush her little painted piggies.
    But I loved her.
    Then along came Charlie.
    We found him kicking butts in the park.
    We became a three piece.
    Charlie's kick up the bum,
    became our finale.
    I think I lost out as the middle man.
    Dill would keep her piggies out of my reach
    But was forever bent over for Charlie,
    winking over her shoulder,
    that he should give her a kick.
    I dont see either of them anymore.
    But I have met Mary.
    She loves to pull wigs from bald men's heads.
    That's her thing.
    Sometimes we have to search all day.
    But, oh, the payoff.
    I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew.

  11. #191
    Registered User Delta40's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin View Post


    I CANNOT HATE

    The spear of dawn serrates the sleeping hillside
    smearing lurid spills of light across its darkened pelt;
    this haze like steaming perspiration,
    undercurrents deep beneath its sleek and heaving flanks
    throw ripples through the rock,
    a stamp-mark on the coal dust,
    horns caged in by twisted towers
    framed by ragged beams of daybreak.

    My father sprang intact from these cold rocks
    and now lies fossilised in those same strata that gave birth to him,
    embedded in the darkest tomb a man could choose,
    no breathing space in there,
    his corpse impressed from toil then crushed by time.

    I cannot hate these hills outside my window
    any more than I can hate the waxing sun,
    although its light brings suffering to each new day.

    To hate those hard, black mountains,
    curse that glinting devil with its drooling maw,
    its sharded teeth and gloating grin,
    is to deny my father dignity;
    his choice to scrape and claw his living
    from those cherished rocks.

    I cannot hate these hills outside my window
    any more than I can hate his stubborn pride,
    his split black nails and gritty tide mark,
    blisters blue from blast not friction,
    heaps of rusted slag piled high with cold despair,
    the waste, the tainted streams,
    the gravity of air.


    A continent away
    another mountain, barren, treeless,
    scarred by craters
    pestilent with jagged bones and rotting flesh and bright red clay;
    an alien landscape scalded white with heat and hatred.

    That hot white sun a galaxy away,
    a sun that scorches every breath
    and burns each shadow into glaring light
    and etches tear-stains in the bitter salt;
    its touch as sharp as any gutting blade.

    I cannot hate the villages;
    he wrote and told me all about them, see;
    the stench of burning dung and garbage,
    peasant farmers smoking flimsy roll-ups,
    playing dominoes ‘til sunset,
    watching football on their satellite tvs.

    They did not choose to lose their fields to battle,
    had no wish to watch a war outside their door.
    Their hills are just as innocent as ours;
    they had no choice but watch him suffer,
    writhe with muted fury
    as their valleys carried back and forth the echo of explosion,
    shredding pity in a screech of helpless desolation.

    I cannot even hate this war that made me proud to be a mother;
    why demean the boy’s ambition,
    fighting for another’s freedom that was never his to sanction?

    Torn to dust beneath an alien desert sun:
    the tainted scent of war deodorised
    then helicoptered here from Helmand.
    brought back home inside a flag-decked coffin;
    surely better that
    than held to ransom in a coal mine,
    ever out of reach but never out of sight.
    My thoughts to this one, too!
    Before sunlight can shine through a window, the blinds must be raised - American Proverb

  12. #192
    dafydd dafydd manton's Avatar
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    There have been some superb poems on this site, but "I Cannot Hate" is, to my mind, one of the very best if not THE best!
    Dafydd Manton, A Legend In His Own Lunchtime!! www.dafydd-manton.co.uk

    My Work Has Been Spread Over Many Fields!

  13. #193
    Registered User Delta40's Avatar
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    Dark Love by Jerrybaldy

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Our shared tattoos,
    sank our love beneath the skin.
    We scabbed and scratched together,
    rainbow hemorrhages,
    spewing over white linen sheets.
    We pierced each other,
    with matching holes,
    and chained our holes together.
    We cut each other,
    and kissed,
    with the lips of our wounds.
    We swam in sheets
    of blood and love.
    Penetrating the wounds,
    with wet fingers.
    Sinking in pain.
    Drowning in despair,
    to be combined.
    Before sunlight can shine through a window, the blinds must be raised - American Proverb

  14. #194
    Something's gotta give PrinceMyshkin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Delta40 View Post
    My thoughts to this one, too!
    Message 191 came out looking as if it were mine but of course it's by Hillwalker.

  15. #195
    Registered User zoolane's Avatar
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    BUNKING DOUBLE GYM

    Imprisoned in this cubicle
    the smell of wee and cigarettes
    ‘Advanced Techniques’ and toilet duck
    that weeping cistern on the wall

    My eyes clamped shut
    I contemplate each heartbeat
    running through us both like wiring
    palpitating as you scent the sea perhaps
    a flood of brine
    my insides out

    A tiny jellyfish of red
    reeled in to land
    and laid to rest in my adidas bag
    with all my other junk
    my tic-tacs and my chap-stick
    my pencil case and tamagotchi

    Dad tried to drown some kittens once
    a home-brew fermentation tub
    the brick inside the sack
    I held my breath then held it under
    ‘til the gargling bubbles rose no more

    And now that squawking bell for double gym
    it sets my teeth on edge
    I hang around the changing rooms with Emo May
    who had verrucas
    waiting for another suicidal day to end

    I dump it in that rubbish skip
    outside ‘Miss Selfridge’
    stepping into ‘Mothercare’
    to say one prayer before I leave

    Then in my bedroom late at night
    my teddy-bear hot-water bottle clamped between my thighs
    I draw an entry in my diary
    a special picture for today
    the 5th of May
    a tiny doodle of an alien

    I think best our friend Hillwalker best because is deal with taboo subject and special when come to poetry.
    English my native language and have characterizes of dyslexia.

    Copyright (C) 2011, Zoolane

    I have pass by English Exam.

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