Your Favorite Poems from fellow Lit-Netters

[Delta40]

(One of our best loved poets)

You stood arched, seeking balance,
by green supermarket bins,
veined hands caught, as if, in quicksand.

I thought of a tree, heavily bent,
needles scattered over rock,
roots at the mercy of uncommitted soil;

of an eyeless street lamp forcing its leg
into the concrete, and around it -
meanders of dried pee and scattered glass;

of August's second full moon in a blue halo:
its shades, I mused, like your features:
worn out, fading.

I wished a mighty draft would come and -
in a whirl - seam shut the sight.

[Bar22do]

Dear Delta, thank you! It is so kind of you.

[Jerrybaldy]

Sorry to double park you in the favourites aisle. This one of yours has that indiscernible quality (its just as well or we would all be nailing it), that we all strive to capture. Hence, I cannot say what you captured or how you captured it, but with certainty, you captured this reader. I can say that it has harvest imagery, a longing and yearning, loss, a nostalgia and maybe most imortantly it manages the voodoo of having a sum greater than its eight line parts.

Here is how its done:




After The Crop

Don't go: late summer's soughs
linger in the hoary olive groves
in Kidron Valley,
silvery leaves blacken fast
as the moon takes over.
Do you hear? Now the gate
to the oil press house creaks open.

In autumn I'll anoint you king.

[Bar22do]

Gosh, thanks Jerry! (I wish this capacity of capturing could happen to me more often! ah)

[wsww]

ah.... i love all the 3 of them in beauty the are washed to be shone .....

[Bar22do]

Melancholia

Darkness tiptoes down the cobbled lane,
slithers over stones and weeping cobwebs,
shakes ghostly hands before her windows,
slides through the keyhole of her front door
and settles like a mourning nightgown
on her skinny shoulders, on her sagging skin.
With weary, bloodshot eyes, she gazes over
the sombre realm outside where streetlamps
bite with acid blandness into cotton fogs
and chew on undressed trees. She chews, as well,
on memories piled up around her rocking chair
like dusty books she’s read a thousand times.
The frozen mirror in her back, gone blind with age,
reflects the languid candlelight that shines
and flickers through the solidly black room.
Her trembling fingers, damp and cold and rheumy,
try to untangle her grey and plaited hair,
but finally give up. She feels too far away
for sighs and sobs, feels beyond life.
The butcher’s knife bearing her name
falls to the floor. She reaches up
and paints her withering face with liquid makeup
and clotting lipstick. Her last date
is waiting in the fogs…

[aliengirl]

Well, I'm a fan of Deltasquen poetry. This is one of my favorites. I won't say one of her best because the lady seldom writes anything below that level. With many thanks to dear Delta.

Early Map Maker

An old man sat on the shore
and wondered,
What is this world
I journey through?
Rats can tread in water
for three days and nights
fish die from seasickness
and hurricanes last for ten moons.
He etched the constant
full horizon of his thoughts
onto a rocky cave wall
without the art of written word.
Long after he was swept away,
all that was left
of his map of the world
was an oblique perspective
of the village in which he had lived.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I'm a longstanding member of the Delta40 fan club, and this only enhances my appreciation of her wrk.

[aliengirl]

I'm a longstanding member of the Delta40 fan club, and this only enhances my appreciation of her work.

Welcome to the club.

[Emil Miller]

If poets paint with words, then Cacian's are the equivalent of Jackson Pollock's.
It's difficlt to choose one from those I've enjoyed but here's one that takes some beating.
I'm particularly fond of the last verse.

dust to dust



the wrath
the anger
the body builder
they all tease
fate
harbour a taste
in case
a face
comes daring praise

the wrath
the thunder
the heaving blunder
they all clutch
a burning rage
they brood
rude
whenever shrude
gets on their mood

the wrath
the tard
the blast of pasts,
whatever caged
the bitter feist
let ill all churn
turn into gurn
and it won't burn

[cacian]

Emil I am really flattered I thank you so much. Sorry I did not see this until now.

[Emil Miller]

Emil I am really flattered I thank you so much. Sorry I did not see this until now.

I'm truly humbled.

[AuntShecky]

A Well is Just a Hole by firefangled

Walking in the rain some say
it is safe to cry,
but this is not true for me,
just as drinking whiskey
does not make it easy
to give up smoking.

I suppose if my hamburger
groaned between my teeth,
I would stop to see
what was happening,
look for eyes and a mouth
and finding none, continue
tearing at the processed shoulder
and chew, until it was mush,

not the time to go vegetarian
with the lettuce and tomato
there cheering you on.

And here is the recruiter,
with his gamer attitude,
showing how you can use your skills
from Halo to avert a clash
of satellites or guide Drones
out to find the flowers,
the desert wedding planned for months
near great-great-grandmother’s well,
near the compound closed on weekends.

[firefangled]

I seldom come here, but I see I should participate more, for I have many favorite poets here and I should recognize them. It is so encouraging to see poems I have written here. Thank you, Auntie. Thanks to Jack and Bar all who have posted a poem of mine here and I didn't see it.

[miyako73]

I wonder why no one puts this one in here. So I'll do it. I think it deserves to be in here.


Nostalgia for Post-modern Recession on the News


Tuesday
certainly closes with the sadness
only found in laminate floors,
in unfinished townhouses
in unfinished neighborhoods,
in this city’s recently vast yet
unfinished suburbs.

and love hangs from another cherry tree
in Fred and Laura's backyard,
hangs from the neck until another
murder suicide is complete,
as the half-finished house is
repossessed
and two children resort
to convex mirrors
and semi-legal drugs
and inauthenticity
to sort things out

clocks fail, spin backwards,
and drenched in diazepam,
we –the generation of lost perspectives-
cross out rather
unpoetic lines
that mean little more than the
bones and shadows of tomorrow’s
headlines at this
point.

disembodied shoes march by,
-my feverish memories of a sidewalk-
suggestive of
a forest without trees,
a charity without a cause,
a **** without an orgasm,
even if her skin is reminiscent
of a bottle filled
with several credit card receipts,
even if she's somewhat claustrophobic
(forget fluoxetine)
after I paint her in a dark shade
of taupe
and leave her to fellate the second-hand hours
exquisitely.

what are we?
misplaced heroes; humiliation;
the executioners of what’s
still cliché?

not life, not death,
but you and I and
so many failed histories
sprawled across a fake granite counter top,
****ing the sorrow out of the first half
of the hour seven,
Wednesday morning.