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Mudcat Poetry Corner
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: frogprince Date: 01 Apr 10 - 08:03 PM That is without a doubt the greatest poem I have ever read. |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Lonesome EJ Date: 01 Apr 10 - 06:38 PM A Poet Drowns Alone He had taken a deep breath and swam Towards some cloudbank on the horizon That held the illusion of dry land And she had wept, and cursed him And become exhausted with treading water. Seeing me not far away, her hand reached out To keep her up, or have me go down with her, Each choice better than to struggle on alone and exhausted in a bottomless ocean. Yeats with his golden bird was right There is no country here, no island. At the setting of the sun they will lose sight of you Nor remember you at the dawn. Even Cummings' insensible scuttling claws Lay a great distance and a slow metamorphosis away. This endless blue vista pales poetry And can be no captured beauty. The spoken words Insensate gasps, the unspoken a chain of foam. I no longer see where she was, no shadow Fixes her place on a featureless surface And even my memory is suspect As I sink without a trace Sans claws, sans Byzantium Sans everything |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: katlaughing Date: 08 Mar 10 - 01:07 AM Stunning, as always, LeeJ. Thanks! |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Amos Date: 07 Mar 10 - 02:58 AM Bravo, Lonesome; bravo. |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Lonesome EJ Date: 06 Mar 10 - 11:02 PM Vimmer in a dream you came to me and I was only a little surprised to see you and realized I must have imagined your suicide- that ridiculous misconception corrected, you only laughed and merged into the background but the old vets knew how to wrap it up in their fatigue caps and shining pins and medals your written orders to report to the Post Everlasting sealed in an envelope and ignited in a silver bowl your name stamped in bronze and placed on a plaque an honor guard who fired rifles into the sky making us all jump as the casings skittered over the asphalt your brother took up his guitar and sang a patriotic medley with an odd self-penned bridge marking to the minute on monday morning the moment you reported for heaven's duty in all this, the only moment when I felt your presence was when the old vets tangled the flagpole lines and the flag doggedly resisted their efforts a touch of black comedy that would have made you laugh and listening to your brother's well meant song I thought of how you would have liked to have Ripple, or Uncle John's Band instead and then the stories were told well, and cleaned up for the occasion and your friend, who could barely croak words through his tears somehow told the story about you the best I kept silent, my stories all wrong for the occasion.. when we stumbled drunkenly to the lake's edge, your leg in a cast and how you lost your footing and fell in and then I thought of your old trick of catching me offguard with your words that sometimes made me think of you as a true son of a bitch but you should never speak ill of the dead and anyway I could never have explained to those wounded people that it never me made love you less |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Amos Date: 27 Feb 10 - 02:50 PM Like architecture foiled by gangs' Slogans and initials spray painted, besmirching-- So poets disfigure their art with An insistent spray of judgement. What would the clean lines show in poems Without them, skeletal in a sunrise? Does beauty have an opinion? Do not be silly. A |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Amergin Date: 27 Feb 10 - 02:13 PM Why would you want to expose newbies to your amazing lack of talent?
-Joe Offer- |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: WalkaboutsVerse Date: 27 Feb 10 - 05:50 AM Joe - due to the collapse of a website-host, the WAV threads are now full of many broken links, so it's probably better all round not to use them/close them down; hence, I thought I'd post here occasionally, and wait a while (for more newbies), before starting another WAV thread - until I just read your message, that is. |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: mousethief Date: 26 Feb 10 - 05:57 PM I haven't kissed you In many weeks Been too long since You shaved your cheeks Burma-Shave O..O =o= |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: WalkaboutsVerse Date: 26 Feb 10 - 04:58 PM Amos: why not remind yourself of your opening post, before posting another piece?
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Amos Date: 26 Feb 10 - 11:16 AM David: For the love of poetry can you please, as requested in the past, confine your couplets to your own, more than generous threads? Thanks, A |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Amos Date: 02 Dec 09 - 09:27 PM Dream Time and ReturnI have just returned from there--the Dream Time, Where each instant is a grand knowing But of late I seem to find Getting there's harder, and returning rougher going, Than it was before I worked for a living. Once there the walls are gauze, and melt. Here there are takers; there, each stranger is giving And every face acknowledges it is yourself Simply dancing otherwise. You walk there among forms that are just knowings The spirit I among the endless possibles, all just right, All true. The thought is the act in staying and in going, The walls newly known as they are met, the night Newly seen dark, the day newly seen light. Each step gliding, each embrace flowing Each surprising vision a known sight. One thought, a sunlit season's sowing. In the dream-web thoughts become real Where souls are as open as your own mind The days are scripts of the heart's feeling, You are the author of the rattling time. And even at the boundary, coming home to land The blending confusion of transition remembers Who defined the winds, and decided the sand And when the flames should be, and when the embers. What is it, then, convinces you When the snoring stops and pillows grow hard, That anything else must now be true The playground now a prison-yard? What single token in the shift of times Betrays your own large knowing That colors or pain are powers of one mind Its single grace endowing On the hard boards and cold kitchen walls of morning? |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: WalkaboutsVerse Date: 29 Nov 09 - 12:13 PM Poem 106 of 230: TESTING 4,3,2,1 I've tried to learn to sing a song Well enough to let a singer Know the way I found to sing My lyric-only songs. That is, just in case a singer Was in want of a way to sing These lyric-only songs. But I'm sorry there's no notes with the songs, And hope they're okay said, if not sung - As love songs. (P.S: writing, via mimicking, my tunes came late, But they were all in shorthand by 2008.) From http://blogs.myspace.com/walkaboutsverse (e-book) Or http://walkaboutsverse.sitegoz.com (e-scroll) (C) David Franks 2003 |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Amos Date: 29 Nov 09 - 11:53 AM Had I no song Sad and songless I Would be mad before long. Were I songless, we Would not be one nor Even I be whole alone. Songless, sad madness Would descend shortly And, in such pique Harrows of harm and Wild harangues ensue. Curing this deep hole seek Solutions or exciters where Lights and sound run long And find nothing turned on The song within but you. |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: VirginiaTam Date: 26 Nov 09 - 02:46 AM Thank you Prince... I am weeping rereading as I wept upon writing it as I wept upon seeing the decimation of my pine forest. Lost 26 of the 50 odd pines in my half acre plot alone. And weeks after the quiet punctuated by chainsaws clearing up the desolation. |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: frogprince Date: 25 Nov 09 - 08:11 PM Gooood, goood, stuff, Virginia Tam and Amerigin. |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: VirginiaTam Date: 25 Nov 09 - 02:58 PM Loblolly Forest My spirit rallied How those pagans danced Tossed their hussy heads Laughed at thunder cannon and storm swords Children, heedless of natural wars My mind burned Drawn at dawn to see the orange fireball Rising to light each dew drenched finger When zephyrs left from the last night's fracas Startle water diamonds from their grasp My body soothed By sultry swaying on Indian summer afternoons That first glimpse of movement and hope Harbinger of a breezes to come First messengers of so welcome a guest My heart broken When the winter ice axed its way through Felling my dearest friends by the hundreds With splitting thuds and huge rents in the Earth Every breath a sickening stench of pine blood |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: VirginiaTam Date: 25 Nov 09 - 02:41 PM Amergin Mommy's sick is heart rending. Jacinta's birthday party - love all the allusion to ancient pagan ritualism. The line "The light dampens the strength of the fire" moves me beyond words to describe. Leaves me feebly fumbling for wondrous dreams lost upon waking. |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Amergin Date: 29 Sep 09 - 04:51 PM Jacinta's 5th Birthday Party There was a young girl who lived across The blue white capped mountains of the sea She loved to dance with the springtime sun Dancing to the eternal song of Faerie Dancing to the tune of the harp and flutes Jumping to the air in half time salutes She closes her eyes, floats off to dreams Hazy visions of the ageless queen Oak trees swaying in the buoyant mists Round the mistletoe crowned grove so green Whistling, enraptured by the magic of the song The grass stains the footprints of the throng She would laugh at the blue painted men Beating their drums of tightly stretched skin And the didgeridoo of the Dreamtime Mingling with the beat note filled din Each jubilant song rejoicing life As the salmon reels, playing his fife The light dampens the strength of the fire As the sun gives birth to the springtime dawn And her eyes twitch and flutter awake Her lips stretch and strain in a morning yawn When the land of the ever young fades from view Her dreams won't flag, as she laughs in the dew nt |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Amergin Date: 29 Sep 09 - 12:31 AM My Mommy's Sick She sat on my lap as I read the book to her, her light brown hair draped over my left arm pointing to me the pictures painted on the cardboard pages. She turned to me I looked in her face and saw the shadows of the faces of her mother and father imprinted in her eyes then she spoke to me two sentences to shatter my heart. My mommy's sick When she gets better She'll come and see us. I held her tiny body squeezing her against my breast, so as not to reveal the tears she invoked in her childish innocence. Yes her mommy is definitely ill lost in a rundown house or an apartment littered with empty cans, food wrappers, cardboard boxes, dogshit, dirty nappies, and human waste as she sits back grasping an aluminum foil pipe losing her soul in one more hit. My mommy's sick Or she could be sliding one more needle into her veins feeling the rush in 15 quick seconds as the poison drips through her heart to the haunted centers of her brain tossing the empty needle to the floor to bounce along the pile of rubbish. My mommy's sick This once corpulent woman teasing her husband with her affectionate smile as he ran his callused hands along her velvety skin each touch a symbol of the vows they spoke before god. My mommy's sick. Now she shuffles down the vacant streets of Spokane a skeleton wrapped in a shroud of blotchy skin her teeth decaying in her virulent mouth as she searches for something to steal or a lustless fuck in an alley to donate more money to her newfound god, a god she loves more than she loves herself, all that came from her. My mommy's sick When she gets better She'll come see us. I sat and wondered that night as I talked with the girls father as we sat and drank from a bottle of Jamesons on his front porch beneath the autumn sky over Spokane: Will she ever care again? Will she ever get better? nt |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: greensue Date: 10 Sep 09 - 05:54 PM In fact I think nearly everything is bri on this site. Not so keen on the silly stuff but c the need 4 it. |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: greensue Date: 10 Sep 09 - 05:43 PM katlaughing, I love your stuff. |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Amos Date: 10 Sep 09 - 12:15 PM WOw. Perfect picture. Do I want to know why you were in Oklahoma? A |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Lonesome EJ Date: 09 Sep 09 - 12:31 PM A Water Moccasin in Oklahoma This was not a turtle's head conning above the water for a turtle peers in benign curiosity upon the esoteric actions of humans in his lake No,this head was attached to a body filled with purpose as it pushed its rippled path across the surface A Father, his two chubby sons and small daughter in the water by the dock and we shouted "Snake! Get out of the water!" The chubby sons, nearly to the swim raft crawled out breathing hard Small daughter thrashed to the dock ladder and up While Father sat immobile in his inflatable chair The water moccasin made a line toward him, fast "I see him" said the man brandishing a foam float in defensive mode and the snake came on, stopping at last nine feet from the man suddenly still in the water his black eyes on the man's Who, sensing resolve in the creature spun suddenly and climbed the ladder in panic This the snake watched, then lunged forward into the man's wake emerging on the other side in cattails, disappearing The lake was still but in the deceptive, gentle ripples we saw the shadows of something beneath the surface something of dark purpose sensing our presence as a minor intrusion which it would ignore, or dispose of, with equal cold calculation |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: VirginiaTam Date: 09 Sep 09 - 02:51 AM EBB TIDE COTTAGE A restless fourteen year old An early summer morning Before the house wakes. Paddling the jon boat Across the Chickahominy River Wraith steams and mists Waltz over dull grey water Sitting solitary 'neath cypress trees Boat bumping 'gainst cypress knees Watching the ball, wisps float, mingle, fade Waiting for the sun another kind of ball To rise, chase the dancers away A glint off the kitchen window A reluctant row back Across now sparkling water Catch the aroma of coffee and bacon The surprising jolt of hunger And the drudge up to the house In dew sodden sneakers. (written August 2009 for my Aunt Dot) |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Lonesome EJ Date: 09 Sep 09 - 01:45 AM Will you believe it Amos? I never saw your poem until your comment on the tree frogs made me look. Great minds in synch once more. Oh that such powers could be harnessed for the good of mankind. |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: frogprince Date: 08 Sep 09 - 09:25 PM Long live this thread; it's a consistent source of delight. |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Amos Date: 08 Sep 09 - 09:21 PM Beautiful paint job, LEJ!! What wave of karmic connection has led us to tree frogs in this late hour of our lives? Hmmmm? A |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: katlaughing Date: 08 Sep 09 - 09:18 PM LOVE IT, Leej...you are my fav. author!! |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Lonesome EJ Date: 08 Sep 09 - 07:47 PM A Tree Frog in Oklahoma The pipe was rust encrusted an upright tunnel in which a tree frog crouched peering out at the day He was the size of my thumb and his eyes rolled in different directions leafy branch left human right He appeared casual and noncommittal his arms folded under his chin like a tiny executive taking a power nap but the skin he wore! Something of grays and greens ochre whites and muted blues and on this surface his eyes like leaves on a mossy pond and he was intelligent he had not builded himself a house but his intelligence was a thing of a primal nature for he had fashioned for himself this skin-cloak so very like the tree 6 feet away that had he been there I would not pick him out But hiding was not on his morning's agenda and so he rested, trusting the rightness of things against the perfect contrast of a rust red pipe |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Joe_F Date: 07 Sep 09 - 06:05 PM Amos: %^) |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Amos Date: 07 Sep 09 - 02:19 PM Singers Here is something strange and Ancient as treefrogs. A dozen tongues, meaty and wet Two dozen lungs, each a damp pink pump For air, in and out. Cheeks, two dozen, long or short, thin, or weighted Ears for coherency's sake. Twenty-four lips, various. All these delicate cuts. fine flesh assembled in one Generous box. Informed by A bright laughing river of common mind, And impeccable brain-pulse timing for Time In a midnight hall or family room or hill camp. Each fire joins in and the corners reach the center, flames licking, And a swelling music is born, singing "Wade in the Water" Or come from Alabammy or McDonald's Farm or Way, haul away! Or the Johnson boys.Or just brek-keerex! These neat meat pieces driven By a dozen hearts Bridging eternity by singing. Miracles never cease. Even tree-frogs know. |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Joe_F Date: 02 Sep 09 - 08:41 PM A free translation of Liebeslied by Bertolt Brecht: No J.P. had signed a certificate, No-one said blessings or broke a glass, Your clothes were the same as on the day we met, And there was no rice on the grass. Don't stare at your plate when the food is all gone -- Put it up to wash with the rest. Our love will go on, or it won't go on, If not in the east, the west. |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: katlaughing Date: 01 Sep 09 - 11:07 PM VERY evocative, Nathan, well done. Thanks for sharing. |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Amergin Date: 01 Sep 09 - 09:01 PM A Restored Soldier? He pauses at the counter, hair still slashed in a military fashion, slightly bronzed arms poking through a sleeveless shirt, gripping delicately in his hand a young blond girl approximately 3 years in age, her ringlets spinning down her pink and indigo dress, proudly exhibiting her to a myriad of acquaintances that approach him for a momentary visit. His eyes squint vaguely in the perpetual strenuous pain, from the continuous pressure positioned on his surrogate leg....a metallic souvenir of titanium joins, ball bearings, and shafts, a memento of the armed confrontation he left behind. His open visage appears attuned to home....but what disfigurements does he possess upon his psyche? What events did he witness that he will never verbalise? What forces certain individuals to suffer a ghastly defacement, but evolve and situate everything behind him, while others, who display no tangible mutilations, submit to the enticing siren's cry of self administered remedies and alcohol, envisaging the combat in the shadows of his damaged mentality.... submerging their trepidations and secreting tears in one more shot? I observe as he and his petite girl ungainly saunter out of the supermarket, his upper body inclining left when his Nike shod counterfeit leg clouts the gleaming tile floor. nt |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Amos Date: 04 Aug 09 - 06:46 PM A True Story A true story is an oxymoron, too. You never can get there from there or here; The connections are not true, But are laced in half-way down the ear. The meanings painted on by wit Are not in the story, And certainly not the true half of it. The morals are bought cheap from fear, The I, the thou, all loaned by you; The teller flown in from elsewhere, just to sit. But that is how we are, and what we do, and we are never sorry. |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Amos Date: 03 Aug 09 - 06:48 PM I have made more noise than I should have. I have roared back at the world, raised Cain, Stamped my foot. That I thought It was all a celebration of life Was a trick of the world, Which I fell for. Oh, I have been a bull-roarer, full-throated Claiming the power of life over stones or dust, And my kind of meat over others'. But, what a bamboozle! Life it self is so still, a zero-being force And is itself all silence. That the world is a tar-baby And I the fool who swung (loudly) at it Entirely escaped me. Despite this error, I hope to be released into The natural briar-patch of silent breath. |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Amos Date: 01 Aug 09 - 07:10 PM Well, you are a better and kinder lifter of lines than yon Rapiare--he never apologizes or surrenders credit!! A |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Lonesome EJ Date: 01 Aug 09 - 04:42 PM Again, my apologies for tainting an otherwise serious thread with silliness, but to get the full impact of Three Fingered Dawn, click here and move timer on the vid to 3:03 |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Amos Date: 01 Aug 09 - 04:42 PM LEJ: I wish you hadn't gone and confessed!! I liked it so much I thought I could have written it myself!! LOL!!! A |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: GUEST,Neil D Date: 01 Aug 09 - 03:29 PM Well EJ, I didn't want to say anything but... Here's my favorite bad poem, from "The Man With Two Brains" with Steve Martin: Oh pointy birds Oh pointy pointy Annoint my head Annointy nointy Not as subtle as Three fingered dawn perhaps, but pretty funny. |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: VirginiaTam Date: 01 Aug 09 - 03:27 PM Blowing more dust off old stuff... this written in 2000, a year before I met my partner and surprisingly applicable. SIP If we were pressed one upon the other agitating the ferment and allowed to cool in one another's juices ~~~ If our combined elements were further strengthened joined in the psychic and corporeal alembic ~~~ What distillate spirit we would be brandy love ~~~ In future to taste the old draught and say ~~~ "That was a very good year" |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: VirginiaTam Date: 01 Aug 09 - 03:16 PM PSYCHIC DE-LILAC I am a comfort flower attracting needy bees drone humming cares into me what you glean from the visit I can't say but I hope you make good honey from it. This is from back in the mommy to teens days. |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: katlaughing Date: 01 Aug 09 - 02:43 PM Thanks, Virginia. I'll see what I can dust off.:-) You've got some really memorable lines in several of yours! LeeJ, I knew that wasn't you...I *think*!**bg** Amos, the blue whale has been a big hit with sisters and a girlfriend! |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Lonesome EJ Date: 01 Aug 09 - 02:31 PM I was hoping to earn some praise on my "Three Fingered Dawn" poem. Now I have to own up...I didn't write it. It's my favorite bad poem, read by Bill Pullman to Ellen Degeneres in the movie Mr Wrong. My apologies to everyone. |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: VirginiaTam Date: 01 Aug 09 - 05:51 AM In the meantime- this on an old interactive poetry forum I used once to frequent. PLAY GOD A universe moves Infinitesmally small worlds Breathed into being From dust Swirling slow Isolated Intrinsically connected A cosmic dance Watch Like God Be pleased with The creation Be giant against it But unable to Control it It is set In motion Nothing to stop it But A black hole Go get the vaccum cleaner! |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: VirginiaTam Date: 01 Aug 09 - 05:48 AM Kat I moved by the dust and dust moving in your piece. More about dust, the good and the bad of it please. We are made of and return to dust and I just reread Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials so have dust on the brain. Must now look in dusty journals to find my long forgotten mental dust. |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: Lonesome EJ Date: 01 Aug 09 - 03:17 AM The three-fingered Dawn, creeping slowly over the hills and the foothills of one's cerebellum bleeds profusely for the loss of all one believes in Souls unlit by flame untouched by passion and unknown by others transported from one place to another places within and without places we're afraid to cry about yet gladly call home like E.T. Still, though, the ship courses on through the blood red three-fingered waters headed homeward like a tired sailor headed homeward homeward towards Love |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: GUEST,Neil D Date: 31 Jul 09 - 10:30 PM Lonesome EJ, Thank you. That was my purpose. |
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Subject: RE: Mudcat Poetry Corner From: katlaughing Date: 31 Jul 09 - 07:07 PM Dean, I thought it was the top of your head in a really BIG smile?:-) Thanks, LeeJ...dust it off, darlin' and keep on moseying. |
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