Favourite Poem?

[MissMagAddict]

Climbing You
Erica Jong

I want to understand the steep thing
that climbs ladders in your throat.
I can't make sense of you.
Everywhere I look you're there--
a vast landmark, a volcano
poking its head through the clouds,
Gulliver sprawled across Lilliput.

I climb into your eyes, looking.
The pupils are black painted stage flats.
They can be pulled down like window shades.
I switch on a light in your iris.
Your brain ticks like a bomb.

In your offhand, mocking way
you've invited me into your chest.
Inside: the blur that poses as your heart.
I'm supposed to go in with a torch
or maybe hot water bottles
& defrost it by hand
as one defrosts an old refrigerator.
It will shudder & sigh
(the icebox to the insomniac).

Oh there's nothing like love between us.
You're the mountain, I am climbing you.
If I fall, you won't be all to blame,
but you'll wait years maybe
for the next doomed expedition.

 

[kikidior]

- bedclothes -

rapture? no: just the handily erotic,
the lover near at hand, the night flesh.
tonight, only: never repeated. two collide
and part, lips avoiding kisses like commitment.

​

and after you're gone, I take the bedclothes and,
instead of laundering, wrap myself in them,
in the remnants of your scent and warmth,
swaddle myself like an infant, and rock in the corner chair,

​

and remember. till the last trace of you lingers, remember.

~ art durkee ~




​

 

[electricladyland]

Full woman, fleshly apple, hot moon,
thick smell of seaweed, crushed mud and light,
what obscure brilliance opens between your columns?
What ancient night does a man touch with his senses?

Loving is a journey with water and with stars,
with smothered air and abrupt storms of flour:
loving is a clash of lightning-bolts
and two bodies defeated by a single drop of honey.

Kiss by kiss I move across your small infinity,
your borders, your rivers, your tiny villages,
and the genital fire transformed into delight

runs through the narrow pathways of the blood
until it plunges down, like a dark carnation,
until it is and is no more than a flash in the night.

Neruda

B)

 

[Multitudes]

Angoisse Stéphane Mallarmé

Je ne viens pas ce soir vaincre ton corps, ô bête
En qui vont les péchés d'un peuple, ni creuser
Dans tes cheveux impurs une triste tempête
Sous l'incurable ennui que verse mon baiser:

Je demande à ton lit le lourd sommeil sans songer
Planant sous les rideaux inconnus du
remords,
Et que tu peux goûter après tes noirs mensonges
Toi qui sur le néant en sait plus que les morts.

Car le vice, rongeant ma native noblesse
M'a comme toi marqué de sa stérilité,
Mais tandis que ton sein de pierre est habité

Par un cœur que la dent d'aucun cri,e ne blesse,
Je fuis, pâle, défait, hanté par mon liceul,
Ayant peur de mourir lorsque je couche seul.

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

I do not come tonight to conquer your flesh,
O beast with the sins of the race, nor in your impure
Hair to stir up a melancholy tempest
By the fatal ennui that my kisses pour:

I ask but to sleep soundly in your bed
where no dreams lurk under curtains unknown to
regret,
sleep you can savor past your black deceits,
You who know more of Nothing than dead:

for Vice, corroding my nobility
inborn, brands both with its sterility,
but while there lives within your breast of stone

a heart no tooth of any crime can prod,
wasted and pale and haunted by my shroud,
I flee, afraid to die if I sleep alone.

(Translated by C. F. MacIntyre)


​

 

[MissMagAddict]

How can you describe yourself,
When everyday
You are a different river.
Culture, ideas, impressions,
Float through,
Rippling your water.

Sarah Neal
8th Grade


flickr​

 

[kikidior]

^ beautiful ...

Love, meet me in the green glen,
Beside the tall elm-tree,
Where the sweetbriar smells so sweet agen;
There come with me.
Meet me in the green glen.

Meet me at the sunset
Down in the green glen,
Where we've often met
By hawthorn-tree and foxes' den,
Meet me in the green glen.

Meet me in the green glen,
By sweetbriar bushes there;
Meet me by your own sen,
Where the wild thyme blossoms fair.
Meet me in the green glen.

Meet me by the sweetbriar,
By the mole-hill swelling there;
When the west glows like a fire
God's crimson bed is there.
Meet me in the green glen.

~ john clare ~
​

 

[daisies]

I always liked these two poems-- oddly both involving cars as metaphors...

she being Brand by: e.e. cummings
----------------------

she being Brand

-new;and you
know consequently a
little stiff i was
careful of her and(having

thoroughly oiled the universal
joint tested my gas felt of
her radiator made sure her springs were O.

K.)i went right to it flooded-the-carburetor cranked her

up,slipped the
clutch(and then somehow got into reverse she
kicked what
the hell)next
minute i was back in neutral tried and

again slo-wly;bare,ly nudg. ing(my

lev-er Right-
oh and her gears being in
A 1 shape passed
from low through
second-in-to-high like
greasedlightning)just as we turned the corner of Divinity

avenue i touched the accelerator and give

her the juice,good

(it

was the first ride and believe i we was
happy to see how nice she acted right up to
the last minute coming back down by the Public
Gardens i slammed on

the
internalexpanding
&
externalcontracting
brakes Bothatonce and

brought allofher tremB
-ling
to a:dead.

stand-
;Still)

#2----------------------------------------------------------------
DEATH IS A BEAUTIFUL CAR PARKED ONLY by: Richard Brautigan

For Emmett

Death is a beautiful car parked only
to be stolen on a street lined with trees
whose branches are like the intestines
of an emerald.

You hotwire death, get in, and drive away
like a flag made from a thousand burning
funeral parlors.

You have stolen death because you’re bored.
There’s nothing good playing at the movies
in San Francisco.

You joyride around for a while listening
to the radio, and then abandon death, walk
away, and leave death for the police
to find.

 

[droogist]

Not my favorite, but I've just read it and I enjoy the sentiment :

"I shall forget you presently, my dear"
Edna St. Vincent Millay

I shall forget you presently, my dear,
So make the most of this, your little day,
Your little month, your little half a year,
Ere I forget, or die, or move away,
And we are done forever; by and by
I shall forget you, as I said, but now,
If you entreat me with your loveliest lie
I will protest you with my favorite vow.
I would indeed that love were longer-lived,
And vows were not so brittle as they are,
But so it is, and nature has contrived
To struggle on without a break thus far,
Whether or not we find what we are seeking
Is idle, biologically speaking.

 

[kikidior]

wild nights / it's all i have to bring to-day / emily dickinson

Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile the winds
To a heart in port,
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.
Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!

~

It's all I have to bring to-day,
This, and my heart beside,
This, and my heart, and all the fields,
And all the meadows wide.
Be sure you count, should I forget, --
Someone the sum could tell, --
This, and my heart, and all the bees
Which in the clover dwell.

​

 

[Multitudes]

Sensation Arthur Rimbaud

On the blue summer evenings, I shall go down the paths,
Getting pricked by the corn, crushing the short grass :
In a dream I shall feel its coolness on my feet.
I shall let the wind bathe my bare head.
I shall not speak, I shall think about nothing :
But endless love will mount in my soul ;
And I shall travel far, very far, like a gipsy,
Through the countryside - as happy as if I were with a woman.

Mag4net.net

​

 

[kikidior]

... intoxication ...

neath a willow with ivy entangled
we take cover in blustery weather.
my arms are wreathed about you;
in my raincape we huddle together.

i was wrong: not ivy, my dearest,
but hops encircle this willow.
well, then, let's spread in its shelter
my cape for a rug and a pillow!

~ boris pasternak ~

[essentialart]​

 

[jennifer~]

He that will not love must be
My scholar, and learn this of me:
There be in love as many fears
As the summer's corn has ears:
Sighs, and sobs, and sorrows more
Than the sand that makes the shore:
Freezing cold and fiery heats,
Fainting swoons and deadly sweats;
Now an ague, then a fever,
Both tormenting lovers ever.
Would'st thou know, besides all these,
How hard a woman 'tis to please,
How cross, how sullen, and how soon
She shifts and changes like the moon.
How false, how hollow she's in heart:
And how she is her own least part:
How high she's priz'd, and worth but small:
Little thou't love, or not at all.

 

[MissMagAddict]

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

 

[sosneha]

i love this forum

 

[MissMagAddict]

Tonight I Will Write
Pablo Neruda

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another’s. She will be another’s. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.​

 

[mcflyandgemmafan]

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
and sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
and looked down one as far as I could
to where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
and having perhaps the better claim
because it was grassy and wanted wear;
though as for that, the passing there
had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
in leaves no feet had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less travelled by,
and that has made all the difference

 

[Stargirl52]

^^
I know that poem off by heart. I love it.

 

[deeth]

[SIZE=-1]L'Etranger by Charles Baudelaire

[/SIZE]Qui aimes-tu le mieux, homme énigmatique, dis? ton père, ta mère, ta sœur ou ton frère?
-Je n'ai ni père, ni mère, ni sœur, ni frère.
Tes amis?
-Vous vous servez là d'une parole dont le sens m'est resté jusqu'à ce jour inconnu.
Ta patrie?
-J'ignore sous quelle latitude elle est située.
La beauté?
-Je l'aimerais volontiers, déesse et immortelle.
L'or?
-Je le hais comme vous haïssez Dieu.
Eh! qu'aimes-tu donc, extraordinaire étranger?
-J'aime les nuages… les nuages qui passent… là-bas… là-bas… les merveilleux nuages!

translation:

The Stranger

Who do you love the most, you enigmatic man? your father, your mother, your sister or your brother?
- I have no father, no mother, no sister, no brother
Your friends?
- You use a word whose meaning has remained unknown to me to this day
Your fatherland?
- I am unaware of under which latitude it is located
Beauty?
- I'd love her gladly, goddess and immortal
Gold?
- I hate it as you hate God
But what do you love then, extraordinary stranger?
- I love the clouds.. the clouds that pass.. over there.. over there.. the marvellous clouds!

 

[Multitudes]

Sonnet Du Trou Du Cul Arthur Rimbaud

Obscur et froncé comme un oeillet violet
Il respire, humblement tapi parmi la mousse
Humide encor d'amour qui suit la fuite douce
Des Fesses blanches jusqu'au coeur de son ourlet.

Des filaments pareils à des larmes de lait
Ont pleuré, sous le vent cruel qui les repousse,
A travers de petits caillots de marne rousse
Pour s'aller perdre où la pente les appelait.

Mon Rêve s'aboucha souvent à sa ventouse ;
Mon âme, du coït matériel jalouse,
En fit son larmier fauve et son nid de sanglots.

C'est l'olive pâmée, et la flûte caline,
C'est le tube où descend la céleste praline :
Chanaan féminin dans les moiteurs enclos !

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

Hidden and wrinkled like a budding violet
It breathes, gently worn out, in a tangled vine
Still damp with love, on the soft incline
Of white buttocks to rim of the pit.

Thin streams like rivers of milk ; innocent
Tears, shed beneath hot breath that drives them down
Across small clots of rich soil, reddish brown,
Where they lose themselves in the dark descent...

My mouth always dribbles with its coupling force ;
My soul, jealous of the body's intercourse,
Makes it tearful, wild necessity.

Ecstatic olive branch, the flute one blows,
The tube where heavenly praline flows,
Promised Land in sticky femininity. ​

 

[Little Star]

I went to the woods
Because I wanted to live deliberately,
I wanted to live deep
And suck out all the marrow of life
To put to rout all that was not life
And not when I had come to die
Discover that I had not lived.
(Thoreau)