I'm bored. First 10 posters get a poem!

[NewOrleans]

I'm not going to write it-- I'll give you a poem I like. 

[elleblue]

[wawa]

aw, come on, you should write them.

[Deleted]

I was hoping you'd write a limerick about me

[laurenpetro]

Memeememeeeeeeeeee

[NewOrleans]

Feb 5, 2014 15:14:17 GMT -5 @majorwife said:

helloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

You get "Her Kind" by Anne Sexton.

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

[Deleted]

Pick me!!

[NewOrleans]

Feb 5, 2014 15:15:13 GMT -5 elleblue said:

Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

[gpw]

ME!

ETA:  Well, shit.  I thought I was getting a poem written personally for me. 

[NewOrleans]

Feb 5, 2014 15:16:30 GMT -5 wawa said:

aw, come on, you should write them.

Making a Fist

Naomi Shihab Nye


For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the
desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl
a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
"When you can no longer make a fist."

Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.

[josieposy]

Well voodoo did say "a poem".

[NewOrleans]

Feb 5, 2014 15:16:38 GMT -5 Lucy Honeychurch said:

There once was a man from Nantucket.

Blackberry Picking

No movement, not a stir
In the trees, the pass between the houses,
but A woman in torn jeans walking
Down the white line of the pathway;
Her two girls in green uniforms dashing into the blackberry bushes
Centipedes between their teeth,
A thousand legs of conversation..

Glaring at her from beneath their eyebrows
When they return, becoming sullen:
“Shut up mother,
We are gelling our hair, painting our lips.”
Smell of moss and cobwebs that will never wash off.

This is it then –
Two girls bloomed into two self-conscious women,
Two mountain ewes with long lashes
Tossing their heads, disappearing down the pathway
All their kisses waiting –
Their mother’s face turned purple,
Like a wine glass tilted to catch the lamplight
Swollen with the berries swilling in her cheeks,
Dribbling from her chin.

-Wendy Mooney

[NewOrleans]

Feb 5, 2014 15:16:44 GMT -5 @septimus said:

I was hoping you'd write a limerick about me

You get a teacher poem.

Red Pencil

A student theme,
scratched and scarred
with red hieroglyphs—
sounds inflicted with strokes quick, decisive.
A penciled grade
in clear bold red
to summarize the mutilation.
Pencil with soul of wood,
hasty arbiter in scarlet,
the racked butterflies of truth and beauty
must smile at your presumption.
Your brave clarity belies
the myriad doubts and scruples of
the hand that guides… and grades.

Melvin L. Straud

[lyssbobiss, Command, B613]

Did I make it? Am I caller 10? Am I twerking?

[NewOrleans]

Feb 5, 2014 15:17:03 GMT -5 laurenpetro said:

Memeememeeeeeeeeee

You get a poem about baking (sort of) because of your cookies.

The Poet's Occasional Alternative

I was going to write a poem
I made a pie instead it took
about the same amount of time
of course the pie was a final
draft a poem would have had some
distance to go days and weeks and
much crumpled paper

the pie already had a talking
tumbling audience among small
trucks and a fire engine on
the kitchen floor

everybody will like this pie
it will have apples and cranberries
dried apricots in it many friends
will say why in the world did you
make only one

this does not happen with poems

because of unreportable
sadnesses I decided to
settle this morning for a re-
sponsive eatership I do not
want to wait a week a year a
generation for the right
consumer to come along

[NewOrleans]

Feb 5, 2014 15:19:19 GMT -5 @lauriergirl28 said:

Pick me!!

A whimsical poem for you by e.e. cummings

Maggie And Milly And Molly And May

maggie and millie and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and

millie befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea.

[NewOrleans]

Feb 5, 2014 15:30:21 GMT -5 lyssbobiss, Command, B613 said:

Did I make it? Am I caller 10? Am I twerking?

"twerking" made me think of the confident sass of this poem for you.


‘Still I Rise’ by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

[meshaliuknits]

I think I can still get in on this. Yes?

[NitaX]

Am I too late? Shit. I never win anything.

[sushi]

Awww. I had to drive somewhere. Nowe I'm bored again

[NewOrleans]

Feb 5, 2014 15:22:31 GMT -5 gpw said:

ME!

ETA:  Well, shit.  I thought I was getting a poem written personally for me. 

You get a beautiful poem of love and remembrance.

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

Pablo Neruda

[lyssbobiss, Command, B613]

You're the best NewOrleans! Thank you!

[NewOrleans]

Feb 5, 2014 15:40:04 GMT -5 NitaX said:

Am I too late? Shit. I never win anything.

I've been waiting for you!  yours was picked out already.  You get Nikki Giovanni.

Revolutionary Dreams

I used to dream militant dreams
of taking over america to show
these white folks
how it should be done

I used to dream radical dreams
of blowing everyone away
with my perceptive powers
of correct analysis

I even used to think I'd be the one
to stop the riot and
negotiate the peace

then I awoke and dug
that if I dreamed natural
dreams of being a natural
woman doing what a woman
does when she's natural
I would have a revolution.

[josieposy]

Hey now! I got skipped?

[NewOrleans]

sushi

A cynical poem for my atheist friend by William Blake.

I went to the Garden of Love

And saw what I never had seen:

A Chapel was built in the midst,

Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,

And "Thou shalt not" writ over the door;

So I turned to the Garden of Love

That so many sweet flowers bore;

And I saw it was filled with graves,

And tomb-stones where flowers should be;

And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds

And binding with briars my joy and desires.

[NewOrleans]

Feb 5, 2014 16:45:36 GMT -5 josieposy said:

Hey now! I got skipped?

I am waiting for my muse.  Shhhhhh.

[gpw]

thank you, NewOrleans! I can relate to this poem very much. Excellent choice.

[NewOrleans]

Feb 5, 2014 15:38:23 GMT -5 meshaliuknits said:

I think I can still get in on this. Yes?

I don't know any poems about knitting, but I know this one about a quilt by Marilyn Nelson Waniak. 

My sister and I were in love
with Meema’s Indian blanket.
We fell asleep under army green
issued to Daddy by Supply.
When Meema came to live with us
she brought her medicines, her cane,
and the blanket I found on my sister’s bed
the last time I visited her.
I remembered how I’d planned to inherit
that blanket, how we used to wrap ourselves
at play in its folds and be chieftains and princesses.


Now I’ve found a quilt
I’d like to die under;
Six Van Dyke brown squares,
two white ones, and one square
the yellowbrown of Mama’s cheeks.
Each square holds a sweet gum leaf
whose fingers I imagine
would caress me into the silence.

I think I’d have good dreams
for a hundred years under this quilt,
as Meema must have, under her blanket,
dreamed she was a girl again in Kentucky
among her yellow sisters,
their grandfather’s white family
nodding at them when they met.
When their father came home from his store
they cranked up the pianola
 and all of the beautiful sisters
giggled and danced.
She must have dreamed about Mama
when the dancing was over:
a lanky girl trailing after her father
 through his Oklahoma field.

Perhaps under this quilt
I’d dream of myself,
of my childhood of miracles,
of my father’s burnt umber pride,
 my mother’s ochre gentleness.
Within the dream of myself
perhaps I’d meet my son
or my other child, as yet unconceived.
I’d call it The Century Quilt,
after its pattern of leaves.

[NewOrleans]

Feb 5, 2014 15:26:54 GMT -5 josieposy said:

Well voodoo did say "a poem".

You are somewhere cold right now.... Minnesota?  You can relate to this playful poem. 

March 1st by Kathleen Spivack

Coming out of the house on a fresh March morning,
I saw February still meandering around
like laundry caught in a Bendix. Stray shreds
of cloud, like pillow slips, were rent from
her large endlessness. Outdated,
her decrepit body garlanded itself disgracefully
with powder. She luxuriated in old age.
Even her graying sheets were still there,
tattered, heaped carelessly on the street,
bearing the indentation of someone’s huge body
and furred with a fine fringe of soot.
She had been plump, she had been heavy, sitting
on top of us since January. Winter, you
old clothes hamper, what mildew
still molders inside you before March
dribbles a bit, dries up, and is done for?

[NewOrleans]

An extra one to hand out, but it is too long to copy. For @helenabonhamcarter who likes history and knows about Russia. Written by the Poetess herself, Anna Akhmatova.

www.columbia.edu/itc/writing/plante/6201/pdfs/requiem.pdf