Poem of the Day

Sonnets to Orpheus - Rainer Maria Rilke

2011-04-30T05:00:00.001-04:00

IV

O you lovers that are so gentle, step occasionally
into the breath of the sufferers not meant for you,
let it be parted by your cheeks,
it will tremble, joined again, behind you.

You have been choosen, you are sound and whole,
you are like the very first beat of the heart,
you are the bow that shoots the arrows, and also their target
in tears your smile would glow forever.

Do not be afraid to suffer, give
the heaviness back to the weight of the earth;
mountains are heavy, seas are heavy.

Even those trees you planted as children
became too heavy long ago - you couldn't carry them now.
But you can carry the winds...and the open spaces...

=================================
translated by Robert Bly

Words like, unhappy, misery, was compelled to, suffered and borne are sprinkled liberally throughout the biography of Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) the Czech-born poet. Given that background it is unsurprising that the turning point of his artistic life came on a trip to Russia, a country with as many synonyms for misery as Eskimos have for snow. He died almost completely unknown, no surprise there. But, also no surprise, his reputation as a great poet has grown steadily since then.

I did deliberately choose this poem and this translation to end the Poem of the Day for another year. It has just the right mix of burden and optimism that seems to release the reader into, well, the open spaces.

Thank you all for your support, your comments and your enthusiasm. I hope you enjoyed reading these as much as I enjoyed sending them.

Ballad - Sonia Sanchez

2011-04-29T05:00:00.000-04:00

(after the spanish)

forgive me if i laugh
you are so sure of love
you are so young
and i too old to learn of love.

the rain exploding
in the air is love
the grass excreting her
green wax is love
and stones remembering
past steps is love,
but you. you are too young
for love
and i too old.

once. what does it matter
when or who, i knew
of love.
i fixed my body
under his and went
to sleep in love
all trace of me
was wiped away

forgive me if i smile
young heiress of a naked dream
you are so young
and i too old to learn of love.

=========================================
Sonia Sanchez (b. 1934) has written poems, essays, plays and childrens books. She is a teacher, organizer and lecturer. Among the many honors she has received are the Community Service Award from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, the Lucretia Mott Award, the Outstanding Arts Award from the Pennsylvania Coalition of 100 Black Women, the Peace and Freedom Award from Women International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the Pennsylvania Governor's Award for Excellence in the Humanities, a National Endowment for the Arts Award, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts.

The Acrobats - Shel Silverstein

2011-04-28T05:00:00.000-04:00

I'll swing
By my ankles,
She'll cling
To your knees
As you hang
By your nose
From a high-up
Trapeze.
Just one thing, please,
As we float through the breeze--
Don't sneeze.

====================================
Shel Silverstein (1930-1999) was a poet, lyricist and, as any child will tell you, a true philosopher. I may have posted this poem before, I don't care, it amuses me.

The Love-Hat Relationship - Aaron Belz

2011-04-27T05:00:00.000-04:00

I have been thinking about the love-hat relationship.
It is the relationship based on love of one another's hats.
The problem with the love-hat relationship is that it is superficial.
You don't necessarily even know the other person.
Also it is too dependent on whether the other person
is even wearing the favored hat. We all enjoy hats,
but they're not something to build an entire relationship on.
My advice to young people is to like hats but not love them.
Try having like-hat relationships with one another.
See if you can find something interesting about
the personality of the person whose hat you like.

===================================
Aaron Belz (b.1971) revels in the comedic. He has occasionally brought his readings to comedy stages. Read more about him here.

He is also clearly a follower of Emily Litella

England 1819 - Percy Bysshe Shelly

2011-04-26T05:00:00.000-04:00

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,--mud from a muddy spring,
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,
An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless--a book sealed;
A Senate,--Time's worst statute unrepealed,
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestous day.

==========================================
Percy Bysshe Shelly (1792-1822) was the classic English Romantic poet. Friend of John Keats and Lord Byron, husband of Mary Shelly. When I first read this poem some years ago it had a particularized meaning for me. . Now I think about the uprisings against totalitarianism all around the world.

The Hand - Mary Reufle

2011-04-25T05:00:00.001-04:00

The teacher asks a question.
You know the answer, you suspect
you are the only one in the classroom
who knows the answer, because the person
in question is yourself, and on that
you are the greatest living authority,
but you don’t raise your hand.
You raise the top of your desk
and take out an apple.
You look out the window.
You don’t raise your hand and there is
some essential beauty in your fingers,
which aren’t even drumming, but lie
flat and peaceful.
The teacher repeats the question.
Outside the window, on an overhanging branch,
a robin is ruffling its feathers
and spring is in the air.

================================
Mary Ruefle (b.1952) travelled through Europe as the child of a military officer father. She has won Guggenheim and NEA Fellowships, among other honors. As a teacher myself I can only say, speak up kids!

A Blessing - James Wright

2011-04-24T05:00:00.000-04:00

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
========================================
James Wright (1927-1980) won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1972.

Jamaican Idol - Terese Svoboda

2011-04-23T05:00:00.000-04:00

Walking backward from the sea,
scales shedding, you seek the cave.

This is why the French door admits
only ocean. You stare into the louver

and forget how to get out. Lull
is the word, or loll. The sea returns,

completing your pulse, the waves live,
each breath of yours worship.

==================================
Terese Svoboda (b.?) tells all. Here

Chester - John Koethe

2011-04-22T05:00:00.001-04:00

Wallace Stevens is beyond fathoming, he is so strange; it is as if he had a morbid secret he would rather perish than disclose . . .
—Marrianne Moore to William Carlos Williams

Another day, which is usually how they come:
A cat at the foot of the bed, noncommittal
In its blankness of mind, with the morning light
Slowly filling the room, and fragmentary
Memories of last night's video and phone calls.
It is a feeling of sufficiency, one menaced
By the fear of some vague lack, of a simplicity
Of self, a self without a soul, the nagging fear
Of being someone to whom nothing ever happens.
Thus the fantasy of the narrative behind the story,
Of the half-concealed life that lies beneath
The ordinary one, made up of ordinary mornings
More alike in how they feel than what they say.
They seem like luxuries of consciousness,
Like second thoughts that complicate the time
One simply wastes. And why not? Mere being
Is supposed to be enough, without the intricate
Evasions of a mystery or offstage tragedy.
Evenings follow on the afternoons, lingering in
The living room and listening to the stereo
While Peggy Lee sings "Is That All There Is?"
Amid the morning papers and the usual
Ghosts keeping you company, but just for a while.
The true soul is the one that flickers in the eyes
Of an animal, like a cat that lifts its head and yawns
And looks at you, and then goes back to sleep.

=====================
John Koethe (b. 1945) holds a Ph.D in philosophy from Harvard University. In spite of that handicap he writes poems that are deeply rooted in human experience and are lyrically expressive. I like the cat on the bed.

Touring the World - Alden Marin

2011-04-21T05:00:00.000-04:00

Step across this latticework
of the day dividing down;
this car, that couch, anyone's corridor--
the TV is off in the living room
but the radio drones on--
a disembodied voice saying "Save America"
but it's already lost, like
a county fair balloon
a kid let go of, while eating
popcorn & cotton candy at once--
the nightingale sings at 3am
So as not to be eaten by the owl
and squirrels are asleep
with eyes flicking open
in their clever dens, preparing
to beg for more free scraps tomorrow;
This is how it used to be
And this is today--waiting
for civilization to end, according
to the Mayan Calendar,
New Age Astronomy
in which we may, or may not believe--
and fired TV celebrities
with their own shows booing them
all the while, touring the world.

================================
Alden Marin (b.?), well he was born, and he is a great friend and supporter of the Poem of the Day. He is a California poet, artist, musician and all-around supporter of the arts. You can read more about him here. Thanks Alden.

Patience - Kay Ryan

2011-04-20T05:00:00.000-04:00

Patience is
wider than one
once envisioned,
with ribbons
of rivers
and distant
ranges and
tasks undertaken
and finished
with modest
relish by
natives in their
native dress.
Who would
have guessed
it possible
that waiting
is sustainable—
a place with
its own harvests.
Or that in
time's fullness
the diamonds
of patience
couldn't be
distinguished
from the genuine
in brilliance
or hardness.
=================================
Kay Ryan (b. 1945) is the winner of the 2011 Pulizter Prize for Poetry for her 2010 collection "The Best Of It." She has also won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Union League Poetry Prize, the Maurice English Poetry Award, and three Pushcart Prizes. One of her poems is also permanently installed at the Central Park Zoo.

Sutra - Marilyn Krysl

2011-04-19T05:00:00.001-04:00

Looking back now, I see
I was dispassionate too often,
dismissing the robin as common,
and now can't remember what
robin song sounds like. I hoarded
my days, as though to keep them
safe from depletion, and meantime
I kept busy being lonely. This
took up the bulk of my time,
and I did not speak to strangers
because they might be boring,
and there were those I feared

would ask me for money. I was
clumsy around the confident,
and the well bred, standing on
their parapets, enthralled me,
but when one approached, I
fled. I also feared the street's
down and outs, anxious lest
they look at me closely, and
afraid I would see their misery.

I feared my father who feared
me and did not touch me,
which made me more afraid.
My mother feared him too,
and as I grew to be like him,
she became afraid of me also.
I kept busy avoiding dangers
of many colors, fleeing from
those with whom I had much

in common. Now afternoon,
one chair in the garden. Late
low light, the lilies still open,
sky beyond them preparing
to close for the night. I'd
made money, but had I kissed

a single lily? On the chair's
arm my empty cup. Its curved
lip struck, bright in late light.
I watch that last light going,
leaving behind its brief burning
which will come to nothing.

The lilies still open, waiting.

Let me be that last sliver of light.
Let me be that last gleaming sliver of silver,
there for an instant on the lily's petal,

light speaking in tongues, tongues of flame.

===================================
Marilyn Krysl (b.1942) has led a fascinating life, among other things teaching ESL in China. You can read all about her and read more of her remarkable poetry here.

Dear Migraine - Gail Mazur

2011-04-18T05:00:00.001-04:00

You're the shadow shadow lurking in me
and the lunatic light waiting in that shadow.

Ghostwriter of my half-life, intention's ambush
I can't prepare for, ruthless whammy

you have me ogling a blinding sun,
my right eye naked even with both lids closed—

glowering sun, unerring navigator
around this darkened room, you're my laser probe,

I'm your unwilling wavelength,
I can never transcend your modus operandi,

I've given up trying to outsmart you,
and the new thinking says I didn't invent you—

whatever you were to me I've outgrown,
I don't need you, but you're tenacity embodied,

tightening my skull, my temple, like plastic wrap.
Many times, I've traveled to a dry climate

that wouldn't pander to you, as if the great map
of America's deserts held the key to a pain-free future,

but you were an encroaching line in the sand,
then you were the sand. We've spent the best years

of my life intertwined: wherever I land
you entrap me in the unraveled faces

of panhandlers, their features my features—
you, little death I won't stop for, little death

luring me across your footbridge to the other side,
oblivion's anodyne. Soon—I can't know where or when—

we'll dance ache to ache again on my life's fragments,
one part abandoned, the other abundance—

=================================
Gail Mazur (b.1937) is Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emerson College and Founding Director of the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, a weekly poetry reading series she ran for 29 years. You can read more about her and more poems here.

Sailing to Byzantium - William Butler Yeats

2011-04-17T05:00:00.000-04:00

Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

=====================================
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) wrote this poem in 1926. He wrote, "When Irishmen were illuminating the Book of Kells an dmaking the jeweled croziers in the National Museum, Byzantium was the centre fo European civilization and the source of its spiritual philosophy, so I symbolize the search for the spiritual life by a journey to that city."

Machines - Michael Donaghy

2011-04-16T05:00:00.000-04:00

Dearest, note how these two are alike:
This harpsichord pavane by Purcell
And the racer's twelve-speed bike.

The machinery of grace is always simple.
This chrome trapezoid, one wheel connected
To another of concentric gears,
Which Ptolemy dreamt of and Schwinn perfected,
Is gone. The cyclist, not the cycle, steers,
And in the playing, Purcell's chords are played away.

So think talk, or touch if I were there,
Should work its effortless gadgetry of love,
Like Dante's heaven, and melt into the air,

If it doesn't, of course, I've fallen. So much is chance,
So much agility, desire and feverish care,
As bicyclists and harpsichordists prove

Who only by moving can balance,
Only by balancing move.

========================================
Michael Donaghy (1954-2004) was born in the Bronx, New York. He won the Whitebread Prize for Poetry and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1988 for his collection Shibboleth. He moved to London in 1985 where he worked as a teacher and musician.

Two for April 15th

2011-04-15T05:00:00.000-04:00

Taxman - George Harrison

One, two, three, four...
Hrmm!
One, two, (one, two, three, four!)

Let me tell you how it will be;
There's one for you, nineteen for me.
'Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.

Should five per cent appear too small,
Be thankful I don't take it all.
'Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.

(if you drive a car, car;) - I’ll tax the street;
(if you try to sit, sit;) - I’ll tax your seat;
(if you get too cold, cold;) - I’ll tax the heat;
(if you take a walk, walk;) - I'll tax your feet.

Taxman!

'Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.

Don't ask me what I want it for, (ah-ah, mister Wilson)
If you don't want to pay some more. (ah-ah, mister heath)
'Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.

Now my advice for those who die, (taxman)
Declare the pennies on your eyes. (taxman)
'Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.

And you're working for no one but me.

Taxman!

and

Sunny Afternoon - Ray Davies

The tax man's taken all my DOUGH,
And left me in my stately home,
BLazing on a sunny afternoon.
And I can't sail my yacht,
He's taken everything I've got,
All I've got's this sunny afternoon.

Save me, save me, save me from this squeeze.
I got a big fat mama trying to break me.
And I love to live so pleasantly,
Live this life of luxury,
BLazing on a sunny afternoon.
In the summertime
In the summertime
In the summertime

My girlfriend's run off with my car,
And gone back to her ma and pa,
Telling tales of drunkenness and cruelty.
Now I'm sitting here,
Sipping at my ice cool beer,
Lazing on a sunny afternoon.

Help me, help me, help me sail away,
Well give me two good reasons why I oughta stay.
'Cause I love to live so pleasantly,
Live this life of luxury,
Lazing on a sunny afternoon.
In the summertime
In the summertime
In the summertime

Ah, save me, save me, save me from this squeeze.
I got a big fat mama trying to break me.
And I love to live so pleasantly,
Live this life of luxury,
Lazing on a sunny afternoon.
In the summertime
In the summertime
In the summertime

========================================
Ok - First, I know taxes are not due until Monday but the 15th is traditionally the day we file. I'll stick with tradition. Also I usually resist the idea that lyrics are poetry. Lyrics are, well, lyrics. They're designed to work in conjunction with music, the two should be inseparable. This was just too good to resist. Have fun, hum along and play your Beatles and Kinks records. Or CDs, or MP3 or flac files.

Creation - Lei Shuyan

2011-04-14T05:00:00.001-04:00

With the scalpel of time
I cut mystic fissures in the brain.

All that has not yet happened
That has already happened
That will happen
In rippling water within those fissures.

Where no beauty exists
I would create beauty.

I shall create a planet
And get it ready to collide with earth.

===================================================
translated from the Chinese by Fang Dai, Dennis Ding and Edward Morin

Lei Shuyan (b.1942) has published nine books of poetry.

Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road? - Robert Hershon

2011-04-13T05:00:00.001-04:00

Don't fill up on bread
I say absent-mindedly
The servings here are huge

My son, whose hair may be
receding a bit, says
Did you really just
say that to me?

What he doesn't know
is that when we're walking
together, when we get
to the curb
I sometimes start to reach
for his hand

==============================================
Robert Hershon (?) appears to want to be a bit cagey about his birthdate. There are only the most general biographical statements about him in the places that I have searched. For example:

Robert Hershon was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He is the author of eleven books of poetry, of which The German Lunatic is the most recent. Among his awards are two creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. He also serves as co-editor of Hanging Loose Press.

daughters - Lucille Clifton

2011-04-12T05:00:00.000-04:00

woman who shines at the head
of my grandmother's bed,
brilliant woman, i like to think
you whispred into her ear
instructions. i like to think
you are the oddness in us,
you are the arrow
that pierced our plain skin
and made us fancy women;
my wild witch gran, my magic mama,
and even these gaudy girls.
i like to thnk you gave us
extraordinary power and to
protect us, you became the name
we were cautioned to forget.
it is enough,
you must have murmered,
to remember that i was
and that you are. woman, i am
lucille, which stands for light,
daughter of thelma, daughter
of georgia, daughter of
dazzling you.

====================================
Lucille Clifton (1936-2010) has two Pulitzer Prize nominations among her many honors. In 1999 she was elected Chancellor of the American Academy of Poets. Her poems eschew intellectual pretension in favor of a direct communication that still connects the reader to deeper realities.

15th Raga: For Bela Lugosi - David Meltzer

2011-04-11T05:00:00.001-04:00

Sir when you say
Transylvania or wolfbane or
I am Count Dracula,
your eyes widen & for the moment,
become pure white marble.

No wonder you were a junkie.
It's in the smile. Your way of drifting
into Victorian bedrooms
holding up your cape like skirts,
then covering her face as you bent over to kiss & sup.

It is no wonder & it was
in good taste too.

========================================================
David Meltzer (b. 1937) is one of the generation of Beat poets that came out of San Francisco in the early 1960s. You can catch up with him here.

- Rumi

2011-04-10T05:00:00.003-04:00

Dance when you're broken open.
Dance, if you've torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you're perfectly free.

======================================================
Rumi (1207-1273) was born in the Persian Empire in what is now Afghanistan. He was a mystic in the Sufi tradition. The poem is a reference to "the turn." The great Rumi scholar Coleman Barks writes, "The 'turn,' the moving meditation done by Mevlevi dervishes, originated with Rumi. The story goes that he was walking in the goldsmithing section of Konya when he hears a beautiful music in their hammering. He began turning in harmony with it, an ecstatic dance of surrender and yet with great centered discipline. He arrived at a place were ego dissolves and a resonance with universal soul comes in. Dervish literally means "doorway."

from Milton - William Blake

2011-04-09T05:00:00.000-04:00

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the countinance divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark satanice mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire.

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have build Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

=============================================
William Blake (1757-1827) did not title this poem. It concludes his book Introduction to Milton I will shy away from analysis but I will note that I cannot read this poem without hearing the extravagant, not to say bombastic musical adaptation by Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Not sure what that says about me.

Giving Up Smoking - Wendy Cope

2011-04-08T05:00:00.001-04:00

There's not a Shakespeare sonnet
Or a Beethoven quartet
That's easier to like than you
Or harder to forget.

You think that sounds extravagant?
I haven't finished yet -
I like you more than I would like
To have a cigarette.

===============================

Unsurprisingly, Wendy Cope (b.1945) gave up smoking shortly before writing this poem. She writes, "People who have never been addicted to nicotine don't understand what an intense love poem it is."

Capriccio - Rita Dove

2011-04-07T05:00:00.002-04:00

Miklos the Magnificent,
otherwise known as Nikolaus Josef
of the clan Salamon in the Czallokoz
and successor to the seat of Esterhazy in Galanta,
royal instigator of the Baroque castle at Fertod,
Lieutenant Field Marshall of the Austrian Empire (decorated),
musician (practiced), sober, honest,
and educated by Jesuits,

had a fantasy: to assemble an array
of Nature's eccentricities - a dwarf, an African perhaps a gypsy
or ferocious Turk or flat-faced Borneo,
summoning each before him dressed in the deep blue and red livery
of the House of Esterhazy
to see who among them would bear
with the most decorum
the imperial trappings.

He would hold a masquerade.
Haydn could work up an opera.

All this transpired within a crescent
of ochre stone run aground in the marshlands of Neusiedlersee,
rural western Hungary,
in the year 1785

========================================

from Sonata Mulatica Rita Dove, former United States Poet Laureate has written a collection of poems and a play on the life of George Bridgetower a violin prodigy born to a white European woman and (in her words) a black "African Prince." This violinist travels through the courts of 18th and 19th century Europe and inspires Beethoven to write his Kreutzer Sonata. This poem appears early in the collection and describes the world that Bridgetower will enter.

Hippos on Holiday - Billy Collins

2011-04-06T05:00:00.002-04:00

is not really the title of a movie
but if it was I would be sure to see it.
I love their short legs and big heads,
the whole hippo look.
Hundreds of them would frolic
in the mud of a wide, slow-moving river,
and I would eat my popcorn
in the dark of a neighborhood theater.
When they opened their enormous mouths
lined with big stubby teeth
I would drink my enormous Coke.

I would be both in my seat
and in the water playing with the hippos,
which is the way it is
with a truly great movie.
Only a mean-spirited reviewer
would ask on holiday from what?

===========================================

Long time readers of the Poem of the Day know that Billy Collins is a favorite of ours. He was Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001-2003 and Poet Laureate of New York State from 2004-2006.

The Company of Birds - Sasha Moorsom

2011-04-05T05:00:00.000-04:00

Ah the company of the birds
I loved and cherished on earth
Now, freed of flesh we fly
Together, a flock of beating wings,
I am as light, as feathery,
As gone from gravity we woar
In endless circles.

========================================
Sahsa Moorsom (1931-1993) loved birds. According to her they represented the soaring spirit in her and in others. She sculpted her own birdbath so that she could watch them and make sure they had enough to eat in the winter.

U-District Incident Report - Heather McHugh

2011-04-04T05:00:00.000-04:00

Apparently they want your body parts. They frisk you for

Your handset, earbud, bluetooth, cellphone, iPad, thumb drive, memory stick

And laptop. You won't need any of it soon. Give them

The finger too.
==============================
I don't know, just felt like a Monday poem to me.

The Uses of Poetry - William Carlos Williams

2011-04-03T05:00:00.000-04:00

I've fond anticipation of a day
O'erfilled with pure diversion presently,
For I must read a lady poesy
The while we glide by many a leafy bay,

Hid deep in rushes, where at random play
The glossy black winged May-flies, or whence flee
Hush-throated nestlings in alarm,
Whom we have idly frighted with our boat's long sway.

For, lest o'ersaddened by such woes as spring
To rural peace from our meek onward trend,
What else more fit? We'll draw the latch-string

And close the door of sense; then satiate wend,
On poesy's transforming giant wing,
To worlds afar whose fruits all anguish mend.

The House - Richard Wilbur

2011-04-02T05:00:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, on waking, she would close her eyes
For a last look at that white house she knew
In sleep alone, and held no title to,
And had not entered yet, for all her sighs.

What did she tell me of that house of hers?
White gatepost; terrace; fanlight of the door;
A widow's walk above the bouldered shore;
Salt winds that ruffle the surrounding firs.

Is she now there, wherever there may be?
Only a foolish man would hope to find
That haven fashioned by her dreaming mind.
Night after night, my love, I put to sea.

Spring - Edna St.Vincent Millay

2011-04-01T05:00:00.001-04:00

To what purpose, April do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

=========================================
Welcome to another year of poem of the day. We come on like an idiot babbling, etc. Feel free to comment, discuss or submit your own poem.

Hope - Philip Booth

2010-04-30T05:00:00.000-04:00

Old spirit, in and beyond me,
keep and extend me. Amid strangers
friends, great trees and big seas breaking,
let love move me. Let me hear the whole music,
see clear, reach deep. Open me to find due words,
that I may shape them to ploughshares of my own making.
After such luck, however late, give me to give to
the oldest dance.... Then to good sleep,
and - if it happens - glad waking.

===========================
Philip Booth (1925-2007) wrote 10 collections of poetry. He was the recipient of Guggenheim, Rockefeller and NEA Fellowships.

Today marks the end of National Poetry Month and brings the Poem of the Day postings to a close for another year. Thank you all for sharing your bandwidth with me.

Keep an eye out on the blog for periodic poetry news, poems and other postings. See you next year.

On Gifts for Grace - Bernadette Mayer

2010-04-29T05:00:00.000-04:00

I saw a great teapot
I wanted to get you this stupendous
100% cotton royal blue and black checkered shirt,
There was a red and black striped one too
Then I saw these boots at a place called Chuckles
They laced up to about two inches above your ankles
All leather and in red, black or purple
It was hard to have no money today
I won't even speak about the possible flowers and kinds of lingerie
All linen and silk with not-yet-perfumed laces
Brillliant enough for any of the Graces
Full of luxury, grace notes, prosperousness and charm
But I can only praise you with this poem -
Its being is the same as the meaning of your name

===============================
Bernadette Mayer (b.1945) is a New York-based poet.

from A Book of Nonsense - Edward Lear

2010-04-28T05:00:00.000-04:00

1.
There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, "It is just as I feared!--
Two Owls and a Hen,Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!"

10.
There was an Old Man in a tree,
Who was horribly bored by a Bee;
When they said, "Does it buzz?"
He replied, "Yes it does!
It's a regular brute of a Bee!"

12.
There was a young lady whose chin,
Resembled the point of a pin:
so she had it made sharp,
And purchased a harp,
And played several tunes with her chin.

===============================
Edward Lear (1812-1888) was a poet and artist of antic wit who could not resist the silly and the absurd.

1990 special - Charles Bukowski

2010-04-27T05:00:00.000-04:00

year-worn
weary to the bone,
dancing in the dark with the
dark,
the Suicide Kid gone
gray.

ah, the swift summers
over and gone
forever!

is that death
stalking me
now?

no, it's only my cat,
this
time.

===========================
Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) was a poet, novelist and short story writer. He is remembered primarily for his documentation of life on the seamy side of America.

Revolutionary Letter #1 - Diane di Prima

2010-04-26T05:00:00.000-04:00

I have just realized that the stakes are myself
I have no other
ransom money, nothing to break or barter but my life
my spirit measured out, in bits, spread over
the roulette table, I recoup what I can
nothing else to shove under the nose of the maitre de jeu
nothing to thrust out the window, no white flag
this flesh all I have to offer, to make the play with
this immediate head, what it comes up with, my move
as we slither over this go board, stepping always
(we hope) between the lines

==================================
Diane Prima (b.1934) was born in Brooklyn, briefly attended Swarthmore before leaving to live and write in Manhattan. She associated herself with the Beat movement, founded Poets Press. After participating in Timothy Leary's LSD experiments at Millbrook she moved to California where she has lived ever since. She has written dozens of books that have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Matins & Lauds - Marie Ponsot

2010-04-25T05:00:00.000-04:00

Excited as a sophisticated boy at his first
Passion of intellect, aware and fully free
Having lost title to full liberty; struck
Aware, for once, as I would always be;

It day and I still shaken, still sure, see
It is not ring-magic nor the faithing leap of sex
That makes me your woman; marks our free
And separate wills with one intent; sets
My each earlier option at dazzling apex
And at naught; cancels, paid, all debts.
Restless, incautious, I want to talk violence,
Speak wild poems, hush, be still, pray grace
Taken forever; and after, lie long in the dense
Dark of your embrace, asleep between earth and space.

===================================
Marie Ponsot (b.1921) is a Chancellor of the American Academy of Poets. She has won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 1998 for her book of poetry The Bird Catcher.

Today - Frank O'Hara

2010-04-24T05:00:00.001-04:00

Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
You really are beautiful! Pearls,
harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! all
the stuff they've always talked about
still makes a poem a surprise!
These things are with us every day
even on beachheads and biers. They
do have meaning. They're strong as rocks.

========================

Frank O'Hara (1926-1966) was associated with the New York School, a group of poets, artists, dancers and musicians that created art during the 1950s and '60s. He was associated with the painters Jasper Johns and Jackson Pollock who he credited as inspirations for his writing. He attempted to capture their immediacy and movement in his poems.

Two Poems by Denise Duhamel

2010-04-23T05:00:00.000-04:00

Hippie Barbie

Barbie couldn't grasp the concept
of free love. After all, she was born
into the world of capitalism
where nothing is free. And all she had
to choose from was a blond or dark-haired Ken
who looked exactly like Midges's boyfriend Alan.
Ken wouldn't even get bell-bottoms
or his first psychedelic pantsuit
until it was way too late, sometime in the mid-seventies.
And then, whenever Barbie tried to kiss him
his peel-off lamb-chop sideburns loosened
and stuck to her cheeks. There were no black male dolls yet
so she guessed a mixed-race love-child
was out of the question. Barbie walked her poodle
past the groovy chicks who showed their bellybuttons
and demonstrated against the war. She couldn't
make a peace sign with her stuck-together fingers.
She felt a little like Sandra Dee at a Janis Joplin concert.

~~~~~~~~
Buddhist Barbie

- for Nick

In the 5th century B.C.
an Indian philospher Gautama
teaches "All is emptiness"
and "There is no self."
In the 20th century A.D.
Barbie agrees, but wonders how a man
with such a belly could pose,
smiling, and without a shirt.

========================
Denise Duhamel (b.1961) has spent some time writing for stand-up comedians and she lists Rosanne Barr and Lucille Ball as inspirations. She is the winner of an NEA Fellowship.

homage to my hips - Lucille Clifton

2010-04-22T05:00:00.000-04:00

these hips are big hips
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!

=============================
Lucille Clifton (1936-2010) was a National Book Award, and twice an Pulitzer Prize nominee. In 1999 she was elected Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She also served as the Poet Laureate of the State of Maryland.

A Letter to Su Tung P'o - W.S Merwin

2010-04-21T05:00:00.000-04:00

Almost a thousand years later
I am asking the same questions
you did the ones you kept finding
yourself returning to as though
nothing had changed except the tone
of their echo growing deeper
and what you knew of the coming
of age before you had grown old
I do not know any more now
than you did then about what you
were asking as I sit at night
above the hushed valley thinking
of you on your river that one
bright sheet of moonlight in the dream
of the water birds and I hear
the silence after your question
show old are the questions tonight

====================
W.S. Merwin (b. 1927) writes of this poem, "It seems as though I have been sending a letter Su Tung P'o for most of my life. The great poests of the Chinese Tang and Song dynasties (in translation) wrote with an apparent intimacy that altered the whole sound of poetry in English for the past hundred years. (One of Su Tung P'o's poems) is a night piece, a river poem, the words speaking, or singing, from aboat moored on a long journey, before daybreak. It evokes a moment of great stillnes an distance, and of evanescence before departure. After reading the poem many times through the years, I read it again late one night in the house where I live, on the side of a wooded valley that is still blessed at night with its own deep silence, and I found myself beginning to answer the ancient poet."

Two Poems by Rumi

2010-04-20T05:00:00.000-04:00

Drumsound rises on the air,
its throb, my heart.

A voice inside the beat says,
"I know you're tired,
but come. This is the way."

Are you jealous of the ocean's generosity?
Why would you refuse to give
this joy to anyone?

Fish don't hold the sacred liquid in cups!
They swin the huge fluid freedom.

~~~~

Dance, when you're broken open.
Dance, if you've torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you're perfectly free.

(translations by Coleman Barks)

========================================
Rumi (1207-1273) was a Persian poet, philosopher and Sufi mystic. His poems often focus on the spirtual nature of love. The second poem certainly is a reference to "the turning" or spinning of Sufi mystics.

from Leap - Jon Woodward

2010-04-19T05:00:00.001-04:00

this is the second shower
I've taken today I didn't
need to take this one
all I did today was
wake up and watch TV

at one point I walked
to the grocery store and
bought a pound of strawberries
for 99 cents they weren't
too tart if my body

is found I want them
to pack it with strawberries
I want my casket lined
with strawberries I want them
to bulldoze strawberries over me

==================================

Jon Woodward (?) writes on his website "I was born in Wichita, Kansas. I grew up in Wichita and Denver, Colorado. I have published two books: Rain (Wave Books, 2006) and Mister Goodbye Easter Island (Alice James Books, 2003). I currently live in the Boston area and work at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology."

Untitled - Bei Dao

2010-04-18T05:00:00.000-04:00

pedestrians lighting their own
lightbulb minds
the street heads for october's wild ideas

in tribute to a dog
shadow leans toward its experience

spring water's laid bare
the sleep underlying landscapes
we take turns hiding beneath
windows of endless light weeping

Li Po beats a drum and sings
calm and unhurried

(translated from the Chinese by David Hinton)

=================================
Bei Dao (b.1949) is a psuedonym for the poet Zhao Zhenkai. His assumed name means, literally, "North Island," a name which alludes to the solitude the writer prefers. He is a member of The Misty Poets a group of artists who reacted against the restrictions of the Cultural Revolution. His poems were a source of inspiration to the Tiananmen Square protesters. He was allowed to travel but has chosen to live in exile since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

The Cats' Strike - Novica Tadić

2010-04-17T05:00:00.001-04:00

The cat's cough wakes him at night.
He turns in bed, gets up.
Puts on his dressing-gown because it's cold.
Puts on his slippers because he's barefoot.
Slowly he approaches the window.
Drawing open the curtain, stares:
Below,
In the street,
As far as Republic Square
Thousands of phosphorescent flares
Thousands upon thousands of cats
Thousands upon thousands of raised tails.
Calmly
He closes the curtain.
And returns to his warm bed.
Yawning
He mutters:
- The cats' strike.

(translated from the Serbian by Michael March and Dusan Puvacic)

==================================
Novica Tadić (b.1949) is a Yugoslavian poet who was born in Montenegro and lived in Belgrade for most of his life.

Music Heard with You - Adam Zagajewski

2010-04-16T05:00:00.000-04:00

Music I heard with you was more than music...

Music heard with you
will stay forever with us.

Grave Brahms and elegaic Schubert,
a few songs, Chopin's third sonata,

a couple of quartets with heart -
breaking chords (Beethoven, adagia),

the sadness of Shostakovich that
didn't want to die.

The great choruses of Bach's Passions,
as if someone had summoned us,

demanding joy,
pure and disinterested,

joy in which faith
is self-evident.

Some scraps of Lutoslawski
as fugitive as our thoughts.

A black woman singing blues
ran through us like shining steel,

even though it reached us on the street
of an ugly, dirty town.

Mahler's endless marches,
the trumpet's voice opening Symphony no. 5

and the first part of the Ninth
(you sometimes call him "malheur!")

Mozart's despair in the Requiem
his buoyant piano concertos -

you hummed them better than I did,
but we both know that.

Music heard with you
will grow still with us.

(translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh)

===========================================
Adam Zagajewski (b.1945) is Polish-born but lives in both Poland and Chicago. He is currently a member of the University of Chicago faculty.He became widely know for his poem Try to Praise the Mutilated World, which was published by The New Yorker magazine shortly after September 11, 2001.

Growth - Shuntaro Tanikawa

2010-04-15T05:00:00.000-04:00

age three
there was no past for me

age five
my past went back to yesterday

age seven
my past went back to topknotted samurai

age eleven
my past went back to dinosaurs

age fourteen
my past agreed with the texts at school

age sixteen
I look at the infinity of my past with fear

age eighteen
I know not a thing about time

(translated from the Japanese by Harold Wright)

================================
Shuntaro Tanikawa (b.1931) is one of Japan's preeminent poets. He is the author of more than sixty books of poetry, the lyrics to the theme song for the movie Howls Moving Castle and he has translated Charles Schultz's Peanuts into Japanese.

Soft Money - Rae Armantrout

2010-04-14T05:00:00.002-04:00

They're sexy
because they're needy,
which degrades them.

They're sexy because
they don't need you.

They're sexy because they pretend
not to need you,

but they're lying,
which degrades them.

They're beneath you
and it's hot.

They're across the border,
rhymes with dancer -

they don't need
to understand.

They're content to be
(not mean),

which degrades them
and is sweet.

They want to be
the thing-in-itself

and the thing-for-you-

Miss Thing - but can't.

They want to be you,
but can't,

which is so hot.

===============================
Rae Armantrout (b.1947) won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry yesterday for her book Versed. You can read about her and see some of her other work here.

Poet-tree - Earle Birney

2010-04-13T05:00:00.000-04:00

i fear that i shall never make
a poem slippier than a snake
or oozing with as fine a juice
as runs in girls or even spruce
on i wont make not now nor later
pnomes as luverlee as pertaters
trees is made by fauns or stayrs
but only taters make pertaters
& trees is grown by sun from sod
& so are the sods who need a god
but poettrees lack any clue
they just need me ......& maybe you
==================================
Earle Birney (1904-1995) was a Canadian poet who moved to America but was forced to leave during the '30s for participating in Trotskyist activities. He served in the Canadian Army during World War II.

This poem has some fun with Joyce Kilmer's "Trees" which begins "I think that I shall never see/a poem lovely as a tree" and ends "Poems are made by fools like me,/But only God can make a tree." You can read all six stanzas here.

Catch - Langston Hughes

2010-04-12T05:00:00.000-04:00

Big Boy came
Carrying a mermaid
On his shoulders
And the mermaid
Had her tail
CurvedBeneath his arm.

Being a fisher boy,
He'd found a fish
To carry -
Half fish,
Half girl
To marry.

===================================
Langston Hughes (1902-1967) wrote novels, short stories and plays but he is best known for his poems depicting both black life in America from the '20 through the '60s. He presented the full range of African-American life; the humor, the tragedy, the joy and the pain.

Desert Places - Robert Frost

2010-04-11T05:00:00.000-04:00

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it - it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less -
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars - on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

===================================
Robert Frost (1874-1963) is traditionally thought of as a New England poet although he was born in San Francisco and lived there until he was eleven. We tend to think of Frost's poems for their traditional style and depictions of nature but his greatest works are profoundly modern explorations of universal hopes and fears.

Nude Descending a Staircase - X. J. Kennedy

2010-04-10T05:00:00.000-04:00

Toe upon toe, a snowing flesh,
A gold of lemon, root and rind,
She sifts in sunlight down the stairs
With nothing on. Nor on her mind.

We spy beneath the banister
A constant thresh of thigh on thigh -
Her lips imprint the swinging air
That parts to let her parts go by.

One-woman waterfall, she wears
Her slow descent like a long cape
And pausing, on the final stair
Collects her motions into shape.

=====================================
X.J. Kennedy (b.1929) won the 1961 Lamont Award for his first book of poetry, Nude Descending a Staircase. The title poem was roughly inspired by the Marcel Duchamp painting but does not attempt to describe the work. A picture of the painting can be found here.

Museum Piece - Richard Wilbur

2010-04-09T05:00:00.001-04:00

The good grey guardians of art
Patrol the halls on spongy shoes,
Impartially protective, though
Perhaps suspicious of Toulouse.

Here dozes one against the wall,
Disposed upon a funeral chair.
A Degas dancer pirouettes
Upon the parting of his hair.

See how she spins! The grace is there,
But strain as well is plain to see.
Degas loved the two together:
Beauty joined to energy.

Edgar Degas purchased once
A fine El Greco, which he kept
Against the wall beside his bed
To hang his pants on while he slept.

==================================
Richard Wilbur (b.1921) was born in New York City and grew up in my home town of North Caldwell, New Jersey. He has twice received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, once in 1957 and again in 1989. It was a poem of his called Running which initially inspired this poem project. I did not post it until last year. You can read it here.

Wilbur explained that the anecdote at the end of the poem is true. By way of further explanation he continued, "What the poem conveys, I hope, is that artists are less gravely reverential about art than its custodians are."

I Remember Clilfford - Philip Levine

2010-04-08T05:00:00.000-04:00

Wakening in a small room,
the walls high and blue, one high window
through which the morning enters,
I turn to the table beside me painted a think white. There instead
of a clock is a tumbler of water,
clear and cold, that wasn't there
last night. Someone quietly entered, and now I see the white door
slightly ajar and around three sides
the light on fire. I remember once
twenty-seven years ago walking
the darkened streets
of my home town when up ahead
on Joy Road at the Bluebird of Happiness
I heard over the rumble of my own head
for the first time the high clear trumpet
of Clifford Brown calling us all
to the dance he shared with us
such a short time. My heart quickened
and in my long coat, breathless
and stumbling, I ran
through the swirling snow
to the familiar sequened door
knowing it would open on something new.
=================================
Philip Levine (b.1928) has written more than 18 books of poetry, two books of translations and a book of essays. He currently resides in Fresno, California. The poem was inspired by a Benny Golson tune of the same name. Clifford Brown was a masterful trumpeter and jazz master who died too young.

You can find video of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers with trumpeter Lee Morgan playing I Remember Clifford here.

As far as I know there is no film of Clifford Brown but you can hear him with Max Roach playing one of his compositions (and one of my favorite tunes of all time) here.

Ciao Bella Chocolate Sorbet - Elaine Equi

2010-04-07T05:00:00.000-04:00

has a dense
chewy

water-to-chocolate
ratio

as if a whole
devil's food cake

were dissolved
in each scoop.

Delivers Elvis-like
indulgence

for only 120 calories.
By the last spoonful,

your whole nervous system
and aura

will be permeated
by the ancient Mayan God.

You will see
through the eyes of Chocolate.

==============================
Elaine Equi (b. 1953) is a Chicago-born poet currently living in New York and teaching creative writing at the City College of New York and the New School.

Two Poems by Alden Marin

2010-04-06T05:00:00.000-04:00

The Refills Never Last- Alden Marin

At the coffee place
I ask for a refill
"more Viennese please..."
and the girl
looks at me like"haven't you had enough?
"that worldless pause of hers
sans smile;
just another
of the morning's imagined problems
like the newly painted garbage cans
in the tidy park
with clouds and peace symbols
on them - (why those?)
and a dog off leash (a Beagle)
that keeps begging
for scraps - and
of course, I give them
surrpetitiously
against the owner's wishes...
Such is lifein this town with its issues
and what you make of them
on a day when summer
cannot come fast enough
and the refills never last.

A Different Person Altogether- Alden Marin

One morning
there - at my feet
lay a half black
half orange leaf
that made me
think of you --
divided, untethered
apart from the whole
but available;
imploring
and beckoning
to be held...
I picked
the fallen one up
and put it gently
in my car
Now, two days later
the leaf has turned brown
and lies inexpressively
on the floor --a different person altogether.

=========================
Alden Marin is a poet, hiker, musician, surfer and painter who lives in Malibu and Pacific Pallisades, California. Much of his inspiration comes from surfing, hiking... and sitting around drinking coffee.

www.aldenmarin.com is his art, poetry and chapbook website. There's a fun YouTube of Alden discussing his paintings live with TV kitchen gadget personality Ron Polpeil, of PocketFisherman fame.

I will add that Alden is a great supporter of the poem of the day. He contributes much appreciated original work and suggestions every year.

Comment - Dorothy Parker

2010-04-05T05:00:00.001-04:00

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong.
And I am Marie of Roumania

=========================
Oh, that wide-eyed naif Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)! She wrote fiction, poetry and criticism with a scathing but intelligent wit. She was a member of the famous Algonquin Roundtable . A bit of not-so-trivial information. She bequeathed her entire literary estate to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to further the civil rights movement. When Dr. King was assassinated the estate became property of the NAACP.

Spring is like a perhaps hand - e.e. cummings

2010-04-04T05:00:00.000-04:00

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window, into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and placing
carefully there a strange
thing and known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

=======================

Edward Estling Cummings (1894-1962) used a break with traditional form, spelling, punctuation and syntax to create a new means of expression.

All Things Pass - Lao-Tzu

2010-04-03T05:00:00.003-04:00

All things pass
A sunrise does not last all morning
All things pass
A cloudburst does not last all day
All things pass
Nor a sunset all night
All things pass
What always changes?

Earth...sky...thunder...
mountain...water...
wind...fire...lake...

These change
And if these do not last

Do man's visions last?
Do man's illusions?

Take things as they come

All things pass

(from translations adapted by Timothy Leary [1920-1996])===============================
Lao-Tzu (ca. 6th century BC) is traditionally considered the author of the Tao Te Ching and the founder of Taoism. Timothy Leary was a Harvard professor and advocate for the use of LSD to expand conciousness. He compiled this version of the poem from a collection of English translations. (And a big shout-out to George Harrison where ever you are.)

Come to the Edge - Christopher Logue

2010-04-02T05:00:00.000-04:00

Come to the edge.

We might fall.

Come to the edge.

It's too high!

COME TO THE EDGE!

And they came,

And he pushed,

And they flew.

====================
Christopher Logue (b.1926) is a poet, playwright and screen writer. He is an early pioneer of jazz poetry and political poetry. He has produced a series of poster poems for the British Labour Party among other causes. Come to the Edge is an example of a poster poem. It was written for an Institute of Contemporary Art exhibition of the work of Guillaume Apollinaire. Logue explains, "The poem was written in - I think - 1968. Michael Kustow curated and exhibition of Apollinaire's work at the ICA and asked for a poem to go on a poster to advertise the show. I cannot say that the poem was the result of my reading Apollinaire, more by the idea of the man, his life, as much as his poetry. A daring figure."

Last Night, as I Was Sleeping - Antonio Machado

2010-03-31T18:30:00.003-04:00

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt - marvelous error! -
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming for me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?
Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt - marvelous error! -
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt - marvelous error! -
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.
Last night, as I slept,
I dreamt - marvelous error! -
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

(translated from the Spanish by Robert Bly)
=========================
Antonio Machado (1875-1939) was a member of the Spanish literary movement called the Generation of '98, a group that formed as an artistic response to the defeat of Spain in the Spanish-American war. They criticized Spain's conservative literary tradition which was prevalent at that time. His interest in French poetry, particularly the exploration of dreams, memory and consciousness is evident in this poem.

Carol Ann Duffy is Britain's first Woman Poet Laureate

2009-05-02T07:02:00.003-04:00

Carol Ann Duffy has been named Britain's Poet Laureate. She is the first woman in the 341-year history of the post. Here is an example of her work:

Valentine - Carol Ann Duffy

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.

Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

The Poem of the Day is closed for daily business until next April but check back periodically for poetry news, events and the random poem of interest.

Epilogue to The Tempest - William Shakespeare

2009-04-30T05:00:00.000-04:00

Prospero -

Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own,
Which is most faint. Now, 'tis true,
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardoned the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell,
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands.
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardoned be,
Let your indulgence set me free.

(Exit)

Mother Doesn't Want a Dog - Judith Viorst

2009-04-29T05:00:00.002-04:00

Mother doesn't want a dog.
Mother says they smell,
And never sit when you say sit,
Or even when you yell.
And when you come home late at night
And there is ice and snow,
You have to go back out because
The dumb dog has to go.

Mother doesn't want a dog.
Mother says they shed,
And always let the strangers in
And bark at friends instead,
And do disgraceful things on rugs,
And track mud on the floor,
And flop upon your bed at night
And snore their doggy snore.

Mother doesn't want a dog.
She's making a mistake.
Because, more than a dog, I think
She will not want this snake.

Vacation - Rita Dove

2009-04-28T05:00:00.001-04:00

I love the hour before takeoff,
that stretch of no time, no home
but the gray vinyl seats linked like
unfolding paper dolls. Soon we shall
be summoned to the gate, soon enough
there’ll be the clumsy procedure of row numbers
and perforated stubs—but for now
I can look at these ragtag nuclear families
with their cooing and bickering
or the heeled bachelorette trying
to ignore a baby’s wail and the baby’s
exhausted mother waiting to be called up early
while the athlete, one monstrous hand
asleep on his duffel bag, listens,
perched like a seal trained for the plunge.
Even the lone executive
who has wandered this far into summer
with his lasered itinerary, briefcase
knocking his knees—even he
has worked for the pleasure of bearing
no more than a scrap of himself
into this hall. He’ll dine out, she’ll sleep late,
they’ll let the sun burn them happy all morning
—a little hope, a little whimsy
before the loudspeaker blurts
and we leap up to become
Flight 828, now boarding at Gate 17.

The Snow on Saddle Mountain - Gary Snyder

2009-04-27T05:00:00.000-04:00

The only thing that can be relied on
is the snow on Kurakake Mountain.
fields and woods
thawing, freezing, and thawing
totally untrustworthy.
it's true, a great fuzzy windstorm
like yeast up there today, still
the only faint source of hope
is the snow on Kurakake Mountain.

Excerpts from 5 & 7 & 5 - Anselm Hollo

2009-04-26T05:00:00.000-04:00

follow that airplane
of course I'm high this is
an emergency

==

far shore Ferris wheel
turning glowing humming love
in our lit-up heads

==

switch them to sleep now
the flying foxes swarm out
great it's flurry time

from: The Father of My Country - Diane Wakoski

2009-04-25T05:00:00.001-04:00

my father was not in the telephone book
in my city;
my father was not sleeping with my mother
at home;
my father did not care if I studied the
piano;
my father did not care what I
did;
and I thought my father was handsome and I loved him and I wondered
whyhe left me alone so much
so many years
in fact, but
my father
made me what I am
a lonely woman
without purpose, just as I was
a lonely child
without a father. I walked with words, words, words, and names,
names. Father was not
one of my words.
Father was not
one of my names.

Unknown Bird - W.S. Merwin

2009-04-24T05:00:00.001-04:00

Out of the dry days
through the dusty leaves
far across the valley
those few notes never
heard here before

one fluted phrase
floating over its
wandering secret
all at once wells up
somewhere else

and is gone before it
goes on fallen into
its own echo leaving
a hollow through the air
that is dry as before

where is it from
hardly anyone
seems to have noticed it
so far but who now
would have been listening

it is not native here
that may be the one
thing we are sure of
it came from somewhere
else perhaps alone

so keeps on calling for
no one who is here
hoping to be heard
by another of its own
unlikely origin

trying once more the same few
notes that began the song
of an oriole last heard
years ago in another
existence there

it goes again tell
no one it is here
foreign as we are
who are filling the days
with a sound of our own

Nothing Except Maybe - Alden Marin

2009-04-23T05:00:00.000-04:00

A list of
petty annoyances:
The crinkling
pastry bag
The agitated
barking dog
the upset baby
in a CVS
Pharmacy line
shrieking to his mom
(and she’s not stopping him)
A few more:
Loud helicopters
in the morning
Harleys revving up
unnecessarily
people crossing intersections
far too slowly
What can be done
about these daily bugaboos?
Nothing, except, maybe
to write about them.

More of Alden Marin's poems can be found on his website.

The Fist - Derek Walcott

2009-04-22T05:00:00.000-04:00

The fist clenched round my heart
loosens a little, and I gasp
brightness; but it tightens
again. When have I ever not loved
the pain of love? But this has moved

past love to mania. This has the strong
clench of the madman, this is
gripping the ledge of unreason, before
plunging howling into the abyss.

Hold hard the, heart. This way at least you live.

In poetry news, W.S. Merwin has been awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for his collection "The Shadows of Sirius." This is his second Pulitzer. He also won in 1971. Look for a sample of his poetry in the coming days.

Coyotes in Greenwich! - Julie Sheehan

2009-04-21T05:00:00.000-04:00

Here hedges are upholstered, each cobblestone
has an appointment, greening boughs aspire
in vain to Tudor style while even ramblers
know their place. And yet, we saw hibiscus
in high alarm, cat-slunk shivering it.

Coyotes invade. They claim to be the truth.
Black bears nose the bougainvillea, moving
eastward, indiscriminate, original.
Our sinks back up, our toilets will not drain,
our nature disobediently tends toward nature.

But we will have no blame, for we attend
our garbage as we always have, bury
and send away what could not prosper Here.
In children's books we keep foxes and mice;
where are the Apaches to back us up?

Logically we sleep though not in comfort
these days. Our wives keep turning in our beds
like roasting meat, the stones call out to us
campfires fringe the Merritt. In our kitchens
pasta forks bare fangs, pans hang like scalps.

From: Twenty-One Love Poems - Adrienne Rich

2009-04-20T05:00:00.000-04:00

No one's fated or doomed to love anyone.
The accidents happen, we're not heroines,
they happen in our lives like car crashes,
books that change us, neighborhoods
we move into and come to love.
Tristan und Isolde is scarcely the story,
women at least should know the difference
between love and death. No poison cup,
no penance. Merely a notion that the tape-recorder
should have caught some ghost of us; that tape-recorder
not merely played but should have listened to us,
and could instruct those after us
this we were, this is how we tried to love,
and these are the forces they had ranged against us,
and these are the forces we had ranged within us,
within us and against us, against us and within us.

DSS Dream - Martín Espada

2009-04-19T05:00:00.000-04:00

I dreamed
the Department of Social Services
came to the door and said:
"We understand
you have a baby,
a goat, and a pig living here
in a two-room apartment.
This is illegal.
We have to take the baby away,
unless you eat the goat."

"The pig's OK?" I asked.
"The pig's OK," they said.

It's all I have to bring today (26) Emily Dickenson

2009-04-18T05:00:00.001-04:00

It's all I have to bring today –
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
Some one the sum could tell –
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.

The Buck in the Snow - Edna St. Vincent Millay

2009-04-17T05:00:00.000-04:00

White sky, over the hemlocks bowed with snow,
Saw you not at the beginning of evening the antlered buck and his doe
Standing in the apple-orchard? I saw them. I saw them suddenly go,
Tails up, with long leaps lovely and slow,
Over the stone-wall into the wood of hemlocks bowed with snow.

Now he lies here, his wild blood scalding the snow.

How strange a thing is death, bringing to his knees, bringing to his antlers
The buck in the snow.
How strange a thing--a mile away by now, it may be,
Under the heavy hemlocks that as the moments pass
Shift their loads a little, letting fall a feather of snow--
Life, looking out attentive from the eyes of the doe.

The Song of Despair - Pablo Neruda

2009-04-16T05:00:00.001-04:00

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.

Pilot’s dread, fury of a blind diver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed the infinite tenderness,
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle.

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

How terrible and brief was my desire of you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.

And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.

This was my destiny and in it was the voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!

Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!

From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.

You still flowered in songs, you still broke in currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.

Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only the tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one.

This poem was translated by W. S. Merwin

Running - Richard Wilbur

2009-04-15T05:00:00.002-04:00

1933

(North Caldwell, New Jersey)

What were we playing? Was it prisoner's base?

I ran with whacking keds

Down the cart-road past Rickard's place,

And where it dropped beside the tractor-sheds

Leapt out into the air above a blurred

Terrain, through jolted light,

Took two hard lopes, and at the third

Spanked off a hummock-side exactly right,

And made the turn, and with delighted strain

Sprinted across the flat

By the bull-pen, and up the lane.

Thinking of happiness, I think of that.

Bilingual/Bilingüe - Rhina P. Espaillat

2009-04-14T05:00:00.003-04:00

My father liked them separate, one there,

one here (allá y aquí), as if aware

that words might cut in two his daughter's heart

(el corazón) and lock the alien part

to what he was - his memory, his name

(su nombre) - with a key he could not claim.

"English outside this door, Spanish inside,"

he said, "y basta." But who can divide

the world, the word (mundo y palabra) from

any child? I knew how to be dumb

and stubborn (testaruda); late, in bed,

I hoarded secret syllables I read

Until my tongue (mi lengua) learned to run

where his stumbled. And still the heart was one.

I like to think he knew that, even when,

proud (orgulloso) of his daughter's pen,

he stood outside mis versos, half in fear

of words he loved but wanted not to hear.

This poem was performed by one of my students at our state's Poetry Out Loud competition. It was a powerful reading that I hear every time I read this poem.

The Ballad of Don Gato - unk.

2009-04-13T05:00:00.000-04:00

O Senor Don Gato was a cat.
On a high red roof Don Gato sat.
He was there to read a letter,
(guau, guau, guau)
where the reading light was better,
(guau, guau, guau)
'Twas a love-note for Don Gato!
"I adore you," wrote the ladycat,
who was fluffy white, and nice and fat.
There was not a sweeter kitty,
(guau, guau, guau)
in the country or the city
(guau, guau, guau)
and she said she'd wed Don Gato!

O Senor Don Gato jumped with glee!
He fell off the roof and broke his knee,
broke his ribs and all his whiskers,
(guau, guau, guau)
and his little solar plexus
(guau, guau, guau)
"Ay Caramba!!" cried Don Gato.
All the doctors they came on the run,
just to see if something could be done.
And they held a consultation,
(guau, guau, guau)
about how to save their patient,
(guau, guau, guau)
how to save Senor Don Gato.

But in spite of everything they tried,
poor Senor Don Gato up and died.
No, it wasn't very merry,
(guau, guau, guau)
going to the cemetary,
(guau, guau, guau)
for the ending of Don Gato.
But as the the funeral passed the market square,
such a smell of fish was in the air,
though the burial was plated,
(guau, guau, guau)
he became reanimated,
(guau, guau, guau)
he came back to life, Don Gato!

Three Poems for Easter but not necessarily about Easter

2009-04-12T05:00:00.001-04:00

Spring is like a perhaps hand - E. E. Cummings

III

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

------------------
Spring and All - William Carlos Williams

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines-

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches-

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind-

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined-
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of
entrance-Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken

-----------------------
Birds Again - Jim Harrison

A secret came a week ago though I already
knew it just beyond the bruised lips of consciousness.
The very alive souls of thirty-five hundred dead birds
are harbored in my body. It’s not uncomfortable.
I’m only temporary habitat for these not-quite-
weightless creatures. I offered a wordless invitation
and now they’re roosting within me, recalling
how I had watched them at night
in fall and spring passing across earth moons,
little clouds of black confetti, chattering and singing
on their way north or south. Now in my dreams
I see from the air the rumpled green and beige,
the watery face of earth as if they’re carrying
me rather than me carrying them. Next winter
I’ll release them near the estuary west of Alvarado
and south of Veracruz. I can see them perching
on undiscovered Olmec heads. We’ll say goodbye
and I’ll return my dreams to earth.

One Art - Elizabeth Bishop

2009-04-11T01:14:00.001-04:00

The art of losing isn't hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident

the art of losing's not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Miracles - Walt Whitman

2009-04-10T06:57:00.000-04:00

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night
with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet
and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

The Telephone - Robert Frost

2009-04-09T08:30:00.000-04:00

'When I was just as far as I could walk
From here today,
There was an hour
All still
When leaning with my head again a flower
I heard you talk.
Don't say I didn't, for I heard you say--
You spoke from that flower on the window sill-
Do you remember what it was you said?'

'First tell me what it was you thought you heard.'

'Having found the flower and driven a bee away,
I leaned on my head
And holding by the stalk,
I listened and I thought I caught the word--
What was it? Did you call me by my name?
Or did you say--
Someone said "Come" -- I heard it as I bowed.'

'I may have thought as much, but not aloud.'

"Well, so I came.'

Definitely - Mary Jo Bang

2009-04-08T05:33:00.000-04:00

What is desire
But the hard wire argument given
To the mind's unstoppable mouth.

Inside the braincase, it's I
Want that fills every blank. And then the hand
Reaches for the pleasure

The plastic snake offers. Someone says, Yes,
It will all be fine in some future soon.
Definitely. I've conjured a body

In the chair before me. Be yourself, I tell it.
Here memory makes you
Unchangeable: that shirt, those summer pants.

That beautiful face.
That tragic beautiful mind.
That mind's ravenous mouth

That told you, This isn't poison
At all but just what the machine needs. And then,
The mouth closes on its hunger.

The heart stops.

The Last Wolf in Edmonson County - Davis McCombs

2009-04-07T05:33:00.000-04:00

Then I stood below the pedestal of Dismal Rock
as shadows straggled up like sheep from the river.
I wanted to believe his ghost might prowl among them,
that something of his hunger might still be limping
down a faint scent trail to its end, but I could not.
Autumn lit the wicks of the leaves; the river, foaming,
garbled, recovered its voice. I did not climb
the flash-lit, switchback trail to the rockhouse.
I did not stand before the petroglyphs again
nor rake at the midden of ash below them with a stick.
I waited until the dark took everything,
but the sound of water; the spillway's troughs of stone,
the dam's think plug. I waited where the blood spoor
of local narrative intersects a trail gone cold,
and what came stalking there was not a shade, though
it moved with stealth among the sawbriars, lit by nothing.

Davis McCombs is the Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Arkansas. He was a Park Ranger at Mammoth Cave National Park from 1991-2001.

I particularly like the feeling of barely flickering hope amid desolation in this poem.

Three Poems

2009-04-06T05:35:00.000-04:00

Teddy Bear - Leanna, age 6, USA

My Teddy Bear is nice and soft
It comes in handy when I'm scared
He follows me wherever I go
That is something that I know.

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

Chocolate Spread - Joshua B, age 6, England

Chocolate Spread is my favourite,
I like it on my toast,
And if I look quite carefully,
I get it through the post!
My little sister Sophie
Steals it from my plate.
I know what she thinks of it,
She thinks it is really great!
P.S. I get angry most
When Sophie steals my toast!

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

Sorrow - Udeshi B., age 10, India

Sorrow is like a tsunami,
That wipes away happiness,
A shock to make you sadder
than you already are,
Joys being swept away
like the sweeping away of leaves,
Friendships being broken,
fights being made,
Losing something
you love.
--------------------------------------
These poems and more can be found at -
http://www.loriswebs.com/youngpoets/

Two Poems for April 5th

2009-04-05T08:14:00.000-04:00

Metaphysics - Allen Ginsberg

This is the one and only
firmament; therefore
it is the absolute world.
There is no other world.
The circle is complete.
I am living in Eternity.
The ways of this world
are the ways of Heaven.

New York, mid - 1949

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

Baseball Couplet - Donald Hall

When the tall puffy
Figure wearing number
nine starts
late for the fly ball,
laboring forward
like a lame truckhorse
startled by a gartersnake,
--this old fellow
whose body we remember
as sleek and nervous as a filly's--
and barely catches it
in his glove's
tip, we rise and applaud weeping:
On a green field we observe the ruin
of even the bravest
body, as Odysseus
wept to glimpse
among the shades the shadow
of Achilles.

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

April 5, 2009 is the twelfth anniversary of Allen Ginsberg's death. It is also opening day of the baseball season. Today we celebrate both. I'd like to think Ginsberg (not noted as a great baseball fan) would appreciate Hall's depiction of the beginning of physical decline and the evocation of the ancient Greeks.

Looking Around, Believing - Gary Soto

2009-04-04T05:23:00.001-04:00

How strange that we can begin at any time.
With two feet we get down the street.
With a hand we undo the rose.
With an eye we lift up the peach tree
And hold it up to the wind — white blossoms
At our feet. Like today. I started
In the yard with my daughter,
With my wife poking at a potted geranium,
And now I am walking down the street,
Amazed that the sun is only so high,
Just over the roof, and a child
Is singing through a rolled newspaper
And a terrier is leaping like a flea
And at the bakery I pass, a palm,
Like a suctioning starfish, is pressed
To the window. We're keeping busy —
This way, that way, we're making shadows
Where sunlight was, making words
Where there was only noise in the trees.

God Says Yes to Me - Kaylin Haught

2009-04-03T18:42:00.000-04:00

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes