Other people's poems

Poem of the Day: The End of Science Fiction

BY LISEL MUELLER

This is not fantasy, this is our life.

We are the characters

who have invaded the moon,

who cannot stop their computers.

We are the gods who can unmake

the world in seven days.

Both hands are stopped at noon.

We are beginning to live forever,

in lightweight, aluminum bodies

with numbers stamped on our backs.

We dial our words like Muzak.

We hear each other through water.

The genre is dead. Invent something new.

Invent a man and a woman

naked in a garden,

invent a child that will save the world,

a man who carries his father

out of a burning city.

Invent a spool of thread

that leads a hero to safety,

invent an island on which he abandons

the woman who saved his life

with no loss of sleep over his betrayal.

Invent us as we were

before our bodies glittered

and we stopped bleeding:

invent a shepherd who kills a giant,

a girl who grows into a tree,

a woman who refuses to turn

her back on the past and is changed to salt,

a boy who steals his brother's birthright

and becomes the head of a nation.

Invent real tears, hard love,

slow-spoken, ancient words,

difficult as a child's

first steps across a room.

Poem of the Day: The Whole Mess ... Almost

BY GREGORY CORSO

I ran up six flights of stairs

to my small furnished room   

opened the window

and began throwing out

those things most important in life

First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink:

"Don't! I'll tell awful things about you!"

"Oh yeah? Well, I've nothing to hide ... OUT!"

Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement:   

"It's not my fault! I'm not the cause of it all!" "OUT!"   

Then Love, cooing bribes: "You'll never know impotency!   

All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!"

I pushed her fat ass out and screamed:

"You always end up a bummer!"

I picked up Faith Hope Charity

all three clinging together:

"Without us you'll surely die!"

"With you I'm going nuts! Goodbye!"

Then Beauty ... ah, Beauty—

As I led her to the window

I told her: "You I loved best in life

... but you're a killer; Beauty kills!"   

Not really meaning to drop her

I immediately ran downstairs

getting there just in time to catch her   

"You saved me!" she cried

I put her down and told her: "Move on."

Went back up those six flights

went to the money

there was no money to throw out.

The only thing left in the room was Death   

hiding beneath the kitchen sink:

"I'm not real!" It cried

"I'm just a rumor spread by life ... "   

Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all   

and suddenly realized Humor

was all that was left—

All I could do with Humor was to say:   

"Out the window with the window!"

Toes He painted my toenails red. Lieing in bed, my foot in his lap Carefully applying polish to each nail His face a mask of concentration Trying to get it just right, I had to laugh because he looked so intent. He smiled and leaned over and kissed my knee. 'Are you always going to paint my toes? ' I had asked him and he just grinned and said. 'Forever, Baby.' Today I looked down and saw the polish Was cracked and worn and coming off. I remembered that promish he made And couldn't keep. I set about removing the last of the polish He had so carefully applied weeks ago. I reached for the red polish, But then put it away. Red was for him. So I painted them pink instead, My favorite color, My toes again. Sandra Brennan Poem of the Day: "I am happy living simply" BY MARINA TSVETAEVA I am happy living simply: like a clock, or a calendar. Worldly pilgrim, thin, wise—as any creature. To know the spirit is my beloved. To come to things—swift as a ray of light, or a look. To live as I write: spare—the way God asks me—and friends do not. 1919 No Man Is An Island No man is an island, Entire of itself, Every man is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thy friend's Or of thine own were: Any man's death diminishes me, Because I am involved in mankind, And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee. John Donne Poem of the Day: Ill-Advised Love Poem BY JOHN YAU Come live with me And we will sit Upon the rocks By shallow rivers Come live with me And we will plant acorns In each other's mouth It would be our way Of greeting the earth Before it shoves us Back into the snow Our interior cavities Brimming with Disagreeable substances Come live with me Before winter stops To use the only pillow The sky ever sleeps on Our interior cavities Brimming with snow Come live with me Before spring Swallows the air And birds sing Poem of the Day: Middle-Aged BY EZRA POUND "'Tis but a vague, invarious delight. As gold that rains about some buried king. As the fine flakes, When tourists frolicking Stamp on his roof or in the glazing light Try photographs, wolf down their ale and cakes And start to inspect some further pyramid; As the fine dust, in the hid cell beneath Their transitory step and merriment, Drifts through the air, and the sarcophagus Gains yet another crust Of useless riches for the occupant, So I, the fires that lit once dreams Now over and spent, Lie dead within four walls And so now love Rains down and so enriches some stiff case, And strews a mind with precious metaphors, And so the space Of my still consciousness Is full of gilded snow, The which, no cat has eyes enough To see the brightness of." Poem of the Day: All This and More BY MARY KARR The Devil's tour of hell did not include    a factory line where molten lead    spilled into mouths held wide, no electric drill spiraling screws into hands and feet, nor giant pliers    to lower you into simmering vats. Instead, a circle of light opened on your stuffed armchair, whose chintz orchids did not boil and change, and the Devil adjusted    your new spiked antennae almost delicately, with claws curled and lacquered black, before he spread    his leather wings to leap    into the acid-green sky. So your head became a tv hull, a gargoyle mirror. Your doppelganger    sloppy at the mouth and swollen at the joints    enacted your days in sinuous    slow motion, your lines delivered with a mocking sneer. Sometimes    the frame froze, reversed, began    again: the red eyes of a friend you cursed, your girl child cowered    behind the drapes, parents alive again    and puzzled by this new form. That's why you clawed your way back to this life. Poem of the Day: Silence BY BILLY COLLINS There is the sudden silence of the crowd above a player not moving on the field, and the silence of the orchid. The silence of the falling vase before it strikes the floor, the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child. The stillness of the cup and the water in it, the silence of the moon and the quiet of the day far from the roar of the sun. The silence when I hold you to my chest, the silence of the window above us, and the silence when you rise and turn away. And there is the silence of this morning which I have broken with my pen, a silence that had piled up all night like snow falling in the darkness of the house— the silence before I wrote a word and the poorer silence now. Believe in Dreams Believe in dreams when you`re alone, When nothing makes your soul smile, If you don`t want to speak by phone And read by own written file. Believe in dreams when tears are falling down, When people hate you for unusual thought. Believe in dreams if you`re a funny clown, Believe like all philosophers were taught. Believe in dreams and sun will shine so bright, You`ll get miracles from a friendly hand. Believe in dreams, you shouldn`t go and fight, You`ll go with me on this way till the end. Believe my friend in clumsy, noisy mind, In each love story you have got inside. Believe in me and stand in angel`s side, You`ll see my light is wonderful and bright. Ekaterina Polischuk  The Wise Dead men are wisest, for they know How far the roots of flowers go, How long a seed must rot to grow. Dead men alone bear frost and rain On throbless heart and heatless brain, And feel no stir of joy or pain. Dead men alone are satiate; They sleep and dream and have no weight, To curb their rest, of love or hate. Strange, men should flee their company, Or think me strange who long to be Wrapped in their cool immunity. Countee Cullen  Poem of the Day: The White House BY JOEL CRAIG He knows how to do what he sets out to do                                                        with perfectly obvious procedure. The sea                                                        is dark and forbidding. The horizon                                                        is dark and forbidding. Even from a distance, the less said the better. The colors in some of these landscapes                                                        are perfectly desperate. In a portrait there is never anything wrong                                                       with the mouth. There is never anything wrong                                                       with anything. Machines are not choosers.                                                       The next best things are certain. Heaven                                                       knowing the next best things. The young                                                       can explain it, but who would they explain                                                       it to? More promise than performance                                                       as all sorts of things begin to interfere. An energetic hostess seated me at the counter                                                       next to a beautiful woman. It is possible                                                       the timid portion of the population                                                       unless held firmly in check will imitate                                                       the silliness of timid people of years ago. Supplication is valued. As soon as I learned the facts I gave up                                                       on the exchange. She wanted something                                                       mysterious, as if everything were the same. Life changes and so-called truth changes with it. The businesslike                                                       haste of the surgeon as he scolds the public.                                                       To look at him and the thing he can never look at                                                       shudderingly as the blood is drawn                                                       is the duty of every patriot. In a constructive age such as this I should have neglected everything                                                       for the supreme duty of aiding                                                       in the reconstruction. I took my courage, which starts everywhere and goes                                                       nowhere, and spoke to her. Here                                                       one can unquestionably infer the inside                                                       from the outside. The leaders of the free world, assembled as if by magic,                                                       seem to have the enemy at their mercy.                                                       It can be argued that Christ himself spoke                                                       to the mob. The crowd will stop                                                       to see almost anything. The crowd will stop                                                       to see something about almost everything. A Woman's Last Word I. Let's contend no more, Love, Strive nor weep: All be as before, Love, ---Only sleep! II. What so wild as words are? I and thou In debate, as birds are, Hawk on bough! III. See the creature stalking While we speak! Hush and hide the talking, Cheek on cheek! IV. What so false as truth is, False to thee? Where the serpent's tooth is Shun the tree--- V. Where the apple reddens Never pry--- Lest we lose our Edens, Eve and I. VI. Be a god and hold me With a charm! Be a man and fold me With thine arm! VII. Teach me, only teach, Love As I ought I will speak thy speech, Love, Think thy thought--- VIII. Meet, if thou require it, Both demands, Laying flesh and spirit In thy hands. IX. That shall be to-morrow Not to-night: I must bury sorrow Out of sight: X ---Must a little weep, Love, (Foolish me!) And so fall asleep, Love, Loved by thee. Robert Browning  Poem of the Day: Epilogue BY ROBERT LOWELL Those blessèd structures, plot and rhyme— why are they no help to me now I want to make something imagined, not recalled? I hear the noise of my own voice: The painter's vision is not a lens, it trembles to caress the light. But sometimes everything I write    with the threadbare art of my eye seems a snapshot, lurid, rapid, garish, grouped, heightened from life, yet paralyzed by fact. All's misalliance. Yet why not say what happened? Pray for the grace of accuracy Vermeer gave to the sun's illumination stealing like the tide across a map to his girl solid with yearning. We are poor passing facts, warned by that to give each figure in the photograph his living name. Poem of the Day: Song BY JOHN FULLER You don't listen to what I say.    When I lean towards you in the car    You simply smile and turn away. It's been like this most of the day,    sitting and sipping, bar after bar:    You don't listen to what I say. You squeeze a lemon from a tray,    And if you guess how dear you are    You simply smile and turn away. Beyond the hairline of the bay    the steamers call that shore is far.    You don't listen to what I say: Surely there's another way? The waiter brings a small guitar.    You simply smile and turn away. Sometimes I think you are too gay,    smiling and smiling, hour after hour.    You don't listen to what I say. You simply smile and turn away. Poem of the Day: After the Stroke BY DAVID BOTTOMS By the time he'd hit eighty, he was something out of Ovid, his long beak thin and hooked,                                             the fingers of one hand curled and stiff. Still, he never flew. Only sat in his lawn chair by the highway, waving a bum wing at passing cars. I was a timid kid, easily spooked. And it seemed like touchy gods were everywhere—in the horns and roar of diesels, in thunder, wind, tree limbs thrashing the windows at night. I was ashamed to be afraid of my grandfather. But the hair on his ears!                                    The cackle in his throat! Then on his birthday, my mother coaxed me into the yard. I carried the cake with the one tiny candle and sat it on a towel in the shade. I tried not to tremble, but it felt like gods were everywhere—in the grimy clouds smothering the pine tops, the chainsaw in Cantrell's woods—everywhere, everywhere, and from the look of the man in the lawn chair, he'd pissed one off.