"POems TO LIve By in UNCertain Times"

[Samsa]

Time Does NOt BrING RElief (Edna St Vincent Millay)

Time does not bring relief: you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain:
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from ev'ry mountain side,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart and my old thoughts abide.

There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
where never fell his foot or shone his face.
I say "There is no mem'ry of him here,"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

[Salena Child]

please stop

[Samsa]

MY CHILD BLOSSOMS SADLY

My child blossoms sadly.
He blossoms in spring without me,
he ripens in the sadness of my not being there.
I saw a cat playing with her kittens.
I shall not teach my son war,
I shall not teach him at all. I shall not be.
He puts sand in a small bucket.
He makes a sand cake.
I put sand in my body.
The cake crumbles. My body.


--Yehuda Amichai
(Translated by Ruth Nevo)

[Samsa]

The world is somewhere visibly round,
perfectly lighted, firm, free in space,

but why men die like kings or
sick animals, why tears stand
in living faces, why one forgets

the color of the eyes of the dead---


--Daniel Berrigan

[Samsa]

Tonight there must be people who are getting what they want.
I let my oars fall into the water.
Good for them. Good for them, getting what they want.

The night is so still that I forget to breathe.
The dark air is getting colder. Birds are leaving.

Tonight there are people getting just what they need.

The air is so still that it seems to stop my heart.
I remember you in a black and white photograph
taken this time of some year. You were leaning against
a half-shed tree, standing in the leaves the tree had lost.

When I finally exhale it takes forever to be over.

Tonight, there are people who are so happy,
that they have forgotten to worry about tomorrow.

Somewhere, people have entirely forgotten about tomorrow.
My hand trails in the water.
I should not have dropped those oars. Such a soft wind.


--Jennifer Michael Hecht

[Samsa]

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.


A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.


Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.


--Theodore Roethke

[Samsa]

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.



--Claude McKay

[Samsa]

At the gate, I sit in a row of blue seats
with the possible company of my death,
this sprawling miscellany of people--
carry-on bags and paperbacks--


that could be gathered in a flash
into a band of pilgrims on the last open road.
Not that I think
if our plane crumpled into a mountain


we would all ascend together,
holding hands like a ring of skydivers,
into a sudden gasp of brightness,
or that there would be some common place


for us to reunite to jubilize the moment,
some spaceless, pillarless Greece
where we could, at the count of three,
toss our ashes into the sunny air.


It's just the way that man has his briefcase
so carefully arranged,
the way that girl is cooling her tea,
and the flow of the comb that woman


passes through her daughter's hair...
and when you consider the altitude,
the secret parts of the engines,
and all the hard water and the deep canyons below...


well, I just think it would be good if one of us
maybe stood up and said a few words,
or, so as not to involve the police,
at least quietly wrote something down.


--Billy Collins

[Samsa]

I believe there is no justice,
but that cottongrass and bunchberry
grow on the mountain.

I believe that a scorpion's sting
will kill a man,
but that his wife will remarry.

I believe that, the older we get,
the weaker the body,
but the stronger the soul.

I believe that if you roll over at night
in an empty bed,
the air consoles you.

I believe that no one is spared
the darkness,
and no one gets all of it.

I believe we all drown eventually
in a sea of our making,
but that the land belongs to someone else.

I believe in destiny,
And I believe in free will.

I believe that, when all
the clocks break,
time goes on without them.

And I believe that whatever
pulls us under,
will do so gently,

so as not to disturb anyone,
so as not to interfere
with what we believe in

--Michael Blumenthal

[Salena Child]

There once was a man named Dave
Who kept a dead whore in his cave
You must admit
She smelled like shit
But imagine the money he saved

[mirrar]

for gods sakes somebody make it stop

[mirrar]

Originally posted by Salena Child
There once was a man named Dave
Who kept a dead whore in his cave
You must admit
She smelled like shit
But imagine the money he saved

you're my hero!

[Samsa]

1. Truly, I live in dark times!
The innocent word is folly. An unwrinkled forehead
Indicates insensitivity. Anyone who laughs
Has simply not yet heard
The terrible news.


What kind of times are these, when
A conversation about trees is almost a crime.—
Because it means we are silent about so many monstrous deeds!
That man there, crossing the street calmly
Is probably no longer in reach for his friends
Who are in danger?


It is true: I still earn my living.
But believe me: that is only an accident. None
Of what I do justifies me in eating my fill.
I am spared by accident. (If my luck runs out
I am lost.)
They say to me: Eat and drink! Be happy, that you have it!


But how can I eat and drink, when
I snatch what I eat from the starving man, and
The thirsty man lacks my glass of water?
And yet I eat and drink.


I, too, would like to be wise.
In the old books it says what wisdom is:
To hold oneself out of the strife of the world and to spend
The brief time without fear.
But to do without brute force
To repay evil with good
Not to fulfill one’s wishes, but to forget them:
This passes for wisdom.
All this I cannot do:
Truly, I live in dark times!


--Bertolt Brecht

(translated by Michael Kicey)

[Samsa]

Originally posted by Graveflower
jesus fuck, she's posting it in ONE THREAD now, stop complaining. The reason everyone was annoyed before was because it was multiple threads and now that it's in one, you still troll.

which is why i post it in multiple threads in the first place. anyways i'm deleting this topic and starting over. feel free to continue to be obnoxious fucking morons because you can't appreciate good poetry. really. go on.

[Samsa]

no i'm not. i changed my mind. it just goes to show how sad netphoria is that they won't let you do anythign nice for them. whatever. go on screaming as if good poetry suddenly = medusa *ahhhh aye me i am turned to stone god forbid i be exposed to something useful* oh well

[Samsa]

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.


--Wendell Berry

[bonsor]

You're shoving it down their throats, suze. It's impossible for people to appreciate something that's keeping them from breathing.

[Samsa]

All right. Try this,
Then. Every body
I know and care for,
And every body
Else is going
To die in a loneliness
I can't imagine and a pain
I don't know. We had
To go on living. We
Untangled the net, we slit
The body of this fish
Open from the hinge of the tail
To a place beneath the chin
I wish I could sing of.
I would just as soon we let
The living go on living.
An old poet whom we believe in
Said the same thing, and so
We paused among the dark cattails and prayed
For the muskrats,
For the ripples below their tails,
For the little movements that we knew the crawdads were making
under water,
For the right-hand wrist of my cousin who is a policeman.
We prayed for the game warden's blindness.
We prayed for the road home.
We ate the fish.
There must be something very beautiful in my body,
I am so happy.

--James Wright

[Samsa]

Originally posted by ******
You're shoving it down their throats, suze. It's impossible for people to appreciate something that's keeping them from breathing.

umm. and exactly who is deciding to clix on my topic?

[Samsa]

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.


--Adam Zagajewski

(Translated by Clare Cavanagh)

[Samsa]

Think in ways you've never thought before.
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you've ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he's carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you've never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he's about
To give you something large: tell you you're forgiven,
Or that it's not necessary to work all the time, or that it's
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.


--RObert Bly

[Samsa]

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.

History says, don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.


--Seamus Heaney

[Samsa]

Originally posted by Graveflower


The problem was that it cluttered the board. It made it messy and hard to ignore. It all fits a theme and could just have been made in one topic. People would have flamed anyway, but it was still kind of annoying.

BUT IT'S NOT AS AESTHETICALLY PLEASING IF IT'SA LL SQUISHED ONTO ONE TOPIC. I PREFER IT TO BE IN SEPARATE POSTS THAT'S WHY YOU CAN EVALUATE EACH POEM BY ITSELF IN ITS OWN LITTLE BLACK VACCUUM

[Samsa]

I know the truth - give up all other truths!
No need for people anywhere on earth to struggle.
Look - it is evening, look, it is nearly night:
what do you speak of, poets, lovers, generals?

The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew,
the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet.
And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we
who never let each other sleep above it.

[Samsa]

You who live secure
In your warm houses,
Who return at evening to find
Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider whether this is a man:
Who labours in the mud
Who knows no peace
Who fights for a crust of bread
Who dies at a yes or a no.
Consider whether this is a woman,
Without hair or name
With no more strength to remember
Eyes empty and womb cold...

Consider that this has been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them on your hearts
When you are in your house,
when you walk on your way,
When you go to bed, when you rise.
Repeat them to your children....


--Primo Levi

[Mayfuck]

*clips*

[Samsa]

I believe
in the sun
even when
it is not shining

I believe
in love
when feeling
it not

I believe
in God
even when
he is silent

(Inscription found on the walls of a cellar in Cologne, Germany, where Jews hid from the Nazis)

[funnygeezus]

Originally posted by Samsa


BUT IT'S NOT AS AESTHETICALLY PLEASING IF IT'SA LL SQUISHED ONTO ONE TOPIC. I PREFER IT TO BE IN SEPARATE POSTS THAT'S WHY YOU CAN EVALUATE EACH POEM BY ITSELF IN ITS OWN LITTLE BLACK VACCUUM

WHY DID YOU THINK IT WAS NECESSARY TO POINT OUT THAT THE VACUUM WAS BLACK, HUH?????!!!??

[Mayfuck]

Check ur e-mail.

P.S. no AIM on this comp.

[Fattening Ass]

Originally posted by Samsa
no i'm not. i changed my mind. it just goes to show how sad netphoria is that they won't let you do anythign nice for them. whatever. go on screaming as if good poetry suddenly = medusa *ahhhh aye me i am turned to stone god forbid i be exposed to something useful* oh well

shut up already.