LIB.html


   
      
         John
         McKernan "When
         You Enter Heaven"
      
      
         Swaim
         |
         Kominyakaa
         
      
   
   
      
         Laurie
         Kuntz "Gretal"
      
      
         Jerry
         Jenkins "Mirror."
      
   
   
      
         Whitman |  Auden 
"Wolf " by Billy Collins 
      
      
         Andrew
         Hudgins
         Prayer
         
      
   
   
      
         Jack Bedell | Yeats 
         Ron Wallace "Palindrome" 
      
      
         W.D. Snodgrass 
         Leaving the Motel
      
   
   
      
         Michael Estabrook 
         "She's Raging at Me from the Inside."
      
      
         Gregory Corso 
         "Hello. . ."
      
   
   
      
         Paul Zimmer
         "The
         Origins of Love."
      
      
         Derek Mahon
 "Rage for Order"
      
   


 Philip Larkin
"At Grass" | "Deceptions." 
"This Be the Verse." |"The Whitsun Weddings" 
 "Toads" | "Ignorance" 
Prose Poem"About" 
Poem"Sad Steps." 
Poem"First Sight." 
Poem"Vers de Societe" 
Poem "Church Going." 
Poem "This Be the Verse." 
Poem "Home is so Sad." 
Poem "Days." 
American Academy of Poets Bio and Links 
Poem "To Failure." 
Poem "Talking in Bed." 
More Poems 
Poems "Money" & "Friday Night at the Royal Station Hotel" 
Poem "Maiden Name." 
Poem"Next, Please." 
Poem "Aubade." 
Frederick Turner 
"Arrival Matters" 
"On Gibb's Law" 
Links to Other Poems 
"A Primer of the Daily Round" 
Henry Reed's"Lessons of War." 
Walking with Kafka 
Links toRobert Frost 
Charles Bukowski "To the Whore who took my poems." 
Jack Bedell    "Sleeping with the Net-Maker." 
W.S. Graham "A Note to the Difficult One." 
Katherine Perry. "Sara Darns her socks in Bright Red." 
Poem Library Extension
Leonard Cohen .Poem about Marianna | My Mind, My Mind, My Mind

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded
with perfumes
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation,
it is odorless,
It is from my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and
naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine
My respiration and inspirations, the beating of my hearts, the passing of
blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and the shore and
dark-colored sea-rocks, and of hay and the barn,
The sound of the belched words of my voice, loos'd the the eddies of the wind.
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on trees as the supple boughs wag.
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and
hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full noon trill, the song of me rising from
bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? Have you reckoned the earth much?
Have you practiced so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems.

Stop this day and night with me and you shall posses the origin of all poems,
You shall posses the good of earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, no look
through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, not take things from me,you
shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

A wolf is reading a book of fairy tales.
The moon hangs over the forest, a lamp.

He is not assuming a human position,
say, cross-legged against a tree,
as he would in a cartoon.

This is a real wolf, standing on all fours,
his rich fur bristling in the night air:
his head bent over the book open on the ground.

He does not sit down for the words
would be too far away to be legible,
and it is with difficulty that he turns
each page with his nose and forepaws.

When he finishes the last tale
he lies down in pine needles
He thinks about what he has read,
the stories passing over his mind
like clouds crossing the moon.

A zig-zag of wind shakes down hazelnuts.
The eyes of owls yellow in the branches.

The wolf now paces restlessly in circles
around the book until he is absorbed
by the power of its narration;
making him one of its illustrations,
a small paper wolf, flat as print.

Later that night, lost in a town of pigs,
he knocks over houses with his breath.

I am five
        wading out into deep
                sunny grass,
Unmindful of snakes
        & yellow jackets, out
                To the yello flowers
Quivering in sluggish heat.
        Don't mess with me
                'Cause I have my Lone Ranger
Six-shooter. I can hurt
        You with questions
                like silver bullets.
The tall flowers in my dreams are
        Big as the First State Bank
                & they eat all the people
Except the ones I love.
                With mouths like where
Babies come from. I am five
        I'll dance for you
                If you close your eyes. No
Peeping through your fingers
        I don't supposed to be
                This close to the tracks
One afternoon I saw
        What a train did to a cow.
                Sometimes I stand so close
I can see the eyse
        Of men hiding in boxcars
                Sometimes they wave
& hollar for me to get back. I laugh
        When trains make the dogs
I also know bees
        Can't live without flowers
                I wonder why Daddy
Calls Mama honey.
        All the bees in the world
                Live in little white houses.
Except the ones in these flowers.
        All stcky & sweet inside.
                I wonder what death tastes like.
Sometimes I toss butterflies
         Back into the air.
                I wish I knew why
The music in my head
        makes me scared.
                But I know things
I don't supposed to know.
        I could start walkinh
                & never stop
These yellow flowers
        Go on foever.
                Almost to Detroit.
Almost to the sea.
        My mama says I'm a mistake
                That I made her a bad girl.
My playhouse is underneath
        Our house, & I hear people
                Telling each other secrets

Beyond the carved teak balustrade
When cooling mist of evening falls,
I chatter with my serving maid.

Purple wisterias cascade
Around the guarded palace walls
Beyond the carved teak balustrade.

Arrayed in all my precious jade
I wander through the lonely halls.
I chatter with my serving maid.

In my pavilion of green shade
I hear the fabled songbird calls
Beyond the carved teak balustrade.

I listen for your serenade
In vain; then, wrapped in silken shawls,
I chatter with my serving maid.

My heart grows desolate, afraid;
The loveliness around me palls.
Beyond the carved teak balustrade
I chatter with my serving maid.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone
Silence the Pianos and with muffled drum,
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let airplanes circle mourning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message he is dead.
Put great bows around the necks of public doves.
Let traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East, and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest.
My noon, my midnight, my talk my song,
I thought love would last forever. I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now, tell everyone
Pack up the moon, and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy. Kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.

A peels an apple, while B kneels to God.
C Telephones to D, who has a hand
On E's knee, F coughs, G turns up the sod
For H's grave, I do not understand
But J is bringing one clay pigeon down
While K brings down a nightstick on L's head,
And M takes mustard, N drives into town,
O goes to bed with P, and Q drops dead,
R lies to S, but happens to be heard
By T, who tells U not to fire V
For having to give W the word
That X is deceiving Y and Z,
Who happens just now to remember A
Peeling an apple somewhere far away.

Deceptions
"Of course I was drugged, and so heavily I did not regain my consciousness till the next morning.
I was horrified to discover that I had been ruined, and for some days I was inconsolable, and cried
like a child to be killed or sent back to my aunt." --Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor

Even so distant, I can taste the grief,
Bitter and sharp with stalks, he made you gulp.
The sun's occasional print, the brisk brief
Worry of wheels along the street outside
Where bridal London bows the other way,
And light, unanswerable and tall and wide,
Forbids the scar to heal, and drives
Shame out of hiding. All the unhurried day
Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.

Slums, years, have buried you. I would not dare
Console you if I could. What can be said,
Except that suffering is exact, but where
Desire takes charge, readings will grow erratic?
For you would hardly care
That you were less decieved, out on that bed,
Than he was, stumbling up the breathless stair
To burst into fulfilment's desolate attic.

I walk into your house, a friend.
Your Kids swarm up my steep hillsides
Or swing in my branches. Your boy rides
Me for his horsie; we pretend
Some troll threatens our lady fair
I swing him squealing through the air
And down. Just what could I defend?

I tuck them in, sometimes, at night.
That's one secret we never tell.
Giggling in their dark room, they yell
They love me. Their father, home tonight
Sees your girl curled up on my knee
And tells her "git"-she's bothering me.
I nod; She'd better think he's right.

Once they're in bed, he calls you "dear."
The boob-tube shows some hokum on
Adultery and loss; we yawn
over a stale joke book and beer
Till it's your bedtime. I must leave.
I watch the squat toad pluck your sleeve.
As always, you stand shining near

Your window. I stand, Prince of Lies
Who's seen bliss; now I can drive back
Home past wreck and car lot, past shack
Slum and steelmill reddening the skies,
Past drive-ins, the hot piuts where our teens
Fingerfuck and the huge screen's
Images fill their vacant eyes.

Down this white-hot avenue
In a grayish-silver haze,
I am driving under blue
And brilliant centuries of days;

And a south wind blows and blows
Tosses the crepe-myrtle trees
white and mauve and pink and rose,
Blows the pollen and the bees;

Where the paving-lines converge
In their clot of blazing mist,
Where the sky and city merge,
Is the point where I exist.
--Frederick Turner

Fathers read to daughters,
teach love of words and stories,
their hearts full of light.
The fathers give to love
the only hope they have?
But have they hope only?
The love to give fathers
the light of full hearts.
Their stories and words of love
teach daughters to read fathers.
--Ron Wallace

I'm walking with Kafka in downtown Dayton, Ohio,
our shadows reflected in the broken windo
of this abandoned diner. "Where are you taking me?"
he asks. "To the library. I want to show you
all the Kafka books." "Oy vay, famous if Dayton.
I told Max to burn my manuscripts."
Even the goyem read you Franz.
They Idnetify with your alienation."
"My what?" "You don't know what alienation is?"
"Lonely? Is that it? Why so fancy?"
"Haven't you read Time or Newsweek?"
"My writing was too personal, too painful to be
Published. I wrote for myself because I had to."
"You knew dreams foretold the future
as Joseph's did in Egypt." "Yes I'm another
castoff, a crazy mixed-up Jew." Shall we go to
the library?" "Will I be recognized?" "I doubt it.
Americans don't know you unless you've been on TV."
"Good. I'm anonymouse in Dayton. Tell me, is there
a Yiddish theater here?" "No, but maybe you could start one."
"Let me tell you something very personal. I'm glad
I died before the Nazis. I wouldn;t want to be a cockroach
In such a place. Goodbye my friend." "Goodby Kafka."

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence
The river's level drifting breadth began,
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.

All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept
For miles inland,
A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.
Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and
Canals with floatings of industrial froth;
A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped
And rose: and now and then a smell of grass
Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth
Until the next town, new and nondescript,
Approached with acres of dismantled cars.

At first, I didn't notice what a noise
The wedding made
Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys
The interest of what's happening in the shade,
And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls
I took for porters larking with the mails,
And went on reading. Once we started, though,
We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls
In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,
All posed irresolutely, watching us go,

As if out on the end of an event
Waving goodbye
To something that survived it. Struck, I leant
More promptly out next time, more curiously,
And saw it all again in different terms:
The fathers with broad belts under their suits
And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;
An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms,
The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes,
The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres that

Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.
Yes, from cafes
And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed
Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days
Were coming to an end. All down the line
Fresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round;
The last confetti and advice were thrown,
And, as we moved, each face seemed to define
Just what it saw departing: children frowned
At something dull; fathers had never known

Success so huge and wholly farcical;
The women shared
The secret like a happy funeral;
While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared
At a religious wounding. Free at last,
And loaded with the sum of all they saw,
We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.
Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast
Long shadows over major roads, and for
Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem

Just long enough to settle hats and say
I nearly died,
A dozen marriages got under way.
They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
- An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,
And someone running up to bowl- and none
Thought of the others they would never meet
Or how their lives would all contain this hour.
I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:

There we were aimed. And as we raced across
Bright knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail
Travelling coincidence; and what it held
Stood ready to be loosed with all the power
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.

If hot solution, saturate,
Be set upon a ledge to cool,
Rayed crystals will precipitate
On dust no thicker than a molecule;

When the slow chilling of the night
Crosses the threshold of the freeze,
The stars shine out as sharp and bright
As frostflowers in their fractal vorticies;

The first white gas that was the world,
To ease the heat and press of birth,
Froze into forms as it unfurled:
The starry galaxies, the living earth;

Such pressure drives this crystal trance,
This thickening of art and hour,
Where order tumbles from the dance
Of dying syllables and forms a flower.

All my dreams are for you,
All the glimmers of my organs
Burning into warm humusm
all the doorways like suddenly
Blossoming arbors that you
Appear in, the sun that
You leaf in, the paths down
Which you diminish in anger
And the rain in which you swell.
The wind full of risings
And fallings and darkness
Full of the memory of them,
These are for you.
I am the shrub that shelters
The neat rows of our garden,
You are the inside of my poems,
The light side of my leaves.
Together we graft our love
Quietly onto the world.

On the stroke of this midnight
Let us cover our typewriters,
Throw down all pens and papers,
Build kindling fires in oil drums.
Let there be no more poems,
Not one more metaphor nor image,
No loose nor strict iambics,
No passion, anger, laughter.
Let no one cheat nor scab,
No furtive peeks in notebooks,
No secret scribbling in closets,
Let us dwell together in a void
Removed from beauty and truth.

Then let us see what happens,
How many trees will blight,
How earth wobbles and fractures,
Words loosen and fall from dictionaries.
People will move through life
Like worms swallowing
And excreting their tedious passage.
They'll beg us for one crippled line,
One near rhyme, One feeble dream,
And they will be so sorry
They will pay and pay and pay.

When the amaryllis thrusts up its leaves,
when the wood-lily's small white skulls fill with scent,
then things switch and veer.

That eclipse you sensed on the skylight was me
hunkered down, cracking my big knuckles
as I pondered you fingering your rosary, your virgin
cased in bronze. That cairn of stone in your heart

is how you hoard for God: proud that you can mortar your way
to the top, terrified you'll be struck dead attempting.
Little white thing dabbing alcohol

at the bloody scratch I cut across you,
I am the shape you craft as your own,
aspiration sorrowed to stone. In this body
I lift you over the city on rushing wings.

John McKernan "When You Enter Heaven"	Swaim \| Kominyakaa
Laurie Kuntz "Gretal"	Jerry Jenkins "Mirror."
Whitman \| Auden "Wolf " by Billy Collins	Andrew Hudgins Prayer
Jack Bedell \| Yeats Ron Wallace "Palindrome"	W.D. Snodgrass Leaving the Motel
Michael Estabrook "She's Raging at Me from the Inside."	Gregory Corso "Hello. . ."
Paul Zimmer "The Origins of Love."	Derek Mahon "Rage for Order"