Bag (a revision) by DjWhite

When it's done,

all that's left is what

I've carried


I'm an over looked

forgotten brown


oh  selfish  hedonist

you need me


and will find me

somewhere

Krogers

a State Store

hidden
at the end of check-out lines

smooth and flat.



My progenitors have been

gone for hundreds of years,

but, I'm still here

wasteful  wasted

dead as they are

dead as you


You won't remember me
and don't want too

So, cruel

your lessons learned,

narcissistic madness


such bankrupt morality
unfolds

my creases looking

for God

yet you


stuff the Y
of my thighs

with fifths of  E & J

or sweaty cans of  211s

then leave
parts of me


under a Canal street bridge

tenting

men in the middle of winter

or

emptied

crumbled

flapped up

against a neighbor's fence.

The Bells by Edgar Allan Poe [My Commentary]

Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849

Let me start off by saying, I refuse to post this poem.

Yes, this is a poetry site, and I do post poems  but this poem The Bells by Edgar Allan Poe just pisses me off!

Why you may ask.

Well, I hate noise.

I hate all kinds of noise -- even the noise chasing its tail behind my forehead. It's all still noise!

When I first read The Bells, I had to put the book down and walk away. In fact I put it down several times. By the time I finished reading The Bells I went looking for a hammer. Sledge hammer, ball ping hammer, MALLET -- anything that I could use to smash any bell I could find.

I wanted to smash the hell out of Poe's bells.

After thinking about my reaction to this noisy poem, I realized that Poe did what an extraordinary writer/poet is suppose to do. They are suppose to invoke emotion from their readers.

Poe did exactly that -- he brought out such strong emotion in me that I had the urge to crush, kill, destroy any bell I could get my hands on.

Then I understood, that's what a great Poet does.

It's not that The Bells isn't a great poem, it's the fact that it is so great that it rung in my ears for days and days. 

Let's forget about the Literary purist who lives to dissect the corpse of a poem. The ones who look to see if the meter is off or the rhyme is forced or the metaphors are cliche. Let them eat the poem or poet if they want.

Poetry is truly a painting that is felt rather than seen.

I felt this poem and wanted to do serious damage to anything that rang, rung, tingled, chimed, etc...

*damn bells I hate noise*

So, if you want to read The Bells by Edgar Allan Poe have at it =====> The Bells

Rhapsody on a Windy Night -- by T.S.Eliot

T.S. Eliot 1888 - 1965

TWELVE o'clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

Half-past one,
The street-lamp sputtered,
The street-lamp muttered,
The street-lamp said, "Regard that woman
Who hesitates toward you in the light of the door
Which opens on her like a grin.
You see the border of her dress
Is torn and stained with sand,
And you see the corner of her eye
Twists like a crooked pin."

The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton,
Stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.

Half-past two,
The street-lamp said,
"Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,
Slips out its tongue
And devours a morsel of rancid butter."
So the hand of the child, automatic,
Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.
I could see nothing behind that child's eye.
I have seen eyes in the street
Trying to peer through lighted shutters,
And a crab one afternoon in a pool,
An old crab with barnacles on his back,
Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.

Half-past three,
The lamp sputtered,
The lamp muttered in the dark.
The lamp hummed:
"Regard the moon,
La lune ne garde aucune rancune,
She winks a feeble eye,
She smiles into corners.
She smooths the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
Her hand twists a paper rose,
That smells of dust and eau de Cologne,
She is alone
With all the old nocturnal smells
That cross and cross across her brain."
The reminiscence comes
Of sunless dry geraniums
And dust in crevices,
Smells of chestnuts in the streets,
And female smells in shuttered rooms,
And cigarettes in corridors
And cocktail smells in bars.

The lamp said,
"Four o'clock,
Here is the number on the door.
Memory!
You have the key,
The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair.
Mount.
The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,
Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life."

The last twist of the knife.

More on T.S. Eliot

**Personal note: Deep thinker this poet makes -- what else can be said!**

You Take My Hand -- by Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood -- Canadian Poet

You take my hand and
I'm suddenly in a bad movie,
it goes on and on and
why am I fascinated

We waltz in slow motion
through an air stale with aphrodisms
we meet behind the endless ptted palms
you climb through the wrong windows

Other people are leaving
but I always stay till the end
I paid my money, I
want to see what happens.

In chance bathtubs I have to
peel you off me
in the form of smoke and melted
celluloid

Have to face it I'm
finally an addict,
the smell of popcorn and worn plush
lingers for weeks

I Chop Some Parsley While Listening To Art Blakey's Version of "Three Blind Mice" by Billy Collins

Billy Collins former U.S. Poet Laureate

And I start wondering how they come to be blind.
If it was congenital, they would be brothers and sister,
and I think of the poor mother
brooding over her sightless young triplets.


Or was it a common accident, all three caught
in a searing explosion, a firework perhaps?

If not,
if each came to his or her blindness separately,


how did thy ever manage to find one another?
Would it not be difficult for a blind mouse
to locate even one fellow mouse with vision
let alone two other blind ones?


And how, in their tiny darkness,
could they possibly have run after a farmer's wife
or anyone else's wife for that matter?
Not to mention why.


Just so she could cut off their tails
with a carving knife, is the cynic's answer,
but the thought of them without eyes
and now without tails to trail through the moist grass


or slip around the corner of a baseboard
has the cynic who always lounges within me
up off his couch and at the window
trying to hide the rising softness that he feels.


By now I am on to dicing an onion
which might account for the wet stinging
in my own eyes, though Freddie Hubbard's
mournful trumpet on "Blue Moon,"


which happens to be the next cut,
cannot be said to be making matters any better.




[Personal Note: I absolutely ADORE this poet. I had the pleasure of seeing Billy read this poem in person up at Kent State. It was then I fell in love with his poetry. It was then I fell in love with poetry period.]

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La Vie C'est La Vie by Jessie Redmon Fauset

Jessie Redmon Fauset

On summer afternoons I sit
Quiescent by you in the park
And idly watch the sunbeams gild
And tint the as-trees' bark.

Or else I watch the squirrel frisk
And chaffer in the grassy lane;
And all the while mark you voice
Breaking with love and pain.

I know a woman who would give
Her chance of heaven to take my place;
To see the love-light in your eyes,
The love-glow on your face!

And there's a man whose lightest word
Can set my chilly blood afire;
Fulfillment of his least behest
Dines my life's desire.

But he will none of me, nor I
Of you. Nor you of her. 'Tis said
The world is full of jests like these. --
I wish that I were dead.

[Note: Most of the known renaissance writers were men: Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Jean Eugene Toomer but, there were some wonderful renaissance women poets and Jessie Redmon Fauset was one of them. Read more about Jessie Redmon Fauset]

Technorati Tags: jessie redmon fauset, poet, harlem renaissance

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Bag

When it's done,

all that's left is what

I've carried.


I'm one of those, over-looked

forgotten browns

yet,

when you need me

you find me


somewhere,



maybe at Krogers or,

a State Liquor store buried

at the end of the check-out line

smooth and flat.



My progenitors have been

dead for hundreds of years,

but, I'm still here,

wasteful, wasted

dead as they are,

dead as you.



I'm sure you don't remember me,

or the many times you've unfolded

my creases, stuffed

me with fifths of E & J or cans of 211

then, after I'd carry

them to a back alley,

you'd throw me away.



Times during renaissance

I'd earn respect

from fraternities and sororities

with my colorism tests.


But now, you can find me

under the Canal street bridge tenting

a man in the middle of winter,


or emptied, crumbled,

and plastering myself

against a neighbor's fence.

[my newest poem]

Blues by Elizabeth Alexander

Elizabeth Alexander

I am lazy, the laziest
girl in the world.
I sleep during the day when I want to,
'til my face is creased and swollen,
'til my lips are dry and hot.

I eat as I please: cookies and milk
after lunch, butter and sour cream
on my baked potato, foods that
slothful people eat, that turn
yellow and opaque beneath the skin.

Sometimes come dinnertime Sunday
I am still in my nightgown, the one
with the lace trim listing because
I have not mended it.

Many days I do not exercise, only consider it,
then rub my curdy belly and lie down. Even
my poems are lazy.

I use syllabics instead of iambs,
prefer slant to the gong of full rhyme,
write briefly while others go for pages.

And yesterday, for example, I did not work at all!

I got in my car and drove to
factory outlet stores, purchased
stockings and panties and socks
with my father's money.

To think, in childhood I missed only
one day of school per year. I went
to ballet class four days a week
at four-forty-five
and on Saturdays, beginning always
with plie, ending with curtsy.

To think, I knew only industry,
the industry of my race
and of immigrants, the radio
tuned always to the station
that said, Line up your summer
job moths in advance.

Work hard and do not shame your family,
who worked hard to give you what you have.

There is no sin but sloth.
Burn to a wick and keep moving.

I avoided sleep for years,
up at night replaying
evening news stories about
nearby jailbreaks, fat people
who ate fried chicken and woke up dead.

In sleep I am looking for poems
in the shape of open V's
of birds flying in formation,
or open arms saying, I forgive you, all.



From Body of Life by Elizabeth Alexander, pulbished by Tia Chucha Press. Copyright 1996 by Elizabeth Alexander.

Technorati Tags: alexander, poet, poem

Quilts by Nikki Giovanni

Nikki Giovanni

(for Sally Sellers)




Like a fading piece of cloth

I am a failure


No longer do I cover tables filled with food and laughter

My seams are frayed my hems falling my strength no longer able

To hold the hot and cold




I wish for those first days

When just woven I could keep water

From seeping through

Repelled stains with the tightness of my weave

Dazzled the sunlight with my

Reflection




I grow old though pleased with my memories

The tasks I can no longer complete

Are balanced by the love of the tasks gone past



I offer no apology only

this plea:



When I am frayed and strained and drizzle at the end

Please someone cut a square and put me in a quilt

That might keep some child warm



And some old person with no one else to talk to

Will hear my whispers



And cuddle

near

Can You, Dear Laureate

What would you think,
Mr. Laureate, if you were reading
this over my shoulder,
capturing each word
as I typed.

Would you sigh to yourself
in exasperation, and mumble
in profane versified disgust.

Would you throw your arms
into a tree stance and grimace

toward the god of poetry
explaining to him
why this writer couldn't possibly
scribble a masterpiece --

none like
Collins, who can ask a reader
to water ski the surface of a poem

or Angelou who somehow
manages to rise from poetic dust.

Would you understand,
that sometimes my muse is bronzed,

a frozen Rodin's Thinker
and that this petrification

has me hunched in this chair
waiting for words to stop
by in pigeon droppings.

Can you, dear laureate,
understand that sometimes,
my measured meters

of emotion are lopsided
antique pillows,

packed with shreds of simile stuffing
sewn together with cliched thread.

Would you agree --

[that, my window watching the world
go by

cannonizing
brooks that talk to much

or homage to canicule's
sweet magnolia scents

are repetitive]

-- with my goldfish
(yes, I have one too, you know)

as he rounds and rounds
his bowl,

silently watching me
from across the room,
with his hypnotic stare

would you too, [then] quietly
mouth
why, why, why.

This Is a Photograph of Me by Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood

It was taken sometime ago.

At first it seems to be

a smeared

print: blurred lines and grey flecks

blended with the paper;


then, as you scan

it, you see in the left-hand corner

a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree

(balsam or spruce) emerging

and, to the right, halfway up

what ought to be a gentle

slope, a small frame house.



In the background there is a lake,

and beyond that, some low hills.


(The photograph was taken

the day after I drowned.


I am in the lake, in the center

of the picture, just under the surface.



It is difficult to say where

precisely, or to say

how large or small I am:

the effect of water

on light is a distortion


but if you look long enough,

eventually

you will be able to see me)

From the Circle Game by Margaret Atwood.


I discovered this poet on my usual jaunt along the internet. I was amazed by her writing and poetic eye. This poem is my favorite.

Margaret Atwood is from Ottawa, Ontario. She has a B.A. from Victoria College, University of Toronto, and an M.A. from Harvard. She's the author of over fifteen books . Read More...

Ms. Atwood ranks as my second favorite poet under Billy Collins.

When you're browsing in Barnes and Noble, or sitting in Borders Books, sipping a cup of green tea, invite Margaret to join you, you'll read a masterpiece in verse.

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You, Reader -- By Billy Collins

Billy Collins

I wonder how you are going to feel

when you find out

that I wrote this instead of you.

that it was I who got up early

to sit in the kitchen

and mention with a pen

the rain-soaked windows,

the ivy wallpaper,

and the goldfish circling in its bowl

Go ahead and turn aside,

bite your lip and tear out the page,

but, listen -- it was just a matter of time

before one of us happened

to notice the unlit candles

and the clock humming on the wall.

Plus, nothing happened that morning--

a song on the radio,

a car whistling along the road outside--

and I was only thinking

about the shakers of salt and pepper

that were standing side by side on a place mat.

I wondered if they had become friends

after all these years

or if they were still strangers to one another

like you and I

who manage to be known and unknown

to each other at the same time --

me at this table with a bowl of pears,

you leaning in a doorway somewhere

near some blue hydrangeas, reading this.

--What I love about Billy Collins' poems are that they always seem to be a dialog with us, his readers. I love the way his mind works. His poems always make me want to go get a cup of tea -- English TeaTime, then, sit a my computer and stare out the window to watch a poem form on a cloud passing by--

Technorati Tags: billy collins, poems, poetry

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