A Sort Of A Song
Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.
-- through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Compose. (No ideas
but in things) Invent!
Marginalia
Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.
Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
- A Simile Like Love, A Metaphor Is Love -
(love is like)
Love is like a painting
filled with all colours and shades
love is like a bleeding heart
cut with many sharp blades
love is like a never ending story
that always begins with a kiss
love is like a space everlasting
that fills bitterness with bliss
love is like the circle of eternity
Spelling
My daughter plays on the floor
with plastic letters,
red, blue & hard yellow,
learning how to spell,
spelling,
how to make spells.
I wonder how many women
denied themselves daughters,
closed themselves in rooms,
Self-Portrait In A Convex Mirror
As Parmigianino did it, the right hand
Bigger than the head, thrust at the viewer
And swerving easily away, as though to protect
What it advertises. A few leaded panes, old beams,
Fur, pleated muslin, a coral ring run together
In a movement supporting the face, which swims
Toward and away like the hand
Except that it is in repose. It is what is
Sequestered. Vasari says, "Francesco one day set himself
To take his own portrait, looking at himself from that purpose
Forest Of Europe
The last leaves fell like notes from a piano
and left their ovals echoing in the ear;
with gawky music stands, the winter forest
looks like an empty orchestra, its lines
ruled on these scattered manuscripts of snow.
The inlaid copper laurel of an oak
shines though the brown-bricked glass above your head
as bright as whisky, while the wintry breath
of lines from Mandelstam, which you recite,
! A Wish
I'd like to write - like grown-up poets do:
with similes that span the universe,
that sparkle, crackle, dazzle, woo the mind;
and touch the heart with tender, swoony verse...
I'd like to write - like grown-up poets do:
in literature that's all the better for
those soaring, parabolic parables
and paradigms, and rhymes, and metaphor...
If I Were Tickled By The Rub Of Love
If I were tickled by the rub of love,
A rooking girl who stole me for her side,
Broke through her straws, breaking my bandaged string,
If the red tickle as the cattle calve
Still set to scratch a laughter from my lung,
I would not fear the apple nor the flood
Nor the bad blood of spring.
Shall it be male or female? say the cells,
And drop the plum like fire from the flesh.
! Metaphor
A pretty girl
is like a simile
and vice-a-versa
so I'd say
for like the sunlight it
delights our so prosaic day
and life is better for
a metaphor
when apposite
A Common Addiction Among Poets
Intoxicated by the inspiration
Of his trade—
With mental powers at work,
A true poet rarely sleeps.
His mind ever churning
With powerful imagery
That produces thought,
Sound, rhythm and gesture.
He molds with metaphor,
Shapes with simile,
Autumn Friends
If one could bridge the distance with a word,
A journey would become a pilgrimage.
Elegant letters slant across the page.
My leaf has found a home upon your coat.
My kind critic, I think it is our fate
To meet in stanzas of my poetry.
Simile and metaphor must be our bond
Until autumn blows one of us away.
>≫A Poet's Journey
The first poem was a wonder
The second was a surprise.
The third poem made me a poet,
The fourth gave me a name and fame.
The fifth poem fetched me a fabulous fantasy
The sixth one was a striving struggle for perfect beauty.
The seventh poem conceived the heaven's serenity,
The eighth one gave me a fly,
The ninth poem lifted me in the sky.
Very Like A Whale
One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by the authors of simile and
metaphor.
Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,
Can't seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have to
go out of their way to say that it is like something else.
What does it mean when we are told
That that Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?
In the first place, George Gordon Byron had enough experience
To know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lot of
In A World Of Poetry
Loved to write as far back as memory goes
Without any thought for a verse to compose
Poetic expressions of innate creativity
So admire the effect and it's sensitivity
Words dive straight to heart like an arrow
Flying through sky piercing at point narrow
Each word so concise of fit and precise
Rabbi Ben Ezra
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith 'A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!'
Not that, amassing flowers,
Youth sighed 'Which rose make ours,
Which lily leave and then as best recall?'
Interim
The room is full of you!—As I came in
And closed the door behind me, all at once
A something in the air, intangible,
Yet stiff with meaning, struck my senses sick!—
Sharp, unfamiliar odors have destroyed
Each other room's dear personality.
The heavy scent of damp, funereal flowers,—
The very essence, hush-distilled, of Death—
Has strangled that habitual breath of home
Poem Written At Morning
A sunny day's complete Poussiniana
Divide it from itself. It is this or that
And it is not.
By metaphor you paint
A thing. Thus, the pineapple was a leather fruit,
A fruit for pewter, thorned and palmed and blue,
To be served by men of ice.
The senses paint
By metaphor. The juice was fragranter
Than wettest cinnamon. It was cribled pears
The Great Explosion
The universe expands and contracts like a great heart.
It is expanding, the farthest nebulae
Rush with the speed of light into empty space.
It will contract, the immense navies of stars and galaxies,
dust clouds and nebulae
Are recalled home, they crush against each other in one
harbor, they stick in one lump
And then explode it, nothing can hold them down; there is no
way to express that explosion; all that exists
Roars into flame, the tortured fragments rush away from each
! Travelling With Robert Frost
Everyone but poets
(who have their own allegiances)
would acknowledge it – you were, and I guess still are,
the most famous and popular poet of
the 20th century – to Americans at least;
though since we’re now into the 21st century,
it’s appropriate that you’re being pushed hard, even overtaken,
at least in the charts here on Poemhunter.com
by the Afro-American and Spanish-American poets;
Mr. Cogito And The Imagination
Mr. Cogito never trusted
tricks of the imagination
the piano at the top of the Alps
played false concerts for him
he didn't appreciate labyrinths
the Sphinx filled him with loathing
he lived in a house with no basement