The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poetry Break, 3/5/08

[BlueIris]

"The Excluded Animals"

Only a certain
claque of beasts
is part of the
créche racket

forming a
steamy-breathed
semicircle
around the
baby basket.

Anything more
exotic than
a camel
is out of luck
this season.

Not that the
excluded animals envy
the long-lashed
sycophants.

cormorants
don't toady,
nor do toads
adore anybody
for any reason.

Nor do the
unchosen alligators,
grinning their
three-foot grin
as they laze
in the blankety waters
like the blankets on Him.

—Kay Ryan

[RetroLounge]

1. Oh, that is a feast of beautiful sounds!

thank you!

:hi:

RL

[BlueIris]

2. Wow, that happened fast.

Retro is a speedy reader.

[RetroLounge]

4. Timing is everything

and I read it out loud here in the bookstore and it reflected back beautiful music and a nice cadence.

:hi:

RL

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. My dear BlueIris!

Yes, what Retro said!

Wonderful!

Thank you...:hug:

[BlueIris]

5. Speedy. Speedy readers!

[qwertyMike]

6. Beautiful

ANGRY:
Act of Union

I

To-night, a first movement, a pulse,
As if the rain in bogland gathered head
To slip and flood: a bog-burst,
A gash breaking open the ferny bed.
Your back is a firm line of eastern coast
And arms and legs are thrown
Beyond your gradual hills. I caress
The heaving province where our past has grown.
I am the tall kingdom over your shoulder
That you would neither cajole nor ignore.
Conquest is a lie. I grow older
Conceding your half-independant shore
Within whose borders now my legacy
Culminates inexorably.

II

And I am still imperially
Male, leaving you with pain,
The rending process in the colony,
The battering ram, the boom burst from within.
The act sprouted an obsinate fifth column
Whose stance is growing unilateral.
His heart beneath your heart is a wardrum
Mustering force. His parasitical
And ignmorant little fists already
Beat at your borders and I know they're cocked
At me across the water. No treaty
I foresee will salve completely your tracked
And stretchmarked body, the big pain
That leaves you raw, like opened ground, again


SEAMUS HEANY

One of 5 Irish Nobel Laureates
(There would have been six if Oscar wan't jailed for Homosexualiity)
Rep. of Ireland, pop. 5 million, same as NJ or Israel.

Name the other four Nobels.

Mike

[BlueIris]

7. Thanks! I've posted some Heaney work in the poem threads.

He's great.