Post a poem about where you are right now.

[MaggieSwanson]

Mine:

CALIBAN
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs,
that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked, I cried to dream again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_pn6afGCsE

I love the Philippines.

[Lyric]

1. Well, this is one kind of related.

California Stars in West Virginia (for Walt)

by James Harms, from Freeways and Aqueducts

I want to rest my heavy head tonight
On a bed of California stars,
I want to lay my weary bones tonight
On a bed of California stars.

--Woody Guthrie

The almond orchard behind Caroline's house
is cross-hatched with roads
that seem to lead away to somewhere
east of everything: the Sierras, the clouds
above them, the last lost lake in America.
In spring the earth is furred
with grass beneath the trees,
which bud snowflakes and fresh
handkerchiefs, the long gone white of almond blossoms.
At night in a new moon's broken beam it seems
the stars have decided to give all their light
to a single hour; the flowers
are singed by starlight; they are bursting into flames
so cool the air for miles
is edged with frost.

Walt slept once in a pram by Carrie's pool
in March and woke covered with blossoms;
I found him gently chewing one,
his hair aged by flowers, the receiving blanket embroidered
with almond petals.
Three years later he asked why the starlight felt like
soft fingers on his cheeks,
like flowers, he said.
We were in the backyard watching
the night settle in the privet, a night too warm
to worry the fading annuals;
I was grilling steaks and he was helping,
his plastic tongs, his white chef's hat.
Walt remembered nothing of spring in the San Joaquin,
of driving through orchards hung loosely
with mist, the smell of water in the ditches, the moon
a white hole in the aquaduct, stars
freckling the irrigation puddles.
"Like flowers," he said again as I imagined the almond
blossoms, as I turned to watch a firefly
settle easily on Walt's cheek,
a firefly with nothing to fear in the falling dusk, the little boy
looking for stars, feeling the light on his face.

[MaggieSwanson]

4. '"Like flowers,"

he said again as I imagined the almond
blossoms, as I turned to watch a firefly
settle easily on Walt's cheek,
a firefly with nothing to fear in the falling dusk, the little boy
looking for stars, feeling the light on his face.'

Utterly beautiful.

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

13. Beautiful

:hi:

RL

[av8rdave]

2. OK....

The lighting is dim
The atmosphere dank
The cacophony of odors
Is somewhat rank

Waves of people
Come and go
In spite of it all
The day seems slow

It's nearly time
To find what food I can scrounge
Just another Sunday
In the %$#@ pilot lounge

[MaggieSwanson]

5. I think

I used to live there, once.

[av8rdave]

7. Perhaps we've crossed paths! LOL

[zingaro]

3. I am in flux. Luckily, poetry often frequents flux.

Regarding Perspective
by Claudia Grinnell

Depending on where you stand
you see a woman with a small dog,
a red leather boot, the heel of the boot,
or the dirt on the boot.
My freshly-washed blue dress
hangs in the window, obscures
the garbage cans, the dead
Sunday street. Forgotten ones
dangle from ropes, a portrait
of useless feet.

Now would be the time, I write,
to invent a more beautiful
handwriting, round strokes
with arching domes--a beautiful
script to describe people
more beautiful than we are.

I am the one writing
and you are the one who reads.
The hand leads you
to an unknown wide field
where every word is a lie
and then again not.
If you had come, you'd have asked,
What do you do?

Perhaps I'd have walked away,
turned, explained,
I am writing a poem.
A poem in which people leave
and paper stays
and curls against your fingers
like an old polaroid.

You took a picture that day,
but never showed it to me,
I didn't ask. Perhaps
I wasn't as beautiful
as I had hoped in front
of the mirror or you had imagined
at home. Our kisses slipped
off our lips. You talked
of one-family houses, two children,
one wife, half-joking, like a soap
bubble you tried to tack
to your skin. I laughed,
was astonished, didn't dare to speak,
although in the silence
there was talk of me.

Depending on where I look
I see trees, patient like Job,
unable to leave.

[MaggieSwanson]

6. This poem does, indeed curl

but around the edges of my memory,
my fingers, loose, feel the breath of the past slip through them.

[Kali]

8. Strawberry Roan, The Bell Mare? I don't know many poems.

(two horses mowing the lawn and a third in the driveway)

[MaggieSwanson]

9. I stumbled upon the one I posted

and it spoke to me on such a deep level. But I don't know too many by heart... mostly Shakespeare which is so overdone. Here's another good one, though, that I performed at an exhibit here in the Philippines.

Too Many Names
100 Love Sonnets, by Pablo Neruda / Translated by Stephen Tapscott


Mondays are meshed with Tuesdays
and the week with the whole year.
Time cannot be cut
with your weary scissors,
and all the names of the day
are washed out by the waters of night.

No one can claim the name of Pedro,
nobody is Rosa or Maria,
all of us are dust or sand,
all of us are rain under rain.
They have spoken to me of Venezuelas,
of Chiles and of Paraguays;
I have no idea what they are saying.
I know only the skin of the earth
and I know it is without a name.

When I lived amongst the roots
they pleased me more than flowers did,
and when I spoke to a stone
it rang like a bell.

It is so long, the spring
which goes on all winter.
Time lost its shoes.
A year is four centuries.

When I sleep every night,
what am I called or not called?
And when I wake, who am I
if I was not while I slept?

This means to say that scarcely
have we landed into life
than we come as if new-born;
let us not fill our mouths
with so many faltering names,
with so many sad formallities,
with so many pompous letters,
with so much of yours and mine,
with so much of signing of papers.

I have a mind to confuse things,
unite them, bring them to birth,
mix them up, undress them,
until the light of the world
has the oneness of the ocean,
a generous, vast wholeness,
a crepitant fragrance.

[Frosty1]

10. Roses are red

violets are blue
I'm in the den
Where are you?

[MaggieSwanson]

11. I'm in the common room

of an inn, sitting across from the man I love
who owns it. He is playing DJ for me with his i-tunes library. I am drinking
rum and coke and it's nearly 3:30am
But i'm not tired.

Cheers, Avabea!

[cwydro]

12. Life is a breeze

in the Florida Keys.B-)

[MaggieSwanson]

16. To the point.

:D

[pokerfan]

14. a couple

There was a young fellow named Sydney
Who drank till he ruined his kidney.
It shriveled and shrank
As he sat there and drank,
But he'd had a good time at it, didn't he?

There was a programmer in Bath
Who gave up formal methods in wrath.
"I swear that I knew
What my programs should do,
But you can't write a "goto" in math!"

[MaggieSwanson]

15. Cheers!

*raises glass of rum*

:toast:

[pokerfan]

17. There was a young lady named Maggie

Whose dog was enormous and shaggy
The front end of him
Looked vicious and grim
The back end was friendly and waggy