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5282. NuPlanetOne - 8/25/2004 4:08:56 AM
House for Sale
I walked through the house
You are selling
It still has that pine smell
Like the first time we walked through
Each visible spot
Evoked some incident or image
And I tried to memorize
Each recollection without emotion
There’s that odd pattern
In the floor boards in the bedroom
Where my head hung over the bed
Facing away from you
It still looks like a ship sailing away
And in the baby’s room
There’s that irregularity in the wall
That I glanced at for ten years
Reading Dr. Seuss and golden books
I stood in the spot
Looking out the window
Like I did that final night waiting for you
When I took off my ring
I never found it again
I stood there a long time
In the kitchen I checked
To make sure the floor creaked
In front of the sink
And still felt like I should do something
But it all felt way too late
It’s awful how hopeless it can feel
So much undone in each little corner
Of course a lot of things are covered up
Fixed, refinished, rearranged
And I suppose we fixed our differences
At least on the exterior of things
But being alone there
For the last time
Inside me
Every mark and memory
Was clear and visible.
5283. Ulgine Barrows - 8/25/2004 4:40:15 PM Mmmm, this one's for kuliginthehooligan and Jenerator.
It’s from the Japanese movie I just watched. The only Japanese word I caught was ‘sayonara’
(‘As I bid farewell’ is how they translated it to English)
5284. Ulgine Barrows - 8/25/2004 4:41:11 PM Somewhere a voice calls
in the depths of my heart
may I always be dreaming
the dreams that move my heart
so many tears, of sadness,
uncountable through and through
I know on the other side of them,
I'll find you
Everytime we fall down to the ground,
we look up to the blue sky above
We wake to its blueness, as for
the first time
Though the road is long and lonely and
the end far away, out of sight
I can with these two arms
embrace the light
As I bid farewell, my heart stops
in tenderness I feel
My silent empty body begins to listen to
what is real
The wonder of living
The wonder of dying
The wind, town and flowers
we all dance in unity
Somewhere a voice calls,
in the depths of my heart
keep dreaming your dreams,
don't ever let them part
Why speak of your sadness or
of life's painful woes
Instead, let the same lips sing
a gentle song for you
The whispering voice, we never want
to forget, in each passing memory
Always there to guide you
When a mirror has been broken,
Shattered pieces on the ground
Glimpses of a new life,
Reflected all around
Window of beginning, stillness,
new light of the dawn
Let my silent empty body be filled
and reborn
No need to search outside
nor sail across the sea
'Cause here shining right inside me
it's right here inside me
I've found a brightness
It’s always with me
5285. Ulgine Barrows - 8/25/2004 4:52:38 PM I had no idea what that Japanese woman was singing.
I turned on the subtitles and lo!
up popped the words.
She had a beautiful voice.
So make sure you listen to the credits and hear that song, if you watch 'Spirited Away'.
Hey NuPlanetOne. My favorite part of that poem I just posted is,
When a mirror has been broken,
Shattered pieces on the ground
Glimpses of a new life,
Reflected all around
Window of beginning, stillness,
new light of the dawn
Let my silent empty body be filled
and reborn
It's so American, and so not. 5286. alistairConnor - 8/29/2004 5:31:53 AM Village clock strikes nine
Good beaujolais and blueberries
What rotten summer? 5287. Macnas - 8/30/2004 9:26:48 PM She’s singing in the kitchen, to something on the radio
And she sings it with the children, when they wander up to listen.
I hear her while I’m sitting, and hum along with her
‘Though she can’t hear me, I’m with her,
And her light heart lifts my own. 5288. NuPlanetOne - 9/2/2004 3:02:17 AM …in not so late fashion compared to mote poetry time lapse phenomena. Yes Ulgine, that Japanese poem is at once somehow American, and not so…at the same time. Poetry translations from so many languages read on the page in such a literal way, that they can pack such a wallop from the sheer simplicity in the rearrangement of grammar and closest literal meanings. I’m sure someone could translate what I just attempted to say……it might be beautiful. Which is my other point. I never felt that poetry translations can ever truly work. I remember having to translate a stanza of Pushkin into English back in college as part of a final exam. I realized that I would have to embellish what I deciphered to even get some literal beauty out of it. Yet, reading translations of prose, or even my own modest attempts, (C-), in translating it myself….The prose was much easier to get a coherent resemblance. I don’t know. I know we have gifted linguists in here, as I can recall Maria G giving wonderful insights into Neruda. (S0 miss her!) Anyway, that is that on that. 5289. NuPlanetOne - 9/2/2004 3:02:44 AM
Dying to Know
If I could figure it all out
If it made any sense
I could write just one poem
At absurdity’s expense
And be done with it.
Oh. I know. Writing anything
At all, is an exception
So many billions of souls
Each second since conception
Must strive to simply be.
But we all, at some quiet moment
Find time to sit and think
With faith we assume there is justice
That somehow there is a link
Something that explains the mystery
And with those in our group
The ones we hold and hug
We take refuge and find solace
And in death we wince and shrug
Then the next day comes.
And life goes on
Except for the part where it ends
And that is the odd thing
As if it all depends
As if it were a conspiracy.
5291. Ulgine Barrows - 9/2/2004 12:50:56 PM Sorry, the formatting. 5292. Ulgine Barrows - 9/2/2004 12:55:12 PM oh well. Now I'm seeing an answer from NuPlanetOne that I didn't see before.
So it's not a total loss. 5293. Ulgine Barrows - 9/2/2004 1:31:31 PM
5294. ElliottRW - 9/9/2004 9:38:00 AM Newt
My newt is not minute. If a newt is minute then it is not my newt.
Not Newt
In Euton a Teuton ate on a futon two tons of newtons. 5295. RickNelson - 9/9/2004 10:00:05 PM 5290. Ulgine Barrows - 9/2/2004 10:49:38 PM
Who's Afraid of Poetry?
Americans are -- but help is on the way
—By Jon Spayde, Utne magazine
September / October 2004 Issue
Certain national traits reveal to all the world that we're Americans. There's our compulsive informality; our odd need to start off all relationships on a first-name basis; our relentless urge for self-improvement; and -- though this one may not seem as obvious as the others -- our profound discomfort with poetry.
This was a pretty insteresting article.
Towards the end,
...."What's hard is to be simple and even stupid enough to enjoy it in and of itself: its sound, its beat, its strangeness, and even your confusion - they're all part of the mix."
5296. RickNelson - 9/9/2004 10:02:03 PM ahhhhhhhh, now that's what I'm talkin' about.
5290 is now in 5295.
Very good reading here. Thank you all for this. 5297. ElliottRW - 9/9/2004 10:38:29 PM I'm afraid of poetry that doesn't rhyme or otherwise provide some easily-recognized verbal razzle-dazzle.
What's wrong with a sonnet?
Of course, one of my favorite poems is one I ought to be afraid of. 5298. Ulgine Barrows - 9/10/2004 11:31:19 AM Why yes, I'm afraid of that one too: it doesn't rhyme, and makes me question what those words meant to the author, and perhaps me. 5299. Ulgine Barrows - 9/10/2004 11:33:03 AM Thanks for fixing that post, RickNelson. I tried. 5300. Ulgine Barrows - 9/10/2004 12:11:37 PM The Red Wheelbarrow....
the first time I read it, I noticed the author's name, William Carlos Williams
and I thought I was in mexico living in abject poverty, things going from bad to worse
the second time I read it, I thought I was a 4 yr old
and ready for adventure 5301. anomie - 9/11/2004 6:07:02 AM I enjoy browsing here and just wanted to express appreciation to you all from someone with no poetic bone in his body.
I am lost to most poetry and usually avoid it. For some reason I got caught up years ago in cummings and enjoyed his preciseness. I like chewing on his obscure stuff. But I don't think he's very poetic. 5302. ElliottRW - 9/13/2004 3:03:06 AM i have never read cummings but i know people who write like him in email
In Slate today, there is an article indirectly about a poet named George Starbuck who, it would seem, wrote the kind of poetry that I most appreciate.
(NOT that I don't appreciate the rhyme-free emotionally evocative stuff like NuPlanetOne's House For Sale, above--it's terrific--I just don't think of it as "poetry." Ok, maybe intellectually I recognize it as poetry and, sure, it really is poetry, but not to my inner eight-year-old.)
As it so happens, I've never read this Starbuck fellow, other than the excerpts in the article above, so I'm open to a second opinion. Otherwise, I'm going to try to pick something up from the library this weekend.
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