Poetry

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Betrothed

You want gut wrenching angst
Drenching flows of suicidal woes
Kids in conflict with mom and dad
As if they had nothing to thank about
As if being bad was the only way
You could make them say anything real
That dad can shout and mom can pout
Something to make it feel better
To send off a letter. A mail. That because
You fail Humanities you are incomplete
Yet they greet you sheepishly at holiday
The visit back home where you are the
Gnome in your room changed to office
Changed to broom closet. Closet antichrist
You are. That would twist the neck of
A proselytizing son of a bitch and which
One of you sweet mom or dad won’t twitch
When I marry that fuckin jerk.

5848. Ulgine Barrows - 2/7/2007 8:51:59 AM

That's an odd post for you, NuPlanetOne.
None of your usual earth tones, more of the orange/red.

5849. NuPlanetOne - 3/10/2007 8:04:23 PM

Commitment

The occasional gleeful screech of a child
Carried down wind as its mother chases behind
Hardly another soul along the beach except
A dog running around and around its master
Gulls, and off the horizon a tanker doesn’t move
Moving across the edge of the globe because I
Keep checking it. You are sitting in white sand
Away from me and I am on the breakers tossing
Smooth rocks over your head. Stop it you insist
And I ask if you meant the rocks as you twist about
And look surprised. You get up and walk down
Toward the water and just then the dog and master
Go by you and the dog splashes and you jump back
That huge smile you give to animals widens your
Face and you bend and pat the soaking thing
And it leaps up and knocks you onto your butt into
The water. Your screech as playful as the child
Upshore and as if no one else existed you hug that dog
And coo and carry on like old friends. I sink back
Against the breaker stones and search for the tanker
That got swallowed by the distance. A gull perched
Higher up on my right screams something at me
And bobs its head holding its wings open. The sun
Breaks from behind a wad of clouds and I go lazy
Like a Sunday paper and try not to think or smoke
But the argument is way too fresh and I should
Have left my smokes in the car and I would have
To finish the argument anyway. You are talking
Now to the master and parting and heading back up
The beach. The smile is a smirk and you sit back in
The same spot and face me shaking your head then
Spin around back toward the water. The mother is
Chasing the child now and catches it where the dog
Had splashed you. They roll and wrestle and hug and
She carries the kid away. Let’s get a dog. I said.

5850. jexster - 3/22/2007 2:44:11 AM

Yesterday NewsHour featured a Canadian philosopher who received a Templeton Award for his work on the spiritual element in politics and history. His view is that traditional power and economic models are insufficient to understand human conflict.


Tonight, first in a series Poetry of the Middle East

There's a lot to be learned from the artist - poets, painters, novelists especially in turbulent times. Time and time again, they seem to anticipate the deeper trends that others miss.

Think there's something here too.

5851. Ulgine Barrows - 4/5/2007 7:54:47 AM

"Commitment

The occasional gleeful screech of a child "

5852. Ulgine Barrows - 4/5/2007 8:02:06 AM

That's not poetry

I love/hate my son

When he was 3, I couldn't urinate
or change a tampon
by myself
without him smacking my door

Now, son is 12
And cleaning up
after himself is a foreign concept
that I smack his door with

5853. NuPlanetOne - 4/21/2007 7:49:12 PM

Billions

Earth time, the observation
A sun rise, a sunset
Time, the concept
A life, a death
Forever, the hope
More time, given time
Always, the conundrum
No birth, no end
And just things
Awake and observing
Living things
And empty space
Where it all swirls
About a galactic center
Who, what or why
Swirling along with it
Billions of balls of swirl
Perhaps swirling about
A greater unfathomed center
And time, the river
No estuary, no source
Just a current.

5854. Ulgine Barrows - 4/25/2007 7:25:38 AM

I see purple when I read that, NuPlanetOne, maybe some blues.

5855. NuPlanetOne - 5/19/2007 3:54:38 PM

If you live long enough

Memory, after all
Is a short term thing
A bodily function
You sit in a room
Your head
And are allowed
A big picture
On each facing wall
The big reminders
With lots of small
Pictures around them
Snippets of images
That evolved out of
And along with
The big pictures
Sections of your life
And as the walls fill
You look them over
And see where you are
Who you are
And what you could be
The small pictures
Various traumas, joys
Accumulate, distract
But you organize
And keep them connected
Eventually, the big pictures
Get brighter
Take over a wall
Soon only the big pictures
Remain
If you live long enough
You will just have
A few big pictures
Hopefully, just one
A comfortable idea
Of what it all means
Now, the other walls
Will be needed
To connect the passing
Minutes
Concerned with muscles
And minor routine
And perhaps
You might only
Recall, squinting
Those exuberant montages
That built the big pictures
And experience yourself
Not as a single entity
Nor even as an imbued spirit
But with a clear recollection
That explains everything.

5856. NuPlanetOne - 5/25/2007 4:03:55 PM

Chieftains

What God is this
Who calls for vengeance
And rewards the taking
Of innocent lives?

What prayers are these
That ask forgiveness
For lesser sins
Than one that is offered?

What morals are these
That shape pain into hate
And prey upon suffering
For gross worldly gain?

That God would speak
And again bring the word
And remind these men
The tribe is not a temple.

5857. Seamus - 6/8/2007 7:58:24 PM

I have enjoyed these re-writes that you are doing for your chapbook, Sir Nu.

I quite like this last one, Chieftains. The anger is so sincere, so palpable, that it simply flows. And there is nothing I want to do when I read it but permit it to flow over me.

And this:

And remind these men
The tribe is not a temple

is powerful. Do you consider this a "political" piece? In any event, well done, Nu! It is good to see you.

And hello to Ulgine, alistair, Rick, wonk, jex, arky and anyone else who may be looking in. Mac, conas tá tú?

5858. Seamus - 6/8/2007 8:07:06 PM

For Mac:

An excerpt from Eavan Boland's "Colony":

Witness

Here is the city—
its worn-down mountains,
its grass and iron,
its smoky coast
seen from the high roads
on the Wicklow side.
From Dalkey Island
to the North Wall,
to the blue distance seizing its perimeter,
its old divisions are deep within it.
And in me also.
And always will be.
Out of my mouth they come:
The spurred and booted garrisons.
The men and women
they dispossessed.
What is a colony
if not the brutal truth
that when we speak
the graves open.

And the dead walk?

5859. NuPlanetOne - 6/25/2007 7:38:19 PM

Seamus…definitely political. All about me and all of us here, really, we are faced with our young ones contemplating enlistment. It’s hard to give advice and encouragement when we know that on average 3-4 troops meet an untimely end over there every day. Then, of course, how do we downplay patriotism and duty merely because it is a loved one who would offer themselves up to a tour of duty that surely includes harms’ way. On the one hand, I feel the evil of this war to be ghastly and illogical. Indefensible, suicidal, fundamental drones, that is, truly unique. On the other hand, I think of the insane diabolical logic of the Third Reich, and I realize that evil, however it puts its coat on, will always be the same enemy to freedom and democracy. Our vested, global, corporate interests, unfortunately, always seem to become a cottage industry and dissect the serpent evil into pieces that further their bottom line. Something like that Oz Oilman hiding behind George in his quiet corner over on Pennsylvania Ave. Human nature?

Then there is the grand cosmic significance of it all. Players just strutting the stage in this, the best of all possible worlds. Always good and evil, sick or sane. And there amongst it all, you and me scribbling our poems in hope of making it all sensible. Ha! 2 more pints, we’ll get it right. Always good to know you lurk here and about my friend, ciao.

5860. Seamus - 7/12/2007 9:20:01 PM

I know it's not exactly de rigueur to title a sonnet, but...


POEM: Molecular chaperones, like nuns, are an ugly nuisance but they have a job to do


Oh Sister Moira Agnes, you have failed
us so. To take us up and keep us whole—
God's use for you—why wouldn't you prevail?
Maeve's life and mine are now destroyed. The shoal—
we've dashed upon by lying on the hill.
To each other binding wrongwise, her site
so misaligned with my domain, yet still
lithe Maeve's pregnant from one misfolded night.
Oh how we wish you’d caught us there, you old
unloving nun—to fold us on our own,
to warn us both of fire and stone, to scold
us, scare and scatter young Maeve and me, alone.

Ora pro nobis—Agnes, in this same way,
with faithless hands—in hora mortis nostrae.


Seamus


(If that manner of nonsense can in any way be explained away, the best I suppose I can offer is that I've been about contemplating whether matters of physics and chemistry and biology and thermodynamics are all that foreign to those of life and love and war and death. Oh yes, and also a pony.)

5861. Ulgine Barrows - 7/13/2007 9:56:43 AM

Sorry to be a Beavis & Butthead, NuPlanetOne, but when I saw this

"Recall, squinting"

I did that heh-heh thing.
Squint, heh-heh. Getting older, getting different humor.

5862. Ulgine Barrows - 7/18/2007 8:44:31 AM

well dang, I wanted you to laugh with me, NuPlanetOne.

In other news, I defended Avril Lavigne lyrics on another discussion board.

So I could be digging a deeper hole, but probably not, since I am lifting upwards.

winky

5863. Ulgine Barrows - 7/18/2007 8:53:57 AM

Born and raised in Pineola, his mama believed in the Pentecost

She got the preacher to say some words so his soul wouldn't get lost

~Lucinda Williams

5864. Ulgine Barrows - 7/18/2007 9:02:59 AM

Didn't you think you were worth anything
See what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world
See what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world


~Lucinda Williams

5865. wabbit - 7/23/2007 3:28:48 PM

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

There was an old father of Dylan
Who was seriously, mortally illin'
"I want," Dylan said
"You to bitch till you're dead.
"I'll be cheesed if you kick it while chillin'."

5866. arkymalarky - 7/23/2007 5:01:06 PM

Great link. Thanks!

Poetry