mae-we-post-poems

[mae-we-post-poems]

Yes It Will Rain (or Prayer for Our First Home)

Patrick Rosal

To Mary Rose

Here is our little yard

too small for a pool

or chickens let alone

a game of tag or touch

football Then

again this stub-

born patch

of crabgrass is just

big enough to get down

flat on our backs

with eyes wide open and face

the whole gray sky just

as a good drizzle

begins I know

we’ve had a monsoon

of grieving to do

which is why

I promise to lie

beside you

for as long as you like

or need

We’ll let our elbows

kiss under the downpour

until we’re soaked

like two huge nets

left

beside the sea

whose heavy old

ropes strain

stout with fish

If we had to we could

feed a multitude

with our sorrows

If we had to

we could name a loss

for every other

drop of rain All these

foreign flowers

you plant from pot

to plot

with muddy fingers

—passion, jasmine, tuberose—

we’ll sip

the dew from them

My darling here

is the door I promised

Here

is our broken bowl Here

my hands

In the home of our dreams

the windows open

in every

weather—doused

or dry—May we never

be so parched

#poems #poem #poem post #poetry #writing #literature #long poem #patrick rosal #mary rose

[mae-we-post-poems]

i want to breathe you in rhythmically, with gravity on my side. i want you to pull me in, passionately, be the ocean that inhales my tides.

#poetry #napowrimo #napowrimo2023 #day 12 #1200 #1k #2k #poems #poem #writing

[mae-we-post-poems]

Woot woot!! It’s NAPOWRIMO time, babeeeyyy!! Pen a poem everyday for 30 days or browse around and write when you can—the choice is yours. ❤️ I’ve loved making prompt lists over the years and I’m excited to see what this years brings. Be silly! Write some bad poems! Write some okay poems! Enjoy ya’self. Love you. ❤️

instagram: hiitssky

#napowrimo #napowrimo 2024 #poetry month #national poetry month #poetry prompts #writers on tumblr #schuyler peck #spprompts #poetry #poems

[mae-we-post-poems]

Poetry Month Prompts

1. as good as you'll get 2. girl names 3. lacrosse 4. swan 5. house with a name 6. one year after the accident 7. profiteroles 8. potholes 9. vivisection 10. adult revenge 11. "safe" place 12. road sign 13. glam 14. oyster mushroom 15. mother's footsteps 16. what life was like 17. almond milk 18. lagomorph 19. physical therapy 20. birthday flowers 21. book of miracles 22. ferment 23. brick 24. routine 25. days spent waiting 26. infirmary 27. hallucinogen 28. supper club 29. deviant 30. age

#poetry month #prompts #monthly prompts #monthly prompt challenge #april prompts #poems #poem #writing #poem post #literature

[mae-we-post-poems]

More Stars Than Sky

I want to understand— all the threads in your bones, how you are both howl and labyrinth, not monster, not grief, but full of longing—

that sadness, tucked deep into your heart, I see it, in glimpses and photographs, in the way you choose your words, in how you are ferociously kind

when you could easily not be. I want to know your clockwork, the puzzle of your heart, if your hands are more map than song, mouth more stars than sky, body more ocean than river—

who are you when it’s quiet? when the days feel too long and not long enough? Who are you when you love, unreasonably and beyond measure?

Give me that— the darkness you keep close, watchful as a wolf, let me see that secret,

and I will keep it safe.

#poem #poetry #poet #poetry month

[mae-we-post-poems]

Going to the Picnic

Julius C. Wright

1

There is a large crowd of young folks

Hurrying down the road;

They are going to have a picnic now,

And spread the news abroad.

2

They are wearing beautiful bouquets,

And carrying bright tin dippers;

New straw hats are waiving high,

And patent leather slippers.

3

Their hats are made of fine chiffon,

And decorated too.

There will be plenty of goodies

For your friends and for you.

4

They will have a big barbecue.

And a lot of other stuff.

They are going to eat and drink

Till everybody puff.

5

They will have cakes and candy by the heaps,

And ice cream pressed in cake;

Peanuts parched fresh and hot,

And a lot of fine milk shakes.

6

They will have fish croquets by the bushels,

And cocoanut jumbles too;

They are going to feed their friends and foes

And have enough for you.

7

They are going to have a big dance

And have a jolly time.

They want to show their handsome looks

Because they look so fine.

8

One barrel or two of lemonade,

Mixed all through with ice;

Lemons cut and thrown therein

Gee! it’s awful nice.

9

Of all the fun and jolities,

And all the places of rest,

Just go to an old picnic ground;

They tell me that’s the best.

#poems #poem #writing #poem post #literature #poetry #long poem #going to the picnic #julius c. wright #julius c wright #julius wright #numbers

[mae-we-post-poems]

Somehow

Dorothy Chan

For Norman

You visit me in a dream after passing,

after I’ve been awaiting you for weeks,

because Chinese belief teaches us our

loved ones will appear when we’re asleep.

It’s real when I enter the hotel restaurant

in the middle of nowhere town I live in,

as the Midwest architecture transforms

into Kowloon at evening time. We eat

bird’s nest soup, and I remember the time

my father ordered me this four-hundred-

year-old delicacy at Hong Kong airport.

Out comes the Peking duck, and I ask you:

“Why did it take you so long?” You answer:

“I arrived once you were strong and ready.”

#poems #poem #writing #poem post #literature #poetry #short poem #short poetry #somehow #dorothy chan #dream #dreams #chinese belief #chinese culture #sleep #food

[mae-we-post-poems]

[poets in their bassinets]

Lucille Clifton

poets in their bassinets

dream a splendid woman holding over their baby eyes

a globe, shining with

possibility. someone,

she smiles, has to see this

and report it, and they

in their innocence

believing that all will be

as beautiful as she is,

whimper use me, use me

and oh how terrifying

that she does.

#poems #poem #writing #poem post #literature #poetry #short poem #short poetry #[poets in their bassinets] #poets in their bassinets #lucille clifton #bassinets #bassinet

[mae-we-post-poems]

Wild Beauty

jessica Care moore

Such a wild beauty

extracted from black ashes (echo)

A series of calculated crashes

I simply

call them romances.

I photograph you in my bed in the morning

I miss you and you never leave

Your scent remains, unbelievably

I pray to all the Gods

and my lies still don’t believe in me.

You dance inside the snow

Slush beneath your boots

We talk philosophy and hardcover books

Sometimes i find the heart you took and carry

It around, a handsome crook

A savior among a crown

of thorns and petals never worn

Of flowers dead and letters never sent

Did you see the way the summer wept

Did you feel my bones break

inside your hands

?

How fragile are the strong and mad

Who dare to wrap themselves in flags

Sewn by slaves and walked over graves (echo)

Jessica, you say, you must behave.

Yourself. I don’t know what to do with wealth

Cept spend it on a love affair or place bright flowers

In my hair.

Just tell me what color I should wear to a funeral

with no people there?

Bodies asleep deep in my chest

Kiss me, since we are all that’s left

In love, in fear, scared half to death

Humans aren’t so interesting my son insists

We have no wings. No power beyond our century

We are given less, and still we sing.

We dress the part

I keep the veil, and pawn the rings.

I want to steal Saul’s new hat and Dante’s bright green boots

My fashionable brothers.

You. Brooklyn bridge. I am hula hoop

Swirling dervish in a perfect suit

Oh my love, my memory swoons.

Such a wild beauty extracted from black ashes (echo)

A series of calculated crashes

I simply call them beautiful massive

Oh wait, I believe I wrote romances.

Protecting me from the brutality, the wounded savage

You, that’s me. Pointing fingers deliciously.

Baby, please hold onto me.

I only want love to hold me for ransom. I know he is.

They are all so handsome. Perhaps, a very good looking cancer.

I call your name, pray you don’t answer.

Such a wild

beauty.

#poems #poem #writing #poem post #literature #poetry #long poem #wild beauty #jessica care moore #wild #beauty #echo

[mae-we-post-poems]

This Too Shall Pass

Kim Addonizio

was no consolation to the woman

whose husband was strung out on opioids.

Gone to a better place: useless and suspect intel

for the couple at their daughter’s funeral

though there are better places to be

than a freezing church in February, standing

before a casket with a princess motif.

Some moments can’t be eased

and it’s no good offering clichés like stale

meat to a tiger with a taste for human suffering.

When I hear the word miracle I want to throw up

on a platter of deviled eggs. Everything happens

for a reason: more good tidings someone will try

to trepan your skull to insert. When fire

inhales your house, you don’t care what the haiku says

about seeing the rising moon. You want

an avalanche to bury you. You want to lie down

under a slab of snow, dumb as a jarred

sideshow embryo. What a circus.

The tents dismantled, the train moving on,

always moving, starting slow and gaining speed,

taking you where you never wanted to go.

#poems #poem #poem post #poetry #writing #literature #long poem #this too shall pass #kim addonizio #life #death

[mae-we-post-poems]

To The Dandelion

James Russell Lowell

Dear common flower, that grow’st beside the way,

Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,

First pledge of blithesome May,

Which children pluck, and full of pride, uphold,

High-hearted buccaneers, o’erjoyed that they

Eldorado in the grass have found,

Which not the rich earth’s ample round

May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me

Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be.

Gold such as thine ne’er drew the Spanish prow

Through the primeval hush of Indian seas,

Nor wrinkled the lean brow

Of age, to rob the lover’s heart of ease;

’Tis the Spring’s largess, which she scatters now

To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand,

Though most heart never understand

To take it at God’s value, but pass by

The offered wealth with unrewarded eye.

Thou art my tropics and mine Italy;

To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime;

The eyes thou givest me

Are in the heart, and heed not space or time:

Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee

Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment

In the white lily’s breezy tent,

His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first

From the dark green thy yellow circles burst.

Then think I of deep shadows on the grass,

Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze,

Where, as the breezes pass,

The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways,

Of leaves that slumber in a cloud mass,

Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue

That from the distance sparkle through

Some woodland gap, and of a sky above,

Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move.

My childhood’s earliest thoughts are linked with thee;

The sight of thee calls back the robin’s song,

Who, from the dark old tree

Beside the door, sang clearly all day long,

And I, secure in childish piety,

Listened as if I heard an angel sing

With news from heaven, which he could bring

Fresh every day to my untainted ears

When birds and flowers and I were happy peers.

How like a prodigal doth nature seem,

When thou, for all thy gold, so common art!

Thou teachest me to deem

More sacredly of every human heart,

Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam

Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show,

Did we but pay the love we owe,

And with a child’s undoubting wisdom look

On all these living pages of God’s book.

#poems #poem #poem post #poetry #writing #literature #long poem #to the dandelion #james russell lowell #dandelion #flowers #earth #art #places #memories #life

[mae-we-post-poems]

2-Sided Map Shows Line Where Falling Bodies Will Land

Brenda Shaughnessy

From where are we getting this information? A woman god?

I don’t think so.

Fem greatness only ever declines on this graph

showing allowable outcomes.

Know-it-all women decline know-it-all men

because know-it-all men know so little it’d fit in a rice pot.

I make my facts and data from internal sources, secret sauces.

I know better. No one knows better one’s own side of things

but knowing how to convince the true authority

on the matter that you are

the true authority on the matter—

well …. Haven’t we all fallen for that, once?

Off-grid, between us, can you imagine knowing yourself

well enough to believe you know others as well?

This Very Dance called Every Rise, Each Fall. The one

you must know and show in order to get anywhere in this society.

In this stinkin’ society where you can’t even say the word

religion (doesn’t matter which) without your back

seizing up out of nowhere. I don’t know if we’re in the middle

of the ending or the beginning of some new concussion.

I have my doubts. I think we might be fucked.

We need some woman-greatness.

Some entity that won’t exist unless we all come together

and wish very hard for her to swim

to our dreamy poolsides. She’d come in summer,

while everyone still wishes very hard to have a fun time.

To relax, melt in the sun, miss work.

Float free in the water, alive-alive, not think about

who got shot, who next, and who is right now

falling from the sky, from one side to the other one side.

#poems #poem #poem post #poetry #writing #literature #long poem #brenda shaughnessy #women #men #life #deity #god #sky

[mae-we-post-poems]

One Cup of Chai

Preeti Vangani

If I had known that the cup of chai

my mother asked me, a drifter

in the kitchen, to make her

that afternoon, which I

having blended water and milk

in such strange ratios

that when reduced and strained

the tea came up

to barely one trisection of my pinkie

(that cup was the driest well I saw,

the lowest tide) so to cover my blunder

I poured raw tap water to flood her cup

and fled her room before she could

collect her body, bring lip to saucer,

had I known that the pale, putrid mess

I presented, was after all, the only and

last cup of tea I’d ever make her

would I have suddenly been

granted the culinary wisdom to brew

instead the pot with sprigs of lemongrass,

a pod of cardamom, perhaps even

a prestigious thread of saffron

that I’d sneak from the silver hexagonal box

she kept hidden behind the airtight jars

of pricey nuts, and bring her

a creamy drink of complex caffeine, even

make some magnanimous promise

of offering her tea on tap till she lived

but knowing me, I know I’d have just

continued being the spectacular failure I was

that day, shit-talking my every inability

out of her sight, embarrassed by failure,

afraid of consequence and knowing her,

she would have creased her nose

at first, then continued to descend

on the plate with the hopeful pull

of her slurp, stubborn as she was,

not willing to peg one finite judgement

of adulation or derision—

on the cup she was served

#poems #poem #poem post #poetry #writing #literature #long poem #one cup of chai #preeti vangani #chai #tea

[mae-we-post-poems]

The Alpine Sheep

Maria White Lowell

When on my ear your loss was knelled,

And tender sympathy upburst,

A little spring from memory welled,

Which once had quenched my bitter thirst.

And I was fain to bear to you

A portion of its mild relief,

That it might be as healing dew,

To steal some fever from your grief.

After our child’s untroubled breath

Up to the Father took its way,

And on our home the shade of Death

Like a long twilight haunting lay,

And friends came round, with us to weep

Her little spirit’s swift remove,

The story of the Alpine sheep

Was told to us by one we love.

They, in the valley’s sheltering care,

Soon crop the meadow’s tender prime,

And when the sod grows brown and bare,

The shepherd strives to make them climb

To airy shelves of pasture green,

That hang along the mountain’s side,

Where grass and flowers together lean,

And down through mist the sunbeams slide.

But naught can tempt the timid things

The steep and rugged paths to try,

Though sweet the shepherd calls and sings,

And seared below the pastures lie,

Till in his arms their lambs he takes,

Along the dizzy verge to go;

Then, heedless of the rifts and breaks,

They follow on, o’er rock and snow.

And in those pastures, lifted fair,

More dewy-soft than lowland mead,

The shepherd drops his tender care,

And sheep and lambs together feed.

This parable, by Nature breathed,

Blew on me as the south-wind free

O’er frozen brooks, that flow unsheathed

From icy thraldom to the sea.

A blissful vision, through the night,

Would all my happy senses sway,

Of the good Shepherd on the height,

Or climbing up the starry way,

Holding our little lamb asleep,—

While, like the murmur of the sea,

Sounded that voice along the deep,

Saying, “Arise and follow me!”

#poems #poem #poem post #poetry #writing #literature #long poem #the alpine sheep #maria white lowell

[mae-we-post-poems]

But for now the music swings from her lacquered radio

Yona Harvey

Ezzard Charles Drive, Cincinnati, Ohio, circa 1980

Snuffed out candlewick shadow

disappears in the shimmer

of her snuff cans. The silver

cylinders cradle the powder

she’s prone to pucker, her lower lip

smooth with the stuff. She takes

her time. This is her time. Her mind

space.

Her words pinch in slow motion.

Tho nobody’s home. & she ain’t

studin you. She knows when to

leave her imaginings. No tobacco-

cancer concerns this eve.

It’s all banana pudding feet

in slippers, vanilla wafer-colored

waves

and wigs. She’ll leave this realm

at sixty-five, much to her children

& husband’s surprise.

#poems #poem #poem post #poetry #writing #literature #yona harvey #ohio #1980 #music

[mae-we-post-poems]

A Southern Night

Matthew Arnold

The sandy spits, the shore-lock’d lakes,

Melt into open, moonlit sea;

The soft Mediterranean breaks

At my feet, free.

Dotting the fields of corn and vine

Like ghosts, the huge, gnarl’d olives stand;

Behind, that lovely mountain-line!

While by the strand

Cette, with its glistening houses white,

Curves with the curving beach away

To where the lighthouse beacons bright

Far in the bay.

Ah, such a night, so soft, so lone,

So moonlit, saw me once of yore

Wander unquiet, and my own

Vext heart deplore!

The murmur of this Midland deep

Is heard to-night around thy grave

There where Gibraltar’s cannon’d steep

O’erfrowns the wave.

In cities should we English lie,

Where cries are rising ever new,

And men’s incessant stream goes by;

We who pursue

Our business with unslackening stride,

Traverse in troops, with care-fill’d breast,

The soft Mediterranean side,

The Nile, the East,

And see all sights from pole to pole,

And glance, and nod, and bustle by;

And never once possess our soul

Before we die.

Not by those hoary Indian hills,

Not by this gracious Midland sea

Whose floor to-night sweet moonshine fills,

Should our graves be!

Some sage, to whom the world was dead,

And men were specks, and life a play;

Who made the roots of trees his bed,

And once a day

With staff and gourd his way did bend

To villages and homes of man,

For food to keep him till he end

His mortal span,

And the pure goal of Being reach;

Grey-headed, wrinkled, clad in white,

Without companion, without speech,

By day and night

Pondering God’s mysteries untold,

And tranquil as the glacier snows––

He by those Indian mountains old

Might well repose!

Some grey crusading knight austere

Who bore Saint Louis company

And came home hurt to death and here

Landed to die;

Some youthful troubadour whose tongue

Fill’d Europe once with his love-pain,

Who here outwearied sunk, and sung

His dying strain;

Some girl who here from castle-bower,

With furtive step and cheek of flame,

’Twixt myrtle-hedges all in flower

By moonlight came

To meet her pirate-lover’s ship,

And from the wave-kiss’d marble stair

Beckon’d him on, with quivering lip

And unbound hair,

And lived some moons in happy trance,

Then learnt his death, and pined away––

Such by these waters of romance

’Twas meet to lay!

But you––a grave for knight or sage,

Romantic, solitary, still,

O spent ones of a work-day age!

Befits you ill.

So sang I; but the midnight breeze

Down to the brimm’d moon-charmed main

Comes softly through the olive-trees,

And checks my strain.

I think of her, whose gentle tongue

All plaint in her own cause controll’d;

Of thee I think, my brother! young

In heart, high-soul’d;

That comely face, that cluster’d brow,

That cordial hand, that bearing free,

I see them still, I see them now,

Shall always see!

And what but gentleness untired,

And what but noble feeling warm,

Wherever shown, howe’er attired,

Is grace, is charm?

What else is all these waters are,

What else is steep’d in lucid sheen,

What else is bright, what else is fair,

What else serene?

Mild o’er her grave, ye mountains, shine!

Gently by his, ye waters, glide!

To that in you which is divine

They were allied.

#poems #poem #poem post #poetry #writing #literature #long poem #a southern night #matthew arnold #sea #mountain #lighthouse #scenery #life #death #god #europe #grave

[mae-we-post-poems]

The Coming of Night

Skipwith Cannell

(In the city)

The sun is near set

And the tall buildings

Become teeth

Tearing bloodily at the sky’s throat;

The blank wall by my window

Becomes night sky over the marches

When there is no moon, and no wind,

And little fishes splash in the pools.

I had lit my candle to make a song for you,

But I have forgotten it for I am very tired;

And the candle … a yellow moth …

Flutters, flutters,

Deep in my brain.

My song was about, ‘a foreign lady

Who was beautiful and sad,

Who was forsaken, and who died

A thousand years ago.’

But the cracked cup at my elbow,

With dregs of tea in it,

Fixes my tired thought more surely

Than the song I made for you and forgot …

That I might give you this.

I am tired.

I am so tired

That my soul is a great plain

Made desolate,

And the beating of a million hearts

Is but the whisper of night winds

Blowing across it.

#poems #poem #poem post #poetry #long poem #writing #literature #night #city #buildings #sky #tired #the coming of night #skipwith cannell