Poems

My favorite form of poem is called the sestina. It's very hard to write because of it's restrictive rules.
This is my favorite sestina (I didn't write it).

A Sour Hour Spent With a Frozen Burrito in a Hot Oven.
BY Arthur Feldman

I have a burrito in the oven.
It has been there nearly an hour.
The heat simply won’t get in.
My mood is growing sour.
Preparing food that’s ready-made frozen
Should not strain my cooking power.

But in the kitchen, what is power?
Surely, not the heat of this subpar oven.
But a freezer that keeps the frosty frozen?
To create a seven-course meal in an hour?
To make sweet the sour?
At the very least, just to get the heat in.

Baking, sautéing, frying I’m schooled in
It all. My stove goes all the way to 11-power.
My custards sweet, my creams sour.
Soufflés arose airily in this very oven.
Yet I cannot heat a burrito inside of an hour?
Blast this Trader Joe’s Chicken Burrito, super-frozen.

My ex-girlfriend called me frozen
When that was the mood she was in.
But I could soothe her within an hour,
That was in my power.
Alas, the bun in her oven
Wasn’t mine, which left a taste rather sour.

And it remains sour.
And my burrito remains frozen,
Unaffected in this hot, hot oven
The heat cannot get in
No matter how high the power.
And I must wait another hour.

I clean the kitchen to wait out the hour.
When there are no longer any pans left to scour
I turn off the power.
That fucking burrito will stay frozen.
I have no more faith in
This goddamn, no-good, two-timing oven.

And so ends the hour, the burrito still frozen
The icy chicken tastes sour. I give in!
From now on, I power only a microwave oven.

 

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Frost

 

One I wrote about the Texas School Board, A Haiku:

Evangelicals
did not evolve from monkeys
have a banana
--- merged: Dec 3, 2011 8:41 PM ---
I am a big fan of Ogden Nash. My Grandma introduced me to Custard the Cowardly Dragon quite young.
The following a complete poem of his, including the title:

Parsley
...is gharstley.

And here's the somewhat longer complete tale of Custard the Dragon:

Belinda lived in a little white house,
With a little black kitten and a little gray mouse,
And a little yellow dog and a little red wagon,
And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon.

Now the name of the little black kitten was Ink,
And the little gray mouse, she called her Blink,
And the little yellow dog was sharp as Mustard,
But the dragon was a coward, and she called him Custard.

Custard the dragon had big sharp teeth,
And spikes on top of him and scales underneath,
Mouth like a fireplace, chimney for a nose,
And realio, trulio, daggers on his toes.

Belinda was as brave as a barrel full of bears,
And Ink and Blink chased lions down the stairs,
Mustard was as brave as a tiger in a rage,
But Custard cried for a nice safe cage.

Belinda tickled him, she tickled him unmerciful,
Ink, Blink and Mustard, they rudely called him Percival,
They all sat laughing in the little red wagon
At the realio, trulio, cowardly dragon.

Belinda giggled till she shook the house,
And Blink said Week!, which is giggling for a mouse,
Ink and Mustard rudely asked his age,
When Custard cried for a nice safe cage.

Suddenly, suddenly they heard a nasty sound,
And Mustard growled, and they all looked around.
Meowch! cried Ink, and Ooh! cried Belinda,
For there was a pirate, climbing in the winda.

Pistol in his left hand, pistol in his right,
And he held in his teeth a cutlass bright,
His beard was black, one leg was wood;
It was clear that the pirate meant no good.

Belinda paled, and she cried, Help! Help!
But Mustard fled with a terrified yelp,
Ink trickled down to the bottom of the household,
And little mouse Blink strategically mouseholed.

But up jumped Custard, snorting like an engine,
Clashed his tail like irons in a dungeon,
With a clatter and a clank and a jangling squirm
He went at the pirate like a robin at a worm.

The pirate gaped at Belinda's dragon,
And gulped some grog from his pocket flagon,
He fired two bullets but they didn't hit,
And Custard gobbled him, every bit.

Belinda embraced him, Mustard licked him,
No one mourned for his pirate victim
Ink and Blink in glee did gyrate
Around the dragon that ate the pyrate.

Belinda still lives in her little white house,
With her little black kitten and her little gray mouse,
And her little yellow dog and her little red wagon,
And her realio, trulio, little pet dragon.

Belinda is as brave as a barrel full of bears,
And Ink and Blink chase lions down the stairs,
Mustard is as brave as a tiger in a rage,
But Custard keeps crying for a nice safe cage.

/ To this day, 30 someodd years on, "realio trulio" is part of my spoken vocabualry.

 

One of my favourites that I remember studying in my poetry class that just so happened to pop up in a sci-fi movie (Equilibrium)

W.B. Yeats - Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

 

The heavens are the Lord's heavens

The heavens are the Lord's heavens
and the earth He has given to man. But
whose are the synagogues of gold and marble?
How many of the men who kiss the mezuzah
have ever been given a lover’s kiss like that by a woman?
And how many of the women who prostrate
themselves on a saint's tomb
have ever, in their lives, been claimed
from behind, until they wail with pleasure?

And what’s to come of the old tour guide
who has danced with Jerusalem
since he was a kid,
and now he’s tired, but she’s still dancing.
He is tossed aside, by the gate,
his pants open, buttons gone,
and only the flies still think he’s sweet.

Because the heavens are the Lord's heavens
and the earth He has given to man. But whose
is the table, and whose, the hand on the table?

-Yehudah Amichai (translated by Levite)

 

The White Knight's Song
aka 'Haddock's Eyes' or 'The Aged Aged Man' or 'Ways and Means' or 'A-Sitting On A Gate'
- by Lewis Carroll

I'll tell thee everything I can;
There's little to relate.
I saw an aged, aged man,
A-sitting on a gate.
'Who are you, aged man?' I said.
'And how is it you live?'
And his answer trickled through my head
Like water through a sieve.

He said 'I look for butterflies
That sleep among the wheat;
I make them into mutton-pies,
And sell them in the street.
I sell them unto men,' he said,
'Who sail on stormy seas;
And that's the way I get my bread--
A trifle, if you please.'

But I was thinking of a plan
To dye one's whiskers green,
And always use so large a fan
That it could not be seen.
So, having no reply to give
To what the old man said,
I cried, 'Come, tell me how you live!'
And thumped him on the head.

His accents mild took up the tale;
He said, 'I go my ways,
And when I find a mountain-rill,
I set it in a blaze.
And thence they make a stuff they call
Rowland's Macassar Oil--
Yet twopence-halfpenny is all
They give me for my toil.'

But I was thinking of a way
To feed oneself on batter,
And so go on from day to day
Getting a little fatter.
I shook him well from side to side,
Until his face was blue;
'Come, tell me how you live,' I cried
'And what it is you do!'

He said, 'I hunt for haddocks' eyes
Among the heather bright,
And work them into waistcoat-buttons
In the silent night.
And these I do not sell for gold
Or coin of silvery shine,
But for a copper halfpenny,
And that will purchase nine.

'I sometimes dig for buttered rolls,
Or set limed twigs for crabs;
I sometimes search the grassy knolls
For wheels of hansom-cabs.
And that's the way' (he gave a wink)
'By which I get my wealth--
And very gladly will I drink
Your Honor's noble health.'

I heard him then, for I had just
Completed my design
To keep the Menai bridge from rust
By boiling it in wine.
I thanked him much for telling me
The way he got his wealth,
But chiefly for his wish that he
Might drink my noble health.

And now, if e'er by chance I put
My fingers into glue,
Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot
Into a left-hand shoe,
Or if I drop upon my toe
A very heavy weight,
I weep, for it reminds me so
Of that old man I used to know--
Whose look was mild, whose speech was slow,
Whose hair was whiter than the snow,
Whose face was very like a crow
With eyes, like cinders, all aglow,
Who seemed distracted with his woe,
Who rocked his body to and fro,
And muttered mumblingly and low,
As if his mouth were full of dough,
Who snorted like a buffalo--
That summer evening long ago
A-sitting on a gate
-----------------------------
As you can tell, I rather like Nonsense.

 

A Man In His Life (Yehuda Amichai)

A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.

A man doesn't have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.

And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.

He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there's time for everything.

 

God, I just love Amichai....

 

Not Interested In Evening

What the material world values does
not shine the same in the truth of

the soul. You have been interested
in your shadow. Look instead directly

at the sun. What can we know by just
watching the time-and-space shapes of

each other? Someone half awake in the
night sees imaginary dangers; the

morning star rises; the horizon grows
defined; people become friends in a

moving caravan. Night birds may think
daybreak a kind of darkness, because

that's all they know. It's a fortunate
bird who's not intrigued with evening,

who flies in the sun we call Shams.

-Rumi (tr. Coleman Barks)

 

Haunting Eyes I See

your eyes are haunting when I gaze into them deeply
they take me to a place I have been to before
so piercing black, I have seen them while sleeping

I saw into your mind almost completely
from a photo from so long ago
how can that be?

I went some place this week that only you can know
it's a place where it's wonderfully peaceful
I wanted to stay but I heard you say....you must go

It was your eyes that woke me
brought me back for today
they pulled me into a world where my heart is beating
piercing black eyes will you please stay?

by Freetofly

 

I just now found this poem..I have no idea who wrote it..But I would like to dedicate it to my lovely wife.

The Warrior


I am the warrior who fights the good fight
My presence flows like beautiful light and I am possessed of grace and power
My sword is Willingness and Truth my shield
I wage a war against the demons within me
Worse than any movie or fantasy these demons are real
Great courage and bravery are needed to face them
Few have had the strength to follow or join me on the path
Many have I seen turn back
And so I have become skilled in the art of single combat
I have been fighting long and hard
My struggle has often been lonely
There are but few obstacles left in my way
The greatest treasure I have won is a real and ever increasing certainty that I am the answer to all my questions, all my desires, and all my needs
Had I known that vulnerability and openness could get me so far I would have made them my abilities much sooner
The recent battles have been hard and yet my castle, once far away is now on the horizon.
I can see it's light's blazing in warm welcome and within it's walls are my peace, my mate, and my joy

 

^^ I like that one!!

 

Awww thats an awesome poem! Great job my awesome husband. I love you.

 

Something old: I wrote this in Iraq circa 2006​

Morning​

Arise, Arise​

Be gone the night,​

And give the Dawn,​

Its morning light.​

The morning rays,​

Like roosters' crows,​

Awake the farmers,​

To their cropping rows.​

Give us day, ​

And daily blessed,​

Before you travel,​

To settle West.​

The flowers tilt,​

To face the East,​

They yearn for substance,​

That will never cease.​

Arise, Arise,​

Oh how you burn,​

And give the world,​

Yet another turn.​

--- merged: Feb 13, 2012 4:04 AM ---
Something new; Written in en-route to Afghanistan.

A Lark

Into the storm,
Disturbing the night,
The lark takes wing,
Her fortress left behind.

Through wind and clouds,
the thunder resounds,
Unfurled and uncaring,
she flies anew.

The blackened sky,
Torn by shards of light,
Strength and fear behind,
She climbs and climbs.

Let the lark soar,
For her her beauty has no equal,
And none shall ever hold her.

 

College buddy of mine, yclept Browning Porter, wrote this one and eventually turned it into a song variously performed by Fatty Deluxe and the Jolly Llamas, The Dao Jonez Combustibles, the Treefrogs, Nickeltown (first recording), and Indescision (who you may have heard of or not. Certainly not the others...) (This from memory...)

The Song of the Itinerant Bible Salesman
On a night like this when the sky is clear and the moon is a yellow dogs tooth you can
Stop what you're doing and look up,
Maybe see some kind of truth well
People got all kinds of truth these days
I seen that wherever I'm at but
Me, I'm a travelling seller of God
And I make a good living at that well

I don't claim to know nothing, but if you would take my advice
Just keep your eyes open and pray every night and
Don't believe no kind of lies
No kind of lies

My Daddy was a backwoods preacher
And my mama was always a saint and
Me and the Lord we got an agreement
And he ain't never had no complaint
with a leatherbound King James version
With full color maps, just twelve ninety-five and
Everything Jesus said lettered in read well
One way or another it keeps me alive well

I don't claim to know nothing, but if you would take my advice
Just keep your eyes open and pray every night and
Don't believe no kind of lies
No kind of lies

Could've been that I met some housewife
Just ripe for the word of the Lord
But her soul is suspended between her salvation and a bible
that she can't afford and
Maybe I shouldn't've done it. I should have given it it her for free but
Sometimes I think
It's just paper and Ink
and it never did
Never meant nothing to me well

I don't claim to know nothing, but if you would take my advice
Just keep your eyes open and pray every night and
Don't believe no kind of lies
No kind of lies

Cause I find the truth
In the the travel
When the night is dark, endless, and black
down a backwoods road, in a straight 8 Ford
With a suitcase of books in the back...

 

Dude- these are really good!

 

Shadow

A shadow of a former self
Hiding what might have been
Thoughts slowly fade away
With feelings no longer seen
Not knowing what Ive become
Or what Im going to be
Ashamed to face the truth
For fear of what they may see

Being left behind
As everyone moves on
Being left behind
Now everyone has gone
Being left behind
In the shadow where I belong

A shadow of a former self
Telling lies so easily sold
Secrets kept deep within
Which cant and never will be told
Thoughts of you that have been lost
Past memories time has taken
Leaving nothing to hold on to
But empty promises so easily broken

Being left behind
As everyone moves on
Being left behind
Now everyone has gone
Being left behind
In the shadow where I belong

A shadow of a former self
Once strong but now defeated
A battle that can never be won
From the fight Ive now retreated
With nothing left to loose
I face the harsh reality
That a shadow of a former self
Is what I now will always be