oh, yes

there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late.

- Charles Bukowski

I love how short and simple this poem is yet it still hits you so hard at the end

The Game

Start your engine.
Here we go.
What fallacy is committed in the following passage?
The dreaded
A
B
C
D
Which to pick?
And around the back corner he goes
now in second place!
Maybe A
not C.
Wait..D
it's always B everyone knows that.
He's spinning out of control..Collision!
Smoke everywhere.
Pen drops.
Pick it up!
WE WO WE WO.
Ambulance on the scene
The race is
Over..


This is a poem I wrote last semester when I was really stressed about Philosophy and how I never like taking test and the stress we have when we have to pick between 4 letters sometimes 5. 

Flames by Billy Collins

Smokey the Bear heads
into the autumn woods
with a red can of gasoline
and a box of wooden matches.

His ranger's hat is cocked
at a disturbing angle.

His brown fur gleams
under the high sun
as his paws, the size
of catcher's mitts,
crackle into the distance.

He is sick of dispensing
warnings to the careless,
the half-wit camper,
the dumbbell hiker.

He is going to show them
how a professional does it.

America
  by Claude McKay
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20221#sthash.zDyyLopN.dpuf

I love this poem. I have ever since I read it in school. It made me really think about how the US treats people from different nations. 

Spring

Spring

Frost-locked all the winter,
Seeds, and roots, and stones of fruits,
What shall make their sap ascend
That they may put forth shoots?
Tips of tender green,
Leaf, or blade, or sheath;
Telling of the hidden life
That breaks forth underneath,
Life nursed in its grave by Death.


Blows the thaw-wind pleasantly,
Drips the soaking rain,
By fits looks down the waking sun:
Young grass springs on the plain;
Young leaves clothe early hedgerow trees;
Seeds, and roots, and stones of fruits,
Swollen with sap put forth their shoots;
Curled-headed ferns sprout in the lane;
Birds sing and pair again.

There is no time like Spring,
When life's alive in everything,
Before new nestlings sing,
Before cleft swallows speed their journey back
Along the trackless track -
God guides their wing,
He spreads their table that they nothing lack, -
Before the daisy grows a common flower
Before the sun has power
To scorch the world up in his noontide hour.


There is no time like Spring,
Like Spring that passes by;
There is no life like Spring-life born to die, -
Piercing the sod,
Clothing the uncouth clod,
Hatched in the nest,
Fledged on the windy bough,
Strong on the wing:
There is no time like Spring that passes by,
Now newly born, and now
Hastening to die.  


This poem is by Christina Rossetti. She is a poet that I had to write about for English class and also got the privilege to order her complete works which is sitting in my drawer in my dorm waiting to be dug out when it was needed. She is a poet that has manage to write everything from romantic poetry to children's poetry. 

Hello all,

For Sunday,


Utilize at least four locations.  Eavesdrop with a pen.

Public space - libraries, parking lots, busses and trains, malls and shopping areas/restaurants  - are best because you have the great possibility to overhear speech that is out of context and no one has real expectation of privacy.


In other words you don't want to write down "Guy with the hat said, 'the Tigers are a bunch of punks'"

You do want to write down "The Tigers are a bunch of punks".


That said, you needn't provide any context for the speech you hear. I would like it if in your email to me you identify what four locations they are from.

Get a couple of pages and email to me by Sunday.

jmulroon2010@gmail.com

enjoy.

Pursue Your Passion

This something that has always moved me, talking about pursuing what you're passionate about, despite what people think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UK-fcfalsw

"The Secret of My Endurance"

Bukowski gets a bit of a mixed response nowadays. He's either hailed as one of the best poets of the 20th Century, or dismissed as a bitter misogynist. Both are probably true.

Emotionally driven

I am curious about how you might go about emotionally driven poems like anger and sadness. Do you have techniques? What about grieving?

Does anyone try to charge any happy/excited/proud poems? How does that work?

Do you struggle when you're not in the mood?

-Jenn

Alice Munro wins literature Nobel Prize

Alice Munro, 'Master' Of The Short Story, Wins Literature Nobel http://n.pr/1acEOJ5

I reference this poem all the time, one of my favorites

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

By John Keats

 

 

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men

Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Give Me a Chance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9EOf7mw3qs

I would check this out I have always been a fan of Def Poetry and my English teacher showed it to us Junior year and ever since I would sit and watch many, many def poets all day as they have so much passion and a different way of delivering there poetry

I do not love you as if you were brine-rose, topaz (Favorite Love poem)

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

What If Money Was No Object? (+playlist)

Will I ever understand

Will I ever understand.

now I am alone

with no-one,

wondering where I went wrong

obsession, my only companion,

as I long for the

warm embrace and

crisp sensation associated with

another.

Fluttering behind the bars,

wanting to be free, to soar.

Pulsating for the urge of excitement,

hunger.

So many that are happy

when I lack the experience to define it,

so many that smile

when I forget how.

I gaze at the world

passing by;

fingers intertwined

lips tied

people left breathless.

Where is it?

My breath,

Gone.

Wondering where I went wrong.

Trickling down my fingertips

i feel warm

finally

chest not rising

I feel breathless

finally

the bird no longer fluttering

I feel at peace

finally

I understand one thing now,

lights interrupt the serenate of the darkness that has become my reality

sounds penetrate the silence that has become the soundtrack to my life

vibrations create a sensation, where I so comfortably felt nothing

for so long,

now,

cries, someone cries for me

I understand one thing now,

I went wrong,

where?

I gave up.

-Lapan

The Stranger

The Stranger  

If only I had the answer,

why my world spins so much faster.

Crashes,

so much harder.

Your eyes tease me, beckoning me.

Lips, shout in anguish and desire.

Licking the flames that escape the confines of my chest.

Palpations echoe, reverberating against the walls.

Desire,

fuels me.

My fingers starve for the compassion of being

entangled

in the locks of crimson that cascade down your smooth

façade.

I am left starved, parched

craving.

Admiration is a simple thing,

when one admires something that they have the

potential to

possess.

Instead, I watch from a far, and

anticipate the sensation of your skin in my grasp.

Your lips pressed ever so delicately against mine.

Bare, close to my chest, every breath in

unison.

I admire,

the challenge.

Happily ever after.

Digging by Seamus Heaney (one of the best poems ever)

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

Seamus Heaney

On Being Brought from Africa to America

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negro's, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train. 

Phillis Wheatley

Where the sidewalk ends.

Where the Sidewalk Ends

from the book "Where the Sidewalk Ends" (1974)

There is a place where the sidewalk ends

and before the street begins,

and there the grass grows soft and white,

and there the sun burns crimson bright,

and there the moon-bird rests from his flight

to cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black

and the dark street winds and bends.

Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow

we shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow

and watch where the chalk-white arrows go

to the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

and we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,

for the children, they mark, and the children, they know,

the place where the sidewalk ends.

Good Poem I read in my Advanced Portfolio class

In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

~ Mary Oliver

(American Primitive)