Midnight Poetry Thread

[SOteric]

I know it's been a while and I apologise for posting something old rather than writing something new. The echoes of it seem oddly appropriate and maybe a little comforting.



Requiem

Memories of you, man whom I have loved and lost,
emerge from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.
Cold flowers are raining over my heart.
Hours with you swallowed everything;
Like distance,
Like the sea,
Like time.
Everything fell into you.


They have been such happy hours,
Hours of a spell that blazed like a lighthouse.
From you the wings of the song birds rose,
I dream, still, of the pleasant assault...of your kiss.
In some turbulent drunkenness of love,
Everything fell into you.


In the childhood mists of my soul, winged and wounded,
You held me up in my sorrow, and I clung to you.
Your life was bound to mine,
An endless chain of paper valentines.
Man whom I have loved
I summon you in this hour and raise my song to you.
You housed an infinite tenderness.
You let your heart take me in.


There were thirsts and hunger, you were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, you were the miracle.
I do not know how you could contain me
In the earth of your soul.
How terrible and brief has been my desire for you,
How difficult and intense, how avid.
This was my destiny and in it was the voyage of my longing
And in it my longing fell into you.


It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
Which night fastens to all timetables.
Only a faltering shadow twists in my hands.
Farther than everything,
I have fallen into you.

[nostamj]

1. I *just* finished this (well, for tonight) for Khephra and

the tsunami victims....


tsunami/scott (khephra)

We are shocked by the suddenness.

Can I boil today's rice
With more joy,
Respecting that it may be
The last bowl?

Most of us will not be warned
Before we are swept out
Of this life.

Will we hold to hope
And spit the bitter out?

That's the daily test.

Most of us will not be warned.
We should not be shocked by the suddenness.

Warning or challenge,
We should not be shocked.

January 8, 2005

[Longgrain]

2. Here's one...

That will probably make no sense to anyone but me...







YOUNG AUDRIE REO

Or

HOW I BECAME A FATHER OVERNIGHT









Young Audrie Reo,
I snuck through the gate,
Past your guards to get to
Your street of
Black marbled houses,
Nervously jesting as I went,
Counting down the numbers to your door;
Passing all your fading belles,
Swinging my satchel before my waist
As I recalled a forgotten memory…

We met on your lawn
So excited to see one another--
You were still a girl
Wearing a training bra
Beneath your gray denim jacket--
But you wore a solid vest of gold.
I grabbed you by the arms
And limply pressed my lips
Into yours, like rubbing them across
The shiny orchid petals
Of an old corsage,
Just as we did when we were young;
But you broke away
And looked at me with your tangled blond eyes
And told me
That we could not do that anymore…

What a strange sequel I’m in,
Penned by a Goddess’s hand
Whose only intent was to
Blot out everything
You wrote about me
And tie-dye your beautiful loose ends…
The Book of the Month Club
Mailed me a facsimile of Her novel
It had a flat black sleeve
And a title so dark and green
It could not be read,
But the author’s name was printed clearly
In the lower left hand corner
In letters of white fire.

Starlight.

Mirror.

What have we done Audralene?
What terrifying visions of bridges have we burned?
Laughing through the streets,
Wearing nothing but potato bags,
Armed with nothing but a cheese grater.
“I was so happy,” lamented
The pig-faced woman
Dust jacketed in cellophane
As she sat at her window staring back at me,
As I burnt her split home…
I can now see,
She is the mother of my child…
Virgo if it’s a boy…
Audrie if it’s a girl…
It could have easily been you…

Now,
The rinsed Drag Queen takes his place
Atop the hotel
And we jealously cross your streets
To the Bedroom Museum
On this--the day of our reunion…
We tip-toe in, along with the auburn-faced men
Pushing through the turnstiles
Into the loft of the gallery,
Where they congregate
Behind black metal rails
And mingle with the curtains
In the niches along the walls…
From the train seat cafeteria,
To the movie screened floor,
They’re waiting for the Queens milk.
But you and I sit apart
On a white pedestal.
Your brother is there
Carrying his Squirrel--
Written into our story by an uncaring editor.
The squirrel comes between us.
She bites your foot.
You crush her head.
And you abandon me.
Vanished from my vision,
And I think of calling out--
“Audrie.”
“Audrie!”
“Audrie!!!”
But I stop myself;
And the doctors come in
And day suddenly become night,
Denying me the diffused orange aspirin of dusk.
The coarse, rainbow of Raccoons
Let out a harrowing scream
As they carry you away for me.
The police cars whoop in the darkness
With their bull-horned voices
Echoing under the trestles--
And their blue antlers--
Strobing like electric flame on the damp tar--
Which reflects everything
Except what I wish to smell.
You.
Audralene.

I will not follow the Hellbounds.
The Hellbounds do not follow me.

But Audrie Reo, I hear you…

[WilliamPitt]

3. For Kef

Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep

Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.

- Horace

===

Foe unvanquished, I won't perish in the field;
I'll be born again, to take up the halberd seven more times.

- Kuribayashi Tadamichi, 'Poetry of the Samurai'

===

Thanatopsis

To him who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;--
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around--
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air--
Comes a still voice. Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world -- with kings,
The powerful of the earth -- the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun, -- the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods -- rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,--
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. -- Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,
Save his own dashings -- yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep -- the dead reign there alone.

So shalt thou rest -- and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men--
The youth in life's fresh spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man--
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
By those, who in their turn, shall follow them.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

- H. W. Longfellow

[johnnie]

4. Here is one I wrote a while ago

It doesn't compare to the words here so far, but I felt a need to post it.

Weathered Season

Bitterness; only for a breath.
Another path…walked along in contempt
Not the first, and not the last
But a written chapter none-the-less.

A heart that beats..in search of a rhythm
For a tranquil place within it's doubtful mind.
Scattered thoughts that will only help deter it
From reaching truth…well before it's time.

Is the hunger for a soul a never-ending dream?
Is the thirst for love found only in a dream?
Does loneliness bring forth a possibility?
Or is every step you take, a step away from peace?

The story carries on, the battles will be fought
In search of our own chosen sun
Paths walked and chapters written
With the salt of tears of no one.

[Longgrain]

5. :(

from a poet on payday...

[Generic Other]

6. Another for Keph

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever; I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood,
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W. H. Auden