@poemtoday.bsky.social
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poemtoday.bsky.social
So

So the promise of happiness?
he asked a frog

then swallowed the frog
And the buzz of memory?

he asked the page
before lighting the page

And by night the sliding stars
beyond the night itself

Michael Palmer

Image courtesy @tomsnarsky.bsky.social
poemtoday.bsky.social
A favourite e e cummings quotation
Reposted
andrewbertaina.bsky.social
Seamus Heaney at play with language
poemtoday.bsky.social
In Memoriam

On that stormy night
a top branch broke off
on the biggest tree in my garden.

It's still up there.  Though its leaves
are withered black among the green
the living branches
won't let it fall.

Norman MacCaig

Image courtesy @pacificraft.bsky.socia
poemtoday.bsky.social
And The Days Are Not Full Enough

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse

Not shaking the grass.

Ezra Pound

Image courtesy ‪@mirahqv.bsky.social‬

briefpoems.wordpress.com/2015/11/08/p...
Reposted
mollytwomey.bsky.social
'Let the worst I ever do to you be die.' A little Vona Groarke of a Saturday eve ☕
Aubade

You say that you heard piano chords rustling in the night; 
that you woke once and saw me there, and again.
Then I was gone. The sea under your bed said something 
like your name: you thought you'd drown.

This morning your fever slinks away 
like a dog bested by the hubbub of city-fed 
and workaday birdsong come into its own.
You call. You want some toast.

The trees are bone dry; sunlight hunkers behind them.
Your hair fronds when I lift your head 
as if out of a sea pulling away. I offer you 
the lidded cup. You take it and you drink.

Let the worst I ever do to you be die.
Turn your head sideways, dear, so I can watch you sleep.
Let the morning have us, and the afternoon.
I am here, blessed, capable of more.
poemtoday.bsky.social
Passion and Form

Ah, they have kissed!
The rhyme
Comes in unnoticed.

Louise Glück

Image courtesy @phillipcrymble.bsky.social
poemtoday.bsky.social
Night Howl

God said, Let there be light
and there was light.

Light moved across her belly
and thighs and between.

God spoke and opened the fountains
of the deep. There was water everywhere.

On the sheets and in the bed. And the evening
and the morning were the third day.

Kate Gale
poemtoday.bsky.social
Michael Longley
ianduhig.bsky.social
Michael Longley, from 'Ghost Orchid'
poemtoday.bsky.social
Pot Burial

He has married again. His wife
Buys ornaments and places them
On the dark sideboard. Year by year
Her vases and small jugs crowd out
The smiles of the wife who died.

Tom Paulin

Image courtesy @phillipcrymble.bsky.social
poemtoday.bsky.social
Couture

If by mink
coat you mean
a soft, warm
garment
made from
the lives of
many other
creatures,
then, yeah, sure,
I guess you
could say I'm
wearing a
mink coat.

Tony Hoagland

Image courtesy @phillipcrymble.bsky.social
poemtoday.bsky.social
They’re all on the same team

my daughter says,
flowers tilting toward her

from market stalls
in bright frazzle, scented chaos

her blonde hair unfurled,
her flag as she herself bends

toward blossom.

Jim Daniels
poemtoday.bsky.social
I and my thoughts of you

Remember that old thorn bush
amazed by
its one flower

If I stood by it, would it be diminished
as an image must be when
it stands beside
what it’s an image of?

Norman MacCaig

Image courtesy @tomsnarsky.bsky.social
poemtoday.bsky.social
Hi, Melissa

I have spoken to you of heaven—
I simply meant the eyes are suns that see.
Seeing is the faces’ nervous delicious Lord.

Listening to you makes me naked.
When I kiss your ankle I am silencing an oracle.
The oracle speaks from the hill of your ankle.

Max Ritvo
poemtoday.bsky.social
A Dead Statesman

I could not dig; I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?

Rudyard Kipling

briefpoems.wordpress.com/2016/05/20/e...
poemtoday.bsky.social
Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog Which I Gave to His Royal Highness

I am his Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

Alexander Pope

Image courtesy @robertallenpoet.bsky.social

briefpoems.wordpress.com/2016/06/17/d...
poemtoday.bsky.social
The Blue Boat

How late the daylight edges
toward the northern light
as though journeying
in a blue boat, gilded in mussel shell

with, slung from its mast, a lantern
like our old idea of the soul

Kathleen Jamie
poemtoday.bsky.social
Swinburne's "Wet Dream".

Maybe this is what Yeats was talking about:-

the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love's despair
To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.

Much tossing on Swinburne's bed.
poemtoday.bsky.social
Butterflies

They fall in ribbons down the path of oceans,
the foam-pale butterflies, but the flowers are salt.
They prove the charms of rapine, that the emotion
called beauty has earned this result.

Derek Walcott
poemtoday.bsky.social
Ease

The baby sighing little curves
like the fretwork on a violin
or torturing her face with soggy mitts
while smiling at shadows.

Her thoughts forming the heartbeat
of THUMP while I wind her,
speaking her secret language
with the magpies in Fairview Park.

Jessica Traynor
poemtoday.bsky.social
A New Being

I know myself no more, my child,
Since thou art come to me,
Pity so tender and so wild
Hath wrapped my thoughts of thee.

These thoughts, a fiery gentle rain,        
Are from the Mother shed,
Where many a broken heart hath lain
And many a weeping head.

Æ (George Russell)
poemtoday.bsky.social
Making it in poetry

The young teller
at the credit union
asked why so many
small checks
from universities?

Because I write
poems I said. Why
haven’t I heard
of you? Because
I write poems
I said.

Bob Hicok
poemtoday.bsky.social
Inheritance

Where did you get those big eyes?
My mother.

And where did you get those lips?
My mother.

And the loneliness?
My mother.

And that broken heart?
My mother.

And the absence, where did you get that?
My father.

Warsan Shire
Reposted
maryanncorbett.bsky.social
I see that my UK friends are mourning the passing of #TonyHarrison, so here *in memoriam* is a video of his realization of the medieval mystery plays. May he rest in peace. www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzIr...
The Mysteries - Part 1: The Nativity
YouTube video by Graham Baldwin
www.youtube.com