Poems/Writing Works I Love
I've been reading a lot of poems lately for my Writer's Craft class and generally just finding bits of really good writing. So, in order not to forget them and to have them handy for perusal on later dates, I'm going to post my collection here.
Suicide's Note
The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.
- Langston Hughes
The Sudden Chillness
The piercing chill I feel:
my dead wife's comb, in our bedroom,
under my heel...
- Buson
Chalked
she blinks and her eyelashes paint the sky. these
expectations will kill me, she says, holding tight
to her wrists because they belong to the
only person who will never let her go. she
writes in chalk across the sidewalk a
message of ‘I love.’ its unfinished, he tells her,
pointing at the lack of direction, grammatical
distinction. its not, she responds, stepping
back and holding out her hands to the world.
I love I love I love, she shouts, and that
is all that matters
- callmechicago
Lines written at a small distance from my house
...
Love, now an universal birth,
From heart to heart is stealing,
From earth to man, from man to earth,
--It is the hour of feeling.
One moment now may give us more
Than fifty years of reason;
Our minds shall drink at every pore
The spirit of the season.
...
- William Wordsworth
San Jose
dances late into the night.
neon red and yellow
skirts sway through the heat,
seducing the darkness
bonavista.
- Jenna Colangelo
Bedtime Story
"Careful, honey, it's loaded," he said, reentering the bedroom.
Her back rested against the headboard. "This for your wife?"
"No. Too chancy. I'm hiring a professional."
"How about me?"
He smirked. "Cute. But who'd be dumb enough to hire a lady hit man?"
She wet her lips, sighting along the barrel.
"Your wife."
- Jeffrey Whitmore
"To be or not to be..."
HAMLET: To be, or not to be--that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--
No more--and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--
To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprise of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. -- Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia! -- Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.
- William Shakespeare
“i thank You God”
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;
and for everything
which is natural which is infinite
which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;
this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:
and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
- e.e. cummings
Untitled
If we should get lost,
throw away all of the maps
and stay lost with me.
- Tyler Knott
Untitled
Wherever I go,
whatever I do, you’re the
home I’ll come back to.
- Tyler Knott
The Winter's Tale
What you do
Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet.
I'ld have you do it ever: when you sing,
I'ld have you buy and sell so, so give alms,
Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs,
To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you
A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that; move still, still so,
And own no other function: each your doing,
So singular in each particular,
Crowns what you are doing in the present deed,
That all your acts are queens.
- Florizel (4.3), Shakespeare
Suicide's Note
The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.
- Langston Hughes
The Sudden Chillness
The piercing chill I feel:
my dead wife's comb, in our bedroom,
under my heel...
- Buson
Chalked
she blinks and her eyelashes paint the sky. these
expectations will kill me, she says, holding tight
to her wrists because they belong to the
only person who will never let her go. she
writes in chalk across the sidewalk a
message of ‘I love.’ its unfinished, he tells her,
pointing at the lack of direction, grammatical
distinction. its not, she responds, stepping
back and holding out her hands to the world.
I love I love I love, she shouts, and that
is all that matters
- callmechicago
Lines written at a small distance from my house
...
Love, now an universal birth,
From heart to heart is stealing,
From earth to man, from man to earth,
--It is the hour of feeling.
One moment now may give us more
Than fifty years of reason;
Our minds shall drink at every pore
The spirit of the season.
...
- William Wordsworth
San Jose
dances late into the night.
neon red and yellow
skirts sway through the heat,
seducing the darkness
bonavista.
- Jenna Colangelo
Bedtime Story
"Careful, honey, it's loaded," he said, reentering the bedroom.
Her back rested against the headboard. "This for your wife?"
"No. Too chancy. I'm hiring a professional."
"How about me?"
He smirked. "Cute. But who'd be dumb enough to hire a lady hit man?"
She wet her lips, sighting along the barrel.
"Your wife."
- Jeffrey Whitmore
"To be or not to be..."
HAMLET: To be, or not to be--that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--
No more--and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--
To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprise of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. -- Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia! -- Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.
- William Shakespeare
“i thank You God”
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;
and for everything
which is natural which is infinite
which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;
this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:
and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
- e.e. cummings
Untitled
If we should get lost,
throw away all of the maps
and stay lost with me.
- Tyler Knott
Untitled
Wherever I go,
whatever I do, you’re the
home I’ll come back to.
- Tyler Knott
The Winter's Tale
What you do
Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet.
I'ld have you do it ever: when you sing,
I'ld have you buy and sell so, so give alms,
Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs,
To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you
A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that; move still, still so,
And own no other function: each your doing,
So singular in each particular,
Crowns what you are doing in the present deed,
That all your acts are queens.
- Florizel (4.3), Shakespeare