I bring poems that are new to me. Heh, she being brand new...
If you see this and have a mind to, post a poem in your lj.
Poem To Be Read at 3 a.m.
by Donald Justice
Excepting the diner
On the outskirts
The town of Ladora
At 3 a.m.
Was dark but
For my headlights
And up in
One second-story room
A single light
Where someone
Was sick or
Perhaps reading
As I drove past
At seventy
Not thinking
This poem
Is for whoever
Had the light on
Me and my insomnia thank you for considering us, Donald.
I was reading along, trying to seek out something new and not angstified, and I had to smile when I saw this one. I was also happy to finally have the motivation to pay proper attention to the anthology Staying Alive : Real Poems for Unreal Times which I bought about 3 years ago.
I'm NOTHING without my angst, though, so I'm putting the new, angsty find under the cut. Heheh. I include this poem to help illustrate one of the contributing factors to my insomnia. Hey, at least I didn't break out Baudelaire. No libertine, absinthe swillers who are in love with corpses here.
The Journey
by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice -
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world.
determined to do
the only thing you could do -
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Longtimers, you feel me on this? New friends, yeah, it's a thing. A really, really difficult, ongoing thing.
One of my favorite things about poetry is that I can overshare using someone else's superior words and economy of expression. Being long-winded, I respect, and am in awe of, those that can distill complicated "things" in this fashion.
See? Need someone else's words. The best I have is this: if a novel or essay is a brawl, a good poem can be a Jet-Li kick in the face. Uh-huh.
In conclusion, I hope to catch tigers in red weather this evening.
Poem To Be Read at 3 a.m.
by Donald Justice
Excepting the diner
On the outskirts
The town of Ladora
At 3 a.m.
Was dark but
For my headlights
And up in
One second-story room
A single light
Where someone
Was sick or
Perhaps reading
As I drove past
At seventy
Not thinking
This poem
Is for whoever
Had the light on
Me and my insomnia thank you for considering us, Donald.
I was reading along, trying to seek out something new and not angstified, and I had to smile when I saw this one. I was also happy to finally have the motivation to pay proper attention to the anthology Staying Alive : Real Poems for Unreal Times which I bought about 3 years ago.
I'm NOTHING without my angst, though, so I'm putting the new, angsty find under the cut. Heheh. I include this poem to help illustrate one of the contributing factors to my insomnia. Hey, at least I didn't break out Baudelaire. No libertine, absinthe swillers who are in love with corpses here.
The Journey
by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice -
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world.
determined to do
the only thing you could do -
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Longtimers, you feel me on this? New friends, yeah, it's a thing. A really, really difficult, ongoing thing.
One of my favorite things about poetry is that I can overshare using someone else's superior words and economy of expression. Being long-winded, I respect, and am in awe of, those that can distill complicated "things" in this fashion.
See? Need someone else's words. The best I have is this: if a novel or essay is a brawl, a good poem can be a Jet-Li kick in the face. Uh-huh.
In conclusion, I hope to catch tigers in red weather this evening.