Showing posts with label poet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poet. Show all posts

Belewe Moon





Belewe Moon

by Taylor Roberts

At night, a whisper, soft against the breeze
in subtle winter, combing her white wreathes,
did rouse the muse and sudden beckoning
positioned me beneath your fecund moon.

When out among the daffodils, you there,
unbridled in your limitless field, called
all impatient paper whites, wait not
for the last frost to break and bloom!

I sought you like a new-formed hyacinth
burrowing my way through root and rock,
though no more capable were my weak limbs
than those periwinkle petals, still I climbed

Out of the graveyard of my buried hearts--
there a piece, a war wound, a soft death--
I scaled past every failure, shaming each
with the audacity of my ascent.


And up and up, I clambered to your call,
with rain sending me running for what looked
like sanctuary, from afar, those hills
earthen breasts breathing under your belewe moon.

And it, and you, together captured me,
my heart a soft sandbar in rising tide,
and coaxed me deep into the cool dream of
your body, your sea-green eyes, those bombshells.

When all along my soul had crept unseen
among the hushed minefields of love; that moon
arrested me, doe-still and sudden snap!
the clap-trap shock, betrayed me to your gaze.
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Thanks

Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, 1971 by Graham Howe


Thanks


by Yusef Komunyakaa


Thanks for the tree
between me & a sniper's bullet.
I don't know what made the grass
sway seconds before the Viet Cong
raised his soundless rifle.
Some voice always followed,
telling me which foot
to put down first.
Thanks for deflecting the ricochet
against that anarchy of dusk.
I was back in San Francisco
wrapped up in a woman's wild colors,
causing some dark bird's love call
to be shattered by daylight
when my hands reached up
& pulled a branch away
from my face. Thanks
for the vague white flower
that pointed to the gleaming metal
reflecting how it is to be broken
like mist over the grass,
as we played some deadly
game for blind gods.
What made me spot the monarch
writhing on a single thread
tied to a farmer's gate,
holding the day together
like an unfingered guitar string,
is beyond me. Maybe the hills
grew weary & leaned a little in the heat.
Again, thanks for the dud
hand grenade tossed at my feet
outside Chu Lai. I'm still
falling through its silence.
I don't know why the intrepid
sun touched the bayonet,
but I know that something
stood among those lost trees
& moved only when I moved.


[copyright 1993, by Yusef Komunyakaa]

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Bohemia


from "Letter to Gary Buttone"
by Jack Spicer

Bohemia is a dreadful, wonderful place. It is full of hideous people and beautiful poetry. It is a hell full of windows into heaven. It would be wrong of me to drag a person I love into such a place against his will. Unless you walk into it freely, and with open despairing eyes, you can't even see the windows. And yet I can't leave Bohemia myself to come to you-- Bohemia is inside of me, in a sense is me, was the price i paid, the oath i signed to write poetry.
I think that someday you'll enter Bohemia-- not for me (I'm not worth the price, no human being is), but for poetry-- to see the windows and maybe blast a few yourself through the rocks of hell. I'll be there waiting for you, my arms open to receive you.

But let's have these letters go on, whether it be days, years, or never before I see you... And we can continue to love each other, by letter, from alien worlds.

Love,
Jack

[c. 1951-52]


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