# Post poems you like



## floodbear (Mar 3, 2016)

james baldwin. staggerlee wonders



> 1
> 
> I always wonder
> what they think the ******* are doing
> ...


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## Penny (Mar 24, 2016)

April Rain Song 

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain. 

Langston Hughes


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## floodbear (Mar 3, 2016)

louis untermeyer. hands




> strange, how this smooth and supple joint can be
> put to so many purposes. it checks
> and rears the monsters of machinery
> and shapes the idle gallantries of sex.
> ...


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## Polexia (Apr 22, 2014)

There once was a woman, and so I've been told,
Who's lover grew weary, who's lover grew cold. 
"My child", he remarked. "Though our episode ends,
In the manners of men I suggest we be friends". 
And the truest of friends, ever after they were. 

Oh, they lied in their teeth when they told me of her. 

-Dorothy Parker


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## Dakris (Jun 14, 2012)

“The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.” 

--

“There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled.
You feel it, don't you?” 

--

“I searched for God among the Christians and on the Cross and therein I found Him not.
I went into the ancient temples of idolatry; no trace of Him was there.
I entered the mountain cave of Hira and then went as far as Qandhar but God I found not.
With set purpose I fared to the summit of Mount Caucasus and found there only 'anqa's habitation.
Then I directed my search to the Kaaba, the resort of old and young; God was not there even.
Turning to philosophy I inquired about him from ibn Sina but found Him not within his range.
I fared then to the scene of the Prophet's experience of a great divine manifestation only a "two bow-lengths' distance from him" but God was not there even in that exalted court.
Finally, I looked into my own heart and there I saw Him; He was nowhere else.” 

Rumi


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

by

Hakim Al-Jamil



> you remember nobody don't you?
> like with de facto segregation
> where they said the schools were segregated
> but nobody did it on purpose
> ...


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## floodbear (Mar 3, 2016)

wallace stevens. domination of black.




> At night, by the fire
> the colors of the bushes
> and of the fallen leaves,
> repeating themselves,
> ...


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

Let us go then, you and I, 
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;

Exerpt from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S Elliot


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## BatFlapClap (Dec 30, 2015)

Anne Sexton - Bat 


> His awful skin
> stretched out by some tradesman
> is like my skin, here between my fingers,
> a kind of webbing, a kind of frog.
> ...


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

Ai Ogawa

Life Story For Father Ritter and Other Priests Accused of Sexual Abuse

Nuns are the brides of Christ, 
but priests are His sons, 
sons denied the sexual release of giving themselves up to the spirit 
Christ is not raped, 
until he hails Caesar, 
no, not Him, 
but isn't it logical, 
can't we imagine it going that far? 
For examined in that context, 
the rest snaps into place. 
To rape is to erase the other's identity and replace it with your own, 
so why not ram it home, eh, 
the Roman way (copied from the Greeks, of course). 

Strip Him, 
whip Him, 
bend Him over and... 
Suddenly, I imagine the blond hustler 
with the blade Georgia O'Keeffe 
crosses tattooed on his butt cheeks. 

Ah, let me count the ways.
But most days I conduct myself in a conventional fashion. 
I perform my desparate acts only in my thoughts. 
I talk to God from one side of my mouth. 
I say Mass, 
pass out the host and most of the time I only drink wine for consolation, 
but once in a while,

I raise the black flag of moral surrender
and get out my visual aids.
My hand trembles, as I turn each page,
where men and boys are displayed like offerings,
their cocks to be seized and squeezed
until I drown in jizzum,
until I leave my prison
to walk the tightrope
to the next broken boy,
the next indiscretion
that could destroy me.
This ones what they used to call consumptive.

"Do you need a place to stay?" I ask
In bed, he says, he's afraid of the dark,
so I leave the light on.
Toward daylight, I strike.
He says, "daddy don't,"
but daddy do and do
and when I'm through
I give him a few dollars
and a card that says
Need Help? Call I (800) 4-Refug.
But what about my own help line to salvation?
The voice always says,
I'm not in right now,
leave a message,
so at the sound of sizzling flesh,
I repeat my request for rescue.
What is it I want to escape?
Are the boys merely substitutes
to save me from some greater abomination?

In my dreams, the centurion has my face,
holds Christ by the waist
and kisses his navel,
sticks his tongue there,
surprised to find the taste
of honey filling his mouth.
The sound of bees also fills ears,
as he spreads his cloak on the floor
and shoves Christ down on it
When he feels stinging in his groin,
he finds his pubic hair alive with bees.
His cock swells to an enormous size,
turns black and he dies,
staring into Christ's eyes.
Still He had not spoken,
had seemed to open and open himself
to the centurion,
only to take his revenge
at the moment of consummation.
Am I going somewhere with this,
or am I really only trying to discover who is whom
in the locked room of sexual abuse?

One is the picture
and the other is the frame around it.
I found it!—the photograph
of Father Harrigan and me
when I am five.
He holds me in his lap.
I'm tired, diough I've had my nap.
Its June, I mean he said he had a Junebug,
to come to his room to see.
Did I say he is my uncle?
By the time I'm thirteen,
we have so many secrets between us—
my tiny hand, a penis
that I stroke
the way he taught me,
he who bought me my first missal
and who later welcomes me into the seminary.
He teaches me how
to capture little boys
with promises of toys,
until a free meal
becomes the lure
with which the fish
are hooked, then filleted
and cooked.

I remember how he shook me,
when I wouldn't touch.
Do not tease me, boy.
"Please me," he said, "or, or..

He shuddered, he jerked away from me
and that was that, until next time.
Finally, I'm at his grave.
When I fall on my knees, father pulls me up.
"I know everything," he whispers, "I know.
When we get home, you pack. You leave."
When he has his final heart attack
I sit with his body for hours.
I think some power to change
may drain from him to me,
but I feel nothing
brushing against my soul,
except the old urge.

After the funeral,
mother and I find letters from my uncle
in a tattered, old suitcase.
Before I can stop her, she opens them.
She smothers a cry
when she comes to the photograph of me
in the buff, a dust broom
stuck up my anus.
I stare at it, amazed I had forgotten it happened
Uncle begs forgiveness, in each letter,
but father never forgives.
The last, dated the year before uncle died,
is five pages (the shortest).
Again he describes how he robbed me of my innocence,
but says I can at least do good as a priest.

Twice mother tries to speak.
At last she says, "you were always such a sweet boy."
She rips the letters up
and throws them in the trash.
"And give me that," she cries.
Finally, the photograph in shreds, she opens her hands
in a gesture of helplessness,
then says, "I'll fix you supper."
Later, we embrace and I go outside.
I spread my arms around the ancient oak,
where uncle tied me once,
until I took him inside my mouth.
I thought my throat would close,
but instead it froze open,
while snow and semen
spilled down into me.
I was ten and I was praying to die,
praying I would choke,
while he commanded me to open wider.
Finally, I couldn't breathe.
I passed out and when I came round,
my mouth tasted of soap.

Uncle spoke, "lie on your side."
I felt him poking me with something,
then I felt myself pried apart,
as I began to lose consciousness again.
"Still friends?" he asked next time.
"What are you drawing?"
It was a flying man, his head
severed from his body
and falling to the earth,
but I said, "It's the Holy Ghost"
"No," he said, "this is your uncle,
this is the end of hope."
He hung himself with rope.
We priests did our best to hide it,
pretended not to know the truth,
though the proof was in his room.

One filthy magazine after another
and nude photos, scattered on the bed and floor
were there for unavoidable discovery.
They delegated me the burning
of the evidence,
the lies about the whys of his closed casket.
We found a way around it all,
got him into hallowed ground.
An accident, a fall, we told everyone.
Hit his head, bled profusely,
found him dead hours later...
I slammed his head against the radiator,
then notified the police.

We came to an agreement
for the good of the Church.
They would not release the report.
We could sort it out ourselves. Couldn't we?
I throw my duffle in the car
and back out of the drive.
When the hustler I pick up
moves across the seat,
I feel no beast rising beneath his hand.
"Go on, get out," I say,
"and stay away from creeps like me."
"I'll see you again," he says,
because he knows.
I know he will too, unless I lose my head some
and like a June bride, marry groom death.
At the next intersection,
I head west, instead of south.

Along the way, I shed my priesthood
like a skin.
I work my way from one end
of decline to another.
Sometimes I drink for days,
then take any job that pays enough
for sandwiches.
After two thousand miles, I sell the car
and tend bar in Wickenburg,
until a memory disturbs my false serenity.
Twin boys, who lived on our street,
forced to eat off the floor,
while uncle bored into them
with a vibrator.

Later he showed a video of Peter Pan,
which was written by a man
not too different from me,
for as I understand it,
Captain Hook may be taken
as the unexpressed desire
to molest a child, to threaten him with harm,
then ultimately to defile him.
Now when people stare at the stub
where my hand was, I smile and rub it,
as if a genie will appear
and grant three wishes.
I am that which I fear.
Is that why you cleared out, uncle dear,
though here you are in a puff of smoke,
the scar of your life healed over now.
How much farther must I go?
Why is my destination so uncertain?
What is the difference between nothing and zero?
Cackling, you fade to black
and I'm lying on my back, staring through the bars
of LA County, where I am incarcerated
for another sex-related incident
that escalated into violence.

He participated willingly, I told them,
as the boy was hustled off
to join the war against the saints,
who aren't just the good ones, no,
but also the ones who struggle again and again
against the flow of raw sewage,
only to drown in its undertow.


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

En la atmosfera dense se vislumbra, vapor disuelto que la brisa encumbra
cual humo frio de homicidias mechas, a las torres de Illion, escombros hechas
Envuelta en veste de opalina gasa, indiferente a lo que en torno pasa
recamada de oro, desde el monte. mira Elena hacia el livido horizonte
de ruinas hacinadas en el llano, irguiendo un lirio en la rosada mano 

Julian del Casal


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## Clueing For Looks (Dec 3, 2016)

The past and present wilt—I have fill'd them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)

*Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)*

I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

- Song of Myself by Walt Whitman, Section 51


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

If the waxing crescent is the bow
and the comet is the arrow
I hope the earth’s gravity
sucks it straight into my marrow
and decimates me completely
with cupid’s celestial arrow


[can't find who this is from]


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## Faery (May 18, 2011)

Chance Meetings 
by Conrad Aiken

In the mazes of loitering people, the watchful and furtive,
The shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leaves,
In the drowse of the sunlight, among the low voices,
I suddenly face you,

Your dark eyes return for a space from her who is with you,
They shine into mine with a sunlit desire,
They say an 'I love you, what star do you live on?'
They smile and then darken,

And silent, I answer 'You too--I have known you,--I love you!--'
And the shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leaves
Interlace with low voices and footsteps and sunlight
To divide us forever.


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## Faery (May 18, 2011)

LXXXV
THE SONG OF THE DEFEATED
by Rabindranath Tagore

My Master has bid me while I stand at the roadside, to sing the song of Defeat, for that is the bride whom He woos in secret.
She has put on the dark veil, hiding her face from the crowd, but the jewel glows on her breast in the dark.
She is forsaken of the day, and God’s night is waiting for her with its lamps lighted and flowers wet with dew.
She is silent with her eyes downcast; she has left her home behind her, from her home has come that wailing in the wind.
But the stars are singing the love-song of the eternal to a face sweet with shame and suffering.
The door has been opened in the lonely chamber, the call has sounded, and the heart of the darkness throbs with awe because of the coming tryst.


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## Faery (May 18, 2011)

Fruit-Gathering
by Rabindranath Tagore

XXI

I will meet one day the Life within me, the joy that hides in my life, though the days perplex my path with their idle dust.
I have known it in glimpses, and its fitful breath has come upon me, making my thoughts fragrant for a while.
I will meet one day the Joy without me that dwells behind the screen of light–and will stand in the overflowing solitude where all things are seen as by their creator.

XXIX

You have set me among those who are defeated.
I know it is not for me to win, nor to leave the game.
I shall plunge into the pool although but to sink to the bottom.
I shall play the game of my undoing.
I shall stake all I have and when I lose my last penny I shall stake myself, and then I think I shall have won through my utter defeat.

XXXVIII

This is no mere dallying of love between us, my lover.
Again and again have swooped down upon me the screaming nights of storm, blowing out my lamp: dark doubts have gathered, blotting out all stars from my sky.
Again and again the banks have burst, letting the flood sweep away my harvest, and wailing and despair have rent my sky from end to end.
This have I learnt that there are blows of pain in your love, never the cold apathy of death.

LXXIX

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain but for the heart to conquer it.
Let me not look for allies in life’s battlefield but to my own strength.
Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved but hope for the patience to win my freedom.
Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling your mercy in my success alone; but let me find the grasp of your hand in my failure.


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## Cosmic Hobo (Feb 7, 2013)

Gossip Goat said:


> Let us go then, you and I,
> When the evening is spread out against the sky
> Like a patient etherised upon a table;
> 
> Exerpt from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S Elliot


One of my father's favorite quotations - and great for confusing people!


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## Cosmic Hobo (Feb 7, 2013)

Good Gnus (A Vignette in Verse) - P.G. Wodehouse

* *





When cares attack and life seems black,
How sweet it is to pot a yak,
Or puncture hares and grizzly bears,
And others I could mention;
But in my Animals “Who’s Who”
No name stands higher than the Gnu;
And each new gnu that comes in view
Receives my prompt attention.

When Afric’s sun is sinking low,
And shadows wander to and fro,
And everywhere there’s in the air
A hush that’s deep and solemn;
Then is the time good men and true
With View Halloo pursue the gnu;
(The safest spot to put your shot
is through the spinal column).

To take the creature by surprise
We must adopt some rude disguise,
Although deceit is never sweet,
And falsehoods don’t attract us;
So, as with gun in hand you wait,
Remember to impersonate
A tuft of grass, a mountain-pass,
A kopje or a cactus.

A brief suspense, and then at last
The waiting’s o’er, the vigil past;
A careful aim. A spurt of flame.
It’s done. You’ve pulled the trigger,
And one more gnu, so fair and frail,
Has handed in its dinner-pail;
(The females all are rather small,
The males are somewhat bigger).
​


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## Cosmic Hobo (Feb 7, 2013)

My Love is a Theosophist - Patrick Barrington

Someone on this forum introduced me to this poem. I forget who, but thanks!


* *





My love is a Theosophist
And reads the Ramayana;
Her luncheon is a pot of tea,
Her breakfast a banana.
She says that matter tends to clog
The spirit-force behind it.
My love is a Theosophist,
And very tough I find it.

My love is a Theosophist
And wears no combinations;
She says they get her thought-urge weak
And lower her vibrations.
She tells me flannel next the skin
Impedes the astral motions.
My love is a Theosophist,
And has the strangest notions.

My love is a Theosophist,
And few things I deplore as
Sincerely as the thoughtless way
She crabs her neighbours' auras.
She sensed Miss Hope's as bilious green,
And got some quack to vet it.
My love is a Theosophist,
And many folk regret it.

My love is a Theosophist,
And though distinctly stouter
She moves on a more mental plane
Than do the folks about her.
She moved into a potted plant
Last week at Mrs Reece's.
My love is a Theosophist,
So I picked up the pieces.

My love is a Theosophist,
And has an intimation
That she was Florence Nightingale
In her last incarnation.
She senses me as Titus Oates,
More Ape-man than Apollo,
My love is a Theosophist,
And difficult to follow.

My love is a Theosophist,
And does not seem to worry
If they forget to send the fish
Or fail to cook the curry.
As my potatoes grow more burnt
Her temper grows the sweeter.
My love is a Theosophist,
And lives on Veeta Weeta.

My love is a Theosophist--
Or, rather, is no longer;
For, though her Ego-urge was strong,
The Cosmic Will was stronger.
While moving on the Higher Plane
She moved into a lorry.
My love was a Theosophist,
And really I'm not sorry.


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## Cosmic Hobo (Feb 7, 2013)

Gates of Damascus - James Elroy Flecker

* *





FOUR great gates has the city of Damascus
And four Great Wardens, on their spears reclining,
All day long stand like tall stone men
And sleep on the towers when the moon is shining.


_This is the song of the East Gate Warden
__When he locks the great gate and smokes in his garden.

_Postern of Fate, the Desert Gate, Disaster's Cavern, Fort of Fear,
The Portal of Bagdad am I, and Doorway of Diarbekir.

The Persian Dawn with new desires may net the flushing mountain spires:
But my gaunt buttress still rejects the suppliance of those mellow fires.

Pass not beneath, O Caravan, or pass not singing. Have you heard
That silence where the birds are dead yet something pipeth like a bird?

Pass not beneath! Men say there blows in stony deserts still a rose
But with no scarlet to her leaf--and from whose heart no perfume flows.

Wilt thou bloom red where she buds pale, thy sister rose? Wilt thou not fail
When noonday flashes like a flail? Leave nightingale the caravan!

Pass then, pass all! "Bagdad!" ye cry, and down the billows of blue sky
Ye beat the bell that beats to hell, and who shall thrust you back? Not I.

The Sun who flashes through the head and paints the shadows green and red,--
The Sun shall eat thy fleshless dead, O Caravan, O Caravan!

And one who licks his lips for thirst with fevered eyes shall face in fear
The palms that wave, the streams that burst, his last mirage, O Caravan!

And one--the bird-voiced Singing-man--shall fall behind thee, Caravan!
And God shall meet him in the night, and he shall sing as best he can.

And one the Bedouin shall slay, and one, sand-stricken on the way
Go dark and blind; and one shall say--"How lonely is the Caravan!"

Pass out beneath, O Caravan, Doom's Caravan, Death's Caravan!
I had not told ye, fools, so much, save that I heard your Singing-man._

This was sung by the West Gate's keeper
__When heaven's hollow dome grew deeper._

I am the gate toward the sea: O sailor men, pass out from me!
I hear you high in Lebanon, singing the marvels of the sea.

The dragon-green, the luminous, the dark, the serpent-haunted sea,
The snow-besprinkled wine of earth, the white-and-blue-flower foaming sea.

Beyond the sea are towns with towers, carved with lions and lily flowers,
And not a soul in all those lonely streets to while away the hours.

Beyond the towns, an isle where, bound, a naked giant bites the ground:
The shadow of a monstrous wing looms on his back: and still no sound.

Beyond the isle a rock that screams like madmen shouting in their dreams,
From whose dark issues night and day blood crashes in a thousand streams.

Beyond the rock is Restful Bay, where no wind breathes or ripple stirs,
And there on Roman ships, they say, stand rows of metal mariners.

Beyond the bay in utmost West old Solomon the Jewish King
Sits with his beard upon his breast, and grips and guards his magic ring:

And when that ring is stolen, he will rise in outraged majesty,
And take the World upon his back, and fling the World beyond the sea._

This is the song of the North Gate's master,
__Who singeth fast, but drinketh faster._

I am the gay Aleppo Gate: a dawn, a dawn and thou art there:
Eat not thy heart with fear and care, O brother of the beast we hate!

Thou hast not many miles to tread, nor other foes than fleas to dread;
Homs shall behold thy morning meal and Hama see thee safe in bed.

Take to Aleppo filigrane, and take them paste of apricots,
And coffee tables botched with pearl, and little beaten brassware pots:

And thou shalt sell thy wares for thrice the Damascene retailers' price,
And buy a fat Armenian slave who smelleth odorous and nice.

Some men of noble stock were made: some glory in the murder-blade;
Some praise a Science or an Art, but I like honorable Trade!

Sell them the rotten, buy the ripe! Their heads are weak; their pockets burn.
Aleppo men are mighty fools. Salaam Aleikum! Safe return!_

This is the song of the South Gate Holder,
__A silver man, but his song is older._

I am the Gate that fears no fall: the Mihrab of Damascus wall,
The bridge of booming Sinai: the Arch of Allah all in all.

O spiritual pilgrim rise: the night has grown her single horn:
The voices of the souls unborn are half adream with Paradise.

To Meccah thou hast turned in prayer with aching heart and eyes that burn:
Ah Hajji, wither wilt thou turn when thou art there, when thou art there?

God be thy guide from camp to camp: God be thy shade from well to well;
God grant beneath the desert stars thou hear the Prophet's camel bell.

And God shall make thy body pure, and give thee knowledge to endure
This ghost-life's piercing phantom-pain, and bring thee out to Life again.

And God shall make thy soul a Glass where eighteen thousand Æons pass.
And thou shalt see the gleaming Worlds as men see dew upon the grass.

And sons of Islam, it may be that thou shalt learn at journey's end
Who walks thy garden eve on eve, and bows his head, and calls thee Friend.


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