#poem

kennychaffin@diasp.org

KILL THEM IN THE MORNING
by Tishani Doshi

I’m trying to find where it says,
If your enemy comes to slay you at night,
kill them in the morning. What happens
in the hours of waiting? Do you sing
to one another across the trenches,
stargaze from casements, then set off
to duel at first light? What is it about the sun
rising that’s so self-righteous? The firstness,
the lightness? There’s an allegory somewhere
about a girl holding scissors encircled by soldiers
with guns. Don’t we know that the dragging
from trains takes place after dark, that wars
always happen offstage until they’re not? Summer
is almost upon us, romantic and lonely. I know,
I know, no tightrope-walking allowed between our house
and the neighbour’s. Haven’t you dreamed
of disappearing for a day, then returning
to life, triumphant? Wouldn’t you want
to know who missed you, who rejoiced?
The idea that there are no innocent people.
What colour would you call this hair
under the rubble? My enemy’s enemy
is an Ottoman couch. But we’re here now,
those of us alive, standing on the beach,
facing the rosy dawn—how it slip slaps us
into forgiveness, how we turn the other cheek.

#poem #poetry #literature
https://www.rattle.com/kill-them-in-the-morning-by-tishani-doshi/

kennychaffin@diasp.org

Burning a Book
by William Stafford

Protecting each other, right in the center
a few pages glow a long time.
The cover goes first, then outer leaves
curling away, then spine and a scattering.
Truth, brittle and faint, burns easily,
its fire as hot as the fire lies make—
flame doesn’t care. You can usually find
a few charred words in the ashes.

And some books ought to burn, trying for character
but just faking it. More disturbing
than book ashes are whole libraries that no one
got around to writing—desolate
towns, miles of unthought-in cities,
and the terrorized countryside where wild dogs
own anything that moves. If a book
isn’t written, no one needs to burn it—
ignorance can dance in the absence of fire.

So I’ve burned books. And there are many
I haven’t even written, and nobody has.

#poem #poetry #literature

kennychaffin@diasp.org

Freedom
by William Stafford

Freedom is not following a river.
Freedom is following a river,
though, if you want to.
It is deciding now by what happens now.
It is knowing that luck makes a difference.
No leader is free; no follower is free—
the rest of us can often be free.
Most of the world are living by
creeds too odd, chancy, and habit-forming
to be worth arguing about by reason.
If you are oppressed, wake up about
four in the morning: most places,
you can usually be free some of the time
if you wake up before other people.

#poem #poetry #literature

kennychaffin@diasp.org

Choosing a Dog
by William Stafford

“It’s love,” they say. You touch
the right one and a whole half of the universe
wakes up, a new half.

Some people never find
that half, or they neglect it or trade it
for money or success and it dies.

The faces of big dogs tell, over the years,
that size is a burden: you enjoy it for awhile
but then maintenance gets to you.

When I get old I think I’ll keep, not a little
dog, but a serious dog,
for the casual, drop-in criminal —

My kind of dog, unimpressed by
dress or manner, just knowing
what’s really there by the smell.

Your good dogs, some things that they hear
they don’t really want you to know —
it’s too grim or ethereal.

And sometimes when they look in the fire
they see time going on and someone alone,
but they don’t say anything.

#poem #poetry #literature

https://poetrying.wordpress.com/2013/01/08/choosing-a-dog-william-stafford/

surazeus@venera.social

King Of The Pack

King Of The Pack
© Surazeus
2024 03 15

I do not want those fawning worshippers,
he proclaims while striding down mirrored halls,
who flock around the beautiful masked stars,
for they are vampires hungry for your power
who misdirect their jealous energy,
and would turn quick to stab you in the back.

Halls of Fame are crowded with Jupiters,
he sneers while tapping photos on the wall,
who cruise around Gotham in fancy cars,
and fight for who will rule the Ivory Tower
to evade fate of double jeopardy
in vicious contest for King of the Pack.

Obsessed with glamor of the worshipped poet,
endowed with recognition of the crowd
as brilliant genius with clever insight
expressed through spells of convoluted verse,
these nascent Apollos seek only fame,
forgetting we endure Hell to reach Heaven.

Programmed by investors to play the prophet
as the tortured poet in tattered shroud
who wears fake wings of Icarus in flight,
nameless poets, ignorant of the curse
bestowed by Orpheus on the Word Game,
chase rainbow of glory cast by the Raven.

After descending to foul gloom of Hell
to rescue my Muse, bitten by the snake
of hunger for fame and glory of the seer,
I lead her back home to the World of Light
only to lose her from silent despair,
my heart glowing with strange Wisdom of Death.

Kneeling in dark woods by Rune-teeming well,
I gaze at mask of my face that seems fake
to discern ideal truth in spinning sphere
that formulates morals for wrong and right,
till I perceive the Real behind is glare,
so I regain my Muse with conscious breath.

Performing role as Priest to save the world
from glamorous illusions of false wealth,
I sing uncanny spells with eerie voice
while bearing lamp that guides my way with love
till crowds of lost souls follow my footsteps
and gather in haven I build with words.

Returning from Hell as the Cosmic Herald
with hard-won secret code for mental health,
I sing new paradigm that presents choice
as creative way to share treasure trove,
concealed with riddles on globalized maps,
so we can sing in harmony with birds.

https://surazeus.blogspot.com/2024/03/king-of-pack.html

Orpheus declares himself to be King of the Pack.

#Poetry #Poem #Pastoral #Necropastoral #MetaModernism #Romanticism #MetaRomanticism #NewRomanticism #AmericanDream #Symbolism #Existentialism #Surrealism #NegativeCapability #NewGnosticism #MetaRealism #Satire #NewTranscendentalism

kennychaffin@diasp.org

TRASH
by Lowell Jaeger

This year’s leaves are last year’s leaves
again. Even the loam breathes.
I believe this and Leonard YoungBear says
in the old days there was no such thing as trash:

Indians camped and left ashes only, or bones,
bits of hide, feathers, mounds of buffalo dung.
What the dogs didn’t eat, coyotes did.
Or wind, snow. Beneath trees and prairie grass

everything from the earth returned. Human life
too, Leonard says, should be like that.
I know, I say, I’m not afraid anymore
of dying. It’s trash

that worries me. Caskets. I keep thinking
of tin cans, foil, yellow rubber raincoats don’t
rot very quick, don’t burn either; bury them
and something spits them back. I’d sooner fall

in the woods, feed the sharp teeth of many hungers
beyond my own. And part of me will swim downstream
in the cold eyeball of a fish next time, my soul
under the wings of a young bird learning to fly.

—from Rattle #37, Summer 2012

Lowell Jaeger
“As a teen in the great north woods, I spent long quiet hours in my hometown library, where I found solace from troubles at home, troubles in school, and troubles in the world. I sat in the big leather chairs and read T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. I had no clear understanding of the book, such a foreign, worldly voice, so unlike the talk of local lumberjacks and factory workers. Yet that poem and I sat and conversed mysteriously beyond the words on the page. For a while, that poem was my best friend. I’d be honored if any poem of mine were ever so esteemed.”

#poem #poetry #literature

https://www.rattle.com/trash-by-lowell-jaeger/

kennychaffin@diasp.org

Bob
by Angela Narciso Torres

In the dream, in bed with a cold,
I asked God for my mom back.
God misheard and brought

my bob back instead, that sleek cut
I wore in junior high, blade-edged,
barely grazing the shoulders

one side curtaining my right eye,
the other tucked behind
my ear like a secret. I was still

the gangly twelve-year-old
my brothers teased: When you stand
sideways no one can see you.

That year, Aunt Girlie, back from America,
scanned me from head to toe
saying, don’t worry, hon,

even Twiggy made it without ’em.
Mom looked away, not knowing
whether to laugh or cry. If God

brought my mom back, I would’ve said,
flipping my bob, it’s okay, Mom.
I’ll be okay. And I was.\

https://2river.org/2RView/28_3/poems/torres.html

#poem #poetry #literature

kennychaffin@diasp.org

The Way It Is
by William Stafford

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

#poem #poetry #literature

kennychaffin@diasp.org

Ask Me
by William Stafford

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.

#poem #poetry #literature
https://allpoetry.com/Ask-Me

kennychaffin@diasp.org

Civilised Okra
Lynda V.E. Crawford

ef you doan wan eat slimy okro stew
wid hands & lips don't

I have

& I've curved my silver spoon away
while delicately scooping turtle soup

& pulled fresh thyme through my teeth
Bajan soup: pumpkin puree & pigtails

& I've raised a small bowl to my lips—why not
while tasting miso broth of soybean & koji.

We Caribbeans are in-between
Mother Africa, Asia & the colonial way

the okra in my cou cou only slightly slimed
flying fish ndiwo firm, metal fork stabbing just slightly.

It's time I try my yellow turned corn meal
with right-hand fingers lick them clean

remember a liminal ancestor or two in the chewing.

from the journal PRAIRIE SCHOONER

#poem #poetry #literature

https://poems.com/poem/civilised-okra/#featured-poet

kennychaffin@diasp.org

Chicago
By Carl Sandburg

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

https://us12.campaign-archive.com/?e=58c6df03ad&u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&id=05efc2d018

#poem #poetry #literature

kennychaffin@diasp.org

When Death Comes
by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world

#poem #poetry #literature

http://www.phys.unm.edu/~tw/fas/yits/archive/oliver_whendeathcomes.html

mkwadee@diasp.eu

A #ChatGPT #poem about #SpaceInvaders

In a world of pixels and light,
Where aliens reign with all their might,
A lone ship stands tall and brave,
Ready to save the world from the invaders' rave.

They descend in waves of three,
Their intentions far from friendly,
But the ship is quick and agile,
Dodging lasers with a smile.

Firing back with all its might,
Destroying aliens left and right,
The battle rages on and on,
But the ship knows it must stay strong.

With each level, the challenge grows,
But the ship's determination only shows,
For it knows the fate of humankind,
Rests on its abilities to outsmart and out-grind.

And as the final boss appears,
The ship knows there's no room for fear,
With one final blast, the alien falls,
And peace once again befalls.

Space Invaders, a game of old,
But its legacy will never grow cold,
For in the hearts of gamers everywhere,
The brave ship's tale will always be there.

kennychaffin@diasp.org

The Last Hummingbird of Summer
By Beth Ann Fennelly

reveals itself in retrospect. Unlike the first,
whose March arrival bade you gasp, hands clasped,
like a child actor instructed to show joy, when the last
departs for points south, there’s no telling,
and no tell. Well, so what? You know their cycle.
In August, they swarm the feeder, all swagger,
greedy tussle for sugar water. Suddenly,
September. Chill tickles your ankles. You reach
for long sleeves and you fret. They’ve left? Not yet.
Ear cocked for the symphony’s shrinking strings.
Then comes a day without a ruby flash. Next day,
they’re back. Next day, there’s one. Then none.
Or maybe one? From porches, pumpkins grin.
Your last had left, and left you uninformed.

Kinda? Sorta? Can I say it?—like menstrual blood,
again, between your legs. Your last, perhaps,
or next-to-last, your no-longer-very-monthly
monthly. So unlike your first crimson, at twelve,
its “Yes-You-Are-There-God” annunciation.
Well, so what? You know the cycle. Your body’s
eggy miracle, unneeded now for years.
And you hate waste. Why fill and dump
and fill again the undrunk sugar water?
Enough. Let’s progress to whatever season’s next.
But still, a farewell ritual wouldn’t be amiss.
The last hummingbird of summer, zinging
from the feeder—to others, a smooth departure—
to you, alone, unmistakably, dipping its wing.

#poem #poetry #litarature #PoetryMagazine
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/161986/the-last-hummingbird-of-summer

kennychaffin@diasp.org

(glad they finally posted this one... I love it!)

TIME TRAVEL FOR BEGINNERS
by Ardon Shorr

Every crumb of starlight
sails across the universe,

the journey of a million years
to end inside our eyes.

Except I was looking at you,
canvas coverall cinched at the waist,

as you undressed me with photons,
wrapped me in stories,

painted with x-rays,
until everything glowed

with backstory—the names of trees,
the name of an extinguished star,

still visible, ghost in the sky,
climbing a staircase of optic nerve

into an afterlife of sight.
Hand on my hand you pointed to the past:

the sun, an 8-minute time machine,
the moon, one second old,

and the incredible now,
unfolding like a cone,

megaphone of memory stretched to the sky
and balanced on the tip was us,

a luminous shout
of life at the speed of light.

In a blink, this moment reaches the moon.
When we pack up the hammock, it floats

in the acid clouds of Venus.
Which means that somewhere, there is a spot,

past the gaps in Saturn’s rings,
beyond the storms of Jupiter,

outside the curved embrace of the Milky Way,
at least one place in the universe,

where you could turn around and see us,
back when we were still in love.

—from Rattle #82, Winter 2023
Rattle Poetry Prize Winner


Ardon Shorr: “I was trained as a scientist. There’s this moment in an experiment where you can ask a question of the universe and actually get an answer. It’s like something is speaking to you, and for a moment, you’re the only one who knows it. Then you get to share it. Poetry is how I return to that moment.”

https://www.rattle.com/time-travel-for-beginners-by-ardon-shorr/

#poem #poetry #literature

kennychaffin@diasp.org

The Second Coming
By William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

#poem #poetry #literature

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming

ramnath@nerdpol.ch

#poem
The work of #CarolynMorgan: everything from Beyond the Clouds
I have never considered myself a poet yet, for reasons unknown, I am awoken in the early hours of the morning to pick up a pen and write the words that are given.

“How can I feel love
When all the world is crying?
So many children dying, dying, dying.
Our brutish leaders lying, lying, lying.
And I am tired of trying
To be the best that I can be
When my body is relying
On poisons slowly killing me.
My heart is in such torment
Empathetic with this discontent
Of Mother Earth in ferment
Of cleansing and rebirth.
The trauma, pain and sorrow
Before a new tomorrow
Dawns for a rain-washed sun-kissed Earth.

No more the men of hate,
No more of wars and killing.
Let love and light be sovereign
And angelic wings be hovering
As they heal the bruised and broken,
And our world shall be awoken
When the consciousness of love
Streams forth from above
To cleanse us from all crying, lying, dying.

No more torture, tears and pain,
Just compassion, care and love again,
To live our Holy Life as deemed,
The one we all have dreamed.”

#quote from #pa

kennychaffin@diasp.org

(I received and devoured her chapbook of the same name a couple of days ago. Love Love Love what she has done!)

The Potential of Radio and Rain
by Myna Chang

June 21, 1984
Deaf Smith County, Texas

I.

Moonshot Rodriguez used to mash up lightning bugs and smear them on his front teeth. His grandpa had named him, and told him the graveyard was haunted with the light of special lives. Moonshot believed him. He wanted to shine.

II.

On her 17th birthday, Gracie Lynn Johnson stole her stepdad’s truck: freedom in the form of a twelve-year-old stepside Chevy, red, stick shift, with an empty gun rack and an AM radio. Pulse thundering, she stepped on the gas.

III.

It was one of those close, rare summer nights when radio waves bounced from the WLS studio in Chicago across the continent and the mesquite and the grit, through layers of atmosphere miraculously windless and damp with possibility, alighting the Caprock like a secret love. Gracie Lynn adjusted the knob. John Cougar cut through the static, singing about Jack & Diane, bass setting the brittle speakers to a tremble.

Moonshot was parked outside the Church of Christ, in the gray Pontiac that once belonged to his grandpa. He crumpled a beer can, waiting.

Gracie Lynn rolled up in a swirl of caliche dust. “Shut up and get in,” she said.

Moonshot didn’t have to be told twice. He grabbed a couple of cold ones out of his cooler.

“Graveyard night,” he said.

They passed the hardware store and the diner, and then Gracie Lynn shifted into third, leaving town behind. Two minutes later, they topped Coyote Ridge and turned on the dirt track that led to the cemetery. The air tasted like sage and, maybe, rain. Lightning bug flickers lit the polished tombstones ahead, and it was magic, that quick sparkle of life under a starshine sky.

“This is almost good enough,” Gracie Lynn breathed.

A lightning bug fluttered through the open window, its glow fading. Moonshot cupped it in his hand and steered it back into the charged night and the AM waves.

~

Myna Chang writes flash and short stories. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in X‑R-A‑Y Lit Mag, Reflex Fiction, FlashFlood, Atlas & Alice, Writers Resist, and Daily Science Fiction. Anthologies featuring her stories include the Grace & Gravity collection Furious Gravity IX; and the forthcoming This is What America Looks Like anthology by Washington Writers’ Publishing House. Read more at MynaChang.com or on Twitter at @MynaChang.

https://newworldwriting.net/myna-chang-the-potential-of-radio-and-rain/

https://mynachang.com/

#flash #poem #poetry #fiction #micro

nypa@sysad.org

When you stand on an empty stony plateau alone
under the fathomless dome of Asia in whose blueness an airplane
or an angel sometimes whips up its starch or star -
when you shudder at how infinitesimally small you are,
remember: space that appears to need nothing does
crave, as a matter of fact, an outside gaze,
a criterion of emptiness - of its depth and scope.
And it's only you who can do the job.

Когда ты стоишь один на пустом плоскогорьи, под
бездонным куполом Азии, в чьей синеве пилот
или ангел разводит изредка свой крахмал;
когда ты невольно вздрагиваешь, чувствуя, как ты мал,
помни: пространство, которому, кажется, ничего
не нужно, на самом деле нуждается сильно во
взгляде со стороны, в критерии пустоты.
И сослужить эту службу способен только ты.

An Admonition, Joseph Brodsky
Назидание, Иосиф Бродский
1987

#poem #brodsky #стих #бродский