Oh pointy birds
Oh pointy pointy
Anoint my head
Anointy nointy
-Steve Martin
Storm by Tim Minchin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U
This may come off as really pretentious, but when I’m feel a wistful melancholy for the past, I hear this short poem I wrote a few years ago called Still Here:
I thought this feeling cast away
Though here it is, perhaps to stay
Though years have passed and I have cried
My inward plea is still denied
The Clock Man by Shel Silverstein
“How much will you pay for an extra day?” The clock man asked the child.
“Not one penny,” the answer came.
“For my days are as many as my smiles.”
“How much will you pay for an extra day?” He asked when the child was grown.
“Maybe a dollar or maybe less, for I’ve plenty of days of my own.”
“How much will you pay for an extra day?” He asked when the time came to die.
“All of the pearls in all of the seas, and all of the stars in the sky.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
If thou must love me… (Sonnet 14)
If thou must love me, let it be for nought Except for love’s sake only. Do not say, “I love her for her smile—her look—her way Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought That falls in well with mine, and certes brought A sense of pleasant ease on such a day”— For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may Be changed, or change for thee—and love, so wrought, May be unwrought so. Neither love me for Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry: A creature might forget to weep, who bore Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby! But love me for love’s sake, that evermore Thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity.
“We will not cease from our exploration. And the end of our exploring Will be to return to the place we began, And to know that place for the first time.”
Basic-ass bitch T.S. Elliot poem. But it hits hard for me growing up in a small town (3,400 ppl) and left to move to a big city (500,000). And I’m reminded of this poem everytime I go back to visit.
First verse of mad Tom o bedlam:
From the hag and hungry goblin.
That into rags would rend ye,
The spirit that stands by the naked man.
In the Book of Moons defend ye,
That of your five sound senses.
You never be forsaken,
Nor wander from your selves with Tom.
Abroad to beg your bacon,
While I do sing, Any food, any feeding,
Feeding, drink, or clothing;
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.XV.
EACH that we lose takes part of us; A crescent still abides, Which like the moon, some turbid night, Is summoned by the tides.
Emily Dickinson
Poor moth, I can’t help you,
I can only turn out the light.It’s a fine day by Edward Barton, also sang by Jane Lancaster: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vgcYBwyw28
I’m Explaining a Few Things by Pablo Neruda
You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I’ll tell you all the news.
I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.
From there you could look out
over Castille’s dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.
And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings –
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children’s blood.
Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!
Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!
Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain :
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull’s eye of your hearts.
And you’ll ask: why doesn’t his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?
Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!
Good Bones by Maggie Smith
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
A poem my brother wrote
Nothing changes, and it changes all at once. Nothing moves, nothing exists. Nothing is important, so we should learn nothing, we should study nothing, get close to nothing, be kind to nothing. We must come to understand nothing so well that we could maybe even see nothing in ourselves. Because nothing matters, nothing is important, and I think that’s something.
Your brother may either enjoy or hate a movie called The Night House.
If— | The Poetry Foundation https://share.google/doIsTaZmZYVmxSOQ6
If. By Rudyard Kipling
I don’t know about favorite, but I keep coming back to “If-” by Rudyard Kipling at different points in my life.
Nothing Is Too Small Not to Be Wondered About by Mary Oliver
The cricket doesn’t wonder if there’s a heaven or, if there is, if there’s room for him. It’s fall. Romance is over. Still, he sings. If he can, he enters a house through the tiniest crack under the door. Then the house grows colder. He sings slower and slower. Then, nothing. This must mean something, I don’t know what. But certainly it doesn’t mean he hasn’t been an excellent cricket all his life.
