
Written on the Wang River Scroll
No urge now to write poems.
Old age is my companion.
In error they made me a poet in a past life.
Some lost existence had me as a painter.
Unable to get rid of ingrained habits,
The world has come to know me by them.
My name, my style, they may grasp, it’s true.
But my mind and heart they’ll never know.
poem by Wang Wei

Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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The time I discovered myself a Poet
I wouldnt say I was patient
but I have an interest in poetry
Is it the dawning of a new error
or will the sky be grey
I write how I see life and it is not always pleasant
I like to write abou experiences that I have been through
my poetry has changed as I ave changed
I see it as a hobby as I write in my grange
My poetry is mainly fiction but I also write about things that are true
I am not a person that would share alot of enthusiasim
poetry is a work of art
on each sheet of blank paper
I put my mark
Poetry is simple in this world of sin
I am not into shakesphere
what I write is authentic
the imagination on paper creates magic
a poem can change an atmosphere
I would like to say my poems mean something
my poems are meant to sting a mind
I want my poems to create pictures for people who are blind
poem by Natasha Browne

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Ingrained
memory ingrained in the memory,
faces ingrained in the wood.
light ingrained in the darkness,
evil ingrained in the good.
poor man ingrained in the bricks
that built the rich man's home.
father ingrained in the child,
his destination, gone...
freedom ingrained in oppression,
moth ingrained in the flame.
tomorrow ingrained in today,
the nameless ingrained in the name.
courage ingrained in the fears
that determination overcomes.
God ingrained in the human,
left standing when all is done!
poem by Eric Cockrell

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Which Poems Are True and Which Poems Only A Story?
WHICH POEMS ARE TRUE AND WHICH POEMS ONLY A STORY?
Which poems are true
and which poems only a story?
There are poems I have to write
They are the heart of who I am-
And other poems that tell a story my mind makes
And takes me where I do not know I'll ever really be-
There are real poems and there are imaginary poems-
And there are poems-in- between like this one.
poem by Shalom Freedman

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Fundamental of Liar Chapter CX: Ability
It’s not unable, it’s just not a favor
It’s not unable, it’s just reluctance
It’s not unable, it’s just not my style
It’s not unable, it’s just wrong
It’s not unable, it’s just no time
It’s not unable, it’s just out of place
It’s not unable, it’s just not consideration
It’s not unable, it’s just objection
It’s not unable, it’s just not effective
It’s not unable, it’s just stubbornness
It’s not unable, it’s just not important
It’s not unable, it’s just mercy
poem by Maria Sudibyo

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A Man Became Addicted To Writing Poems
A man became addicted to writing poems
Even when he lost the sense
That they were true poetry.
He then permitted himself
To write poems
He did not himself quite believe in.
Can we say this is a poor poet
And a harmless fool
And someone who need not be taken seriously?
poem by Shalom Freedman

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A Small Need...
Let me write some poems
Let me be a poet.
Give me a pen,
Give me a paper,
And give me a few thoughts.
Let the world know me a lot
Let me be a clot.
Give my poems a rhyme
Give them a rhythum too.
And give me a name.
Let my poems be recited by all
Let my lines be quoted by the world.
Give me your fingers
Give me your mind as well.
Let me too be a poet.
poem by M.d Dinesh Nair

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I never said I was a poet just a man
dear francis,
do not call yourself
'just a man',
do not deprive yourself
the laurels of
'a poet'
you are a man, and a man is more than a poet
the man with the urge to write is more than a man without an urge
even just to write
and be this 'poet'
the poets (those taking the top charts) either have died
(and take the fame posthumously) or they have rested
on laurel
leaves, or they have confined themselves on
some
writers' block
but you francis
behold the stars and the other suns
has written more
and toiled more, your fruits are many
and more have eaten them
tasted how sweet what wisdom you have
i crown you the true laurels
these living laurels of poetry
moving, alive, toiling, working, always thinking
about those that must come
next for generations to come
i crown you,
Francis Duggan
the true laurels of working, moving, living poetry
i give you the title,
the true, living poet.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa

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Sonnet: the Master Poet
’Tis God who inspires in me fire!
He is the Master-Sculptor and Poet!
I play a melody with strings well-set;
God-kindled heart of mine becomes a lyre.
Every poet speaks to God in his mind,
In ways so strange that both can understand;
The Poet is a singer in his band;
To God’s tenets, his songs will always bind,
With time, he communicates very fast;
The Poet takes up every word of His;
And so the poems get very well cast;
As if God gave the poet’s mind- bliss.
To thee belongs my poems, O my Lord!
They are made great byThy divine accord.
3-3-2000
poem by John Celes

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The Poem Of Shabbat Morning Is Gone
THE POEM OF SHABBAT MORNING IS GONE
The poem of Shabbat morning is gone-
Forgotten forever
As if it never was.
It came to me
And I could not write it down
And now it is gone.
The world is filled with poems which are lost
And never written down
Great works and great mysteries
Never to really be.
In all those billions of unrecorded lives
That went before us on this earth
There were many many poems lost.
I write this down now
as compensation-
How many poorer poems
have replaced
the true poems
that were once
and never are to be?
poem by Shalom Freedman

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What Is It To Be 'Stuck' In Life?
WHAT IS IT TO BE 'STUCK’ IN LIFE?
What is it to be ‘stuck’ in life?
To be unable to get out of the prison one is in?
To see no way out except the way one has tried and failed with many times before?
No light.
What is it to be unable to move?
To feel lost
To believe no change possible?
What is it to despair in life?
What is to be stuck in life all one’s life
And repeat again and again
The same mistakes?
Here I am forty- five years later
Trying to write a dream true
And unable to.
poem by Shalom Freedman

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A Poet To Be
A poet I claim not to be,
For words are never there.
In all the years I've tried to write,
I have no words to share.
I sit and think but nothing comes,
No inspiration here.
I want to write of anything,
But still no words I fear.
I read the works of other poets,
I wish I were like them.
How do they write such beautiful lines,
A poet, I'm not him.
I try to write from the heart,
From deep within my soul.
I try to write of the love I have,
But cannot reach my goal.
But why I ask, why can't I write,
Of love so pure and true.
Why can't I write about her eyes,
A mix of green and blue.
I want to write about her smile,
It brightens up my day.
I try to think of anything,
But words I cannot say.
I wish I knew how to write,
A poem with such bliss.
I wish I knew how to describe,
Her soft but tender kiss.
I cannot even begin to write,
How she holds me tight.
How her arms around me,
Makes everything just right.
A poet does not have to think,
The words flow right out.
When I sit and try to write,
I want to scream and shout.
I mean come on, how hard can it be,
To write about her hair.
Such long beautiful natural blonde,
That flows in the air.
I try to write about her laugh,
The words will not fly.
Time passes and finally,
I say it's soft and high.
It's been an hour and a half,
I'm here on verse twelve.
I had to go to Rhymezone,
To find out the rhyme is shelve.
A poet does not do that,
Go online to find a rhyme.
A poet has it in his head,
And can write at any time.
But a poet I am not,
For I cannot write of love.
How the girl I am with,
Is an angel from up above.
How I love her with all my heart,
And want to spend my life with her.
How her love for me is more,
Than I can ever be for sure.
As I draw near the end,
My mind is not so numb.
I realize I've just written of love,
A poet I have become.
poem by Adam McKim

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0011 How Rilke might have translated Bashó on poetry
Be solitary.
Love solitude, and don’t look for poetry;
don’t seek what former poets sought;
see what is still and changeless;
see also what is changing;
be filled with the true nature of things – mountains, rivers, trees, grasses, falling blossoms, the scattering leaves,
and, yes, humanity too, its true nature –
and the universe will become your companion.
So your solitude will be full of the universe;
and you will watch, unmoved, the reality
and the vacuity of the world.
Concentrate your thoughts, in solitude,
on an object, on each object;
in this concentration,
the space between oneself and the object will disappear,
and the essential nature of the object can be perceived.
Then be quick to express it, while it lives for you;
say quickly what is in your mind;
as a woodcutter fells a tree, or
a swordsman leaps at his enemy, or
as you cut a ripe watermelon with a sharp knife,
or take a large bite at a pear;
this immediacy will be the life of your poem,
for nature will write the poem for you.
The language may be untrue;
but it will live with the truth.
You may feel that writing so quickly,
you may always fail; but pay no attention;
know no other thing than writing poetry;
let it make you penniless, if that is
what it needs, to speak itself.
Then, in your solitude,
which is so full of everything,
the poetic spirit will lead you wherever you must go,
make you a friend of nature,
and every form of existence will reveal
its individual feelings to you –
which are similar to those of men;
and all things, you will know, have their fulfilment.
In this solitude, your mind will be undistracted;
and then, enlightened by nature itself,
you may return to the world,
with a lightness of being, and poems
as light as looking
at the sandy bed of a shallow river;
as a tree untouched by the axe,
seemingly useless,
vulnerable to wind and rain,
at ease in itself.
Like a poet.
(This text is Bashó's advice to a poet. But the medieval Japanese poet and the modern European poet seem to be so close in their search for essence, for being, that some of Bashó's phrases have the same ring as Rilke's own advice to a young poet. I have tried to bring this out discreetly..)
poem by Michael Shepherd

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Searches Creating Harmonic Beauty
your wishes
blessing already comes
true in the night
I write freely easily
poems sung not
sad but mystic joy
of life pulse renewing
cycling through changes
as soul spirit feelings
dreams inspirations
evolves into new hopes
dreams praising souls
appreciative devotions
to life all telling defining
true moral ethos values
uplifting minds ennobling
fellow souls in searches
creating harmonic beauty
Dedicated to the painter poet Hosney Soliman.
poem by Terence George Craddock

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Painter Man
Went to college, studied arts
To be an artist make a start
Studied hard, gettin my degree
But no one seemed to notice me
Painter man, painter man
Who wanna be a painter man
Painter man, painter man
Who wanna be a painter man
Tried cartoons and comic books
Dirty postcards could have done
Here was where the money laid
Classic art has had its day
Painter man, painter man
Who wanna be a painter man
Painter man, painter man
Who wanna be a painter man
Did adverts for t.v.
Household shops and brands of tea
Labels all around the cans
Who wanna be a painter man
Painter man, painter man
Who wanna be a painter man
Painter man, painter man
Who wanna be a painter man
La...la...la...la...la...la...
La...la...la...la...la...la...la...
Painter man, painter man
Who wanna be a painter man
song performed by by Boney M.

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Glad To Be Happy
Yesterday I was glad that I m happy
I don't know the reason to be,
But I danced with the tune as
I am glad to be happy
Unable to express I started playing drums
Don't know how to hold that one
But trying as I am glad
But it sounds damn hell
So unable to express again
This time with a guitar I begin
Hardly a minute and 3 rd one gone
Still I m glad to be happy
I don't know the reason to be..
So unable to express again
This time in painter's style
Trying a country side
But it was almost suicide
It turns out to be a modern art
And was 1st in that chart
Still unable to express
That I m glad to be happy
Trying to express again
But don't know what to do
I m not a drummer nor a guitarist
Nor a painter or any artiest
So searching someone to express
I called u up and said
I m glad that I am happy
I don't know the reason to be…
poem by Jaideep Garg

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The History Poems Have Not Been Written
The history poems have not been written
The poems after Milosz
The Wallace Stevens poems will never be written
I can’t come close
I have tried the Blake poems
But of course I am not near them either
I would like to the ironic intellectual poems
I might be able to do them
I could do a kind of surrealistic association mind poem a prose poem
But I don’t like that very much
The poems of Jerusalem have not been good enough
Poems of propaganda are awkward and unacceptable
The small poems that tell of my life
They are for me the chance at real poetry
And I will continue as best I can with them
The American poems I have not yet found the idiom for
I can be epigrammatic in Emerson Thoreau fashion
But not with the hard New England observing eye
Borges poems I love
And the stories of mind and literature
Making the drama of a life of a storyteller
Interest me
But I doubt I could truly do them well
Imitation can only take one so far
And through it one may lose one’s way entirely
I can really do only what I am
Not the Dickinson poems nor the Hopkins poems nor the Wordsworth poems nor the Keats poems nor the Amichai poems nor the poems of many others whose poetry I love
The Biblical poems have been tried
The poems of cosmic and scientific reflection
I could try to improve them
There are too many different kinds of poems to write
And I cannot write almost all of them
This is another poem about poems and poetry
I have written many for a long time now
Perhaps I need to go elsewhere and write in a new way
A way I have not dreamed or even remotely understood possible before.
The poems of the unknown poetry await me
I will go on but I am not sure now I know in which wa
poem by Shalom Freedman

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The Poet’s Prayer
Lord forgive me
That I have chosen to become a poet
Forgive me for what I write
The poems of my life
Grant me such devotion
To write the poems that I love
Grant me the love of poetry
That must not distract me
From tenderness
Make my desire last long
Make my disillusion short
Uproot from me these impure desires
From those poems that trouble me
Let not some images confuse me
Let not some metaphors numb me
Let not my dullness sadden me
Let your radiance descend upon
The modesty of my poems
As you once gave radiance
To the prophets who cannot speak
For themselves
Let me be a strong poet
Able to love and defend
the poems for the
women and children and land
Grant me the talent to make
The poems that they may still
Recite and remember
Even when I am gone
In my weakness as a poet
Make me strong
To scorn the poems that are not pure
To shy away from the fires
And flames that do not light
The lives of other men
And women too.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa

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Self
Bluff it is
If I say I'm a learned poet
For I'm not a scholar
So too my poems
My master's degree..
Lost in the abyss of oblivion
Searching out of and on
Those learnt reminiscences
I write to learn
Learning to write
And that learning
For my heart's happy content
You're welcome to read my words
For shared should be my happiness
Pat or hit..I don't bother
For I'm not a learned poet
poem by Indira Renganathan

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Empty Without You
Feel so lost without you and yes I cannot live without you. These are the lines which I have always said to you and still I am saying it to you. Without you I am lost and am unable to find myself. Only you can fulfill my dreams as well my life. These sweet thoughts I express since you live in my heart and in my soul. Nothing can ever be complete if I do not have you in my life. Only you I have dreamt about. My only true desire is you. Without you I have no soul and no existence. I have turned to be empty.
poem by Rohit Sapra

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The aged poet. For Kealan if
When he was young
and life was poetry
and poetry was life
and girls made poetry
in his heart
he’d showed his poems to
an aged poet who
was quiet a while then
nodded his head and
smiled and
said ‘keep writing’
and he swore that day
as long as he could hold a pen
he’d write some sort of poetry
and so he did and so he did
and when he was
too old to hold a pen
he spoke his poetry
some say in an Irish pub
and people came from miles around
and said sure it was a t’ousand times
better than to read his poems on the page
which was itself worth –
and that last phrase was poetry
for who is not Irish and a poet
and when he was too old
to walk down to the pub
they came and listened
at his door and at his window
and when he was too old to speak
they came to see his silence
and left as poets
for their head
had joined their heart
poem by Michael Shepherd

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