Under the Sun: A Haibun
New Year's drink
our yellow streams cross
each other's
'Son, now you're a man, ' Father says coldly. Something strange…something I can't articulate in his eyes. A gaze I will carry with me always.
the moon floats
from one glass
to another…
Haibun Winner,2012 Great Big Little Poems Contest
poem by Chenou Liu
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Related quotes
All My Pretty Ones
Father, this year's jinx rides us apart
where you followed our mother to her cold slumber;
a second shock boiling its stone to your heart,
leaving me here to shuffle and disencumber
you from the residence you could not afford:
a gold key, your half of a woolen mill,
twenty suits from Dunne's, an English Ford,
the love and legal verbiage of another will,
boxes of pictures of people I do not know.
I touch their cardboard faces. They must go.
But the eyes, as thick as wood in this album,
hold me. I stop here, where a small boy
waits in a ruffled dress for someone to come…
for this soldier who holds his bugle like a toy
or for this velvet lady who cannot smile.
Is this your father's father, this Commodore
in a mailman suit? My father, time meanwhile
has made it unimportant who you are looking for.
I'll never know what these faces are all about.
I lock them into their book and throw them out.
This is the yellow scrapbook that you began
the year I was born; as crackling now and wrinkly
as tobacco leaves: clippings where Hoover outran
the Democrats, wiggling his dry finger at me
and Prohibition; news where the Hindenburg went
down and recent years where you went flush
on war. This year, solvent but sick, you meant
to marry that pretty widow in a one-month rush.
But before you had that second chance, I cried
on your fat shoulder. Three days later you died.
These are the snapshots of marriage, stopped in places.
Side by side at the rail toward Nassau now;
here, with the winner's cup at the speedboat races,
here, in tails at the Cotillion, you take a bow,
here, by our kennel of dogs with their pink eyes,
running like show-bred pigs in their chain-link pen;
here, at the horseshow where my sister wins a prize;
Now I fold you down, my drunkard, my navigator,
my first lost keeper, to love or look at later.
I hold a five-year diary that my mother kept
for three years, telling all she does not say
of your alcoholic tendency. You overslept,
she writes. My God, father, each Christmas Day
with your blood, will I drink down your glass
of wine? The diary of your hurly-burly years
goes to my shelf to wait for my age to pass.
Only in this hoarded span will love persevere.
Whether you are pretty or not, I outlive you,
bend down my strange face to yours and forgive you.
poem by Anne Sexton
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He stole his eyes from a milk-glass moon - Villanelle
He stole his eyes from a milk-glass moon,
From drops of peridot scattered at sea,
Hidden beneath a moon-shadowed ruin.
His father not caring where or with whom,
Or from what rare ocean his being might be-
He stole his eyes from a milk-glass moon.
He learnt his letters from a dark winged loon
Who flew where the mountains caress the trees,
Hidden beneath a moon-shadowed ruin.
His speech was a garble of false and truth,
Whistling like a hollow piped reed,
He stole his eyes from a milk-glass moon.
His eyes a contagion of waters blue
And brackish trunks of underwater trees
Hidden beneath a moon-shadowed ruin.
His normal voice wove a threadless tune,
Brought close the mermaids, hungry to feed;
He stole his eyes from a milk-glass moon,
Hidden beneath a moon-shadowed ruin.
poem by Patti Masterman
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The Winner
Written by c. jackson, m. yancy and g. barge
In this world of make believe I must confess
To be number one youve got to do it better
And if you strive to be happy youll find success
Perspectively youve got to pull it together
Nothing good will come to you if you dont see
A reason for victory
Everybody loves the winner
Only the winner can really make things happen
Everybody loves the winner, so be the winner, I know you are
If theres something youd like to do youve never done
Dont let fear stand in your way
Just collect your dreams and thoughts and get on the run
I wouldnt wait another day
You can be the best in everything you do
When it thawls out, its all up to you
Everybody loves the winner (everybody loves the winner)
Only a winner can really make things happen
Everybody loves a winner (everybody loves a winner)
So be the winner you are
Be a winner, ooh (yes you can, yes you can, yes you can)
Be a winner, ooh (yes you can, yes you can, yes you can)
Be a winner, a winner, a winner, yes you can
cause everybody (everybody) loves (loves a winner)
The winner, so be a winner
You can only make things happen
Everybody (everybody) loves a winner (loves a winner)
So be the winner, I know you are
Every (everybody), everybody, (loves a winner)
Really loves the winner, (so be a winner)
Only the winner can really make things happen
Everybody (everybody) loves the winner (loves a winner)
So be a winner (so be a winner), I know you are if you really try
Be a winner, you know you can, you know you can
You know you can be a winner
(yes you can, yes you can, yes you can)
Scat (yes you can, yes you can, yes you can)
Scat
(everybody) yeah, (loves a winner)
Scat
(everybody loves a winner)
(everybody) everybody really loves a winner (loves a winner)!
song performed by by Natalie Cole
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Good bye 2011
Happy new year
2012 is here.
Happy new year
2012 is a brand new year
Happy new year
2012 is a year of fear.
Happy nae year
2012 is very much dear
Happy new year
2012 is very much near.
Good bye 2011
2012 is so much near.
poem by MOHAMMED Zuhair
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Li Po And Sappho
Li Po knew
He was the greatest
Living poet in China;
He liked to drink
And fondly gaze at the moon.
A million poems
And haikus later,
No one greater since
Has arrived.
I hope,
In the mystical universe,
He gets to meet Sappho
Who is the greatest poet
That has ever been,
Even though most of her poems
Have been cruelly destroyed by men
Who thought kisses
Shouldn’t be that gentle.
poem by Uriah Hamilton
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Shouting words down the sidewalk while watching the moon
Moon beams!
pouring out light like streams of crystal
onto black ice cracked streets!
There are no birds
tonight
Hello Moon!
white
yellow
epiphany that shed form
Circumference of sky
falls sweetly into the arms
of the moon
and I walk
back down the sidewalk
to a home I hardly know
& to a home- soon I see
the Sky is waiting infront of me
and that is the home
that I know!
Goodnight
white
yellow
Moon!
poem by Steven Adelman
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Full Moon Song to parents.
This year autumn full moon festival
My father and mom did not appear.
Oh, my father, I think you got arrival.
Have you met mom on the moon?
She liked to live there as I was told.
Most of the human beings want to go
The place where is the beautiful moon.
Now you and mom are going together.
Every year we have enjoyed moon cakes.
I forgot let you bring one or two to mom.
She was fond of eating those with yokes.
Now you and mom can eat at the moon.
Please don’t be worry having not brought.
We will yearly send you delicious moon cakes.
I ne’er forget your hard works to bring me up.
It’s a little bit on my lost for your pass-away.
We are separated onto two different worlds,
Yet we can communicate in our inner souls.
Father, would you protect your grand children.
They are having the same blood like yours.
Many people tell me you can feel what we think.
It is because we have your blood in our brains.
We hope you will be happy every day with mom.
You are mom are always in our minds every day.
poem by Albert Wong
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I don't write poems
I don't write poems,
I drink them like wine,
I become tipsy
with each coming line.
I don't write poems,
I breathe them like air,
I become so happy
when each one I share.
I don't write poems,
I live with them;
they prolong my years,
they are as true as I am.
I don't write poems,
I weave into verses
sadness, joy, tears,
prayers, love, curses…
My poems talk and sing,
Sense of living they bring.
©Larisa Rzhepishevska (Odessa, Ukraine)
26th of April,2012
poem by Larisa Rzhepishevska
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Happy New Year 2012
New Year comes,
Old Year gone,
Happy and Merry Year,
Merry and Cheerful Year.
Happy New You,
Happy and Happy New Year.
All poets, and
All friends;
God bless You All.
Give Your Best in,
Creating Best poems,
In years to come.
Happy New Year 2012,
Happy Dragon Year.
poem by Lawrence Hiung
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Sonnet. The sun and stream
As some dark stream within a cavern's breast,
Flows murmuring, moaning for the distant sun,
So ere I met thee, murmuring its unrest,
Did my life's current coldly, darkly run.
And as that stream, beneath the sun's full gaze,
Its separate course and life no more maintains,
But now absorbed, transfused far o'er the plains,
It floats, etherealized in those warm rays;
So in the sunlight of thy fervid love,
My heart, so long to earth's dark channels given,
Now soars, all pain, all doubt, all ill above,
And breathes the ether of the upper heaven:
So thy high spirit holds and governs mine;
So is my life, my being, lost in thine!
poem by Anne Lynch Botta from Poems (1848)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Kalmuck Bride
I HAVE saddled your white steed, and I have burnished them-
Your belt with crystal clasps, your lance, your scimitar,
Your carbine silver-chased; now ere you mount and ride
Across the sky-wide steppe, a horseman to the war:
A promise make your bride: that at the self-same hour,
Whether you gallop on or halt in some wide mart,
You'll look up at the moon, so round, so full, so bright,
The almost moveless moon, with longing in your heart!
And I beside the tent will gaze and gaze and gaze
Upon the self-same moon that's like the looking-glass
You brought me from the fair of whitened Kadajah,
The present from your hand in which I saw my face.
(Shine, lance and scimitar, shine belt, and shine, carbine,
With magic of the moon I have endued your shine!)
Charmed by that double gaze, the moon that's won unto
The magic I contrive, will mirror my wan face,
And you will see above, so far, so still, so sad,
The daughter of the Khan who nightly seeks your gaze.
poem by Padraic Colum
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Drink Drink Sire
Drink drink sire
None other times
Insistent more
No other shadow
But thyself
Moon and stars
Drink drink sire
Thy creed to followers
Lonely hearts
Under the moon
And in the flowers
Drink drink sire
What times other
What seasons other
Spring and stars
And the moon
And song of love
Drink drink sire
To the last drop
Un satiated
More and more
From moon now
To stars now
To milky way
Drink drink sire
To the passion of drink
To meet again in the journey
For Li Po
Islamabad
17/3/2010
poem by Sadiqullah Khan
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Father Of Night
Father of night, father of day,
Father, who taketh the darkness away,
Father, who teacheth the bird to fly,
Builder of rainbows up in the sky,
Father of loneliness and pain,
Father of love and father of rain.
Father of day, father of night,
Father of black, father of white,
Father, who build the mountain so high,
Who shapeth the cloud up in the sky,
Father of time, father of dreams,
Father, who turneth the rivers and streams.
Father of grain, father of wheat,
Father of cold and father of heat,
Father of air and father of trees,
Who dwells in our hearts and our memories,
Father of minutes, father of days,
Father of whom we most solemnly praise.
song performed by by Bob Dylan
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Summer in Calcutta
What is this drink but
The April sun, squeezed
Like an orange in
My glass? I sip the
Fire, I drink and drink
Again, I am drunk
Yes, but on the gold
of suns, What noble
venom now flows through
my veins and fills my
mind with unhurried
laughter? My worries
doze. Wee bubblesring
my glass, like a brides
nervous smile, and meet
my lips. Dear, forgive
this moments lull in
wanting you, the blur
in memory. How
brief the term of my
devotion, how brief
your reign when i with
glass in hand, drink, drink,
and drink again this
Juice of April suns.
poem by Kamala Das
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Not Beer
at the end of the year
i open a page
of my journal where
i wrote my one
and only dream
a goal,
a wish,
something
that i have longed
for and
may even die for,
i must tell you
i never realized it.
i close back the page
and begin to move on
with my life
it is another year of
broken dream
under the moon
i drink alone
this cold, cold glass
of water.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Surely these women won't lose any more of their beauty and charm by putting a ballot in a ballot box once a year than they are likely to lose standing in foundries or laundries all year round. There is no harder contest than the contest for bread, let me tell you that.
quote by Rose Schneiderman
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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When I Close my Eyes
When I close my eyes,
I can see my country,
Shining in the light, bright.
When I close my eyes.
When I close my eyes,
I see the trees,
Green against the skyline.
When I close my eyes.
When I close my eyes,
I see stars shining cross,
The wide beyond.
When I close my eyes.
When I close my eyes,
I see the sunset behind your hair,
Halo shining in the air.
When I close my eyes.
When I close my eyes,
I hear the ocean waves,
Crashing on the shore.
When I close my eyes.
When I close my eyes,
I see the moon glistening,
Through your eyes.
When I close my eyes.
© 2012
poem by Nick Strong
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Father God
Father we leave year 2007 and walk through the gate of 2008
Father God, I thank you for all the years you have given me.
For allowing me to live with love, trust and prosperity.
Oh Father I travelled through darkness back into the light.
You never let me out of your sight.
You are my strength, you are my power,
you never forgot me in my saddest hour.
When all else fails you stand by my side
giving me the courage needed to survive.
Father thank you for the precious gifts,
My children, my talents, the honour to live.
To see your beauty from an earthlings eyes.
To gaze at the view in your awesome sky.
I thank you for the earth so beautiful and green,
the vast waters filled with treasures unseen.
Thank you Father for every breath I take
For the eyes to see each morning i wake
In the name of your precious son Jesus
Thank you Father God.
Written: Jan.8,2008
poem by Melvina Germain
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Beauty Contest
Damsel in distress is quite submissive
Look how somber my vanity is
A feminine human creature
Superficial, seducing detour
Im going to the mall for the cookie cutter
The ugly duckling will always suffer
Contaminated standards, I try to fight it
I better get back on my diet
Obsessed with the beauty contest
Beauty contest
Howd my vanity get such a mess?
Beauty contest
Im obsessed
Reduce myself, I got the strict restrictions
Not sexy enough without the regulations
A melting point countdown the fading features
Born to blossom and bloom to perish
Obsessed with the beauty contest
Beauty contest
Oh, Ive got to get out of this mess
Beauty contest
Im obsessed
And Ive fallen, I cant help myself
Im feeling envious of all the rest
Youre bringing out the lemming in me
A victim of the cattle call disease
Not easy to be me
I feel swollen
Obsessed with the beauty contest
Beauty contest
Howd my vanity get such a mess?
Obsessed with the beauty contest
Obsessed with the beauty contest
Beauty contest
Ive got to get out of this mess
Obsessed with the beauty contest
Obsessed with the beauty contest
Beauty contest
Howd my vanity get such a mess?
Caught up in the beauty contest
Caught up in the beauty contest
Caught up in the beauty contest
Caught up in the beauty contest
Caught up in the beauty contest
And I feel swollen
Howd my vanity get such a mess?
My vanitys a mess
song performed by by No Doubt
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Let me have my own cross! ! !
Let me carry my own cross,
on thy shoulder, not pause,
Let me have my own crown,
Lord, enough of that frown,
I am a soul, full of Karma,
on thy stage, no more drama,
everything visible very apt,
my ignorance and pride,
my evilness and wickedness.
I am a coward to pass it on,
I am a fool to believe it fun,
I am not innocent,
when my heart is dark,
I am not good,
when my mind is full of fog,
I am not sincere,
when my actions are deceitful,
I am a traitor,
when I betray thy rules.
Let me carry my own cross,
cross of my actions false.
Let me have my own crown,
an arrogant crown, full of poking iron,
Let me drink the soured acid,
acid to neutralize my weak base,
Let me have my own cross,
which is made of feather and floss.
poem by Veeraiyah Subbulakshmi
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