A Folder
While lifting a folder
from a box of papers
I had stored up in the loft
several loose pages fell out
and landed at my feet.
As I lifted them,
I saw much to my surprise
that they were half a dozen poems
I had written twenty years ago
and forgotten all about.
As I quickly flicked
through the folder
it became clear to me
that there was about fifty other poems
buried within I had forgotten about.
I’ve put the folder to one-side
to sort through it when I have more time.
Then I can rediscover
what I was writing
more than twenty years ago.
6 March 2008
poem by David Harris
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Early Morning Facing A Folder
confronted with a folder
in a dream
i wake up laden with
work in my head
a folder lies there
with a mouth gaping
for justice
who killed innocence?
who buried love?
why are some so cruel
about other people's dreams?
a folder lies in front of me
and then i begin
to open the pages
something must be done
and it has
to start with me
this early morning
on this very day....
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Poems About.
There are poems that you will never see
Marked in a folder titled 'privacy'
Poems of hate and anger and personal pain
Poems about greed and hunger and personal gain
Poems about people I would love to see dead
Poems about women I met
Poems about relationships that have gone bad
Poems about issues with mom and dad
Poems about me, the person no one knows
Poems about places where only my soul goes
Poems I wish I could place in the clouds for all to read
Poems about lust, selfishness and greed
Poems I know will hurt those I hate
Poems I write by complete mistake
Poems I have hidden in my heart and my head
Poems about things that are better left unsaid
Poems I want to share and poems I want to retract
Poems of shame and how others might act
They stay in my psyche, they are a part of me
These poems I write, but you will never see.
poem by Mahfooz Ali
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Always The Poems In Me
Always the poems in me-
Saying themselves over and over
Returning to lines learned long ago
Or lines learned with more difficulty in old age-
Always the poems in me-
While my own poems written
And forgotten
As if only
Poems of a single occasion
The time of their writing-
Always the poems in me-
The poems which others will have in them after me
Poems not my own.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Of All The Poems I Have Written And Forgotten
OF ALL THE POEMS I HAVE WRITTEN AND FORGOTTEN
Of all the poems written and forgotten
Are there any worthy of remembrance?
I go on losing my poems as I make more of them-
The same old story
The future calls
And the past is forgotten
And all futures
Become past.
When will I learn to remember
My own work?
To cherish it
As I do that of others?
Line after line
Racing into the distance
Of a never- to- be – known
And forever forgotten
Unreality.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Moments Of Writing Poetry
Draft poems sometimes like
loose ripped off pieces of paper
to be drafted out roughly upon.
Draft poems hang around
in the strangest places waiting
to be written out one day.
Draft poems wait for a poet
to wake at the beginning of day
to be written out, in any
seized moments, sacrificed.
This is now time, shower time, eating time,
reflective time, conversation time, work time;
t.v. time, driving time, riding motorcycle time,
going to sleep time, cooking time, or any time.
Draft poems can only be written
in spared moments of seized time.
Draft poems can only be written today,
they will not wait for fair weather like hay,
which lays around waiting to be harvested.
Draft poems will not wait for a clear sunny day to dawn,
and then mature slowly, over a perfect golden summer.
Draft poems are ever now or never
if they are ever to be swiftly written.
A draft may possibly be perfected
upon any future day of favoured writing;
but a draft never written is a poem
never written, never completed, never known.
poem by Terence George Craddock
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It’s time to seal my father’s book
The one I’ve been given while he was still alive
Sometime before the year 2000
I filled it in last year
After so many years of not writing
Posted some of its contents
It contains
Like so many previously empty pages
Lots of something and bits of half nothing
And I’m sure that this peace of information is totally irrelevant
For the readers
Except for the fact
That there are always pages that need to remain just that
The pages and nothing else
Even though they contain things that should not be forgotten
That will not be forgotten
poem by Miroslava Odalovic
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Second Chance
Sometimes you never get a second chance
at anything you do.
If one day you do, embrace it
and never let it slip through your fingers
or it will never come to you again.
Now this is my story of the two second chances that I got
and how I embraced them without regret.
The story begins half a century ago when I was a teenager.
I was a very shy boy
and my friends were very few,
especially where the girls were concerned.
No friendships grew there
and all too soon they were gone
without me ever saying a word to them
as I left and set sail for a far distant shore.
Their faces remained with me
through the years in photographs.
The years slipped by so quickly
from teenager to adult hood,
but still those photographs
kept the past alive to me.
Always hoping one day,
I would be able to see them over again.
More years slipped by
and the chances of that happening
became just as remote as could be,
or so I thought.
Then on the 15 December 2006,
I had an internal message on classmates.com
and that is where the first of my two second chances began.
The second came shortly afterwards
when this classmate introduced me to her friend,
whose encouraging words made me take
the second of my second chances
and on the 19th January 2007 I lifted my pen to paper
after six or seven years
and never looked back since then.
Since that date, I have written
one thousand four hundred and twenty eight poems,
a novel and published my first book.
All because of the second chances, I got.
If you are given a second chance
at anything at all,
grasp them with all your might,
never letting them go
because you will probably never get them again.
22-23 November 2008
poem by David Harris
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Footnote to a famous poem
You all know it from the classroom.
It’s in all the anthologies.
Many say it’s his best; ‘a young man’s poem’
full of life and love and promise;
and short too. His long poems,
they’re great but few have the patience now
and who cares about Poet Laureates
when they’re out of fashion?
It never appeared, did you know,
in his lifetime. Sat in his desk drawer,
a single poem in a fine Italian leather folder.
His wife left it there after he died;
remembering when he’d sent it to her
the night before their marriage; she caught him
once, sitting there, an old man reading
a young man’s poem; closed the door quietly,
said nothing.
They cleared the house after she died.
It would never have come to light
if years later his mistress hadn’t left
a copy – it transpired - to the museum
in her will; he’d written it just for her, she said;
but made her promise not to publish it.
She felt she owed it to his memory though.
Some people prefer not to have
footnotes to poems; they say
they spoil the poem,
and cheapen a great man;
some people like them; they say
it makes poets seem more human.
poem by Michael Shepherd
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Necessary Artistic Deletions
deleted approximately fifty good draft seed poems
not because they were bad but because were too good
each could have born fruit to ten twenty thirty poems
this would take days a week a few weeks writing out
in total months a year a year of full fool time writing
time gap economy denies artistry an extensive write out
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Perhaps My Poems Have Already Been Written
PERHAPS MY POEMS HAVE ALREADY BEEN WRITTEN
Perhaps my poems have already been written
Perhaps it is all now senseless repetition
Perhaps I should just stop
And go on if I can to some other form of writing
God gives us what we have
We strive to go beyond ourselves
We can to a certain point
But then we have done what we have done
We can live a million years more
And write a million more poems
But what we have to write
Is done
Perhaps my poems have already been written
And small and poor and awkward as they are
Less than the truest poetry
They are what I have and am
Good-bye myself
I cannot go home.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Poems
Poems resemble little strains
of our childhood's distant past,
care to cry and smile with us,
when we feel them in the rain.
Poems are like little soldiers
ascending to a mountain high,
singing a longing ode to nigh,
of what our silences express.
Poems hurt your hands in cold,
as north winds blow in Winter,
inside to commence and linger,
when old acquaintances unfold.
When loved forms annunciate,
in verses that were kept pure,
and pictures our loves ensure,
in misty solitudes necessitate.
In poems words become drops,
a dispersed mizzle in October,
dormant are in a closed folder,
as we recite them on sea docks.
There with ocean foams explode,
carrying our childhood's dreams,
as all winds recite them to brims,
and to our wraiths that fly to bode.
poem by Giorgio Veneto
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All I Can Do Now Is Write Another Poem
All I can do now is write another poem-
The poems are small,
And do not require the long hours and long years
Of the books-
Like the world as a whole
I seem to have a shorter attention span
And less patience-
A poem can be written and given a name
In minutes not years-
Though some would say a great poem
Takes the travail of years of waiting
And years of work-
But I did not say
‘All I can do now is write another great poem'
Perhaps I have in all the years of the nights never written one-
I can write the poems I write
My kinds of poems
In a fairly short time-
All I can do now
Is write another of my kind of poems-
Whether they be worth anything,
Or not.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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I Have Written Many Poor Poems
I have written many poor poems
That may not be poems at all -
They are single in dimension
Prose
In short lines of seemingly poetic form-
They do not call for their rereading
They are not difficult in ambiguities-
They seem to me only one simple clearly understood thing-
Like this poem
They can be understood at once
And forgotten soon after.
I have written many poor poems
That may not be poems at all
And this is another one.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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You will find my last words in the blue folder.
quote by Max Beerbohm
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I Wrote Many New Poems Now Long Forgotten
I WROTE MANY POEMS NOW LONG FORGOTTEN
I wrote many poems now long forgotten
Why do I believe any poem I will write now
Or in the future
Is better than them?
I am a man lost in the world of his own words
And the only way out I know
Is writing more words
Which too are added on
To the unending pile of the forgotten.
Tell me where this poem too will be
When I am in the ground?
poem by Shalom Freedman
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My recovery (21 POEMS)
Twenty one...some number
Twenty one poems I can’t remember
21....waiting for you to re-discover
If only I could have seen this story foretold
It hurts to know they never had the chance to see the world
They were my hidden acclamation
All they ever wanted was a public proclamation
I didn’t because they were conceived by my emotion
As d old saying goes 'it probably happen for a reason'
21 poems all gone
In the middle of the night someone broke into my home
Twenty one poems all gone
Why did I only save them in my phone?
I miss my babies
Now they’re just fading memories
I desperately try 2 remember
It’s sooooo hard to conceive (write) another
SiGH *mylostlove*
poem by Anita Khelawan
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The Magic of Numbers
The Magic of Numbers—1
How strange it was to hear the furniture being moved around in the apartment upstairs!
I was twenty-six, and you were twenty-two.
The Magic of Numbers—2
You asked me if I wanted to run, but I said no and walked on.
I was nineteen, and you were seven.
The Magic of Numbers—3
Yes, but does X really like us?
We were both twenty-seven.
The Magic of Numbers—4
You look like Jerry Lewis (1950).
The Magic of Numbers—5
Grandfather and grandmother want you to go over to their house for dinner.
They were sixty-nine, and I was two and a half.
The Magic of Numbers—6
One day when I was twenty-nine years old I met you and nothing happened.
The Magic of Numbers—7
No, of course it wasn’t I who came to the library!
Brown eyes, flushed cheeks, brown hair. I was twenty-nine, and you were sixteen.
The Magic of Numbers—8
After we made love one night in Rockport I went outside and kissed the road
I felt so carried away. I was twenty-three, and you were nineteen.
The Magic of Numbers—9
I was twenty-nine, and so were you. We had a very passionate time.
Everything I read turned into a story about you and me, and everything I did was turned into a poem.
“The Magic of Numbers” from The Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright © 2006 by Kenneth Koch.
poem by Kenneth Koch
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Hvad ei et Solkys folder ud
Hvad ei et Solkys folder ud
Maa modnes ved den skarpe Lud.
poem by Hans Christian Andersen
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Forgotten Time
bumming around
the country...
sleeping under bridges,
or just under...
the night sky...
working when i
could find it.
selling blood
when i couldnt!
gather a little change,
stop in a diner
for a cup of
black coffee...
writing poems
on napkins
with pencils...
leaving them for
my tip...
unsigned, forgotten
prayers, a forgotten
man, a forgotten
time!
poem by Eric Cockrell
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Oh The Poems And More Poems
OH THE POEMS AND THE MORE POEMS
Oh the poems and the more poems
The wonderful poems I am writing all the time
God has given me this gift
And when I wait in the right way
And when I listen to myself properly
The poems come in ways I could never have thought of or imagined before
They come as mysteries as gifts as surprises
As wonderful to me as perhaps to you their possible readers
Oh the poems and the more poems
The wonderful poems God has given me
And the light of this day and so many other days, also.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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