Selecting a Reader
a striking title
she stops flipping
her painted nail
edges onto the page
the fan tries to turn over
the clouds, the smoke
trail, swirl, twirl,
her city heart calms to
country words
a brook in deep jungle
crystal clear water
treking, swishing,
tinkling,
through a landscape
she wishes to be a part
a hypnotic song
soothing a loneliness
a disturbed soul
below the big Ssh
in the bookstore
the silent brook
does its job
outside the city buzzes with traffic
well, it is time to take a holiday
she tells herself
and plonk the book goes back
to the shelf
she swirls past the counter
and slowly walks out
like a jungle brook
her bracelets tinkling
the bookstore as calm as she has come
inspired by
Selecting A Reader
First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
'For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned.' And she will.
Ted Kooser
poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Related quotes
Selecting A Reader
First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.
poem by Ted Kooser
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Book Of Days
Your life is as a book
Written on the pages are the weeks
For you would give anything to take just one look
Into the next chapter, the next page
Each page is a new thought, a new dream
Sometimes it takes so long to pass that page
And sometimes nothing is as it seams
For you know you can not go ahead or back
You know you are where you are
You know you can't change that
As you read page to page, so near to fear
You write the chapters as you go, with each turn
Each turn, each move changes what's to come
And you know each moment could be the last
With this in mind you go so mumb
So numb to the touch, to the thought
You turn page after page
until you reach the 'end'
And only then, you are freed from the title
The title that has kept your thoughts bound, and tight
You turn the pages one by one
You take the pain, take the joy
Until you are done
And your story becomes another on the shelf of eternity
(1/24/2008)
poem by Bethany Maxwell
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A Brook In The City
The farmhouse lingers, though averse to square
With the new city street it has to wear
A number in. But what about the brook
That held the house as in an elbow-crook?
I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength
And impulse, having dipped a finger length
And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed
A flower to try its currents where they crossed.
The meadow grass could be cemented down
From growing under pavements of a town;
The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame.
Is water wood to serve a brook the same?
How else dispose of an immortal force
No longer needed? Staunch it at its source
With cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown
Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone
In fetid darkness still to live and run --
And all for nothing it had ever done
Except forget to go in fear perhaps.
No one would know except for ancient maps
That such a brook ran water. But I wonder
If from its being kept forever under,
The thoughts may not have risen that so keep
This new-built city from both work and sleep.
poem by Robert Frost
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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I can walk into a bookstore and hand over my credit card and they don't know who the hell I am. Maybe that says something about bookstore clerks.
quote by E.L. Doctorow
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Poetry is Dead
Capital D.
Go to the bookstore if you don’t
Believe me
See if you can find the poetry
Way back in the back where
Most people seldom go
If you do find it, what
Do you see?
Frost and Dickinson and
Susan Polis Schutz
Oh, yes, Poetry is Dead.
Who killed it? And why?
We need to find the corpse
Get a sample of DNA
Re-construct a new being
A Poetry people can relate to
A Poetry people want to hear
A Poetry not only striking
But with something vividly important
To say.
(Previously published in CER*BER*US, XLIII, July 2001)
poem by Laurence Overmire
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Rook
Rook, rook read from your book
Who murders who and where is the treasure hid?
Crow, crow spill all you know
Is that my name on the bell?
Rook, rook gaze in the brook
If theres a secret can I be part of it?
Crow, crow before Ill let go, say is that my name on the bell?
Soar up high, see the semaphore from the washing lines
Break the code of the whispering chimneys and traffic signs
Wheres the message thats written under the base of clouds?
Plans eternal, I know you know, so dont blurt out loud
Rook, rook by hook or by crook
Ill make you tell me what this whole things about!
Crow, crow why cant you show
If thats my name on the bell?
On the wings of night, I fly too, above field and stream
My head bursting with knowledge till I wake from the dream
If I die and I find that I had a soul inside
Promise me that youll take it up on its final ride
Rook, rook gaze in the brook
If theres a secret can I be part of it?
Crow, crow before Ill let go, say is that my name on the bell?
Is that my name on the bell?
song performed by by Xtc
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A Brook In The City
in my heart
a river runs
alluvial, fishes,
leaves, flowers and all
a catfish winds
its way up to the surface
shows its pinkish whiskers
and round mouth
and down in a fleet second
puyu splash
their way down
after a fall
bubble, splash, bubble, splash,
big fish, small fish,
breakdance
down the river
their only way to show
joy and gratitude
for nature's care
like a gymnast
they turn their tails up
bend and sweep
the water swivels
and down they go
head plunging
the river a stage
of tail splashing game
how the world has changed since
thirty years the sweep of a puyu's tail
i could still collect that childhood heart
that had gone afflutter
the river that has changed course
to run through my heart
calming nerves and evoking childhood joy
the river now buried deep
in the town's memory
the river now imprisoned
caged between cement walls
no more fishes, no more splashdance, breakdance
red water, blooms and leaves!
the river that now only has me as its fish
splashing every now and then
to let its sweetness flow forth
the river now buried deep in the earth
in the city's mind
inspired by
A Brook In The City
The farmhouse lingers, though averse to square
With the new city street it has to wear
A number in. But what about the brook
That held the house as in an elbow-crook?
I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength
And impulse, having dipped a finger length
And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed
A flower to try its currents where they crossed.
The meadow grass could be cemented down
From growing under pavements of a town;
The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame.
Is water wood to serve a brook the same?
How else dispose of an immortal force
No longer needed? Staunch it at its source
With cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown
Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone
In fetid darkness still to live and run -
And all for nothing it had ever done
Except forget to go in fear perhaps.
No one would know except for ancient maps
That such a brook ran water. But I wonder
If from its being kept forever under,
The thoughts may not have risen that so keep
This new-built city from both work and sleep.
Robert Frost
poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Going For Water
The well was dry beside the door,
And so we went with pail and can
Across the fields behind the house
To seek the brook if still it ran;
Not loth to have excuse to go,
Because the autumn eve was fair
(Though chill), because the fields were ours,
And by the brook our woods were there.
We ran as if to meet the moon
That slowly dawned behind the trees,
The barren boughs without the leaves,
Without the birds, without the breeze.
But once within the wood, we paused
Like gnomes that hid us from the moon,
Ready to run to hiding new
With laughter when she found us soon.
Each laid on other a staying hand
To listen ere we dared to look,
And in the hush we joined to make
We heard, we knew we heard the brook.
A note as from a single place,
A slender tinkling fall that made
Now drops that floated on the pool
Like pearls, and now a silver blade.
poem by Robert Frost
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Three Dog Night
Chuck Negron who I did meet
is really sincere and really sweet.
I told him I wrote 'Poems of Inspiration
and Recovery'
People who read them can feel
better with discovery.
My poems have words in them
like the word 'pray'.
These poems where on display
in Hazelden Ctr.
that very same day.
Now he didsign my book
writing to my alias Suzae.
The book hewrote is
'Three Dog Nightmare'.
describing his life which
is almost like one of Razel's
'Frightmares'
It's abouthis drug
addiction& his word
of hope,
for anyoneaddicted to
or strung out on dope.
Now buy it onAmazon or at
your local bookstore,
it's worth every penny
and then some more.
poem by Suzae Chevalier
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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A man in a bookstore buys a book on loneliness and every woman in the store hits on him. A woman buys a book on loneliness and the store clears out.
quote by Doug Coupland
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I was in Paris at an English-language bookstore. I picked up a volume of Dickinson's poetry. I came back to my hotel, read 2,000 of her poems and immediately began composing in my head. I wrote down the melodies even before I got to a piano.
quote by Gordon Getty
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Angry Young Woman
Angry young woman on sunrise strip,
Walking away to the new world.
She left her man, she left her children,
cause she knows she has only one life to live.
Angry young woman with her background on her forehead,
Three children and two abortions.
Played a little piano ten years ago.
And some typing from the college where she met her husband.
Angry young woman in the dark of the night,
Hears her children crying for dinner,
Hears her man shouting for his shirt
And thinks of the first sundays they spent in the park.
Angry young woman, angry young woman,
Theres no way back, so just keep walking.
Leave your past in your raincoat pocket
And when you turn the corner youll see the new world.
Angry young woman, angry young woman,
Theres no way back, so just keep walking.
Leave your past in your raincoat pocket
And when you turn the corner youll see the new world.
(angry young woman, angry young woman,
Theres no way back, so just keep walking.
Leave your past in your raincoat pocket)
(angry young woman, angry young woman)
song performed by by Yoko Ono
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Angry Young Woman
Angry young woman on sunrise strip,
Walking away to the new world.
She left her man, she left her children,
cause she knows she has only one life to live.
Angry young woman with her background on her forehead,
Three children and two abortions.
Played a little piano ten years ago.
And some typing from the college where she met her husband.
Angry young woman in the dark of the night,
Hears her children crying for dinner,
Hears her man shouting for his shirt
And thinks of the first sundays they spent in the park.
Angry young woman, angry young woman,
Theres no way back, so just keep walking.
Leave your past in your raincoat pocket
And when you turn the corner youll see the new world.
Angry young woman, angry young woman,
Theres no way back, so just keep walking.
Leave your past in your raincoat pocket
And when you turn the corner youll see the new world.
(angry young woman, angry young woman,
Theres no way back, so just keep walking.
Leave your past in your raincoat pocket)
(angry young woman, angry young woman)
song performed by by Yoko Ono
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The House Was Quiet and The World Was Calm
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.
poem by Wallace Stevens
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
Vote! | Copy! | In Romanian
Three Dog Night
Chuck Negron
who I did meet
is really sincere
and really sweet.
I told him I wrote
'Poems of
Inspiration
and Recovery'
People who
read them
can feel
better with discovery.
My poems have
words in them
like the word
“pray”.
These poems
where on
display
in Hazelden Ctr.
that very
same day.
Now he did
sign my book
writing to my
alias Suzae.
The book he
wrote is
“Three Dog Nightmare”.
describing
his life which
is almost like
one of Razel’s
“Frightmares”
It’s about
his drug
addiction
& his word
of hope,
for anyone
addicted to
or strung out on dope.
Now buy it on
Amazon or at
your local bookstore,
it’s worth every penny
and then some more.
Written on April 2nd 2011 by Christina Sunrise
www.christinasunrise.com www.purplepoems.com
poem by Christina Sunrise
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Part 3 of Trout Fishing in America
SEA, SEA RIDER
The man who owned the bookstore was not magic. He was not a
three-legged crow on the dandelion side of the mountain.
He was, of course, a Jew, a retired merchant seaman
who had been torpedoed in the North Atlantic and floated
there day after day until death did not want him. He had a
young wife, a heart attack, a Volkswagen and a home in
Marin County. He liked the works of George Orwell, Richard
Aldington and Edmund Wilson.
He learned about life at sixteen, first from Dostoevsky
and then from the whores of New Orleans.
The bookstore was a parking lot for used graveyards.
Thousands of graveyards were parked in rows like cars.
Most of the kooks were out of print, and no one wanted to
read them any more and the people who had read the books
had died or forgotten about them, but through the organic
process of music the books had become virgins again. They
wore their ancient copyrights like new maidenheads.
I went to the bookstore in the afternoons after I got off
work, during that terrible year of 1959.
He had a kitchen in the back of the store and he brewed
cups of thick Turkish coffee in a copper pan. I drank coffee
and read old books and waited for the year to end. He had a
small room above the kitchen.
It looked down on the bookstore and had Chinese screens
in front of it. The room contained a couch, a glass cabinet
with Chinese things in it and a table and three chairs. There
was a tiny bathroom fastened like a watch fob to the room.
I was sitting on a stool in the bookstore one afternoon
reading a book that was in the shape of a chalice. The book
had clear pages like gin, and the first page in the book read:
Billy
the Kid
born
November 23,
1859
in
New York
City
The owner of the bookstore came up to me, and put his
arm on my shoulder and said, "Would you like to get laid?"
His voice was very kind.
"No, " I said.
"You're wrong, " he said, and then without saying anything
else, he went out in front of the bookstore, and stopped a pair
of total strangers, a man and a woman. He talked to them for
a few moments. I couldn't hear what he was saying. He pointed
at me in the bookstore. The woman nodded her head and
then the man nodded his head.
They came into the bookstore.
I was embarrassed. I could not leave the bookstore because
they were entering by the only door, so I decided to go
upstairs and go to the toilet. I got up abruptly and walked
to the back of the bookstore and went upstairs to the bathroom,
and they followed after me. I could hear them on the stairs.
I waited for a long time in the bathroom and they waited
an equally long time in the other room. They never spoke.
When I came out of the bathroom, the woman was lying naked
on the couch, and the man was sitting in a chair with his
hat on his lap.
"Don't worry about him, " the girl said. "These things
make no difference to him. He's rich. He has 3, 859 Rolls
Royces." The girl was very pretty and her body was like a
clear mountain river of skin and muscle flowing over rocks
of bone and hidden nerves.
"Come to me, " she said. "And come inside me for we are
Aquarius and I love you."
I looked at the man sitting in the chair. He was not smiling
and he did not look sad.
I took off my shoes and all my clothes. The man did not
say a word.
The girl's body moved ever so slightly from side to side.
There was nothing else I could do for my body was like
birds sitting on a telephone wire strung out down the world,
clouds tossing the wires carefully.
I laid the girl.
It was like the eternal 59th second when it becomes a minute
and then looks kind of sheepish.
"Good, " the girl said, and kissed me on the face.
The man sat there without speaking or moving or sending
out any emotion into the room. I guess he was rich and owned
3, 859 Rolls Royces.
Afterwards the girl got dressed and she and the man left.
They walked down the stairs and on their way out, I heard
him say his first words.
"Would you like to go to Emie's for dinner?"
"I don't know, " the girl said. "It's a little early to think
about dinner. "
Then I heard the door close and they were gone. I got
dressed and went downstairs. The flesh about my body felt
soft and relaxed like an experiment in functional background
music.
The owner of the bookstore was sitting at his desk behind
the counter. "I'11 tell you what happened up there, " he said,
in a beautiful anti-three-legged-crow voice, in an anti-dandelion
side of the mountain voice.
"What?"I said.
"You fought in the Spanish Civil War. You were a young
Communist from Cleveland, Ohio. She was a painter. A New
York Jew who was sightseeing in the Spanish Civil War as if
it were the Mardi Gras in New Orleans being acted out by
Greek statues.
"She was drawing a picture of a dead anarchist when you
met her. She asked you to stand beside the anarchist and act
as if you had killed him. You slapped her across the face
and said something that would be embarrassing for me to
repeat.
You both fell very much in love.
"Once while you were at the front she read Anatomy of
Melancholy and did 349 drawings of a lemon.
"Your love for each other was mostly spiritual.Neither
one of you performed like millionaires in bed.
"When Barcelona fell, you and she flew to England, and
then took a ship back to New York. Your love for each other
remained in Spain. It was only a war love. You loved only
yourselves, loving each other in Spain during the war. On
the Atlantic you were different toward each other and became
every day more and more like people lost from each other.
"Every wave on the Atlantic was like a dead seagull dragging
its driftwood artillery from horizon to horizon.
"When the ship bumped up against America, you departed
without saying anything and never saw each other again. The
last I heard of you, you were still living in Philadelphia. "
"That's what you think happened up there?" I said.
"Partly, " he said. "Yes, that's part of it. "
He took out his pipe and filled it with tobacco and lit it.
"Do you want me to tell you what else happened up there?"
he said.
"Go ahead."
"You crossed the border into Mexico, " he said. "You
rode your horse into a small town. The people knew who
you were and they were afraid of you. They knew you had
killed many men with that gun you wore at your side. The
town itself was so small that it didn't have a priest.
"When the rurales saw you, they left the town. Tough as
they were, they did not want to have anything to do with you.
The rurales left.
You became the most powerful man in town.
You were seduced by a thirteen-year-old girl, and you
and she lived together in an adobe hut, and practically all
you did was make love.
"She was slender and had long dark hair. You made love
standing, sitting, lying on the dirt floor with pigs and chickens
around you. The walls, the floor and even the roof of the
hut were coated with your sperm and her come.
"You slept on the floor at night and used your sperm for
a pillow and her come for a blanket.
"The people in the town were so afraid of you that they
could do nothing.
"After a while she started going around town without any
clothes on, and the people of the town said that it was not a
good thing, and when you started going around without any
clothes, and when both of you began making love on the back
of your horse in the middle of the zocalo, the people of the
town became so afraid that they abandoned the town. It's
been abandoned ever since. "People won't live there.
"Neither of you lived to be twenty-one. It was not neces-
sary.
"See, I do know what happened upstairs, " he said. He
smiled at me kindly. His eyes were like the shoelaces of a
harpsichord.
I thought about what happened upstairs.
"You know what I say is the truth, " he said. "For you
saw it with your own eyes and traveled it with your own body.
Finish the book you were reading before you were interrupted.
I'm glad you got laid. "
Once resumed the pages of the book began to speed up
and turn faster and faster until they were spinning like wheels
in the sea.
poem by Richard Brautigan
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Oh To Be Out In The Country
A hot day in the city and scarce a puff of breeze
Oh to be out in the country in the cool shade of the trees
In the shadow of the wattles leafing through a favourite book
Listening to the coot and black duck calling in the quiet brook.
Oh to be out in the country on this sunny Summer's day
In the hills above Wonthaggi more than eighty miles away
In the shadow of the gum trees many miles from city street
Stretched and resting on the fog grass sheltering from the mid day heat.
I feel tired of city living city life's a hard old slog
And I am sick of man's pollution sick of breathing smoke and smog
Oh to be out in the country by a creek enjoying a beer
In a World free of pollution many miles away from here.
A hot day in the city near thirty five degrees
Oh to be out in the country in the cool shade of the trees
In the shadow of the gum trees many miles from city street
Stretched and resting on the fog grass sheltering from the mid day heat.
poem by Francis Duggan
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Open Book's Monologue (revisited the years later portion of part 16)
Maybe I'm the book, and maybe you're the reader
but who is you? is it not everyone
since I'm open, for all to point at laugh at, out of malice or for fun
because they know my thoughts, they know i love her? !
what did i do?
i never said i love you! ! !
how can they know?
how did i reap what i did now sow? !
The worst part
about being an open book,
is an open book can't close itself, can't have a heart
anyone can know all from just one look
there seems to be something wrong with being too open and honest
but it's too late a book can't close itself
can't move by its own accord to a shelf
an open book can never rest
so now I'm the book, so since im there just read
just read.... and watch my heart, my purpose, my soul, my life, me
watch.... watch them bleed
poem by David Knox
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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We were just a one-room bookstore; we didn't have any money for lawyers.
quote by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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All of us can think of a book... that we hope none of our children have taken off the shelf. But if I have the right to remove that book from the shelf -that work I abhor- then you also have exactly the same right and so does everyone else. And then we have no books left on the shelf for any of us.
quote by Katherine Paterson
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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