One Night She Reads My Poems
one night she reads some of my poems
those that speak about leaving
images of sunset and dusk
a bird flying away from the cage
a stone thrown to space like one tennis ball
at night
something that is gone away
for good
she feels each line and well
every metaphor she understands
and she asks me if i have something to tell her
i smile and like Robert i play nice and then i utter the most
philosophical word in the entire history of humanity:
'nothing'
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Related quotes
Fly Me To The Sun
Like the bird flying high in the sunrise
I just want to fly to you
I just want to fly to your soul
Into the sunset, high in the sunrise,
Through the links in the chain I see it's to be
It all seems to fit, it just fits, thats it
Like a sunset within a sunrise, a night outside a day
As we spin in our souls and look at the sky... It's our sky
And I fly through the sunrise that takes me to you
We can glide, we can fly, we can be... we must be
We fly though the sunset that is always you.
Like the bird flying high in the sunrise
I just want to fly to your soul
Like the bird flying high in the sunset
I know the sun rises and sets within you.
poem by Mark Hopwood
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Little Black Bird
little black bird of Lia
flying away to Arizona
how is that little black
bird? what is it doing
in the desert? watching
how God paints a very
red orange sunset and
how the wind of the night
erases everything? Little
Black bird of Lia, what
is the reason for the
the leaving of devotion?
is sincerity still found
on that desert flower
blooming without water?
the cactus and some thorns
my loneliness deep like
the desert night, my longing
wide like the wind, my
illusions that life still
imitate art, that i can be
myself. Blackness and wings.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Alan Dugan Telling Me I Have A Problem With Time
He reads my latest attempt at a poem
and is silent for a long time, until it feels
like that night we waited for Apollo,
my mother wandering in and out of her bedroom, asking,
Haven't they landed yet? At last
Dugan throws it on the table and says,
This reads like a cheap detective novel
and I've got nothing to say about it. It sits,
naked and white, with everyone's eyes
running over it. The week before
he'd said I had a problem with time,
that in my poems everything
kept happening at once. In 1969,
the voice of Mission Control
told a man named Buzz
that there was a bunch of guys turning blue
down here on Earth, and now I can understand
it was with anticipation, not sickness. Next,
Dugan says, Let's move on. The attempted poem
was about butterflies and my recurring desire
to return to a place I've never been.
It was inspired by reading this
in a National Geographic: monarchs
stream northward from winter roosts in Mexico,
laying their eggs atop milkweed
to foster new generations along the way.
With the old monarchs gone (I took this line as the title)
and all ties to the past ostensibly cut
the unimaginable happens--butterflies
that have never been to that plateau in Mexico
roost there the next winter. . . .I saw this
as a metaphor for a childhood I never had,
until Dugan pointed out
that metaphor has been dead for a hundred years.
A woman, new to the workshop, leans
behind his back and whispers, I like it,
but the silence is seamless, as deep
as outer space. That night in 1969
I could turn my head from the television and see
the moon
filling the one pane over the bed completely
as we waited for Neil Armstrong
to leave his footprints all over it.
poem by Nick Flynn
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* * *
Carve a canyon in my soul,
this young girl here feels a bit too old;
in thought and manner, in speech and word,
she knows she has been and is but a caged bird.
A cage made with strings of steel,
steel that can bind, but you cannot feel.
She twitters around in her lonely cage,
writes her poems, and another page.
A bird escaping finally from its cage
Let me not speak about
This bird that finally finds a way
Out of its cage
New to its freedom
It whirls and circles the skies
A tryst with the wind
A feast with the sun
A dive to the sea
A rising up to the limitless
Space around it
Let me not speak about its
Final regret
Its wanting to be back in the cage
Again
Because for a time
It thinks again
It is really its home
Forever
The bird shall soon ask you
To open the cage
To spend its nights there
All its lifetime
Soon it will have the courage to say it
Freedom sometimes
Home it is not
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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My Conclusion
I come to the conclusion
that it was not wisdom that enabled her to write poetry,
but a kind
of anger
this desperation
and hatred for all men
and mankind
not of instinct even
neither inspiration
the one that you find
in seers
and crystal ball owners
or gypsies
and Cassandras
with a gift
to foretell the future
and the Armageddon
that is coming
to our town
she has not delivered
any sublime
message
at all to me
or to the rest
of this forlorn
humanity
she means
every word she says
and she proclaims
she understands
all of them
word for word
line to line
poem to poem
like the scars
of her
grandchildren
and the
wounds
of her husband
like she knows
everything
from the tip
of my hair
to the tip of
my toe
the origin
of my sorrow
unlike the medium
be it Moses
or Elijah
the emissary
of the holy holy
God
who delivers
the message
without knowing
in the least
what the message
really means
and good
God gracious
she is unique
and so
differently
different
from me
or us
or the rest of us
morons
to her appearance
she says
she is finally
leaving and all the choirs of the angels in heaven
all sing
alleluia!
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Seed, Qou Vadis?
seed falling on the ground
brought by a night bird
wet by the rain of dusk
you have no choice
but to crack your hard covering
and then grow
some roots and leaves
in time's blessing
some flowers
then fruits
then the silence of the wilting
follows
to be back into a seed again
eaten by this night bird
and thrown back
to a distant soil
seed,
you must begin
your cycle again
for what choice do you have?
the night bird does not
even know
and the soil simply receives you
and the rain of the dusk
simply wets you
and they do not even know
what & why
they are doing all these
this is the cycle
of the seed of life
and wilting and death
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Soliloquy For An Early Morning Sigh
syllables soon
form the word
that you want
to utter this early
morning, they
lurk there for
the whole night
like a cocoon
and then something
like a moth comes
out and so you
open your mouth
something blue and
winged and beautiful
and it flies away
like a pebble that
you thrown away
against the dark
you may pretend
that it does not
know you but hell
sure it knows you
well enough and
it is seeking the
help of the dusk
who can deny it?
not your heart that
stil still beat for love.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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A Love Forbidden
it is about a love
forbidden
when the two
of us
decided to break
the rules
written in stone
by our
ancestors
we dare
them all
one night
we do not
speak any
word
yet we understand
what we
both want
we both
need it
we wait
for the
mutual release
of feelings
inside us
we release
them like
doves
deep in the night
we are restless
then
we finally
find this
bliss and do
its dictates
like a hidden
code
pre-stitched
in our skins
there is
no word
to describe
it, there is no word that we can utter
we feel justice
is now inside us, there is no regret, there is no feeling
of being wasted
we are inside this dream
and we do no wish waking up again
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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His Poetry His Pillar
Only a little more
I have to write:
Then I'll give o'er,
And bid the world good-night.
'Tis but a flying minute,
That I must stay,
Or linger in it:
And then I must away.
O Time, that cut'st down all,
And scarce leav'st here
Memorial
Of any men that were;
--How many lie forgot
In vaults beneath,
And piece-meal rot
Without a fame in death?
Behold this living stone
I rear for me,
Ne'er to be thrown
Down, envious Time, by thee.
Pillars let some set up
If so they please;
Here is my hope,
And my Pyramides.
poem by Robert Herrick
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Our Bird In Your Cage
we have this bird
we both own it and love it and care for it
our bird
and you have this cage
that you only own
golden, new and strong and as you say it
so reliable
that when our bird is in that cage
it will be safe
and cannot escape
we feed this bird together
and give it water and birdseeds
and a place of twigs and swing
where the bird can play
and perch upon
like it is on a tree
days and years
we keep this bird in your cage
and we see it is dying
and wanting to be free
yet you say, this sickness is just temporary
time heals what has wounded it
and shall forget the power of its wings
days and more years
we keep this bird in your cage
and i have not listened at all
to the sad song of that bird
her waning chirps
her weakened wings
her way of losing hold to the dreams of its wings
today we see this bird is dead
but you have no sadness at all
you say, you will buy another bird
again to be kept in your cage
i could have told you
i am the bird in your cage and i too have forgotten the power of
my wings
i could have told you, i have long died
and have forgotten what freedom is, what love is, what i am
in the first place. How can i ever tell you?
you are my cage.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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The Man With The Horn
(released as b-side of sussudio single, 1985)
They come from miles around just to hear him play
Hes on the same street corner almost every day
And theres always a crowd wherever he goes
And when he blows his horn, well everybody knows
I only wanna see him play
All the girls n boys they wanna see him play
Nobody else they wanna see him play
And he brings a tear to the eye
Hell make you smile of make you cry
And nobody asks him why
Cos they just wanna see him play
They come from every way, every night
Hes got a band so out there, its outta sight
And the boys in the dancehall are rocking in the aisle
The girls up front - they wanna see him smile
I only wanna see him play
All the girls n boys they wanna see him play
Nobody else they wanna see him play
And he brings a tear to the eye
Hell make you smile of make you cry
Ooh, nobody asks him why
Cos they just wanna see him play
Yeah, hes the man with the horn
Ooh they wanna see him play
Yeah, hes the man with the horn
Ooh they wanna see him play
Yeah, hes the man with the horn
You know they wanna see him, they wanna see him
They wanna, they wanna, they wanna see him play
(play it, don!)
Ah, station to station, coast to coast
Well you can hear all his records on the radio
He makes every evening feel like saturday night
And if youre happy or sad hell make the feeling right
I only wanna see him play
All the girls n boys they wanna see him play
Nobody else they wanna see him play
And he brings a tear to the eye
Hell make you smile of make you cry
Ooh, nobody asks him why
Cos they just wanna see him play
Yes, you know they wanna see him, they wanna see him
Chow, they know they wanna see him, they wanna see him
They wanna, they wanna, they wanna see him play
They wanna see him play, play, play, play
Oh, all the girls and boys wanna see him play
All the girls and boys wanna see him play
All the girls and boys...
song performed by by Phil Collins
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Free Bird
i shall not talk about the free bird
about the cage
judge shall i not about what really
happened after
the fruition of freedom
for the bird may be free and now
flying all the corners of directions
the heavens and the
gardens and rivers of love flowing
yet on the night when it rests
upon a branch
the thought comes somehow
unavoidably
the cage though
to her a prison has sometime
in one precious moment
pure love and devotion
she once felt.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Speak The Word
Unsettled hearts
Promise what they cant deliver
Bring me the wine
And the cold night air to clear my head
Gray matter memory house
Master of this trembling flesh
Steady still my doubts
Let me speak the word that precedes bliss
Let me speak the word
Let me speak the word
Love love love love love love love love
Let me speak the word
Let me speak the word
Love love love love love love love love
Let me speak the word
Let me speak the word
Let me speak the word
Let me speak the word
These weakened knees
Have not touched ground or pew in ages
I havent bowed my head
I offer thanks to any God or to ask for favors
But watch me now
Im falling down
Praying
To speak the word that precedes bliss
To speak the word
To speak the word
Love love love love love love love love
Let me speak the word
Let me speak the word
Love love love love love love love love
Let me speak the word
Let me speak the word
Let me speak the word
Let me speak the word
song performed by by Tracy Chapman
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Critique Of Poetry
A poem is a sorry thing,
Not fit for reading to a king:
It’s often full of silly rhymes
That waste a lot of people’s times.
But modern poets can’t rhyme at all,
Which really is abominable;
Their rhythm quickly gets all out of whack,
Because I guess it just seems like for rhythm and rhyme they don’t have the necessary knack.
Phrases created on demand
Which nobody can understand,
Like wool that's thrown across a fence
And stirred until it is quite dense.
Syntax gets twisted out of shape
Not unlike a grinning ape -
Examples which of, I think cannot,
So, yet to learn have I a lot.
Poems do not make much sense
When talking of abstract sentiments
Or waffle philosophical
On subjects what ain’t topical.
A poem can be so abstruse
It makes you feel you’re quite obtuse;
You scratch your head until it’s sore,
And still can’t follow any more.
So poets often write of love,
Usually rhymed with “heaven above”,
Neither of which they know about -
But mostly they are not found out.
And many a poet is a bore
With simile and metaphor
That fill up many an empty line
With silly thoughts like yours and mine.
A simile is like a ball
(Or maybe not - I can’t recall) ,
Or like a man who runs around
And never seems to touch the ground.
A metaphor’s a stranger’s child,
And so to you it might seem wild;
But just when you think, “This is rum! ”
It up and bites you in the part of the anatomy on which a homo sapiens normally sits.
Now, if you think you’ve got my drift,
Then you have a very special gift,
‘Cause I can’t understand myself -
So, best to leave me on the shelf!
poem by Rory Hudson
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Keep Writing
We share thoughts, and ideas, and hopes, and fears
And dreams of nightmares that ask why we're here
The anger and rage that we cannot ignore
Rampages on pages no one can deplore
Our longings for belonging to someone special
While we try to figure out a good rhyme for special
Choosing one word for another, and which goes first
We inspire our humanity, until it knows no thirst
From the hearts and the minds of the young and the old
There is no normalcy, no conventional code
Our pens flow freely as space is black
Experience makes trusty keyboards 'click-clack'
Imagination colors images on every line
Scribbled in a moment or trapped in time
To all who may read this, I ask just one thing
Write what you want, just write something
It may not reach the entire world, or a newsstand
But no one can tell your story, quite like you can
poem by P.R. Prosper
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Hypocrite Auteur
mon semblable, mon frère
(1)
Our epoch takes a voluptuous satisfaction
In that perspective of the action
Which pictures us inhabiting the end
Of everything with death for only friend.
Not that we love death,
Not truly, not the fluttering breath,
The obscene shudder of the finished act—
What the doe feels when the ultimate fact
Tears at her bowels with its jaws.
Our taste is for the opulent pause
Before the end comes. If the end is certain
All of us are players at the final curtain:
All of us, silence for a time deferred,
Find time before us for one sad last word.
Victim, rebel, convert, stoic—
Every role but the heroic—
We turn our tragic faces to the stalls
To wince our moment till the curtain falls.
(2)
A world ends when its metaphor has died.
An age becomes an age, all else beside,
When sensuous poets in their pride invent
Emblems for the soul’s consent
That speak the meanings men will never know
But man-imagined images can show:
It perishes when those images, though seen,
No longer mean.
(3)
A world was ended when the womb
Where girl held God became the tomb
Where God lies buried in a man:
Botticelli’s image neither speaks nor can
To our kind. His star-guided stranger
Teaches no longer, by the child, the manger,
The meaning of the beckoning skies.
Sophocles, when his reverent actors rise
To play the king with bleeding eyes,
No longer shows us on the stage advance
God’s purpose in the terrible fatality of chance.
No woman living, when the girl and swan
Embrace in verses, feels upon
Her breast the awful thunder of that breast
Where God, made beast, is by the blood confessed.
Empty as conch shell by the waters cast
The metaphor still sounds but cannot tell,
And we, like parasite crabs, put on the shell
And drag it at the sea’s edge up and down.
This is the destiny we say we own.
(4)
But are we sure
The age that dies upon its metaphor
Among these Roman heads, these mediaeval towers,
Is ours?—
Or ours the ending of that story?
The meanings in a man that quarry
Images from blinded eyes
And white birds and the turning skies
To make a world of were not spent with these
Abandoned presences.
The journey of our history has not ceased:
Earth turns us still toward the rising east,
The metaphor still struggles in the stone,
The allegory of the flesh and bone
Still stares into the summer grass
That is its glass,
The ignorant blood
Still knocks at silence to be understood.
Poets, deserted by the world before,
Turn round into the actual air:
Invent the age! Invent the metaphor!
poem by Archibald MacLeish
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For I Am A Metaphor
'For i am a Metaphor
For i am free as a bird
wiser than wise itself
brighter than a sun gama ray
FOR I AM A METAPHOR
for i love like the word
think like einstein
dream like Martin
FOR I AM A METAPHOR
For i smell like success
Achieve like achievers
and soar like number 23
FOR I AM A METAPHOR
for i deliver like mailmen
determine like focus
and prosper like underdogs
FOR I......AM.....A METAPHOR'
By: Kottrell Johnson
poem by Kottrell Johnson
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Honey
If Jermaine likes it
(He do)
Then I like it
Rap~ JD
Rap~ Da Brat
Rap~ JD
Rap~ Da Brat
(This is...)
Oh, honey
(So So Def)
You can have me when you want me
If you simply ask me to be there
And you're the only one who makes me come running
'Cause what you've got is far beyond compare, oh
And it's just like honey
When your love comes over me
Oh baby, I've got a dependency
Always strung out for another taste of your honey
Chorus:
It's like honey when it washes over me
You know sugar never, ever was so sweet
And I'm dying for ya, crying for ya, I adore ya
One hit of your love addicted me
Now I'm strung out on ya, darlin' don't you see
Every night and day
I can hardly wait for another taste of honey
Honey, I can't describe how good it feels inside
Honey, I can't describe how good it feels inside
(MC, come on)
Oh, I can't be elusive with you honey
'Cause it's blatant that I'm feeling you
(Say what?)
And it's too hard for me to leave abruptly
'Cause you're the only thing I wanna do
Rap~ JD
Rap~ Da Brat
They say, "Hey JD, won't you play that song
And keep 'em dancin' (dancin') all night (all night)"
"Hey JD, won't you play that song
And keep 'em dancin' (dancin') all night (all night)"
They say, "Hey JD, won't you play that song
And keep 'em dancin' (dancin') all night (all night)"
"Hey JD, won't you play that song
And keep 'em dancin' (dancin') all night (all night)... long"
Honey, it's like
Chorus
Oh, sugar, you know
Oh I need your love right now baby
Oh, every
I need a taste of honey
I need it
Oh honey, oh honey I
I need it
Oh honey I
Honey, honey
I need it, need it
I need it, need it
And I need it, need it
And I need it, need it
Honey you can have me when you want me
Oh
Honey you can have me when you want me
Yeah
Honey you can have me when you want me
Oh
Honey you can have me when you want me
Honey you can have me when you want me
Yeah
Honey you can have me when you want me
Oh
Honey you can have me when you want me
Honey you can have me when you want me
I'll tell you what they say
They say, "Hey JD, won't you play that song
And keep 'em dancin' (dancin') all night (all night)"
"Hey JD, won't you play that song
And keep 'em dancin' (dancin') all night (all night)"
They say, "Hey JD, won't you play that song
And keep 'em dancin' (dancin') all night (all night)"
"Hey JD, won't you play that song
And keep 'em dancin' (dancin') all night (all night)... long
song performed by by Mariah Carey
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Spirit Of Sunset
There is magic at the end of everyday
You can see it on the horizon of play.
The sun slowly drops down to take a rest,
And then we lay down for the night until the morning crest.
There is beauty in every sunset, open your eyes to see perchance.
You may see the Sunset Spirit rest upon the suns departing glance
Her beauty is beyond reproach; her eyes leave a lasting impression.
And although she does not speak, her lips speak the night's confession.
The Sunset Spirit is this and more, she comes from the suns inner core.
She guides are sunsets for our pleasure, so that we are left wanting more
Her lust for attention motivates her, to show all of sunset's glory.
But, this my friends is truly only half of this beautiful story.
The Sunset Spirit has always been and she will always be,
For she has been set upon this earth at the Lord Gods decree
The Sunset Sprit is a savior to ensure the beauty that we all see,
But most of all she is the beauty in the sunset, that always comforts me.
REB (MAY 2012) I Love the sunsets, and to see the real beauty of them, you just have to open our eyes.
poem by Rik Bertrand
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