Yes, My Poems Are Imaginary

these poems tell about despair
and who will ever like despair? you grumble
why can't these poems have
happines as its theme
a poem that like a belly dancer must entertain
weary bedouins
oasis to the thirsty camels
cool green palms to travellers whose feet are dusty
and even blistered
grass to some snakes
and trees to black birds
rest for the night
tent and wine and bread and lyre to our passions

but do not worry my friend
these poems are imaginary
like a garden existing only in our minds
we transport some toads and butterflies
and clouds and sun and tonight
let us have the moon and some glasses of strong wine
let us put our bed outside
in this garden where the moon shines
and creates the silver sheen in our happy faces

we love illusions, we can have all the illusions we need
when we are drunk, when we dance when we are finally drunk
when we even want to make love
when we are drunk & when we make love and we do not choose
whom to kiss and caress and touch an unknown body
with our hands and lips and choose

what we remember and what we do not want to remember
now i want to write
about illusory gardens and imagine despair that despair
has no place and must leave right away
let me
do not hinder me write what i want
about what i can disown

but i assure you, whatever that is, these poems
i am talking to you, as a friend, and even be a lover at the end,

even if the rest are imaginary, and fiction and illusory
i am still real amidst this grumble and rubble

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Three Small Morning Poems Of Despair

THREE SMALL MORNING POEMS OF DESPAIR

NO POEM

No Poem
No Life
Nothing to write

ALL THE POEMS HAVE GONE AWAY

All the Poems have gone away
Nothing remains
I am lost
And my Life is lost with me.

THE END OF DESPAIR

The end of Despair
No longer here
No longer there
No longer anywhere
The End of Despair.

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Fictional

everything i write comes back to me
like they are real
in flesh and blood and friends write
how come
how is it that we are there in your poems
when they are supposedly
some works of a writer
imaginary and fictional

i have no answer

i write about love and broken hearts
and another friend
emails if i am alright
is there anything she can do to help?

but i say again

this is not me this has nothing to do with me
this is fiction

and she does not believe me
she says,
there you are trying to lie again
when blood runs surging like some pulse
of a dying man wanting to be alive
in your poetry,

i have no answer

the poems are works of fiction
it is not me it is about him and her and them

she shrugs off her shoulders
and reads again about the old church where
she once knelt and prayed

there was this girl who fell in love
and whose heart was
beautifully torn to pieces

she says she is her
the poem is true

and there was this boy
who was with her praying
who, when he became a man
broke her heart

she says it is you it is you
the poem is true,

the poems are true
who will ever believe me now?

i have always lied all along
count it from the first poem
when i said about

it and i said it was
it is

all about nothing and
it will always be about nothing

but fiction, nothing personal, but it can be also painful and lingering.....

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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.

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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

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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.

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But Don't Despair

Despair, if you must –
But how's it going to pull you through?
Despair, when you trust
Naught since then there's naught to do.
Despair, should you thrust
Aside your pride, your self-esteem.
And so despair, if it's dust,
The only substance that you deem.
Despair, when a gust
Of slightly breeze can break your stance.
And do despair, when lust
Is your interpretation of romance.

But don't despair, if you can care
About the plight of any other being.
And you can focus on the help,
Support, and altruistic further actions
For the seeing. Be believing,
As despair will start receding
All around – simply since you found
A way to steer you clear
From this: the very cause of your despair!

So give to others; give them all a helping lift:
Despair, you'll find will disappear –
And that has got to be a well-deserved
And saintly gift!


Copyright © Mark R Slaughter 2009



Rain of despair

despair despair despair despair despair despair despair
despair despair despair despair despair despair despair
despair despair despair despair despair despair despair
despair despair despair despair despair despair despair
despair despair despair despair despair despair despair
despair despair despair despair despair despair despair
despair despair despair despair despair despair despair

poem by Mark R SlaughterReport problemRelated quotes
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Not yet 40, my beard is already white.

Not yet 40, my beard is already white.
Not yet awake, my eyes are puffy and red,
like a child who has cried too much.

What is more disagreeable
than last night's wine?

I'll shave.
I'll stick my head in the cold spring and
look around at the pebbles.
Maybe I can eat a can of peaches.

Then I can finish the rest of the wine,
write poems 'til I'm drunk again,
and when the afternoon breeze comes up

I'll sleep until I see the moon
and the dark trees
and the nibbling deer

and hear
the quarreling coons

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Soap

you wish i were true
to every word i wrote in my poems
like sadness
that i must be sad when my poems
talk about sadness

like separation and disgust and pain
that i must suffer
with the poems i write that i must have despair
and pain too
and disgust
for every word of disgust written in every word
in every line

how cruel of you
how cruel of truth
how can i justify my death when i speak only of death
and in the very poem
where i write the word
death

there is soap
there is this box of untruths in pandora and when i open it
they must spread and you may refuse to believe
me again

but it would be very cruel of you
to make these poems
all these poems be my life my only life
and lived
and day by day lived in accordance with the
mouths of these poems

empathy
is the word, it is like i am putting my feet in another person's
shoes

then i write, and i could have written about this word: happiness
joy, bliss
ecstasy, light, and amazing glory

i choose not to,
i think, i have too much of it, and i do not share it for now
there is no necessity
and i cannot really help

with so much loneliness and sadness out there
with them i stretch my hands to hold them and feel them
and they all become

myself. it is not soap then, and there are no bubbles in the skies
there is no child playing amazed by the bubbles that burst and by the
bubbles that

are so abundant.

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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

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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.

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I Have Written Too Many Poems Of Despair

I HAVE WRITTEN TOO MANY POEMS OF DESPAIR

I have written too many poems of despair-
Too much complaint-
Too much sorrow grief sadness difficulty pain-
I should have written more of hope of youth of love-
I should have sung of happiness
I should have been been a poet
Who helps others love life more

I can try now-

But can words of ‘will’ really be poetry?

It is when the lines come to the mind and heart
On their own
Naturally
That the poem begins to live.

Does this sound like a ‘happy poem’?
Or yet another lament for what I am
And have not been?

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We Need Poems To Make Us Love Life More

WE NEED POEMS TO MAKE US LOVE LIFE MORE

We need poems to make us love life more
Poems that will make us happier
Poems that will make us kinder, better people.
We need poems that will inspire us
That will add to our sense of the world’s Beauty
We need Poems that will make us love others as we love ourselves as we love God.
We need holy poems
And joyful poems
And blessed poems
And kind poems
We need poems which will make us love life more
Which will help us love others and ourselves more
God more
We need poems.

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Advice To A 'Sensitive' Boy

If you bought me a bunch of roses
I'd call you a silly fool,
Like that time you carried my satchel
All the way home from school,

But if you want to impress me
Pretend you don't really care,
Stop preening yourself in the mirror
And worrying about your hair!

Chivalrous acts are wasted
On me as a general rule,
I just think you're a sissy -
You're certainly not very cool! !

Don't write me beautiful poems
About love and your soul's despair -
You must be a fool to imagine
That someone like me would care! !

No, don't be so bloody serious,
I just want a bit of fun,
You're making yourself a spectacle,
Laughed at by everyone!

I'd rather go to a disco
And get drunk as a skunk with a friend
Than listen to some young poet
Who swears that his love won't end! !

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Not Every Poem Knows How To Say Its Own Name Properly

NOT EVERY POEM KNOWS HOW TO SAY ITS OWN NAME PROPERLY

Not every poem knows how to say its own name properly-
There are poems that have no name
And poems that are named by others who have not written them-
There are poems whose names make them what they are
And poems whose names contradict and belie them-
Many poems have their first lines as their names
And these poems often are as memorable as one line only-
Great poems and good poems can be nameless
Or can have unforgettable names.

Not every poem knows how to say its own name properly -
Poems are poems are poems
And names are names are names
And sometimes they meet and are one
And live happily ever after-
But there are times when perhaps
They never should have met each other at all.

Poems have their names
And names have their poems
But sometimes they love each other
And truly are one.

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There Should Have Been More Poems Of Gratitude And Joy

There should have been more poems of Gratitude and Joy
Too much has been Sadness and Despair-
There should have been more poems of other people
And not so much of myself -
There should have been more metaphor
And less one- dimensional statement-

There should have been more Poetry in my Poetry
And more Inspiration and Blessing and Love-
Small worry and anxiety have been too much-
Oh the Beauty and the Goodness
I have been given in Life,
And how I have not known how to write it well enough.

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Few Poems Are Remembered

FEW POEMS ARE REMEMBERED

Few poems are remembered -
Few poems are ever really known-
Few poems are chosen -
Few poems make us want to return to them again and again-

Out of thousands written every day
Perhaps one poem in a decade
Perhaps less.

This is not the poem.

One can write a lifetime
Without ever writing one such poem.

Most of us never write the poem
And most of us are not remembered either.

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My Little Poems/ Are All I Have

MY LITTLE POEMS/ ARE ALL I HAVE


My little poems
Are all I have
In writing now.
I don’t believe in them
So much either.
But I cling to them
As all I have.
As I write this
The Despair deepens in me.
I have failed
And I will never get out.

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Dream Miracles God Speaks To Soul Mine

I gave God two more poems today
two perfectly harmonic resonating poems

two poems dream mind writ
two poems never to write out
two poems never to public post

the first fruits the best
I vowed to give God
in awaiting dreams I gift


poems to God is gifted best poems
God smiles I watch heaven’s eyes
across cosmos God’s love is given

across created God space prayer given
love gifted given God’s love shines
dream miracles God speaks to soul mine


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Lost Horizons

The last horizons I can see are filled with bars and factories
And in them all we fight to stay awake...
Drink enough of anything to make this world look new again
Drunk drunk drunk in the gardens and the graves
She had nothing left to say so she said she loved me
I stood there grateful for the lie...
Drink enough of anything to make this girl look new again
Drunk drunk drunk in the gardens and the graves
Turn summer trees to bones and ice
Turn insect songs against the night
With words we build and words we break
Im drunk drunk drunk in the gardens and the graves...
Drink enough of anything to make myself look new again
Drunk drunk drunk in the gardens and the graves

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The Only Dreams I Have In Writing Now Are Poems

THE ONLY DREAMS I HAVE IN WRITING NOW ARE POEMS

The only dreams I have in writing now are poems
Poems and more poems-
I write them in the morning and in the evening
At all times of day
Whenever I can make them come to me
They calm me and make me rest
They bring a sense that I am still alive
They justify me an amuse me
They give me hope
The only dreams I have now are poems
And poems keep me alive
As long as they can.

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