I Write to Tell the Truth I Have Known
I DREAMED I WAS A POEM
I dreamed I was a poem
And the universe read and reread me-
Until waking up I understood
I would never be written again.
I WRITE TO TELL THE TRUTH I HAVE KNOWN
I write to tell the truth I have known -
But there is so much truth
And so much life unrecognized and unremembered-
Most of my life has gone by
Unknown to me-
And even my most intense moments
Cannot be remembered so as to be re- experienced.
I
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Related quotes
I Dreamed I Was a Poem
I dreamed I was a poem
And the universe read and reread me-
Until waking up I understood
I would never be written again.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Read poem write poem and poem
Read poem write poem and poem
I know poem is the best
Poem has emotion poem has life
Through poem we can reach
Where we want to reach.
I express myself through poem
Truth is in the poem
And truth is my expression.
Know truth live with truth
Truth is in the poem.
Read poem write poem and poem.
poem by Gajanan Mishra
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I Dreamed.
I dreamed a dream and in that dream,
I dreamed that I had dreamed a dream,
Of hope and fairytales come true,
I dreamed a dream and thought of truth,
I dreamed a dream of life and love,
Of fate and angels and God above,
I dreamed a dream of good wishes and friends,
I dreamed a dream I dreaded to end,
But then I woke into my dream,
I dreamed I woke in a world obscene,
I dreamed a dream of violence and hate,
And once again I dreamed of fate,
I dreamed a dream of terror and fear,
I dreamed that each word went unheard,
And so children never spoke a word,
I dreamed a dream of demons and beasts,
I dreamed a dream that ended at last,
I woke in my bed and wondered if,
I dreamed a dream of dreams or if,
I dreamed a dream of truth that night,
And if so I wondered which was truth,
And which was merely a dream.
poem by Emma Wright
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The Poem I Did Not Write Today
THE POEM I DID NOT WRITE TODAY
The poem I did not write today
Will never be written.
No one knows what it is
Or where it is
'How it can be? ' is another question
No one can answer.
The poem I did not write today
Never went away
It is always here with me and with you
It is the same simple poem
Written over and over again
In our everyday minds.
It is the poem of love of life
The poem of happiness
The poem of belief in God
And in the goodness in the world to come
It is the poem which believes too that poetry will help save the world.
It is the good poem
The happy poem
The poem I did not write today
Is the poem my life is writing now and always
And with you it says
‘What a miracle it is that we are here
reading and writing
and loving life as we do’.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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I will write a poem that will say the truth
This poem I will write and it will tell the truth
The candid truth, the whole candid truth and nothing
But the miserable truth
And this will hurt you and all of you who consider me a friend
The words are carefully chosen and the
Lines screened with so much introspection
This poem will tell you who you really are
No holds bar, no second thoughts
No consideration at all that you may hate me
I, who want, always to be loved and be popular
I am tired of lying and telling what is not in my mind,
I will now write the truth about you and the whole world,
This poem will hurt you and this world
And the whole world will be angry about me writing this poem,
This poem will bring you into harsh awakenings
And this will surely shake you and hurt you and you will never
Talk to me again and you will wish me ill and you will curse the day that I was born.
This poem will make you hate me forever but for one thing
I still have no courage to show it to you, perhaps later when I am
All ready to be despised, hated and finally discarded from your minds.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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A Not a Poem Poem
A Not a Poem Poem
I will not write a poem
For I am not a poet
I cannot makes things rhyme
I’ve tried for quite some time
So will I write a poem?
NO!
I can’t write poetry
I’ve tried to all my life
Once, I tried to write a poem
About a husband and his wife
It sounded really silly
So I crumbled it up into a ball
That’s why I decided
That I couldn’t write poetry at all
Am I gonna write a poem?
NO!
Well, I’ll try to write a poem
But it will be really bad
It will be absolutely lousy
It will be completely horrible
It won’t be up to snuff
People will say, “Who wrote this stuff? ”
Will my poem be good?
NO!
Can I write a poem?
NO!
Will I write a poem?
NO!
Well, what do you know! ? !
I wrote a poem!
And it’s a pretty good poem, too!
I guess I can write poetry if I try
The next time I’m asked to write a poem,
Will I say no?
NO!
I Could Not Write The Poem I Dreamed
I COULD NOT WRITE THE POEM I DREAMED
I could not write the poem I dreamed
I wrote the poem I am -
A minor poet? No poet all?
Only what I can-
No one cares and no one reads
And no one knows my name
Yet I continue writing my words
And playing my happy small game.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Cat Poem - with discussion
I must not write a poem
because I want to write a poem.
I must try to write the poem
when the poem has to be written.
Yes but what if my cat dies?
Yes, what if my cat dies
and I know my cat lived a
good and honest life
I can write a poem?
I can can’t I
I can have a cat poem can’t I
Life of an honest cat and that
Yes I know, I said the cat was honest
but I didn’t say that I was, and
I lied about the cat
________________________________
Discussion:
The poem begins as a slightly
finger wagging exercise in telling
people not to write just because
they want to write a poem - it must
be DRIVEN by the poem's insistence
on being written. The poet is
unable to sustain this arrogance
hence the cat. Then, using the
cat as an excuse, writes the poem
but in the end has to admit that
the cat was just a device to break
the rule outlined in the 4 opening
lines. (Secretly of course the poet
believes or at least hopes that the
poem is good enough to excuse itself
and be allowed to break the rule.)
But of course it isn't
poem by by unknown author
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Scribbler's Stymie
Pen and paper in sight
I've got no poem to write
Staying up all night
I've got no poem to write
Although my mind is bright
I've got no poem to write
It's windy out tonight, should I go fly a kite?
I've got no poem to write
My ceiling, it is white
I've got no poem to write
It's 4: 59! Five, but not quite
I've got no poem to write
In your arms I'd feel so light
I've got no poem to write
I've had no sleep tonight
I've got no poem to write
Will you just hold me tight?
I've got no poem to write
Outside it's almost light
I've got no poem to write
It's late, off goes my light
I've got no poem to write
poem by Julia Grace
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Life Art
Life Art
I want to write you a poem.
One that contains no verses
no words
how long it will be
I cannot tell.
It will be a poem that you can see through
yet it will shade you from the sun
a simple lyric
as complex as a crossword
I want it to be something
that you carry through your day
every day
I don’t know if I can write that poem
Or if indeed that poem can be written at all
So instead I am with you
Of you
And slowly together
we are writing our very own poem
Not on a page
Or in a lost notebook
But in the café
and in the street
At a table
In our bed
Every day we add another line
another image
another verse
and I know that with every word that we write
I want it to be the longest poem
That has ever been written.
poem by Andy Houlihan
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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
poem by Shalom Freedman
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I Will Have Written Only One
I WILL HAVE WRITTEN ONLY ONE
I wrote another poem today
The poem that I wrote yesterday
Tomorrow I will write a poem
Whose meaning will not be unknown.
Again and again I continue to write
The single poem of my only life
When all my poems and writing are done
I will have written only one.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Poem's Truth Is That It Says More Than It Knows
THE POEM’S TRUTH IS THAT IT SAYS MORE THAN IT KNOWS
The poem’s truth is that it says more than it knows
That it goes beyond its own intention
That it means in more than only one way
The poem’s truth is its hidden music
And the melody it plays through and beyond our listening
A poem’s truth answers itself in endless questions and ambiguities
No wonder no one simply reads these simple words
As if they were simply written.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Best Poem
when you plant a seed
in the ground, and
water it, work it, weed it
till it grows... you've written
the best poem you'll ever write.
when you make a baby,
waiting and planning for birth;
and you raise this child to adulthood
with respect... you've written
the best poem you'll ever write.
when you live your life
working honestly, giving
all that you are and can be,
never holding back... you've written
the best poem you'll ever write.
when you go to death openly
with no regrets, not clinging
to dreams that were not real,
owning no one... you've written
the best poem you'll ever write.
poem by Eric Cockrell
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The Poem Of All The Places I Have Never Been
THE POEM OF ALL THE PLACES I HAVE NEVER BEEN
The poem of all the places I have never been
The poem of all the dreams I have not seen
The poem of others poems written in lines I have never imagined
The poem of the infinite – what-is- not and ‘what- will- never- be
The poem of seas and suns and sounds and Shakespeare’s sonnets,
The poem of words and only words whose sounds do not mean what we feel
The poem of all I would not and cannot write
The poem that is not and never will be in me
The poem I do not write
The poem I am not
The poem lost
The poem which itself is not a poem
The poem of the last contradiction and the first
The poem beyond the poem hidden within the poem
The poem which will never be a poem
The poem which is not
The poem I cannot dream.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Poem About The Poem About The Poem
THE POEM ABOUT THE POEM ABOUT THE POEM
The poem about the poem about the poem
Written in dream
And forgotten in sleep
Comes back to me slowly now
As if it had been away on a long long journey
And is reluctant to come home-
I write it
But it really writes me
And when I try to make sense of what it means
It tells me its ambiguities
Are more important and interesting
Than my clarity-
The poem about the poem about the poem
Written now
May not be a poem about a poem about a poem at all
But may merely be my own playing with words
Which take the place in my life
Of really living-
A poem about a poem about a poem?
Surely this is a mysterious thing
If it exists at all.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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If We In Verse Slay Ourselves
with 'something to say'
which needs to be said
it is not necessary for us
to 'live long enough to write
the poem we know we can write'
because with something to say
if we seek universal truth
if we dedicated write enough
at least a few poems will
eventually be 'the poem
we know we can write'
if we in verse slay ourselves
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Paradox of Truth
The most subtle lies art the greatest truth
Like the fairy tales of our imaginative youth
Each truth a paradox, a lie does tell
A truth somewhere in mythical spell
When one lies, truth still speaks
For in everything doth truth seek
To express itself to hearts to behold
The truth of life in every lie told
Told in such eloquent song
There is truth in something especially wrong
Rhetoric, myths, ignorance and lies
Truth in all, every truth belies.
If thou don't believe it is certainly true
For to believe is true to me and you
And in this poem if you believe no truth
Let this poem be truth's own proof….
poem by Kevin Michael Murphy
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Write A Poem And Immortalize Yourself
Write a poem and they'll
Read your masterpiece for
The next five hundred years!
Write a fabulous poem and they'll
Know who you are!
Write a great majestic superlicious
Poem and immortalize yourself!
Kings and presidents live and they
Die to be the footnotes of History!
But if you write a superb poem
They'll call you the immortal
Beloved of your generation!
Write the poem of the century
And you will speak in proverbs
With the gods!
poem by Ngaka Motaung
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There Are Too Many Contradictions In A Life
There Are Too Many Contradictions In A Life
There are too many contradictions in a life
to ever write that life down in perfect clarity.
All we can do is select moments of our experience
and make of our great pretensions little Poems.
The whole Truth is a different Poem
one too subtle for us to completely write.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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