I Wrote A Poem I Could Not Write

I wrote a poem I could not write-
And then when I tried to write it again
Could not write it again -

Poems written and not written
Words and more words
What do they mean?

Paradoxes and games with words
What do they mean?

If there is Beauty in the language
It is one thing
But words just to hear themselves think,
Why should they mean ‘Remembrance'?

Oh Words oh Questions oh Darkness oh Life-
Let me write myself to the grave
Believing at least
That poems too even when they can be written
Have their small unhidden meanings.

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There Are Days No Poem Can Be Written

THERE ARE DAYS NO POEM CAN BE WRITTEN

There are days no poem can be written
Grief and worry frighten the poem away
Yet the poem lives hidden
For our darkest moments our loneliest fears
Too need their poetry.

Poetry is a way of saying all we need to say
It is our deepest feeling most deeply expressed
It is all we are
The whole of our being
In words.

When a poet dies
Words die
When I will die
All I am will no longer be able to write
One more poem.

How afraid I am in the night
And how dark in the early morning before I rise
But now that I am here
Writing this
A bit of hope begins in me
And I can dream that
When I walk out the door
a few minutes from now
A new day will begin.

How many days I have left
How many poems to write
I do not know.

It is not light yet
And the darkness is still here
But I will feel the morning again
This morning
Thank G-d
You have given me so many poems.
A few small words
help me believe
I truly am alive.
.

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Many Can Teach Few Can Write

many can teach and be good teachers
some even aspiring excellent teachers
but few can image write wondrous words

who are now waiting among
those who have words worth writing
words waiting to be written?

writing will cost much
demanded much
then will cost yet more

a small fortune in wages
wages spent not made
still to be spent and yet

accumulative cost is nothing
for there are hunger hearts
minds waiting for these words

looking even searching
for quest sought words
therefore it matters not

if for a specific poem
or passage paragraph
only a few or one is searching

these thoughts
are important
still must be written

some of what we write
even much of what we write
is of no prime importance

but that small portion
which is important
that tiny potent seed

which is important
must be written
translate many can translate

some even translate
almost perfectly precise
but those writing

original thoughts
are far more precious
and their words

will also in their time
be sought after read
but there time is not yet

that which is not
written cannot
be read

therefore write
write
and write well


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Ars Gratia Artis

i will say this
and i will say this
again to you

it is for art's sake
that i write
not for the rating
not for popularity

that is why i never
go on campaigning
that you read me

i do not advertise
no gimmicks
just plain writing
because i just feel
like doing it

words come and
i welcome them
they ask to be written
and so i have to
write them

art must be for art's sake
words are written
and poems are posted
because they are here.

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A poem for you...

I write a poem for you today,
to get a place in your heart for ever
A poem that could tell you my love for you
I write my poem with emotion and affection
for you to understand my deep thoughts for you
A poem to love and a poem to understand its soul
A poem to enjoy and a poem to understand its happiness
A poem to think and a poem to understand its way of life
A poem to learn and a poem to understand its content
A poem to sing and a poem to understand its melody
A poem to cry and a poem to understand its sorrow
There are poems I have written but this is specially for you
The poem could tell you how important you are for me
There are words comes out freely from my mind to write poem
but there are no words to find my love for you
Those words can not missed as I miss your love today
Let me have all those words put in to my heart and
say I love to write a love poem for you


Ravi Sathasivam / Sri Lanka

Copyright ©2004 Ravi Sathasivam

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In The Manner Of Borges I Write Poems In My Old Age

IN THE MANNER OF BORGES I WRITE POEMS IN MY OLD AGE

In the manner of Borges I write poems in my old age
And dream that they are not only imitations
Of poems written by others
When we all were young.

Instead I go on now in the darkness of the night
Because the fear of what will be
Is always so deep in me
It does not need Poetry or Happiness or any other Meaning
Outside itself.

We are small sands drifting on the edge of stars
Lesser beings of a time we will never know
All that we have done comes back to us over and over again
As if we never were

I don’t believe I will ever write Borges lines
He wrote them in his own imagined words
And I must in my own little life
Suffer to the end of time
All I have not been
And never will be.

God Who is Good
God of Love
You gave me so much
You did not have to give me Poetry also.

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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.

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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.

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All These Poems About Poems

All these poems about poems
Where do they lead?

The world is so rich in so many other things
Write poems about them.

At twilight I look out
At strangers walking
To do their errands of preparation
for Sukkot.

A poem should have some Beauty in it
And not just be an effort at recording observations-

The scarlet bright flowers rage at me from the distance
I cannot translate their Beauty to words -

There is so much I have seen
And so much I will never write –
And so many Poems beyond my Imagination.

All these poems about my failing at poetry
And about translating the Beauty of the world to words-

This is a poem I not know how to properly finish.

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Meditation Infused Medium Minds

written faith
hooked in words
rapidly writes

write your poems
straight out,
line by line,

no themes,
no plans,
complete as written

written words
written souls
infused medium minds

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Poem of the Ageing

A simple poem I wanted to write
The words were so clear in my mind
But my fingers were numb and sore
Lift a pencil they can't at all
Before a few lines write I could
With my signpen wrestle I should

I tried to read what I've written
And asked my self how did I fare
The words I saw were all in blur
And were in badly crooked lines
I have but lost my metering
And all my lines did hardly rhyme

My next poems shall not be written
And in my thought will just remain
Be unrecited as they may
Till in my mind they fade away

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In This World Of Infinite Words

IN THIS WORLD OF INFINITE WORDS

In this world of infinite words
So many poems have already been written,
Infinite poems in infinite words-

Therefore any new poem simply seems to cry out its own non- necessity-

Yet in a word in a voice
A whole world can be born and transformed-

A new poem a real poem
Can make us forget all the others
And make all the others live through it-

Yet who in this world of infinite words
Can write this poem?

And when will the next set of strangers names come
To show me that my words are nothing?

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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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The Poems Went Away

THE POEMS WENT AWAY

The poems went away.
Nothing inside.
An empty will for poetry
Forcing words on the page,
Words without music
Without resonance
Without great implication
Meaning.

Write, write, write
Lest you die.
And the words themselves
A kind of desperate uphill catching of breath
On the page.

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How Do You Write Poetry

There is a question I am often asked,
of which I have no answer for at all.
The question is a simple one,
how do you write poetry?
To be honest I haven’t got a clue.
With me the words just trickle out
one after the other,
if they rhyme that is great
and if they don’t, I just scratch my head.
I cannot tell anyone how to write,
for me it’s just a natural thing.
I write almost everything,
novels, short stories, poems and songs.
I have even written a couple of plays,
but that was a long, long time ago.
However to tell anyone how to write,
I would not know where to begin.
The answer I give to the question is simple;
write whatever you like good or bad.
It’s yours and be proud of it
no matter what anyone else has to say.
The more you write the better you will get.
However, the most important thing
that you should always remember and that is
that you write, write, and write!

9 November 2011

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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.

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I Know There Are More Poems In Me Than I Can Ever Write

I KNOW THERE ARE MORE POEMS IN ME THAN I CAN EVER WRITE

I know there are more poems in me
Than I can ever write
I know that I will die
With thousand upon thousands
Of unwritten memories
And songs, dreams and perceptions-
I know each poem
A small sample
Of a larger universe
I myself cannot encompass
Words upon words
Worlds upon worlds which
Will die when I die.

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We Live Poems We Cannot Write

WE LIVE POEMS WE CANNOT WRITE

We live poems we cannot write-
Words of beauty that sometimes come suddenly
And disappear before we think to transcribe them-
Indescribable perceptions that move rapidly within us
And are gone before we can even be fully conscious of them-

We live poems we cannot write
Worlds of feeling there are no words for-

Our lives are pervaded by unwritten poetry
And our strongest Will and most determined Memory
cannot make pages of it all.

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A Poet To Be

A poet I claim not to be,
For words are never there.
In all the years I've tried to write,
I have no words to share.

I sit and think but nothing comes,
No inspiration here.
I want to write of anything,
But still no words I fear.

I read the works of other poets,
I wish I were like them.
How do they write such beautiful lines,
A poet, I'm not him.

I try to write from the heart,
From deep within my soul.
I try to write of the love I have,
But cannot reach my goal.

But why I ask, why can't I write,
Of love so pure and true.
Why can't I write about her eyes,
A mix of green and blue.

I want to write about her smile,
It brightens up my day.
I try to think of anything,
But words I cannot say.

I wish I knew how to write,
A poem with such bliss.
I wish I knew how to describe,
Her soft but tender kiss.

I cannot even begin to write,
How she holds me tight.
How her arms around me,
Makes everything just right.

A poet does not have to think,
The words flow right out.
When I sit and try to write,
I want to scream and shout.

I mean come on, how hard can it be,
To write about her hair.
Such long beautiful natural blonde,
That flows in the air.

I try to write about her laugh,
The words will not fly.
Time passes and finally,
I say it's soft and high.

It's been an hour and a half,
I'm here on verse twelve.
I had to go to Rhymezone,
To find out the rhyme is shelve.

A poet does not do that,
Go online to find a rhyme.
A poet has it in his head,
And can write at any time.

But a poet I am not,
For I cannot write of love.
How the girl I am with,
Is an angel from up above.

How I love her with all my heart,
And want to spend my life with her.
How her love for me is more,
Than I can ever be for sure.

As I draw near the end,
My mind is not so numb.
I realize I've just written of love,
A poet I have become.

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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.

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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.

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