Moments Of Writing Poetry
Draft poems sometimes like
loose ripped off pieces of paper
to be drafted out roughly upon.
Draft poems hang around
in the strangest places waiting
to be written out one day.
Draft poems wait for a poet
to wake at the beginning of day
to be written out, in any
seized moments, sacrificed.
This is now time, shower time, eating time,
reflective time, conversation time, work time;
t.v. time, driving time, riding motorcycle time,
going to sleep time, cooking time, or any time.
Draft poems can only be written
in spared moments of seized time.
Draft poems can only be written today,
they will not wait for fair weather like hay,
which lays around waiting to be harvested.
Draft poems will not wait for a clear sunny day to dawn,
and then mature slowly, over a perfect golden summer.
Draft poems are ever now or never
if they are ever to be swiftly written.
A draft may possibly be perfected
upon any future day of favoured writing;
but a draft never written is a poem
never written, never completed, never known.
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Necessary Artistic Deletions
deleted approximately fifty good draft seed poems
not because they were bad but because were too good
each could have born fruit to ten twenty thirty poems
this would take days a week a few weeks writing out
in total months a year a year of full fool time writing
time gap economy denies artistry an extensive write out
poem by Terence George Craddock
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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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Always The Poems In Me
Always the poems in me-
Saying themselves over and over
Returning to lines learned long ago
Or lines learned with more difficulty in old age-
Always the poems in me-
While my own poems written
And forgotten
As if only
Poems of a single occasion
The time of their writing-
Always the poems in me-
The poems which others will have in them after me
Poems not my own.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Oh The Poems And More Poems
OH THE POEMS AND THE MORE POEMS
Oh the poems and the more poems
The wonderful poems I am writing all the time
God has given me this gift
And when I wait in the right way
And when I listen to myself properly
The poems come in ways I could never have thought of or imagined before
They come as mysteries as gifts as surprises
As wonderful to me as perhaps to you their possible readers
Oh the poems and the more poems
The wonderful poems God has given me
And the light of this day and so many other days, also.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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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.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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For my poems, written so early
For my poems, written so early
That I didn't even know I was a poet,
Hurled like drops from a fountain,
Like sparks from rockets,
That burst like tiny devils,
Into the sanctuary of sleep and incense,
For my poems about youth and death
-- For my unread poems!
Scattered in dusty bookstores,
Where no one ever buys them!
For my poems, like precious wines,
A time will come.
poem by Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva
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Back To My Work
It's time for me to write again
The poems were on pause
So as to ease my mind
Now I see it only took my emotions away
It was locked with the thoughts of new poems
Now I'm back and filled to the brim
Here come the poems
For so long tried to escape to paper
Blocked by procrastination and laziness
Welcome to the world new poems
May the paper caress you for years to come
Written January 31,2011
poem by Ryan Collins
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Writing, yeah. Me and my friend Scott Bloom just finished the first rough draft of a script. It's taken us three years to do, but we finally got a first draft. And we'll see whatever happens with that.
quote by Ethan Suplee
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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An Afternoon Poem Is Rare
AN AFTERNOON POEM IS RARE
An Afternoon Poem is rare-
Afternoon is long after the first light-
Afternoon is a time of heaviness and quiet
A time of rest-
Afternoon is after the morning work has been done-
Afternoon is the weight of the day-
Afternoon is the time after the day has lost its freshness-
Still there must be afternoon poems-
There must be a beauty that emerges
In its own way,
Perhaps from where lovers meet
Perhaps from ‘ripeness is all’
Perhaps from the anticipation of evening
Perhaps from winter where it is the warmest time of day.
There must be afternoon poems-
Poems that celebrate all that warmth can bring-
Poems of rest poems of sleep-
Poems of waiting to believe
That in the evening
A new day and a new world
Will make life easier again.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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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.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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I Have Written Too Many Imperfect Poems
I HAVE WRITTEN TOO MANY IMPERFECT POEMS
I have written too many imperfect poems
This is another one.
Years have gone by,
Where are the perfect poems?
A handful of true poems
And the poet does not die.
Where are mine?
poem by Shalom Freedman
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An Apology To The Reader Who Has Written Me A Message I Have Not Answered
AN APOLOGY TO THE READER WHO HAS WRITTEN A MESSAGE TO ME I HAVE NOT ANSWERED
The real apology is not this poem
It is one by one
Reader by reader
Answering each one
Who has ever written me.
It is reading all the poems of others
I do not want to say
A ‘real no’ or a ‘false yes’ to.
It is opening myself
To perhaps a true friend
To perhaps one whose writing
I see better than my own.
The real apology
Is in opening up to the poems of the many unknown others.
Will I do this
Will I give it the time
When I already am guilty
Of not using my limited time
To correct my past work?
Dear Reader,
I apologize, I do not know.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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We Need New Poems
WE NEED NEW POEMS
We need new Poems-
So many great Poems
Have already been written.
Perhaps the Greatest poems
Have already been written.
But we need new poems.
We need our Poems
We need the poems only we can write
We need the poems we must write.
We need new poems
My poems
Your poems
Our poems.
We need new poems.
Let us write them.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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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.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Poetic Intrigues
just leave these
intrigues
the morning
is beautiful
and there are
many other
poems to write
did i tell you
that they still
beg to be written?
did i tel you
that time is too
short of the haggle?
did i tell you
that these poems
cannot wait and
that if you let them
wait
they simply go
away without
any word?
write another one
and if someone
wants to own your
creations
let that be
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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I was part of the draft resistance movement in LA where we did demonstrations at the draft centre and burned our cards and made a lot of trouble on campus.
quote by Cheech Marin
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Gratis Et Amore
for the poems that i have written
and which you read
by heart, i bless you with a prayer for luck
for another year
for the poems which i have not written yet,
i wish you a longer life, so you may read them
when they become finally written
for the poems i have in mind and which i will not write
i wish you patience i wish you some prayers
may these poems realize their worth
may they decide to become truths
with you i pray that God may be also kind
for those still unspoken
and may God bless your mind
may they open up like tight buds to become the flowers
of the world, the sun to warm them, the rain to shower them
may these poems live and linger
may they be like grass always unswerving to grow and cover everything
alive and loving.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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The Poems I Would Have Written
THE POEMS I WOULD HAVE WRITTEN
The poems I would have written
Never came to me
They’re greater than I ever was
Or I will ever be.
The poems I would have written
Never came to mind
I was too small for them
Beyond what I could find.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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There Are Poems Too Painful To Be Written
THERE ARE POEMS TOO PAINFUL TO BE WRITTEN
There are poems too painful to be written
Poems also too shameful-
And poems that cannot be said,
Because of the pain they would give others.
No one can tell all their truth
Without hurting too much.
Silence may be sacred
Hiding – True Love.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Poem Is Always With Me
THE POEM IS ALWAYS WITH ME
The poem is always with me
It waits inside.
And when it wants to be heard
It asks me to write it down.
Sometimes I say it,
Sometimes I hear it within myself silently,
Sometimes it goes away
When I go elsewhere for a while.
The poem is always in me
But sometimes it goes away
And is lost forever.
How many poems have I lost?
And how many poems have I never written down
That I should have?
And how many times have I written down
What is not a poem for anyone,
Except for the one who seems to need
A poem inside
All the time
So much?
poem by Shalom Freedman
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