I Find Us Between the Lines
I find myself between the lines
Of Marvin Bell's poem
'Prodigal? ' in his book
Of poems 'Mars Being Red'
It's like he's welcoming me
Back unconditionally
I'll put his words in brackets
So you can follow along
[I'm off to the front lines in the war to preserve
the privilege of myth-making]
That's me whenever I write
My poetic license tucked in my pants
I have [...the nerve to think
the future and remember the past...]
How does Marvin know how poems
Come to me and want to get back out
I still hink he is talking about me
In the last lines of the poem
[...They lived among the heroic
who did not want another life, and if
they erred in creating bigger-than-life characters,
they broke bread with the unspeakable,
and that is worth something.]
In case you are wondering
I think you too the other writers
Are the [heroic/who] also [did not
want another life, ...]
[and that is worth something.]
poem by Tom J. Mariani
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The Poem I Am Writing Now
The poem I am writing now
does not know if it will be finished
it does not even know if it will be a poem -
it is slowly appearing line by line
and making its own meaning on the page-
Is it worth anything?
will anyone care?
I don't know -
The poem I am writing now
is just these lines
and these lines like all lines
are only small words
in a vast universe
that has long lived
and will probably longer live
without them.
Why then write these words now?
The poem I am writing now is saying,
'I am here now'.
But why should this mean anything to anyone else?
The poem I have written here
is not the poem I would have posted here
It is only the poem I am finishing now
a poem without great love or belief in itself.
The poem I am writing now
is written.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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My Twenty Lines
I just read this poem about using just twenty lines,
and it brought these words to my mind.
Who are they to tell us how many lines we should use to speak?
This is America where we have a law known as freedom of speech.
Just twenty lines tell you something about my life in words.
To me that seem completely absurd.
My life is much more than just twenty lines.
Hell I am thirty nine.
And if they except me to sum up thirty nine years in twenty lines
They are complete outside their minds.
How am I suppose to tell you how I nearly died when I was child?
Or how my mother harsh words took away my smile:
In just twenty lines?
Like I said they must be out of their minds.
I guest I can do if I shorten my life.
I don't have to talk about how much I love my future wife.
But her love is the inspiration for a lot of my poems.
So to not talk about her would be wrong.
I have a lot more to say but I'm out of time.
I reach my limit of my twenty lines.
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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Poem As Conversations
a poem for ramona
and a poem for jean and a poem for candice
and a poem too for yuri
and a poem too for emma and another poem for hannah
and another poem for allan
and the rest of the clan
they are but
conversations sticking to my mind
and through these poems
i replay them
and you think these are not poems at all
precisely, these are conversations of the living
the living word
the word that still cohabits with us
we let them out from our mouths
but you do not wish to recover them
did you mean them all to be said
with the terms and conditions of truth?
i am recording them
and i am replaying them through these lines
i look where truth
lies
i find some and keep them
and these are these
on these lines
a poem for you a poem for the world that we all make
what we say is what we get
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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The Poems Bring Me Back To Myself
THE POEMS BRING ME BACK TO MYSELF
The poems bring me back to myself
I begin to live again –
Without the poems
I would have to make a new life-
I do not know if I am capable of it-
A life without poems without poetry
With other words perhaps-
I am too old to slowly write the long narrative
I never was capable of before
Little poems
Little lines
What I am capable of now.
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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There Is No Poem For Me Today
THERE IS NO POEM FOR ME TODAY
There is no poem for me today
There is no poem of yesterday
The poems have gone
And far away
There is no poem
For another day.
There never will be another poem
Poems are gone
Poems are stone.
All the words I will ever write
Are not enough
For a Poem of Life.
The Poems are not
They will never be
I am not a Poem
Nor Poetry.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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I Write A Few Lines
I WRITE A FEW LINES
I write a few lines,
I try to tell myself
They are a poem.
But what’s a poem
In a Universe of trillions of poems?
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The poem that got away
I started a poem with a serious intent…
but who would ever guess the mess, and where that poem went?
I’d barely writ a line so fine, when the poem turned to me,
looked me in the eye and ear, and laughed demonic-lee,
pranced around me, singing, boo! you can’t catch me!
ain’t no rules nor grammar for the boldheart and the free!
race you round the chocabloc, poetic chairbound fatty!
you’re just like every pompous poet, thinking always that he
can control a poem with a life that’s its own!
tries to rhyme each couplet up, as if lines were circus clones…
tries to measure poems by some rules about their feet, or
wants to match my singing lines to some archaic meter…
’cause I’m a poem!
I’ve got my own life!
I want to dance around the streets,
I want to join a band!
I’ve got so much to tell you,
I want to lift your heart…
I want to make you weepy too,
If that’s the way I feel..
I want to talk to children,
or to live in fantasy;
I want to feel much bolder
than this sillybilly world,
quick and slick and fancy-free;
and sail past time and space;
or wonder what it could be like
before the world began…
I want to shuffle words around,
like books upon a shelf;
I want to be all bold and free –
I want to be – myself!
So boo to all your metered rhymes,
you faded, jaded poet…
poems are the masters now…
it’s much more fun,
it’s just begun…and
it’s time for you to know it! …
poem by Michael Shepherd
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My Ageing Poem
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 my scribbles
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
poem by Pacific Hernandez
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Why Does A Poem/ Not Want To Begin
WHY DOES A POEM /NOT WANT TO BEGIN
Why does a poem
Not want to begin?
Why does Silence say
It should be all and all?
Why against this
Must ‘Will’ and ‘Ambition’ come?
And force lines
As these lines forced now?
Because I am a lonely man
Who has nothing to do with himself?
But write poems
Which he dreams
Someone someday
Will read.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Poems Poems
poems poems every where does any one care
poems are your life but do you include them
poems may seem silly but there a great part of life
so say a poem write a poem listen to a poem be the poem
poem by Samantha Thuringer
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Two Word Lines
I write
my pain
and its
just another poem
its just
the same
all the heart ache that goes onto this page
only takes me back to the place where I await
behind the curtains of an empty stage
the pain
I write
I wrote this
I locked my own cage
I threw away the key to he that did see me rage
and still
I write
yes still
I fight
hoping that I might find something you feel
because these two word lines are just rhymes
when I say them back they aren't real
I'm sick and tired of talking about better times
forcing things like a relationship two people don't really want
a mum and dad staying together for the sake of the kids when the love is really gone.
Look at this back and see my two word lines
see my two word lines
are one.
poem by Daniel McCann
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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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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
poem by Pacific Hernandez
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Grey Grey Morning
GREY GREY MORNING
Grey grey morning
Purim again
Where to begin?
A poem is not just any words-
A poem needs a music of its own-
A beauty-
Lines that are memorable.
A poet cannot just be
What one happens to see and feel
At the moment
A poem must have lines which others will remember.
Grey grey morning
Purim again
Another poem about a poem
Is there one line here worth remembering?
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Oh The Poems
OH THE POEMS AND THE POEMS AND THE POEMS
Oh the poems and the poems and the poems
Oh the love of Literature
Oh all that stuff
I have given my life to-
Words and meanings and feelings
Pages and pages and pages –
What it is all this literary life for?
When out the window out the door
With our eyes we see in an instant other worlds other dreams?
I don’t know and I will never know
And Literature is certainly far more than I can say it is-
Oh the poems and this poem and this day turning grey
And all my life old and old and more old and more old-
Oh why oh why oh why
And always back to God
My last rescue and refuge and escape
I who have read so much Great Literature
And can only write this-
Oh the why and the oh oh oh and the words
And the whole world of Literature
I would belong to and do not.
Oh the words oh the world oh the Literature
Oh God help me please can’t you please help me a little or not?
poem by Shalom Freedman
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That poem
It was a day much like any other.
Too many letters to open right now;
The phone pipped and bleeped and hissed
as it recorded too many requests
to read here, go there, answer these questions,
be interviewed;
why did you write this poem,
did you mean – ten lines
of prosaic speculation follow, about some mere
two words; wouldn’t this poem
be better without the last two lines?
please read my poems and
return the manuscript with
your extensive comments…
(the invisible PS reads ‘I’m just
as good as you, and younger, and, moreover,
more in touch’…)
the occasional face peering
over the gate; once every few weeks
a stranger boldly knocking at the door
so sure the poet would be glad
to meet a fan, unannounced,
eager to tell them what their
poetry really meant…
his fame, like some dark aura
which he would have craved, in those days
when he rose early, wrote for hours
to preserve his sanity, before he went out
to that job which made him miserable – his fame
now pressed around, demanding.
It was a day much like any other:
a poem might come, life
might flow; flow down, flow through, flow out..
Dusk and a sigh and a laying down of pen;
should today’s lines go straight into the overflowing bin,
or be returned to tomorrow, in the fresh of day -
there seemed to be something there
around coffee time that morning,
it was going somewhere…
Years later, this poem, found in his
random papers when his widow
paid her last gleaning respects to the genius
which she loved less certainly
than she loved the man –
this poem would be pounced upon,
chewed, spat out with discriminating pride
by literati – look, our idol has his feet of clay..
shall we measure his greatness by his failure
or feed our envy and our self-regard?
No. Sit here, in his chair; take up his pen;
put that poem in front of you;
be there, on that day like any other
when no sublime inspiration came;
yet, work was done, somewhere, innerly;
know that;
love poetry.
poem by Michael Shepherd
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All The Poems Remain Written Where They Once Never Were
ALL THE POEMS REMAIN WRITTEN WHERE THEY ONCE NEVER WERE
All the poems remain written where they once never were
The grass and the skies of Whitman form lines in the mind of Baudelaire
The trees and dark cities of the distance form single sounds in the heart of the poet who cares
Night is more than darkness and day more than an early setting out
Each thing influences the other and calls back its own origins and end
We are going somewhere we will never know whether we write eternal lines or not
Over everywhere can be heard in the morning light the selfsame sound that through the heart of Ruth burned the alien corn
Keats is not dead, and Borges is not dead and Kafka is not dead and Wordsworth and all those who wrote great lines are not dead
Poetry is the last first eternity of the living word
And those who can hear the sounds of others greater than themselves in their own lines know
We are all writing down this last poem for ourselves and no one else
Though as we go to pray each morning the minyan tells us secretly
All our prayers together are more than any single poem can be alone
In the grey long distance where no one hears any poem at all
God writes and rewrites for us all the book of the stars in which dread is no longer a name
And beauty bright bright beauty is heard and reechoed as more than we will ever be
God is the only Poetry in the End
God is the Only One who never will be dead..
poem by Shalom Freedman
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I Lost The Poem I Wrote In My Mind
I LOST THE POEM I WROTE IN MIND
I lost the poem I wrote in my mind
When walking to Shul this morning-
I can only try to recall its thoughts;
‘Walk too fast and the mind cannot hear itself
Walk slowly and listen to the poem inside yourself.
The road ahead the trees the sky
Has a beauty too great for you to write
Thank God for your sight.”
The best lines are forever gone-
A poem to replace a poem
Is not as good as the original-
I wish I had the words for all the beauty God gives me in my life
How wonderful it is to be alive- sometimes
And to be able to write poems – even if somewhat poorly.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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