In Translation
Arriving with no intepretator
Leaving with signals and signs
On the elevator
In the pressed drudged crowds
Filled by the strangeness of infatuation
Your first arrival
Under the flash of a neon ray
Leaving with the wrong signs
In your back pocket
The price tags and the labels
As if heaven was an eternal shopping mall
And hell was a supermarket checkout queue
Missing the signs and the cues
Leaving in an unfamiliar way
Unexpected
The wisest words are always spoken by children
Before reading and learning
In translation!
yvette m smith march 09
aka yvette m smith
circa march 09
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Related quotes
Conundrum
I am not who I say I am
Who I say I am, is not, who I am
So who am I?
cue.....'Looks intently at the words and trys to read them, backwards! '
minus so...moving question mark back three spaces'
william shakespeare aka? yvette smith
circa march09
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Sorrow Of Words
The sorrow of words that rarely tell themselves
They sail like brightly coloured balloons
Lost in their own universe
They spin off the edge of a tongue
kissing air and emptiness
Seldom filling loneliness
Leaving their sound like a symphony
A faint noise hanging in the air
Somewhere in the back of my mind
The radio is playing
A song I used to know
yvette smith oct 08
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Bag For Life
And so I blew it
And I some how I knew it, that
I would throw out the screwed up ends
The tighly coiled gut load of sentences
That discharged themselves randomly
In the supermarket
They gave me a 'bag for life! '
Somewhere on the journey I left it behind
At the point of exchange
Where there were no bins
I filled it with sentiment and waste
And those unheard wishes
Best left silent
Somewhere between here and waterloo
If only they knew
How easy it is to dropp off
The edge of all reasonable sense
Spill coffee on those carefuly pressed creases
And forget your lines
Under the interrogators light
A dark mastermind chair of pitting wits,
Leaving all wits witless!
45 minutes and times up!
yvette smith june 09
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
I have written
And I have written sorrow many times
Yet never cried
These tears
I have written laughter in sunspilt skies
Though kept my laughter hidden out of view
And what you see, you who see these words?
What you see is true, yet not all true
For words hang in the air
Under a vacant sky
Leaving no trace or sign or clue
Of what is lived
Of what is breathed
And concieved
In every careful wording of an 'I'
In every other that finds a 'you'
I have written sorrow many times
With eyes unwept
For fallen trees and generations gone
Keeping their secrets and their brokeness
In all that cannot tell itself
Yet travels in the silence between what is said
And what is dead, and what is gone
yvette smith march 09
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Viewpoint
some people said I was crazy
And some people said I was lazy
And some people said I was on course
For a fully fledged 'divorce'
Until I said 'listen, I'm not married'
Some people said I was always carried
By other people with as much emotional baggage
Some people said I looked like a cabbage
And some people said I was as BIG AS A HOUSE
Some people said I was as quiet as a mouse
And some people said I should get a life
some people said I was a pain in the neck
And some people said they felt the pain
And some people who salvaged the wreck
Abandoned the deck
Broadcasting the ship would sink
And some people of the same clan
Disconnected their phone
Leaving me to ponder on my own
About all that they had said
And all their words fell silent
And suddenly dead.....
After so much defintion
I chose life instead
yvette smith march 09
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Virus
A world rocked
Shaken
Broken
Dissoloution of words
Who washed them all away?
Today I awoke to find
A 'virus in my hardrive'
Is that a metaphor for greed?
That rots the healthy guts
Of every leviathan that sunk its teeth to deep,
Leaving so many poor Jonahs
Outside 'the belly of the whale'? ?
Now hollow
Spitting out a 'last dime'
For the homeless!
yvette m smith sept 08
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Radio Girl
Every morning she hung her sad same song
On the hum of the radio words
Mimicking
Her coffee mug
microphone under her chin, lip synch
Always late for work
Humming the same sad song
On the bus
Always arriving
As if she were somewhere else
[Visiting another life]
yvette m smith sept 08
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Grand Central Lonely
At Grand Central 'lonely'
The workers are all going home
Leaving the dregs of the day
The littered side streets
The delinquent and the hobo
And the street musician
Those who are oblivious to time
Who move in and out of it
With drifting thoughts
More lonely than lonely?
These are the silhouettes
Leaving scattered patterns
Of broken stars
Their long forgotten
[ encores ] ]
Some twist and turn
Some shatter into dust and light
And in the sudden shift, dance with the living
colours cascading down bright rivers
Into a monet or a still life
In one last
'As if to say all men are born alone
They will depart this way'
Yet we who have the' light of the living'
Who shake the dust off the dregs of the day
Who hold no candle for the lost
But carry the same solitary journey
In punctuated arrivals and departures
Have we forgotten that god is in their eyes?
They leave no traces
But in their dreams,
Are they not the angels who have come to warn us?
yvette smith march 2009
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Borderlines
Beyond the limit of 'ourselves'
Beyond the making and the undoing of our tongues
Borderlines
No need for ritual here
No need for argument
The blank posters
The blind accomplishment
These borderlines
Leading
Seeking to
Unseeking
Unmet
Naked disguises of
Relinquishment
Of 'only in having'
Having nothing at all!
The surveillance of our lives twenty four seven
Crowds small
Names lettered small
Numbers
Digits
Uncomposed/Our hollow dearest illusions
Looking for 'holy'
Unseeking
Disregarded
Making ' minds citadel shine'
These thin borderlines
Between nothing
And nothing at all
Signs?
Your letters ride out shaky
In a dying light
And tomorrow?
Who knows
yvette m smith august 2009
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
This Poetry
This poetry is not poetry
This poetry is not poetry as poetry goes
But is as silent as a man in a rollo neck jumper
Almost reading yesterdays news
This poetry is not poetry
As far as poetry goes
It is neither verse
Or poesy prose
This is a debunking of 'The poetry'
Everyone knows
And so they are not amused
This poetry is not poetry
So why poetry?
If not
Prose?
It is as idle as a man picking his nose
Pondering a wonderful muse
Yet some, are not amused
Infact if this poetry is Not poetry
What right have I to use, the word poetry?
It is a lovely panacea for expressing and de stressing
The individual's points of view
And yet if not poetry
Who says Not poetry
And who is qualified to choose?
Give me a pocket full of roses
Or a misty morning cloud
Are you amused?
clammy wynette aka Yvette m smith
march 09
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Born
Today I was born,
Like the first ray of bright summer sun breaking,
Turning the day from the darkness
Today I was born,
Like the first bud breaking upon
Knowing it will flower
Leaving its scent in the earth
And all around the sky has opened
A pure white canvas
On which I will paint my love
For today I know
I was born for this
This gift of life!
yvette m smith april 09
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
February
February came and went, like a love song never meant,
To be heard until summer.
Then march marched in, suprisingly late
The buds still swollen on the trees
The river stretching out beneath the evening
And april brought memories of you leaving
The sunlight left it's golden locks upon the floor
And may was full of sleeping in beyond the time of waking
Of autumn walks under overcast skies
And something out of step and out of season
The beating of a silent heart
The rain washed streets
Left drops on leaves
And smells of smoky bars
And early scents of rising earth
And all our hopes shone in a dazzling constellation
The universe in symphony
In wonder at love's death
In triumph at its celebration
yvette smith may 09
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Lost
The loss began out of sequence
Not quite inevitable
As the measure of a grief
At least in the procession
The pall bearers
The expenses
This loss
Outrode the cold cadaver
lying stiff like a stuffed doll
Half resembling a loved one
Casket ajar
Somewhere in the living room
By the armchair now empty of him
No this happened, long after he was gone
The loss happened
Out of sequence
When walking down a road with a familiar name
Took you by suprise
When walking backwards towards home
You return to find a dumb child
Jamming a key into a different lock
This was not your block
You lost the familiar scent of it
The room
The place
The time
The reason had left you
A blank
Uncertain
NAMES NO LONGER MADE SENSE
And you belonged to no one
No mirror could tell you who you were or are
No shopping mall assistant could escort you to safety
Only a waiting car
Left with the remains of you blank eyed
sad child wasted
With a few coins in yor pocket
It happened out of sequence
And suddenly
Arriving in a white landscape
The light almost erased you
Nothing could have prepared you for this
All maps signs roads names homes places faces
Strange
No use now
More alien this isolated slow death of you
Wishing
One last dance
One salvaged heart
From the wreckage
Of all losing him
This last slow circuit
Squeezing out the last ebb and flow of light
yvette smith april 09
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Landscape Of Secondary Things
The landscape of secondary things
Is the arrival that comes into place and placing
After the soft lull and the rush and the hum
The shapeless movement without words
Or point of turning
After all that is in primal feeling felt
We return and yet arrive at the landscape
Of secondary things
Some visions visitations in our dreams
yvette smith april 09
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
These words
These words will be gone tomorrow
They steal the numbers from the streets
Til every door looks the same
These words like candles will burn out
They steal the light from temporary souls
Soon, too soon
They will bury the love
Under the tongues of yesterdays softness
As if they never were, more
As if they hunger still
There is no promise
No everlasting
And every eternal door
Always looks the same
They look
Tomorrow we will walk away
As if, when these words were gone
We forget, yes we forget
Still, that they ever came
And yet, they carry on!
yvette m smith jan 09
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Casserole
It was a casserole of an affair
Too many vegetables to name in the file for divorce
I knew the rift would fade and die
And that all loves complete their course
It was an out of court settlement
To save the tomato its blushes
And avoid exposing the greeness of the cucumber
The potato came out on top
[the the underdog must have it's day! '
P.S The cauliflower left quietly with a slab of cheese
It still harboured a secret ambition to make it
on the dining room circuit as a 'VERY TASTY DISH'
P.S It knew without the cheese it was nothing!
yvette smith london march 09
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Onion
My love is an onion naked and white
Peeled back from itself
Into it's selves
It conceals many lives
My love is the layer upon layer
The years in which we grew
Slowly and in perfect symmetry
Up from that first shoot
Anchored in the earth of first passion
sculpted in time into one clear white orb
Invincible
immeasurable
The depth and breadth of you and I
Knitted in silkness of flesh and form
And at that first touch
The first severing of ties
A parting sorrow
brings a rivulet of tears to thy celestial eye
Twixt pain and joy,
True love is born!
yvette smith march 09
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Gift
Love given
Ridden
Lived in
Loved in
Lost in
Love fallen
Broken
Stalling
Spoken
Woken in smoke filled rooms
Full of old whispers calling to
Love taken
Mistaken
Forsaken
Love wounded
Love preacher
Love teacher
Love prayer
Love giver
Lover taker
Love sinner
Love maker
Love over
Too soon
like a gift forgotten
Your face in the mirror
Much older
yvette m smith sept 09
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
To a child on not returning
When time was an island in which we basked
Riding the river as it flowed past
Skimming stones in hazy lazy days
Knowing the immeasurable depth of the sky
Cloud spotting
Tree hawking
Lying under trees mast
In fields, rolls back
The camera from the eye
No 'need ' for states of happiness or bliss
Just this!
Sad dumb animals languishing
Beneath a blazing sun
Niether knowing whence they came
Or whence they would be gone.
Roll back the camera from the eye
The careful pose
'The smile' of yesterday
Nothing is lonelier than a child waving goodbye
To the other self, the adult, leaving home.
All other things buried
These trinkets of the past
Though the photograph is fading
Still the smile is holding fast.
yvette smith
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
How To Write Wrong Right
What is wrong is often misunderstood as right
And what is right is often wrong
And so many write the song
And make right wrong
And do this right
Error perfect
Taught the perfect flaw
There is no cure or cause or fate
Of late forgetulness makes us feel blessed
Make sense from 'Ignorance is bliss'
Making what's wrong, our perfect right
We create 'our genius' over night! !
mary shelley junior
AKA Yvette m Smith
dec 08
poem by Yvette Smith
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!