bad poetry of sadness

Some days I cry easy and some days it's all I do,
but then there are dry weeks and months
all the sadness burns my throat, a desert
of tears.

Some weeks I drown
Some weeks I perish

Some weeks I am joyful.

on disconnecting

I feel the loss
of facebook less
than twitter

I want the quick and easy
expressivity.

Especially when attempting
to express grand
philosophical
ideas in a tiny format.

Palm Sunday Reflections

There is something so lovely about light

something unphotographable

so unwordable

something about the Word

made flesh

made light

and life

I will mark ash

I will wave palms

I will rejoice

that he is triumphant

that he is risen

that he will come

again

and I remember

whenever the light is lovely.

The Lonely Land

Cedar and jagged fir
uplift sharp barbs
against the gray
and cloud-piled sky;
and in the bay
blown, spume and windrift
and thin, bitter spray
snap
at the whirling sky;
and the pine trees
lean one way.

A wild duck calls
to her mate,
and the ragged
and passionate tones
stagger and fall,
and recover,
and stagger and fall,
on those stones--
are lost
in the lapping of water
on smooth, flat stones.

This is a beauty
of dissonance,
this resonance
of stony strand,
this smoky cry
curled over a black pine
like a broken
and wind-battered branch
when the wind
bends the tops of the pines
and curdles the sky
from the north.

This is the beauty
of strength
broken by strength
and still strong.

A.J.M. Smith

everyday object poem

smells like blood
and silicone and soap—
dusty and sharp,
like iron filings
or old copper pennies.

began white, virginal
translucent—

now the colour of tarnished hopes
and new (childless) plans

holds  the sloughed,
rich blood
that is pulled
from my womb

by a thin, tapered
end.

Found Poem

inside this triangle,
rebels were inspired
to be in a state of insurrection

their actions subsequently
match their assumption that
rebellion was going on elsewhere—

and later their realisation
that they were alone
in the fight. Open rebellion unraveled—

some survival of the old
sentiments—this old agrarian agenda
(especially in the northern parts,

where the two are most
likely to have overlapped)
drifted back into the various parts

scattered by bad weather,
a footnote in history was
unraveling that night.

Clementine

Swirls of ink thoughts
inhabiting corners
of pages everywhere

Poetry borderlands
defined and liminal
sketched in words

that taste and sound.

like noses

and my heart is broken

and broken

and broken

and I wonder if hearts are like noses

that need to be broken

to be straitened

to be righted

and I know, oh I know

that my heart

will be broken again

on my own

wickedness

and I hope, oh I hope

that my heart

will be broken again

on God’s love

Sad poem that I love

Neglect
R. T. Smith

Is the scent of apple boughs smoking
in the woodstove what I will remember
of the Red Delicious I brought down, ashamed

that I could not convince its limbs to render fruit?
Too much neglect will do that, skew the sap's
passage, blacken leaves, dry the bark and heart.

I should have lopped the dead limbs early
and watched each branch with a goshawk's eye,
patching with medicinal pitch, offering water,

compost and mulch, but I was too enchanted
by pear saplings, flowers and the pasture,
too callow to believe that death's inevitable

for any living being unloved, untended.
What remains is this armload of applewood
now feeding the stove's smolder. Splendor

ripens a final time in the firebox, a scarlet
harvest headed, by dawn, to embers.
Two decades of shade and blossoms - tarts

and cider, bees dazzled by the pollen,
spare elegance in ice - but what goes is gone.
Smoke is all, through this lesson in winter

regret, I've been given to remember.
Smoke, and Red Delicious apples redder
than a passing cardinal's crest or cinders.

taken from http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/

story

a landscape sketch
a colour palette
some characters
with some flaws
knitted together--
in a wavy afghan
something homely
and lovely
held loosely in my mind
and beginning to take
shape on paper
of paper
and delicately inscribed
so as not to lose
any life in the pinning
down of the butterfly's
wings

bedtime

there is a certain peace
after everyone has gone to sleep
music of my childhood playing
competing with the rotating fan
reading words of beauty and wisdom
knowing that all shall be well,
and all shall be well--
and all manner of things
shall be well

a poem by somebody else

Grammar

Maxine, back from a weekend with her boyfriend,
smiles like a big cat and says
that she's a conjugated verb.
She's been doing the direct object
with a second person pronoun named Phil,
and when she walks into the room,
everybody turns:

some kind of light is coming from her head.
Even the geraniums look curious,
and the bees, if they were here, would buzz
suspiciously around her hair, looking
for the door in her corona.
We're all attracted to the perfume
of fermenting joy,

we've all tried to start a fire,
and one day maybe it will blaze up on its own.
In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty,
and when we see it, what we do is natural:
we take our burned hands
out of our pockets,
and clap

by Tony Hoagland
from Donkey Gospel, 1998
Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minn.

the mystery of seed

the mystery of seed
hidden in the dark
recesses of damp earth
somehow feels the warmth
of the sun far above
and sprouts
shoots up
we know not how

bangles

like your words through my mind

the bangles on my wrist rattle

there is a tone less clear

a tone that jangles the rest

out of order, out of place

until it is found and the metal beaten

which would make it
round and smooth and clear

as a fern that unfurls

chaos unsorted spirals
unravels and sorts itself
onto the page
scribbles become
ribbons of ink
and waves of colour
shadows shade
the lines of black
and white
giving depth and character
as a fern that unfurls.

rubber bands

rubber bands twisting

around each other

knotted in an infinite loop

twining not tight enough

to hide the gaps

that keep them detached

defined square edges

that when stretched

show wear—ragged

Poem 20

sea glass
celadon, bottle green
pocked by sand and wind
blemished, no longer complete
soft to the touch, mostly
hidden jagged edges
unlikely beauty
ordinary

Poem 19

the waves that beat
against my shores
are wearing debris
thrown into the ocean -- left there
that breaks apart
until it is so small
it is infinitesimal
that it is unseen; unknown
it is consumed
by the waves that beat
against my shore
and wear away
the stone of my cliffs
and mix it
with the salt water

Poem 18

Trees are warmer than snow
they draw their heat
from a source of great temperature
of constant temperature
from the soil
from the centre
from the earth
they have been provided for
they are safe --
from the snow.

Poem 17

early morning fears become afternoon doubts and nighttime dreads

and the light is missing

and the sound is drowned

and we are tired and tired and tired

and outside there is light

and brightly coloured train cars

piled higher and higher and higher

until they block all view of the sky and the sun and the birds