Under the Moon
– Tom Warner

In a shanty town of chimneys and aerials,
plumped pigeons roost their silhouettes.
Under the pigeons, children sleep with their pets
in rooms stencilled with bright fairy-sentinels.
Under the children, parents wipe surfaces
and watch television. A windless snowfall
corrects typing errors; streets like rows of kisses.
But disasters have happened, are happening, will.
Under the parents, the unmentioned monsters
that slam doors are tonight locked down in the cellars.
The children are hurt. O mothers, fathers!
They are lying at school, and they don’t tell us.
The morning snow has made grottoes of the cars.
A blackbird stitches the front lawn with scars.

In Dreams
– Ian Hamilton

To live like this:
One hand in yours, the other
Murderously cold; one eye
Pretending to watch over you,
The other blind.
We live in dreams:
These sentimental afternoons,
These silent vows,
How we would starve without them.

Retreat
– Ian Hamilton

A minute pulsation of blood-red
Invades one corner of your wounded eye.
You hear it throb
In perfect harmony with our despair
And I’m no comfort to you anymore.

A rather excellent Poem Favoured from a new online poet
found by way of howard. Thank you again howard!

And one for Valentines day just passed.
——————————–

I am on a poetry kick
– susan

“Every shooting star that is seen
from Earth is an angel who has just
received his wings”
Popular Folk Myth

When surrounded by vast
nothingness-
a black sky
that is nothing
but a
cosmic wasteland
illuminated by light
from starry nightlights

Do astronauts
really pass
dead souls
on their way
to the moon?

——————————————-

Valentine for Ernest Mann
– Naomi Shihab Nye

You can’t order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, “I’ll take two”
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, “Here’s my address,
write me a poem,” deserves something in reply.
So I’ll tell you a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn’t understand why she was crying.
“I thought they had such beautiful eyes.”
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he reinvented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of the skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we reinvent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.

Got a few of these for you today.
First is by a fellow blogger I stumbled upon,
or rather by whom I was stumbled upon.
He’s rather great. Give him a look.

Death of a Poem
– Opoetoo

10 years on the blood trail
Of a gut shot poem
Sleeping by tainted indentions in leaves and grass
Dreams of its death – oh to put this thing out of my misery
No compassion for the beast
As it confounds me in red maple leaves
Camouflaging on the ground and
Swirling around my head in scarlet confusion

So thankful for the broom straw
Red tipped broom straw waving me on to victory
To the smell of death
Juxtaposed with
The pungent aroma of the taxidermist’s tight rubber gloves
Dreams of long talks ,smoke rising, interest increasing

A widow maker falls beside me and brings me back to reality
My left hand rusted solid to the lantern
My back permanently stooped
The trail leads down now
They always die by the water
Hopeful and wanting
Soon the leaves will fall again
Death by the water? Victory by the water?

A decade has passed when I find the beast
It falls two steps from the stream
It’s warm breath clouding
Rising into the red maple leaves

———————————–

Now some lovely Bukowski.

Consummation Of Grief
– Charles Bukowski
I even hear the mountains

the way they laugh

up and down their blue sides

and down in the water

the fish cry

and the water 
is their tears.

I listen to the water

on nights I drink away

and the sadness becomes so great

I hear it in my clock

it becomes knobs upon my dresser

it becomes paper on the floor

it becomes a shoehorn

a laundry ticket

it becomes

cigarette smoke

climbing a chapel of dark vines. . .

it matters little

very little love is not so bad

or very little life

what counts

is waiting on walls

I was born for this

I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead.

As The Sparrow
– Charles Bukowski

To give life you must take life,

and as our grief falls flat and hollow

upon the billion-blooded sea

I pass upon serious inward-breaking shoals rimmed

with white-legged, white-bellied rotting creatures

lengthily dead and rioting against surrounding scenes.

Dear child, I only did to you what the sparrow

did to you; I am old when it is fashionable to be

young; I cry when it is fashionable to laugh.

I hated you when it would have taken less courage

to love.

Bluebird
– Charles Bukowski

there’s a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I’m too tough for him,

I say, stay in there, I’m not going

to let anybody see

you.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I pur whiskey on him and inhale

cigarette smoke

and the whores and the bartenders

and the grocery clerks

never know that

he’s

in there.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I’m too tough for him,

I say,

stay down, do you want to mess

me up?

you want to screw up the

works?

you want to blow my book sales in

Europe?

there’s a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out

at night sometimes

when everybody’s asleep.

I say, I know that you’re there,

so don’t be

sad.

then I put him back,

but he’s singing a little

in there, I haven’t quite let him

die

and we sleep together like

that

with our

secret pact

and it’s nice enough to

make a man

weep, but I don’t

weep, do

you?

Bluebird
– Charles Bukowski

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pur whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?

Another gem from ‘herself’ over at Good at Getting Better

Ordinary

From a window above,
on an ordinary day,
where the ordinary people go
to make memories,
a voice floats over the courtyard
into the restaurant where you sit
eating anything and everything organic-
“la-di-la-di-day….”

a girl sings love, love with a ukulele,
Cupid’s arrows, our plastic forks,
souvenirs we carry home-
“la-di-la-di-day…”

three guys scramble, hacky sac,
two men play chess on the corner,
the girl sings love, love done me wrong-
“la-di-la-di-day…”

little doggie naps at feet,
his owner on a bench,
cigarette in lip, straw hat on head-
“la-di-la-di-day…”

traffic slows,
the old men chuckle at their game,
or the girl, or at love…

from the street below,
on an ordinary day,
belly full, you cross the courtyard-

the tune of the ukulele girl in your step,
and on your shoulder
a backpack,
filled with your own
stolen handful of plastic forks.

©2009 Krkbaker

Bit of a triple whammy here.

Found this here. I think she’s pretty amazing.
Inside Out
-Diane Wakoski

I walk the purple carpet into your eye
carrying the silver butter server
but a truck rumbles by,
leaving its black tire prints on my foot
and old images the sound of banging screen doors on hot
afternoons and a fly buzzing over the Kool-Aid spilled on
the sink
flicker, as reflections on the metal surface.

Come in, you said,
inside your paintings, inside the blood factory, inside the
old songs that line your hands, inside
eyes that change like a snowflake every second,
inside spinach leaves holding that one piece of gravel,
inside the whiskers of a cat,
inside your old hat, and most of all inside your mouth where you
grind the pigments with your teeth, painting
with a broken bottle on the floor, and painting
with an ostrich feather on the moon that rolls out of my mouth.

You cannot let me walk inside you too long inside
the veins where my small feet touch
bottom.
You must reach inside and pull me
like a silver bullet
from your arm.

——————

This is also excellent and touching:
Remembrance
–Lucia

Remember where the poets are,
for we’re a dying breed,
with our hands in our empty pockets,
let down,
let down.

——————

And this is an another by Lydia that i meant to put up AGES ago because it is
amazing but because I am not, I forgot. Sorry.
Zurich Lake
– Lydia (secretagentartist)

On the pleasure boat,
I ask my uncle – whose dark eyes
are contemplating hills – the german word for lake.
He writes it for me, absent minded:

“Zurichsee –
the see as z.“

‘The Zurich-zee is tooled glass,
it’s printed cellophane.
The Zurich-zee is silver fish,
slashed brail, misted zinc.’

My uncle sees a gliding gull, small castle,
at Richterschill – a blue and yellow tram.

‘The Zurich-zee is silver milk,
sleek bands of graying hair.
The Zurich-zee is spilt yellow,
watercoloured pale.’

My uncle makes the sounds
for places as we pass:

“Wadensail.”
“Richterschill.”
“Staf.”

I chew the pen and mark them down.
Like the ink is made of lake.
My uncle, words.