[Janet Kenny]

Oh you're all so mature and tasteful. Honesty compels me to post this gusher. I advise dark glasses and a dry vermouth while reading this early opus.

I would never write about....


i
poems are
snake dreaming in
speckles of dappled day and
dark, chanted by necromancers beneath
blank stars; invocation of unattainable
lust ennobled by chivalry, set in
lunatic landscapes of tilted
strangeness, a need
for otherness or
a benediction
on now

ii
they are
tintinnabulations of
bells in steeples, sounded
to warn, or lament; blown brazen
trumpets, reedy flutes, big drums pounded
and sparkle of xylophone’s tiny
tinkles that penetrate
broad thoughts
with sharps
of light

iii
or
menaces of
loss, lamented
before the losing,
reverence phrased according to
rules taught by ancestors, or volumes of
flood-water breaching its barriers,
hammered-copper cross inlaid
with stones disposed
punctiliously by
gnarled
hands

iv
verbal
constructions planned
minutely and connected laboriously
to confound critics who fossick around
eagerly seeking loose beams with
which to construct a plinth
for their oratory far
more significant
than a mere
poem


v
and there are misty gardens,
skies blown with frantic clouds,
sun-soaked hillsides where indolent
lovers roll and toss with devotion to more than
money; baskets of grapes, melons and peaches, foaming
tankards, crusty loaves, crumbling cheeses,
ruby glow of wine goblets
held against
light

vi

meditations
read in polyphony
by writer and reader at
different ends of the earth
intimations of immortality from
other centuries and from
silent rooms in the
house next door
consecrated
for poetry

vii
some are wishes
longed for without hope,
memories preserved with love,
buried ambitions,
the scent of
lemons.

[Cally Conan-Davies]

All these poems veer between hilarious and gobsmacking in turn! Thanks for linking Maryann's poem, Rose. Your poem about 'the poet who will not win this competition' is one of my all-time favourites. I remember well when I first read it here. Is that one in your book?


A poem is a horny hunter.
A poem is a nest of ideas.
A poem is an edge, but blunter.
A poem can wipe off years.

A poem is ever after.
A poem is a box of words.
A poem is tricked up laughter.
A poem is startled birds.

A poem is twist to open.
A poem is push to close.
A poem is hush when spoken.
A poem is no-one knows.

[Maryann Corbett]

And just for fun and to compound the guilt, I'm gonna link to this poems-on-poetry thread, the one I had the chutzpah to start when I was a very new member.

[Mary Meriam]

Full Tank

I ate too many beans. I’m like a gas

balloon. Oh, mama mia, beans in soup
for breakfast, beans on toast for lunch, alas
for dinner, I had beans from Guadeloupe.
I’ve got a stomach ache, a pressure stuck
inside my kishkas (Yiddish guts). I hear
my critics start complaining, “What the fuck,
for gas she writes a sonnet?” Do not fear,
my darlings, I will find a way to be
profound, sincere, polite, amusing, and
complete my sonnet. Pain may torture me,
I may regret those beans, but still I stand
before you, belching iambs, line fourteen
Voila! the glory of the humble bean.

[Janice D. Soderling]

And under the sun there is nothing new. Flabbergasted, is what.

Lordy, Maryann, I thought you had been here for donkey's ears. How did you get so savvy in such a short time? There may be hope for me yet.

Janice

PS What a great bunch of poems & poets in your linked thread.

[Janet Kenny]

Originally posted by Rose Kelleher:

R's Poetica

A poem should be mean
As a bee

But a B poem may not be.

A poem should move rhythmically in time
As a blacksnake winds

Unseen between skunk cabbages in mud
Rustling up a stink of the sublime

Or failing that,
Rhyme.

Rose I've been laughing over this one ever since I read it.
Janet

[Holly Martins]

MORE OR LESS

Write less not more my instincts say
when I fill up a page of less
than brilliant verse to end the day.

The writing sprawls and looks a mess -
what is the point of scribbling balls
that shows no trace of artfulness?

It’s best to wait the Muses’ calls
whose rhymes arrive out of the blue;
but I might wait till Pisa falls.

The daily search for something new,
what once was fun becomes a chore,
and all my verses ring untrue.

If I wrote less, the ones which score
more than a seven out of ten
would come less often than before.

More might mean less, or less mean more - but then
I write the same crap time and time and time again.

[Janice D. Soderling]

I doubled checked that this was not on Maryann's thread. This is one of the poems I would take to a desert island instead of sandwich.

Gentle Reader

Late in the night when I should be asleep
under the city stars in a small room
I read a poet. A poet: not
a versifier. Not a hot–shot
ethic–monger, laying about
him; not a diary of lying
about in cruel cruel beds, crying.
A poet, dangerous and steep.

O God, it peels me, juices me like a press;
this poetry drinks me, eats me, gut and marrow
until I exist in its jester's sorrow,
until my juices feed a savage sight
that runs along the lines, bright
as beasts' eyes. The rubble splays to dust:
city, book, bed, leaving my ear's lust
saying like Molly, yes, yes, yes O yes.


- Josephine Jacobsen