Childhood Poems
The Nightingale
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
A Conversation Poem, April, 1798
No cloud, no relique of the sunken day
Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip
Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues.
Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge!
You see the glimmer of the stream beneath,
But hear no murmuring: it flows silently.
O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still.
A balmy night! and though the stars be dim,
......
The List Of Famous Hats
by James Tate
Napoleon's hat is an obvious choice I guess to list as a famous
hat, but that's not the hat I have in mind. That was his hat for
show. I am thinking of his private bathing cap, which in all hon-
esty wasn't much different than the one any jerk might buy at a
corner drugstore now, except for two minor eccentricities. The
first one isn't even funny: Simply it was a white rubber bathing
cap, but too small. Napoleon led such a hectic life ever since his
childhood, even farther back than that, that he never had a
chance to buy a new bathing cap and still as a grown-up--well,
he didn't really grow that much, but his head did: He was a pin-
......
My Favourite Colour
by Dorin Saadat
My favourite colour is his brown skin the blue sky
Before me, my childhood stands,
A colonial entwined with anarchic vines-
Maturing realizations.
What is love? An itch to set your house on fire?
What colour are the walls?
Not brown. Not blue.
......
Shaping an adult
by Azaad M
If I could make my own adults,
I’d shape them gently—
after the foggy warmth of grandmothers' laps
and the way a mother tucks in the corners of a blanket like a promise.
I’d build them with leftover laughter from childhood
pressed into the hollows of their cheeks,
the kind that resurfaces when they laugh with their eyes closed.
I’d stir in a spoonful of Camus—
so they'd look at the sky and feel both lost and held.
......
Duino Elegies: The Fourth Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
O trees of life, oh, what when winter comes?
We are not of one mind. Are not like birds
in unison migrating. And overtaken,
overdue, we thrust ourselves into the wind
and fall to earth into indifferent ponds.
Blossoming and withering we comprehend as one.
And somewhere lions roam, quite unaware,
in their magnificence, of any weaknesss.
But we, while wholly concentrating on one thing,
......
Satin and Silk
by Robert Creffield
There you were always racing against time,
a willing mother, a conscientious worker, a wife sublime.
There you were with your wondrous wrinkles, your drooping eyelids and your starched crisp cuffs to waitress pinafore uniform you ironed so much.
There you were at the filthy hospital kitchen sink sloshing the dollops of patients’ left-over dinner bits and your magnificent pride with its iron core, smiling through all that shit.
There you were standing at the bus stop early purple morning or late black night the back stocking line straight and right and shoes polished waxy and bright.
There you were seemingly solid and confident, but really wobbly and light, smoking too many fags through too many disappointed nights.
......
Vivien
by Robert Creffield
All blond curls and blur of blue velvet shorts
tilting arms splayed and plasticine legs bent
balancing along the bombsite wall, intrepid.
There was a difference between him and me
not like plastic cups and porcelain
rather a faint aura of all the things he’d become
and all the things I’d fail to be.
Behind him was a semi-detached
......
Clean
by Teo Luchin
Wash my hair,
Lavender shampoo, the squeak of cleanliness.
When you’re almost done,
Split my skull wide open.
Let it all spill out,
Cerebral storms unraveling in cold, biting splashes.
Take away all that I couldn’t purge.
Let the water flood the hollows of my head.
I’ll shake myself like a stray.
Flinging drops into my eyes.
......
Father's Gun Hanging at the Door.
by C Duggan
My father's gun hung on the door,
at first menacing, then necessary.
That gun kept out the wolves,
the bears,
and the wind howling.
The gun kept out the cold,
my mother no longer shivered,
and my father no longer took watch.
The stars no longer stared,
and the moon no longer seemed like a dream.
......
Shaping an adult
by Azaad M
If I could make my own adults,
I’d shape them gently—
after the foggy warmth of grandmothers' laps
and the way a mother tucks in the corners of a blanket like a promise.
I’d build them with leftover laughter from childhood
pressed into the hollows of their cheeks,
the kind that resurfaces when they laugh with their eyes closed.
I’d stir in a spoonful of Camus—
so they'd look at the sky and feel both lost and held.
......
