Narrative Poems
Baby's Pantoum
by Anne Waldman
for Reed Bye
I lie in my crib midday this is
unusual I don't sleep really
Mamma's sweeping or else boiling water for tea
Other sounds are creak of chair & floor, water
dripping on heater from laundry, cat licking itself
Unusual I don't sleep really
unless it's dark night everyone in bed
Other sounds are creak of chair & floor, water
......
Confines Of Intelligence Deceptive Trap
by K. S. Lutso
In shadows of intelligence, a young man stood,
His mind ablaze, his spirit pure and good.
A brilliant flame, a flicker of creativity,
But society's pressure whispered for conformity.
With dreams of literature and arts so fine,
He yearned to let his creativity truly shine.
But the world, in its wisdom, had other plans,
Forcing the young man into law's demanding hands.
......
The Embrace
by Mark Doty
You weren't well or really ill yet either;
just a little tired, your handsomeness
tinged by grief or anticipation, which brought
to your face a thoughtful, deepening grace.
I didn't for a moment doubt you were dead.
I knew that to be true still, even in the dream.
You'd been out--at work maybe?--
having a good day, almost energetic.
......
The Two Voices
by Alfred Lord Tennyson
A still small voice spake unto me,
"Thou art so full of misery,
Were it not better not to be?"
Then to the still small voice I said;
"Let me not cast in endless shade
What is so wonderfully made."
To which the voice did urge reply;
"To-day I saw the dragon-fly
......
Inside Gertrude Stein
by Lynn Emanuel
Right now as I am talking to you and as you are being talked
to, without letup, it is becoming clear that gertrude stein has
hijacked me and that this feeling that you are having now as
you read this, that this is what it feels like to be inside
gertrude stein. This is what it feels like to be a huge type--
writer in a dress. Yes, I feel we have gotten inside gertrude
stein, and of course it is dark inside the enormous gertrude, it
is like being locked up in a refrigerator lit only by a smiling
rind of cheese. Being inside gertrude is like being inside a
monument made of a cloud which is always moving across
......
Confines Of Intelligence Deceptive Trap
by K. S. Lutso
In shadows of intelligence, a young man stood,
His mind ablaze, his spirit pure and good.
A brilliant flame, a flicker of creativity,
But society's pressure whispered for conformity.
With dreams of literature and arts so fine,
He yearned to let his creativity truly shine.
But the world, in its wisdom, had other plans,
Forcing the young man into law's demanding hands.
......
The phantom of the asteroid
by Marc B. F.
How long it's been
since the airship reached
this distant space rock?
Years, decades,
or maybe more.
Stranded on this lonely asteroid,
I lost my thirst, my sense
and my body to the void.
The dust of my bones
made an atmosphere
......
Narrative And Dramatic The Wanderings Of Oisin
by William Butler Yeats
BOOK I
S. Patrick. You who are bent, and bald, and blind,
With a heavy heart and a wandering mind,
Have known three centuries, poets sing,
Of dalliance with a demon thing.
Oisin. Sad to remember, sick with years,
The swift innumerable spears,
The horsemen with their floating hair,
......
Kora In Hell: Improvisations I
by William Carlos Williams
1
Fools have big wombs. For the rest?—here is pennyroyal if one knows to use it. But time is only another liar, so go along the wall a little further: if blackberries prove bitter there'll be mushrooms, fairy- ring mushrooms, in the grass, sweetest of all fungi.
2
For what it's worth: Jacob Louslinger, white haired, stinking, dirty bearded, cross eyed, stammer tongued, broken voiced, bent backed, ball kneed, cave bellied, mucous faced—deathling,—found lying in the weeds "up there by the cemetery." "Looks to me as if he d been bumming around the meadows for a couple of weeks." Shoes twisted into incredible lilies: out at the toes, heels, tops, sides, soles. Meadow flower! ha, mallow! at last I have you. (Rot dead marigolds—an acre at a time! Gold, are you?) Ha, clouds will touch world's edge and the great pink mallow stand singly in the wet, topping reeds and a closet full of clothes and good shoes and my-thirty-year's-master's-daughter's two cows for me to care for and a winter room with a fire in it—. I would rather feed pigs in Moonachie and chew calamus root and break crab's claws at an open fire: age's lust loose!
3
Talk as you will, say: "No woman wants to bother with children in this country";—speak of your Amsterdam and the whitest aprons and brightest doorknobs in Christendom. And I'll answer you: "Gleaming doorknobs and scrubbed entries have heard the songs of the housemaids at sun-up and—housemaids are wishes. Whose? Ha! the dark canals are whistling, whistling for who will cross to the other side. If I remain with hands in pocket leaning upon my lamppost—why—I bring curses to a hag's lips and her daughter on her arm knows better than I can tell you—best to blush and out with it than back beaten after.
——————
......
Kora In Hell: Improvisations Xii
by William Carlos Williams
1
The browned trees are singing for my thirty-fourth birthday. Leaves are beginning to fall upon the long grass. Their cold perfume raises the anticipation of sensational revolutions in my unsettled life. Violence has begotten peace, peace has fluttered away in agitation. A bewildered change has turned among the roots and the Prince's kiss as far at sea as ever.
——————
To each age as to each person its perfections. But in these things there is a kind of revolutionary sequence. So that a man having lain at ease here and advanced there as time progresses the order of these things becomes inverted. Thinking to have brought all to one level the man finds his foot striking through where he had thought rock to be and stands firm where he had experienced only a bog hitherto. At a loss to free himself from bewilderment at this discovery he puts off the caress of the imagination.
2
The trick is never to touch the world anywhere. Leave yourself at the door, walk in, admire the pictures, talk a few words with the master of the house, question his wife a little, rejoin yourself at the door—and go off arm in arm listening to last week's symphony played by angel hornsmen from the benches of a turned cloud. Or if dogs rub too close and the poor are too much out let your friend answer them.
——————
......
