Apologies if this is more of a creative-type thread, but just wanna show some love to Li-Young Lee. I’m really not into poetry like that as much as prose, but that mf is inspirational

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

-T. S. Eliot
Little Gidding, The Four Quartets

Out beyond ideas of right
and wrong there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.

― Rumi

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going
The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

• Czeslaw Milos, 1936

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass.

• Ezra Pound

Slam... poetry. YELLING! Angry???? WAVING MY HANDS A LOT! Specific point of view on things! Cynthia! Cyn-thi-a! Jesus died for our sin-thi-as! Jesus cried, runaway bride. Julia Roberts! Julia Rob-hurts????! Cynthia! Mmmmmmmm, Cynthia. You're dead. You are dead, bop boop beep bop bop boop bop. You're dead. That's for Cynthia... who's dead.

-Jonah Hill

I first heard this rumi quote in a song

The Voidz?

Yep!

2 pages in and no mention of Noah Sammak??? I guess this isnt a real poetry thread then? Uncultured swines.

Here's a classic Yeats Everyone knows this one but worth posting anyway. Very similar themes as The Wasteland here. post-first world war modernist poetry >>>

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

just here to name drop a QUEEN!

Elizabeth Bishop

Any poetry books to check out?

You get so alone at times that it just makes sense by bukowski

You said:

“I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried like something dead.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”

You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You’ll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.
You’ll always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:
there’s no ship for you, there’s no road.
Now that you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you’ve destroyed it everywhere in the world.

The City, C.P. Cavafy

My Life has only just begun

My Life is only 1 of 1

My Life is lonely but it's Fun

No reason for the Loaded gun...

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts: who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."

Psalms 132:14

Here I stand before my Lord
Here I bow before my King
Here I pray to my God
Here I thank my Creator

All Praises To The Most High
Yahawah (The Eternal One)
Who sits on His Cherubim’s
Established His Covenant with Jacob

Poetry is death cast out

Poetry is death cast out
though it gives one chance to retaliate,
Death takes it but the poem moves
a little further beyond death's gate,

and I know the proof of this. Once walking
amongst bushes and lizard stones I found
a little further than I had thought
to go, a stream with a singing sound.

— Sydney Clouts

Otherwise

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

—Jane Kenyon

I’ve memorized all the fish in the sea
I’ve memorized each opportunity strangled
and
I remember awakening one morning
and finding everything smeared with the color of
forgotten love
and I’ve memorized
that too.

I’ve memorized green rooms in
St. Louis and New Orleans
where I wept because I knew that by myself I
could not overcome
the terror of them and it.

I’ve memorized all the unfaithful years
(and the faithful ones too)
I’ve memorized each cigarette that I’ve rolled.
I’ve memorized Beethoven and New York City
I’ve memorized
riding up escalators, I’ve memorized
Chicago and cottage cheese, and the mouths of
some of the ladies and the legs of
some of the ladies
I’ve known
and the way the rain came down hard.
I’ve memorized the face of my father in his coffin,
I’ve memorized all the cars I have driven
and each of their sad deaths,
I’ve memorized each jail cell,
the face of each new president
and the faces of some of the assassins;
I’ve even memorized the arguments I’ve had with
some of the women
I’ve loved.

best of all
I’ve memorized tonight and now and the way the
light falls across my fingers,
specks and smears on the wall,
shades down behind orange curtains;
I light a rolled cigarette and then laugh a little,
yes, I’ve memorized it all.

the courage of my memory.

-Bukowski

Sparkies
Someone
Outflow
Smart
Poor
Park
Plz
Pizza
Pod
Semi
Pixel

-created using swipe keyboard on my iPhone