Sharing Poetry! :)

[mjules]

So, as my self-discovery continues and I come to the conclusion that I am actually more androgyne than male or female...that is, I'm both and neither, I have begun light-heartedly referring to myself as a "boygirl" or a "girlboy", using them interchangeably. Last night someone asked me where I had come up with that, and I told them it was from an e.e. cummings poem that I love. (Cummings isn't for everyone, but I have a soft spot.) That prompted me to go look up the poem in its entirety since I'd forgotten most of it, and when I did I realized that it fit me much better than I'd remembered. I love when that happens.

The more I thought about it, the more I felt it related to not just my life in general - which it does - but also, in places, to my life in the GLBTQ community. And yes, I know I'm reading too much into it when I make an acronym out of "glad and young" but it makes me happy.

So I thought I'd share it with the rest of you, and see if anyone else had poems they wanted to share! I love poetry.


"you shall above all things" - e.e. cummings

you shall above all things be glad and young
For if you're young,whatever life you wear

it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever's living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love

whose any mystery makes every man's
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think,may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation's dead undoom.

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

[Alecto]

Truthfully, more of an Auden fan myself, but...he's a bitter one. (don't wanna bring the mood down, but one of my favorites is available here: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15551
;D)

[antiochian]

I wrote these tonight for English class tomorrow. One is a sonnet, the other a villanelle.

It aches to breathe sometimes.
Sometimes life hurts so much
And all I want is to reach out
And experience a human’s touch.

The world can be cold sometimes.
Sometimes I think I could cry
For hours without end
When what I really want is to fly.

People can be disappointing sometimes.
Sometimes those we call friends
Abandon, betray and hurt us.
Will the pain ever end?

Sometimes I remember that I am strong.
I hurt, I cry, I sing my warrior’s song.

-October 16, 2007

-Jeffery Johnson


***********************

I utter a prayer with a weary voice.
The words hit the wall and melt in the shadows.
I raise my eyes and consider my choice.

A rich man in a three-piece suit drives his Rolls Royce
While the poor man in rags shivers and starves in the night.
I utter a prayer with a weary voice.

A girl is taunted by the popular boys.
They call her fat, ugly and loser.
I raise my eyes and consider my choice.

A child awakens to the terrible noise
Of gang members shouting and shooting each other.
I utter a prayer with a weary voice.

A preacher waves a sign shouting in a loud voice
That God hates gays and they are going to hell.
I raise my eyes and consider my choice.

I long for the death of injustice. I long to rejoice.
We can decide to live hatred or to fight it.
I utter a prayer with a weary voice.
I raise my eyes and consider my choice.


-October 16, 2007

-Jeffery Johnson

[Casey]

I also write poetry and here are a few of my favorites!

The Mirror:

Mirrors are for hair,
Cheeks, lips, and eyes,
Mirrors show the truth,
Or do they show lies?

One morning in the light,
You might see a girl,
With softly curving hips,
And her hair in a perfect curl.

But that same day,
By the light in someone’s eye,
The same little girl,
Seems about to cry.

Mirrors show you as a fake,
The perfect features of a doll,
But of those feelings inside,
They show nothing at all.

Definition of a Coward:

To be a coward,
To stand away,
To fall far behind,
To never get in the way.

To hide in the shadows,
To never give in,
To look in my eyes,
And fear it’s a sin.

To be a coward,
To live all alone,
To never be happy,
To never find home.

To hide all your feelings,
To tell secret lies,
To run from all reason,
To always shield your eyes.

To be a coward,
To never reach the clouds,
To never hold hands,
To stand alone in the crowds.

To hide all your tears,
To guide a ship with no sail,
To have dreams that aren’t yours,
To lean too far over the rail.

To be a coward,
To pretend like you care,
To never want a whole heart,
To cherish those moments you’ll never share.

To lock up your heart,
To close off your ears,
To blow out all lights,
To throw away those few happy years.

To be a coward,
To let them poison your mind,
To always say sorry,
To pretend to be kind.

To waste your time running,
To fear just one touch,
To let me suffer forever,
Because you fear it’s too much.

This One is For You:

This life that seems so dark,
At times might not be true,
But the truth will someday show itself,
This one is for you.

Sometimes truth can hide from us,
And sometimes love can lie,
But you have to always try your best,
You are my reason why.

Love itself has many forms,
Life with love has more,
That is why this one’s for you,
My life, my center, my core.

To prove myself time again,
To you it is not fair,
I have never been more honest,
Then when I say I care.

I made a pact awhile ago,
I promised to see you through,
I swear to keep my promises,
This one is for you.

[iowan woman]

Jeffery,

I read (and made comment) on your thread about being angry at G-D. I just happened across this - I am a poet/story-teller and so the title caught my eye - and your expression reveals your capacity for compassion that extends past your own concerns. Most people who see injustice dismiss it unless it is their concern. Let your anger be your guide in a way that determines change.


You are truly a gift. Hang in there.


Casey,
I have a thing about mirrors. It is an underlying theme in my work; I have had many visions (I meditate) of mirrors and my shadow.
I noticed your work has a touch of the magical to it.

Alecto,

Auden. You remind me that there are so many poets I know only by name. I majored in English Lit but took almost all my electives in History - i did not get enough English and...I am really lazy on my own.



MJules,

e.e. cummings is one of my favorite poets.

My girl, when she was little, used to call herself a tom/girl. I named her so that her first two initials are e.e. because I like his poetry so much.
Huh.




iowanwoman

[u-dog]

this is my all time favorite poem:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of allnothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

[sailaway58]

Thanks for this thread. I really like the poetry. The line ,"To guide a ship with no sail," makes me want to say I'm here!
But really, I like the poems. Jeffery, Casey, really good stuff.
U-dog your poem clashes with my dark side and I need that.
Here is one I wrote a few years ago. My son performed it with me when he was 14 playing his guitar. I changed it to be less age dated.

Here I sit all alone
I’m just trying to make some sense of things
I see my boys, look how they’ve grown
Just yesterday they played on the swings

When I was young I took a bride
It’s been over 30 years
She’s still the one to catch my eye
We’ve been together through all the tears

I’m over 40, I guess you know
It’s time for me to sit and reflect
Midlife days have been a hitting me
It’s not as bad as I‘d expect

I’m a little older, a little cynical
I cherish memories of my good friends
The times we’ve shared and the love we gave
It’s all that matters in the end

This is a song of my reflections
This is a song that I rejoice
These past few years have gone quickly now
It seems I made the right choice

If you seem me and I seem quiet
Deep in thought about my soul
I’m just thinking about my life
And how much longer it will go

[iowan woman]

Wow,

UDog! The e.e. cummings poem you posted (I do not remember ever reading it) caught me unexpectedly - I am dead; this is the day of my rebirth. I like that. The poem is actually very dark, Sailaway. My dark side knows that.

I like your pensive poem, Sailaway, and that you wrote it with your kid. Do you remember the song, "I'm sailing away. Set an open course, for the open sea." That is what your moniker makes me think of. Who wrote that? "Cause I've got to be free, Free to face the life that's ahead of me..." Styx? I noticed you were of the age (close to mine) to know that.

Casey, I keep reading your poem "Te Be A Coward." I really like it. If you changed the word Coward to Abused, that poem would spell my name.

iowanwoman

[Casey]

Aw! thankies to all who liked mine... i really thought that e.e. cumming's was better. (im doing a paper in english on his greatness!)

Here is another poem that i wrote that just makes me happy every time i read it:

I Believe:

I believe in singing off key,
I believe in midnight snacks at 8 o’clock,
I believe in jumping in puddles with your best shoes on,
I believe in taking huge strides for a three minute walk.

I believe in lucky rainbows,
I believe in wishing on stars,
I believe in crawling on the floor,
I believe in comparing your fifth grade scars.

I believe in snowball fights with mud,
I believe in reading a book by the fire,
I believe in romance and clichés,
I believe that anything can inspire.

I believe that time is an allusion,
I believe every guy should learn to knit,
I believe that a smile makes you beautiful,
I believe that shoes are really worth it.

I believe in winking at a stranger,
I believe in funky last names,
I believe in dancing in the middle of the mall,
I believe in playing all my favorite kid games.

I believe in baking one giant cookie,
I believe in jumping on your grandparents’ bed,
I believe in naming your body pillow,
I believe that special always ends with ‘ed’.

I believe that some can be cruel,
I believe that most can be kind,
I believe that everyone can be in trouble,
I believe that everyone is intertwined.

I believe in bear hugs,
I believe in staring contests,
I believe in popping your knuckles,
I believe in high school recess.

I believe in microwavable s’mores,
I believe in kissing your friends on the cheek,
I believe in gazing into someone’s eyes,
I believe that Monday should be cut from the week,

I believe you really can have a soul mate,
I believe in being married for fifty years,
I believe that I will never grow taller,
And I believe that the ocean is made from God’s happy tears.

[iowan woman]

Casey,


I loved your poem about belief. You remind me of the beauty of being human.

Thanks

[antonyh]

I'm a huge fan of Mary Oliver's poems. Here is one of my favorites.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

[Casey]

That poem really makes me happy, because it shows that no matter what bad thing can happen, beauty still lives on, the world still goes on... A lesson we should all learn.

[antonyh]

Originally Posted by Casey

That poem really makes me happy, because it shows that no matter what bad thing can happen, beauty still lives on, the world still goes on... A lesson we should all learn.

Since you enjoyed that one, here is another Mary Oliver poem:

Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You know what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.

[Casey]

Thanks!!! Im doing a poetry project in English class and this is giving me great ideas!

[antiochian]

What a great thread to come and take a break and feed the mind and heart! Casey, your poems blow me away--they're beautiful. I read the last one by Mary Oliver just recently and it moved me. I'm afraid like sailaway, I have a harder time writing about happy things. Like so many artists, I do my best work when I'm depressed and half insane. Maybe I should write about the gift of insanity!

[Casey]

Originally Posted by antiochian

What a great thread to come and take a break and feed the mind and heart! Casey, your poems blow me away--they're beautiful. I read the last one by Mary Oliver just recently and it moved me. I'm afraid like sailaway, I have a harder time writing about happy things. Like so many artists, I do my best work when I'm depressed and half insane. Maybe I should write about the gift of insanity!

OH! Thank you so much! And yes, most of my poems where done when i was down in the dumps. If you write one about insanity, i will print it out and frame it on my wall!! Every good artist has some quirks!

[antonyh]

Originally Posted by antiochian

What a great thread to come and take a break and feed the mind and heart! Casey, your poems blow me away--they're beautiful. I read the last one by Mary Oliver just recently and it moved me. I'm afraid like sailaway, I have a harder time writing about happy things. Like so many artists, I do my best work when I'm depressed and half insane. Maybe I should write about the gift of insanity!

Yes, I have this problem too . Instead of waxing eloquent about the glories of the world I write about the horror I see around me. I only have one uplifting poem, a love poem I wrote to my partner when I was courting him. The rest of it is of the dark and serious nature. Here is the only happy poem I ever wrote:

Carpe Diem

When I gaze into your brown eyes
I yearn for my passions dew
to settle gently on the soil there
so forests and flowers can grow
and we can make love in trees shade
and gather rose buds while we may.

The last line is not mine!

[antonyh]

I love this thread...another poem:

America

Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud
Says America is for him a maximum security prison whose walls

Are made of Radio Shacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes
Where you can't tell the show from the commercials;

And as I contemplate how full of shit I think he is,
He says that even when he's driving to the mall in his Isuzu

Trooper with a gang of his friends, letting rap music pour over them
Like a boiling jacuzzi full of ballpeen hammers, even then he feels

Buried alive, captured and suffocated in the folds
Of the thick satin quilt of America.

And I wonder if this is a legitimate category of pain,
Or whethere he is just spin-doctoring a better grade,

And then I remember that when I stabbed my father in the dream last night,
It was not blood but money

That gushed out of him, bright green hundred-dollar bills
Spilling from his wounds, and, this is the funny part,

He gasped, "Thank God - those Ben Franklins were
Clogging up my heart -

And so I perish happily,
Freed from that which kept me from my liberty" -

Which is when I knew it was a dream, since my dad
Would never speak in rhymed couplets

And I look at the student with his acne and cell phone and phoney gheto clothes
And I think, "I am asleep in America too,

And I don't know how to wake myself either"
And I remember what Marx said near the end of his life:

"I was listening to the cries of the past,
when I should have been listening to the cries of the future"

But how could he have imagined 100 channels of 24-hour cable
Or what kind of nightmare it might be

When each day you watch rivers of bright merchandise run past you
And you are floating in the pleasure boat upon this river

Even while others are drowning underneath you
And you see their faces twisting in the surface of the waters

And yet it seems to be your own hand
Which turns the volume higher?

[Casey]

Another of my 'I Believe' poems!

I believe in stories of knights and horses,
I believe in playing hooky,
I believe that humans can purr,
I believe in reluctantly sharing a cookie.

I believe in crawling on the floor,
I believe in watching scary shows,
I believe that chocolate was the best invention,
I believe in wrinkled clothes.

I believe in loving who you love,
I believe in singing in the rain,
I believe that clovers bring good luck,
I believe that beauty doesn’t always mean pain.

I believe in punk rock bands,
I believe in classical tunes,
I believe in blaring headphones,
I believe in singing into a spoon.

I believe in recognizing failure,
I believe in seeing success,
I believe that dogs really do listen,
I believe in the ‘little black dress.’

I believe people are afraid,
I believe everyone needs a friend,
I believe we all are capable of destroying,
I believe that there is never really an end.

I believe it takes courage to be,
I believe it takes tears to grow,
I believe it takes hope to cure,
I believe it takes all of us to know.

I believe in the power of laughter,
I believe in the song in my heart,
I believe in Santa Clause,
I believe that love can’t be torn apart.

I believe that rain is truly a blessing,
I believe ghosts are spirits of loved ones,
I believe friends are the best medicine,
I believe in all the old reruns.

I believe in Heaven on Earth,
I believe in the ‘golden years.’
I believe in the good of mankind,
And I believe that with God we need not have fears.

[antonyh]

I enjoyed your poem Casey. Keep writing!