Tag: Poetry

A Nice Old Poem

Find out all about it by clicking the title to see it all. (Also not proselytizing.)

January by Robert Bridges 1844 – 1930

Cold is the winter day, misty and dark:
   The sunless sky with faded gleams is rent:
And patches of thin snow outlying, mark
   The landscape with a drear disfigurement.

The trees their mournful branches lift aloft:
   The oak with knotty twigs is full of trust,
With bud-thronged bough the cherry in the croft;
   The chestnut holds her gluey knops upthrust.

No birds sing, but the starling chaps his bill
   And chatters mockingly; the newborn lambs
Within their strawbuilt fold beneath the hill
   Answer with plaintive cry their bleating dams.

Their voices melt in welcome dreams of spring,
   Green grass and leafy trees and sunny skies:
My fancy decks the woods, the thrushes sing,
    Meadows are gay, bees hum and scents arise.

And God the Maker doth my heart grow bold
   To praise wintry works not understood,
Who all the worlds and ages doth behold,
   Evil and good as one, and all as good.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on January 4, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

Some Poetry on New Year’s Morning

It is about war. It is a beautiful piece of work about war. Click the title to get the background.

All I can see is nothing Sahar Muradi

If nothing that can be seen can either be God or represent Him to us as He is, then to find God we must pass beyond everything that can be seen and enter into darkness.
Since nothing that can be heard is God, to find Him we must enter into silence.
—Thomas Merton, from “New Seeds of Contemplation,” 1961

I swear to God, mom, I am exhausted, but praise be to God in all circumstances.
—writing, translated from the Arabic, on the Al-Shifa Hospital walls, April 2024

All I can see is nothing
Fields of

Hollow
The O that escapes

A pasture of
Mouths

An apartment building
Of locked jaws

The silent weeping
Of rocks

I hear nothing
In the bags of soft limbs sighing

Milk teeth
Sharpening a father’s heart

The cone hat on the small head
Singing to plumes

Iftar in the tents
Flapping pages off the moon

But Your name over and over
On the hospital walls

But Your name stilling
The fire that does not cease

But Your name everywhere
Everything all at once

I see nothing
From this distance

This deepest night
This longest darkness

Fumble at fajr
To loosen my gasps

I repeat Your name
Over and over

Then bow to Your wisdom
To the terror of Your liberation

O that I may not see anything
More

Copyright © 2024 by Sahar Muradi. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 31, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poetry for An Election

You know what to do to find out more.

Morning After The Election by Regie Cabico

I can’t control
the vanishing
       of bees

       but I can control
the honey I swallow
to soothe
       the vocal cords

I can’t control boys
       bully-tumbling
another boy

in the classroom
       like they’re
in a mosh pit

but I can remember
       rolling on hills
with boys being the bully

I can’t change my major
from drama to global peace

but I can write
similes of serenity

& poetic sermons
in temples
of matrimonial fanfare

I know the bombs, the explosives,
and Molotovs are overhead

and I can’t control 
       the lottery, the multiverses,
and tomorrow’s astrology

but whatever tarot card I pick
       or whatever
   gets thrown
       at my face: 

Hangman
       or Fallen Towers

I can express
my weathering emotions

to sing while hoarse
to control air placement
to find the chakra

the right amount of air
to pass through my throat

oh sing with me
the octave between

blade & nectar
rubble & clouds 
ash & mountain

Copyright © 2024 by Regie Cabico. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 30, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

I Like This; I’m Taking It as a Statement about Social Media. Ideas?

Also, we here will be pleased when people share their happiness. The poem makes good sense to me from what I see around me here in town, but it isn’t true of absolutely everyone and everywhere. Though I do strongly urge that people don’t disclose they’re travelling until they arrive back home! 🌞

Be Happy, Don’t Tell Anyone (Sonnet) | Abhijit Naskar, Neurosonnets | Merry Christmas 2024

Some Poetry for Tuesday

Flannel Sheets and Winter Solstice

Saturday Poetry

You know the drill; click the title to get more.

herederos de cero Sheila Maldonado

I’ve returned from the question         the motherland 
            a continually illegitimate relationship
I’m a pretend immigrant       afraid of coats and the cold
            stunned by space and the sun   up in the face 
landlocked      behind the barbed wire of mama’s house 

what did I do there     scratch twitch stare 
           wandered with a prima     and her daughters
was asked about the prima      who should have been there
           she left the world      after her mama   mi tía   se fue 
nadie era nadie           en esa casa     only the men

it made my mama sick             to see me leave 
           into the hot night     of her origins
I return for the right    to walk in the dark
           like the black cat family
that roamed our alley           in the valley of Sula

if I woke up at a decent hour      I caught the colibrí
           little brown red god     came around 9   10am
humming into a tree   of little red stems
           never know names 
                       a place of teeny overlooked gods

I drank tea      at the white iron table
           another tía gave mama      they got on so well 
about their nests           in the capital of slurs
           will I be the only bird to be about the tree 
last one flitting           do we want me to be

Copyright © 2024 by Sheila Maldonado. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 20, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

Finally Friday!

Have a poem. As always, the title is a link to learn more.

Blues Franchise David Henderson

Line from a letter, “Blues Franchise.” I believe it is a motif language rather than thought—intimately

Blues as art as theme as exhibition

Up on a midtown metropolis edifice

Billboard façade 50 feet tall thirty feet wide: BLUE SMOKE

Of a black femme-like face framed by her fingers tapered upward in the V of her palms

Looking off, her eyes below her painted on eyebrows

And Caucasoid wig solid black

touching off of a violet plunging deeper into the decorated pigment

A frame furls hints of blue in a spectral geometry

Framing tightly the face, reposed

A white strap over one deep ochre shoulder as background

 
Could be trans-shim or a delightful Caledonia,

red skein of a lipstick kiss imprinted invisibly in a nano dimension

 
Replications across the marquees of legions of subway cars

Her face on the mini billboard above the seat next to

The moving doors

Always looking somewhere else as the

Masses travel to all destinations

Blues smoke surrounding whatever stage as forum

For the franchise

Forever after for as far as the past goes.

 
Entering the negative space of a corporate behemoth

A lobby of the skyscraper museum or loft like enclosures

interlocking directorates of high art residencies.

 
Consumer beware of what you purchase with your eyes,

The presence of your body

 
                                              *

Out of the blue

You

Out of the blue

And into the blues

You

Out of the blue

You

Out of the blue

Vanish into the blue

you

Copyright © 2024 by David Henderson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 19, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

More Poetry

Re-post: … and … : a #poem

We Have a Poem

Just click on the title.

Sign by Sahar Romani

What aren’t you willing to believe. A heart  
graffitied fuchsia on the street, a missive from another life.
Remember the stem of lavender you found
in a used copy of Bishop’s poems, a verse underlined:  
The world is a mist. And then the world is
minute and vast and clear. Suddenly, across the aisle  
a woman with your mother’s bracelets, her left wrist  
all shimmer and gold, you almost winced.  
Coincidence is the great mystery of the human mind
but so is the trans-oceanic reach of Shah Rukh Khan’s  
slow blink. Each of us wants a hint, a song
that dares us to look inside. True, it takes whimsy  
and ego to believe the universe will tap your shoulder  
in the middle of a random afternoon. That t-shirt  
on a stranger’s chest, a bumper sticker on the highway upstate.  
Truth isn’t going anywhere. It’s your eyes passing by.

Copyright © 2024 by Sahar Romani. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 16, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

Cookies In The Oven

but this is so nice, I had to share it. Sorry about the cookies, though. Our moon isn’t full here until 3:01 Sunday AM.

december full moon by onecloud

fri 13, 2024 over richmond st. at spadina ave. Read on Substack

december full moon

over richmond at spadina

at 5 PM

under full moon 
traffic west bound 
bound for home

at oxford st

at richmond