Ghost Poem

by Laura Moriarty

The story begins
Waiting for the trick
When after life
Death ends
The night goes on
The sick sea
As much as possible
Comes to me
In the form of
But not alive
In the words from
But not dead
We wed or end
Swallowed by
Sick with
And again

Seltzer

by Jim Carroll

1.
Here is my room, smiling like a forest
of navels               yet, in secret,
                                          so sad and filthy.


2.
breathe deep enough and we are possessed.
breathe again and we will be gone.


3.
the best thing about today
is the idea of tomorrow.
                                  we will go on a picnic.


4.
who can argue with 6000 swallows
flying from a single cloud,
                                          like joy.


5.
when we die we might see the Virgin Mary
sitting before the father, the son, and the Holy Ghost

right now I'll settle for you
with your bra unhooked        (under a tree)
on the Staten Island ferry.

the health act

by Tom Hibbard

By injuring others one creates merely oneself
Rather than creating something outside oneself.
A road ran beside the river Thames.
A pack of Marlboro cigarettes is advertised for $1.67.
Behind every Mosaic law is a beneficial reason.
The brothers in the new museum are polite.

The Fourth of October, 1963

by Philip Whalen

A cold hand among the clouds.
 

Torn Canvas

by Jim Carroll

A man passes through a gate
as wide as his eyes

his wife stands before it thirteen hours
she waits

she cries

from Poems

by Charles Reznikoff

        [ 23 ]

Under the heavens furrowed with clouds
A man behind his stumbling plough.

from Poems

by Charles Reznikoff

        [ 22 ]

She woke at a child crying
And turned to the empty cradle,
Forgetting.

The People Are a Temple

by Gennady Aygi (tr. Peter France)

And souls are candles, each lighting the other.

Happiness

by Günter Grass (tr. Michael Hamburger)

An empty bus
hurtles through the starry night.
Perhaps the driver is singing
and is happy because he sings.

Streets and Flowers

by Eugen Gomringer (tr. Jerome Rothenberg)

streets
streets and flowers

flowers
flowers and women

streets
streets and women

streets and flowers and women and
an admirer

Oceans

by Juan Ramón Jiménez (tr. Robert Bly)

     I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.
                                            And nothing
happens! Nothing . . . Silence . . . Waves . . .

     Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?

The Gods Are Back

by René Char (tr. Peter Boyle)

The gods are back, companions. Right now they have just entered this life; but the words that revoke them, whispered underneath the words that reveal them, have also appeared that we might suffer together.

Metal Coughdrops

by Tristan Tzara (tr. Jerome Rothenberg)

her bare feet tell the neurasthenic: fake moustaches on that ostrich
made in u.s.a.
the cold bird tells the monocle: mouth got no lips I’ll kill myself
but the cubist tells the cubist: i have invented the chief-of-scratch & I am
his boss
the boss tells the boss: boss

Wonder

by Yannis Ritsos (tr. Minas Savvas)

Before going to bed, he placed his watch under his pillow.
Then he went to sleep. The wind outside was blowing.
You, who know the wondrous succession of the slightest movements,
you will understand. A man, his watch, the wind. Nothing more.

[If they want me to be a mystic, fine. I’m a mystic.]

by Fernando Pessoa (tr. Edward Honig and Susan M. Brown)

If they want me to be a mystic, fine. I’m a mystic.
I’m a mystic, but only of the body.
My soul is simple and it doesn’t think.

My mysticism is not wanting to know.
It’s living without thinking about it.

I don’t know what Nature is. I sing it.
I live on a hilltop
In a solitary whitewashed cabin.
And that’s what it is all about.

[Looking over my shoulder]

by Allen Ginsberg

Looking over my shoulder
my behind was covered
with cherry blossoms.

[Eastern guard tower]

by Etheridge Knight

Eastern guard tower
glints in sunset; convicts rest
like lizards on rocks.

After a Death

by Roo Borson

Seeing that there’s no other way,
I turn his absence into a chair.
I can sit in it,
gaze out through the window.
I can do what I do best
and then go out into the world.
And I can return then with my useless love,
to rest,
because the chair is there.

[Night. Street. Lamp. Drugstore.]

by Alexander Blok (tr. Ilya Kaminsky)

Night. Street. Lamp. Drugstore.
Dull and sleazy light.
Live twenty-five years more —
It will be as now. No way out.

You die — and again you begin.
All is repeated as before:
Night. The canal’s icy ripples.
Drugstore. Lamp. Street.

Aubade on East 12th Street

by August Kleinzahler

The skylight silvers
and a faint shudder from the underground
travels up the building’s steel.

Dawn breaks across this wilderness
of roofs with their old wooden storage tanks
and caps of louvered cowlings

moving in the wind. Your back,
raised hip and thigh
well-tooled as a rounded baluster

on a lathe of shadow and light.

Catullus #48

by Bernadette Mayer, afer Catullus

I'd kiss your eyes three hundred thousand times
If you would let me, Juventius, kiss them
All the time, your darling eyes, eyes of honey
And even if the formal field of kissing
Had more kisses than there's corn in August's fields
I still wouldn't have had enough of you

Dead Salamander's Song

by Jim Carroll

The sistine eye,
The twisted thigh. If
Dead skin says nothing,
Then it cannot lie. But

Its coral breath
Could light night when alive.
And its will to outsmart
the sun was a dance
Which no language survives.

Hotel

by Guillaume Apollinaire (tr. Roger Shattuck)

My bedroom is shaped like a cage,
The sun puts its arm through the window.
But I, wanting to smoke to make mirages,
I light my cigarette from the day’s fire.
I do not want to work — I want to smoke.

In the Evening

by Else Lasker-Schüler (tr. Eavan Boland)

I had to do it — suddenly, I had to sing.
I had no idea why —
But when the evening came I wept. I wept bitterly.

Pain was everywhere. Sprang out of everything —
Spread everywhere. Into everything —
And then lay on top of me.

from The Clay Hill Anthology

by Hayden Carruth

Roads wear out slowly,
but they wear out. The milestones
twinkle in long grass.

Prayer

by Galway Kinnell

Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.

Motto

by Bertolt Brecht (tr. by John Willett)

In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing
About the dark times.

You

by Kenneth Rexroth

Let Y stand for you who says,
“Very clever, but surely
These were not written for your
Children?” Let Y stand for yes.

Get Well Card

by Elio Schneeman

I write this in the garden planted beside your bed.

ZZZZZ

by Carl Rakosi

Lines

by William Carlos Williams

Leaves are graygreen,
the glass broken, bright green.

Three

by Gregory Corso

                1

The streetsinger is sick
crouched in the doorway, holding his heart.

One less song in the noisy night.


                2

Outside the wall
the aged gardener plants his shears
A new young man
has come to snip the hedge


                3

Death weeps because Death is human
spending all day in a movie when a child dies.

Gregory Corso

[The Pleiades disappear]

by Sappho (tr. Sam Hamill)

The Pleiades disappear,
the pale moon goes down.

After midnight, time blurs:
sleepless, I lie alone.

Fingers

by Orrick Johns

I’ve ten fingers
Very much admired,
I shall frame them
For they cannot do anything;
They cannot earn dinner
Or even hold a pebble . . .
Pebbles are pretty falling through them.

from “Olives” (1915)

The Beaver (twelve gematrias)

Check out The Beaver (twelve gematrias) by Jerome Rothenberg.

Some Prose Poems for You

A series of short prose poems posted by the indefatigable W.B. Keckler, definitely worth checking out, as is his blog in general. “All babies are spontaneous and all consciousness is a priori waiting. I'm not returning to this Waiting Room ever again in this lifetime. I'm not sure about later.”

Middleton Gardens

by Gregory Corso

Cypress and myrtle
Azalea and holly
Joy! Joy!
But will the turtle
Forsake its melancholy?

Mine

by Elaine Equi

I hide it
when even I
can't find it,

wordsmall

it directs
everything—

returns
as a gift
from someone else.

To Reverdy

Here's a link to another great short poem by Tom Clark. It's called "To Reverdy."

Sad Song

by Philip Whalen

i is a statue of white-hot metal
i is a river that never stopped
i is the falling flower petal
is the lover I never copped.

A Western Haiku

by Jack Kerouac

Birds singing
   in the dark
— Rainy dawn.

The Sociology of Games

by Edward Dorn

In soccer
when you do something good
you get a hug and a kiss

In american football
when you do something good
you get a slap on the ass.

Life

by Darrell B. Grayson

A man goes to the hospital
Has his foot cut off
Goes home, has a beer
And goes to sleep.
 

Fête of the Little Boats

by Jeanne Marie Beaumont

Handkerchief sails
             sneeze of a breeze
                   stowaway bee
on the stern
             Gently the petite boat
                   dreams toward the green horizon
Called her
             Merrilee
 

[Inked-in]

by Fanny Howe

Inked-in
nerve endings
never by owner seen.
Snow-lit like
the house of suffering
known by no one but who's in.
 

Thanksgiving

by Joe Brainard

It seems to be that Thanksgiving Day is nearly upon us.
And I’m wondering (and curious) as to what (if anything)
Thanksgiving Day really “means” to me. Or, rather, what it
makes me think of. Recalls to mind. And so now —
(emptying out my head) — let’s see what pops up. Well, first
is turkey. Second is cranberry sauce. And third is pilgrims.
 

Sleep

by Bill Knott

We brush the other, invisible moon.
Its caves come out and carry us inside.
 

October 20th

by David Trinidad

I was so surprised
I'd never have thought you were
waiting, watching me.
 

Heaven

by Robert Creeley

If life were easy
and it all worked out
what would this sadness
be about.

If it was happy
day after day,
what would happen
anyway.
 

The White Horse

by D.H. Lawrence

The youth walks up to the white horse, to put its halter on
and the horse looks at him in silence.
They are so silent, they are in another world.
 

On a Leaf Picked Up in the Road

by Aldo Vianello (tr. from the Italian by Richard Burns)

Lady,
most blonde and pink,
most beautiful, you do not hear
how across the landscape
your voice responds
to all the wounded silences
of a heart alone.
 

Ants

by Shinkichi Takahashi (tr. from the Japanese by Lucien Stryk)

Nothing exists, yet fascinating
The ants scurrying in moonlight.

It is the eye deceives:
The ants—they are nothing but moonlight.

The idea of being's impossible:
There's neither moon nor ants.

Hat tip to Why Is There Something
 

Poem

by A. R. Ammons

In a high wind the
leaves don't
fall but fly
straight out of the
tree like birds
 

Beck

by Brian Clements

Where can you begin on an infinite surface?
Wherever the eye falls.
The simple act of calling to can be seen as the love act.
What seems to be uniform from a distance could be a canyon.
Am I talking to you?
This page shines with fantasy, from the Greek.
Look—nothing but words.
 

Poem

by Ted Berrigan

Yea, though I walk
through the Valley of
the Shadow of Death, I
Shall fear no evil—
for I am a lot more
insane than
This Valley.
 

from Three Laments

by Diane di Prima

     III

So here I am the coolest in New York
what dont swing I dont push.

In some Elysian field
by a big tree
I chew my pride
like cud.
 

from Three Laments

by Diane di Prima

     II

I have
the upper hand
but if I keep it
I’ll lose the circulation
in one arm
 

from Three Laments

by Diane di Prima

     I

Alas
I believe
I might have become
a great writer
but
the chairs
in the library
were too hard
 

from Of Being Numerous

by George Oppen

Clarity

In the sense of transparence,
I don’t mean that much can be explained.

Clarity in the sense of silence.
 

Death

by Bill Knott

Going to sleep, I cross my hands on my chest.
They will place my hands like this.
It will look as though I am flying into myself.
 

Musical Variations

by Bei Dao

clouds are advancing, on the bus
a man smiles behind his newspaper
like a god reading his bible

the driver’s heart roars
uphill, and slips on toward the tunnel

amid syncopated street lights
I enter communal sleep
drifting through dog-bones and dog-joints

up toward inner sanctum, I ascend sublimation
 

Peel

by Abigail Child

I can’t remember how to ‘get’ the picture
love sticks up
between mutuality
to make sense of
body
not as a rule but a break in particular

just a lark to a fault

until repair is stalled
 

Central Reader

by William Fuller

I hold the book up to my face. The dead file out through a bullet-hole. Impassive and denatured, all the books are talking. The green guitars play.
 

[My eye is fuller than my vase]

by Emily Dickinson

My Eye is fuller than my vase—
Her Cargo—is of Dew—
And still—my Heart—my Eye outweighs—
East India—for you!
 

Weight

by Rosmarie Waldrop

The horizontal thread
falls and a figure
is deformed
yellow mouth
clothes and acacias change
a late apprentice
in the sun
I make a mirror
for the tarnish
 

I Like to Collapse

by Joseph Ceravolo

Saturday night    I buy a soda
Someone’s hand opens     I hold it
It begins to rain
Avenue A     is near the river
   

[In the harvest field]

by Emperor Tenji (tr. from the Japanese by Peter McMillan)

In the harvest field
gaps in the rough-laid thatch
of my makeshift hut
let the dewdrops in,
but it is not only dew
that wets my sleeves
through this long night alone.
 

If I Became a Stone

by So Chong-Ju (tr. from the Korean by David R. McCann)

If I became
a stone

stone would become
lotus

lotus,
lake

and if I became
a lake

lake would become
lotus

lotus,
stone
 

Our Life

by Paul Eluard (tr. from the French by A. S. Kline)
 
We’ll not reach the goal one by one but in pairs
We know in pairs we will know all about us
We’ll love everything our children will smile
At the dark history or mourn alone
 

If I Was God

by Joe Brainard

If I was God
up there in heaven
looking down at us
I think
I'd find it hard to believe
that I'd actually done it.
 

Anyone

by Robert Grenier

up
for a second
walk around
the cemetery
 

Poem

by David Trinidad

Sometimes it seems the night conspires

to undo me      It hasn’t stopped pouring

and I’m trapped inside listening to songs

that inevitably evoke these sentiments

I’m really lost      Hopelessly immersed

in lyrics      “Love is the answer,” etc.
 

The Moon

by Terence Winch

So, this is the moon.
There are only holes
where once there were motels.

But, there is a motel somewhere.

Little white men take you to it.
 

The Cycle

by Bill Knott

what's the use
waking all night
to write down truths
which dawn quite
easily refutes
 

A Winter's Tale

by Charles North

She is stranded on a ladder
and her hair is in mine.
She has her daughters and I have mine.
Her dowry is emeralds set in a neutral Arches.
I hold her up to the night
like a subaqueous lake against the sea.
Her eyes keep edging off into the transparency.
Exit: pursued by a bear.
 

Vowels

by Christian Bök

loveless vessels
we row
solo love

we see
love solve loss
else we see
love sow woe

selves we woo
we lose
losses we levee
we owe

we sell
loose vows
so we love
less well

so low
so level
wolves evolve
 

Manifesto

by Carrie Comer

The bodies

we lust after,
they should all

be burned:

corpus hilarious.

The flaming stack

but a tiny flare reflected
in your pupil.
 

Statue

by Tom Clark

The angel asked, as his shoulders were pressed into the stone
Why me? And taken away from the inhabited body,
Like the lyric voice rustling from memory forests,
Childhood rushes toward death, a wind in those woods,
Crashing through trees, dying out,
Settling like a white mist over everything.
 

   This poem is also available at the author's site: check it out!

[ounce code orange]

by Clark Coolidge

ounce code orange
a
      the
               ohm
trilobite trilobites
 

Standoff

by William Bronk

In business and politics, sometimes in love
even, we speak to the public and expect a reply.
But the arts speak in private to the silent world.
They stay unanswered after centuries.
 

Fête of the Little Boats

by Jeanne Marie Beaumont

Handkerchief sails
             sneeze of a breeze
                   stowaway bee
on the stern
             Gently the petite boat
                   dreams toward the green horizon
Called her
             Merrilee
 

Patterns

by Catherine Simmonds

Fleet clouds
relieved of snow
passing in
January’s
sharp light.
Three coloured
houses
repeating themselves,
patterns on china
on nerves
on ice.
 

Election Day

by William Carlos Williams

Warm sun, quiet air
an old man sits

in the doorway of
a broken house—

boards for windows
plaster falling

from between the stones
and strokes the head

of a spotted dog
 

Poem to Poetry

by Bill Knott

Poetry,
your are an electric,
a magic, field—like the space
between a sleepwalker’s outheld arms
 

from Circe/Mud Poems

by Margaret Atwood

My face, my other faces
stretching over it like
rubber, like flowers opening
and closing, like rubber,
like liquid steel,
like steel. Face of steel.

Look at me and see your reflection.
 

To Ant

by Cole Swensen

The shattered glass.
And we all live on.
The points of the form
will not align, will not
slow down.
A holy book of moving punctuation marks,
dark salt of a
permanently parted sea
drowning
memory shocks like electricity.
They say it all comes back at once
while the million bodies hurdle on.
 

[the poem begins & ends nowhere]

by bpNichol

the poem begins & ends nowhere
being part of the flow you live with
starts when you're born
stepping in & out of
such moments you are aware
emerge as pages put in a book & titled
living always on the edges of
you are drawn into & cannot encompass
the flow of which is poetry

People of the Future

by Ted Berrigan

People of the future
while you are reading these poems, remember
you didn’t write them,
I did.
 

[World to be stuttered after]

by Paul Celan (tr. John Felstiner)

World to be stuttered after,
in which I’ll have been
a guest, a name
sweated down from the wall
where a wound licks up high.
 

The Black Stags

by René Char (tr. Gustaf Sobin)

The waters were speaking into the ear of the sky.
Stags, you have leapt millennial space
From the darkness of the rock to the air's caresses.

How, from my spacious shore, I adore their passion:
The hunter who presses, and the spirit who sights you.
What if, in the instant of hope, I had their eyes?
 

from Three Little Poems

by Ron Padgett

4:50 and dark
already? Everyone
wants to be
beautiful but
few are. 4:51
and darker.
 

from Three Little Poems

by Ron Padgett

In literature and song
love is often expressed
in the imagery of
weather. For example,
“Now that we are one
Clouds won't hide our sun.
There’ll be blue skies . . .
etc.” Partly cloudy
and cool today, high
around fifty, mostly
cloudy tonight and tomorrow.
 

from Three Little Poems

by Ron Padgett

I call you on
the ’phone &
we chat, but
the way tele
is missing from ’phone is the
way it makes me
feel, wishing
the rest of
you were here.
 

[Though this body, I know]

by Ki no Sadamaru (tr. Burton Watson)

Though this body, I know,
is a thing of no substance,
must it fade, alas,
so swiftly,
like a soundless fart.
 

Triolet on a Line Apocryphally Attributed to Martin Luther

by A.E. Stallings

Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night,
The swaying in darkness, the lovers like spoons?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes?
Does he hum them to while away sad afternoons
And the long, lonesome Sundays? Or sing them for spite?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night?
 

[love is a place]

by E. E. Cummings

love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds
 

The Woods

by Hayden Carruth

Finally the woods
are stripped down
and the great trees
are gone,

leaving a tangle
of saplings and vines,
used up and ugly,
confused signs

of the simplicities
that once were here,
the high crowns for tanagers,
glades for the deer.
 

Accidents

by Jean Follain (tr. W.S. Merwin)

One evening stepping barefoot
on a nail
falling out of a tree
swallowing water that is too cold
are mortal accidents
imposed by ancient fate
so the world has no age
the sky remains intact and blue
nothing can keep the walls from drying.
 

All Morning

by Gregory Orr

All morning the dream lingers.
I am like the thick grass
in a meadow, still
soaked with dew at noon.
 

from War and Silence

by Robert Bly

One leg walks down the road and leaves
The other behind, the eyes part
And fly off in opposite directions