Favourite Pomes

[Tift]

“Poetry” by Marianne Moore got whittled down over the years
from twenty-nine lines to four:

“I, too, dislike it.
Reading it, however, with a
  contempt for it, one discovers in
it, after all, a place for the genuine.”

“Moore described the rest of the poem as 'padding,'
and it’s true that the lines are self-contradictory
and hard to explicate, but that, surely, was the point:
they show simultaneously the pointlessness, strangeness,
and necessity of poetry. “

Poetry
by Marianne Moore

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all
this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf
under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that
feels a
flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician–
nor is it valid
to discriminate against 'business documents and

school-books'; all these phenomena are important. One must
make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
'literalists of
the imagination'–above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, 'imaginary gardens with real toads in them', shall
we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry.

(But the last 5 lines are key)

(Note extract from NYRB)

[Tift]

Sexism
by David Lehman

The happiest moment in a woman's life
Is when she hears the turn of her lover's key
In the lock, and pretends to be asleep
When he enters the room, trying to be
Quiet but clumsy, bumping into things,
And she can smell the liquor on his breath
But forgives him because she has him back
And doesn't have to sleep alone.

The happiest moment is a man's life
Is when he climbs out of bed
With a woman, after an hour's sleep,
After making love, and pulls on
His trousers, and walks outside,
And pees in the bushes, and sees
The high August sky full of stars
And gets in his car and drives home.

[Tift]

Life
by Mary Darby Robinson (1758-1800)

“What is this world?­ thy school, O misery!
“Our only lesson is to learn to suffer.”

– YOUNG.

LOVE, thou sportive fickle boy,
Source of anguish, child of joy,
Ever wounding­ever smiling,
Soothing still, and still beguiling;
What are all thy boasted treasures,
Tender sorrows, transient pleasures?
Anxious hopes, and jealous fears,
LAUGHING HOURS, and MOURNING YEARS.

What is FRIENDSHIP’S soothing name?
But a shad’wy, vap’rish flame;
Fancy’s balm for ev’ry wound,
Ever sought, but rarely found;
What is BEAUTY ? but a flow’r,
Blooming, fading in an hour;
Deck’d with brightest tints at morn,
At twilight with’ring on a thorn;
Like the gentle Rose of spring,
Chill’d by ev’ry zephyr’s wing,
Ah! how soon its colour flies,
Blushes, trembles, falls, and dies.

What is YOUTH ? a smiling sorrow,
Blithe to day, and sad to-morrow;
Never fix’d, for ever ranging,
Laughing, weeping, doating, changing;
Wild, capricious, giddy, vain,
Cloy’d with pleasure, nurs’d with pain;
AGE steals on with wint’ry face,
Ev’ry rapt’rous Hope to chase;
Like a wither’d, sapless tree,
Bow’d to chilling Fate’s decree;
Strip’d of all its foliage gay,
Drooping at the close of day;
What of tedious Life remains?
Keen regrets and cureless pains;
Till DEATH appears, a welcome friend,
To bid the scene of sorrow end.

[Tift]

Nightclub
by Billy Collins

You are so beautiful and I am a fool
to be in love with you
is a theme that keeps coming up
in songs and poems.
There seems to be no room for variation.
I have never heard anyone sing
I am so beautiful
and you are a fool to be in love with me,
even though this notion has surely
crossed the minds of women and men alike.
You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool
is another one you don’t hear.
Or, you are a fool to consider me beautiful.
That one you will never hear, guaranteed.

For no particular reason this afternoon
I am listening to Johnny Hartman
whose dark voice can curl around
the concepts on love, beauty, and foolishness
like no one else’s can.
It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette
someone left burning on a baby grand piano
around three o’clock in the morning;
smoke that billows up into the bright lights
while out there in the darkness
some of the beautiful fools have gathered
around little tables to listen,
some with their eyes closed,
others leaning forward into the music
as if it were holding them up,
or twirling the loose ice in a glass,
slipping by degrees into a rhythmic dream.

Yes, there is all this foolish beauty,
borne beyond midnight,
that has no desire to go home,
especially now when everyone in the room
is watching the large man with the tenor sax
that hangs from his neck like a golden fish.
He moves forward to the edge of the stage
and hands the instrument down to me
and nods that I should play.
So I put the mouthpiece to my lips
and blow into it with all my living breath.
We are all so foolish,
my long bebop solo begins by saying,
so damn foolish
we have become beautiful without even knowing it.

[JessiCapri]

Walking into the future,
every single step we take plants seeds
Seeds that will grow into the reality
we will live in

You have control over the future,
choose your seeds wisely
One seed can grow respect,
one seed grows vision,
one seed grows beauty and grace,
and another seed grows hate

You are the sower, you are the Creator.
With each step, each word, you create a world
You bring reality into being each moment,
every moment

Is it pain or kindness that you are planting with your steps today?
When you move on, what will trace
the journey you walked?

Will it be the weeds of hatred,
bitterness and sorrow?
And the twisted vines of resentment,
envy and meanness
choking the ground and poisoning the future?

If you walk with courage, your steps will glow
with the flowers and blossoms of hope,
joy and forgiveness
and the abundant fruits of community,
tolerance and compassion
Radiant proof of Blessings from the Creator

How did you use Your Divinity today?
Were you poisonous or healing?
Kind or cruel?

Were you a benevolent or vengeful Creator?
Tomorrow awaits your choices.
You have a World to Create
~ Abby Willowroot ~

[Tift]

The People Upstairs
by Ogden Nash

The people upstairs all practise ballet
Their living room is a bowling alley
Their bedroom is full of conducted tours.
Their radio is louder than yours,
They celebrate week-ends all the week.
When they take a shower, your ceilings leak.
They try to get their parties to mix
By supplying their guests with Pogo sticks,
And when their fun at last abates,
They go to the bathroom on roller skates.
I might love the people upstairs more
If only they lived on another floor.

[Tift]

So sweet love seemed that April morn
by Robert Seymour Bridges

So sweet love seemed that April morn,
When first we kissed beside the thorn,
So strangely sweet, it was not strange
We thought that love could never change.

But I can tell–let truth be told–
That love will change in growing old;
Though day by day is naught to see,
So delicate his motions be.

And in the end ’twill come to pass
Quite to forget what once he was,
Nor even in fancy to recall
The pleasure that was all in all.

His little spring, that sweet we found,
So deep in summer floods is drowned,
I wonder, bathed in joy complete,
How love so young could be so sweet.

[Tift]

Autumn Song
by Katherine Mansfield

Now’s the time when children’s noses
All become as red as roses
And the colour of their faces
Makes me think of orchard places
Where the juicy apples grow,
And tomatoes in a row.

And to-day the hardened sinner
Never could be late for dinner,
But will jump up to the table
Just as soon as he is able,
Ask for three times hot roast mutton–
Oh! the shocking little glutton.

Come then, find your ball and racket,
Pop into your winter jacket,
With the lovely bear-skin lining.
While the sun is brightly shining,
Let us run and play together
And just love the autumn weather.

[Tift]

Please Master
by Allen Ginsberg

Please master can I touch your cheeck
please master can I kneel at your feet
please master can I loosen your blue pants
please master can I gaze at your golden haired belly
please master can I have your thighs bare to my eyes
please master can I take off my clothes below your chair
please master can I can I kiss your ankles and soul
please master can I touch lips to your hard muscle hairless thigh
please master can I lay my ear pressed to your stomach
please master can I wrap my arms around your white ass
please master can I lick your groin gurled with blond soft fur
please master can I touch my tongue to your rosy asshole
please master may I pass my face to your balls,
please master order me down on the floor,
please master tell me to lick your thick shaft
please master put your rough hands on my bald hairy skull
please master press my mouth to your prick-heart
please master press my face into your belly, pull me slowly strong thumbed
till your dumb hardness fills my throat to the base
till I swallow and taste your delicate flesh-hot prick barrel veined Please
Mater push my shoulders away and stare in my eyes, & make me bend over
the table
please master grab my thighs and lift my ass to your waist
please master your hand’s rough stroke on my neck your palm down to my
backside
please master push me, my feet on chairs, till my hole feels the breath of
your spit and your thumb stroke
please master make my say Please Master Fuck me now Please
Master grease my balls and hairmouth with sweet vaselines
please master stroke your shaft with white creams
please master touch your cock head to my wrinkled self-hole
please master push it in gently, your elbows enwrapped round my breast
your arms passing down to my belly, my penis you touch w/ your fingers
please master shove it in me a little, a little, a little,
please master sink your droor thing down my behind
& please master make me wiggle my rear to eat up the prick trunk
till my asshalfs cuddle your thighs, my back bent over,
till I’m alone sticking out, your sword stuck throbbing in me
please master pull out and slowly roll onto the bottom
please master lunge it again, and withdraw the tip
please please master fuck me again with your self, please fuck me Please
Master drive down till it hurts me the softness the
Softness please master make love to my ass, give body to center, & fuck me
for good like a girl,
tenderly clasp me please master I take me to thee,
& drive in my belly your selfsame sweet heat-rood
you fingered in solitude Denver or Brooklyn or fucked in a maiden in Paris
carlots
please master drive me thy vehicle, body of love drops, sweat fuck
body of tenderness, Give me your dogh fuck faster
please master make me go moan on the table
Go moan O please master do fuck me like that
in your rhythm thrill-plunge & pull-back-bounce & push down
till I loosen my asshole a dog on the table yelping with terror delight to be
loved
Please master call me a dog, an ass beast, a wet asshole,
& fuck me more violent, my eyes hid with your palms round my skull
& plunge down in a brutal hard lash thru soft drip-fish
& throb thru five seconds to spurt out your semen heat
over & over, bamming it in while I cry out your name I do love you
please Master.

May 1968

[Tift]

Flavors of My Mind
Ken Allan Dronsfield

Contempt in a shaded gray
virtuous omnipotent pinks
rally through the green ivy
vines of feted consciousness.
Vanilla violet paths follow
the blood-red rivers while
blue-black chambers ignite
white flying herds of nerds.
Preposterous nerves on fire,
graciously curtsy to a queen
of tangerine smiles all the while
kicking a yellow ball of dreams.
I’m a dark silver starlight orb
bouncing through the galaxy in
a purple frock mocked by Odin.
Righteous blame, red once again.
Holler from a mountain of shame,
on a whirling grain of golden sand
a sufferance of pious blue proclivity
Banging drums in a peppermint band.

[Tift]

An App a Day
by Ralph Monday

She said he didn’t know how
to love.
No problem–downloaded a
Love app and made like Valentino.
Not satisfied, she sighed that he
lacked sensitivity.
So…hit Google and felt, like an
Alaskan snow crab dipped in
drawn butter, the curing call–Dr. Phil
Sensitive Male App.
Didn’t help with chick flicks.
Did help with fake tears, cheerleaders,
Cheerios.
Which troubled her commitment
detection feelers.
Found an app for that, buck fifty,
on ITunes, inspiration for facebooking
an old parking pad to seek counsel.
She happily sent a link to an advice
app hidden deep in Pipl,
but by this stage he had forgotten
why he had sought the first three.
By the time his memory app cleared
Homeland Security he lost the password
to the Ipad, went to An App a Day,
discovered that she had downloaded
the Coming Out App.

[Tift]

The Dog
by Ogden Nash

The truth I do not stretch or shove
When I state that the dog is full of love.
I’ve also found, by actual test,
A wet dog is the lovingest.

[Soniaslut]

THE GREAT PANJANDRUM

Samuel Foote 1885
(Arranged in verse by Randolph Caldecott)

So she went into the garden
to cut a cabbage-leaf
to make an apple-pie;
and at the same time
a great she-bear, coming down the street,
pops its head into the shop.
What! no soap?
So he died,
and she very imprudently married the Barber:
and there were present
the Picninnies,
and the Joblillies,
and the Garyulies,
and the great Panjandrum himself,
with the little round button at top;
and they all fell to playing the game of catch-as-catch-can,
till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.

[Tift]

Free In Art
by Nathy Dulanto Bernuy

How can I stand here and be focused
When all I can think of is Art
My mind is lost somewhere else
Because my thoughts are flying to another place
You tried to bring me back to reality
You said art is a waste of time
You can’t define me I choose this way
We are not the same
This is my happiness
We are different, we express ourselves differently
And we are free to do that,
That’s why it’s Art
Why can’t people understand?
Art set me free, made me forget all the bad things
Art is my all, it’s my way to be

[Tift]

The Monkey Puzzler
by Marianne Moore

A kind of monkey or pine-lemur,
not of interest to the monkey,
but to the animal higher up which resembles it,
in a kind of Flaubert’s Carthage, it defies one —
this ” Paduan cat with lizard, ” this ” tiger in a bamboo thicket. ”
” An interwoven somewhat, ” it will not come out.
Ignore the Foo dog and it is forthwith more than a dog,
its tail superimposed upon itself in a complacent half spiral,
incidentally so witty;
but this pine-tree — this pine-tiger, is a tiger, not a dog.
It knows that if a nomad may have dignity,
Gibraltar has had more —
that ” it is better to be lonely than unhappy. ”
A conifer contrived in imitation of the glyptic work of jade and
hard-stone cutters,
a true curio in this bypath of curio-collecting,
it is worth its weight in gold, but no one takes it
from these woods in which society’s not knowing is colossal,
the lion’s ferocious chrysanthemum head seeming kind in
comparison.
This porcupine-quilled, infinitely complicated starkness —
this is beauty — ” a certain proportion in the skeleton which gives
the best results. ”
One is at a loss, however, to know why it should be here,
in this morose part of the earth —
to account for its origin at all;
but we prove, we do not explain our birth.

1925

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