Poetry
I can't hear most poetry. Or maybe it's that I don't like most poetry.
I don't find clever rhyming entertaining, except Ogden Nash and Cole Porter.
I don't like easy rhymes.
I really don't like
What could be regular prose
Arranged in a way that looks like poetry,
But still reads like prose.
As with most art forms, perhaps most in poetry, I don't like agenda disguised as entertainment. And so many poems are.
But then, there are poems that do get to me. I don't quite understand why they do. Perhaps because these poems communicate more than the words can.
Here are a few poems that reach me.
Divorce
by Billy Collins
Once, two spoons in bed,
now tined forks
across a granite table
and the knives they have hired.
Halfway Down the Stairs
by A A Milne
Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair
Where I sit.
There isn't any
Other stair
Quite like it.
I'm not at the bottom,
I'm not at the top;
So this is the stair
Where
I always
Stop.
Halfway up the stairs
Isn't up
And isn't down.
It isn't in the nursery,
It isn't in the town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head:
"It isn't really
Anywhere!
It's somewhere else
Instead!"
I knew something was wrong
by Dorothea Grossman
I knew something was wrong
the day I tried to pick up a
small piece of sunlight
and it slithered through my fingers,
not wanting to take shape.
Everything else stayed the same,
the chairs and the carpet
and all the corners
where the waiting continued.
Everything Stays
by Rebecca Sugar
Let's go to the garden, you'll find
something waiting
Right there where you left it, lying
upside down
When you finally find it, you'll see how it's faded
And the underside is lighter when you turn it around
Everything stays right where you left it
Everything stays, but it still changes
Ever so slightly, daily and nightly
In little ways, when everything stays
Go down to the ocean
The crystal tide is raising
Water's gotten higher as the shore washes out
Keep your eyes wide open, even when the sun is blazing
The moon controls the tide, it could cause you to drown
Everything stays right where you left it
Everything stays, but it still changes
Ever so slightly, daily and nightly
In little ways, when everything stays
For M
by Nikko Harvey
The number
of hours
we have
together is
actually not
so large.
Please linger
near the
door uncomfortably
instead of
just leaving.
Please forget
your scarf
in my life
and come
back later
for it.
A little bit of
Song of the Open Road
by Walt Whitman
Allons! we must not stop here,
However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling
we cannot remain here,
However shelter'd this port and however calm these waters
we must not anchor here,
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us
we are permitted to receive it but a little while.