Poem Hunter: Poems - Poets - Poetry

I like divorce. I love to compose
letters of resignation; now and then
I send one in and leave in a lemon-
hued Huff or a Snit with four on the floor.
Do you like the scent of a hollyhock?
To each his own. I love a burning bridge.

I like to watch the small boat go over
the falls -- it swirls in a circle
like a dog coiling for sleep, and its frail bow
pokes blindly out over the falls' lip
a little and a little more and then
too much, and then the boat's nose dives and butt

flips up so that the boat points doomily
down and the screams of the soon-to-be-dead
last longer by echo than the screamers do.
Let's go to the videotape, the news-
caster intones, and the control room does,
and the boat explodes again and again.
...

A blind horse stands among cherry trees.
And bones shine from cool earth.
The heart leaps
Almost up to the sky! But laments
And filaments pull us back into the dark.
Night takes us. But
A paw
Comes out of the dark
To light the road. I'll be all right.
I follow my own fiery traces through the night.
...

What a haunting place this is,
the old cottage;
Derilect and stilled;
Roof tiles clinging to rotting timbers
and weed strewn garden that was long since tilled.

Rusted hinges, weary of toil,
Have long since shed their load;
The stout oak door vanquished;
No more the gallant knight who challenged Winter's cold.

...

Felices ter et amplius
Quos irrupta tenet Copula, nec malis
Divulsus querimoniis,
Suprema citius solvet amor die.

What's Female Beauty, but an Art divine,
Through which the Mind's all gentle Graces shine?
They like the Sun irradiate all between;
The Body charms, because the Mind is seen.
...

Abani, are you home?

The neighbourhood lies in sleep with doors closed
But I keep hearing the night knocking at my door,
'Abani, are you home? '

Here it rains all the twelve months
Here the clouds roam like cows
Here the eager green grass
closes in on the door,

...

In the ocean deep and blue,
The rolling waves appear,
A sea crest running shore-ward,
To the sandy beaches near,

For is a wave just one or three,
Or ripples to the side,
Or is it all the ocean,
And the movement of the tide?


...

As once I sat upon the shore
There came to me a fairy boat,
A bark I never saw before,
Whose coming I had failed to note,
Wrapped in my studies conning rules of life by rote.
The stern was fashioned like a heart;
The curving sides like Cupid's bow.
And from the mast, which like a dart
Was winged above and barbed below,
A pennon like an airy stream of blood did flow.
Upon the prow on either side
Was carved a snowy Paphian dove.
Between, reflected in the tide
An arching swan's neck rose above
The deck o'erspread with broidered tapestries of love.
Against the mast the idle sail
Flapped like a lace-edged valentine.
It seemed a canvas all too frail,
Should winds arouse the sleeping brine.
A toy the boat appeared, for sport in weather fine.
And so I stepped, in idle mood,
Aboard the bark — when suddenly
A breeze sprang up: and while I stood
Uncertain, thinking I was free
To make retreat, the vessel bore me out to sea.
Silent and swift away from land
It cut the waves. No pilot steered.
No voice of captain gave command.
Yet to and fro it tacked and veered.
All day it flew. At eve a distant land appeared.

...

All week she's cleaned
someone else's house,
stared down her own face
in the shine of copper--
bottomed pots, polished
wood, toilets she'd pull
the lid to--that look saying

Let's make a change, girl.


...

It's said that loved ones' who have passed away.
Can visit us in other living form.
If you dismiss this as sheer fallacy,
My evidence will quickly reinform.
When death has caused the soul to fly away,
It oft returns with wings upon the air.
Disguised as bird or butterfly they say,
To reassure and show you that they care.
I can attest that I have witnessed this;
In honest truth such visits I have seen,

...