contemporary poetry
Europeans
POSTED IN contemporary poetry January 5, 2014
Europeans
Now we are in Europe let us take
To selling mushrooms by the roadside,
Broad-brimmed platefuls and uniform buttons
Plucked before dawn in the forest of birch,
The dank delicious one-legged flesh
Climbing from grave-pits as big and as deep
As the forest themselves, for it does not
Take long to establish the custom, not long
To forget the beginning, to hold up
A bucket or basket of mushrooms
And talk about always and offer a shrug
That proves our knowledge and our ignorance
Identical, proverbial, entirely
Beyond the scope of history or law,
And since we have always been here
On our fold-away chairs near the crossroads,
Hunched in black overcoats, pale as our produce,
Seeking and selling the flesh of the earth
By the handful and kilo in brown paper bags,
We cannot be other than real.
From the volume “November”
Sean O’Brien
Night poem
POSTED IN contemporary poetry January 5, 2014
Night poem
There is nothing to be afraid of,
it is only the wind
changing to the east, it is only
your father the thunder
your mother the rain
In this country of water
with its beige moon damp as a mushroom,
its drowned stumps and long birds
that swim, where the moss grows
on all sides of the trees
and your shadow is not your shadow
but your reflection,
your true parents disappear
when the curtain covers your door.
We are the others,
the ones from under the lake
who stand silently beside your bed
with our heads of darkness.
We have come to cover you
with red wool,
with our tears and distant whispers.
You rock in the rain’s arms,
the chilly ark of your sleep,
while we wait, your night
father and mother,
with our cold hands and dead flashlight,
knowing we are only
the wavering shadows thrown
by one candle, in this echo
you will hear twenty years later.
Margaret Atwood
Our Gaia
POSTED IN contemporary poetry January 4, 2014
Our Gaia
Look down from space and feel wonderment,
right past the moon, as dry as bone dust, past
our landing spot in the sea of tranquility.
Catch your breath, see rising earth, aglow
a gleaming membrane of the brightest blue
that’s girded with great drifts of cloud,
Gaia is our ferry on this sea of existence.
The great oceans and rivers are her life blood,
the mountains, her spine, the land, her bones.
Ley lines, or meridians carry her life force.
We consume the great forests of her lungs,
pollute air, she breathes with moons pull.
We pour tons of concrete, steel and tarmac
on a heartbeat that pulses beneath our feet,
tearing wounds in her skin with our ploughs.
All Gaia’s living creatures are her senses,
seventy percent water, thirty percent earth,
about the same proportions as land and sea.
We are her seed, the forgetful progeny
of a super organism, we’re naked without earth,
a conscious assembly of earth’s elements,
know ourselves, we will know the universe.
Are we as fleas destroying our planet’s fine pelt,
or birds flying free, who rid her of parasites?
Gael Bage
Waves of Time
POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 30, 2013
Waves of Time
Time passes too
leaving you with
giving you some
choices to make
things to fate
messages are broken
words not spoken
feeling awoken
future turns
a wheel of meaning
clouds of doubt
waves of been
of being
of to be
of has been
of have
of will be
of could be
from the volume “Roll The Dice”
Glen Alexander
Searcher
POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 30, 2013
Searcher
To seek
But to never find
To wish
To lose your mind
To dream
Of losing time
A way out
Is sometimes
To let it go
You’ll find
A resolution
Of some kind
The day is long but
Darkness is a friend of mine
Did you turn that
Water to wine
All alone
Middle of the daily grind
Searching for
Someone to be mine
from the volume “Been, Being…Gone”
Glen Alexander
Whispers Of Your Heart
POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 28, 2013
Whispers Of Your Heart
There is a quiet in my life only your whisper brings
I listen in the silence to the music your heart sings
I rest upon your loving thoughts, enjoying peace of mind
Inside that peaceful tenderness only with you I’d find
There are no hidden feelings, everything is very clear
We ride the truth together, there’s no hurry or no fear
Just living in the moment for whatever it may give
No thoughts of any other thing – the moment’s where we live
You have another life – another true reality
We both accept that’s how it is – it is the same for me
But when I need that quiet space to let my feelings roam
The whispers of your loving heart are there to take me home
from Wanda’s page
Wanda Kiel-Rapana
The Blues
POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 24, 2013
The Blues
Much of what is said here
must be said twice,
a reminder that no one
takes an immediate interest in the pain of others.
Nobody will listen, it would seem,
if you simply admit
your baby left you early this morning
she didn’t even stop to say good-bye.
But if you sing it again
with the help of the band
which will now lift you to a higher,
more ardent, and beseeching key,
people will not only listen,
they will shift to the sympathetic
edges of their chairs,
moved to such acute anticipation
by that chord and the delay that follows,
they will not be able to sleep
unless you release with one finger
a scream from the throat of your guitar
and turn your head back to the microphone
to let them know
you’re a hard-hearted man
but that woman’s sure going to make you cry.
Billy Collins
Astral bard
POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 22, 2013
Astral bard
Fair seer
intuit beauty
as night absorbs the moon and stars
as thorns know the rose
time streams along age-worn bedrock
underscored by muse.
Hush! Listen!
Life sings a solar windsong
Lips open to paint new visions
Ink sweeps silks in fantasy strokes
her poems plucked from the ether
to reanimate,
as nectar for soul
fragrant
as rose wine
from PoetryZoo Abigael
Gael Bage
Christmas Sparrow
POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 21, 2013
Christmas Sparrow
The first thing I heard this morning
was a soft, insistent rustle,
the rapid flapping of wings
against glass as it turned out,
a small bird rioting
in the frame of a high window,
trying to hurl itself through
the enigma of transparency into the spacious light.
A noise in the throat of the cat
hunkered on the rug
told me how the bird had gotten inside,
carried in the cold night
through the flap in a basement door,
and later released from the soft clench of teeth.
Up on a chair, I trapped its pulsations
in a small towel and carried it to the door,
so weightless it seemed
to have vanished into the nest of cloth.
But outside, it burst
from my uncupped hands into its element,
dipping over the dormant garden
in a spasm of wingbeats
and disappearing over a tall row of hemlocks.
Still, for the rest of the day,
I could feel its wild thrumming
against my palms whenever I thought
about the hours the bird must have spent
pent in the shadows of that room,
hidden in the spiky branches
of our decorated tree, breathing there
among metallic angels, ceramic apples, stars of yarn,
its eyes open, like mine as I lie here tonight
picturing this rare, lucky sparrow
tucked into a holly bush now,
a light snow tumbling through the windless dark.
Billy Collins
I Ask You
POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 19, 2013
I Ask You
What scene would I want to be enveloped in
more than this one,
an ordinary night at the kitchen table,
floral wallpaper pressing in,
white cabinets full of glass,
the telephone silent,
a pen tilted back in my hand?
It gives me time to think
about all that is going on outside–
leaves gathering in corners,
lichen greening the high grey rocks,
while over the dunes the world sails on,
huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake.
But beyond this table
there is nothing that I need,
not even a job that would allow me to row to work,
or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4
with cracked green leather seats.
No, it’s all here,
the clear ovals of a glass of water,
a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin,
not to mention the odd snarling fish
in a frame on the wall,
and the way these three candles–
each a different height–
are singing in perfect harmony.
So forgive me
if I lower my head now and listen
to the short bass candle as he takes a solo
while my heart
thrums under my shirt–
frog at the edge of a pond–
and my thoughts fly off to a province
made of one enormous sky
and about a million empty branches.
Billy Collins
