COMING TO TERMS WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA

Related poetry:

1. LETTER FROM LEEDS Would ‘any woman’ find me difficult to live with? My tastes are simple: space for several thousand books, The smoke from my pipe stuffed with aromatic Balkan Sobranie, A leftover from the Sixties, frequent brief absences to fulfil My duties as a carer, unending phone calls And the unenviable reputation as England’s worst or best […]...
2. Poor Poet ‘A man should write to please himself,’ He proudly said. Well, see his poems on the shelf, Dusty, unread. When he came to my shop each day, So peaked and cold, I’d sneak one of his books away And say ’twas sold. And then by chance he looked below, And saw a stack Of his […]...
3. THE DAYS GO BY for Daniel Weissbort Some poems meant only for my eyes About a grief I can’t let go But I want to, want to throw It away like an old worn-out cloak Or screw up like a ball of over-written Trash and toss into the corner bin. I said it must come up or out I […]...
4. LETTER FROM HAWORTH Poems do not always satisfy the soul, The feel of cobbles underfoot is at this moment more Than all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the unending vistas Of the moor, an infinity of purity that excels even Mallarmй. I sit on the cracked steps to the church, sipping tea With my eye on the Black Bull where […]...
5. Book Lover I keep collecting books I know I’ll never, never read; My wife and daughter tell me so, And yet I never head. “Please make me,” says some wistful tome, “A wee bit of yourself.” And so I take my treasure home, And tuck it in a shelf. And now my very shelves complain; They jam […]...
6. A Tragedy Among his books he sits all day To think and read and write; He does not smell the new-mown hay, The roses red and white. I walk among them all alone, His silly, stupid wife; The world seems tasteless, dead and done – An empty thing is life. At night his window casts a square […]...
7. The Home-Coming My boy’s come back; he’s here at last; He came home on a special train. My longing and my ache are past, My only son is back again. He’s home with music, flags and flowers; With peace and joy my heart’s abrim; He got here in the morning hours With half the town to welcome […]...
8. WELCOME HOME ‘Leeds welcomes you’ in flowers Garlanding the white stuccoed tower Of City Station: red on green As poetry’s demon seizes me, Upending all ordures of order. ‘Haworth Moor, Haworth Moor’ Echoes and re-echoes under the Dark Arches Where the Aire gurgles and swirls In eddies of Jack the Ripper, cloud-hopping Jumping Jack Flash but Jack’s […]...
9. For A Coming Extinction Gray whale Now that we are sinding you to The End That great god Tell him That we who follow you invented forgiveness And forgive nothing I write as though you could understand And I could say it One must always pretend something Among the dying When you have left the seas nodding on their […]...
10. Futility Dusting my books I spent a busy day: Not ancient toes, time-hallowed and unread, But modern volumes, classics in their way, Whose makers now are numbered with the dead; Men of a generation more than mine, With whom I tattled, battled and drank wine. I worshipped them, rejoiced in their success, Grudging them not the […]...
11. A FINE MADNESS Any poets about or bored muses fancying a day out? Rainy, windy, cold Leeds City Station Half-way through its slow chaotic transformation Contractors’ morning break, overalls, hard hats and harness Flood McDonalds where I sip my tea and try to translate Valйry. London has everything except my bardic inspiration I’ve only to step off the […]...
12. To Ireland In The Coming Times Know, that I would accounted be True brother of a company That sang, to sweeten Ireland’s wrong, Ballad and story, rann and song; Nor be I any less of them, Because the red-rose-bordered hem Of her, whose history began Before God made the angelic clan, Trails all about the written page. When Time began to […]...
13. When I read the Book WHEN I read the book, the biography famous, And is this, then, (said I,) what the author calls a man’s life? And so will some one, when I am dead and gone, write my life? (As if any man really knew aught of my life; Why, even I myself, I often think, know little or […]...
14. Authorship You say that father write a lot of books, but what he write I don’t Understand. He was reading to you all the evening, but could you really Make out what he meant? What nice stores, mother, you can tell us! Why can’t father Write like that, I wonder? Did he never hear from his […]...
15. A Cabbage Patch Folk ask if I’m alive, Most think I’m not; Yet gaily I contrive To till my plot. The world its way can go, I little heed, So long as I can grow The grub I need. For though long overdue, The years to me, Have taught a lesson true, Humility. Such better men than I […]...
16. Oh You Are Coming Oh you are coming, coming, coming, How will hungry Time put by the hours till then? But why does it anger my heart to long so For one man out of the world of men? Oh I would live in myself only And build my life lightly and still as a dream Are not my […]...
17. If you were coming in the Fall If you were coming in the Fall, I’d brush the Summer by With half a smile, and half a spurn, As Housewives do, a Fly. If I could see you in a year, I’d wind the months in balls And put them each in separate Drawers, For fear the numbers fuse If only Centuries, delayed, […]...
18. Love's Coming She had looked for his coming as warriors come, With the clash of arms and the bugle’s call; But he came instead with a stealthy tread, Which she did not hear at all. She had thought how his armor would blaze in the sun, As he rode like a prince to claim his bride: In […]...
19. For K. J., Leaving and Coming Back August First: it was a year ago We drove down from St.-Guilhem-le-Désert To open the house in St. Guiraud Rented unseen. I’d stay; you’d go; that’s where Our paths diverged. I’d settle down to work, You’d start the next month of your Wanderjahr. I turned the iron key in the rusted lock (it came, like […]...
20. Style Flaubert wanted to write a novel About nothing. It was to have no subject And be sustained upon the style alone, Like the Holy Ghost cruising above The abyss, or like the little animals In Disney cartoons who stand upon a branch That breaks, but do not fall Till they look down. He never wrote […]...
21. Song's Eternity What is song’s eternity? Come and see. Can it noise and bustle be? Come and see. Praises sung or praises said Can it be? Wait awhile and these are dead – Sigh, sigh; Be they high or lowly bred They die. What is song’s eternity? Come and see. Melodies of earth and sky, Here they […]...
22. There Are Not Many Kingdoms Left I write the lips of the moon upon her shoulders. In a Temple of silvery farawayness I guard her to rest. For her bed I write a stillness over all the swans of the World. With the morning breath of the snow leopard I Cover her against any hurt. Using the pen of rivers and […]...
23. THE DEATH OF ART “Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.” -critic Harold Bloom, who first called slam poetry “the death of art.” I am not a poet. I want to be rich and buy things for my family. Besides, I am sort of popular and can honestly say I’ve had a great […]...
24. Dear Colette Dear Colette, I want to write to you About being a woman For that is what you write to me. I want to tell you how your face Enduring after thirty, forty, fifty. . . Hangs above my desk Like my own muse. I want to tell you how your hands Reach out from your […]...
25. Alfred Lord Tennyson – The Coming Of Arthur Leodogran, the King of Cameliard, Had one fair daughter, and none other child; And she was the fairest of all flesh on earth, Guinevere, and in her his one delight. For many a petty king ere Arthur came Ruled in this isle, and ever waging war Each upon other, wasted all the land; And still […]...
26. Widows My mother’s playing cards with my aunt, Spite and Malice, the family pastime, the game My grandmother taught all her daughters. Midsummer: too hot to go out. Today, my aunt’s ahead; she’s getting the good cards. My mother’s dragging, having trouble with her concentration. She can’t get used to her own bed this summer. She […]...
27. PULLED FROM A LIFE SOME LEAVES Pulled from a life some leaves in evergreen Or dressed like fragrant crinoline draped Over shadows by di Chirico, stolen From a station where trains never run And set up in a tableau in the parsonage at Haworth The three sisters with Chekovian overtones Stood round the table where their mirrored forms Await the blast […]...
28. Stay Now the journey is ending, The wind is losing heart. Into your hands it’s falling, A rickety house of cards. The cards are backed with pictures Displaying all the world. You’ve stacked up all the images And shuffled them with words. And how profound the playing That once again begins! Stay, the card you’re drawing […]...
29. Coming To This We have done what we wanted. We have discarded dreams, preferring the heavy industry Of each other, and we have welcomed grief And called ruin the impossible habit to break. And now we are here. The dinner is ready and we cannot eat. The meat sits in the white lake of its dish. The wine […]...
30. The Second Coming Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some […]...
31. Coming Through The Rye Coming thro’ the rye, poor body, Coming thro’ the rye, She draiglet a’ her petticoatie Coming thro’ the rye. O, Jenny’s a’ wat, poor body; Jenny’s seldom dry; She draiglet a’ her petticoatie Coming thro’ the rye. Gin a body meet a body Coming thro’ the rye, Gin a body kiss a body – Need […]...
32. Resurrection Sometimes in morning sunlights by the river Where in the early fall long grasses wave, Light winds from over the moorland sink and shiver And sigh as if just blown across a grave. And then I pause and listen to this sighing. I look with strange eyes on the well-known stream. I hear wild birth-cries […]...
33. "I Love You Sweatheart&quot A man risked his life to write the words. A man hung upside down (an idiot friend Holding his legs?) with spray paint To write the words on a girder fifty feet above A highway. And his beloved, The next morning driving to work…? His words are not (meant to be) so unique. Does she […]...
34. Sense Of Something Coming I am like a flag in the center of open space. I sense ahead the wind which is coming, and must live It through. While the things of the world still do not move: The doors still close softly, and the chimneys are full Of silence, The windows do not rattle yet, and the dust […]...
35. Coming Close Take this quiet woman, she has been Standing before a polishing wheel For over three hours, and she lacks Twenty minutes before she can take A lunch break. Is she a woman? Consider the arms as they press The long brass tube against the buffer, They are striated along the triceps, The three heads of […]...
36. To One Coming North At first you’ll joy to see the playful snow, Like white moths trembling on the tropic air, Or waters of the hills that softly flow Gracefully falling down a shining stair. And when the fields and streets are covered white And the wind-worried void is chilly, raw, Or underneath a spell of heat and light […]...
37. The Coming Of Wisdom With Time Though leaves are many, the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun; Now I may wither into the truth....
38. A first Mute Coming A first Mute Coming In the Stranger’s House A first fair Going When the Bells rejoice A first Exchange of What hath mingled been For Lot exhibited to Faith alone...
39. It's coming the postponeless Creature It’s coming the postponeless Creature It gains the Block and now it gains the Door Chooses its latch, from all the other fastenings Enters with a “You know Me Sir”? Simple Salute and certain Recognition Bold were it Enemy Brief were it friend Dresses each House in Crape, and Icicle And carries one out of […]...
40. Some Rainbow coming from the Fair! Some Rainbow coming from the Fair! Some Vision of the World Cashmere I confidently see! Or else a Peacock’s purple Train Feather by feather on the plain Fritters itself away! The dreamy Butterflies bestir! Lethargic pools resume the whir Of last year’s sundered tune! From some old Fortress on the sun Baronial Bees march one […]...