The Octopi Jars

Related poetry:

1. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
2. The Watch Moonlight spills down vacant sills, Illuminates an empty bed. Dreams lie in crates. One hand creates Wan silver circles, left unread By its companion unmoved now By anything that lies ahead. I watch the minutes test the limits Of ornamental movement here, Where once another hand would hover. Each circuit incomplete. So dear, So precious, […]...
3. Memory A black ringlet Curls to lie At the nape of her neck, Glistening with sweat In the evaporate moonlight… This is what I remember Now that I cannot forget. And tonight, If I have forgotten her name, I remember: Rigid wire and white lace Half-impressed in her flesh… Our soft cries, like regret, … the […]...
4. By the Spring, at Sunset Sometimes we remember kisses, Remember the dear heart-leap when they came: Not always, but sometimes we remember The kindness, the dumbness, the good flame Of laughter and farewell. Beside the road Afar from those who said “Good-by” I write, Far from my city task, my lawful load. Sun in my face, wind beside my shoulder, […]...
5. John Horace Burleson I won the prize essay at school Here in the village, And published a novel before I was twenty-five. I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art; There married the banker’s daughter, And later became president of the bank- Always looking forward to some leisure To write an epic novel of […]...
6. The Folly of Wisdom She is wise in the way that children are wise, Looking at me with such knowing, grave eyes I must bend down to her to understand. But she only smiles, and takes my hand. We are walking somewhere that her feet know to go, So I smile, and I follow… And the years are dark […]...
7. Still own thee still thou art Still own thee still thou art What surgeons call alive Though slipping slipping I perceive To thy reportless Grave Which question shall I clutch What answer wrest from thee Before thou dost exude away In the recallless sea?...
8. The Visitor In Spanish he whispers there is no time left. It is the sound of scythes arcing in wheat, The ache of some field song in Salvador. The wind along the prison, cautious As Francisco’s hands on the inside, touching The walls as he walks, it is his wife’s breath Slipping into his cell each night […]...
9. Love And Death Shall we, too, rise forgetful from our sleep, And shall my soul that lies within your hand Remember nothing, as the blowing sand Forgets the palm where long blue shadows creep When winds along the darkened desert sweep? Or would it still remember, tho’ it spanned A thousand heavens, while the planets fanned The vacant […]...
10. Earthfast Architects plant their imagination, weld their poems on rock, Clamp them to the skidding rim of the world and anchor them down to its core; Leave more than the painter’s or poet’s snail-bright trail on a friable leaf; Can build their chrysalis round them – stand in their sculpture’s belly. They see through stone, they […]...
11. The Refugees In the shabby train no seat is vacant. The child in the ripped mask Sprawls undisturbed in the waste Of the smashed compartment. Is their calm extravagant? They had faces and lives like you. What was it they possessed That they were willing to trade for this? The dried blood sparkles along the mask Of […]...
12. At Wilfred Owen's Grave A week before the Armistice, you died. They did not keep your heart like Livingstone’s, Then plant your bones near Shakespeare’s. So you lie Between two privates, sacrificed like Christ To politics, your poetry unknown Except for that brief flurry’s: thirteen months With Gaukroger beside you in the trench, Dismembered, as you babbled, as the […]...
13. Tarantella Do you remember an Inn, Miranda? Do you remember an Inn? And the tedding and the bedding Of the straw for a bedding, And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees, And the wine that tasted of tar? And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers (Under the vine of the dark […]...
14. MY PERFECT ROSE At ten she came to me, three years ago, There was ‘something between us’ even then; Watching her write like Eliot every day, Turn prose into haiku in ten minutes flat, Write a poem in Greek three weeks from learning the alphabet; Then translate it as ‘Sun on a tomb, gold place, small sacred horse’. […]...
15. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
16. I Remember, I Remember I Remember, I Remember I remember, I remember The house where I was born, The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn; He never came a wink too soon Nor brought too long a day; But now, I often wish the night Had borne my breath away. I remember, I remember The […]...
17. If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem If I forget thee, Jerusalem, Then let my right be forgotten. Let my right be forgotten, and my left remember. Let my left remember, and your right close And your mouth open near the gate. I shall remember Jerusalem And forget the forest my love will remember, Will open her hair, will close my window, […]...
18. Horses and Men in Rain LET us sit by a hissing steam radiator a winter’s day, gray wind pattering frozen raindrops on the window, And let us talk about milk wagon drivers and grocery delivery boys. Let us keep our feet in wool slippers and mix hot punches-and talk about mail carriers and messenger boys slipping along the icy sidewalks. […]...
19. Nicotine Hymn to the Dope Goddess of the murmuring courts, Nicotine, my Nicotine, Houri of the mystic sports, Trailing-robed in gabardine, Gliding where the breath hath glided, Hidden sylph of filmy veils, Truth behind the dream is veiléd E’en as thou art, smiling ever, ever gliding, Wraith of wraiths, dim lights dividing Purple, grey, and shadow […]...
20. Remember Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land; When you can no more hold me by the hand, Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay. Remember me when no more day by day You tell me of our future that you plann’d: Only remember me; you understand […]...
21. The Locker All the dull hollow clamor has died And what was contained, Removed, Reproved Adulation or sentiment, Left with the pungent darkness As remembered as the sudden light. Originally published by The Raintown Review...
22. Past and Present I remember, I remember The house where I was born, The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn; He never came a wink too soon Nor bought too long a day; But now, I often wish the night Had borne my breath away. I remember, I remember The roses, red and white, […]...
23. Farewell To Verse In youth when oft my muse was dumb, My fancy nighly dead, To make my inspiration come I stood upon my head; And thus I let the blood down flow Into my cerebellum, And published every Spring or so Slim tomes in vellum. Alas! I am rheumatic now, Grey is my crown; I can no […]...
24. Fahr an' Ice, Apologies to Robert Frost From what I know of death, I’ll side with those Who’d like to have a say in how it goes: Just make mine cool, cool rocks (twice drowned in likker), And real fahr off, instead of quicker. Originally published by Light Quarterly...
25. Cumulatives STORMS have beaten on this point of land And ships gone to wreck here And the passers-by remember it With talk on the deck at night As they near it. Fists have beaten on the face of this old prize-fighter And his battles have held the sporting pages And on the street they indicate him […]...
26. Well I Remember How You Smiled Well I remember how you smiled To see me write your name upon The soft sea-sand. . . “O! what a child! You think you’re writing upon stone!” I have since written what no tide Shall ever wash away, what men Unborn shall read o’er ocean wide And find Ianthe’s name again....
27. A soft Sea washed around the House A soft Sea washed around the House A Sea of Summer Air And rose and fell the magic Planks That sailed without a care For Captain was the Butterfly For Helmsman was the Bee And an entire universe For the delighted crew....
28. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
29. The Old Lowe House, Staten Island Another prospect pleased the builder’s eye, And Fashion tenanted (where Fashion wanes) Here in the sorrowful suburban lanes When first these gables rose against the sky. Relic of a romantic taste gone by, This stately monument alone remains, Vacant, with lichened walls and window-panes Blank as the windows of a skull. But I, On evenings […]...
30. Tremble Her predatory eye, The single feral iris, Scans. Her raptor beak, All jagged sharp-edged thrust, Juts. Her hard talon, Clenched in pinched expectation, Waits. Her clipped wings, Preened against reality, Tremble. Originally published by The Lyric...
31. Water and Gold You came to me as rain breaks on the desert When every flower springs to life at once, But joy is an illusion to the expert: The Bedouin has learned how not to want. You came to me as riches to a miser When all is gold, or so his heart believes, Until he dies […]...
32. A Note On Wyatt See her come bearing down, a tidy craft! Gaily her topsails bulge, her sidelights burn! There’s jigging in her rigging fore and aft, And beauty’s self, not name, limned on her stern. See at her head the Jolly Roger flutters! “God, is she fully manned? If she’s one short…” Cadet, bargee, longshoreman, shellback mutters; Drowned […]...
33. SOULSTRONG;/BREAKAWAY Abandon the past Throw away the baggage Suffer no more. avast(stop now) Breakaway from the chains and shackles Which from you, your life, take away; Breathe again; this time without constraint And the dreams in your eyes Realize; Forget fear. Forget the barriers and the walls Even the greatest of mountains on your feet will […]...
34. Ghosts I to a crumpled cabin came Upon a hillside high, And with me was a withered dame As weariful as I. “It used to be our home,” she said; “How well I remember well! Oh that our happy hearth should be Today an empty shell!” The door was flailing in the storm That deafed us […]...
35. Charon 2004 I, too, have stood paralyzed at the helm Watching onrushing, inevitable disaster. I too have felt sweat (or ecstatic tears) plaster Damp hair to my eyes, as a slug’s dense film Becomes mucous-insulate. Always, thereafter Living in darkness, bright things overwhelm. Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea...
36. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
37. "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 […]...
38. Peter Strong and slippery, Built for the midnight grass-party Confronted by four cats, he sleeps his time away The detached first claw on the foreleg corresponding To the thumb, retracted to its tip; the small tuft of fronds Or katydid-legs above each eye numbering all units In each group; the shadbones regularly set about the mouth […]...
39. The farthest Thunder that I heard The farthest Thunder that I heard Was nearer than the Sky And rumbles still, though torrid Noons Have lain their missiles by The Lightning that preceded it Struck no one but myself But I would not exchange the Bolt For all the rest of Life Indebtedness to Oxygen The Happy may repay, But not the […]...
40. Failure Because God put His adamantine fate Between my sullen heart and its desire, I swore that I would burst the Iron Gate, Rise up, and curse Him on His throne of fire. Earth shuddered at my crown of blasphemy, But Love was as a flame about my feet; Proud up the Golden Stair I strode; […]...