Summer – John Clare

Come we to the summer, to the summer we will come,
For the woods are full of bluebells and the hedges full of bloom,
And the crow is on the oak a-building of her nest,
And love is burning diamonds in my true lover’s breast;
She sits beneath the white thorn a-plaiting of her hair,
And I will to my true lover with a fond request repair;
I will look upon her face, I will in her beauty rest,
And lay my aching weariness upon her lovely breast.

The clock-a-clay is creeping on the open bloom of May,
The merry bee is trampling the pink threads all day,
And the chaffinch it is brooding on its grey mossy nest
In the white thorn bush where I will lean upon my lover’s breast;
I’ll lean upon her breast and I’ll whisper in her ear
That I cannot get a wink o’sleep for thinking of my dear;
I hunger at my meat and I daily fade away
Like the hedge rose that is broken in the heat of the day.

Any Night – Philip Levine

Look, the eucalyptus, the Atlas pine,
the yellowing ash, all the trees
are gone, and I was older than
all of them. I am older than the moon,
than the stars that fill my plate,
than the unseen planets that huddle
together here at the end of a year
no one wanted. A year more than a year,
in which the sparrows learned
to fly backwards into eternity.
Their brothers and sisters saw this
and refuse to build nests. Before
the week is over they will all
have gone, and the chorus of love
that filled my yard and spilled
into my kitchen each evening
will be gone. I will have to learn
to sing in the voices of pure joy
and pure pain. I will have to forget
my name, my childhood, the years
under the cold dominion of the clock
so that this voice, torn and cracked,
can reach the low hills that shielded
the orange trees once. I will stand
on the back porch as the cold
drifts in, and sing, not for joy,
not for love, not even to be heard.
I will sing so that the darkness
can take hold and whatever
is left, the fallen fruit, the last
leaf, the puzzled squirrel, the child
far from home, lost, will believe
this could be any night. That boy,
walking alone, thinking of nothing
or reciting his favorite names
to the moon and stars, let him
find the home he left this morning,
let him hear a prayer out
of the raging mouth of the wind.
Let him repeat that prayer,
the prayer that night follows day,
that life follows death, that in time
we find our lives. Don’t let him see
all that has gone. Let him love
the darkness. Look, he’s running
and singing too. He could be happy.

Water Floods – James K. Dyson

modern day in the shade

feels like hazy, blue, pouring rain

sitting under chipmunk filled trees

watching clouds and thinking about fleas

fleas are small but not as tiny

I am fine, but please, don’t mind me

growing tadpoles in the pond

just a patient, won’t take long

alcohol is in my blood

inject an overdose

when water floods

the find is dry

she lied again

I don’t know why?

I do know when.

Football Fever – Vijay Sai

Football fever
Gripping all over
Fierce battles
Fittingly fought
Triumphant team
Winning accolades
Late night parties
Crowded countrymen
Celebrations galore
Shining south africa
Dazzling lighting
Quizzing questions
Is it day in night!
I turnaround
Weeping west africa
Crying countrymen
Impoverished infants
Hunger stricken
Poverty at peak
Food ball fever
Gripping all over
Quizzing questions
Is it night in day!

Lonely Dreams – Uriah Hamilton

I meditate achingly
Her delicate lips
Slowly sipping
Elegant imported wine.

In lonely dreams, 
I weep at night
Wishing my hands
Were upon her hips.

Lovely flowers
Blossom in the afternoon; 
But while I linger
Unable to see her, 
Nothing can make me happy. 

A Psalm Of Life – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Hunting Memory – Barry Middleton

In my youth I was a hunter.
As age advances, I hunt for memory.
I remember planting flowers by the front steps,
just old enough to dig with a spoon.
I planted nasturtiums and was amazed at the riot of color as that grew.
I knew then I wanted to grow things.
I remember the garden gate I built at seven and how
my mother bragged on its durability all her life.
I knew then I wanted to build things.
I remember painting the kitchen and the smell of the glossy oil paint.
I remember the dogwood in bloom in an upper valley.
I remember roaming, searching; I remember beech trees, and the stillness of the woods before my eye caught the movement of a squirrel.
I remember the jeweled rocks in our rippling creek.
I remember home, the garden patch, apple picking,
the cool fall air, the first frost, cedar Christmas trees
and priceless winters when southern snow blew in from the west.
I remember the first daffodils of spring.
All childhood is intact, all of my life stored in memory.
I remember love and love lost,
and found and lost again.
I remember joy and pain, grief and new hope.
For now the monster of forgetting is at bay.
I can remember.
I can hunt, I can find, all time not yet lost.

Thanks – Widelene Ermat

Thanks for being there
Always being so aware
Thanks for being near when I needed you here
Thanks for staying so close when I needed you the most

Thanks for the love your rain on me like a dove
Always seeming as if you are from right above
Thanks for the times you seem to help me enjoy love

Thanks for being here when I need someone near
Thanks for being there
Also for being so fair

Thanks for saying hi
When they all shouted good-bye
Thanks for giving me the time of day
When all your friends didn’t bother to say hey

We May Live Together – Anne Bradstreet

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were lov’d by wife, then thee.
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that Rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompetence.
Thy love is such I can no way repay.
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let’s so persever
That when we live no more, we may live ever.

Passive Weather – Ramesh Rai

The sun is annoyed with the earth
that so he is not seen throughout
but aroma of his arrival
spreaded throughout the earth
Air is not humming to – day
stopped mesmerizing the flowers
so, flowers are sad too
not sympathetic with bees even
to sip her nectar today
to view the piteous scene of earth
sky also weeps with drizzling tears
an unforeseen silence stirs the nature
making me bore except
to lean and chat with my poetry.

Gray Weather – Robinson Jeffers

It is true that, older than man and ages to outlast him, the Pacific surf
Still cheerfully pounds the worn granite drum;
But there’s no storm; and the birds are still, no song; no kind of excess;
Nothing that shines, nothing is dark;
There; is neither joy nor grief nor a person, the sun’s tooth
sheathed in cloud,
And life has no more desires than a stone.
The stormy conditions of time and change are all abrogated, the essential
Violences of survival, pleasure,
Love, wrath and pain, and the curious desire of knowing, all perfectly
suspended.
In the cloudy light, in the timeless quietness,
One explores deeper than the nerves or heart of nature, the womb or soul,
To the bone, the careless white bone, the excellence.

Poem – Roses Are Dead

Roses are dead
Vilots are too
I was in love with a guy
But not with you
You told all your friends i was a little bytch
And i told all my friends you had a little ass dick

Poem – Born to Die

In a white night
After a dark day, 

I was jogging around the busy streets. 

When got a glance. Of stale

and weary creature: 

Bare footed and dressed

in tattered threads.

Dirt shrouded his white stinky skin

That hosted dust and flies’ wings, 

Had chapped lips and sore eyes.

For an onlooker he was: 

A walking dead.

(Was ripped off by mercy of an angry god) 
For him life is nothing but

wound uncured.Like a bird 

engulfed by storm or a butterfly: 

for a child’s charm.

So was he: fettered and bound.

A roving vagabonds. 

(pity that mocks our handicapped world) 

In response to my childish quarries.

He smiled and voiced: 

Our life story ends in words two: 

‘Born to die’

(An irony of the cultured being) 

An Autumn Tableau – HEG George

When you come to stay, you’ll stay In a box, 

much like any other. With its own rich vein 

of concrete running between two green 

rivers of grass; supporting islands of tainted 
leaves too corrupt to remain at home for another 

season. A bird feeder stands lonely sentinel in a 

changing Eden, the only nod to nature’s needy. 

Where a magpie, whose beak shares the accuracy 
of the boxer punching a moving bag, eats the once 

yearly offering of seed from its moving target. 

And two black – ringed turtle doves, the epitome 

of Athrodite’s children, throw a lovers spat over 
the single bird feeder. Whilst mellow music 

drifts upon the same wavelengths as the 

shrilling calls of the birds. One, more 

harmonious than the other. 
A dog, lying in the heated comfort of the box, 

tries to urge a bark, but settles for a growl, at 

an autumn intruder. It’s head following the 

ostentatious jig of a robin, like a type writer 
Jarring between upper and lower case. This 

fleeting balsam that comes once every year, 

tasting of deep velvet shiraz, willingly shares 

its richness with those that bring a glass. 
No rights witheld. That’s what you’ll see 

when you come to stay. If you look.

May Not Be – Happy Hannah

When can I be your necessity? 
May not be today, 
May not be tomorrow 
May not be the day till I die. 
I’ve known you for so long, 
Loved you for ages. 
But you still can’t read my longing eyes.