Poetry: “Disown” by saartha
And it broke my heart but I
killed every trembling thing. The yearning
spaces subsided, they were reddened, they
were convinced to stillness.And it broke my heart but God
became God-in-exile, became
yearning spaces. I buried my demons
with a knife, and left them to it. Exile
was the new love, it was a barren land,
it took no prisoners.And it broke my heart but the pieces
hardened, they were as clockworks,
they counted down the hours. I was
waiting, my body was a sharp plane,
a border, I was waiting, everythinghad already happened, I had killed it,
it drifted through the motionless diaspora,
the hours turned on me and they had teeth.– by saartha
Tags: beautiful, confessional poetry, emotive, expressive, poetry
Poetry: “Lovesong” by Ted Hughes
He loved her and she loved him
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and Sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtainsHer eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Or everlasting or whatever there was
Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy place
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His word were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assassin’s attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
Her glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon’s gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall
Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stopIn their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostageIn the morning they wore each other’s face
—Ted Hughes
Tags: confessional poetry, modernism, poetry, ted hughes, visceral
Poetry: “Nearer:Breath Of My Breath:Take Not They Tingling” by E. E. Cummings
nearer:breath of my breath:take not they tingling
limbs from me:make my pain their crazy meal
letting they tigers of smooth sweetness steal
slowly in dumb blossoms of new mingling:
deeper:blood of my blood:with upwardcringing
swiftness plunge these leopards of white ream
this pith of darkness:carve an evilfringing
flower of madness on gritted lips
and on sprawled eyes squirming with light insane
chisel the killing flame that dizzily grips.Querying greys between mouthed houses curl
thirstily. Dead stars stink. dawn. Inane,
the poetic carcass of a girl
- ee cummings
Tags: experimental, hauntingly beautiful, modernism, poetry, stream of consciousness
Poetry: “The Rabbit Catcher” by Sylvia Plath
It was a place of force -
The wind gagging my mouth with my own blown hair,
Tearing off my voice, and the sea
Blinding me with its lights, the lives of the dead
Unreeling in it, spreading like oil.I tasted the malignity of the gorse,
Its black spikes,
The extreme unction of its yellow candle-flowers.
They had an efficiency, a great beauty,
And were extravagant, like torture.There was only one place to get to.
Simmering, perfumed,
The paths narrowed into the hollow.
And the snares almost effaced themselves –
Zeroes, shutting on nothing,Set close, like birth pangs.
The absence of shrieks
Made a hole in the hot day, a vacancy.
The glassy light was a clear wall,
The thickets quiet.I felt a still busyness, an intent.
I felt hands round a tea mug, dull, blunt,
Ringing the white china,
How they awaited him, those little deaths!
They waited like sweethearts. They excited him.And we, too, had a relationship -
Tight wires between us,
Pegs too deep to uproot, and a mind like a ring
Sliding shut on some quick thing,
The constriction killing me also.- Sylvia Plath, 1965
Tags: confessional poetry, emotive, hauntingly beautiful, metaphors, poetry, sylvia plath
Poetry: “Black Rook in Rainy Weather” by Sylvia Plath
On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accidentTo set the sight on fire
In my eye, nor seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can’t honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Lean incandescentOut of kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then —
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequentBy bestowing largesse, honor
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); sceptical,
Yet politic; ignorantOf whatever angel any choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grantA brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a contentOf sorts. Miracles occur.
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait’s begun again,
The long wait for the angel,
For that rare, random descent.
—–Sylvia PlathTags: nature, poetry, sylvia plath, trees
Poetry: Apocrypha
“Envy tastes like copper filings.
It settles into the stomach wall and plies
its sinuous trade, hawking green-eyed girls
at the tented market of the womb — thin-mattresses
waifs with syringe-scored ribs.
Under fallopian awnings
they turn their chlorinated eyes inward,
lashes slice into the flesh as they blink slowly,
once, twice.Envy sidles into the blood, jangling metals and plastics,
is yearn-swollen fingers all ringed in agates and amethyst–
so fat that knuckles bulge tumescent out of the gold bands.Eel-headed, it stretches and pants, breath filled
with rotted diamonds.
It claws and adores and kisses the edge
without guessing the center, cobbling a
hermetic path, yellow and grey,
down into the rickety basement door
of the second heart–
the secret heart, shut as a reliquary
that whispers sulfuric villanelles into the dark
while storm shutters screen against glass
threatening expulsion from the apple-bled
rooms of the interior.This other heart is a city of wan-faced slattern-beasts,
snouts pressed against frozen windows, bones
howling for hot bread. But it is beautiful there, in the black
aorta, blood pure as grain alcohol.
In these jealous walls the self instructs the self–
the second heart murmurs
its beatific perversions
to the first.”from Apocrypha by Catherynne M. Valente
Tags: apocrypha, catherynne m valente, poetry
Poetry: “Instructions” by Neil Gaiman
Touch the wooden gate in the wall you never saw before,
Say ‘please’ before you open the latch,
go through,
walk down the path.
A red metal imp hangs from the green-painted front door,
as a knocker,
do not touch it; it will bite your fingers.
Walk through the house. Take nothing. Eat nothing.
However,
if any creature tells you that it hungers,
feed it.
If it tells you that it is dirty,
clean it.
If it cries to you that it hurts,
if you can,
ease its pain.From the back garden you will be able to see the wild wood.
The deep well you walk past leads down to Winter’s realm;
There is another land at the bottom of it.
If you turn around here,
you can walk back, safely;
you will lose no face. I will think no less of you.Once through the garden you will be in the wood.
The trees are old. Eyes peer from the undergrowth.
Beneath a twisted oak sits an old woman. She may ask for something;
give it to her. She
will point the way to the castle. Inside it
are three princesses.
Do not trust the youngest. Walk on.
In the clearing beyond the castle the twelve months sit about a fire,
warming their feet, exchanging tales.
They may do favours for you, if you are polite.
You may pick strawberries in December’s frost.Trust the wolves, but do not tell them where you are going.
See more after the cutTags: animals, children's poems, diamonds and toads, fantasy, illustrations, keith eric williams, little red riding hood, modern fairy tales, neil gaiman, poetry, wolf
Poetry Corner: Angel of Flight
Angel of flight and sleigh bells, do you know paralysis,
that ether house where your arms and legs are cement?
You are as still as a yardstick. You have a doll’s kiss.
The brain whirls in a fit. The brain is not evident.
I have gone to that same place without a germ or a stroke.
A little solo act—the lady with the brain that broke.In this fashion I have become a tree.
I have become a vase you can pick up or drop at will,
inanimate at last. What unusual luck! My body
passively resisting. Part of the leftovers. Part of the kill.
Angel of flight, you soarer, you flapper, you floater,
you gull that grows out of my back in the dreams I prefer,stay near. But give me the totem. Give me the shut eye
where I stand in stone shoes as the world’s bicycle goes by.
- Anne SextonTags: angel, anne sexton, poetry, stream of consciousness
Poetry: Her Sweet Anatomy
“Number 8″ from Pictures of the Gone World
by Lawrence FerlinghettiIt was a face which darkness could kill
in an instant
a face as easily hurt
by laughter or light‘We think differently at night’
she told me once
lying back languidlyAnd she would quote Cocteau
‘I feel there is an angel in me’ she’d say
‘whom I am constantly shocking’Then she would smile and look away
light a cigarette for me
sigh and riseand stretch
her sweet anatomylet fall a stocking
Tags: poetry
Poetry Corner: “Lady Lazarus”
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it–A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right footA paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?–The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on meAnd I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to seeThem unwrap me hand and foot–
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladiesThese are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shutAs a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.- from “Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath
Tags: poetry, resurrection, sylvia plath
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