The Carnival by Robert Creeley
The Carnival by Robert Creeley Whereas the man who hits the gong dis- proves it, in all its simplicity — Even so the attempt makes for triumph, in another man. Likewise in love I am not foolish or in- competent. My method is not a tenderness, but hope defined. ————— The End And that’s the […]
Song by Robert Creeley
Song by Robert Creeley What I took in my hand grew in weight. You must understand it was not obscene. Night comes. We sleep. Then if you know what say it. Don’t pretend. Guises are what enemies wear. You and I live in a prayer. Helpless. Helpless, should I speak. Would you. What do you […]
Something by Robert Creeley
Something by Robert Creeley I approach with such a careful tremor, always I feel the finally foolish question of how it is, then, supposed to be felt, and by whom. I remember once in a rented room on 27th street, the woman I loved then, literally, after we had made love on the large bed […]
Other by Robert Creeley
Other by Robert Creeley Having begun in thought there in that factual embodied wonder what was lost in the emptied lovers patience and mind I first felt there wondered again and again what for myself so meager and finally singular despite all issued therefrom whether sister or mother or brother and father come to love’s […]
Myself by Robert Creeley
Myself by Robert Creeley What, younger, felt was possible, now knows is not; but still not chanted enough – Walked by the sea, unchanged in memory – evening, as clouds on the far-off rim of water float, pictures of time, smoke, faintness – still the dream. I want, if older, still to know why, human, […]
Love by Robert Creeley
Love by Robert Creeley The thing comes of itself (Look up to see the cat & the squirrel, the one torn, a red thing, & the other somehow immaculate ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the ultimate repository of world […]
Kore by Robert Creeley
Kore by Robert Creeley As I was walking I came upon chance walking the same road upon. As I sat down by chance to move later if and as I might, light the wood was, light and green, and what I saw before I had not seen. It was a lady accompanied by goat men […]
I Know A Man by Robert Creeley
I Know A Man by Robert Creeley As I sd to my friend, because I am always talking,–John, I sd, which was not his name, the darkness sur- rounds us, what can we do against it, or else, shall we & why not, buy a goddamn big car, drive, he sd, for christ’s sake, look […]
Goodbye by Robert Creeley
Goodbye by Robert Creeley She stood at the window. There was a sound, a light. She stood at the window. A face. Was it that she was looking for, he thought. Was it that she was looking for. He said, turn from it, turn from it. The pain is not unpainful. Turn from it. The […]
Four Days In Vermont by Robert Creeley
Four Days In Vermont by Robert Creeley Window’s tree trunk’s predominant face a single eye-leveled hole where limb’s torn off another larger contorts to swell growing in around imploding wound beside a clutch of thin twigs hold to one two three four five six dry twisted yellowish brown leaves flat against the other gray trees […]
Clemente’s Images by Robert Creeley
Clemente’s Images by Robert Creeley 1) Sleeping birds, lead me, soft birds, be me inside this black room, back of the white moon. In the dark night sight frightens me. 2) Who is it nuzzles there with furred, round headed stare? Who, perched on the skin, body’s float, is holding on? What other one stares […]
Ballad Of The Despairing Husband by Robert Creeley
Ballad Of The Despairing Husband by Robert Creeley My wife and I lived all alone, contention was our only bone. I fought with her, she fought with me, and things went on right merrily. But now I live here by myself with hardly a damn thing on the shelf, and pass my days with little […]
America by Robert Creeley
America by Robert Creeley America, you ode for reality! Give back the people you took. Let the sun shine again on the four corners of the world you thought of first but do not own, or keep like a convenience. People are your own word, you invented that locus and term. Here, you said and […]
Age by Robert Creeley
Age by Robert Creeley Most explicit– the sense of trap as a narrowing cone one’s got stuck into and any movement forward simply wedges once more– but where or quite when, even with whom, since now there is no one quite with you–Quite? Quiet? English expression: Quait? Language of singular impedance? A dance? An involuntary […]
A Wicker Basket by Robert Creeley
A Wicker Basket by Robert Creeley Comes the time when it’s later and onto your table the headwaiter puts the bill, and very soon after rings out the sound of lively laughter– Picking up change, hands like a walrus, and a face like a barndoor’s, and a head without any apparent size, nothing but two […]
A Token by Robert Creeley
A Token by Robert Creeley My lady fair with soft arms, what can I say to you-words, words as if all worlds were there. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the ultimate repository of world poetry. Poetry Monster — the […]
A Song by Robert Creeley
A Song by Robert Creeley I had wanted a quiet testament and I had wanted, among other things, a song. That was to be of a like monotony. (A grace Simply. Very very quiet. A murmur of some lost thrush, though I have never seen one. Which was you then. Sitting and so, at peace, […]
The Storm by Rainbow Reed
The Storm by Rainbow Reed On granite rock, The woman sat. Damp hair trickled down her back, Azure highlights glimmering, Golden curls shimmering. Seaweed sparkled; waving wildly White foam horses rear and pound, Surging through the rocky mound. Crashing against the sleeping stone. Woman sits and Stares alone. Black cloud glares, Fog horn blares, Lightning […]
The Mystic Isle by Rainbow Reed
The isle arose from swirling mists, Slicing through the broken skies, Lurking beneath the whitened waters, Dark hungry fangs of piercing stone Impatiently waiting for their prey: A trawler beached on Mystic Rock. Darkened creatures with heads of foam, Shake seaweed hair and madly moan. Watch wood crash into surging tides, Splinters fly, while the […]
The Chipmunk by R. L. Karlowsky
The Chipmunk by R. L. Karlowsky The Chipmunk ran from tree to burrow, gathering food to store for tomorrow. From sunrise to set he filled his stores, the others laughed, take a break from your chores. The Crow stopped him quick in his track, where do you go, you’re running so fast? The Chipmunk panting, […]
The Sandbox by Rachel McKibbens
for Lisa or Laurie We held each other in silence mouth against mouth blood & thunder scorching the grass Behind the shed I played the husband brutish breadwinner choking her flesh in my troubled hands pulling her head back to lick from neck to ear in frenzied thrill The kind of love I learned from […]
Since you asked by Radames Antonio Cruz
I’m nothing but a shell of what once was Coming out of a personal hell Where, although I did not choose to stay, still often I would dwell Unchained but in a cell, it seems, made from the very cells, Which make up my physical being This me What I am I cannot tell For […]
Primrose Rose by Rainbow Reed
Primrose Rose by Rainbow Reed Silently, they stopped to stare, At the freak with raven hair, His eyes rings of Dante black, Angry looks burnt through his back. Strange black clothes flapped in the air. Flying back to darkened lair. Primrose Close, closed its eyes, Abnormals were despised. Close people; pillars of good, Bedrock, of […]
Prayers by Rainbow Reed
Jimmy Choos’ stalked across the floor, Ripping, clawing against the antiqued oak, Stuttered, stiffened; listened to deep silence Then slowly circled, nowhere once more. The gold straps coiled around her calf’s, Winding, binding, painfully twisting… D. and G. suit clinging about her, Her grey silk blouse rustled in the breeze, While around her stalk, staccato […]
Snow & Ice by Quincy Troupe
Snow & Ice by Quincy Troupe ice sheets sweep this slick mirrored dark place space as keys that turn in tight, trigger pain of situations where we move ever so slowly so gently into time — traced agony the bright turning of imagination so slowly grooved through revolving doors, opening up to enter mountains where […]
Untitled by Quincy Troupe
Untitled by Quincy Troupe in brussels, eye sat in the grand place cafe & heard duke’s place, played after salsa between the old majestic architecture, jazz bouncing off all that gilded gold history snoring complacently there flowers all over the ground, up inside the sound the old white band jammin the music tight & heavy, […]
Poem Reaching For Something by Quincy Troupe
Poem Reaching For Something by Quincy Troupe we walk through a calligraphy of hats slicing off foreheads ace-deuce cocked, they slant, razor sharp, clean through imagination, our spirits knee-deep in what we have forgotten entrancing our bodies now to dance, like enraptured water lilies the rhythm in liquid strides of certain looks eyeballs rippling through […]
I Hardly Remember by Rafael Guillen
I Hardly Remember by Rafael Guillen I hardly remember your voice, but the pain of you floats in some remote current of my blood. I carry you in my depths, trapped in the sludge like one of those corpses the sea refuses to give up. It was a spoiled remnant of the South. A beach […]
Not Fear by Rafael Guillen
Not Fear by Rafael Guillen Not fear. Maybe, out there somewhere, the possibility of fear; the wall that might tumble down, because it’s for sure that behind it is the sea. Not fear. Fear has a countenance; It’s external, concrete, like a rifle, a shot bolt, a suffering child, like the darkness that’s hidden in […]
Online Lover by Rainbow Reed
City sounds screamed and swirled, Sirens raced through neon world, Shutters shook, while ghost trucks sped Lewd vacant sign flashed deep red. Her laptop buzzed and flickered, While angry parents bickered. She stared at the screen entranced, Red electric shadows danced. Angry voices drifted near, Pa sailed in on wave of fear, “Switch that off!” […]
One Day You Will Miss Me.. by Rahul S
My love is not supposed to miss you Like the Tom misses the Jerry every time.. It’s like a clock; we are in the same perimeter But we can’t stay close to each other. One day you will miss me, And it will be same as missing your shadow.. You will miss my talks, And […]
O my Lord by Rabi’a
O my Lord, the stars glitter and the eyes of men are closed. Kings have locked their doors and each lover is alone with his love. Here, I am alone with You. O my Lord, if I worship you from fear of hell, burn me in hell. If I worship you from hope of Paradise, […]
Not Fear by Rafael Guillen
Not Fear by Rafael Guillen Not fear. Maybe, out there somewhere, the possibility of fear; the wall that might tumble down, because it’s for sure that behind it is the sea. Not fear. Fear has a countenance; It’s external, concrete, like a rifle, a shot bolt, a suffering child, like the darkness that’s hidden in […]
My Eyes in the Time of Apparition by Rachel McKibbens
Curse the steady mice who feast upon ____________my son’s gray matter— __________________those soft purveyors of wickedness, ____________mutilators of my womb, ______mutilators of an empty chapel. Praise the sirens of widening synapses, ______who beckoned my boy to fall, ____________then drift, upstream __________________to sleep without song & awaken _______________________savant: a piano angel hypnotist, __________________miracle hands ____________fraught with […]
Mrs. Mouse has glasses by R. L. KARLOWSKY
Mrs. Mouse has glasses by R. L. KARLOWSKY Mrs. Mouse was very distraught, her glasses were missing, she simply forgot. She looked in her pocket, her purse and her sweater, I can’t believe I misplaced them, you’d think I knew better. Mrs. Duck quacked along with her ducklings in tow, what’s wrong Mrs. Mouse, why […]
Mother by Sachin Yadav (Pen Name: Rahul Nachhiketa)
How much she lives in me with me or without me,she is full of life An incomplete man caught in cold strife but, she lives in me like a dream alive! How thoughtless, careless I have been spreading the naughtiness around she whipped me tough, with her eye lash without a whimper or a sound! […]
Most Precious by R. L. Karlowsky
Most Precious by R. L. Karlowsky I sought through the world those things most precious, of praise of possessions and things prestigious. I would look in the earth and curse the sky, when plans I made would not comply. When I was young my dreams so grand, life would later teach, it was not what […]
Minneapolipstick by Rachel McKibbens
1. Santa Ana, California, 3 a.m. in my cousin’s basement, lights out, television volume spun low. We are huddled around the screen, a small congregation of forgotten children, brown faces illuminated by a five-foot-two Black man, decked out in lace, eyeliner, Spandex and the gutsiest high-heeled boots big enough to fit only a mannequin. This […]
Meditation by Radames Antonio Cruz
Imagine for a second That this moment extended Infinitely along a line And that we could dwell in it Observe and reflect With no regrets While suspended in time The past not a burden The future uncertain While present Is presence of mind Oneness with your soul Which is one with the whole Coalesced with […]
Manipulation by Radames Antonio Cruz
They paint a pretty picture of hatred Horrific portrait of love The inner city the matrix The farmland in a flood Forcing kids to be Christmas trees Cut down where they stood Congratulations to the wicked On the humiliation of good Please excuse my politeness Let’s laugh at the men who trust And together ridicule […]