Dropping Truth on That Pretty Little Head by Rob Leatherman Sr.
When people react to the things I say I know I struck a nerve That’s just my way I can’t always find the words But I try anyway A dose of reality is just a few words away There’s only so much a man can take Before he blows up and fixes what’s fake Just […]
Clinic by Rob Leatherman Sr.
The ride there You slept All I could do was stare Wondering wanting needing Wishing life was fair Wish this didn’t stand up my neck hair I love what’s inside you Even if it’s a little speck no bigger than air Wish this could happen If life was just fair I can’t tell you my […]
An Untold Love by Rixa White
I never thought … Love will penetrate through a tiny fracture in a closed shutter She came into my life She made living fine She filled my heart She touched my soul That short peek was the spark for an untold Love I was drowned … in her blue eyes I was charmed … by […]
A Wandering Knight by Rixa White
A wandering knight wambling in an endless road Thinking to himself Where the others are? Taking care of what? Who am I? but a fading footprint on a dark empty land under a starless sky seized by roaring shadows and delusive hopes Poetry In Englishwww.poetry.monster
A Slight Change by Rixa White
Pains are not to be relieved Sorrows are not to fade away a slight change in the vision may bring a new experience Poetry In Englishwww.poetry.monster
A Perfect World by Robby Charters
A world where it doesn’t rain save there are umbrellas for all Where, only on the house of the evil doer, would a tree ever fall Where bad people look gruff and mean, but good men all stand tall …in your dreams, maybe A life of harmony and love that begins with just one kiss […]
Winged And Acid Dark by Robert Hass
A sentence with “dappled shadow” in it. Something not sayable spurting from the morning silence, secret as a thrush. The other man, the officer, who brought onions and wine and sacks of flour, the major with the swollen knee, wanted intelligent conversation afterward. Having no choice, she provided that, too. Potsdamerplatz, May 1945. When the […]
Under Cover of Night by Robert Desnos
Under Cover of Night by Robert Desnos To slip into your shadow under cover of night. To follow your footsteps, your shadow at the window. That shadow at the window is you and no one else; it’s you. Do not open that window behind whose curtains you’re moving. Shut your eyes. I’d like to shut […]
The Voice of Robert Desnos by Robert Desnos
The Voice of Robert Desnos by Robert Desnos So like a flower and a current of air the flow of water fleeting shadows the smile glimpsed at midnight this excellent evening so like every joy and every sadness it is the midnight past lifting its naked body above belfries and poplars I call to me […]
The Sympathies of the Long Married by Robert Bly
The Sympathies of the Long Married by Robert Bly Oh well, let’s go on eating the grains of eternity. What do we care about improvements in travel? Angels sometimes cross the river on old turtles. Shall we worry about who gets left behind? That one bird flying through the clouds is enough. Your sweet face […]
The Song of the Borderguard by Robert Duncan
The Song of the Borderguard by Robert Duncan The man with his lion under the shed of wars sheds his belief as if he shed tears. The sound of words waits – a barbarian host at the borderline of sense. The enamord guards desert their posts harkening to the lion-smell of a poem that rings […]
The Ring of Stars by Robert Desnos
The Ring of Stars by Robert Desnos In order to make a star with five branches Where six would have been the same A circle must first be drawn In order to make a star with five branches … A ring! One did not take so many precuations In order to make a tree from […]
The Cat in the Kitchen by Robert Bly
The Cat in the Kitchen by Robert Bly Have you heard about the boy who walked by The black water? I won’t say much more. Let’s wait a few years. It wanted to be entered. Sometimes a man walks by a pond, and a hand Reaches out and pulls him in. There was no Intention, […]
The Buried Train by Robert Bly
The Buried Train by Robert Bly Tell me about the train that people say got buried By the avalanche–was it snow?–It was In Colorado, and no one saw it happen. There was smoke from the engine curling up Lightly through fir tops, and the engine sounds. There were all those people reading–some From Thoreau, some […]
The Defunct Drugstore by Robert Lloyd Jaffe
The Defunct Drugstore by Robert Lloyd Jaffe The electric meters have been pulled off the walls and ivy is blocking the door with the goodbye note and thanks for letting us serve you. Don’t the townspeople still have birthdays, and weddings, funerals and get well soon? And what about the drugs? Where do the people […]
The Apple Trees at Olema by Robert Hass
They are walking in the woods along the coast and in a grassy meadow, wasting, they come upon two old neglected apple trees. Moss thickened every bough and the wood of the limbs looked rotten but the trees were wild with blossom and a green fire of small new leaves flickered even on the deadest […]
Snowbanks North of the House by Robert Bly
Snowbanks North of the House by Robert Bly Those great sweeps of snow that stop suddenly six feet from the house … Thoughts that go so far. The boy gets out of high school and reads no more books; the son stops calling home. The mother puts down her rolling pin and makes no more […]
Sleep Spaces by Robert Desnos
Sleep Spaces by Robert Desnos In the night there are of course the seven wonders of the world and the greatness tragedy and enchantment. Forests collide with legendary creatures hiding in thickets. There is you. In the night there are the walker’s footsteps the murderer’s the town policeman’s light from the street lamp and the […]
Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow by Robert Duncan
Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow by Robert Duncan as if it were a scene made-up by the mind, that is not mine, but is a made place, that is mine, it is so near to the heart, an eternal pasture folded in all thought so that there is a hall therein […]
No, Love Is Not Dead by Robert Desnos
No, Love Is Not Dead by Robert Desnos No, love is not dead in this heart these eyes and this mouth that announced the start of its own funeral. Listen, I’ve had enough of the picturesque, the colorful and the charming. I love love, its tenderness and cruelty. My love has only one name, one […]
Need by Robert Lloyd Jaffe
Need by Robert Lloyd Jaffe I love them, one and three and often, in happy moments wish time would let us be Have walked through an ancient cemetery them clinging to my legs and arm leaning on me, heavily And handed over my umbrella standing there, wet and hungry with a smile wondering where I […]
My Mother Would Be a Falconress by Robert Duncan
My Mother Would Be a Falconress by Robert Duncan My mother would be a falconress, And I, her gay falcon treading her wrist, would fly to bring back from the blue of the sky to her, bleeding, a prize, where I dream in my little hood with many bells jangling when I’d turn myMy mother […]
Misery And Splendor by Robert Hass
Summoned by conscious recollection, she would be smiling, they might be in a kitchen talking, before or after dinner. But they are in this other room, The window has many small panes, and they are on a couch embracing. He holds her as tightly as he can, she buries herself in his body. Morning, maybe […]
Lying Down by Robert Desnos
Lying Down by Robert Desnos To the right, the sky, to the left, the sea. And before your eyes, the grass and its flowers. A cloud, the road, follows its vertical way Parallel to the plumb line of the horizon, Parallel to the rider. The horse races towards its imminent fall And the other climbs […]
Long Long Ago by Robert Desnos
Long Long Ago by Robert Desnos Long long ago I went through the castle of leaves Yellowing slowly in the moss And far away barnacles clung desperately to rocks in the sea Your memory better still your tender presence was there too Transparent and mine Nothing had changed but everything had aged at the same […]
Iowa City: Early April by Robert Hass
This morning a cat—bright orange—pawing at the one patch of new grass in the sand-and tanbark-colored leaves. And last night the sapphire of the raccoon’s eyes in the beam of the flashlight. He was climbing a tree beside the house, trying to get onto the porch, I think, for a wad of oatmeal Simmered in […]
Interrupted Meditation by Robert Hass
Little green involute fronds of fern at creekside. And the sinewy clear water rushing over creekstone of the palest amber, veined with a darker gold, thinnest lines of gold rivering through the amber like—ah, now we come to it. We were not put on earth, the old man said, he was hacking into the crust […]
If You Only Knew by Robert Desnos
If You Only Knew by Robert Desnos Far from me and like the stars, the sea and all the trappings of poetic myth, Far from me but here all the same without your knowing, Far from me and even more silent because I imagine you endlessly. Far from me, my lovely mirage and eternal dream, […]
Identity of Images by Robert Desnos
Identity of Images by Robert Desnos I am fighting furiously with animals and bottles In a short time perhaps ten hours have passed one after another The beautiful swimmer who was afraid of coral wakes this morning Coral crowned with holly knocks on her door Ah! coal again always coal I conjure you coal tutelary […]
I Have Dreamed of You so Much by Robert Desnos
I Have Dreamed of You so Much by Robert Desnos I have dreamed of you so much that you are no longer real. Is there still time for me to reach your breathing body, to kiss your mouth and make your dear voice come alive again? I have dreamed of you so much that my […]
Heroic Simile by Robert Hass
When the swordsman fell in Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai in the gray rain, in Cinemascope and the Tokugawa dynasty, he fell straight as a pine, he fell as Ajax fell in Homer in chanted dactyls and the tree was so huge the woodsman returned for two days to that lucky place before he was done with […]
Fairy Tale by Robert Desnos
Fairy Tale by Robert Desnos Many times upon a time There was a man who loved a woman. Many times upon a time There was a woman who loved a man. Many times upon a time There was a man and there was a woman Who did not love the ones who loved them. Once […]
Dove in the Arch by Robert Desnos
Dove in the Arch by Robert Desnos Cursed! be the father of the bride of the blacksmith who forged the iron for the axe with which the woodsman hacked down the oak from which the bed was carved in which was conceived the great-grandfather of the man who was driving the carriage in which your […]
Dancing by Robert Hass
The radio clicks on—it’s poor swollen America, Up already and busy selling the exhausting obligation Of happiness while intermittently debating whether or not A man who kills fifty people in five minutes With an automatic weapon he has bought for the purpose Is mentally ill. Or a terrorist. Or if terrorists Are mentally ill. […]
Children Are Like Water by Robert Lloyd Jaffe
Children Are Like Water by Robert Lloyd Jaffe Children are like water water that fights the drain but won’t be contained. Children fight sleep and fight the wake-up and, like water, fight the drain and won’t be contained. Like a rambunctious Moon who fights its wax, and fights its wane. ————— The End And that’s […]
Cascade by Robert Desnos
Cascade by Robert Desnos What sort of arrow split the sky and this rock? It’s quivering, spreading like a peacock’s fan Like the mist around the shaft and knot less feathers Of a comet come to nest at midnight. How blood surges from the gaping wound, Lips already silencing murmur and cry. One solemn finger […]
Between The Wars by Robert Hass
When I ran, it rained. Late in the afternoon— midsummer, upstate New York, mornings I wrote, read Polish history, and there was a woman whom I thought about; outside the moody, humid American sublime—late in the afternoon, toward sundown, just as the sky was darkening, the light came up and redwings settled in the cattails. […]
What We Leave Behind by Robert Saltzman
STELLA!! He screamed this Brando guy…. in a Street Car Named Desire, Mr. Dean he died in a crash… of twisted metal and fire. We had John Wayne…Superman they were our heroes of the day, when we were 18 we knew it all…. we were going to do it our way. We grew, we learned, […]
Water by Robert Lowell
Water by Robert Lowell It was a Maine lobster town— each morning boatloads of hands pushed off for granite quarries on the islands, and left dozens of bleak white frame houses stuck like oyster shells on a hill of rock, and below us, the sea lapped the raw little match-stick mazes of a weir, where […]
Waking in the Blue by Robert Lowell
Waking in the Blue by Robert Lowell The night attendant, a B.U. sophomore, rouses from the mare’s-nest of his drowsy head propped on The Meaning of Meaning. He catwalks down our corridor. Azure day makes my agonized blue window bleaker. Crows maunder on the petrified fairway. Absence! My hearts grows tense as though a harpoon […]