A Silence poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry

past parentage or gender beyond sung vocables the slipped-between the so infinitesimal fault line a limitless interiority beyond the woven unicorn the maiden (man-carved worm-eaten) God at her hip incipient the untransfigured cottontail bluebell and primrose growing wild a strawberry chagrin night terrors past the earthlit unearthly masquerade (we shall be changed) […]

A Hermit Thrush poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry

Nothing’s certain. Crossing, on this longest day, the low-tide-uncovered isthmus, scrambling up the scree-slope of what at high tide will be again an island, to where, a decade since well-being staked the slender, unpremeditated claim that brings us back, year after year, lugging the makings of another picnic— the cucumber sandwiches, the sea-air-sanctified […]

A Hedge Of Rubber Trees poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry

The West Village by then was changing; before long the rundown brownstones at its farthest edge would have slipped into trendier hands. She lived, impervious to trends, behind a potted hedge of rubber trees, with three cats, a canary—refuse from whose cage kept sifting down and then germinating, a yearning seedling choir, around the […]

Soliloquy In A Tub poem – Amy Cavanaugh poems | Poems and Poetry

Tonight I possess the gliding tides of water: Translucent and true. Their perfect perfumes Foam and bubble To coat the surface. Beneath the surface The wondrous water Knows no streak of daylight. Diligently Like a drink It hydrates My awakening face My brown curls And that intangible wonder Dubbed ‘a mind.’ Like a sun of […]

Reviving My Feminity poem – Amy Cavanaugh poems | Poems and Poetry

Lifeless – she lies on the cold-blooded floor Like a rug without its warmth and comfort. Nothing but an old ceiling fan gladly stirs the air And lets it tap the ends of her still soft hair. Creaking – the wooden floor beneath my Chilled feet smells of old tradition. I creep – tip-toeing in […]

Portrait of Rage and Age poem – Amy Cavanaugh poems | Poems and Poetry

The couple stands still – Hand-drawn And perky like dawn. Femininity had silently signed The brown paper-like frame Into her own – Using her signature Nail-polish-painted red rose And almost cherry lipstick. Age has her black hair Up in twin buns – Almost a couple themselves. Rage manages – Somehow To sneak no peek at […]

Introspection In Evening poem – Amy Cavanaugh poems | Poems and Poetry

I acquire the sensational psychology in me Which reliably wraps my mind and me Up in a blissful blanket of yarn – Hand-knitted by Creativity herself. Heater-like – The blanket bathes Us in a glow Of what light feels like. My mind and I breathe united as An inseparable couple. Friend-like – We gleefully greet […]

For Fixation Who Loves Me Back poem – Amy Cavanaugh poems | Poems and Poetry

The evening dips – Dips into mourners blue Like Childhood’s perfect paint. Fury. Fireflies Flash like tiny cameras. A lonely car Swishes its windy way down The real road. You – You pop your smiling Cushion face out the window. Now you shrink Into Depths of distance – But there you go again. Again. And […]

A March Afternoon poem – Amy Cavanaugh poems | Poems and Poetry

The lovely terrific ground Wears a paved path And a glamorous glow: Unblocked by barren branches Of premature spring. Somewhere The woods terminate – Giving a kind of birth to a field. And on that flat field The grass still licks And drinks the Rain of revival From last night’s Shimmering showers. A young girl’s […]

A February Night poem – Amy Cavanaugh poems | Poems and Poetry

Like an alley The street hides between Trees of brown rattling leaves In the daring depths of dark. The swirling wind above Wrestles itself: Spinning its airy way Down the vacant road. Aged rain water Leaves its signature in mirror-like puddles On the unpure pavement And in the mind I call mine. I fake possession […]

Why

Why? by Alex Gross Email Share You’ve asked me already. Yet you want to know. What need have you to question Everything I say and do? Being conventional is overrated. Why? you ask. Because I must be myself. Do I Tell you to learn to play An […]

Where Are You

Where Are You? by Alex Gross Email Share This is the time when I text you I’m bored in this hallway all alone. I need to see your familiar smiley face emoticon But you’re not here, Where Are You? This is the time when you call me. […]

Tell Me

Tell Me by Alex Gross Email Share Don’t walk away from me. I’m trying to talk to you. I know what you’re feeling, But I don’t know what is Going on in your head. Please tell me. It’s obvious I’ve upset you, So don’t pretend I haven’t. […]

Teacher

Teacher by Alex Gross Email Share I remember when I feared you. I Always thought I was inferior, And that sooner or later, you would Find out. I remember when I distrusted you. I always thought I was wrong in some Way. And that sooner or later, […]

Sleep

Sleep by Alex Gross Email Share I’m waiting for you to come to me. I’ve done everything in my power To Please you. It’s cold, and dark, just Like you like it. Now why Don’t you come to me? It’s four AM and I feel like shit. […]

Ode To A Harmonica

Ode to a Harmonica by Alex Gross Email Share I love you, Janis, Because my lips go with you so naturally. I never regret kissing you, Bercause I know that you Have felt my kiss alone. You were made for my kiss. I love you Janis, Because […]

Intruder

Intruder by Alex Gross Email Share Innocent little girl walking. She is preoccupied, at the moment with An enigma which plagues all young girls At a point. Which Barbie Doll do I want? Another thought enters her head: What’s for dinner? Then: What’s on TV tonight? She […]

Do You Know What Its Like

Do You Know What It’s Like by Alexandra Gross Email Share Do you know what it’s like To be different? To never Feel quite right with people? To be in a crowd and yet utterly Alone? To wish for someone Who understands you completely, And come to the […]

Written In A Volume Of The Comtesse De Noailles

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Be my companion under cool arcades That frame some drowsy street and dazzling square Beyond whose flowers and palm-tree promenades White belfries burn in the blue tropic air. Lie near me in dim forests where the croon Of wood-doves sounds and moss-banked water flows, Or musing late till the […]

With A Copy Of Shakespeares Sonnets On Leaving College

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) As one of some fat tillage dispossessed, Weighing the yield of these four faded years, If any ask what fruit seems loveliest, What lasting gold among the garnered ears, — Ah, then I’ll say what hours I had of thine, Therein I reaped Time’s richest revenue, Read in thy […]

Vivien

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Her eyes under their lashes were blue pools Fringed round with lilies; her bright hair unfurled Clothed her as sunshine clothes the summer world. Her robes were gauzes — gold and green and gules, All furry things flocked round her, from her hand Nibbling their foods and fawning at […]

Virginibus Puerisque

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) I care not that one listen if he lives For aught but life’s romance, nor puts above All life’s necessities the need to love, Nor counts his greatest wealth what Beauty gives. But sometime on an afternoon in spring, When dandelions dot the fields with gold, And under rustling […]

Translations Dante Inferno Canto Xxvi

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Florence, rejoice! For thou o’er land and sea So spread’st thy pinions that the fame of thee Hath reached no less into the depths of Hell. So noble were the five I found to dwell Therein — thy sons — whence shame accrues to me And no great praise […]

To England At The Outbreak Of The Balkan War

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) A cloud has lowered that shall not soon pass o’er. The world takes sides: whether for impious aims With Tyranny whose bloody toll enflames A generous people to heroic war; Whether with Freedom, stretched in her own gore, Whose pleading hands and suppliant distress Still offer hearts that thirst […]

Tithonus

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) So when the verdure of his life was shed, With all the grace of ripened manlihead, And on his locks, but now so lovable, Old age like desolating winter fell, Leaving them white and flowerless and forlorn: Then from his bed the Goddess of the Morn Softly withheld, yet […]

The Wanderer

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) To see the clouds his spirit yearned toward so Over new mountains piled and unploughed waves, Back of old-storied spires and architraves To watch Arcturus rise or Fomalhaut, And roused by street-cries in strange tongues when day Flooded with gold some domed metropolis, Between new towers to waken […]

The Torture Of Cuauhtemoc

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Their strength had fed on this when Death’s white arms Came sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew, Curling across the jungle’s ferny floor, Becking each fevered brain. On bleak divides, Where Sleep grew niggardly for nipping cold That twinged blue lips into a mouthed curse, Not back to Seville […]

The Sultans Palace

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) My spirit only lived to look on Beauty’s face, As only when they clasp the arms seem served aright; As in their flesh inheres the impulse to embrace, To gaze on Loveliness was my soul’s appetite. I have roamed far in search; white road and plunging bow Were […]

The Rendezvous

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) He faints with hope and fear. It is the hour. Distant, across the thundering organ-swell, In sweet discord from the cathedral-tower, Fall the faint chimes and the thrice-sequent bell. Over the crowd his eye uneasy roves. He sees a plume, a fur; his heart dilates — Soars . . […]

The Old Lowe House Staten Island

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) 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 […]

The Nympholept

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) There was a boy — not above childish fears — With steps that faltered now and straining ears, Timid, irresolute, yet dauntless still, Who one bright dawn, when each remotest hill Stood sharp and clear in Heaven’s unclouded blue And all Earth shimmered with fresh-beaded dew, Risen in the […]

The Need To Love

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) The need to love that all the stars obey Entered my heart and banished all beside. Bare were the gardens where I used to stray; Faded the flowers that one time satisfied. Before the beauty of the west on fire, The moonlit hills from cloister-casements viewed Cloud-like arose […]

The Hosts

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Purged, with the life they left, of all That makes life paltry and mean and small, In their new dedication charged With something heightened, enriched, enlarged, That lends a light to their lusty brows And a song to the rhythm of their tramping feet, These are the men that […]

The Deserted Garden

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) I know a village in a far-off land Where from a sunny, mountain-girdled plain With tinted walls a space on either hand And fed by many an olive-darkened lane The high-road mounts, and thence a silver band Through vineyard slopes above and rolling grain, Winds off to that dim […]

The Bayadere

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Flaked, drifting clouds hide not the full moon’s rays More than her beautiful bright limbs were hid By the light veils they burned and blushed amid, Skilled to provoke in soft, lascivious ways, And there was invitation in her voice And laughing lips and wonderful dark eyes, As though […]

The Aisne

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) We first saw fire on the tragic slopes Where the flood-tide of France’s early gain, Big with wrecked promise and abandoned hopes, Broke in a surf of blood along the Aisne. The charge her heroes left us, we assumed, What, dying, they reconquered, we preserved, In the chill […]

Tezcotzinco

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Though thou art now a ruin bare and cold, Thou wert sometime the garden of a king. The birds have sought a lovelier place to sing. The flowers are few. It was not so of old. It was not thus when hand in hand there strolled Through arbors perfumed […]

Sonnet Xvi Who Shall Invoke Her

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Who shall invoke her, who shall be her priest, With single rites the common debt to pay? On some green headland fronting to the East Our fairest boy shall kneel at break of day. Naked, uplifting in a laden tray New milk and honey and sweet-tinctured wine, Not without […]