Life poems
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A Lover's Complaint
© William Shakespeare
FROM off a hill whose concave womb reworded
A plaintful story from a sistering vale,
My spirits to attend this double voice accorded,
And down I laid to list the sad-tuned tale;
The Vanity of Human Wishes (excerpts)
© Samuel Johnson
45 Yet still one gen'ral cry the skies assails,
46 And gain and grandeur load the tainted gales,
47 Few know the toiling statesman's fear or care,
48 Th' insidious rival and the gaping heir.
Between Hurricanes
© Belinda Subraman
As we slide into the 3rd world we have created,
running from hurricanes,
with our SS# indelibly inked on our arms
storms swell and swallow our control.
Yin Yang
© Belinda Subraman
At the edge of winter
in crisp early March
a dull thud of numbness
delays joy and sadness
Sordello: Book the Third
© Robert Browning
Whereat he rose.
The level wind carried above the firs
Clouds, the irrevocable travellers,
Onward.
Metropolitan Nightmare
© Stephen Vincent Benet
Until, one day, a somnolent city-editor
Gave a new cub the termite yarn to break his teeth on.
The cub was just down from Vermont, so he took the time.
He was serious about it. He went around.
He read all about termites in the Public Library
And it made him sore when they fired him.
he and the hilltown
© Rg Gregory
when they look into his mind they find a hill town
somewhat surprised they go off to their learned books
outside (architecturally) hed seems a little wind-blown
not special a common sort of shackman by his looks
confessions of a fool
© Rg Gregory
(i)
i believed in flower-power (the triumph of the meek)
the thought that what a wind could bend was not to be
derided for its weakness but known to draw its calm
from a corporate sense of self (its many-ed history)
that tyranny (in the long blow) lacked the will to break
October
© Madison Julius Cawein
I oft have met her slowly wandering
Beside a leafy stream, her locks blown wild,
christmas in a box
© Rg Gregory
the policeman on the streets
found christmas in a box
tipped it down a manhole
it wasn't wearing socks
damsel flies
© Rg Gregory
certain creatures it seems are never seen
straight on - they occupy the corner of the eye
once sensed (a second look) they're gone
the damsel even more so than the dragon-fly
elusive wisdom
© Rg Gregory
thoth (who became hermes who became mercury)
who was both moon and wisdom to the egyptians
manifested himself mainly as an ibis - a watery bird
a restless creature that could not stop searching
through marshy ground with its sickle-shaped beak
the eyes that haunt me
© Rg Gregory
there are eyes that refuse to exist
in the fresh air - they are invented
by the lies of paint or make their mark
in a memory that had a truth
to feed on but only by distortion
An Elegy on Parting
© James Thomson
It was a sad, ay 'twas a sad farewell,
I still afresh the pangs of parting feel;
Against my breast my heart impatient beat,
And in deep sighs bemoan'd its cruel fate;
shaw and jung
© Rg Gregory
shaw had the gift of the crab
how he took the straight idea
and scuttled with it sideways
marking sand and word with sea's
Paradise Lost : Book II.
© John Milton
High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth or Ormus and of Ind,
temporising with the eternal
© Rg Gregory
i dont know what youre up to
yet but for me
you wouldnt exist
(not on this page anyway -
penelope
© Rg Gregory
name meaning thread weaver or duck
(these may be guesses from obscurity)
ten-year faithful wife whilst her husband
was gallivanting round the islands
The Relic
© John Greenleaf Whittier
TOKEN Of friendship true and tried,
From one whose fiery heart of youth
With mine has beaten, side by side,
For Liberty and Truth;
bluefish
© Rg Gregory
the bluefish was surprised
i was there to greet itthis world it said is mine
it feeds on bluenessfor the first time in my life
i felt i'd found my truthbluefish i cried in joy
