Cryptic poems and poetic ramblings etc. General ponderings.

dc38

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Chauncey Gardiner started a thread a WHILE back known as "Words to live by". With all this living by going on, I have decided to start this thread with the spirit of making observations or complaining about life. HOWEVER, it should done in such a way that leads people to ponder the mystery of life. This is not a thread to troll, this is not a thread to promote flaming. My personal favorites are riddles, to each his own.

In the spirit of the thread, I'll start with a rather innocuous one that I'm SURE many people can relate to.

The Money Tree
Lo, what blossoms here in this city of glass and stone,
So cold, serene, majestic, bold,but it is not alone;

for every ten, no-twelve, no-fifteen feet, there stands another one,
Its nourishment confounds me, for, It comes not from the sun.

Rooted firmly in the false earth, its bulb is one to see;
The ground from which its trunk extends is bleak and dead, to me

The trunk itself is but a tube, it has been crafted in a forge,
On the face of the tree itself is a mouth by which to gorge.

Suddenly, it's clear to me that this tree does not grow,
It flaunts time upon it's face, trees of nature have their rings to show.

This tree is evil, filled with greed and pain,
its water is not water, it drinks from a different kind of rain.

In a shower of stamped discs, this evil tree flourishes.
It holds its own amidst the sea of many trampling tourists.

Money tree, money tree, why do you torment us.
Had I known you would be here, I would have ridden the bus!
 

StarHalo

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Sentimental Education by Tony Hoagland

And when we were eight, or nine,
our father took us back into the Alabama woods,
found a rotten log, and with his hunting knife

pried off a slab of bark
to show the hundred kinds of bugs and grubs
that we would have to eat in a time of war.

"The ones who will survive," he told us,
looking at us hard,
"are the ones who are willing to do anything."
Then he popped one of those pale slugs
into his mouth and started chewing.

And that was Lesson Number 4
in The Green Beret Book of Childrearing.

I looked at my pale, scrawny, knock-kneed, bug-eyed brother,
who was identical to me,
and saw that, in a world that ate the weak,
we didn't have a prayer,

and next thing I remember, I'm working for a living
at a boring job
that I'm afraid of losing,

with a wife whose lack of love for me
is like a lack of oxygen,
and this dead thing in my chest
that used to be my heart.

Oh, if he were alive, I would tell him, "Dad,
you were right! I ate a lot of stuff
far worse than bugs."

And I was eaten, I was eaten,
I was picked up
and chewed
and swallowed

down into the belly of the world.
 

Capolini

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VERY INTERESTING!

I have written hundreds of quotes and dozens of Poems of which a few are published and in Poetry books.

My best one is a heartfelt and sensitive side of me! It is called MY SPIRIT LIVES,,written in memory of a friend!

I do not think it would qualify for this thread but I may start one or search for one where it may fit better.

Anyway,,,thanks for your creativity and inspiring me! :)
 

dc38

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The Cleaver
Cleave ye, flesh unto flesh
The Lord Almighty said to us.

And cleave we did, so deep and true,
and watched as the seed of our love grew,

A fine young man he did become, treading straight and light,
though very soon we came to find, he was walking into night.

He slowly wandered away from us, towards a wily siren;
her song was long and sad indeed, the burden of a mountain.

We pleaded and begged, we raged and sobbed,
but of our counsel he was robbed,

The siren's words and promises would soon be found,
filling his heart and senses abound.

They fell like the execution'rs axe and cleft him from our eyes...
we heard his confused utterances and grieved at his mangled cries...

Each fell stroke of perverted moans slowly cleft my heart in two...
As he quickly cleft his life away, to an early tomb.

I ask but this, ask of yourself, to whom or what you believe?
Watch what you say and do, to those ideas you'll cleave!
 
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StarHalo

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Oh Yes by Charles Bukowski

there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late.
 

StarHalo

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When they die we change our minds about them by Jennifer Michael Hecht

When they die we change our minds
about them. While they live we see
the plenty hard they're trying,
to be a star, or nice, or wise,
and so we do not quite believe them.

When they die, suddenly they are
what they claimed. Turns out,
that's what one of those looks like.

The cold war over manner of manly
or mission is over. Same person,
same facts and acts, just now
a quiet brain stem. We no longer
begrudge his or her stupid luck.

When they die we change our minds
about them. I will try to believe
while you yet breathe.
 

TEEJ

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Are you guys all about to commit suicide or something?

There's a theme going here that's really depressing.

:D
 
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Oh Yes by Charles Bukowski

there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late.

When end I was a young man, early 20's, I wasn't wise enough to realize it's far better to be lonely than miserable.

Fortunately, I met the lovely, soon to be Mrs. "Gardiner" and had the good sense to ask her to marry me. During the last 29 years I've never L@@Ked back,, or sideways for that matter. An old friend I hadn't seen for a very long time, asked me how I'd been able to stay married for so long. I answered, "I married-up, and have never forgotten that I did. If you don't believe me, just ask my mother-in-law." :laughing:

That's my story, and no TEEJ, I'm not about to comit suicide.

~ Chance
 
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TEEJ

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When end I was a young man, early 20's, I wasn't wise enough to realise it's far better to be lonely than miserable.

Fortunately, I met the lovely, soon to be Mrs. "Gardiner" and had the good sense to ask her to marry me. During the last 29 years I've never L@@Ked back,, or sideways for that matter. An old friend I hadn't seen for a very long time, asked me how I'd been able to stay married for so long. I answered, "I married-up, and have never forgotten that I did. If you don't believe me, just ask my mother-in-law." :laughing:

That's my story, and no TEEJ, I'm not about to comit suicide.

~ Chance

LOL

Of course, ironically, you're the one WITHOUT the depressing poem...
 
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Why conflicted? Didn't he have insurance?

Now, on the other hand, my wife and mother are the very best of friends. At the rehearsal dinner, mom stood, raised her glass and said, "If I had gone out to find a wife for my son, I would have brought back Debbie." I've always known that if push came to shove, it would be mom & wife, with me, the odd man out. Way out.....in the doghouse.

Truth be told, I wouldn't have it any other way. Two of the finest women I've ever met.

~ C.G.
 

orbital

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^

TEEJ, you average over 202 posts a month.


CPF owes you a beer :D
 

StarHalo

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Alright, here's a happy one:

Meeting at Night by Robert Browning

The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low:
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!
 

StarHalo

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Labor as a Tulip by Karen Volkman

Labor as a tulip
arrays its flame, nu
form, as the bulb-star,
interred, divines its ore

surging the gulf
rooting it into
appalled memento
pulsing will.

Leaf-blades score the heap.
Other wounds—penetralia—
other worlds, cries, far.
Filaments, simples

emblazoning the rei,
rebus of grief.
Unslumbering terra
premising her kill.
 

StarHalo

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A Sense of Proportion by William Stobb

On 20th between Madison and Ferry
a line of municipal maples binds the community
to an orderly, serviceable beauty. Platforms
from which our sparrows and starlings
might decorate our domestic sedans,
perhaps these trees serve most to stimulate
the car wash economy. Today, they remind me:

unsatisfied with workaday species, my parents
nailed oranges to a post to attract the exotic Oriole.
When the birds arrived, I wondered if they'd flown
all the way from Baltimore, which in turn
evoked a hotel, gables lined
with black and tangerine, posh clientele
spackled by the vagaries of Maryland living.

By nine I could sigh, climb our single
red maple, which I imagined a national landmark.
Child of movies, I could see the tree even at night
as a kind of beacon, a singularity. White
sheen on the leaves' pitchy gloss, bodily.
And I too would learn to feel glazed
as any creature accumulating light

cast from stars, hidden in a federation
of equivalent times, distant trains
carrying sugar, coal, whole families beyond
deserts, imposing ranges, shimmering coastlines
said to define the spirit of a people.
Far from the station, the pinpoint aurora,
a line of municipal maples bears its charge.
 

StarHalo

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The Dream of a Common Language by Leigh Stein

On Wednesdays I take the train past Yankee Stadium,
to a place where it is never a given that I speak the language,
to a place where graffiti covers the mural they painted to hide
the graffiti, to a place where the children call me Miss Miss
Miss Miss Miss and I find in one of their poems, a self-portrait,
the line I wish I was rish. The dream of a common language

is the language of one million dollars, of basketball, of plátanos.
Are the kids black? my boyfriend wants to know. Dominican.
It's different. When asked to write down a question
they wish they could ask their mom or dad, one boy writes,
Paper or plastic? A girl in the back of the class wants to know
Why don't I have lycene, translating the sound of the color

of my skin into her own language. The best poet
in sixth grade is the girl who is this year repeating
sixth grade. When I tell her teacher of her talent
she says, At least now we know she's good
at something. To speak their language, I study
the attendance list, practice the cadence of their names.

Yesterday I presented a black and white portrait of a black man,
his bald head turned away from us, a spotted moth resting
on one shoulder. I told them this is a man serving a life
sentence in Louisiana. Is this art? Without hesitation,
one girl said no, why would anybody
want to take a picture
of that.
 
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