Writing Lessons

There are...still..so many books I want to read...and reread...

There are...still...so many places I want to travel...to...

There are...still...foods I want to eat...and drinks I want to sample...

There are... blankets to lie upon or under...

There are...pillows upon which to prop my books or my head...

I definitely want to rocket to outer space...I also want to explore inner space...

I know no one ever wished they had been meaner...

Or hated more...

Or spent more hours away from people they loved...

I know that life is interesting and you can never go wrong Being interested

If I were giving advice I would say: Sing.
People who sing to themselves
People who make variations on songs they know
People who teach songs to other people
These are the people other people want to be with

and that will let you be a good writer
Because

There are...still...so many ideas to conceive

~Nikki Giovanni

note for my wall

it's no good
after all.
it has been cut in half
drawn and
quartered and
hung out to dry.

it was hardly good
even when it was good.

the ego gets caught
in a web of desire
the ego creates that strange mirage,
love.

I need a new home for my ego.
who will she be
this time?

~Charles Bukowski

For Jane

225 days under grass
and you know more than I
they have long taken your blood,
you are a dry stick in a basket.
is this how it works?
in this rooms
the hours of love
still makes shadows.

when you left
you took almost
everything.
I kneel in the nights
before tigers
that will not let me be.

what you were
will not happen again.
the tigers found me
and I do not care.

~Charles Bukowski

I mounted

I mounted
my face falling into the mass
of red hair that overflowed
from her head
and my fattened c--- entered
into the miracle

----------------
----------------

she told me
how good she felt and I told her
how good I felt and we ate
the chicken and the shrimp and the
french fries and the buns and the
mashed potatoes and the gravy and
the cole slaw too.

~Charles Bukowski

wondering where the good luck

I drive around the streets
an inch away from weeping
ashamed of my sentimentality and
possible love.

a confused old man driving in the rain
wondering where the good luck
went.

~Charles Bukowski

Rumi

I am so small I can barely be seen.
How can this great love be inside me?

Look at your eyes. They are small,
but they see enormous things.

Translated by Coleman Barks

Love

The boy at the end of the train car
kept looking behind him
as if he were afraid or expecting someone

and then she appeared in the glass door
of the forward car and he rose
and opened the door and let her in

and she entered the car carrying
a large black case
in the unmistakable shape of a cello.

She looked like an angel with a high forehead
and somber eyes and her hair
was tied up behind her neck with a black bow.

And because of all that,
he seemed a little awkward
in his happiness to see her,

whereas she was simply there,
perfectly existing as a creature
with a soft face who played the cello.

And the reason I am writing this
on the back of a manila envelope
now that they have left the train together

is to tell you that when she turned
to lift the large, delicate cello
onto the overhead rack,

I saw him looking up at her
and what she was doing
the way the eyes of saints are painted

when they are looking up at God
when he is doing something remarkable,
something that identifies him as a God.

~Billy Collins

3 poems of Maya Angelou

A Conceit

Give me your hand.

Make room for me
to lead and follow
you
beyond this rage of poetry.

Let others have
the privacy of
touching words
and love of loss
of love.

For me
Give me your hand.

~Maya Angelou

***


Tears

Tears
The crystal rags
Viscous tatters
of a worn-through soul.

Moans
Deep swan song
Blur farewell
of a dying dream.

~Maya Angelou

***

Is Love

Midwives and winding sheets
know birthing is hard
and dying is mean
and living's a trail in between.

Why do we journey, muttering
like rumors among stars?
Is a dimension lost?
Is it love?

~ Maya Angelou

the least figure

I tried to think of someway
to let my face become yours.

"Could I whisper in your ear
a dream I've had? You're the only one
I've told this to."

You tilt your head, laughing.
as if, "I know the trick you're hatching,
but go ahead."

I am an image you stitch with gold thread
on a tapestry, the least figure,
a playful addition.

But nothing you work on is dull.
I am part of the beauty.

~Rumi
Translated by Coleman Barks

Now children run through me

I used to be shy.
You made me sing.

I used to refuse things at table.
Now I shout for more wine.

In somber dignity, I used to sit
on my mat and pray.

Now children run through me
and make faces at me.

~Rumi
Translated by Coleman Barks.

you do it while you're killing flies

Bach, I said, he had 20 children.
he played the horses during the day.
he f--ed at night
and drank in the mornings.
he wrote music in between.

at least that's what I told her
when she asked me,
when do you do your
writing?

~Charles Bukowski

Yehuda Amichai ( ) A Dog After Love / A Precise Woman

After you left me
I let a dog smell at
My chest and my belly.
It will fill its nose
And set out to find you.
I hope it will tear the
Testicles of your lover
and bite off his penis
Or at least
Will bring me your stockings
between his teeth.


http://plagiarist.com/poetry/2155/

--------------------------------------------------------------------

A Precise Woman

A precise woman with
a short haircut brings order
to my thoughts and my dresser drawers,
moves feelings around like furniture
into a new arrangement.
A woman whose body is cinched
at the waist and firmly divided
into upper and lower,
with weather-forecast eyes
of shatterproof glass.
Even her cries of passion
follow a certain order,
one after the other:
tame dove, then wild dove,
then peacock, wounded peacock, peacock, peacock,
the wild dove, tame dove, dove dove
thrush, thrush, thrush.
A precise woman: on the bedroom carpet
her shoes always point away from the bed.
(My own shoes point toward it.)


Translated by Chana Bloch
http://plagiarist.com/poetry/2157/

Charles Bukowski ( ) Confession - I Love You

waiting for death
like a cat
that will jump on the
bed
I am so very sorry for
my wife

she will see this
stiff
white
body
shake it once, then
maybe
again

"Hank!"
Hank won't
answer.

it's not my death that
worries me, it's my wife
left with this
pile of
nothing.

I want to
let her know
though
that all the nights
sleeping
beside her

even the useless
arguments
were things
ever splendid
and the hard
words
I ever feared to
say
can now be
said:

I love
you.


http://plagiarist.com/poetry/139/

D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) Gloire de Dijon

When she rises in the morning
I linger to watch her;
She spreads the bath-cloth underneath the window
Glistening white on the shoulder,
While down her sides the mellow
Golden shadows glow as
She stops to the sponge, and her swung breasts
Sway like full-blown yellow
Gloire de Dijon roses.

She drips herself with water, and her shoulders
Glisten as silver, they crumple up
Like wet and falling roses, and I listen
For the sluicing of their rain disheveled petals,
In the window full of sunlight
Concentrates her golden shadow
Fold on fold, until it glows as
Mellow as the glory roses.

Note:
Gloire de Dijon: a kind of rose

Charles Simic (1937- ) The Partial Explanation

Seems like a long time
Since the waiter took my order.
Grimy little luncheonette,
The snow falling outside.
Seems like it has grown darker
Since I last heard the kitchen door
Behind my back
Since I last noticed
Anyone pass on the street.

A glass of ice water
Keeps me company
At this table I chose myself
Upon entering.

And a longing
Incredible longing
To eavesdrop
On the conversation
Of cooks.

Harold Pinter ( ) The Special Relationship

The bombs go off
The legs go off
The heads go off

The arms go off
The feet go off
The light goes out

The heads go off
The legs go off
The lust is up

The dead are dirt
The lights go out
The dead are dust

A man bows down before another man
And sucks his lust

Note:
Harold Pinter who is against the war in Iraq gives poetic expression to the Bush-Blair relationship in the Guardian. See other articles and poems by the 2005 Nobel Prize winner in literature at http://www.haroldpinter.org/home/index.shtml#

Sharon Olds (1942 - ) The Pope's Penis

It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate
clapper at the center of a bell.
It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a
halo of silver seaweed, the hair
swaying in the dark and the heat - and at night
while his eyes sleep, it stands up
in praise of God.


http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/Sharon-Olds/5582

Camincha ( ) That Bouquet

My love Thank you!
Your roses are keeping me company
till we
get together again.
Meantime I practice
placing my fingertips at the bottom of
the blossom
where the petals swell up next to the
stem. I caress
them softly, over and over.
Placing my lips on the tips of the
petals
after a week in the vase
they are hard, stiff I lick them
over and over. Meantime I practice...

Note:
This is a beautiful love poem. It creates imagery and at the same time tenderly expresses the feelings of N. See the word play and the skillful use of repetitions.
Camincha is from Peru. She now lives in USA, her second home.

Edna St.Vincent Millay (1852-1950) Ebb

I know what my heart is like
Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
Left there by the tide,
A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.


http://www.geocities.com/Paris/LeftBank/6865/millayad2req.htmlEbb

Sappho ( circa 600 BCE ) Love For That Boy

It's no use

It's no use
Mother dear, I
can't finish my
weaving
You may
blame Aphrodite

soft as she is
she has almost
killed me with
love for that boy


http://www.emule.com/poetry/?page=poem&poem=1504