Introduction To Poetry Poem by Billy Collins
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
Saddest Poem Poem by Pablo Neruda
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
Write, for instance: “The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.”
The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don’t have her. To feel that I’ve lost her.
To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.
What does it matter that my love couldn’t keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.
That’s all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.
As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.
The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.
I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.
Someone else’s. She will be someone else’s. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.
Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.
Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.
Ars Poetica Poem by Archibald MacLeish
A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb
Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown –
A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs
Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,
Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind –
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs
A poem should be equal to:
Not true
For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf
For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea –
A poem should not mean
But be
*** A Poem For You *** Poem by Sulaiman Mohd Yusof
The distance, laden with terminal disease
Counting the days to eternal abyss
Fragile, a vein ruptures
Agile, a mood bursts
Your scent is across the ocean
I smell the stinky you, in notion
Desire so beautiful, like a poppy
Blossoms, sugar coated with honey
I got no means to come to you
If I can walk the ocean blue
I don’t have to write this poem
Just bury ourselves in a dorm
For a start, before luxury unleashes
We bravely, overcome love patches
Poem For A Poem Poem by Naseer Ahmed Nasir
She asks me
What is a poem?
Her shapely nose,
Her lips like two slices of water melon,
Her eyes reflecting clear blue sky,
Her thick hair like dark grey clouds,
Her horizon-like forehead
Are poems.
Frolicking of children,
Gossiping old women,
Cheering buddies gathered to spend an evening together,
Waiting travellers with carry-on bags in hand,
Strolling couples in a park, picnickers,
Are all features of a poem.
Lively sunlight warming the sanitorium stairs,
A nude poster,
A gypsy girl,
Are poems.
Ramble through a wonderland,
Laughter at an amusement park,
Still blue lake,
Scream of herons slipping on the rocks,
Thunder of a water fall,
Symphony of four seasons,
Song of pure rains,
Silent hunch of rainbow, arching over all,
Are poems.
Children of Bosnia
All are words of a poem.
Prior to gang rape
Women were preambles to poems,
Now they are complete poems.
Suppressed scream of a prisoner
In torture chamber
Is also a poem.
The blood ablaze
In the snow clad valley of Kashmir
Is fast becoming a poem.
Death of the starving in Somalia is a poem.
Coffin of the peace keeping soldier
Is a real-life poem.
She asks me, what is a poem?
Shall I tell her
That her poem inscribing fingers are too a poem
And her handwriting,
Her handsome portrait,
Her brown sandal
Even destiny under her feet
Are a poem.
She knows!
She is a poem to me clad in mauve.
Still she asks me
What is a poem?
When You Wake Tomorrow Poem by Brian Patten
I will give you a poem when you wake tomorrow.
It will be a peaceful poem.
It won’t make you sad.
It won’t make you miserable.
It will simply be a poem to give you
When you wake tomorrow.
It was not written by myself alone.
I cannot lay claim to it.
I found it in your body.
In your smile I found it.
Will you recognise it?
You will find it under your pillow.
When you open the cupboard it will be there.
You will blink in astonishment,
Shout out, ‘How it trembles!
Its nakedness is startling! How fresh it tastes!’
We will have it for breakfast;
On a table lit by loving,
At a place reserved for wonder.
We will give the world a kissing open
When we wake tomorrow.
We will offer it to the sad landlord out on the balcony.
To the dreamers at the window.
To the hand waving for no particular reason
We will offer it.
An amazing and most remarkable thing,
We will offer it to the whole human race
Which walks in us
When we wake tomorrow.
To Make A Dadist Poem Poem by Tristan Tzara
Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are–an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.
The Abandoned Poem Poem by Daniel Brick
I wrote a long poem
for you this morning
in the pure light
of an untouched day.
The poem was marvelous!
It took two hours to write,
two hours to revise,
one hour to copy neatly.
As I read the final draft,
I felt I was in your presence:
your flesh as pure as the light,
your mind as untouched as the day.
The poem was one moment
a window through which I saw
your beauty. The next moment,
a mirror reflecting our joy.
Then a darkness that was not
nature’s fell across my desk.
I dropped my pen, closed my
notebook. My mind, like a whirlgig.
This poem, these paper words
contained no trace of you:
the down of your face,
the curve of your legs,
your breathing lifting
your breasts, your lips
parted to speak, or parting
to kiss – Yes,
words are such perfect
traitors: they make promises
that warm you, like summer light,
they create spirals of hope.
For those hours of composing,
the words performed miracles
of desire, produced wonders
of expectation, and then –
I dumped the three sheets
in the yard as I trudged
to my daily tasks,
silent, sullen, sorry.
That evening, as twilight
slowly finished what
morning light had begun,
I saw you, sitting alone,
on your balcony, half-
hidden by a vase of flowers.
Your hands held my poem,
your eyes gazed intently.
I stood leaning against
a maple tree, watching
this impossible scene,
wondering what words were left.
No longer traitors, I
sifted through my mind
to find the words closest
to touch and to silence.
As I looked up in desire,
you suddenly looked
down in anticipation.
Words dissolved into gestures.
Silence Is The Entrance…. Poem by Sylvia Frances Chan
Below the water surface
I put down my foundations
to build a house
with a tiny room
I can work, is never disturbed
Below the water surface
I see my inside
peculiar, the doors are mirror
I see myself knocking on the door
Below the water surface
I have just lost my way
suddenly there is a door open
the main gate of my soul
Below the water surface
I see my inside
silence is the absolute must
to the main gate to open,
the mirrors to remove
and so I see myself go inside
Nice to be there
nice to be in place to
Heaven in order to remain
in the interior, in this huge silence
have you met me, you raise me
with your love…
Silence is the Entrance
to the deepest me….
Clouds Of Love Poem by PREMKUMAR C N
Oh, golden twilight clouds,
Go far with the message in my songs
To where my beloved weeps for me
Wipe her tears and tell her she is mine
Let her know how sad I feel
In this world so unreal
In this suffocating silence
Left by her long absence
Carry the vapors of tears
From my eyes as your clouds of blue
Stay above her, high in the sky
Inundate her, with droplets of my sorrow
Let the thunders in my heart
Shiver all the Ashta-Dikpalas
With the reverberations of the mantra
‘Krishna loves Radha’
Let the lightning in my heart
Spread around the horizon
All the sparks of love I kept undisturbed
For the queen of my heart
Take her up in the whirlwinds of my mind
And carry her in the mighty winds
Take her in your stormy hands
Place her in my arms which crave for her touch