T.R | Title | User | Personal Name | Date | Lines |
---|
41.1 | | DZIGN::STHILAIRE | there should be enough for us all | Tue Apr 24 1990 09:32 | 17 |
| Soiled Dove
by Carl Sandburg
from Complete Poems
Let us be honest; the lady was not a harlot until she married a
corporation lawyer who picked her from a Ziegfeld chorus.
Before then she never took anybody's money and paid for her silk
stockings out of what she earned singing and dancing.
She loved one man and he loved six women and the game was changing
her looks, calling for more and more massage money and high
coin for the beauty doctors.
Now she drives a long, underslung motor car all by herself, reads
in the day's papers what her husband is doing to the inter-state
commerce commission, requires a larger corsage from year to
year, and wonders sometimes how one man is coming along with
six women.
|
41.2 | | DZIGN::STHILAIRE | there should be enough for us all | Tue Apr 24 1990 09:36 | 22 |
| Harrison Street Court
by Carl Sandburg
from Complete Poems
I heard a woman's lips
Speaking to a companion
Say these words:
"A woman what hustles
Never keeps nothin'
For all her hustlin'.
Somebody always gets
What she goes on the street for.
If it ain't a pimp
It's a bull what gets it.
I been hustlin' now
Till I ain't much good any more.
I got nothin' to show for it.
Some man got it all,
Every night's hustlin' I ever did."
|
41.3 | | DZIGN::STHILAIRE | there should be enough for us all | Tue Apr 24 1990 09:40 | 19 |
| Old Woman
by Carl Sandburg
from Complete Poems
The owl-car clatters along, dogged by the echo
From building and battered paving-stone;
The headlight scoffs at the mist
And fixes its yellow rays in the cold slow rain;
Against a pane I press my forehead
And drowsily look on the walls and sidewalks.
The headlight finds the way
And life is gone from the wet and the welter -
Only an old woman, bloated, disheveled and bleared
Far-wandered waif of other days,
Huddles for sleep in a doorway,
Homeless.
|
41.4 | | DZIGN::STHILAIRE | there should be enough for us all | Tue Apr 24 1990 09:46 | 21 |
| Working Girls
by Carl Sandburg
from Complete Poems
The working girls in the morning are going to work - long lines
of them afoot amid the downtown stores and factories, thousands
with little brick-shaped lunches wrapped in newspapers under
their arms.
Each morning as I move through this river of young-woman life I
feel a wonder about where it is all going, so many with a peach
bloom of young years on them and laughter of red lips and
memories in their eyes of dances the night before and plays
and walks.
Green and gray streams run side by side in a river and so here are
always the others, those who have been over the way, the women
who know each one the end of life's gamble for her, the meaning
and the clue, the how and the why of the dances and the arms
that passed around their waists and the fingers that played
in their hair.
|
41.5 | | DZIGN::STHILAIRE | do you have a brochure? | Tue May 08 1990 16:09 | 47 |
| "The Woman Inside"
by Michael Blumenthal
from "Days We Would Rather Know"
There is a woman
inside me.
She is not beautiful
or divine,
but when I turn
in my sleep, restless
with other worlds,
she is always there -
placing a lilac
in my hand, gesturing
to the earth where
it all begins and
all ends. She knows
there are cruel men
everywhere, and angels
in unlikely places.
She knows the darkness
is only a passage
between light and light,
that the wisteria
climbing the house
are real, and lust
only tenderness gone wild
in the wrong field.
She is the one who is
always fertile in times
of barrenness, the one
with the silver hair
carrying a candle
through the long tunnel.
She is Halcyone,
calming the waters
after all my deaths;
she is Eurydice,
refusing to fade
when I look behind me.
She is the one
who wakes
with her arms around me
when I wake
alone.
|
41.6 | | DZIGN::STHILAIRE | do you have a brochure? | Tue May 08 1990 17:43 | 36 |
| The Pleasures of Old Age
by Michael Blumenthal
from "Against Romance"
When my grandmother Lisette turned ninety-nine,
all she could think of was men -
how they would enter her room during the night
from the vast mixer of the mind, wild
with desire, drunk with a desperate love
for only her. All day she sat, spectacle-less,
over romance magazines, until, at night,
she could dream them back into her arms,
those beautiful men, and, when morning came,
rise from her immaculate bed, pink
with the glow of the newly deflowered,
to enter the world again. All over our island
that was Manhattan, bachelors sprouted like dandelions
in the field of her hungers - Baruch Oestrich, stifled
by shyness at eighty-eight, for whom she would primp for hours;
Hugo Marx, a youthful seventy-seven, but too tired to notice;
Walter Hass, a sprightly eighty, who had sat shivah
for his wife for thirty years. Afternoons,
like a young girl dateless at prom time,
she would wait by the phone, sure that deliverance
would come in the voice of some stranger, resolved
that her double digitry would grow centuried
in a whirl of romance. I don't know what she was thinking
that day, when she fell from the top of the stairs
to die at the bottom, but I like to imagine
it was of who would enter her room that night,
and of her great joy in beautiful men -
how she had trembled for them once,
how she would gladly tremble for them again,
even now.
|
41.7 | cummings | TINCUP::KOLBE | The dilettante debutante | Fri Jun 01 1990 21:10 | 21 |
| if I have made, my lady, intricate
imperfect various things chiefly which wrong
your eyes(frailer than most deep dreams are frail)
songs less firm than your body's whitest song
upon my mind-if i have failed to snare
the glance too shy-if through my singing slips
the very skillful strangeness of your smile
the keen primeval silence of your hair
-let the world say "his most wise music stole
nothing from death"-
you only will create
(who are so perfectly alive) my shame:
lady through whose profound and fragile lips
the sweet small clumsy feet of April came
into the ragged meadow of my soul.
ee cummings
"IS 5"
Harcourt, Brace & World, inc. NY,NY 1926
|
41.8 | Women | MILKWY::CROBERTS | | Fri Jun 08 1990 11:16 | 30 |
| This poem is one my mother cut of of a newspaper many years ago, she
always wanted to show it to my father but never did.
So for all of you women who are or once were wives and mothers:
Regardless of what you think woman should be,
I'm a separate being, a person, I'm me.
Not just your wife and not just their mother,
I don't and can not live just for another.
I never was born to martyr myself,
to put my dreams away on a shelf.
The things I want are so pitifully few,
it seems very little I'm asking from you.
I want faith and respect and a very small part
of the love you must carry down deep in your heart.
I don't want to be taken for granted or bossed;
I don't wnat myself as I am to be lost.
Maybe I'm not all you'd like me to be,
but if you'd just open your heart you could see,
that just as I am I feel I am worth,
the right to be me for my whole stay on earth.
|
41.9 | Yes! | HENRYY::HASLAM_BA | Creativity Unlimited | Fri Jun 08 1990 11:50 | 5 |
| Rel: -1
Thank you for that one!
Barb
|
41.10 | Baudelaire | TINCUP::KOLBE | The dilettante debutante | Fri Jun 15 1990 18:01 | 21 |
| In those times when Nature in powerful zest
Conceived each day monstrous children,
I would have loved to live near a young giantess,
A voluptuous cat at the feet of a queen.
I would have loved to see her body flower with her soul,
To grow up freely in her prodigious play;
To find if her heart bred some dark flame
Amongst the humid mists swimming in her eyes;
To run leisurely over her marvellous lines;
To creep along the slopes of her enormous knees,
And sometimes in summer, when impure suns
Made her wearily stretch out across the countryside,
To sleep carelessly in the shadow of her breasts,
Like a peaceful village at the foot of a mountain.
Charles Baudelaire from the "Selected Poems of CB".
translated from French by Geoffrey Wagner
Grove Press 1974
|
41.11 | Mark Doty | SPARKL::KOTTLER | | Fri Jun 29 1990 09:23 | 53 |
|
HAIR
In a scene in the film
shot at Bergen-Belsen days after
the liberation of the camp
a woman brushes her hair.
Though her gesture is effortless
it seems also for the first time,
as if she has just remembered
that she has long hair,
that it is a pleasure
to brush, and that pleasure
is possible. And the mirror
beside which the camera must be rolling,
the combing out and tying back
of the hair, all possible.
She wears a new black sweater
the relief workers have brought,
clothes to replace the body's
visible hungers. Perhaps
she is a little shy of the camera,
or else she is distracted
by the new wool and plain wonder
of the hairbrush, because
on her face is a sort of dulled,
dreamy look, as if the part
of herself that recognizes
the simple familiar good of brushing
is floating back into her,
the way the spiritualists say
the etheric body returns to us
when we wake from sleep's long travel.
With each stroke she restores
something of herself, and one
at a time the arms and hands
and face remember, the scalp
remembers that her hair
is a part of her, her own.
-- Mark Doty, from his book
Turtle, Swan, 1987
|
41.12 | | JURAN::TEASDALE | | Fri Jun 29 1990 17:16 | 6 |
| re .11
I don't usually read poetry, but that was truly beautiful.
Thanks.
Nancy
|
41.13 | .12 - yr wlcm! The rest of the book is good too... | SPARKL::KOTTLER | | Tue Jul 03 1990 09:14 | 1 |
|
|
41.14 | | OASS::BACOT_A | | Fri Jul 20 1990 11:13 | 35 |
|
Warning: When I am an old woman I shall wear purple...
With a red hat that doesn't go and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer
gloves and satin sandals, and say we've no money
for butter.
I shall sit on the pavement when I'm tired
and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
and run my stick along the public railings and
make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
and pick flowers from other people's gardens
and learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
and eat 3 pounds of sausage at a go
or only bread and pickles for a week
and hoard pens and pencils and beer mats
and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes to keep
us dry and pay our rent and not
swear in the street and set a good
example for the children.
We will have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked
and surprised when suddenly I am
old and start to wear purple.
Jenny Joesph
|
41.15 | | OASS::BACOT_A | | Fri Jul 20 1990 11:51 | 30 |
| Comes the dawn
After awhile you learn the subtle difference
between holding a hand and chaining a soul
and you learn that love doesn't mean security
and you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises.
And you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and your eyes open
with the grace of a woman -- not the grief of a child.
And you learn to build all your roads
on today because tomorrows ground
is too uncertain -- And futures have a way
of falling down in mid flight.
And after awile you learn that even sunshine burns
If you get too much.
So you plant your garden and decorate your soul
instead of waiting
for someone to bring you flowers
And you learn that you really can endure...
That you really are strong
and that you really do have worth
and you learn and learn
With every goodbye you learn.
|
41.16 | the empty nest | TLE::RANDALL | living on another planet | Fri Jul 20 1990 12:31 | 54 |
| This is something I wrote a few days ago that I thought the =wn=
community might enjoy -- not as good as Sandburg and Millay, I'm
afraid . . .
The Empty Nest
(c) 1990 Bonnie Randall Schutzman. All rights reserved.
We lay on the bank by the pond in the dark
After the children ran us ragged,
"Will you go to sleep now?" we said, and they giggled, "Never,"
And ran away screaming.
We chased them around the fire
And ended the tag with a kiss.
In winter now I treasure that kiss
And the games we played in the dark.
I gather kindling for the fire.
My hands are old and ragged.
Outside the blizzard is screaming
And I ache with the flame of never.
I asked, "When will you go?" And you said, "Never,"
And you closed my mouth with a kiss
Nighthawks swooped, their tiny screaming
Finding mosquitos in the dark.
The wind-torn clouds were ragged,
Flashing blue with lightning's fire.
I sit alone and tend the fire.
Its baleful heart hisses, "Never."
Sleep's careworn knitting leaves my mind's sleeve ragged.
Do the mountains miss the morning's kiss
While they wait alone in the dark?
Do they ever wake up screaming?
You held our firstborn in his screaming,
Warmed his bottle by the fire
And walked him through a house grown quiet and dark.
"Is he asleep?" I asked, and you almost laughed. "Never,
I think. Here, he wants a kiss."
Who minded that our clothes were poor and the quilt
for his bed was ragged?
The wound in his chest was ragged.
I pounded the pillow, screaming,
"What use now is a mother's kiss
When the enemy's fire
Has frozen all our dreams? We will never
Forget those games in the dark."
Through ragged tears I watch the fire
And run screaming through my dreams. I cry, "Never?"
And the answer is a bloodless kiss from a world forever dark.
|
41.17 | | GEMVAX::KOTTLER | | Wed Aug 08 1990 09:35 | 38 |
|
FROM BLOSSOMS
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted "Peaches."
From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
-- Li-Young Lee, from his book Rose, 1986
(ok, so it's about peaches, but they're fruit, right? produced by the
feminine, right? anyway it seemed feminine somehow...)
|
41.18 | Very Visual, Very Gentle | HENRYY::HASLAM_BA | Creativity Unlimited | Wed Aug 08 1990 13:38 | 4 |
| <------That was beautiful!
Barb
|
41.19 | Death in the Family | OASS::AMATO_A | | Thu Oct 25 1990 10:16 | 129 |
|
People hug us and cry
and pray we'll be strong
and know we'll see her again someday
And we nod and they pat and rub
reassuring her to heaven
She's with Jesus now
no suffering where she is
Then sit on hard benches and sing
of precious memories how they linger
and farther along we'll understand it
Cheer up my brother
We're not forgotten
The preacher studies his Bible and stares at the ceiling
and the song leader in his blue funeral suit sweats
and strokes the air
with a callused hand
We'll understand it
all bye and bye
And powdered and rosy cheeked
Miss Anne sleeps in an open coffin
the children standing tiptoe to see through the flowers
but scared to go near and drawing back when lifted
And the choir brings a balm in Gilead
and a roll is called up yonder
When the trumpet of the lord shall sound
and time shall be no more
And big men shake heads white at the hat line
while women weep and flutter air with palm leaf fans
And later we stand amidst the stones
by the mound of red clay our eyes wet against the sun
and listen to preachers and mockingbirds
and the 23rd Psalm
II
Men stand uneasy in ties
and nod their hats to ladies
and kick gravel with shoes too tight
and talk about life
Nobody no better'n Miss Anne
No Sir
No Sir
Smoking bull durhams around the porch
shaking their heads to agree
and sucking wind through their teeth
Never let you go thirsty
bring a jugga tea to the field
ever day
They open doors for us and look at the ground
as if by not seeing our faces they become invisible
There are not enough chores
so three draw well water
and two get the mail
and four feed the dogs
and the rest chop wood
and wish for something to say
Lester broke his arm one time
and Miss Anne plowed that mule
like a man
put in the whole crop
And they talk of crops and plowing
of rain and sun and flood and drought
The seasons passing in memory
marking changes in years and lives
that men remember at times
when there's nothing to say
III
Ladies come with sad faces
and baskets of sweets
teacakes, pecan pies, puddings, memories
and we choose and they serve
telling stories and god blessing the children
I declare that Miss Anne
was the sweetest Christian person
in the world
Saying all the things to be said
doing all the things to be done
like orderly spirits
freshening beds from the grieving night
poking up fires gone cold
filling the table and sideboard
then gathering there to urge and cajole
as if the dead rest easier on our full stomachs
Lord how Miss Anne would have loved that country ham
No sadness so great it cannot be fed away
by the insistent spirits
That banana cake is her very own recipe
I remember how she loved my spoon bread
She canned the berries in this cobbler
And suddenly we are transformed
and eat and smile and thank you
and the ladies nod and know they have done well again
in time of need
And the little girls watch and learn
And we forget the early spring cemetery
and the church with precious memories
and farther along we do understand it
the payments and repayments
of all the ladies that were and are
and we pray ever will be. Amen
James A. Autry
Nights under a Tin Roof
|
41.20 | John Haines | GEMVAX::KOTTLER | | Tue Dec 18 1990 13:12 | 55 |
|
DAPHNE
I
Of yourself and your beginnings,
these scattered images
say what you are
and what you may become.
Morning, and Spring come again
to the island where you live,
always Daphne. Soul of the wind,
there are vines at your throat,
your ear thinned to a shell
that listens to water and the vice
of a sea bird crying in the fog.
II
I know three women that are you:
One keeps track of the silver
in a box of drawers, she loves
the glitter and the falling sound.
Another climbs all day the rooms
in a vacant house; she rocks
at night before a fire, reads
from a large red book, withheld
and alone.
And the third
calls music from a heart of wood.
III
You rise from your sleep
as from a lover gone silent and cold.
You walk in a sunken green light,
stand before your water mirror,
then cut off your hair.
I find you, I lose you. You change,
stand fast in a makeshift of shadows;
you leave, and ferry my heart away.
Your voice from its inner distance
saying your poem, your myth,
born from the bark of your tree.
-- John Haines, from Cicada, 1977
|
41.21 | for her | CSC32::K_JOHNSON | It's only natural! | Sat Dec 22 1990 17:17 | 33 |
|
Old men stand
around her tiny form
gibbering like
circus clowns
giving up their dignity
for her smile
for her smile
for her
Young men stand
cool pretensions lost
to nervous glances
none will say the words
but each would give his soul
for her heart
for her heart
for her
Lost men stand
around her quiet form
father, brother, lover, friend
the time was just too brief
each will grieve a different way
for her love
for her love
for her
- Anonymous
kj
|
41.22 | | TALLIS::TORNELL | | Wed Mar 06 1991 11:19 | 41 |
| I wrote this in 1986 when my grandmother became ill and we all became
worried. In the poem life ends, (or more precisely, is "interrupted"),
but my grandmother recovered and is still with us today. The rebirth of
the Spring season naturally brings this poem to my mind.
Sandy Ciccolini
THE PACT
Spring waits in a whisper.
Poised on thin ice, her tantative step
Awaits its acceptance in patient repose,
Then with delicate hesitancy,
She lifts her toes.
Beyond the equinox the soft days of May,
Secure in their footing and resting on promises kept,
Will linger and flirt to tease and attract,
And with the weight of their heat firm and exact,
Force life from the wasteland of what life lacked,
On point in the perpetual dance of the pact.
Cling as we did in the shadows of Fall,
Drawn together at the Winter's call.
Leaves that were taken long on the wind,
Hear the wind in the trees and gather again.
Consanguineous circles with backs to the cold,
Suckle the young and comfort the old.
As we braced for the struggle in fear of the known,
She withdrew at the solstice and left us alone.
And so we remain in the grips of our fate,
On the snow-covered hillsides to ponder and wait.
The emptiness threatens, grip tightens and then,
Spring lifts her tentative leg again.
|
41.23 | | TALLIS::TORNELL | | Wed Mar 06 1991 14:17 | 43 |
| I wrote this one around 1984 to mark a beautiful rainy morning,
which I used as a setting for a woman who is realizing that she
has fallen in love, and who goes through many emotions before ultimately
surrendering to that fact. I may have posted this one in an earlier
version of wn.
RAIN IN THE MORNING
In the rain in the morning,
When I think of him in bed,
In that strong and silent solitude
Except for what we've said,
I could blindly pour the coffee,
I could settle down to read,
And discover I'm caressing
Such a private greed.
My mind becomes my lover,
And then my enemy,
And worst of all,
Cold indifference,
Through which I fail to see
The softness and the sweetness
That has him wanting me,
And missing, almost craving
Sweet mediocrity.
But deeper into panic,
Then up to ecstacy,
I'm paralyzed in passing
By this strange passivity.
Skipping over calmness,
Headlong into hell,
From loathing into loving,
(Oh, I knew me once so well!)
But now the feeling is the fire
And that mandatory dread,
Is just a flicker in the distance
When I think of what we've said.
And the gentle mist sedates me
When I see where this has led,
In the rain in the morning
When I think of him in bed.
|
41.24 | | TALLIS::TORNELL | | Wed Mar 06 1991 15:31 | 36 |
| This one I wrote when I was thinking about the possibility of
reincarnation and weaving a terrific fantasy that the odd quirks we
have as humans may be the vestigial remnants of past lives. And if so,
then is there any such thing as free will? I was also trying out a new
poetic form I learned, the villanele, (sp?), which has strict rules for
rhyme, meter and stanza structure like a sonnet or a haiku does.
FREE WILL
All the things I had to have and be,
The wants, the needs, the ways to make things last,
Ignored the antecedent, (he or she).
Half dozing with the paper over me,
A myoclonic jolt and then it's passed.
I'll win the things I want to have and be.
But in my books as far as I can see,
The truths are not without a suble cast.
That craving antecedent, (he or she).
My deepest fears make no real sense to me.
Covert and brief, these moments hold me fast
To all the things *it* used to have and be.
Collect yourself, and know your will is free!
I turned but just went forward in the past
And met the antecedent, (HE not she!).
My life's inclined by this new subtlety,
For who it was and when it was at last
Are now the things I need to have and be
To calm the antecedent one, (and me!).
|
41.26 | remembered on reading that amy bought a silk blouse | SPCTRM::GONZALEZ | limitless possibilities | Fri Apr 19 1991 11:13 | 7 |
| I am a woman
and a warrior born
I am a poor woman
and afforded no armor
Yor flesh is the only silk
I will feel against my skin
|
41.27 | | GLITER::STHILAIRE | Food, Shelter & Diamonds | Thu May 09 1991 09:13 | 22 |
| Noon Hour
by Carl Sandburg
She sits in the dust at the walls
And makes cigars,
Bending at the bench
With fingers wage-anxious
Changing her sweat for the day's pay.
Now the noon hour has come,
And she leans with her bare arms
On the window-sill over the river,
Leans and feels at her throat
Cool-moving things out of the free open ways:
At her throat and eyes and nostrils
The touch and the blowing cool
Of great free ways beyond the walls.
(from Complete Poems, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.,NY)
|
41.28 | POETRY | WMOIS::SUNDBLOM_L | | Fri Jun 07 1991 13:58 | 32 |
|
Note: This was a poem I wrote for my daughter Christine by her request.
THE JOY I ONCE HELD
I held you in my arms
to keep you from all harm.
Your tiny eyes were smiling
just for me my little darling.
Your face so fair, beyond compare
these moments are oh so rare.
Hands and feet so pink and small
they make me feel so tall.
Time passes by, the tears they go
baby then, young lady now,
soon a Lady you will be.
My thoughts are always of thee.
Someday a mother you'll be
with children of your own.
Then you too will know of
the joy I once held.
Lenny Sundblom
WMOIS::Sundblom_L
|
41.29 | Uncommon Women | ATSE::FLAHERTY | Cosmic laws don't need manual overrides! | Wed Jun 26 1991 15:42 | 68 |
|
Wanted to share this beautiful poem that Carla Blazek wrote about an
experience that she, Nanci VanFleet, Carole Fretts, Karen Berggren, and
I shared this weekend. Carla has captured in words an interlude in
time that I will cherish always.
Uncommon Women
--------------
staggered, one by one, soul by soul
brought us together
in a setting ne'er before set
in a lifetime ne'er before met
in a desert ne'er before wet
and the golden threads connecting
our hearts pulsate with abalone love
tough and shatterproof yet
nourishing and soft, amazing
how destiny set in motion
the gentle waves that washed
us ashore, sealogged, foamy,
squinting at the white sand
unsure of our legstrength and
whether we could swim and walk
if one is easier than the other
forgetful, perhaps ashamed, that
we can do both
with grace and strength
with our hands intertwined
and our hearts alive
and our eyes ablaze
and our spirits aflame
between the threads are memories
between the memories are silent reflections
of past connections
as powerful as the sea which guided us here
to the now
to the healer's room
and it is as it was
five crones weaving a blanket
five spiders spinning a web
five sunrises gracing Mother Earth
five candles flickering in a storm
five hurricanes, beautiful in their strength
as we are
crashing, rising, rebuilding,
relearning, accepting, chanting,
laughing, rejoicing, touching,
healing, resting, living
dance, sisters, rise
let us go within to find the way
let us find the way to embrace our power
and to find our voice
and to never fear the gifts we hold
together, we can
united, we will
- clb
6/26/91
|