Everyone is a poet. They might not know it...
Words are the all seeds you need. Plant one, for a poem, and grow it for a time... give it water and let it feed...no need to worry 'bout rhyme... and when it is it tall and it is flowering... here is a corner to show it... where it can speak or shout or sing.

Come on guys, do your thing.


Well, I hope that improvisation served to break the ice.

Chris has agree to help us out with this tread and I am looking forward to much fun.

So... poetry needed

No sagas, no epics, however. Sonnets, limericks, haiku, free verse, prose poems, epitaphs... are hereby solicited.

And no poem is too short, friends. For instance:

Lines Upon Milk Spilled On the Floor

He wept.
She swept.

Nor is any poem too silly, I hasten to add (ever try sweeping milk?).

I prayed the prayer of Jabez
'Twas the fash'n'ble thing to do.
Look where fashion led me,
It brought me here to you.

(This is the first verse of a poem I'd written in February. I'd be interested to see if anyone could come up with a few more lines. I have two more verses--somewhere. I'll share them if and when I can find them (the first I'd committed to memory, so it was easy to share.))

Sweep some milk, or herd a cat
Or something difficult like that
Such tasks will ease a troubled mind
And help escape a mental bind
Or at least keep one from getting fat

Alas those lines just barely scan
They flout poetical convention
I hope, in your kindness, that you can
Forgive this simple flawed invention

Blast convention!
We need invention
to ease our boredom with all
that lacks progressive intention-

like shopping at the mall-
like cringing at fashion's call
so that no possibility of retention
is, but dispersal in the halls

of commerce, - stifling the mother of invention.

Frank Zappa and the Mothers
Were at the best place around
But some stupid with a flare gun
Burned the place to the ground

(not original)

For fun, I sometimes like to take another poet's creation and alter it to suit my own taste.
Take for example, e.e. cummings poem:

l(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness


A twist and a turn, I give you:

g(an

ap
ple
fa
ll

s)
rav
i

ty

[quote=chris[ti(a)n](e)]I prayed the prayer of Jabez
'Twas the fash'n'ble thing to do.
Look where fashion led me,
It brought me here to you.

But where'twill lead I cannot tell
I can but hope and pray
T'will benefit us both until
We meet again some day

I'm sorry...I couldn't make head or tail out of this one...............

No problem, Don! Some poems aren't for everyone. I liked your second verse to my first! I couldn't find the original one I'd writte a while back, but here's the added verses I'd written last night:

I prayed the prayer of Jabez
'Twas the fash'n'ble thing to do.
Look where fashion led me,
It brought me here to you.

"Braoaden my horizons, Lord,"
I pled, "and make me new."
(Afear'd I'd grown too comf'rt'ble,
Afear'd my time was through.)

"God, muddy up and salve me,
Refresh, recleanse, renew."
When prayed, the prayer of Jabez
Draws others near to You.

Very good....

Chris, it is lovely! I'm glad to know someone else who reads e.e.cummings!

Don: here's a hint: around the parentheses is the topic word, within the parenthesis is a discription.

1st verse:
"l- (a leaf falls) -oneliness"

I leaf you the fun of deciphering the second :-)

I hope and pray
You do not think
That rhyming comes with ease
Nor words roll off the tongue intact
Like leaves from off the trees.
Sometimes one has to sit and think
When ne'er a thought arises
When suddenly the light comes on
And brings with it surprises.
So if you have the gift of rhyme
It's always good to share
It might not ever make you rich
Or take you anywhere.
So now this ditty soon will end
And I can hardly wait
To see if there is more besides
I've nothing more to state.

That was tons of fun to read; I'll bet it was even more fun to write! Weeeee-eeee!

Getting fat!! getting fat?!
From reading all of that???
Tis not flawed invention that we need
Tis creativity
Of words with great flare
concepts that lay bare
juxapositions we must swear
That motivates us to share
our lives spent, used up and declare
among those who are unaware....

Beware!
Creativity is catching
finding words scratching
and finally matching...
words and concepts galore.
For some, it is a bore
and others...adore.....

A poem made famous by John Wayne:

America, Why I Love Her
Written by John Mitchum

You ask me why I love her? Well, give me time, and I'll explain...
Have you seen a Kansas sunset or an Arizona rain?
Have you drifted on a bayou down Louisiana way?
Have you watched the cold fog drifting over San Francisco Bay?


Have you heard a Bobwhite calling in the Carolina pines?
Or heard the bellow of a diesel in the Appalachia mines?
Does the call of Niagara thrill you when you hear her waters roar?
Do you look with awe and wonder at a Massachusetts shore...
Where men who braved a hard new world, first stepped on Plymouth Rock?
And do you think of them when you stroll along a New York City dock ?


Have you seen a snowflake drifting in the Rockies...way up high?
Have you seen the sun come blazing down from a bright Nevada sky?
Do you hail to the Columbia as she rushes to the sea...
Or bow your head at Gettysburg...in our struggle to be free?


Have you seen the mighty Tetons? ...Have you watched an eagle soar?
Have you seen the Mississippi roll along Missouri's shore?
Have you felt a chill at Michigan, when on a winters day,
Her waters rage along the shore in a thunderous display?
Does the word "Aloha"... make you warm?
Do you stare in disbelief When you see the surf come roaring in at Waimea reef?


From Alaska's gold to the Everglades...from the Rio Grande to Maine...
My heart cries out... my pulse runs fast at the might of her domain.
You ask me why I love her?... I've a million reasons why.
My beautiful America... beneath Gods' wide, wide sky.

A good poem for the fourth!

Why does it read so well? Does it have any regular meter? Many lines seem to have eight feet and some i'm not sure of.

The meter on a whole is pretty good in this poem. I do see where the line about Aloha should have been combined with the next one so that both lines would end with the "ief" sound. "Does the word "Aloha"... make you warm? Do you stare in disbelief? When you see the surf come roaring in at Waimea reef?" I am a stickler for meter being just right...It drives me nuts..........

I simply cut and paste, may have been a problem with the website I was using.

As for meter...it appears to be an even 15..sometimes broken in 7/8 or 8/7. Regardless. It works. And maybe it works simply because it is about the beauty of God's creation--nothing more and nothing less.

Yes, I agree, it does work.

I was reading Canterbury Tales last night. They seem to be in 'iambic pentameter;' and in Nevill Coghills translation seem to float along easily when read at a good pace. Here's a sample from the prologue.

"A holy-minded man of good renown
There was, and poor, the Parson to a town,
Yet he was rich in holy thought and work.
He also was a learned man, a clerk,
Who truly knew Christ's gospel and would preach it
Devoutly to parishioner, and teach it.
.................
Holy and virtuous he was, but then
Never contemptuous of sinful men,
Never disdainful, never too proud or fine,
But was discreet in teaching and benign.
His business was to show a fair behaviour
And draw men thus to Heaven and their Saviour,

I must protest
I don't agree
The meter's not
Just right
For me.
To just throw in
An extra word
Upsets the flow
Of what I heard.
Write if you wish
In verse that's free
But don't expect me
to agree.

Saith the man,
Most humbly.

To be completely honest, most poetry that rhymes bores me. e.e. cummings is the most enjoyable read IMO. Rhyming poems remind me of elementary school music class: clapping, swaying and stomping one's feet. I like a poem that makes one think, that moves one's soul, that makes one chuckle...

Canterbury Tales is wonderful! In high school we were required to memorize the first lines of it. I'll never forget:

1: Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
2: The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
3: And bathed every veyne in swich licour
4: Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
5: Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
6: Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
7: Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
8: Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,
9: And smale foweles maken melodye,
10: That slepen al the nyght with open ye
11: (so priketh hem nature in hir corages);
12: Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
13: And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
14: To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
15: And specially from every shires ende
16: Of engelond to caunterbury they wende,
17: The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
18: That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

e.e.cummings is good for moving the soul and making one think. His poetry is evocative of tenderness, sometimes hilarious.

who knows if the moon's
a balloon,coming out of a keen city
in the sky-filled with pretty people?
(and if you and i should

get into it,if they
should take me and take you into their balloon,
why then
we'd go up higher with all the pretty people

than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen
city which nobody's ever visited,where

always
........it's
................Spring)and everyone's
in love and flowers pick themselves

[quote=chris[ti(a)n](e)]Saith the man

"To be completely honest, most poetry that rhymes bores me. "

Sorry that you don't like "my kind of "poetry" (?) which rhymes.
What I see of e.e. cummings turns me off. Give me Ogden Nash any day.

Ogden Nash? Give me don/aldridge any day, the meter's better.

Tis my humble opinion
that anyone with this diminion
who can cleverely compose
a polyphonic prose
is a much better versifier
among english authors and writers.
They don't have to be famous
to perform the writ of mandamus.
Just a bit of research, you see...
and a knak for clever-ity,
Is all that I require
in a poet that I would admire.

Prose poems fascinate me, Neil. This is by one of my favorite poets:

Watermelons

Green Buddhas
On the fruit stand.
We eat the smile
And spit out the teeth.

by Charles Simic

Here is a prose poem I wrote about 1965. Believe it or not it was published in a monthly sheet at the University at Austin, Texas and they paid me one dollar. :-| That was the end of my career as a poet. :-)

CREDO

as necessary
or un-
the soaring bird
silent
tall trees naked or
clothed
streams that are traveling
traveling
or any large rock
which
waits
in the
desert

LOL, your career as a poet sounds like my career as an author! One published work, a couple of acclaimed works--but not much more!

I love it, by the way--your poem!

Thanks, Cris. I did manage to get rejection slips from The New Yorker and from Harper's Magazine. Should have kept them and framed them. Oh, well, guess I could always get more. :-)

Observations on a Sabbath School Class
(dedicated to those whispering in the back row)

Listen you biddies
Bestow the yak yak
Lest deacons invite you
To go farther back.

The rumble's disturbing
The rest of the class
As glances go backward
Hoping 'twill pass.

You notice I'm quiet
My hands in my lap
No noise am I making
As I take my nap.....

Hey deacon! Hey preacher!
Hey sabbath school teacher!
Come closer and bend us your ear.

Should we raise our hands higher?
You preach to the choir!
We know the end's already near.

Observations On Christian Education

Christian Education costs, they say
And some contend it doesn't pay
Can we a price put on a soul
As we continue toward our goal? For what we like we don't think twice
For quality we pay the price.

We house and clothe and feed our youth
Care for their needs, teach them the truth
We tell them stories, entertain
We must not let their interest wane.
But do we do all that we could
For their salvation as we should?

The home, the school, the church all do
A vital part to help us too.
Like a triangle,each a side
We cannot leave one open wide
For Satan's crew in dead of night
To change the signs from wrong to right.

As parents we must use each tool
To demonstrate the 'Golden Rule'
And why we're here,for what great plan
Our Heavenly Father created man.

"We can't afford our schools", some say
And think they've found a 'better' way.
So to the Public Schools they Send
Their kids----"It's cheaper in the end".

We can't afford to lend our youth
To those who have no love for Truth
Who train them just for now and here
Ignoring all that WE hold dear
That Christ is coming, soon we know
And to His Kingdom WE will go.

And so, my friends, what will it be?
Invest in Youth for eternity
For us the Father gave His son
Will He accept what We have done?

SILLY POEM FOR COMPACT-CARRYING GENDERS

When the mind goes blank
in the mid-afternoon
and your hair is a hank -
just a floppy cartoon

of it's usual fluff
and your posh is all poof
take your powder and puff
and you'll feel less uncouth

when you've smoothed off the shine -
you will have peace of mind.

You need two more lines

when you've smoothed off the shine
you will glow like the moon -
you will have peace of mind -

(in its frowsy cocoon.)


How about that, don? The last line should be spoken quietly and slowly. would it be too much to write it:

(in its froooowsy .... cocoooooooon)

?

A bit of inspiration on chris's poem...appologies to Chris for the taking apart and rearranging it...

Hey deacon! Hey preacher!
Hey sabbath school teacher!
Come closer move together
and bend us your ear.

Should we raise our hands higher and higher
That will inspire men to an ecclesiastical desire
that will be, in the hearts of men, absolutely heard...
to say something profound and say something absurd?

As a minister and a grocer, you preach to the choir!
You hawk your wears, you search for a buyer.
"It's the end! It's the end!" We know the end's already near.
But you clothe the message as the best marketeer.
It's not the end, that we need, that will draw us closer.
It's the Christ and that's a whole different grocer...

The Christ is large enough for any congregation
and specializes in the most tiny mutation.
To grow many a variety of species, that may
Tell of His love in a varied way.

Whose primary purpose is surgical you see,
A new purpose, a new life, a new generousity.
Christ's love is as varied as any grower,
and it is in the heart, man what a sower!

It's springs to life and produces much fruit
and we find it is far more astute
than anything found in sabbath school classroom
whose academics are kinda in costume..

dress up stuff up,...man, I am repeating myself
and so, I must, this poem, place on the shelf.

Apologies not needed! Bravo, Neil! **Woot!!**

I actually had a couple more lines to add to it, myself. I wrote them down in haste on the airplane and seem to have misplaced them. If I perchance across them, I'll share.

I love that you've taken mine and gone where inspiration leads!

Apropos for the times,
From Babes in Arms, "Johnny One Note"

Johnny could only sing one note
And the note he sings was this
Ah!

Poor Johnny one-note
sang out with "gusto"
And just overlorded the place
Poor Johnny one-note
yelled willy nilly
Until he was bleu in the face
For holding one note was his ace

Couldn’t hear the brass
Couldn’t hear the drum
He was in a class
By himself, by gum!

Poor Johnny one-note
Got in Aida
Indeed a great chance to be brave
He took his one note
Howled like the North Wind
Brought forth wind that made critics rave,
While Verdi turned round in his grave!

Couldn’t hear the flute
Or the big trombone
Ev’ry one was mute
Johnny stood alone.

Cats and dogs stopped yapping
Lions in the zoo
All were jealous of Johnny's big trill
Thunder claps stopped clapping,
Traffic ceased its roar,
And they tell us Niag’ra stood still.
He stopped the train whistles,
Boat whistles,
steam whistles,
Cop whistles,
all whistles bowed to his skill

Sing Johnny One-Note,
Sing out with "gusto" and
Just overwhelm all the crowd
Ah!
So sing Johnny One-Note, out loud!!
Sing Johnny One-Note
Sing Johnny One-Note out loud!

In View of the Fact
by A. R. Ammons


The people of my time are passing away: my
wife is baking for a funeral, a 60-year-old who

died suddenly, when the phone rings, and it's
Ruth we care so much about in intensive care:

it was once weddings that came so thick and
fast, and then, first babies, such a hullabaloo:

now, it's this that and the other and somebody
else gone or on the brink: well, we never

thought we would live forever (although we did)
and now it looks like we won't: some of us

are losing a leg to diabetes, some don't know
what they went downstairs for, some know that

a hired watchful person is around, some like
to touch the cane tip into something steady,

so nice: we have already lost so many,
brushed the loss of ourselves ourselves: our

address books for so long a slow scramble now
are palimpsests, scribbles and scratches: our

index cards for Christmases, birthdays,
Halloweens drop clean away into sympathies:

at the same time we are getting used to so
many leaving, we are hanging on with a grip

to the ones left: we are not giving up on the
congestive heart failure or brain tumors, on

the nice old men left in empty houses or on
the widows who decide to travel a lot: we

think the sun may shine someday when we'll
drink wine together and think of what used to

be: until we die we will remember every
single thing, recall every word, love every

loss: then we will, as we must, leave it to
others to love, love that can grow brighter

and deeper till the very end, gaining strength
and getting more precious all the way. . . .

from - http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16971

Absence makes the heart grow fonder
And now I have an urge to wonder.

But I'll return to you some day
Be good - don't fight too much. OK?

Wonder, if you must; wander if you may.
As the old, dear sweet book says,
"We'll meet again someday."

will be back next week, ciao

Charles Simic, a writer who juxtaposes dark imagery with ironic humor, is to be named the country’s 15th poet laureate by the Librarian of Congress today.
He was born in Belgrade and came to the U.S. at the age of 16.
He began writing poetry, he says, to impress girls!
The New York Times has an
ARTICLE about him by Motoko Rich.

A stanza from one of his poems:

"A dog trying to write a poem on why he barks,

That’s me, dear reader!

They were about to kick me out of the library

But I warned them,

My master is invisible and all-powerful.

Still, they kept dragging me out by my tail"

Two Poems for August

There is a story about a poet who was asked to talk about what his poem meant "in ordinary terms". He replied that if he had been able to express it in ordinary terms, he wouldn't have written the poem. Children are often very open to poetic language, and there are many poems that children enjoy hearing over and over. Poems open imaginations. If your read-aloud times haven't included some poems, you could check the library for some good anthologies for children.
Here are two for you to enjoy:

August
The opposing
of peach and sugar,
and the sun inside the afternoon
like the stone in the fruit.

The ear of corn keeps
its laughter intact, yellow and firm.

August
The children eat
brown bread and delicious moon.
- Federico Garcia Lorca

The next short poem describes perfectly the approach to the natural world that so many children instinctively practice:

Step out onto the Planet
Draw a circle a hundred feet round.

Inside the circle are
100 things nobody understands, and, maybe
nobody's ever really seen.

How many can you find?
- Lew Welch


- Donice Wooster in Family Matters, a blog at http://www.fcchurch.com

My two favorite poem books when I was little were "A Child's Garden of Verses" by Rob't L. Stevenson, and a book called "If Jesus Came to Your House."

I like beauty in poetry, not deep thinking (I can't think deep).

Welcome to the club, Dottie; I can't think deeply either. Well maybe if I were in a coal mine, or a submarine.

I

A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine,
Y cladd in mightie armes and siluer shielde,
Wherein old dints of deepe wounds did remaine,
The cruell markes of many a bloody fielde;
Yet armes till that time did he neuer wield:
His angry steede did chide his foming bitt,
As much disdayning to the curbe to yield:
Full iolly knight he seemd, and faire did sitt,
As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt.

2

But on his brest a bloudie Crosse he bore,
The deare remembrance of his dying Lord,
For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore,
And dead as liuing euer him ador'd:
Upon his shield the like was also scor'd,
For soueraine hope, which in his helpe he had:
Right faithfull true he was in deede and word,
But of his cheere he did seeme too solemne sad,
Yet nothing did he dread, but euer was ydrad.

Canto I, The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser

For Dottie:

The Snail

By Gladys Sims Stump

A snail is such a funny thing.
I saw one just this morning.
He was walking past my house.
Last night it had been storming.

I watched him go along the path.
He had a slow, slow pace.
With a house on his back-- he
Wouldn't be expected to run a race.

A home like a snail, no, no, no.
I wouldn't like it, you see.
The load would be heavy,
But-- worse than that--
No one could live in the house with me.

'ydrad' - a nice word. of the same ilk as 'yclept'



The Gentle Knight, at first sight, seems to embody some contradictions. He feared nothing, but rather himself was dreaded (although 'gentle'). He is 'Full jolly' yet 'too solemne sad.'

I think I see some influence of c.c. cummings maybe there.

Thanks very much for that, D. Allen. It's the longest rhymed epic in the English language and well worth reading.

Yes, and just as important, though less obvious, Robinson Jeffers and Walt Whitman were influences at that time. But who could ever hope to rival those three? It is just fun (and some times unavoidable) to let one's own soul speak in poetry or any other medium, - music, painting, horticulture, etc.

I Looked At Calvary, a Song


(1) I look'd at Calvary,
And what did I see?
I saw my bless'd Savior
Dying there for me! *

O wonderful Jesus,
This I do know:
Nothing have I done
For you to love me so.*

(2) I look up to heav'n,
And what do I see?
I see my sinless High Priest
Standing up for Me! *

O wonderful Jesus,
This I do know:
Nothing have I done
For you to treat me so.*

(3) I'll look into the sky,
And what will I see?
I'll see my righteous King
Come to rescue me!*

O wonderful Jesus,
This I do know:
Nothing have I done
For you to want me so.*

* Repeat last line of each stanza.