Poem: Toward the Winter Solstice by Timothy Steele

Although the roof is just a story high,
It dizzies me a little to look down.
I lariat-twirl the rope of Christmas lights
And cast it to the weeping birch's crown;
A dowel into which I've screwed a hook
Enables me to reach, lift, drape, and twine
The cord among the boughs so that the bulbs
Will accent the tree's elegant design.

Friends, passing home from work or shopping, pause
And call up commendations or critiques.
I make adjustments. Though a potpourri
Of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and Sikhs,
We all are conscious of the time of year;
We all enjoy its colorful displays
And keep some festival that mitigates
The dwindling warmth and compass of the days.

Some say that L.A. doesn't suit the Yule,
But UPS vans now like magi make
Their present-laden rounds, while fallen leaves
Are gaily resurrected in their wake;
The desert lifts a full moon from the east
And issues a dry Santa Ana breeze,
And valets at chic restaurants will soon
Be tending flocks of cars and SUV's.

And as the neighborhoods sink into dusk
The fan palms scattered all across town stand
More calmly prominent, and this place seems
A vast oasis in the Holy Land.
This house might be a caravansary,
The tree a kind of cordial fountainhead
Of welcome, looped and decked with necklaces
And ceintures of green, yellow , blue, and red.

Some wonder if the star of Bethlehem
Occurred when Jupiter and Saturn crossed;
It's comforting to look up from this roof
And feel that, while all changes, nothing's lost,
To recollect that in antiquity
The winter solstice fell in Capricorn
And that, in the Orion Nebula,
From swirling gas, new stars are being born.

The Chair

A funny thing about a Chair:
You hardly ever think it’s there.
To know a -Chair is really it,
You sometimes have to go and sit.

Theodore Roethke

Poem for Saturday: The Sloth

In moving-slow he has no Peer.
You ask him something in his Ear,
He thinks about it for a Year;

And, then, before he says a Word
There, upside down (unlike a Bird),
He will assume that you have Heard-

A most Ex-as-per-at-ing Lug.
But should you call his manner Smug,
He'll sigh and give his Branch a Hug;

Then off again to Sleep he goes,
Still swaying gently by his Toes,
And you just know he knows he knows.


Theodore Roethke

Isolated Hearse of My Sleep

Night Music

At one the wind rose,
And with it the noise
Of the black poplars.

Long since had the living
By a thin twine
Been led into their dreams
Where lanterns shine
Under a still veil
Of falling streams;
Long since had the dead
Become untroubled
In the light soil.
There were no mouths
To drink of the wind,
Nor any eyes
To sharpen on the stars'
Wide heaven-holding,
Only the sound
Long sibilant-muscled trees
Were lifting up, the black poplars.

And in their blazing solitude
The stars sang in their sockets through
the night:
`Blow bright, blow bright
The coal of this unquickened world.'

Philip Larkin

'Poem to Be Read at 3 A.M.'

Excepting the diner
On the outskirts
The town of Ladora
At 3 A.M.
Was dark but
For my headlights
And up in
One second story room
A single light.

Donald Justice

Happy Birthday Paul Verlaine-- 30 March, 1844

My Familiar Dream-- Mon Reve Familier

I often have some strange and striking dreams
about an unknown girl, of love we share,
each time the same, each time a different air
about her swirls, who understands it seems.

She loves and understands me, from her beams
a crystal pure dismissing strife and care.
She, only, eases heart-ache and despair,
soothing pain with tears’ refreshing streams.

She’s blond, brunette, reflecting russet gleams?
I know not, nor her name and voice though fair
and sounding-soft if feels, far off I swear,
like loved ones Life has banished from its schemes.

A statue’s sightless stare, the look she gave.
Voice, - still echo of friends in the grave.

Verlaine Drinking Absinthe in a Cafe in Paris

Poem for Monday

Here, above,
cracks in the buildings are filled with battered moonlight.
The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat.
It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on,
and he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon.
He does not see the moon; he observes only her vast properties,
feeling the queer light on his hands, neither warm nor cold,
of a temperature impossible to record in thermometers.

But when the Man-Moth
pays his rare, although occasional, visits to the surface,
the moon looks rather different to him. He emerges
from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks
and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings.
He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky,
proving the sky quite useless for protection.
He trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb

Excerpted from Man-Moth by Elizabeth Bishop

On Vampires

The Vampire

You, who like a dagger ploughed
Into my heart with deadly thrill:
You who, stronger than a crowd
Of demons, mad, and dressed to kill,

Of my dejected soul have made
Your bed, your lodging, and domain:
To whom I'm linked (Unseemly jade!)
As is a convict to his chain,

Or as the gamester to his dice,
Or as the drunkard to his dram,
Or as the carrion to its lice —
I curse you. Would my curse could damn!

I have besought the sudden blade
To win for me my freedom back.
Perfidious poison I have prayed
To help my cowardice. Alack!

Both poison and the sword disdained
My cowardice, and seemed to say
"You are not fit to be unchained
From your damned servitude. Away,

You imbecile! since if from her empire
We were to liberate the slave,
You'd raise the carrion of your vampire,
By your own kisses, from the grave."

— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)

We'll be celebrating National Vampire Awareness day in the Black Mansion today. Oh, look. Here comes one of the revelers in his finery. It should be a fine night for becoming aware of the vampires in our midst.

Poem: Keeping Things Whole

BY MARK STRAND

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

a tree falls

a tree fell in the woods.
y
ou
h
e
a
r
d it.

If You Had No Memories, How Would You Understand What You've Become?

A Memory of the Players in a Mirror at Midnight by James Joyce
They mouth love's language. Gnash
The thirteen teeth
Your lean jaws grin with. Lash
Your itch and quailing, nude greed of the flesh.
Love's breath in you is stale, worded or sung,
As sour as cat's breath,
Harsh of tongue.

This grey that stares
Lies not, stark skin and bone.
Leave greasy lips their kissing. None
Will choose her what you see to mouth upon.
Dire hunger holds his hour.
Pluck forth your heart, saltblood, a fruit of tears.
Pluck and devour!
.

Your heart, a fruit of tears. The question remains. My memories have legs tonight. They'll ramble in the chaparral, chasing tornadoes. When they wander afield like this we call them ghosts. Those apparitions are dangerous if confronted.

Poe Poem With an Acrostic-- Can You Find it?

A Valentine

For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes,

    Brightly expressive as the twins of Leda,

  Shall find her own sweet name, that nestling lies

    Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader.

  Search narrowly the lines!- they hold a treasure

    Divine- a talisman- an amulet

  That must be worn at heart. Search well the measure-

    The words- the syllables! Do not forget

  The trivialest point, or you may lose your labor

    And yet there is in this no Gordian knot

  Which one might not undo without a sabre,

    If one could merely comprehend the plot.

  Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering

    Eyes scintillating soul, there lie perdus

  Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing

    Of poets, by poets- as the name is a poet's, too,

  Its letters, although naturally lying

    Like the knight Pinto- Mendez Ferdinando-

  Still form a synonym for Truth- Cease trying!

    You will not read the riddle, though you do the best you can do.

Bearing the Light - Poem for Sunday

Rain-diamonds, this winter morning, embellish the tangle of unpruned pear-tree twigs; each solitaire, placed, it appearrs, with considered judgement, bears the light beneath the rifted clouds -- the indivisible shared out in endless abundance.

Denise Levertov

Flying at Night - a Poem for Teusday

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like
his.

Ted Kooser

Poem for Monday With Scary Ghost Ship Video

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.

About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white.

And some in dreams assured were
Of the Spirit that plagued us so;
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow.

Excerpted from Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Poem: My Siren

My siren is blue as the veins where she swims
For the moment she sleeps on mother-of-pearl
And on the ocean I create for her
She can visit the magic grottoes of preposterous isles
There some very foolish birds
converse with crocodiles who never finish up
And the very foolish birds fly above the blue siren
The crocodiles return to their drink
And the island doesn't come back
doesn't come back from where it's placed
where my siren and I have forgotten it
My siren has some very beautiful stars in her sky
Blonde stars with black eyes
Red haired stars with sparkling teeth
and dark stars with beautiful breasts
Each night three by three
alternating the color of their hair
These stars visit my siren
This makes for lots of comings and goings in the sky
But my siren's sky isn't an ordinary sky
My siren has seven boats on her ocean
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
Saturday and Sunday
Some with steam the others with sails
Some rapid the others slow
But all beautiful all charming
with sailors who know their craft

Excerpted from "My Siren," Robert Desnos, translated by Amy Levin

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Theodore Roethke May 25, 1908 – August 1, 1963

I Measure Every Grief I Meet-- Emily Dickinson for Her Birthday, 12-10

I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, eyes –
I wonder if It weighs like Mine –
Or has an Easier size.

I wonder if They bore it long –
Or did it just begin –
I could not tell the Date of Mine –
It feels so old a pain –

I wonder if it hurts to live –
And if They have to try –
And whether – could They choose between –
It would not be – to die –

I note that Some – gone patient long –
At length, renew their smile –
An imitation of a Light
That has so little Oil –

I wonder if when Years have piled –
Some Thousands – on the Harm –
That hurt them early – such a lapse
Could give them any Balm –

Or would they go on aching still
Through Centuries of Nerve –
Enlightened to a larger Pain –
In Contrast with the Love –

The Grieved – are many – I am told –
There is the various Cause –
Death – is but one – and comes but once –
And only nails the eyes –

There's Grief of Want – and grief of Cold –
A sort they call "Despair" –
There's Banishment from native Eyes –
In sight of Native Air –

And though I may not guess the kind –
Correctly – yet to me
A piercing Comfort it affords
In passing Calvary –

To note the fashions – of the Cross –
And how they're mostly worn –
Still fascinated to presume
That Some – are like my own

The Snowman

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Wallace Stevens