Author Love of the Day · favorite poems by other Poets · Poems

Sayeth Much, Ain’t He?

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Seamus Heaney

My author/poet love of the day goes out to Seamus Heaney, Irish poet, playwright, translator, Nobel Laureate in Literature.

A fixture in my heart and mind in recent years, Seamus Heaney offers a full experience of living in the exceptional world of ordinary words and circumstances. He dresses his poems quite nicely, and makes them accessible in a way that belies their sheer power to spark familiarity without the consciousness of realizing the discovery as it unfolds. Seek his words out and let them buzz around your brain. Although, many may have pints in their fists on this day of days, I propose that you can get equally intoxicated drinking from this man’s artful lines.

 

“When all the others were away at Mass”

by Seamus Heaney

When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives–
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

Author Love of the Day · favorite poems by other Poets · Poems

We Could All Hughes a Little Compassion in This Life…

My author/poet love of the day goes out to Langston Hughes. One of my favorite poets, Langston Hughes was a leader of the Harlem Renaissance of the early twentieth century. His poems inspire me because they work so well on many levels and transcend cultural and societal boundaries. Langston’s voice is a human voice that convinces us that although we are at times stuck within viewing the world from our own perspective, when we seek common threads of our humanity we can tap into a grander view of shared universal experience.

 

 Mother to Son

By Langston Hughes

Well, son, I’ll tell you: 

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. 

It’s had tacks in it, 

And splinters, 

And boards torn up, 

And places with no carpet on the floor— 

Bare. 

But all the time 

I’se been a-climbin’ on, 

And reachin’ landin’s, 

And turnin’ corners, 

And sometimes goin’ in the dark 

Where there ain’t been no light. 

So, boy, don’t you turn back. 

Don’t you set down on the steps. 

‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard. 

Don’t you fall now— 

For I’se still goin’, honey, 

I’se still climbin’, 

And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

Author Love of the Day · favorite poems by other Poets · Poems

“Don’t Try”

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you can have this typewriter when you pry it from my cold dead hands

 

My ProCrasstheNation “Author Love of the Day” goes out to Charles Bukowski.

Hank found me at a time in my life when I needed him most. His gut-punching prose guided me through a pretty harrowing period of disillusionment. He made me feel that it was okay to throw your hands in the air and just launch a big ol’ bird at life.

Bukowski’s “Post Office” was gifted to me by a great friend, a best friend. He knew me well enough to know that I needed a post in the road, a distraction, some sage advice. Ever since that time, Bukowski has been a welcome voice in my head as well as a witness of the suffering that can be endured in this life.

He’s a hard man for many to love. His shortcomings, which are many, alienate those who can’t think critically in the knee jerk  reality of a politically correct driven universe. However, if you can sit back and allow him to invade your space, Bukowski shows an adept ability to grab you with his words and make you realize that when you’re dealing with life there is no politics, just what exists despite our best efforts to contort what comes our way into mind-numbing saccharin delusions.

Below is a poem, that has always spoken to me. It is especially apropos in light of the shitshow currently surrounding us on many levels. Give Bukowski a chance. You won’t be sorry. There is integrity and compassion in the suffering he painted in his words, and there is nothing more gratifying to me than in finding a soul in this world that can articulate how I feel, even though I didn’t know I felt that way to begin with.

“Dinosauria, We”

by Charles Bukowski

Born like this
Into this
As the chalk faces smile
As Mrs. Death laughs
As the elevators break
As political landscapes dissolve
As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree
As the oily fish spit out their oily prey
As the sun is masked
We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes
Born into this
Walking and living through this
Dying because of this
Muted because of this
Castrated
Debauched
Disinherited
Because of this
Fooled by this
Used by this
Pissed on by this
Made crazy and sick by this
Made violent
Made inhuman
By this
The heart is blackened
The fingers reach for the throat
The gun
The knife
The bomb
The fingers reach toward an unresponsive god
The fingers reach for the bottle
The pill
The powder
We are born into this sorrowful deadliness
We are born into a government 60 years in debt
That soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt
And the banks will burn
Money will be useless
There will be open and unpunished murder in the streets
It will be guns and roving mobs
Land will be useless
Food will become a diminishing return
Nuclear power will be taken over by the many
Explosions will continually shake the earth
Radiated robot men will stalk each other
The rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms
Dante’s Inferno will be made to look like a children’s playground
The sun will not be seen and it will always be night
Trees will die
All vegetation will die
Radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men
The sea will be poisoned
The lakes and rivers will vanish
Rain will be the new gold
The rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind
The last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases
And the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition
The petering out of supplies
The natural effect of general decay
And there will be the most beautiful silence never heard
Born out of that.
The sun still hidden there
Awaiting the next chapter.

hank

Author Love of the Day · favorite poems by other Poets · Poems · Uncategorized

Author Love of the Day: EAP

 

 

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“A Dream Within a Dream”
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow —

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand —

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep — while I weep!

O God! Can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

 

favorite poems by other Poets · General Musing · Journey · Poems

Tis’ the Season

Poe is never far from my mind. He takes up residence with greater frequency during the run up to Halloween of course. Here is a lesser known poem not quite related to the Gothic but quick and dirty nonetheless.
Eldorado



BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

Gaily bedight,

   A gallant knight,

In sunshine and in shadow,   

   Had journeyed long,   

   Singing a song,

In search of Eldorado.
   But he grew old—

   This knight so bold—   

And o’er his heart a shadow—   

   Fell as he found

   No spot of ground

That looked like Eldorado.
   And, as his strength   

   Failed him at length,

He met a pilgrim shadow—   

   ‘Shadow,’ said he,   

   ‘Where can it be—

This land of Eldorado?’
   ‘Over the Mountains

   Of the Moon,

Down the Valley of the Shadow,   

   Ride, boldly ride,’

   The shade replied,—

‘If you seek for Eldorado!’
Source: The Complete Poems and Stories of Edgar Allan Poe (1946)

favorite poems by other Poets

“Air And Light And Time And Space”

By Charles Bukowski

”– you know, I’ve either had a family, a job,
something has always been in the
way
but now
I’ve sold my house, I’ve found this
place, a large studio, you should see the space and
the light.
for the first time in my life I’m going to have
a place and the time to
create.”

no baby, if you’re going to create
you’re going to create whether you work
16 hours a day in a coal mine
or
you’re going to create in a small room with 3 children
while you’re on
welfare,
you’re going to create with part of your mind and your body blown
away,
you’re going to create blind
crippled
demented,
you’re going to create with a cat crawling up your
back while
the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment,
flood and fire.

baby, air and light and time and space
have nothing to do with it
and don’t create anything
except maybe a longer life to find
new excuses
for.

– Charles Bukowski