poetry: results 481–504 of 735

I needed to see you,

but you weren't here.

There was no sign.

The gate was bolted.

If I could

be a character with a mind

to find inside my own head

the path from A to B…

You have to wonder

who would leave

a ladder open

in an empty lot.

First, say:

Today will not end

as if it never began.

Thunderheads are not

gathering.

A likeness or delineation. Or. The application of Light to the purpose of Representation. Rather. The smallest reduction of the largest pyramid. And. The largest enlargement of the smallest microbe. An underwater waterlog of the sawfish in swim. For.

My dad would like to ship my grandmother to Oregon, but first

he calls to ask what I think about heart surgery. She'll die

if they do and she'll die if they don't and there are buckets of hyacinths

on my rooftop, and bathtubs of irises; I don't want to talk about this…

give me my 12 cuckoos worth

of haunted fleurons, nostalgia

to fix my haywire antennae

and be heard…

You spend the last part of the party in the laundry rubbing salt into wine splotches on your shirt, thinking, even the stone painted like a ladybug, even the slug made of Christmas lights, even rusted bicycle wheels soldered to spikes? This is not party talk about landscape…

A scrawny hippo, a tar-caked disc

hopping around out back.

A rogue flipped on his back…

You are no dumb chimp, smacking white on ultramarine, mars black on white, a stroke of crimson somewhere in between to mimic an inferno. You didn't knock over the brushes or try to eat them…

Neverland won't fess up…

You say, "I have been tired recently and I've tried to tell you

                About this, about how I'm feeling."

I have looked at you, but you have not seen me looking…

Your return brought many surprises.

I hadn't, for example, remembered

your habit of calling me Herman Tinklewip…

Safe in their Alabaster Chambers—

Untouched by Morning—

And untouched by Noon—

Lie the meek members of the Resurrection—

Rafter of Satin—and Roof of Stone!

We play at Paste—

Till qualified, for Pearl—

Then, drop the Paste—

And deem ourself a fool—

The Heaven we chase,

Like the June Bee—before the School Boy,

Invites the Race—

Stoops—to an easy Clover—

But how he set—I know not—

There seemed a purple stile

That little Yellow boys and girls

Were climbing all the while—

You there green with teeth

and certificates, summer

another midnight

under a dotted line (a trust fund)…

Whatever comes naturally, he says

the sky is always the hardest part

with the guest bedroom locked

and you in it…

You needn't be trying to comfort me,

I tell you my Dolly is dead!

There's no use in saying she isn't

With a crack like that in her head.

If it is not machine mastery, it is a language. Even without air, the cold clattering of padded keys impresses the tiny white seals with seams.

The telling time our task is; time's some part,

Not all, but we were framed to fail and die—

One spell and well that one. There, ah thereby

Is comfort's carol of all or woe's worst smart.

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.

What hours, O what black hours we have spent

This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!

I watch the hound drape

a dead me with a red robe

instruct my child in morals,

correct my ethical shortcomings.