Poetry collection
The World of complex ideas,
different faiths,
little tolerance,
mostly, lack of complaisance
Look at the flowers with every colour,
full of love, together
flowers have easily climbed over
all the walls!
From: http://www.thanalonline.com/en/page.asp?ID=219
Date: 2011
By: Fide Erken (1967- )
At the corner of Simonton and Amelia
there is a small junkyard that is
as beautiful to me as the deep
blue sea stretching from here to Cuba.
It has an arching tree over it
and its shards of old cars, tractors,
boating gear shine in the tropic sun
but with an American splendor
like rolling waves of grain. How odd
to have been taught to respond to
junk by my culture, and with
a patriotic fervor, so that the colors
red, white, and blue blaze through the rust.
From: https://bombmagazine.org/articles/four-poems-30/
Date: 2011
By: Harvey Shapiro (1924-2013)
The old cat weighs no more than
teeth, claws, and purr, the bones inside.
A cat is a cat: lap comfort, or
too much togetherness, Egyptian god,
mummy demanding my mind.
Tonight “I want to tell you something
with my hands,” I say. She turns
to lick her flank, her thigh, what’s left
of fur after thirteen years together.
I could tabulate each vertebra
down her spine. She still knows how
to purr, as long as hands
think of pain as a flit against the pane,
a bird that flies. Teeth and purr,
feathers of bird-wings in flight, bones
inside. In her next life, in mine.
From: https://www.persimmontree.org/articles/Issue19/articles/PoetryFromtheWesternStates.php
Date: 2011
By: Taylor Graham (Judith Ann Taylor) (1944- )
There are no heroic deaths in war,
if you round people up they cry like stuck pigs,
if you run with a bayonet you wet your pants
if you kill with a drone, computer games
make you crazy when your kids play them.
For evil not to triumph good people
need do nothing but advocate, negotiate, react,
be diplomatic, watchful, mindful.
They need to listen, hear,
answer not placate, resist not fight,
determine not dominate, be dutiful not expectant.
And ramparts will give way to borders,
wars will be averted before
they grow tired, seed poppies,
make mounds, cinders of macheted limbs,
empty boy’s bowels, girl’s wombs.
From: http://www.stosvet.net/12/green/index2.html
Date: 2011
By: Yvonne Green (1957- )
even in daylight, these shadows find me
From: http://lilliputreview.blogspot.com/2011/09/constance-campbell-monday-twitter-poem.html
Date: 2011
By: Constance Campbell (19??- )
I bite instead and she needs salt,
a little more time on the grill.
Young men are coming,
they’ll want her.
Her head is an oyster
turned out of a shell.
She needs her rocks,
and wave after wave.
I’m riding this dream,
her claws position me, specimen
ready for the knife. But who
holds the light?
The young men laugh.
It’s a game, it’s fun, it’s everyday.
I run across the beach,
a toll at last tolling.
Gulls rise with her eyes,
They shriek, night
iced under their wings,
its salt falling.
From: https://plumepoetry.com/260-2/
Date: 2011
By: Terese Svoboda (1950- )
The ocean was still.
In an empty sky, two gulls turned lazy arcs, and
their keening cries echoed
off the cliff and disappeared into the sea.
When the child, scrambling up the rocks, slipped
out of her parents’ reach,
they called to her. She was already
so high, but those distant peaks beyond —
they called to her. She was already
out of her parents’ reach
when the child, scrambling up the rocks, slipped
off the cliff and disappeared into the sea.
Their keening cries echoed
in an empty sky. Two gulls turned lazy arcs, and
the ocean was still.
From: https://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2011/06/a-crab-canon-for-douglas-hofstadter.html
Date: 2011
By: Julia Galef (1983- )
Matins in the morning and evensong at dusk,
in French called moineaux: little monks, shabby, humble,
more than a bit agitated, twittering prayers
as if time were running out to save the world;
not too proud to forage in the dust,
certain that God looks out
for each and every one
for he takes care of his own.
Lear complains “The lecherous sparrows do couple in my sight.”
They rear three broods in a season,
invade other nests,
attack chickadee, thrush, and robin.
“Who killed Cock Robin?”
“I,” said the sparrow,
I shot him with my little bow and arrow.”
If I were a shaman I would take the sparrow’s cloak,
brown and coca buff,
and whirl and whirl about,
my black eye no bigger than
a pepper seed over my curved beak,
and I would dance the dance of humility and lust,
of friendship and enmity,
I, my chest pounding,
I, in my lowly, kingly robes.
From: http://www.towerjournal.com/spring2011/celia_poetry.htm
Date: 2011
By: Celia Gilbert (1932- )
From your bed, noctilucent paths
are rambling, one of which could lead
through the Tudor knot of yew hedge
to that rose arbour at its centre
where white-slippered sleep is breathing.
Simple to untangle one path after the next
if you still had all night, but fat mice
are eating through the blue and green wool
with which the maze is tapestried.
Though tawny owls, silver-beaked, dive
to unpick the plump bodies, bursting
every pink and yellow cross-stitch,
you’re still awake at dawn, tattered
in your threadbare nest of bones.
From: https://andotherpoems.com/2013/03/01/rowyda-amin/
Date: 2011
By: Rowyda Amin (19??- )
My poems: fledglings, heirs,
Plaintiffs and executors,
The silent ones, the loud,
The humble and the proud.
As soon as the shovel of time
Threw me onto the potter’s wheel—
Myself without kith or kin—
I grew beneath the hand, a miracle.
Something stretched out my long neck
And hollowed round my soul
And marked on my back
Legends of flowers and leaves.
I stoked the birch in the fire
As Daniel commanded
And blessed my red temper
Until I spoke as a prophet.
I had long been the earth—
Arid, ochre, forlorn since birth—
But you fell on my chest by chance
From beaks of birds, from eyes of grass.
From: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/54749/to-poems
Date: 1983 (original in Russian); 2011 (translation in English)
By: Arseny Alexandrovich Tarkovsky (1907-1989)
Translated by: Philip J. Metres III (1970- )
From Troubles of The World 