Dada poem

 Genre nun genuine they they run run

They they they beg be the the then they he

Genuine then um they men runs they run

He the they tent run they eng men graven

Ground um don't next net burn tend run 

Ground they eng drum agent run run

Judgment hurts my get even and berth end then it's by

Ethernet btw I the cheer net tent men sober synergy embrace can

War Girls BY JESSIE POPE

 War Girls

BY JESSIE POPE

There's the girl who clips your ticket for the train,

  And the girl who speeds the lift from floor to floor,

There's the girl who does a milk-round in the rain,

  And the girl who calls for orders at your door.

      Strong, sensible, and fit,

      They're out to show their grit,

    And tackle jobs with energy and knack.

      No longer caged and penned up,

      They're going to keep their end up

    Till the khaki soldier boys come marching back.

There's the motor girl who drives a heavy van,

  There's the butcher girl who brings your joint of meat,

There's the girl who cries 'All fares, please!' like a man,

  And the girl who whistles taxis up the street.

      Beneath each uniform

      Beats a heart that's soft and warm,

    Though of canny mother-wit they show no lack;

      But a solemn statement this is,

      They've no time for love and kisses

    Till the khaki soldier-boys come marching back.

 

Ozaagi’aan One Open to an Other

Margaret Noodin

Gizaagi’in apii zaagi’idizoyan I love you when you love yourself gaye gaawiin zaagi’idizosiiyan and when you do not apii zaagijiba’iweyang when we escape together gaye zaagijinizhikawangwaa and when we chase together wiindigoog wiindamoonangwaa the demons who tell us gaawiin zaagiginzinog ozaagiing nothing sprouts at the inlet aanawi gikendamang jiigi-zaaga’igan when we know at the edge of the lake gii-zaagida’aawangweyang ingoding where ashes were poured zaagaakominagaanzh zaagaagoneg the bearberry stands in the snow zaagidikwanaaging ezhi-nisidotamang branches reaching and tracing zaagijiwebinamang gaye ishkonamang what we have tossed and what we have saved ezhi-naagadawaabandamang as we examine gizaagi’in, gizaagi miidash ozaagi’aan. love.

Copyright © 2020 by Margaret Noodin. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 2, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

How to Disappear BY RAE ARMANTROUT

 How to Disappear

BY RAE ARMANTROUT

1

You had been swinging restlessly

between the appearance of spontaneity

and the appearance of serious thought.

You had been changing lanes

after a glance

in a mirror honest about

its tendency to distort.

What choice did you have?

It was soothing to watch

wisps of smoke

from a nearby chimney

disappearing

one by one.

2

Do you like pulses,

ridges, ripples

stretching into obscurity?

Would you prefer a flicker

to a steady light source?

This one stutters

slightly,

hesitant,

as if it could hold something

in reserve

Source: Poetry (July/August 2020)

Behind The Mask

© Melisa Bernards

Published: February 2015

Hiding the hurt, hiding the pain,
Hiding the tears that fall like rain.
Saying I'm fine when I'm anything but.
This ache in my soul rips at my gut.
My skin is on fire; I burn from within.
The calm on my face is an ongoing sin.
The world must stay out; I've built up a wall.
My fragile lie will collapse should it ever fall.
Loneliness consumes me; it eats away the years
Until my life is swallowed by unending fears.
Waiting for someone to see I wear a mask
And care enough to remove it; is that too much to ask?

Source: https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/behind-the-mask

An Ode To Watts.

Kay Meraz Sep 2012

An Ode To Watts.

in my city, my pretty pretty city,
People lock their doors driving through my pretty pretty city.
in my city, my pretty pretty city,
Dogs are the kings in my pretty pretty city.
in my city, my pretty pretty city,
Harlots bargain with panderers in my pretty pretty city.
in my city, my pretty pretty city,
Felons avoid the police by hiding in schools, in my pretty pretty city.
in my city, my pretty pretty city,
Eye contact is discouraged, in my pretty pretty city.
in my city, my pretty pretty city,
Walking alone can be the biggest mistake you ever made, in my pretty pretty city.
Oh-
but in my city, my pretty pretty city,
the sea sends you salty, sandy kisses, in my pretty pretty city.
Oh-
and in my city, my pretty pretty city,
the railroad tracks take you to Zion from my pretty pretty city.
Oh-
in my city, my pretty pretty city
i have left behind my blood and promises to return.
Oh-
my city, in my pretty pretty city,
hearts break, while others mend,
tears fall, while smiles are conceived,
hate roams, while lovers love,
fear attacks, while fortitude prevails,
Oh-
my city, my pretty pretty city,
that's where i belong.

33°56′30″N 118°14′30″W coordinates to my heart.

Forever And Always © Mercedes

Forever And Always

© Mercedes

Published: February 2013

You are the sun that shines brightly throughout my day.
You are the gravity that holds me down in every way.
You are the moon that shimmers throughout my night.
You are stars that glimmer oh so bright.

You are the oxygen that keeps me alive.
You are my heart that beats inside.
You are the blood that flows through me.
You are the only guy I can see.
You have the voice of when a mockingbird sings.
You are my everything.

You are my one and only.
You stop me from being so lonely.
We plan our future as if we have a clue.
I never want to lose you.
I want you to be my husband, and I want to be your wife.
I want to be with you for the rest of my life.

Source: https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/forever-and-always-poem

To the Swimmer BY COUNTEE CULLEN

To the Swimmer

BY COUNTEE CULLEN

Now as I watch you, strong of arm and endurance, battling and struggling

With the waves that rush against you, ever with invincible strength returning

Into my heart, grown each day more tranquil and peaceful, comes a fierce longing

Of mind and soul...

One With Others [Not the mental lethargy in which the days enveloped her]

C. D. Wright - 1949-2016

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

       Not the mental lethargy in which the days enveloped her

       Nor the depleted breasts not the hand that never knew

       tenderness nor eyes that glistened

       Not the people dragging canvas bags

       through the ragged fields

       Not the high mean whine of mosquitoes

       Not another year of shoe-top cotton

       No more white buck shoes for Henry

       No peaches this year on the Ridge, and no other elevation

       around to coast another mile out of the tank

       No eel in L'Anguille

       Not the aphrodisiac of crossing over

       Not the hole in the muffler circling the house

       Not a shot of whiskey before a piece of bread

       Not to live anymore as a distended beast

       Not the lying-in again

       Not the suicide of the goldfish

       Not the father's D.T's

       Not the map of no-name islands in the river

       Not the car burning in the parking lot

       Not the sound but the shape of the sound

       Not the clouds rucked up over the clothesline

       The copperhead in the coleus

       Not the air hung with malathion

       Not the boomerang of bad feelings

       Not stacks of poetry, long-playing albums, the visions of Goya and friends

       Not to be resuscitated

       and absolutely no priests, up on her elbows, the priests confound you

and then they confound you again. They only come clear when you're on your

deathbed. We must speak by the card or equivocation will undo us.




       Look into the dark heart and you will see what the dark eats other than

your heart




       The world is not ineluctably finished




       though the watchfires have been doused




       more walls have come down




       more walls are being built




       Sound of the future, uncanny how close




       to the sound of the old




       At Daddy's Eyes




       "Pusherman" still on the jukebox




       Everybody's past redacted

From One With Others by C. D. Wright. Copyright © 2011 by C. D. Wright. Published by Copper Canyon Press. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.

a redshirt's perspective on the prime directive surrounding us: a billion stars

Natasha Teller Dec 2013

a redshirt's perspective on the prime directive

surrounding us: a billion stars
in a time when a trip to mars is like walking around the block
and captain kirk and mister spock are arguing
about the prime directive.

we’re beaming to a planet’s surface. now listen:
i know about inverse tachyon beams
i know about coded klingon screams
i know about going to warp factor eight
i know about redshirts' survival rate.
(no. chance.)

i’m beaming down with the main crew
to the surface of minerva II
we've got a malfunctioning interstellar transceiver which is distressing-- dysgraphing? dismantling…
…i don't know.
scotty said it was defective.

so we’re on this planet,
standing on one side of a thick forest packed with monster janeks,
starfleet says we need to fix this thing yesterday, and we’re in a panic—
and **** it, mccoy is a doctor, not a lumberjack,
and kirk says we should just burn through the middle with phasers,
and spock says we must preserve respect for all life forms no matter the situation.

now please remember kirk’s the captain.
that means he runs this show
but kirk always listens to spock,
so
we spend two days walking through the forest.

surrounding us: a billion trees
in a place where a strange disease is rare as feathers in a flock
and captain kirk and mister spock are arguing
about the prime directive.

halfway through this dark-lit trip
things go wrong (obviously)
and an alien with shellac for skin captures the captain.
said alien grabs a vine, ascends into the canopy of the trees,
and for one glorious moment
i believe kirk’s the dead guy in this episode, not me!

but spock, in his calm and logical vulcan voice,
orders us to exercise any necessary force to recover the captain.
translation: **** EVERYTHING. JUST GET KIRK BACK.

we reach the janek village.
being a good redshirt, i rush in, phaser blasting, ready to complete the heroic rescue of our captain—
and get killed instantly.

as i was dying, i heard the sound of thousands of janeks dying beside me
saw spock help kirk off the ground
and the last words I heard were theirs:
“captain, are you in need of immediate medical attention?”
“nah, spock, i’m fine—”
“mr. scott. the captain is hurt. beam us aboard immediately.”
one’s arm over the other’s shoulders,
they vanished.

surrounding them: a billion stars
in a time when a trip to mars is like walking around the block
and captain kirk and mister spock are arguing
about the prime directive—

but the prime directive
was never the real objective.

My very first attempt at slam poetry, back in the day... this was written for a sci-fi slam. Live long & prosper.

 

We Drink at the Attenuation Well Porsha Olayiwola

We Drink at the Attenuation Well

Porsha Olayiwola

Motivated forgetting is a psychological defense mechanism whereby people cope with threatening and unwanted memories by suppressing them from consciousness.             —Amy N. Dalton and Li Huang               in Badagry there is a hung-               ry well of water and memory                                                            loss. in Badagry there was a well                                                           of people lost across a haven    of water. in Badagry there was a port overwhelmed in un-return.                                             to omit within the mind is to ebb                                          heavenward. memory is a wealth                                                                     choking the brain in un-respons-                                                                  ibility. violence in the mind and                                             the mind forgets in order to remember                                          the self before the violence begot.  in Badagry trauma washes ungod- ly memory heavenward. in Bad-                                          agry there is an attenuation well                                         meant to wish away a passage,                                                                          meant to unhaven a people.                                                                       violence is underwhelming                                          in return. what the body eats,                                         the mind waters. responsible    is the memory for un-remittal.  royal is the body for return. god is                                                    the mind for wafting. forgetting                                                   is a port homeward. in Bad-                                                                agry hungry memory grows angry.                                                             in Badagry the memories un-                     choke. trauma un-eats the royal.                   in Badagry there is a heaven                                                                   of people responsible for the birth-                                                                 right of remembering, for the well                                                  of us across a haven of water                                               overwhelmed in un-return.

Copyright © 2020 by Porsha Olayiwola. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 17, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.

NDN Homopoetics by Billy-Ray Belcourt

NDN Homopoetics   Billy-Ray Belcourt

1. I hoard dirt in my ears; months later, I pull out a summer dress. The dress is not a dress to be worn but to be hung, like a flag on a wobbly pole that is noticed only when crowded in the mouths of those near it. The dress is not a dress to be worn but to be hung, like an NDN condemned to death by the judiciary of historical ignorance, an enactment of white fellowship and care. We all bear the dress, not as an article of clothing, but as an ontological imprint. To bear is not to wear, of course. To bear and to birth, however, are from the same neighborhood of experience. It is there, in the neighborhood of experience, that my childhood home is nowhere to be found. And so, my childhood home could be anything, even a dress made out of dirt. 2. Boy becomes a 3-D printing of a man. It brings me comfort to think of my gender as a farmer’s field already rototilled, already cleaned up. I become less of who I am by the second. Look at the branches growing from my teeth! Then there’s the mare, tipsy on me, grazing to no end. If I were to speak, I’d sound like a cracked windshield, typo-ridden. These 206 lonely bones have each gained a type of consciousness; they pretend not to harbor hard feelings about me, my ungodly molecularity. What can I say about my shadow? It loves the unlit street more than it does me. Sometimes a body is that which happens to you. Everyday, dime-sized holes proliferate on my flesh, as if I were trying to free myself from myself. I will go on like this forever: with the earth ringing in my chest. 3. I am a body of knowledge, not one of chemical compounds. Which is to say that I live as ideas do. This is the fate of NDNs. It is on the rez that one can hear sentences speak as though in a chorus. To tear the page is to tear our world apart. What shame to be a sentence on its knees! The day I obtained my driver’s license, I followed a cumulus cloud through a maze of dirt roads until it evaporated. Forty minutes. That was all it took. I bore witness. It did not ask this of me, but I wanted to keep watch of the dying everywhere, so I could figure out how to care for a bleeding sentence. 4. What to an NDN is the intrinsic goodness of mankind? Maybe justice is a lover who regurgitates the English language so it comes back sweeter. Canada, why are your elevators filled with mud water? What is it about a palm that makes a country feel like a garden? I dug and dug. I pulled out a bouquet of skyscrapers. I kissed each window softly. Is this not what an NDN does in a poem?

dayenu

I will make the darkness light before thee

I will make the darkness light before thee

Representative Text

1. I will make the darkness light before thee,
What is wrong I’ll make it right before thee,
All thy battles I will fight before thee,
And the high place I’ll bring down.

Refrain
When thou walkest by the way I’ll lead thee,
On the fatness of the land I’ll feed thee,
And a mansion in the sky I’ll deed thee,
And the high place I’ll bring down.

2. With an everlasting love I’ll love thee,
Though with trials deep and sore I’ll prove thee,
But there’s nothing that can hurt or move thee,
And the high place I’ll bring down. [Refrain]

3. Although Satan in his rage would tear thee,
And with all his winning arts would snare thee,
Even down to thine old age I’ll bear thee,
And the high place I’ll bring down. [Refrain]

4. I will make the darkness light before thee,
I will make the crooked straight before thee,
I will spread My wings protecting o’er thee,
And the high place I’ll bring down. [Refrain]

Source: The Cyber Hymnal #3175

Invictus BY WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY

Invictus 

BY WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY

Out of the night that covers me,

      Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

      For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

      I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

      My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

      Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

      Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

      How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

      I am the captain of my soul.