poetrymotherfckr

[poetrymotherfckr]

Realism

Socialist Realism & Capitalist Realism

are the same thing

I am thinking this way &

walking down Shattuck with my wife

when I catch the sign in

Woolworth’s window

                 Lifelike

              PLASTIC

             FLOWERS

                   with

             built-in-bloom

               washable

               nonallergic

                  prices

                as marked

     Satisfaction Guaranteed

                      or

            money refunded

So knowing a good poem

when I see one I copy it down

on the back of the brown envelope

from the Telephone Company that says --

EXTENSION PHONES take the run

out of RUNNING A HOME!

- Al Young, Geography of the Near Past

#Al Young #poetry #blackpoets #black poets #blackpoetry #black poetry

[poetrymotherfckr]

Moon so bright for love!    Come closer, quilt,    enfold... My passionate cold!           - Sampu

In the twilight rain    These brilliant - hued    hibiscus... A lovely sunset           - Basho

A camelia    Dropped down into    deep waters Of a still dark well           - Buson

Live in simple faith...    Just as this    trusting cherry Flowers, fades, and falls           - Issa

Angry I strode home    But stooping in    my garden... Calm old willow - tree           -Ryoto

See... the heavy leaf    on this silent    windless day... Falls of its own will           - Boncho

Watching, I wonder    What poet could put    down his quill... Such a perfect moon!           - Onitsura

Two ancient pine trees...    A pair of gnarled    and sturdy hands With ten green fingers           - Ryoto

Crossing it alone    In the cold moonlight...    the brittle bridge Echoes my footsteps           - Taigi

[poetrymotherfckr]

Memo to Non-White Peoples

They will let you have dope Because they are quite willing To drug you or kill you. They will let you have babies Because they are quite willing To pauperize you -  Or use your kids as labor boys For army, air force, or uranium mine. They will let you have alcohol To make you sodden and drunk And foolish. They will gleefully let you Kill your damn self any way you choose With liquor, drugs, or whatever. It's the same from Cairo to Chicago, Cape Town to the Carribean, Do you travel the Stork Club circuit To old dear Shepherd's Hotel? (Somebody burnt Shepherd's up.) I'm sorry but it is The same from Cairo to Chicago, Cape Town to the Carib Hilton, Exactly the same.

   - Langston Hughes

#langston hughes #black poetry #black poets #african american poetry #memo to non-white peoples

[poetrymotherfckr]

Dead my old fine hopes    and dry my dreaming    but still... Iris, blue each spring!           - Shushiki

Dew evaporates    and all our world    is dew...so dear, So fresh, so fleeting           - Issa

Black cloudbank broken    scatters in the    nigh...now see Moon-lighted mountain!           - Basho Arise from sleep, old cat,    and with great yawns    and stretchings... Amble out for love.           - Issa

In the city fields    contemplating    cherry-trees Strangers are like friends           - Issa

Many solemn nights    blond moon, we stand    and marvel... Sleeping our noons away           - Teitoku

Dewdrops, let me cleanse    in your brief    sweet waters... These dark hands of life           - Basho

Ah me! I am one    who spends his little    breakfast... Morning-glory gazing           - Basho

Life? Butterfly    on a swaying grass    that's all... But exquisite!           - Soin

Good friend grasshopper    will you play    the caretaker For my little grave?           - Issa

Haiku from Japanese Haiku, Peter Pauper Press, 1955

#Haiku #japanese haiku #poetry #issa #basho

[poetrymotherfckr]

Power

Living     in the earth-deposits     of our history

Today a backhoe divulged     out of a crumbling flank of earth one bottle    amber    perfect    a hundred-year-old cure for fever    or melancholy    a tonic for living on this earth    in the winters of this climate

Today I was reading about Marie Curie: she must have known she suffered     from radiation sickness her body bombarded for years    by the element she had purified It seems she denied to the end the source of the cataracts on her eyes the cracked and suppurating skin    of her finger-ends till she could no longer hold    a test-tube or a pencil

She died    a famous woman    denying her wounds denying her wounds    came   from the same source as her power

    - Adrienne Rich

#adrienne rich #poetry #american poetry #women poets #feminist poets #good poetry

[poetrymotherfckr]

Women

They were women then My mama's generation Husky of voice -  Stout of Step With fists as well as Hands How they battered down Doors And ironed Starched white Shirts How they led Armies Headragged Generals Across mined Fields Booby-trapped Ditches To discover books Desks A place for us How they knew what we Must know Without knowing a page Of it Themselves.

    - Alice Walker, Revolutionary Petunias & Other Poems, 1973

#alice walker #revolutionary petunias #women #black women #black poets #good poetry #poetry

[poetrymotherfckr]

Kill the part of you that believes it can’t survive without someone else. Start with the hands. The feeble way they shake holding your morning coffee, the way they did his dishes, his laundry, so willingly. How they itch from the want of undressing his memory. All lonely. All empty - you. Cut them off. Undo the trembling in your knees when you licked the blood from his lips; Undo the weakness in your feet when he stole the breath in your lungs. Stand the fuck up. Go for the stomach. Destroy the butterflies giving you sleepless nights and make a painting out of their corpses’ wings. Spit him out. You can eat fire if you want to. Do not let his absence take away your magic. You are not hard to love if you can love yourself and no one has the authority to break you except you. You are a calamity, you are a force of nature, and there is thunder crackling in your veins. Can you hear it? This is your funeral song. Now, burn - Explode.

Sade Andria Zabala (surfandwrite) | Phoenix

When you rise from the ashes, STAND ALONE.

(via surfandwrite)

[poetrymotherfckr]

I Love My Life

        I announced I had books to give away         - if anyone wanted free books         meet me outside in the parking lot and they did, and it was so funny -                 two- and three-hundred-pound grandpas,                 skinny, graying grandmas                 abuelos flacos con barbas y brochas, ohing and ahing over the boxes of children's books donated to my by bookstores -  and here, because months ago I volunteered to be the librarian at a school without books to stock their shelves, to make sure thay all had books -                 here I am at dawn                 with sixty- and seventy-year-old grandparents                 loading up armfuls of books to take back to their grandchildren. I don't know how Christmas ornaments ended up in one box but several of the older men and women in their eighties walk off, arms bulging with fairy tale books, wearing Christmas wreathes around their necks and on their heads, the women draping red bunting cloth used for fireplace mantles                  over their shoulders                  like scarves kings and queens wear -  these poor people are regal, carrying armfuls of kingdoms and dreams for their grandchildren, to imagine they too can have and be and break through the poverty                   through reading -                   I love my life,                   here at 6:00 a.m., giving out books                   to people who have never had them -                   I am blessed!                   Thank you Creator                   for the fate you have given me!  

- Jimmy Santiago Baca, Spring Poems Along the Rio Grande

#I love my life #Jimmy Santiago Baca #spring poems along the rio grande #latino poetry #latino poets #latino authors #good poetry #poetry

[poetrymotherfckr]

Dancing All Alone

We move through rooms & down the middle of freeways, myself & I. A feeling lumps up in the throat that says I wont be living forever. The middle of the month signifies the end of some beginning the beginning of some end. Once I thought the heart could be ripped out like doll filling & naked essence examined but I'm a man not a mannikin. I would transfer to the world my idea of what it's like beneath flesh & fur. I cannot do this without making fools of myself. Cold winds whoosh down on me under winter stars & the way ahead is long but not uncertain. I am neither prince nor citizen but I do know what is noble in me & what is usefully vulgar. It is from this point that the real radiates. I move & am moved, do & am done for. My prison is the room of myself & my rejection of both is my salvation, the way out being the way in, the freeway that expands to my true touch,  a laughter in the blood that dances. 

- Al Young, Dancing, 1969

#al young #dancing #dancing all alone #black poetry #black poets #african american poetry

[poetrymotherfckr]

Ain't it a Bitch?

When all your money's gone and you drain your last cup, you sittin' and thinkin' of the times when you once was up, when all your friends has gone and left you and you flat in a ditch - now hi, my jivin' Mike, ain't it a bitch?

When the skies turn dark and gray, the rain begins to pour, you out wanderin' from door to door, you get throwed in jail by some dirty old snitch - now hi, my jivin' Mike, ain't it a bitch?

They take you down to the old county jail, maybe three or four of your old used-to-be broads tell you, "Daddy, I'll go your             bail." But you feel like killin' one a those bitches, but you don't know which - now hi, my jivin' Mike, ain't it a bitch?

When they take you to court you nearly beat the rap. The district attorney bring up some damned old crap, then the judge he fine you just like you was rich - I can't take it, Mike, ain't it a bitch?

There stand a old broad in the courtroom you maybe done forgot all about, starts to beefin' to the judge, "I'll bail him out." While all the other chickenshit offenders they got to stand in the hitch - now how are ya, my jivin' Mike, ain't it a bitch?

She takes you home and a drink makes you feel sort of spry, then you light up a stick of tea and you both get high, then you both get friggish and then you pull of every stitch - you starts to slow jivin', Mike...ain't it a bitch?

 -  - a “toast” from “Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me” Narrative          Poetry from Black Oral Tradition by Bruce Jackson, 1974

#toasts #get your ass in the water and swim like me #black poetry #black poets #african american poetry #black oral tradition #poetry

[poetrymotherfckr]

ABC Any body can die, evidently. Few Go happily, irradiating joy, Knowledge, love. Many Need oblivion, painkillers, Quickest respite. Sweet time unafflicted, Various world: X = your zenith.

"ABC" by Robert Pinksy (via words-in-lines)

#poetry #robert pinsky #ABC

[poetrymotherfckr]

A Dance for Ma Rainey

I'm going to be just like you, Ma Rainey this monday morning clouds puffing up out of my head like those balloons that float above the faces of white people in the funnypapers

I'm going to hover in the corners of the world, Ma & sing from the bottom of hell up to the tops of high heaven & send out scratchless waves of yellow & brown & that basic black honey misery

I'm going to cry so sweet & so low & so dangerous, Ma, that the message is going to reach you back in 1922 where you shimmer snaggle-toothed perfumed & powdered in your bauble beads hair pressed & tied back throbbing with that sick pain I know & hide so well that pain that blues jives the world with aching to be heard that downness that bottomlessness first felt by some stolen delta nigger swamped under with redblooded american agony; reduced to the sheer shit of existence that bred & battered us all,  Ma, the beautiful people our beautiful brave black people who no longer need to jazz or sing to themselves in murderous vibrations or play the veins of their strong tender arms with needles to prove that we're still here  - Al Young, Dancing, 1969

#al young #a dance for ma rainey #dancing #black poetry #black poets #african american poetry #poetry

[poetrymotherfckr]

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know what despair is; then winter should have meaning for you. I did not expect to survive, earth suppressing me. I didn’t expect to waken again, to feel in damp earth my body able to respond again, remembering after so long how to open again in the cold light of earliest spring— afraid, yes, but among you again crying yes risk joy in the raw wind of the new world.

Louise Glück, Snowdrops (via arpeggia)

#louise gluck #snowdrops #good poetry

[poetrymotherfckr]

It was a time of waiting, of suspended action. I lived in the present, which was that part of the future you could see. The past floated above my head, like the sun and moon, visible but never reachable. It was a time governed by contradictions, as inI felt nothing and I was afraid.

Louise Glück, from “Landscape” (via oofpoetry)

[poetrymotherfckr]

All You Tough Guys That Thinks You're Wise

All you tough guys that thinks you're wise, take heed and avoid your downfall. For I'm a wise egg, and I can lie, steal, and beg, and I've traveled this whole world around. I been east and I been west and I been with the best when it comes to covering ground. Why I juggled a tray in a New York cafe and I hopped hotel bells in Chi, and I've carried a pack down a B & O track and I've popped redball freights on the fly. Now, you know, all my life I've been a wanderer up and down that old cinder trail, and all the happy memories I've got left are the few days I've spent out of jail. Why I've laid in my cell and I've suffered like hell for the want of a shot of dope, I've prayed in despair to be sent to the chair or bumped off at the end of a rope. I have prayed without hope to the goddess of dope, to whomever with whom I have served. So just hark to the tale of the wanderer's trail, just look what it's done to me. You better stay out in the sticks with the rest of the hicks, that's a convict's warning from me.

 - a "toast" from "Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me" Narrative          Poetry from Black Oral Tradition by Bruce Jackson, 1974

#toast #black oral tradition #black poetry #african american poetry #black poets #get your ass in the water and swim like me #narrative poetry #poetry #american poetry #jail poetry

[poetrymotherfckr]

ChicaIndio

Brown-eyed, black-haired spirit violated as a boy, I learned to violate myself as a man, fucking to cope with loss, reduce the ache of my fragmented self to disassociate, repress my insecurities -               paralyzed by panic,               unable to trust,               labeling love a psychosis,               fearing commitment, my heart bellied up                                        in an oil spill of arctic deceptions. I betrayed myself again               in bed with you               at Jackson Hole, Wyoming,                        my rib cage                        a hangman's platform,                        lynched bodies                                                        swayed from,                                                        clacking their death spell                                                        between us, the words I love you corpse worms wriggling beneath my tongue.  - Jimmy Santiago Baca, Spring Poems Along the Rio Grande

#ChicaIndio #Jimmy Santiago Baca #spring poems along the rio grande #latino poets #latino authors #latino poetry #good poetry #poetry

[poetrymotherfckr]

In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, Who, squatting upon the ground, Held his heart in his hands, And ate of it. I said: "Is it good, friend?" "It is bitter - bitter," he answered; "But I like it Because it is bitter, And because it is my heart."

- Stephen Crane

#stephen crane #poetry