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I measure every Grief I meet

I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, Eyes —
I wonder if It weighs like Mine —
Or has an Easier size.

I wonder if They bore it long —
Or did it just begin —
I could not tell the Date of Mine —
It feels so old a pain —

I wonder if it hurts to live —
And if They have to try —
And whether — could They choose between —
It would not be — to die —

I note that Some — gone patient long —
At length, renew their smile —
An imitation of a Light
That has so little Oil —

[...] Read more

poem by Emily Dickinson
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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To A Lady, Who Presented To The Author A Lock Of Hair Braided With His Own, And Appointed A Night In December To Meet Him In The Garden

These locks, which fondly thus entwine,
In firmer chains our hearts confine
Than all th' unmeaning protestations
Which swell with nonsense love orations.
Our love is fix'd, I think we've proved it,
Nor time, nor place, nor art have moved it;
Then wherefore should we sigh and whine,
With groundless jealousy repine,
With silly whims and fancies frantic,
Merely to make our love romantic?
Why should you weep like Lydia Languish,
And fret with self-created anguish?
Or doom the lover you have chosen,
On winter to nights to sigh half frozen;
In leafless shades to sue for pardon,
Only because the scene's a garden?
For gardens seem, by one consent
(Since Shakespeare set the precedent,
Since Juliet first declared her passion),
To from the place of assignation.

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poem by Byron
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The History Poems Have Not Been Written

The history poems have not been written
The poems after Milosz
The Wallace Stevens poems will never be written
I can’t come close
I have tried the Blake poems
But of course I am not near them either
I would like to the ironic intellectual poems
I might be able to do them
I could do a kind of surrealistic association mind poem a prose poem
But I don’t like that very much
The poems of Jerusalem have not been good enough
Poems of propaganda are awkward and unacceptable
The small poems that tell of my life
They are for me the chance at real poetry
And I will continue as best I can with them
The American poems I have not yet found the idiom for
I can be epigrammatic in Emerson Thoreau fashion
But not with the hard New England observing eye
Borges poems I love
And the stories of mind and literature

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poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Dying Kid

Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi
Prima fugit-…
~Virg.
Imitation.

Ah! wretched mortals we! - our brightest days
On fleetest pinions fly.

A tear bedews my Delia's eye,
To think yon playful kid must die;
From crystal spring, and flowery mead,
Must, in his prime of life, recede!

Erewhile, in sportive circles round
She saw him wheel, and frisk, and bound!
From rock to rock pursue his way,
And on the fearful margin play.

Pleased on his various freaks to dwell,
She saw him climb my rustic cell;

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poem by William Shenstone
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Janice and You At London Bridge

It was the fourth day
since the break up
from school
for the summer vacation

and you were riding
with Janice
on the bus
to London Bridge

and she was wearing
the lemon coloured dress
you liked
that came to the knees

which were pressed
together
and the brown sandals
with the patterned holes

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poem by Terry Collett
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Biography

Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud, a French poet, was born Oct.20,1854, in Charleville. His childhood was marred by a 'cantankerous and vindictive' mother and by the discipline of the local school, but his poetic virtuosity was extraordinary. By the age of fifteen he had written verse in imitation of the Romanticists (Vers de College,1932) , and one of his teachers, Izambard, introduced him to contemporary poetry. He was fiercely revolutionary, and wrote the words 'Down with God' on the public benches of Charleville. He ran away from his native town, twice to Paris and once into Belgium, and once he spent 10 days in prison for travelling by train without a ticket. During these escapades, he wrote such poems as Ma Boheme and Le Cabaret vert.
In 1871, in Charleville, he wrote his first prose poems and the Lettres du voyant, and sent to Verlaine a copy of his poem Le Bateau ivre. Verlaine was enthusiastic with the work and encouraged Rimbaud to come to Paris. At this time he had already started the composition of his Illuminations, which was not published until 1886. Verlaine and Rimbaud drifted into an affair. He served in the army of the Commune, and after its fall he went abroad with Verlaine, travelling in England and Belgium. In 1873, in Brussels, he was shot in the wrist by Verlaine, who was condemned to 2 years' imprisonment in the city of Mons for the act. After the incident, Rimbaud wrote a new Illuminations and Une Saison en Enfer.

In november 1893, Rimbaud gave up the writing of poetry and started traveling through Europe on foot. He returned once more to Paris and then disappeared for 16 years. Part of this time he spent in the East, but the greater part was in Ethiopia, where he dealt in contraband firearms, in ivory and gold, and perhaps in slaves. In 1891 he became ill, returned to France to have one leg amputated, and died on November 10 in a Marseille hospital.

poem by Arthur Rimbaud
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The Logicians Refuted

IN IMITATION OF DEAN SWIFT

LOGICIANS have but ill defin'd
As rational, the human kind;
Reason, they say, belongs to man,
But let them prove it if they can.
Wise Aristotle and Smiglecius,
By ratiocinations specious,
Have strove to prove with great precision,
With definition and division,
'Homo est ratione praeditum',--
But for my soul I cannot credit 'em;
And must in spite of them maintain,
That man and all his ways are vain;
And that this boasted lord of nature
Is both a weak and erring creature;
That instinct is a surer guide
Than reason-boasting mortals' pride;
And that brute beasts are far before 'em,
'Deus est anima brutorum'.

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poem by Oliver Goldsmith
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Will You Get Outta Here Tryin' to 'Spook' Somebody

Here...
Take this.
It will feed you!

'LOL...
Look, Mac
The joke is on you.
If you don't give us what we want,
Millions will suffer.'

This has usages you will not believe.

'Seriously,
What do you want?
Some change or something.
I think I've got a dollar.
You want it so you can leave me alone! ? '

This bone is so magical,
It will make you belive it's meat.

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poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Eternally Fortified

There is a place...
Deep within the crevices,
Of their recessed minds!
Where they perceived themselves envied.
Conditioned to believe they were in possession,
What others wanted to take.
Others wanted so badly...
They felt a need to defend themselves,
With weapons and attitude.

They believed themselves highly educated.
Although a few...
Even with degrees,
Could comprehend, read or write.
Even fewer than that,
Had common sense.
And those who did express it,
Were feared!
Even though rarely used.

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poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Island In A Sea Of Space

Night stroked the vision from the dream I became
While soothed to the pull from the door of the first page
The salt of ocean lingered in my nostrils that quivered
Confusion annulled existence rampant waves of haphazard rigor
Beneath opaque sapphire that crept on scarlet shores
Shimmering reminiscence particles between my velvet toes
As I kissed the look of horizon that rotated mechanically
On the soft romances of childhood kidnapped into Fantasy
I was spellbound in purgatory that was five miles round
Sheathed in Pacific imitation of Hawaii bold mounds
Forever encapsulated as the cynosure of pure anger
That was licensed to service by the Machiavellian Doctor

In an island in a sea of space

Old Satellites ascended in a cathedral of black mass
Whispering anxious luminescence in geodesic glass
Orion sat lackadaisically behind the nave of Ganymede
Vacillating the trajectory to escape his lovers band
As he encroached the heavens as I wondered as fractal

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poem by Kevin Patrick
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