05-02-2023, 12:42 AM
Oops- I forgot the reference prompts. Oh well.
If I have to choose I'll go with this by WJames, simply because I loved the slant rhymes that I highlight, below:
I wear my finest overalls
and vintage flannel shirts,
to cocktail bars in Montreal
to woo and gab and flirt.
Some women like a rugged man
so that's what I present,
but in my bones I love Rembrandt
and fuchsia, floral scents.
And this, also by WJames. The bolded phrase is fantastic:
When a lemon drops
in your palm, and there is no sugar
to meringue, or steak to marinate,
and you have only swallowed saliva
since the full moon lost a quarter
in a bet with the wind
over the weight of the harvest,
guzzle the juice and ration the skin.
I also very much liked this one by 'notch, bolded parts especially:
All lives lived in this world
are sick, one way or another.
You start out a sickly child
always vomiting on your mother's shoulder
or your father's lap, then as you begin
to stand up on your own, to walk, to run,
you learn your parents were actually the source
of your many diseases -- their impatience
when you were an infant, their present ignorance,
their malice as you are forced
in this uncaring world out of your home
to hold down something even they can't call
a living, to treat your time
as a series of debts to pay, to pass down
your own lack of vision
to the succeeding generation -- and then you find
it's not so much a lack as it's beginning
to blur, your arms and legs
are weakening, a mere cold
translates into pneumonia: the end comes
so quickly, instead of a treatment
you think it's one more sickness.
And this by Steve from Bryn Mawr. The poem is as evocative as the painting:
Springtime at Giverny
As you lay in the quiet
of your cot did you dream
of her reborn at the spring
waking from the sanctuary
of her long winter sleep?
Hope she rose like the daffodil
with a green stretch and a yellow yawn
ready to don her bonnet; shrugging the dark
earth from the purple of her shoulders,
unfurling her petals with the crocus?
Then walk the garden to the fragrance
of first cut grass, her touching
the stable bloom of dogwood,
wild-white and cultured-pink, hearing
the breath of your young lover’s sigh
like the early bird song heard
on a dawn’s breeze through the cottage window. really good imagery
But she was fragile
as the magnolia bloom with beauty
unable to survive beyond
the mildest spring storm.
Now she is only a memory lost
in the corner of a dusty dream
dreamt from beyond the grave.
And this one by Duke, especially the end:
The You Know, The Thing
“What’s black and white,”
she said, “and red
all over, twice?”
“I’ve heard this one, it’s
a newspaper,” I simpered.
“Wrong.”
“Oh, alright. I know
the other one. It goes,
‘A sunburned zebra.’
Gotcha!”
“What about that ‘twice?’”
she riposted in a trice.
“It must be,” I muttered,
thinking rapidly,
“two newspapers!”
“No. That will not go.”
“Then it’s two sunburned
zebras, there now, plains as...”
“Still no go, Romeo.”
A third clever possibility
escaped me like a bumblebee
flying free
after stinging.
“I give up.”
She grinned. I groaned.
“It’s...
a sunburned zebra
reading a newspaper
right down to the want-ads
and obituaries.”
“That’s silly,”
I complained
but she wanted
something explained:
“What’s a ‘newspaper,’
anyway?”
What a little dimpled lark
you are, I thought,
to memorize that entire jape
without any understanding,
darling ape. And said,
“It’s like an influencer
but made of wood
and, you know,
red.”
If I have to choose I'll go with this by WJames, simply because I loved the slant rhymes that I highlight, below:
I wear my finest overalls
and vintage flannel shirts,
to cocktail bars in Montreal
to woo and gab and flirt.
Some women like a rugged man
so that's what I present,
but in my bones I love Rembrandt
and fuchsia, floral scents.
And this, also by WJames. The bolded phrase is fantastic:
When a lemon drops
in your palm, and there is no sugar
to meringue, or steak to marinate,
and you have only swallowed saliva
since the full moon lost a quarter
in a bet with the wind
over the weight of the harvest,
guzzle the juice and ration the skin.
I also very much liked this one by 'notch, bolded parts especially:
All lives lived in this world
are sick, one way or another.
You start out a sickly child
always vomiting on your mother's shoulder
or your father's lap, then as you begin
to stand up on your own, to walk, to run,
you learn your parents were actually the source
of your many diseases -- their impatience
when you were an infant, their present ignorance,
their malice as you are forced
in this uncaring world out of your home
to hold down something even they can't call
a living, to treat your time
as a series of debts to pay, to pass down
your own lack of vision
to the succeeding generation -- and then you find
it's not so much a lack as it's beginning
to blur, your arms and legs
are weakening, a mere cold
translates into pneumonia: the end comes
so quickly, instead of a treatment
you think it's one more sickness.
And this by Steve from Bryn Mawr. The poem is as evocative as the painting:
Springtime at Giverny
As you lay in the quiet
of your cot did you dream
of her reborn at the spring
waking from the sanctuary
of her long winter sleep?
Hope she rose like the daffodil
with a green stretch and a yellow yawn
ready to don her bonnet; shrugging the dark
earth from the purple of her shoulders,
unfurling her petals with the crocus?
Then walk the garden to the fragrance
of first cut grass, her touching
the stable bloom of dogwood,
wild-white and cultured-pink, hearing
the breath of your young lover’s sigh
like the early bird song heard
on a dawn’s breeze through the cottage window. really good imagery
But she was fragile
as the magnolia bloom with beauty
unable to survive beyond
the mildest spring storm.
Now she is only a memory lost
in the corner of a dusty dream
dreamt from beyond the grave.
And this one by Duke, especially the end:
The You Know, The Thing
“What’s black and white,”
she said, “and red
all over, twice?”
“I’ve heard this one, it’s
a newspaper,” I simpered.
“Wrong.”
“Oh, alright. I know
the other one. It goes,
‘A sunburned zebra.’
Gotcha!”
“What about that ‘twice?’”
she riposted in a trice.
“It must be,” I muttered,
thinking rapidly,
“two newspapers!”
“No. That will not go.”
“Then it’s two sunburned
zebras, there now, plains as...”
“Still no go, Romeo.”
A third clever possibility
escaped me like a bumblebee
flying free
after stinging.
“I give up.”
She grinned. I groaned.
“It’s...
a sunburned zebra
reading a newspaper
right down to the want-ads
and obituaries.”
“That’s silly,”
I complained
but she wanted
something explained:
“What’s a ‘newspaper,’
anyway?”
What a little dimpled lark
you are, I thought,
to memorize that entire jape
without any understanding,
darling ape. And said,
“It’s like an influencer
but made of wood
and, you know,
red.”