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Apr. 4th, 2004 11:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancingyeldance is wonderful...we won our comp and had a lovely time at the event...had fun hanging out the next day...had a really nice drive over the previous day. it was all nice and a good change from the hellish week before. and now i'm in an odd mood and have lots to say/write but i'm not sure how to verbalize any of it so i won't at the moment. i think i'll look for poems to post instead, since it's national poetry month and i want to try and post 30 poems this month, just because. not my own, no, but good poems that i haven't already posted in this journal. so here are poems for april 1st through the 4th, behind several convenient lj cut tags.
the first poem reminded me of sam from berkeley...are you reading this sam? because you should be. yes. heh. anyhow, it's an amusing poem.
Numbers
I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,
they are willing to count anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room,
eight dancers dressed as swans.
I like the domesticity of addition--
add two cups of milk and stir--
the sense of plenty: six plums
on the ground, three more
falling from the tree.
And multiplication's school
of fish times fish,
whose sliver bodies breed
beneath the shadow
of a boat.
Even subtraction is never loss,
just addition somewhere else:
five sparrows take away two,
the two in someone else's
garden now.
There's an amplitude to long divisio,
as it opens Chinese take-ou
box by paper box,
inside every floded cookie
a new fortune.
And I never fail to be surprised
by the gift of an odd remainder,
footloose at the end:
forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,
with three remaining.
Three boys beyond their mothers' call,
two Italians off to the sea,
one sock that isn't anywhere you look.
by Mary Cornish
this next poem makes me think of my grandparents, for some reason.
Love Poem with Toast
Some of what we do, we do
to make things happen,
the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc,
the car to start.
The rest of what we do, we do
trying to keep something from doing something,
the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting
the truth from getting out.
With yes and no like the poles of a battery
powering our passage through the days,
we move, as we call it, forward,
wanting to be wanted,
wanting not to lose the rain forest,
wanting the water to boil,
wanting not to have cnacer,
wanting to be home by dark,
wanting not to run out of gas,
as each of us wants the other
watching at the end,
as both want not to leave the other alone,
as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone,
we gaze across breakfast and pretend.
Miller Williams
the next one is highly random and weird but wonderful. all spacing and puncutation are copied exactly...not my mistakes, just the way the poem was written.
(once like a spark)
if strangers meet
life begins --
not poor not rich
(only aware)
kind neither
nor cruel
(only complete)
i not not you
not possible;
only truthful
--thruthfully,once
if strangers(who
deep our most are
selves)touch:
forever
(and so to dark)
e.e.cummings, if you can't guess.
last one for now...another weird one, but really cool.
LII
life is more true than reason will deceive
(more secret or than madness did reveal)
deeper is life than lose:higher than have
--but beauty is more each than living's all
multiplied with infinity sans if
the mightiest meditations of mankind
cancelled are by one merely opening leag
(beyond whose nearness there is no beyond)
or does some little bird than eyes can learn
look up to silence and completely sing?
futures are obsolete;past are unborn
(here less than nothing's more than everything)
death,as men call him,ends what they call me
--but beauty is more now than dying's when
ok, that's all for now...more later, i'm sure.
the first poem reminded me of sam from berkeley...are you reading this sam? because you should be. yes. heh. anyhow, it's an amusing poem.
Numbers
I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,
they are willing to count anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room,
eight dancers dressed as swans.
I like the domesticity of addition--
add two cups of milk and stir--
the sense of plenty: six plums
on the ground, three more
falling from the tree.
And multiplication's school
of fish times fish,
whose sliver bodies breed
beneath the shadow
of a boat.
Even subtraction is never loss,
just addition somewhere else:
five sparrows take away two,
the two in someone else's
garden now.
There's an amplitude to long divisio,
as it opens Chinese take-ou
box by paper box,
inside every floded cookie
a new fortune.
And I never fail to be surprised
by the gift of an odd remainder,
footloose at the end:
forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,
with three remaining.
Three boys beyond their mothers' call,
two Italians off to the sea,
one sock that isn't anywhere you look.
by Mary Cornish
this next poem makes me think of my grandparents, for some reason.
Love Poem with Toast
Some of what we do, we do
to make things happen,
the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc,
the car to start.
The rest of what we do, we do
trying to keep something from doing something,
the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting
the truth from getting out.
With yes and no like the poles of a battery
powering our passage through the days,
we move, as we call it, forward,
wanting to be wanted,
wanting not to lose the rain forest,
wanting the water to boil,
wanting not to have cnacer,
wanting to be home by dark,
wanting not to run out of gas,
as each of us wants the other
watching at the end,
as both want not to leave the other alone,
as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone,
we gaze across breakfast and pretend.
Miller Williams
the next one is highly random and weird but wonderful. all spacing and puncutation are copied exactly...not my mistakes, just the way the poem was written.
(once like a spark)
if strangers meet
life begins --
not poor not rich
(only aware)
kind neither
nor cruel
(only complete)
i not not you
not possible;
only truthful
--thruthfully,once
if strangers(who
deep our most are
selves)touch:
forever
(and so to dark)
e.e.cummings, if you can't guess.
last one for now...another weird one, but really cool.
LII
life is more true than reason will deceive
(more secret or than madness did reveal)
deeper is life than lose:higher than have
--but beauty is more each than living's all
multiplied with infinity sans if
the mightiest meditations of mankind
cancelled are by one merely opening leag
(beyond whose nearness there is no beyond)
or does some little bird than eyes can learn
look up to silence and completely sing?
futures are obsolete;past are unborn
(here less than nothing's more than everything)
death,as men call him,ends what they call me
--but beauty is more now than dying's when
ok, that's all for now...more later, i'm sure.
