ADULT LITERACY POETRY NIGHT AT LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY - CENTRAL AT DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES - SEPTEMBER 26th 2024

 

I HAVE LONGED TO MOVE AWAY by DYLAN THOMAS

I Have Longed To Move Away

by Dylan Thomas

I have longed to move away
From the hissing of the spent lie
And the old terrors' continual cry
Growing more terrible as the day
Goes over the hill into the deep sea;
I have longed to move away
From the repetition of salutes,
For there are ghosts in the air
And ghostly echoes on paper,
And the thunder of calls and notes.

I have longed to move away but am afraid;
Some life, yet unspent, might explode
Out of the old lie burning on the ground,
And, crackling into the air, leave me half-blind.
Neither by night's ancient fear,
The parting of hat from hair,
Pursed lips at the receiver,
Shall I fall to death's feather.
By these I would not care to die,
Half convention and half lie.

ANDERSON .PAAK and GET LIT

SHE, THE PREMIER POET, HAD DISAPPEARED

SHE, THE PREMIER POET, HAD DISAPPEARED

by Christine Trzyna

She, the premier poet, had disappeared.

'Off the face of the earth,' they said,

leaving me to think she had gone deeper underground 

on the spoken word scene than they knew.

Maybe beneath the floorboards of a closed and vacant bookstore in Reseda, 

where photocopied posters were still stuck with tape.

Maybe in the library archives of Cal State - Northridge,

where they digitalized 

but it wasn't easy for a researcher to be taken seriously in person.

Maybe she'd appeared in a video that Brendan made,

having you sign under false pretenses. 

Shown at parties.

Making a fool of you for the pleasure of his guests.

A sadistic ritual.

Infamy.

Maybe when Murray turned her into a cover girl

the publicity was just too much.

Bags of fan mail, too many letters,

unsigned love poems that rhymed?

Other people with her name appear on the Internet.

You just didn't know it till you'd read a while

that she could not possibly be the mother who wrote about her son.

I recall the disappeared poet back when 

she knew who she was.

She pretended incompetence at running a vacuum cleaner, 

moving it over the fringe of a tattered Persian rug in the forever twilight, 

which broke the vacuum and ripped the weave.

Then she departed.

Who did we think she was?

She was not a maid,

not with her way with words.

She might fill the room with people

but the toilet would remain grunge.

She herself had never been known to go in there.

Everyone wanted to know her, 

not just the name on the flyers that drew them closer,

to benefit from a brush with her, 

to keep a vigil,

as if she was the lint that could light their bonfires.

To say she was their close personal friend,

that they wrote where she did, 

though she was mostly alone at an undisclosed location.

Here and there, 

Everywhere,

she was hard to pin down.

Deliberately.

They listened.

Her mother perched on a stool at the back of the room.

Her daughter on stage and earnest.

What had she created?

Was there such a thing as a career in poetry?

Her gentleman offered all she would accept, such as rides places.

He waited for her to one day recognize him,

standing with a dusty fedora in his hand in the back.

He waited for her to know his nobility was what kept him at arm's length.

He waited for the virgin who finally made a choice.

Maybe she lightly rests in an unmarked coping grave of her own choosing,

Far away in a crowded cemetery in New Orleans.

Where only a vampire, 

with his heightened sense of smell, could find her waiting.

Down on her wedding day,

Someday she might emerge from the chuppah, holding a candle.

I recall the disappeared poet back when she made high pitched squeals

and jumped as a cartoon, her legs back, never forward, 

almost kicking her own ass.

Weeeee!

On a teeter-totter only she could see.

Had she been flung into a hospital?

Were there visitors?

Everyone wanted to know her.

Her deepest, most inner being,

a darker side that hadn't made it into print.

"That would not be good," she said.

I recall the disappeared poet who had boyfriends

who were men in prison.

Stuck away for a life time.

They knew it.

She did not but she wrote them.

Sister, they called her.

Sister!

Maybe her prison was poetry, 

from where you must remain a keen observer 

like a spook that makes it through the wall behind

and sees over someone else's shoulder.

You sit reading one of her chap books quietly.

Your dog senses something.

Can you sense that?

But she escaped

And is now truly living under an assumed name,

that you could never guess.

Or, maybe

she's become an ancestor 

who once put Los Angeles poetry on the map.

Los Angeles has disappeared without her.

March 30 2023  7:05 am - 9:00 am

C Christine Trzyna

RECONSTRUCTING THE WORLD'S OLDEST POEM: GILGAMESH - AN EPIC ABOUT THE GREAT FLOOD and THE NATURE OF HUMANITY

Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East presents - the Babylonians - the Assyrians - THE GREAT FLOOD. This poem is about 4000 years old.  Reconstruction through many long ago sun baked clay tablets, this is the story of Gods and of humanity.  The original pre-Jewish/Christian Bible, the flood was already an ancient story.

PITY THE NATION by LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

WET

"Stop this and we can still be friends," I told Micky. 

That was me knowing life's a bitch and then you die, said in a spirit of generosity. I meant it, there was art in our friendship, but she didn't stop. She was having an affair with a man not her husband, irresponsibly, and she'd recently told me the two of them were including me into their fantasy.

To explain to others what appeared to be my sudden departure from her life, but had been a long sad realization on my part that Micky was using me and didn't care about my reputation, she lied some more. 

She called it "making something up" and I suspect she had been doing so since childhood. She felt no guilt. She shrugged. She was going to do whatever she wanted and get away with it even if it was a horrible way to treat a person who'd believed in you - your work - your writing - and had participated in a genuine friendship.

I felt relieved to be freeing myself from an entanglement not at all to my making or liking. I didn't want these two screwing with thoughts of me in their heads. To me that was Black Magic. It was absolutely not OK with me.

After a while, after she had not stopped, the phone rang a hundred times that I know about. 

Hang up calls.

Withdrawal.

I got a message from her boy brother telling me I had been insensitive.  What did he know? I'm sure not the truth. Vague rumors of bisexuality or repressed homosexually were also in his aura. What had she said to him about me to enlist his pity? 

I decided not to use the word "girlfriend" any more as it could be misunderstood in Los Angeles.

I didn't call him back.

//

I met Micky at a poetry reading before I burned out on that scene.

Reading her wet lines to an audience that included a smiling cat of a husband who was always using nip, you would have assumed she was enjoying the best sex with him and he knew it. Her poems encouraged everyone to be more daring, self revealing, and sexy as writers but were based on the fantasies of a sex starved woman who was interested openly in males and secretly in females.

What an imagination.

Micky was one of the most creative woman I've ever known. 

I don't know if she knew her survival required constant invention but after a year, I did. 

Seems the black and white Lucy Show reruns were on her television set whenever I visited and she watched as if she were taking a master class in getting around a husband. 

How had so much intelligence and artistic talent and beauty come to this?

She'd laugh, knowing what was coming next on that show.

Her lips glistened her words as they left her mouth. 

//

Micky was the neglected wife of a husband whose life philosophy was to stay in the denial of a constant high on pot. He loathed reality and mixed it up with the threat of an overdose of got-lemons-make-lemonade. He was always smiling. Nothing was going to get him down. Retreating into his role of provider, he preferred dumb. 

He was not interested in sex, not with her, not in years. He couldn't imagine she had needs besides money.

He was a good provider and she could count on that. 

There were always rumors with no reference, such as that they had an "arrangement." They did. Unsaid.

She was told by her parents that she was lucky she didn't need to bring in income. Lucky to have him. Her parents put all their money on their boy. Their boy expected the marriage to last. Their boy went to college while she had a boss who tossed her to clients. It was a sex, drugs, and rock and roll lifestyle that ended in a celibate marriage.

//

I'll tell you how to prevent your daughter from ever being Micky. Love your girl. See her potential. Raise her knowing her own value. Give her the strength of an education and foundation - some basis for ethics and morals. The Golden Rule. 

//

Her sins of surviving a marriage were like a twelve car pile up on the 405 - hard to figure who did what but full of permanent injury. You know you shouldn't look but also you can't help yourself - you look. 

//

For the hell of it, I courageously sent a poem into a tiny time chap book publisher who was soliciting entries (first publication rights only) and was surprised when it was accepted. I'd written the poem on a high tide afternoon in Malibu that I'd spent watching surfers from a perch on a cliff. 

Micky called me and was faking a conversation on her end to be overheard by her husband, suggesting we two drive to the publication reading and spend the weekend away but what she was trying for was a weekend away with her lover. Her script confused me. What the hell?!

I went alone.

Some time after that I went over to her place to work on an art project and found it curious that her husband was actually not smiling but sitting at their table holding a check book, his thumb repeatedly ruffling the pages while he glared at me to make a point. I pretended not to notice.

Like the previously written about woman friend who was using me as an excuse for where she was and to account for gifts she bought for a lover, Micky was also. That's why when it became glaring obvious that I was no longer around she spun more web.

This situation, I eventually learned, was worse than the last. Micky wasn't buying a men's wallet for her lover at Macy's. She was spending hundreds of dollars. She was buying cocaine and abortion.

//

There are so many things I've never experienced. 

I'm so glad.

And, Oh! It is not true that you have to have experiences so you can write about them.

C 2021

Notes: A few years ago I learned that Micky, having secured a max of social security and half the assets, did divorce. I so hope she's found peace and real love and is making art.

GUINESS WORD RECORD FOR MAKING A HOUSE OF CARDS

Bryan Berg is the champeon card stacker.  It looks so much fun to apply a fan to the structure and see what happens.  It's almost poetic.

MARK SHAW's BOOK DENIAL OF JUSTICE : DOROTHY KILGALLEN STORY

I heard this author speak on a radio program and then listened to this YouTube video of his presentation another time.  I think Shaw is a well organized speaker and the story about Dorothy Kilgallen is interesting.  Because of him, an investigation of her death which had been called a suicide was opened.  He thinks it was murder.  He thinks he knows who did it too because of a POEM his suspect wrote. Kilgallen was a journalist who was onto something about the President John F. Kennedy assassination.  More famous for her presence as a game show player on "What's My Line," a television show, I had no idea that she had been known in her time as a respected investigative journalist.  This one take about an hour, but if any of that interestes you, it's worth the listen. 

WHAT IS IT ALL BUT LUMINOUS : NOTES FROM AN UNDERGROUND MAN by ART GARFUNKEL : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

Picked this one up at the library new book shelf on a whim as I was heading out the door and wish I had the time to deeply read rather than dip in and out. 

It's a poetical book, many stanzas between scenarios with George Harrison and the Beatles, with James Taylor, as well as, of course,his long time associate, sometimes partner, Paul Simon.  Entwined with music legends as he himself became,  born and bar mitzvah'ed Jewish but a Buddhist just the same.  And lists ; the books and the songs and the accomplishments but which leads no doubt that his wife and son and grandchild are the epitome of his life.  He has had a long time writing habit.

A song  is a poem is a song.

I liked this one page 140 of this small hardback.

I was her love pest.
Like aphids in her garden.
Mold on her bloom.
I was fungus underneath her nail.
Crust in her eyelashes.
Trust in the atmosphere.
Dust on the pictures of places we've been.
I'm her old bed linen.
The thrust of the argument.
Honey for the tea in a bear.
There in the X-rays.
I'm the horn in her side
cornucopia.
I am her underwear.
Solder and weld.
Fused in our children.
    Behold and beheld.


Even if you don't know who he is, the poetry is worth it.

C 2019  Christine Trzyna  Book Review All Rights reserved.

EXCERPT FROM THURSTON CLARK'S BOOK : JFK LAST HUNDRED DAYS

Commentary : This is fabulous writing, bringing the reader to the scene in the nation, in the world, with broad strokes and then the small details, painting a heart rendering picture of the JFK assassination and immediate aftermath!

CHAPTER "AFTER DALLAS"  (Last Chapter)
Pages 347 - 362

Jackie wept first, and from her and from Dallas a tidal wave of tears rolled across the nation and around the world.  In New York, there was a murmur and then a rising wail as the news jumped between tables at a midtown restaurant.  Advertising men in tailored suits hurried into St. Patrick's Cathedral and fell onto their knees.  Outside, drivers hunched over steering wheels, sobbing as dashboard radios broadcast the news.  A crowd gathered at the Magnavox showroom on Fifth Avenue, watching on television sets piled two stories high as Walter Cronkite chocked back tears before announcing that the President was dead.  Chorus girls rehearsing for an evening television show at the Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway kicked in unison, arms linked around waists and tears streamed down their cheeks.

In Washington, a rookie police officer wept as he lowered the flag on the Capitol dome to half mast and looked down to see that drivers had abandoned their cars and stood in the street, staring up at the flag and crying... At Harvard, a girl wept on the steps of the Widener Library and a boy hit a tree in time to a tolling church bell... President Truman cried so much when he called on Jackie before the funeral that he had to be put to bed in the White House.  A poem by the columnist Art Buchwald began each line, "We weep for, " and conclude, "We weep because there is nothing else we can do."  The cartoonist Bill Mauldin drew the statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial, sitting with his head in his hands... November 22 would be the first time many children saw an adult cry, and after hearing the news from sobbing teachers they went home to find their mothers in tears.  A girl remembered her mother doing the ironing as she watched television, her tears sizzling a they hit the hot iron...

Soviet interest in maintaining the atmosphere of détente created by the nuclear test ban treaty was demonstrated by the appointment of First Deputy Premier Anastas Mikolya, the most powerful Soviet official after Khrushchev, to represent the USSR at President Kennedy's funeral.  Khrushchev instructed his wife to write Jackie a personal note, an unprecedented gesture for a Soviet leader that his son believed was meant to stress "the sincerity and personal nature of his sympathy." ... (Yevgeny) Yevtushenko would tell the actor Kirk Douglas, "People cried in the street... They sensed that, in him (Kennedy). there might be a chance for our two countries to get together."

... Big Ben tolled every minute for an hour, lights dimmed in Piccadilly Circus, and Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home reported that distraught British teenagers were "openly crying in the street." ...

Danes carried bouquet to the U.s Embassy and left behind a six foot high wall of flowers.  ...

Sixty thousand  West Berliners held an impromptu torchlight procession and gathered in the square where Kennedy had said "Ich bein ein Berliner." ...

President Charles de Gaulle told a friend, "I am stunned.  They are crying all over France.  It is as if he were a Frenchman, a member of their own family."

EXCERPTS FROM : JFK'S LAST HUNDRED DAYS by THURSTON CLARKE C 2013
The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President.
Penguin Press New York 2013 Publisher

KEEPING THINGS WHOLE by MARK STRAND

I saw this poem posted along with new poetry books at a public library, and the posting didn't mention what book or books it is from.  Mark Strand owns the copyright.

KEEPING THINGS WHOLE

by Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Whenever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

VISITING JAM MY SENIOR FRIEND

I made a surprise visit to my senior friend JAM recently. 

I met him maybe 6 years ago when I was friend with a friend of his, a woman poet.  The elderly woman used to take walks around my neighborhood and when I engaged her, she recited short lovely poems to me, poems she was proud of and wanted to publish.  Our first conversations were about putting together a chap book (usually a small book published by the person or an editor meant for small distribution, like at poetry readings at coffee houses or art galleries, often free or for the cost of printing.)  She wanted her only grandson to have her intellectual property rights.

I have a soft spot for seniors who are alone in life, without living or local family to look in on them. 

The woman poet only had her grandson and Jam, who with his wife, had been this couple's best friends.  The woman poet died several months after I began visiting and phoning her frequently.  She was dying of cancer and had not yet been told the truth, though she suspected.  I was with her the night before she died, and met her grandson only then. 

JAM was also depressed not only because he was surrounded in a senior living place with people who were dealing with illness or dying, because of the death of his wife, who he had known and been married to over 60 years!  Now in his 90's JAM is my "oldest" friend, but because he does have family to look in on him (people I will probably never meet) I don't visit with him as often.

JAM's way out of his depression was WRITING.  He joined several senior - oriented writing clubs and classes and recorded mostly memoirs some of his short stories or chapters published.

This visit he surprised me by pulling out his Barnes and Noble NOOK! JAM bragged that he might be ready to go but he always kept up with technology and with this NOOK he was able to access Los Angeles Public Library and download books.  He had read near 40 in the last several months on the NOOK.  He surprised me by telling me he didn't like non-fiction especially not history, and naming his favorite writers of suspense, mystery, and murder.  Since he is slowing down physically, this has saved him the hardship of walking with a cane to take public transportation to the library.

UPDATE OCTOBER 2016  ...JAM DIED THIS PAST SPRING...

I CAN'T KEEP MY OWN SECRET : SIX WORD MEMOIRS BY TEENS A NEW POETRY

Remember straining to write a haiku?  Severe boundaries (from another - Japanese culture) sometimes bring out beauty and eliminates BS.



If you want to laugh and maybe even find a tear in your eye,  try I CAN'T KEEP MY OWN SECRETS, SIX WORD MEMOIRS by TEENS FAMOUS AND OBSCURE edited by Smith Magazine. (Some of these are actually memoirs.)

A selection:

Jesus saves, my ass,  comma justified. -  Hali H.



Afraid I'm crazy, Bell Jar style. - Annikka T.



I found hope in clinical depression. - Jonathan E.



Read the thesaurus on the toilet. - Dan R.

FOR I WILL CONSIDER MY DOG PERCY from A THOUSAND MORNINGS by MARY OLIVER

Penguin Press 2012  Copyright by poet Mary Oliver

FOR I WILL CONSIDER MY DOG PERCY

For I will consider my dog Percy.

For he was made small but brave of heart.

For if he met another dog he would kiss her in kindness.

For when he slept he snored only a little.

For he could be silly and noble in the same moment.

For when he spoke he remembered the trumpet and when
  he scratched he struck the floor like a drum.

For he hate only the finest food and drank only the
  purest of water, yet would nibble of dead fish also.

For he came to me impaired and therefore certain of
  short life, yet thourooughly rejoiced in each day.

For he took his medicines without arguement.

For he played easily with the neighborhood's Bull Mastiff.

For when he came upon mud he splashed through it.

For he was an instrument for the children to learn
  benevolence upon.

For he listened to poems as well as love talk.

For when he sniffed it was as if he were being
  pleased by every part of the world.

For when he sickened he rallied as many times as
  he could.

For he was a mixture of gravity and waggery.

For we humans can seek self - destruction in ways
  he never dreamed of.

For he took actions both cunning and reckless, yet
  refused always to offer himself to be admonished.

For his sadness through without words was
  understandable.

For there was nothing sweeter than his peace
  when at rest.

For there was nothing brisker than his life when
in motion.

For he was of the tribe of Wolf.
For when I went away he would watch for me at
  the window.

For he loved me.

For he suffered before I found him, and never
  forgot it.

For he loved Anne.

For when he lay down to enter sleep he did not argue
  about whether or not God made him.

For he could fling himself upside down and laugh
  a true laugh.

For he loved his friend Ricky.

For he would dig holes in the sand and then let
  Ricky lie in them.

For often I see his shape in the clouds and this is
  a continual blessing.

READING POETS ADRIENNE RICH and MARY OLIVER : DO YOU ONLY READ POETRY BECAUSE OF NATIONAL POETRY MONTH?

At the library I noticed a prominent display of poetry books for NATIONAL POETRY MONTH.  

You would think there were a gazillion months instead of just twelve on the calender since we seem to have so very many months dedicated to subject matter.

Even though I think there should be more holidays that require people to stay home from work and/or have three day weekends - which would decrease traffic, increase tourism, and prevent more burnout and heart attacks from crummy jobs, Monday morning being the big "I can't take another day of that ass at work so I'll have a heart attack day", I still feel kind of negative about the Hallmarkisation of the yearly calender.

To the point, do we need months dedicated to Poetry, or African American History, or whatever?  Is this all between Dollar Tree Stores (and the like) and school teachers who use their salaries to supplement student's art supplies and decorations for bulletin boards in the classroom?  You know, suddenly Saint Patricks Day, which is for the Irish, which I'm not, is the cause for buying green crap from China.

Are the same people who brought you Mother's Day and Secretary Day and Doggie Day behind everything for girls being PINK and everthing for boys being BLUE?  Good thing I don't have a child, because I would have to choose YELLOW  or GREEN.

DO YOU ONLY READ POETRY BECAUSE IT'S NATIONAL POETRY MONTH?

If so, then I feel sorry for you.

POETRY SHOULD BE READ when you are in a MOOD.  In particular it is very good for indulging the emotions.  If you don't get torn up or twisted around by an ah ha moment reading poetry, maybe you never will.

I've picked up copies of MARY OLIVER'S A THOUSAND MORNINGS and LATER POEMS (1971-2012) by ADRIENNE RICH since these are poets I read in college.  Hmm... a favorite poem?

C 2013 All Rights Reserved  Christine Trzyna / Christine Trzyna Writerly Life

POEMS FROM THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT : EDITED BY HONOR MOORE : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

POEMS FROM THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT

Edited by Honor Moore
American Poets Project
The Library of America


(Poetry by Alta, Rae Armantrout, Olga Broumas,Rita Mae Brown, Jan Clausen, Michelle Cliff, Lucille Clifton, Jane Cooper, Martha Courtot, Beverly Dahlen, Toi Derricotte, Diane Di Prima, Rachel Balu DuPlessis, Carolyn Forche, Kathleen Fraser, Elsa Gidlow, Louise Gluck, Jorie Graham, Judy Grahn, Susan Griffin, Marilyn Hacker, Jana Harris, Fanny Howe, Erica Jong, June Jordan, Carolyn Kizer, Irena Klepfisz, Maxine Kumin, Joan Larkin, Denise Levertov, Audre Lorde, Cynthia MacDonald, Bernadette Mayer, Honor Moore, Carol Muske-Dukes, Jane Miller, Robin Morgan, Eileen Myles, Alice Notley, Sharon Olds, Alicia Ostriker, Maureen Owen, Pat Parker, Molly Peacock, Marce Piercy, Sylvia Plath, Katha Pollott, Marie Ponsot, Adrienne Rich, Muriel Rukeyser, Alice Walker, and Fran Winant.)


Several of these poems brought me back to the time when I still met women who were on fire about women's rights. Mostly since then I have met women who are bitches to other women. (Erica Jong has a theory that these creatures aren't women at all.)

Browsing through the bios in back of the book, I started searching for years of birth. Seems the youngest woman whose poetry is presented in this book was born in 1950.

I had to wonder. Are women younger than this not credited with:

Being important in the woman's movement?

Not writing poetry considered to represent the woman's movement?

Not interested in the woman's movement and the rights, responsibilities, and privileges (which they have inherited as simply their right as women)?

Writing feminist poetry that is not identified or accepted as feminist poetry by "mothers" of the movement or "mothers" of poetry?

Writing poetry that is not identified as worthy by the "literary cannon" and it's supposed upholders? (I yawn at the cannon.)

(Many "older" self identified feminist women who I've talked to about women of younger generations think they're a disaster when it comes to behaving and believing in a way of life that upholds feminism; So many of them lost to the importance instead of being "girly girls" whose lives revolve around what nail polish color to wear and shopping. Or we've talked about the horrific and sick influence of rap music on women; who the hell wants to have in their lives anyone who calls women "ho's", thinks women are "ho's" or self identifies as a" ho"? Why else is the female teenage ambition in high school to reduced to becoming experts at giving blow jobs boys demand so they can have and/or hold onto a boyfriend and/or starving themselves model thin? Are these young women the result of rotten parenting or what?)

Consider then that POEMS FROM THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT presents poems by poets who are and were unafraid to make the personal political and to write about subjects such as rape, bad sex, lesbianism, marital boredom, the effects of racism and sexism on their ability to live life independently and to the fullest.

I wish with all my heart that this poetry and the women who wrote it could have had more impact on society because it feels like not much has changed. The last sexist asshole I encountered just a few months ago was in his twenties, healthy, handsome, black, and highly educated and going to law school and working full time. He told me he did not "feel sorry" for me because I had no idea how hard it was to be a black man. He told me to "dumb down" as well. I was reminded that in college not one male student took the Women's Literature class I took.

C Christine Trzyna 2012
All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights

JOHN KEATS : THIS LIVING HAND NOW WARM AND CAPABLE

THIS LIVING HAND NOW WARM AND CAPABLE
by John Keats 1795–1821

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calm’d–see here it is–
I hold it towards you.

DAVID FERRY BIRDS

NATIONAL POETRY MONTH : ACADEMY OF AMERICAN POETS LINK HERE!

Link here to information on the National Academy of American Poets and APRIL which is National Poetry Month...

Go ahead and write a poem! (And turn off those censors in your head!)