The spirit of revolt
all times sing
to some special ear
a word that we need for beating
down the wall
and making a window
there in the wind
Inspired poems
Inspired poems — a collection of the best works on PoemShip.
Personal growth
an hour alone
is a wing I can fasten
any place in the world
and I might be the only man
at a silent disturbance
against his own interest
a take that is a mistake
taking away the chance
to undertake it
I believe we live
to question not to suffer
or correct faults
a bread and heart sandwich
so we grow fat
with love
Guerillera
We cut them down at daybreak
at the head of a dry wash
with their dogs & their rifles asleep
in the thorn scrub,
soon to flower
as I remember it growing up:
the sudden reds & purples
against the ground,
the clouds of bees
& I close my eyes
for a heart-
beat or two–
but not, I assure you,
from any faint-heartedness.
It’s only men who tremble
when their guns go off.
Storm light
the green time of the storm
had the greatest weather
silence is a creature
of the winter air
but all this rain
is home to my voice
Weeding
After a rain,
the weeds yield
to the gentlest tug,
even the deep-rooted dock
& the brittle rhizomes
of brome grass:
they let go, they give up
their fistfuls of dirt to
a few hard shakes,
& for at least
one morning out of
all those that are left to me
it feels as if I am winning
this tug-of-war
with the earth.
Retired pianist
Lines fine as spider silk
that craze a surface once
adored for sleekness,
ripples where a frog jumped in,
oh flesh that sags, corners
that wander off true: with
these very claws fumbling
for the keys I have found
a way to go on without regret.
My love, oh world, I give you
pearly everlasting. Let happiness
spread like the spot in this
November sky where the sun
used to make a blazon of
your virtues. Let outlines grow
fuzzy, liberated from their shadows.
In league with the stones
Dear Teju,
Rocks are the roofs of a city
we barely know. On a dry ridgetop
at the end of a dry month,
I find little under them but burrows
leading deeper into the earth,
a colony of ants frantic
at the sudden inversion,
and on the talus slope, more rocks:
a puzzle that was put together wrong
8,000 years ago, but over the millenia
has settled into its own kind
of rightness. I follow a bear’s trail
through the woods, marked by black
cherry-pitted cairns of bear shit,
& note the series of overturned rocks,
Last stand
who continues
ill as an ash
and straight up
in song
Onward and upward
the garden grows every
day another
ladder into night
I come up hungry
to begin
to be
Bringing the noise
the din at my beginning
little head out
to eat joy
must leave the remainder of me
to hear and believe
in the attempt
Boondocks
get the press out of the city
and they do not love us
who is looking
after the moon
I see patient laboring men
housekeepers
poor wives and strangers
against all tyranny
having one good night
Vagabondage
disappointed in God
and in authority
I find it so necessary to have
that which is greater
sand and sea and every foot
of this road
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