Poetry Tuesday: "In the Glade" by Cait McKnelly

Wind sighing, tree limbs swaying
Listen and you will hear the song.
Faint harp playing, the owl crying
Of days that are now long gone.
Moon riding high on a cloud tossed sea
Shining silver in the glade below.
Shadows dancing, moonlight playing
On a dance done long ago.
Hands touching, eyes catching
Shining in the fey touched light.
Hearts racing, breath sighing
Ancient love is afoot tonight.

Salaam!
The Lonely Alchemist 

Poetry Tuesday: "Sea Fever" by John Masefield

 

Ciao!

The Lonely Alchemist

Poetry Tuesday: "Alexander by Thebes" by Anna Akhmatova

I think, the king was fierce, though young,
When he proclaimed, “You’ll level Thebes with ground.”
And the old chief perceived this city proud,
He’d seen in times that are in sagas sung.
Set all to fire! The king listed else
The towers, the gates, the temples – rich and thriving…
But sank in thoughts, and said with lighted face,
“You just provide the Bard Home’s surviving.”

Caio!
The Lonely Alchemist

Poetry Tuesday: "Sonnet 54" by Shakespeare

 

Ciao!

The Lonely Alchemist

Poetry Tuesday: "There By None of Beauty's Daughters..." by George Gordon (Lord) Byron

There be none of Beauty's daughters

With a magic like Thee;

And like music on the waters

Is thy sweet voice to me:

When, as if its sound were causing

The charméd ocean's pausing,

The waves lie still and gleaming,

And the lull'd winds seem dreaming:

And the midnight moon is weaving

Her bright chain o'er the deep,

Whose breast is gently heaving

As an infant's asleep:

So the spirit bows before thee

To listen and adore thee;

With a full but soft emotion,

Like the swell of Summer's ocean. 

 

Ciao!

The Lonely Alchemist

Poetry Tuesday: "A conversation in the stype of Japanese love poems" by Robin Bonneau

A conversation in the style of Japanese love poems

I no longer walk in my garden

for the flowers there remind

me of your beauty –

and increase my sorrow.

I try to think

that it was only yesterday you left-

but the snow on the trees

and my tear-stained sleeves

do not leave room for excuses.

You have forsaken me. 

Poe Week: Poetry Tuesday: "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

Poetry Tuesday: "Aquatic nocturne" by Sylvia Plath

deep in liquid
turquoise slivers
of dilute light

quiver in thin streaks
of bright tinfoil
on mobile jet:

pale flounder
waver by
tilting silver:

in the shallows
agile minnows
flicker gilt:

grapeblue mussels
dilate lithe and
pliant valves:

dull lunar globes
of blubous jellyfish
glow milkgreen:

eels twirl
in wily spirals
on elusive tails:

adroir lobsters
amble darkly olive
on shrewd claws:

down where sound
comes blunt and wan
like the bronze tone
of a sunken gong.


Ciao!
The Lonely Alchemist

Poetry Tuesday: "The Kraken" by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

Poetry Tuesday: "Bluebird" by Charles Bukowski

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the ****s and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

Poetry Tuesday: "Le génie" by Jules Verne

Le génie

Comme un pur stalactite, oeuvre de la nature,
Le génie incompris apparaît à nos yeux.
Il est là, dans l'endroit où l'ont placé les Cieux,
Et d'eux seuls, il reçoit sa vie et sa structure.

Jamais la main de l'homme assez audacieuse
Ne le pourra créer, car son essence est pure,
Et le Dieu tout-puissant le fit à sa figure ;
Le mortel pauvre et laid, pourrait-il faire mieux ?

Il ne se taille pas, ce diamant byzarre,

Poetry Tuesday: "The Indian Serenade" by Percy Bysshe Shelley

   I arise from dreams of thee

In the first sweet sleep of night,

When the winds are breathing low,

And the stars are shining bright:

I arise from dreams of thee,

And a spirit in my feet

Hath led me—who knows how?

To thy chamber window, Sweet!

   The wandering airs they faint

On the dark, the silent stream—

The Champak odours fail

Like sweet thoughts in a dream;

The Nightingale's complaint,

It dies upon her heart;—

As I must on thine,

Oh, belovèd as thou art!

   Oh lift me from the grass!

I die! I faint! I fail!

Let thy love in kisses rain

On my lips and eyelids pale.

My cheek is cold and white, alas!

My heart beats loud and fast;—

Oh! press it to thine own again,

Where it will break at last.

Poetry Tuesday: "A Tree Telling of Orpheus" by Denise Levertov

White dawn. Stillness.      When the rippling began
    I took it for a sea-wind, coming to our valley with rumors
    of salt, of treeless horizons. but the white fog
didn't stir; the leaved of my brothers remained outstretched,
unmoving.

          Yet the rippling drew nearer — and then
my own outermost branches began to tingle, almost as if
fire had been lit below them, too close, and their twig-tips
were drying and curling.
                  Yet I was not afraid, only
                  deeply alert.

I was the first to see him, for I grew

Poetry Tuesday: "Despair" by H. P. Lovecraft

Here's a poetical tidbit for you from one of the forefathers of Steampunk, the creator of Cthulhu himself:

O’er the midnight moorlands crying,
Thro’ the cypress forests sighing,
In the night-wind madly flying,
      Hellish forms with streaming hair;
In the barren branches creaking,
By the stagnant swamp-pools speaking,
Past the shore-cliffs ever shrieking;
      Damn’d daemons of despair.

Once, I think I half remember,
Ere the grey skies of November
Quench’d my youth’s aspiring ember,
      Liv’d there such a thing as bliss;
Skies that now are dark were beaming,
Gold and azure, splendid seeming
Till I learn’d it all was dreaming—
      Deadly drowsiness of Dis.

But the stream of Time, swift flowing,
Brings the torment of half-knowing—
Dimly rushing, blindly going
      Past the never-trodden lea;
And the voyager, repining,
Sees the wicked death-fires shining,
Hears the wicked petrel’s whining
      As he helpless drifts to sea.

Evil wings in ether beating;
Vultures at the spirit eating;
Things unseen forever fleeting
      Black against the leering sky.
Ghastly shades of bygone gladness,
Clawing fiends of future sadness,
Mingle in a cloud of madness
      Ever on the soul to lie.

Thus the living, lone and sobbing,
In the throes of anguish throbbing,
With the loathsome Furies robbing
      Night and noon of peace and rest.
But beyond the groans and grating
Of abhorrent Life, is waiting
Sweet Oblivion, culminating
      All the years of fruitless quest. 


Ciao!
The Lonely Alchemist

Poetry Tuesday: "In my eyes he matches the gods..." by Sappho

Sappho was a famous female poet of Ancient Greece.  Though her poems only exist in fragments today, they still carry immense beauty and emotional power.

In my eyes he matches the gods, that man who 
sits there facing you--any man whatever--
listening from close-by to the sweetness of your 
          voice as you talk, the

sweetness of your laughter: yes, that--I swear it-- 
sets the heart to shaking inside my breast, since 
once I look at you for a moment, I can't
          speak any longer,

but my tongue breaks down, and then all at once a
subtle fire races inside my skin, my
eyes can't see a thing and a whirring whistle 
          thrums at my hearing,

cold sweat covers me and a trembling takes 
ahold of me all over: I'm greener than the 
grass is and appear to myself to be little
          short of dying.

But all must be endured, since even a poor... (fragment ends here)

Caio!

The Lonely Alchemist 

Poetry Tuesday: Salvinia Molesta, a poetry book review

The book Salvinia Molesta by Victoria Chang is a tangled trellis of image and emotion, weaving a story of fear, loss, and violence.  From this framework of intense and frightening subject matter, each poem hangs like an over-ripe fruit, eloquent words making the outside palatable, while the inside remains an upsettingly truthful vision of humanity’s disillusionment and depravity.  In her uniquely gentle and motherly tone, Victoria Chang reassures us while simultaneously forcing us to open our eyes to the gloom that surrounds us, as in the elegant yet desolate opening stanza of “Ars Poetica as Dislocated Theater:”

Poetry Tuesday: "Risk" by Anais Nin

And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to Blossom. 


Ciao!
The Lonely Alchemist

Poetry Tuesday: "The Fist" by Derek Walcott

The fist clenched round my heart
loosens a little, and I gasp
brightness; but it tightens
again. When have I ever not loved
the pain of love? But this has moved

past love to mania. This has the strong
clench of the madman, this is
gripping the ledge of unreason, before
plunging howling into the abyss.

Hold hard then, heart. This way at least you live.


by Derek Walcott


Ciao!

The Lonely Alchemist

Poetry Tuesday: "Without Hope" By Samuel Taylor Coleridge

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair—
The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing-
And Winter, slumbering in the open air,  
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!  
And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing,          
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.    

Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,  
Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.  
Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,  
For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!   
With lips unbrighten'd, wreathless brow, I stroll:  
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?  
Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,  
And Hope without an object cannot live.

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Ciao!

The Lonely Alchemist

Poetry Tuesday: "We Are All Upset and Talented" a collaborative poem

"We Are All Upset and Talented"

Our banner fell from slanted rooftops:

frayed fabric, clay tiles (clothing, lodging).

I guess I like to break stuff—as long as you don’t mind

sexy sista tripping past love(ly) trays, gasps,

flutters, strays, pulls the glass

from her teeth, then shudders, drops in shards

on feet underneath. And away,

away we go to lick

the grease from the deep fryers.

Nothing could ever haunt me—as dangerously,

no, not a form as subtle as the closet’s shadow

but louder than the shouts of July

on that amaranthine summer’s night. Everything’s better

with absinthe (wormwood) twinged

with the value(less) vomit of other people’s words.

Fine then. I can carry the weight (wait!)

of the world’s sarcasm alone.

by the ENG 403 Poetry Class at Chapman University. Lovely job guys!

Ciao!

The Lonely Alchemist