This Poem

 

This poem squats in a desert place.

This poem perches upon your chamber door;

This poem sings, your face your face your face

This poem is merely this and nothing more.

This poem is a traveler from an antique land.

This poem is what you find in the windmills of your mind.

This poem is the lone and level sand. 

This poem is old anarchy to the horizon line.

This poem sees the best minds of your generation.

This poem says, let us go then, you and I.

This poem is tearful lamentations

This poem has a silent lifting mind.

I sing myself and celebrate myself

and that, dear lady, were no crime;

if life is over there--behind a shelf

there you'll find these poems--in one of mine.

________

A bit of doggerel for What's Going On? "Poetry Is..."

I have referenced:

Stephen Crane "In A Desert Place"

E.A. Poe "The Raven"

Ewan MacColl "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"

Percy Bysshe Shelley "Ozymandias"

Alan and Marilyn Bergman "The Windmills of Your Mind" (English lyrics)

Sylvia Plath "The Colossus"

Allen Ginsberg "Howl" (altered)

t.s. eliot "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Francesco Petrarch "The Triumph of Death"

John Gillespie Magee Jr. "High Flight"

Walt Whitman "Song of Myself"

Andrew Marvell "To His Coy Mistress" (altered)

Emily Dickinson "I Cannot Live With You"

Contained

"The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration." ~ Frida Kahlo

As a small child,

I caught my mind in a jar.

All day, under the sun in the grass blades,

I was monarch,

dandelion,

daddy longlegs. 

That night,

terror held its regularly scheduled circus.

There were lids on every eyelash,

and glass between me and morning.

The tigers said, "Hide in our mouths."

The great ape said, "Hide in my hand."

In their eyes, jars of murder.

People smile and say,

"I wish I could spend an hour inside your head."

Inside, Bengal and Silverback.

Outside

--even still--

monarch,

dandelion,

daddy longlegs

and my face against the glass.

_____ 

for Susie's goose at Toads. 

Image: "Ophelia" by Antoine Auguste Ernest Hebert