Dan's Poetry Corner II

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Profile Daniel Michel
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Message 1325671 - Posted: 8 Jan 2013, 4:13:15 UTC

"After The Dance"

my child is someone else
who i will never know
i know that he or she
will never hear of me
my child is just a dream
'cause i never took the chance
i knew way too much
i saw the future
after the dance

my child will never know
because i never told
i didn't want to share the pain
i just wanted to move on
my child is in my heart
because i understand regret
so i never i did grew up
to live the future
after the dance

all the stories my imagination bought and sold
the dreams that i have lived
the stories i have told
will not sustain me
because they never were made real
now the emptiness inside
is the only thing i feel

my child is someone else
who i will never know
i know that he or she
will never hear of me
my child is just a dream
'cause i never took the chance
i knew way too much
i saw the future
after the dance

(2012 db michel)



PROUD TO BE TFFE!
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Message 1327422 - Posted: 13 Jan 2013, 19:30:14 UTC

Two years without you


Now that the time comes closer
to the hour you left this world
two years ago. I feel numb, in
sadness and lost, for all that I know

We miss your shining light,
the fact you always wanted
to give more, even though you were
hurt sometimes, even though
through all you had to endure.

I wish there were more people
on this planet with a soul like yours,
so loving, kind and forgiving.
That would simply open doors.

You had a heart for children
and the child was inside of you,
you said 'it's all for love'
L.O.V.E, and that's what I'll do

Seppe, I saw your true self,
you showed more than a dance or a song.
I thank you for everything you gave us
now that you...no longer belong...


Julie Detavernier (2013)
4 Feb will be 2 years...




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Message 1327526 - Posted: 14 Jan 2013, 1:16:07 UTC

Where Seppe belongs, Julie, is where you -- and all of us -- will
belong, someday.


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Message 1328077 - Posted: 16 Jan 2013, 21:15:58 UTC

This might stimulate some comments . . .


Lesson Learned


A nearby orchard found old trees
with branches, low, with fruit.
I plucked a honeyed gem, with ease --
and took a bite, with guilt.

I did not see, on deck of house,
an old man raise his gun.
But, heard it roar, with load of salt --
and felt it sting my buns.

When I got home, I told my pa
about that cranky man.
But, pa told me about the law --
with evidence, in hand.

The moral of this tale is plain:
Oft, gain is fraught with pain.

* * *

j. r. martin
18 January 2013

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Message 1328079 - Posted: 16 Jan 2013, 21:25:48 UTC

Here's a haiku I wrote several years ago. I'm kind of afraid to post it in the NFL season thread.

Football. Men running.
Smush his face into the ground.
Then do it again.

David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

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Message 1330846 - Posted: 24 Jan 2013, 19:16:15 UTC

Our Tree


We are growing branches,
spreading wide, blooming,
rooted deep within the earth.
Growing from east to west,
always searching for the best
soil to grow, to be our tree.

Beginning with mom and dad,
raising eight children here,
letting the tree blossom,
branches growing into the air,
various colors always welcomed
a melting pot, marked as our tree.

More than seventy souls we are,
the youngest born on new years day,
living as a family, near, far,
always in touch with all.
Foreign names are added to ours,
we blend in, assimilate, we must.

And as our leafs will fall,
our tree will grow further,
making its own branches,
adding names in our tree:
blond, brown,black or red-headed,
all part of our family tree.


Julie Detavernier (2013)


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Message 1330994 - Posted: 25 Jan 2013, 1:21:11 UTC

Well, Julie -- Your extended family appears to be similar to the USA, but
under one family roof. Good for you (all).


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Message 1332925 - Posted: 30 Jan 2013, 20:17:10 UTC

Soulmates


Soulmates flattered
down in green pastures
Gazing at the illuminated sky
Astonished by celestial magnificence
What this splendor does imply.

Feeling the grandeur of it all
Energies flowing through their veins
Souls entwined together
Only unconditional love remains.

No physical love, just heartfelt hugs
In love with eachothers soul
Inspired and in love with life itself
They see the beauty of it all.


Julie Detavernier (2013)

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Message 1333040 - Posted: 31 Jan 2013, 2:58:46 UTC

Cave Man Rock


Blow some tunes on Red Elk bones.
Sing of hunts, in glaciers' thrall.
Silhouettes, on fire-lit walls,
animating paintings' home.

Shadows bending to the ground,
then upright, and whirling 'round.
Keeping Cave Bear far away,
to their gods, did hunters pray.

Reading signs in star-lit sky.
Thrusting sticks in campfire coals,
that would capture stories, bold.
Embers freed, to heights, did fly.

Adding meaning, to the day --
safely stored in night-time's sway.

* * *

j. r. martin
30 January 2013

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Message 1333279 - Posted: 31 Jan 2013, 20:22:19 UTC

Darker of Better


In every corner
A shadow is cast
In every shadow
A crime has his past

Death is coming
Feel that it’s near
Sometimes you even feel
It soon will appear

People will murder
With knife, blade and gun
They will even strangle
Just for the fun

The pit and the pendulum
And the tell-tale heart
Both goosefleshly good
But it’s just the start

The fall of the house of Usher
Makes you want to squeal
The cask of amontillado
Feels so very real

There is no Romantic
At least none I know
Who writes better or darker
Than Edgar Allen Poe.


Julie Detavernier (2013)
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Message 1333407 - Posted: 1 Feb 2013, 4:10:23 UTC

Quoth the raven . . .
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Message 1333923 - Posted: 2 Feb 2013, 11:41:54 UTC

Pink Shy Blush


Pink shy blush,
She is like the sweetest embrace.
She is daylight inside your heart,
bursting into a caleidoscope flame.
Will she ever return?

To see her smile,
to watch her cry.
To be with her,
with all my heart.
To her I’ll surrender
with all that lies
inside the deepest
dungeons of my heart.

Ah, will she ever return?
My sweetest pink shy blush.


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Message 1334695 - Posted: 4 Feb 2013, 20:16:38 UTC

It's you that I miss


I used to take you for granted
Never stopped to appreciate
that you were there
By now it’s too late
And it just isn’t fair

Every day that goes by
I force myself not to think
I can’t handle my emotions
I’m just trying not to sink

I can’t deal with the pain
of missing you every day
and it tears me apart
how you’ve been taken away

I wish I could trade places
Your life was supposed
to be longer than this
How can I ever manage without you?
When it’s you that I miss…


Julie Detavernier '2013
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Message 1335964 - Posted: 9 Feb 2013, 0:28:40 UTC
Last modified: 9 Feb 2013, 0:31:11 UTC

Tuesday, June 4th, 1991

(Billy Collins, 1941-)

By the time I get myself out of bed, my wife has left
the house to take her botany final and the painter
has arrived in his van and is already painting
the columns of the front porch white and the decking gray.

It is early June, a breezy and sun-riddled Tuesday
that would quickly be forgotten were it not for my
writing these few things down as I sit here empty-headed
at the typewriter with a cup of coffee, light and sweet.

I feel like the secretary to the morning whose only
responsibility is to take down its bright airy dictation
until it's time to go to lunch with the other girls,
all of us ordering the cottage cheese with half a pear.

This is what stenographers do in courtrooms,
alert at their dark contraptions catching every word.
When there is a silence they sit still as I do, waiting
and listening, fingers resting lightly on the keys.

This is what Samuel Peyps did too, jotting down in
private ciphers minor events that would have otherwise
slipped into the heavy, amnesiac waters of the Thames.
His vigilance paid off finally when London caught fire

as mine does when the painter comes in for coffee
and says how much he likes this slow, vocal rendition
of "You Don't Know What Love Is" and I figure I will
make him a tape when he goes back to his brushes and pails.

Under the music I can hear the rush of cars and trucks
on the highway and every so often the new kitten, Felix
hops into my lap and watches my fingers drumming out
a running record of this particular June Tuesday

as it unrolls before my eyes, a long intricate carpet
that I am waking on slowly with my head bowed
knowing that it is leading me to the quiet shrine
of the afternoon and the melancholy candles of evening.

If I look up, I see out the window the white stars
of clematis climbing a ladder of strings, a woodpile,
a stack of faded bricks, a small green garden of herbs,
things you would expect to find outside a window,

all written down now and placed in the setting
of a stanza as unalterably as they are seated
in their chairs in the ontological rooms of the world.
Yes, this is the kind of job I could succeed in,

an unpaid but contented amanuensis whose hands
are two birds fluttering on the lettered keys,
whose eyes see sunlight splashing through the leaves,
and the bright pink asterisks of honeysuckle

and the piano at the other end of this room with
its small vase of faded flowers and its empty bench.
So convinced am I that I have found my vocation,
tomorrow I will begin my chronicling earlier, at dawn,

a time when hangmen and farmers are up and doing,
when men holding pistols stand in a field back to back.
It is the time the ancients imagined in robes, as Eos
or Aurora, who would leave her sleeping husband in bed,

not to take her botany final, but to pull the sun,
her brother, over the horizon's brilliant rim,
her four-horse chariot aimed at the zenith of the sky.
But tomorrow, dawn will come the way I picture her,

barefoot and disheveled, standing outside my window
in one of the fragile cotton dresses of the poor.
She will look in at me with her thin arms extended,
offering a handful of birdsong and a small cup of light.

*

Included in "The Discovery of Poetry",
by Frances Mayes
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Message 1336500 - Posted: 10 Feb 2013, 3:15:51 UTC
Last modified: 10 Feb 2013, 3:31:17 UTC

Perchance, a cheery poem on cold, winter's day . . .


Winter

(William Shakespeare, 1564-1616)


When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipped, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl:
"To-who!
Tu-whit, tu-who!" a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel* the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian's nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl:
"To-who!
Tu-whit, tu-who!" a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.


*keel: to cool by stirring.


from "The Discovery of Poeetry",
by Frances Mayes.
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Message 1337139 - Posted: 11 Feb 2013, 19:15:25 UTC

Song for the road


Last one standing, keep moving on until forever ends.
Into oblivion, knowing the black and white will blend.
Never ending road, I walk alone.
Never ending road, will you take me home?
Forward we march with heads held high.
Under wavering clouds, darkening sky.
We won’t back off, we won’t give in.
Keep up hope, keep up that chin.
We walk through the night.
We push through the rubble.
We follow the spark of light.
Try winning the struggle.
Rise again, we will not bend.
Rise again, keep up the endeavor.
Rise together, and we’ll make a stand.
Rise against, we’ll go forever.


Julie Detavernier (2013)
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Message 1337319 - Posted: 12 Feb 2013, 4:47:27 UTC

As We Wait


I ponder, on occasion,
as to what sort of intelligent life
we shall, ultimately, discover
in our galaxy --

if not, in the universe.

Will it possess "free will"?
Will it have addressed the concept
of one, or more,
creators of the universe?

What might its attitude towards the Earth's
variety of peoples, and cultures, be?
Will its degree of social and technological evolution
be welcome?

Why should I ponder such issues?
Why should anyone ponder such issues?
The answer seems obvious.

To survive.

* * *

j. r. martin
11 February 2013

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Message 1337395 - Posted: 12 Feb 2013, 10:19:34 UTC

Nice one, Jim :)
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Message 1337419 - Posted: 12 Feb 2013, 11:36:35 UTC
Last modified: 12 Feb 2013, 11:37:21 UTC

A circle of three


A circle of three, holding hands
The unbroken, on the land.
In the snow, nobody knows.
What they are thinking
Where they will go.

A circle of three, holding hands.
They’re not moving, they just stand.
They watch each other, not making a sound.
Standing in silence, on the frozen ground.

A secret they keep
Wonderful and deep.
Taking it everywhere, even in their sleep.
And now I wonder, what it would be.
They are a mystery,
In a circle of three.


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Message 1337577 - Posted: 13 Feb 2013, 1:13:29 UTC
Last modified: 13 Feb 2013, 1:18:35 UTC

Follow-up . . .



A Hypothetical Dream


The news-media, today,
was in a frenzy --
An alien race had landed on Mars.

Their level of technology
appeared vastly superior to ours.
And, they appeared to be terra-forming, for permanent residency.

Although, they appeared neither benevolent, nor malevolent,
they showed little interet in contact with Earth.
Their agenda was theirs, alone.

What should Earth's response be?
More importantly, how would we continue to conduct our daily lives?
How would our self-esteem fair?

I woke up, scratched my back with a cane,
and set out for a cup of coffee.


* * *

j. r. martin

12 February
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