Dragongrrl's Poems
The Question
People always say to me
Karla Kuskin
"What do you think you'd like to be
When you grow up?"
And I say "Why,
I think I'd like to be the sky
Or be a plane or train or mouse
Or maybe a haunted house
Or something furry, rough and wild…
Or maybe I will stay a child."
Emily Dickinson
Hope is the thing with feathers
And sweetest in the gale is heard
I've heard it in the chillest land
One shade the more, one ray the less,
And on that cheek and o'er the brow
When I pronounce the word Silence,
When I pronounce the word Nothing,
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm
And on the strangest sea
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
Shel Silverstein
Listen to the MUSTN'TS, child,
Listen to the DON'TS
Listen to the SHOULDN'TS
The IMPOSSIBLES, the WON'TS
Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me -
Anything can happen, child,
ANYTHING can be.
Winter Poem
Nikki Giovanni
once a snowflake fell
on my brow and i loved
it so much and i kissed
it and it was happy and called its cousins,
and brothers and a web
of snow engulfed me then
i reached to love them all
and i squeezed them and they became
a spring rain and i stood perfectly
still and was a flower
She Walks in Beauty
Lord Byron
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress
Or softly lightens o'er her face,
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.
Herbert Thompson
My garden is like a poem
Only full of flowers not words
Instead of rhyme, there's parsley and thyme
And instead of scansion there's birds.
Instead of meter, there's something neater
i.e. rows of pretty things.
instead of vowels there are spades and trowels
And the sound of the lawn edger sings.
My garden has a compost heap
and herbaceous borders as well.
And where a poem has a thought
My garden has a smell.
My poems are rather like a garden
Only minus the flowers and birds
And minus the trees and minus the bees
And instead of the plants - there's words.
High Flight
John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
The Three Oddest Words
Wislawa Szymborska
Transl. by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh
When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.
I destroy it.
I make something no non-being can hold.
Wislawa Szymborska
Transl. by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh
I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love's concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms' fairy tales to the newspapers' front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers wihout leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven't mentioned here
to many things I've also left unsaid.
I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.
Fog
Carl Sandburg
The fog comes
It sits looking
on little cat feet.
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
James Kavanaugh
I was born to catch dragons in their dens
And to pick flowers
And to tell tales and laugh away the morning
To drift and dream like a lazy steam
And walk barefoot across sunshine days.
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