* POEMS FOR THE TIMES *
Home Poets Directory FRAMED?
TRAIL BREAKERS
Remember trail breakers searching
River courses to secret sources
Platte, Yellowstone, Sweetwater, Columbia, Snake
Seeking passes over Shining mountains across
Big Horns, Bitterroot, Medicine Bow, Tetons, Cascades, Sierras
Wind in the Great South Pass remembers lost trappers
Under red bluffs wagon trains, prairie schooners, pass
White tops in dusty processions along the Oregon and Santa Fe trails
Bringing Prairie Breakers, plowmen, settlers
Cutting rough sod in Nebraska, the Dakotas
Green corn for Iowa, golden wheat for Minnesota
Pioneer mothers listening to twilight wolf song
In Kansas prairie sod huts
Mule train, stage coach, pony express push through mountain passes
The Iron Horse rolls spouting black clouds and cinders
The Continental Express roars on, faster, faster
On 6-lane highways sleek speeders streak west
Airplanes drone across the sky, hours to California
jets, supersonic rockets, Atomic Age mushroom blast
Astoria, log fort forgotten between forest and sea
Lost in white sea fog and perpetual forest drip
Time's not ripe for the dream, a hound rushing ahead
Of slow destinites, for Astor's encompassing dream
Vision is true but the hour has not come, only the voice
Calling in the wilderness, "The vision is yet for another time
But in the end it shall speak and not lie
Though it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come,
It will not tarry."
GREEN SPRING
Spring day clad in brightest green
Morning sun floods hills in golden glory
From early morn til dusk
Garden filled with nodding flowers
Every shade and hue
Walk to and fro
Laugh and sing
Discuss philosophy
Gaze afar
Drink of nature's beauty
FAIRYLAND
Up airy mountain
Down rushy glens
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men
They stole little Bridget
For 7 years long
When she got back
Her friends were all gone
THE WEEPING WILLOW by Kyla Wong
It stands alone, this weeping willow
Within a curtain of leaves drooping with despondency
Does the willow weep?
I truly think it does
I've heard the shivering, rustling, quivering as a weeping willow
Why does the willow weep? A mystery unsolved
For all is hidden in her heart, sorrow endured
Forever poignant yet obscure is the willow's pain
Imagine this tree as must you know her bark
This weeping willow gazing down at me
far above in a third story window
Tears wetting her eyes facing the breeze
Hair flying about like willow leaves
A fly and a flea got caught in a flue
The fly said, let's flee!
The flea said, let's fly!
So they flew through the flaw in the flue
FLY IN SOUP:
* 10 cents extra
* Been looking for him all day
* What do you expect with Blue Plate - a whole spider?
* Aha! Caught him at last!
* Strange - what kind of soup is it?
* We ran out of turtles
Minnesota lake so clear you can see China
SWAN AND SHADOW John Hollander
Dusk
Above the
Water hang the
loud
flies
Here
O so
gray
then
What A pale signal will appear
When Seen before its shadow fades
Where Here in this pool of opened eye
In us No Upon us As at the very edges
Of where we take shape in the dark air
this object bares its image awakening
ripples of recognition that will
Brush darkness up into light
even after this bird this hour both drift by stop perfect instant now
Already passing out of sight
toward yet-untroubled reflection
this image bears its object darkening
into memorial shades Scattered bits of
Light No of water Or something across
water Breaking up No being regathered
soon Yet by then a swan will have
gone Yes out of mind into what
vast
pale
hush
of a
place
past
sudden dark as
if a swan
sang
TIME
Ian "Chili" Evans
Being in jail is like shooting at kites
Waiting for letters nobody writes
Waiting for visits that never take place
From so-called friends who forgot your face
Wondering how time could go so slow
Prayers are answered and the answer is no
Learning relationships are something dying
When they call you "honey" you know they're lying
Depending on people you thought were friends
Waiting for pictures nobody sends
Sitting around with nothing to do
Except finding out who's really who
Learning that hearts are made of stone
Realizing now, I'm on my own
I'll do my time with my head up high
And keep my pride till the day I die
The day will come soon when I'll be free
Think twice my friend, when you're in need like me
V-CHIP BLUES
Calvin Trillin The Nation Jan 13 1997
Mom and Dad block anything I'd choose
Got them TV's a drag with this gross little V-Chip blues
Nothing's allowed that's fun or scary
Life is all Little House on the Prairie
No they haven't removed my Nintendo
But I miss all that cool innuendo
'Til I learn how to jam it I'm a poor little fellow who's
Got them TV's a drag with this gross little V-Chip blues
from Secret of the Machines
- Rudyard Kipling
We were taken from ore bed and mine
Melted in furnace and pit
Cast and wrought and hammered to design
Cut and filed and tooled and gauged to fit
Water, coal and oil is all we ask
A 1000th of an inch to give us play
If you will set us to our task
We will serve you four and twenty hours a day!
Remember please the law by which we live
We are not built to comprehend a lie
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive
If you slip in handling us you die!
We're greater than Peoples or Kings
Be humble as you crawl beneath our rods
Our touch can alter all created things
We're everything on Earth except the Gods!
From MULBERRY STREET
- Dr Seuss
That can't be my story. That's only a start
I'll say a zebra was pulling that cart
The story would really be better to hear
If the driver I saw were a charioteer
A gold and blue chariot's something to meet
Rumbling like thunder down Mulberry Street
It's not too late to make one little change
A sleigh and an elephant. There's something strange
Say - that makes a story no one can beat
When I say I saw it on Mulberry Street
Oh he'd look simply grand
With a great big brass band
The mayor is there and aldermen too
All waving banners of red white and blue
With a roar of its motor an airplane appears
Dumping confetti while everyone cheers
And that makes a story that's really not bad
It still could be better. Suppose I add
A magician doing tricks
No time for more. I'm almost home
I swung round the corner and dashed through the gate
I ran up the steps and felt simply great
I had a story no one could beat
And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street
Dad said quite calmly just draw up your stool
Tell me the sights on your way home from school
Was there nothing to look at, no people to greet
Did nothing excite you or make your heart beat?
Nothing, I said, growing red as a beet
But a plain horse and wagon on Mulberry Street
I AM NO CHRIST
Geena
I am no Christ to be crucified
At every blazing Golgotha
Nor the carcass of a hoary phoenix
Awaiting redemption
This frames a song born of pain
A harp that strings
In every storm, breeze or gale
Careless truths in vain
Jaundiced hearts! Souls purblind!
To reason thou art blind
You gyrate in palsy hands
To the dirge of dying bands
THE WOODPECKER PECKS BUT THE HOLE DOESN'T APPEAR
It's hard to imagine how unremembered we all become
How quickly all we've done
Is unremembered and unforgiven
How quickly bog lilies and yellow clover flashlight our footfalls
How quickly and finally the landscape subsumes us
Everything we are becomes what we are not
This is not new, the orange finch
And the yellow and dun finch
Picking the dry clay politely
Grasses alseep in in their green slips
Before noon can rouse them
Sweet oblivion of everyday like a warm coat
Over the cold endless body of memory
Cloudscarce Montana morning
July with blue cheeks puffed out on an ancient map
Huffing the wind down from the northwest corner of things
Tweets on evergreen stumps, swallows treading the air
Ravens hawking from tree to tree, not you, not you,
In all the world allows and all one could wish for
Charles Wright
POETS' NAMES
Aero
Akitomo
Alex Notme
Amoto
Conifer
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Fukakawa
Hero
Gold Mist
Jakiri
Katisha
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Lord Aleister
La-Z-Boy
Mehitabel
Minoko
Mochitsuna
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Norikwira
Nero
Ozymandias
Ozawa
Petros
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Willie
Sunshine
Shogun
Sanetoki
Sanyoshi
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Tadayoshi
Tagimora
Takeda
Taksu
Tanaka
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Yamamoto
Convivial Fish
I Don't Know
Unheard of
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