Tag Archive

The following is a list of all entries tagged with poetry:

We Decided To Plant Trees (The Star 24.08.09)

to plant blue gum trees because they would sell to the power
company, because it would help the environment, to plant,
even if we replaced the ones God planted – destroy them -
to make farms for profitable fashionable green things, like maize
and coffee, neglecting and forgetting the plants we grew before,
the trees that just breathed while gnarled [...]


Eulogy for a Pothole (The Star 17.08.09)

The pothole is gone; the one I hit once
and remembered every other trip home,
knowing it was there when I passed
like a road sign. It’s been      recarpeted–
by the Chinese, mum says, only they
will fix a road in a day.
I drive over the spot to celebrate and mourn,
the same way you scatter soil over a coffin
before they [...]


As You Say (Not Without Sadness), Poets Don’t See, They Feel

By Karl Shapiro
As you say, (not without sadness), poets don’t see, they feel. And that’s why people who have turned to feelers seem like poets. Why Children seem poetic. Why when the sap rises in the adolescent heart the young write poetry. Why great catastrophes are stated in verse. Why lunatics are named for the [...]


Try To Praise The Mutilated World

by Adam Zagajewski
Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June’s long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you’ve [...]


Get well

When you are well we can walk in the rain
pretend we are young again, that we are willful
enough to splash in puddles. We don’t have to do it really.
We can just smell the rain and the trees and skulk in the black cotton soil-
Come home with me.
(June 18 edit)


Seeing you

I will try not to look at you funny
I am not perfect either. But when I do
it’s really a question I want to ask
God or Fate. But it’s good to see you.


Dream house

i saw the house today,
a quaint two bedroomed,
with enough space
for a dinning and lounge.
The bathroom loo had a wonderful flush,
a properly old school bowl and tank
and the tub, in its own room,
imagine a bath without the knock
of a belly full of pee cutting in
Outside was a garden of fully grown trees,
no matter they give nothing [...]


Daddy, No.1

every thing he says i recall
because he repeats himself
and tells tales as if the action is at par
with the Matrix or Genesis.
everything he says stays
especially my name in vexed tones,
he’s ready to leave,
but i’m still dressing, selecting earings,
So he roars my name into the walls,
no, he’s changed, now he drives radiowaves
into everything, dialing my cell [...]


Love poem no.1

Leaving is not an option
because of you, because of me.
Your face belongs to me,
when you shave it wrong I wince
as you itch. Your belly I accept
as I do your cavities, and I promise to nag
about the virtues of seatbelts.
Leaving is not an option because I got your tire
fixed today, because you hug like a solution.
Because [...]


Good.

Friday came and went without music,
the sky cracking, without thunder.
Even the long rains were missing;
they would have helped us invent
a memory of God dying, gratitude.
But there were no clouds, the sky
did not darken. Last year’s Friday
could not be recycled. How does one
remember a thing that happened
two thousand years ago, in another
culture, in another place, in [...]