Poetry Appreciation (do NOT post your own poetry)

Beautiful, Loved & Blessed (lyrics) by Prince & Tamar Davis

Wake up
Ur beautiful, loved and blessed
Feel me? (I think I do)

When U found me I was just a piece of clay
I was 4mless, U gave me a new name
With the breath of life I now live abundantly
All I needed was the potter's hand
And the blood on Calvary (that's right)

But 2 much power (tell it)
Can can sometimes turn 2 shame
2 much desire
Sometimes makes U feel the same (come on)
But 4giveness is how U win the game
I begged 4 truth, now I know the truth
And that is when U came and said I was...

Beautiful, loved and blessed
I'm better than the day b4
Cause U made me confess that I am...
Beautiful, loved and blessed
When U're free U're really free indeed
All U gotta do is just plant the seed

A constant battle 2 stay ahead of the game
Is anybody famous when everybody wants fame?
Always trying 2 break U down
Thinkin' that'll raise 'em up
I just wanna b happy
Come take this bitter cup from me

If I were ever 2 write my life story
I could truly say through all the pain and glory
I was just a piece of clay in need of the potter's hand
Cause when U whispered in my ear
The words I so now understand, oh...

Beautiful, loved and blessed
I'm better than the day b4
Cause U made me confess that I am...
Beautiful, loved and blessed
When U're free U're really free indeed
All U gotta do is just plant the seed

Everything U made U said, "That's good"
B4 the fall of man U said, "That's good"
Everytime I walk in faith, that's good
U let me see another day, that's good
B4 the earth was made U said,
"Tamar, I will lead the way and U'll go far"
Knowledge and understanding
Understanding is good
And when I wake up in the morning
All I hear in my hood is people saying that they're...

Beautiful, loved and blessed
When U rescue me from the darkness
And our heart just must confess
Beautiful, loved and blessed
When U're free U're free indeed
All U gotta do is just plant the seed

Hey, hey, hey
Wake up it's a new day
Hey, hey, hey
Wave Ur hands in the air and say
Hey, hey, hey
Wake up it's a new day
Hey, hey, hey
Wave Ur hands in the air and say

Beautiful, loved and blessed
U rescued me from the darkness in the wilderness
But I am beautiful, loved and blessed
No matter what the challenge
I always pass the test

That's what I am, beautiful
That's what I am, beautiful
I don't mean 2 put nobody down
Still I must confess that I am...
Beautiful, that's what I am
That's what I am
When U wanna give up, don't cause U know
U always got a friend

That's what I am, that's what i am
Thats' what I am
Beautiful, beautiful
That's what I am, that's what i am
Thats' what I am
Beautiful, beautiful
Oh yeah, oh yeah
Beautiful, beautiful
Beautiful, beautiful​

 

A Valediction: Of Weeping by John Donne

Let me pour forth

My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,

For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,

And by this mintage they are something worth,

For thus they be

Pregnant of thee;

Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more,

When a tear falls, that thou falls which it bore,

So thou and I are nothing then, when on a diverse shore.



On a round ball

A workman that hath copies by, can lay

An Europe, Afric, and an Asia,

And quickly make that, which was nothing, all;

So doth each tear

Which thee doth wear,

A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,

Till thy tears mix’d with mine do overflow

This world; by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved so.



O more than moon,

Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere,

Weep me not dead, in thine arms, but forbear

To teach the sea what it may do too soon;

Let not the wind

Example find,

To do me more harm than it purposeth;

Since thou and I sigh one another’s breath,

Whoe’er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other’s death.​

 

Shakespeare’s Sonnet LV

Not marble, nor the gilded movements

Of princes, shall out-live this powerful rhyme;

But you shall shine more bright in these contènts

Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.

When wasteful war shall statues overturn,

And broils root out the work of masonry,

Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn

The living record of your memory.

‘Gainst death and all oblivious enmity

Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room

Even in the eyes of all posterity

That wear this world out to the ending doom.

So, till the judgement that yourself arise,

you live in this, and dwell in lover’s eyes.​

 

Moon Has Found Her Sun

Every night, the Moon rises alone,

wondering if she will ever meet the one.

She has heard of him before,

has never saw him, neither touched him,

but she has felt his warm touch during some moments,

when the sunlights touch the snow

and colour it red.



Oh, red, the colour of love,

the colour of blood,

of passion, fury and heart.

The Moon already knows its taste

and won’t let it go.



Poor Sun, so warm,

so cold.

Loneliness is the only company in every journey;

every single turn around the world

is accompanied by the fiery and hot presence

of this mystical Lord.



But something happens,

unexpectedly,

she touches him, he touches her.

There’s a spark,

full of violets and red horizons,

with the water falling around the blossomed flowers

blue combining green,

like the lake where Ophelia fell,

when the prince of Elsinor forgot her.



Oh Moon.

Oh, Sun.

Magical appearance, and eclipse,

a storm.

Passion is not a secret anymore.

Let the stars enjoy the union,

with the power of a gun.



But still words cannot describe this,

how the Moon has found her Sun.

-Charles Ryder​

 

Sonnet CXVI

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments: love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

Oh no! It is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth’s unknown although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

-William Shakespeare ​

 

Sonnet XI​

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.


-Pablo Neruda

 

Sonnet XVII


I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.


-Pablo Neruda

 

The Eighth of September

This day, Today, was a brimming glass.
This day, Today, was an immense wave.
This day was all the Earth.
This day, the storm-driven ocean
lifted us up in a kiss
so exalted we trembled
at the lightning flash
and bound as one, fell,
and drowned, without being unbound.
This day our bodies grew
stretched out to Earth’s limits,
orbited there, melded there
to one globe of wax, or a meteor’s flame.
A strange door opened, between us,
and someone, with no face as yet,
waited for us there.


-Pablo Neruda

 

The Insect

From your hips down to your feet
I want to make a long journey.

I am smaller than an insect.

Over these hills I pass,
hills the colour of oats,
crossed with faint tracks
that only I know,
scorched centimetres,
pale perspectives.

Now here is a mountain.
I shall never leave this.
What a giant growth of moss!
And a crater, a rose
of moist fire!

Coming down your legs
I trace a spiral,
or sleep on the way,
and arrive at your knees,
round hardness
like the hard peaks
of a bright continent.

Sliding down to your feet
I reach the eight slits
of your pointed, slow,
peninsular toes,
and from them I fall down
to the white emptiness
of the sheet, seeking blindly
and hungrily the form
of your fiery crucible!


-Pablo Neruda

 

The Old Women Of The Ocean


To the solemn sea the old women come
With their shawls knotted around their necks
With their fragile feet cracking.

They sit down alone on the shore
Without moving their eyes or their hands
Without changing the clouds or the silence.

The obscene sea breaks and claws
Rushes downhill trumpeting
Shakes its bull's beard.

The gentle old ladies seated
As if in a transparent boat
They look at the terrorist waves.

Where will they go and where have they been?
They come from every corner
They come from our own lives.

Now they have the ocean
The cold and burning emptiness
The solitude full of flames.

They come from all the pasts
From houses which were fragrant
From burnt-up evenings.

They look, or don't look, at the sea
With their walking sticks they draw signs in the sand
And the sea erases their calligraphy.

The old women get up and go away
With their fragile bird feet
While the waves flood in
Traveling naked in the wind.


-Pablo Neruda

 

The Portrait In The Rock


Oh yes I knew him, I spent years with him,
with his golden and stony substance,
he was a man who was tired -
in Paraguay he left his father and mother,
his sons, his nephews,
his latest in-laws,
his house, his chickens,
and some half-opened books.
They called him to the door.
When he opened it, the police took him,
and they beat him up so much
that he spat blood in France, in Denmark,
in Spain, in Italy, moving about,
and so he died and I stopped seeing his face,
stopped hearing his profound silence ;
then once, on a night of storms,
with snow spreading
a smooth cloak on the mountains,
on horseback, there, far off,
I looked and there was my friend -
his face was formed in stone,
his profile defied the wild weather,
in his nose the wind was muffling
the moaning of the persecuted.
There the exile came to ground.
Changed into stone, he lives in his own country.


-Pablo Neruda

 

The Song of Despair


You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time.
In you everything sank!
It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.
Pilot's dread, fury of a blind diver,
turbulent drunkenness of love,
in you everything sank!


-Pablo Neruda

 

Dungeon

He whom I enclose with my name is weeping in this dungeon.
I am ever busy building this wall all around; and as this wall goes up into
the sky day by day I lose sight of my true being in its dark shadow.

I take pride in this great wall, and I plaster it with dust and sand
lest a least hole should be left in this name;
and for all the care I take I lose sight of my true being.


-Rabindranath Tagore

 

Ecstasy

Cover mine eyes, O my Love!
Mine eyes that are weary of bliss
As of light that is poignant and strong
O silence my lips with a kiss,
My lips that are weary of song!
Shelter my soul, O my love!
My soul is bent low with the pain
And the burden of love, like the grace
Of a flower that is smitten with rain:
O shelter my soul from thy face!


-Sarojini Naidu

 

I love the dark hours of my being.
My mind deepens into them.
There I can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,
and held like a legend, and understood.

Then the knowing comes: I can open
to another life that’s wide and timeless.

So I am sometimes like a tree
rustling over a gravesite
and making real the dream
of the one its living roots
embrace:

a dream once lost
among sorrows and songs.

-Ranier Maria Rilke

 

The One by Prince

If U're lookin' 4 the man that will walk away from responsibility
I ain't the one {x3}
And if U're lookin' 4 the brotha that'll treat U like anything but a queen
I ain't the one

But if U're lookin' 4 a man that'll sweep U off your tired weary feet
Pay your bills, buy U pretty dresses
And take U anywhere U wanna eat
Make love 2 U every night of the week
Oh, don't think it over, girl
Look no further
I am the one
Oh yes I am

If U're lookin' 4 a man that'll make big money
And keep it all 2 himself
I ain't the one
No, no - not me
And if U're lookin' 4 a man that'll have 10 women
And confuse it all with his wealth
Listen here, I ain't that one
No, no no - wait a minute

If U're lookin' 4 a man who can share his dinero (His money)
Buy U half the town (Half the town)
Treat every step U take (Every step)
As if U're walkin', huh, on holy ground (Holy ground)
Place U, place U above all others
When it comes, when it comes 2 the gettin' on down (Down)
Look no further, ooh
Your man's around (He's around)
Oh yes he is

He's standing right here, right here (Right here, right here)
Don't U look no further, girl
He's standing right here, right here

(I am the one) {x2}

If U're lookin' 4 a man that'll make U feel like time has just begun, ooh
A man that'll make U feel like U're the only thing that ever mattered
Underneath the sun, underneath the sun, ooh
If U're lookin' 4 somebody
Who will turn your bad day into one long night of fun
Look no further, baby
I'm… I'm the one

Oh yes I am
I am the one
Don't U look no further, girl
Oh, I am the one
Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, oh
My, my, my little Mayte
I'm the one

 

Indeed they are.

 

After the Dance is Over

We danced as lovers dance
to music only we had heard.
A hot beat to which we moved
in perfect time,
with perfect synch.
Unhurried though each driven on,
both knowing how the dance would end.

We shared the lead
as the tempo quickened.
You followed me,
I followed you,
each wanting that conclusion
as ageless passion demands its due.
Our cries loud as bodies yield,
sounds from deep within escaped
to alert close neighbors
to the simultaneous climax of our dance.

The music softened,
mellow in its final strains.
We curled together our contented bodies,
our cries at last subdued,
and only now a gentle purring.
In this quietness our muffled moans yell out
a thousand words of utter joy,
in celebration of our dance,
in recognition of our love.

-©2002 Robert W. Birch

 

Sidewinder


I am a sidewinder

tongue, licking
thirsty lips as
my thrusting hips
sway their way to you

smoothly, weaving

belly, surfing waves
of hourglass sands,
winding side-valleys
marking hypnotic trails

only eyes can follow

you watch me shed
my skin- silk slipping
from shoulders,
hissing as it falls

on the floor. I am

slithering up your leg
contracting, coiling
around your snake:
pulsating soft flesh

of my sidewinder mouth.

-Rax