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poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 2m

Night Howl

God said, Let there be light
and there was light.

Light moved across her belly
and thighs and between.

God spoke and opened the fountains
of the deep. There was water everywhere.

On the sheets and in the bed. And the evening
and the morning were the third day.

Kate Gale

poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 23h

Michael Longley

Ian Duhig @ianduhig.bsky.social · 1d

Michael Longley, from 'Ghost Orchid'

poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 23h

Pot Burial

He has married again. His wife
Buys ornaments and places them
On the dark sideboard. Year by year
Her vases and small jugs crowd out
The smiles of the wife who died.

Tom Paulin

Image courtesy @phillipcrymble.bsky.social‬

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poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 1d

Couture

If by mink
coat you mean
a soft, warm
garment
made from
the lives of
many other
creatures,
then, yeah, sure,
I guess you
could say I'm
wearing a
mink coat.

Tony Hoagland

Image courtesy @phillipcrymble.bsky.social‬

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poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 2d

They’re all on the same team

my daughter says,
flowers tilting toward her

from market stalls
in bright frazzle, scented chaos

her blonde hair unfurled,
her flag as she herself bends

toward blossom.

Jim Daniels

1

poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 3d

I and my thoughts of you

Remember that old thorn bush
amazed by
its one flower

If I stood by it, would it be diminished
as an image must be when
it stands beside
what it’s an image of?

Norman MacCaig

Image courtesy @tomsnarsky.bsky.social‬

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poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 4d

Hi, Melissa

I have spoken to you of heaven—
I simply meant the eyes are suns that see.
Seeing is the faces’ nervous delicious Lord.

Listening to you makes me naked.
When I kiss your ankle I am silencing an oracle.
The oracle speaks from the hill of your ankle.

Max Ritvo

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poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 5d

A Dead Statesman

I could not dig; I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?

Rudyard Kipling

briefpoems.wordpress.com/2016/05/20/e...

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poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 6d

Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog Which I Gave to His Royal Highness

I am his Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

Alexander Pope

Image courtesy @robertallenpoet.bsky.social‬

briefpoems.wordpress.com/2016/06/17/d...

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poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 7d

The Blue Boat

How late the daylight edges
toward the northern light
as though journeying
in a blue boat, gilded in mussel shell

with, slung from its mast, a lantern
like our old idea of the soul

Kathleen Jamie

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poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 8d

Swinburne's "Wet Dream".

Maybe this is what Yeats was talking about:-

the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love's despair
To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.

Much tossing on Swinburne's bed.

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poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 8d

Butterflies

They fall in ribbons down the path of oceans,
the foam-pale butterflies, but the flowers are salt.
They prove the charms of rapine, that the emotion
called beauty has earned this result.

Derek Walcott

poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 9d

Ease

The baby sighing little curves
like the fretwork on a violin
or torturing her face with soggy mitts
while smiling at shadows.

Her thoughts forming the heartbeat
of THUMP while I wind her,
speaking her secret language
with the magpies in Fairview Park.

Jessica Traynor

1

poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 10d

A New Being

I know myself no more, my child,
Since thou art come to me,
Pity so tender and so wild
Hath wrapped my thoughts of thee.

These thoughts, a fiery gentle rain,
Are from the Mother shed,
Where many a broken heart hath lain
And many a weeping head.

Æ (George Russell)

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poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 11d

Making it in poetry

The young teller
at the credit union
asked why so many
small checks
from universities? 
Because I write
poems I said. Why
haven’t I heard
of you? Because
I write poems
I said.

Bob Hicok

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poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 12d

Inheritance

Where did you get those big eyes?
My mother.

And where did you get those lips?
My mother.

And the loneliness?
My mother.

And that broken heart?
My mother.

And the absence, where did you get that?
My father.

Warsan Shire

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Reposted

Maryann Corbett @maryanncorbett.bsky.social · 13d

I see that my UK friends are mourning the passing of #TonyHarrison, so here *in memoriam* is a video of his realization of the medieval mystery plays. May he rest in peace. www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzIr...

The Mysteries - Part 1: The Nativity

YouTube video by Graham Baldwin

www.youtube.com

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poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 13d

from “Palladas, Poems”

Born crying, and after crying, die.
It seems the life of man’s just one long cry.
Pitiful and weak and full of tears,
Man shows his face on earth and disappears.

Tony Harrison

briefpoems.wordpress.com/2017/04/30/z...

Zeg-Zeg – Brief Poems by Tony Harrison

Tony Harrison (born 30 April 1937) is an English poet, translator and playwright. He was born in Leeds, the son of a baker, and educated at Leeds Grammar School and at Leeds University. He is one …

briefpoems.wordpress.com

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poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 14d

Words for a Dead Friend

Some nights, or whenever I meet up with the dead,
facing out in long lines leading out
of me, you are
most alive among those still
in sight: you
cannot be killed
in the living mind looking in

George Quasha

Image courtesy @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

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poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 15d

How I pine

How I pine for a hawdy,
yir really beautiful body,
ahm right besotten,
ah fancy yi rotten;
let’s huvva tet-a-tet
– stoap playn hard tay get.

Tom Leonard

1

poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 16d

Still Start

As if engine
parts could be
wrenched out 
at random and
the car would
still start and
sound even,
hearts can go
with chambers
broken open.

Kay Ryan

3

poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 17d

First Day at Day Care

My daughter comes home smelling like
another woman’s perfume.

Beth Ann Fennelly

Image - ‪@phillipcrymble.bsky.social‬

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poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 18d

For the Road to Santiago

For the road to Santiago,
don’t make new declarations
about what to bring
and what to leave behind.

Bring what you have.

You were always going
that way anyway,
you were always
going there all along.

David Whyte

Image courtesy @arealmofwonder.bsky.social

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Reposted

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 20d

I can’t help but think
of that cruel fairy tale
about the proud girl

who trod on a loaf
to spare her new shoes crossing
a puddle of mud.

Down she sank, down, past
the Marsh Witch’s brewery,
to hell’s portals

‘Autumn Cyclamen’, a poem by @aestallings.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

A.E. Stallings · Poem: ‘Autumn Cyclamen’

www.lrb.co.uk

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poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 19d

Long Poem on Four Feet

Emptied of humans
the dancing ground dances.

Robert Bringhurst