Contemporary Poetry ( Archived) (12)

I have been a fan of contemporary, chiefly non-rhyming poetry for years and thought it might be nice to have a place to post my favorites. None of these will be anything I have written, rather the favorite works of others...hope you enjoy...

For the Walking Dead

Veronica passes her cape between breath
& death, rehearsing
the body's old rhyme.
With boyish soldiers on their way
to the front, she dances
the slowdrag in a bar called
Pylos. White phosphorus blooms
five miles away, burning sky
for a long moment, mortars
rock in iron shoes cradled
by earth, within earshot
of carbines stuttering through
elephant grass. Canisters lobbed
over night hills whine
like moonstruck dogs. After-
silence falls into the valley.

Tunes on the outdated jukebox
take her back to St. Louis,
back to where the color of her eyes
served as no one's balsam.
"Please," they whisper in her ear
as she counts the unreturned
faces, pales beads on an abacus.
Skin-colored dawn unravels
& a gun turret picots on a hill.
Amputated ghosts on the walls-
she pulls them to her,
knowing the bruise beforehand.
She lets them work her into
the bar's darkest corner.
They hold her, a shield
against everything they know.

Yusef Komunyakaa
from Neon Vernacular

Yusef Komunyakaa is a professor at Princeton University, originally from Louisiana, has written over 11 books of poetry and won the Pulitzer Prize in Lieterature in 1994.

This is a little beyond my taste for poetry, but glad to see you. maybe next one will be more to my liking, lol

thx...i have a pretty extensive and eclectic collection of poetry, so i am sure i will find something you will like in the days to come

good I will be watching for something.

Well I definitely liked this one better than the last. It is quit a take on child birth, something I have never experienced.

Any verse from Dylan Thomas, Edgar Allen Poe, and a Irish Canadian Poet Tom Henihan... just to widen your horizons !!

Welcom to the forum, Amouress from Ireland.

dpw

yea, dylan thomas is great....my other favorites are bukowski and doty

Smart

My dad gave me one dollar bill
'Cause I'm his smartest son,
And I swapped it for two shiny quarters
"Cause two is more than one!

And then I took the quarters
And traded them to Lou
For three dimes-I guess he don't know
That three is more than two!

Just then, along came old blind Bates
And just 'cause he can't see
He gave me four nickels for my three dimes,
And four is more than three!

And I took the nickels to Hiram Coombs
Down at the seed-feed store,
And the fool gave me five pennies for them,
And five is more than four!

And then I went and showed my Dad,
And he got red in the cheeks
And closed his eyes and shook his head--
Too proud of me to speak!

Shel Silverstein
"Where the Sidewalk Ends"
Shel started out doing cartoons for Stars and Stripes in Korea, later working as a cartoonist at Playboy, eventually writing children's books, where this is from. Hint: If you want some entertaining, educational material for your kids, look for his stuff at any book store.