DayPoems: A Seven-Century Poetry Slam
93,142 lines of verse * www.daypoems.net
Timothy Bovee, editor
When I am dead and sister to the dust;
When no more avidly I drink the wine
Of human love; when the pale Proserpine
Has covered me with poppies, and cold rust
Has cut my lyre-strings, and the sun has thrust
Me underground to nourish the world-vine, --
Men shall discover these old songs of mine,
And say: This woman lived -- as poets must!
This woman lived and wore life as a sword
To conquer wisdom; this dead woman read
In the sealed Book of Love and underscored
The meanings. Then the sails of faith she spread,
And faring out for regions unexplored,
Went singing down the River of the Dead.
There are systems that dictate sounds
worlds that rule words
and judgements in observations.
Perhaps they 'shouldn't' be heard.
The boa constricts its prey
in such a privileged way.
Should power empower the silenced
or limit what they have to say?
Is 'freedom' a Taniwha myth
born from our boundaries of birth
where we learn how we can discriminate
in order to cohabit the earth?
Copyright 2000 Jennifer Kathleen Phillips. All rights reserved.
God, I return to You on April days
When along country roads You walk with me,
And my faith blossoms like the earliest tree
That shames the bleak world with its yellow sprays --
My faith revives, when through a rosy haze
The clover-sprinkled hills smile quietly,
Young winds uplift a bird's clean ecstasy . . .
For this, O God, my joyousness and praise!
But now -- the crowded streets and choking airs,
The squalid people, bruised and tossed about;
These, or the over-brilliant thoroughfares,
The too-loud laughter and the empty shout,
The mirth-mad city, tragic with its cares . . .
For this, O God, my silence -- and my doubt.
She follows me about my House of Life
(This happy little ghost of my dead Youth!)
She has no part in Time's relentless strife
She keeps her old simplicity and truth --
And laughs at grim Mortality,
This deathless Child that stays with me --
(This happy little ghost of my dead Youth!)
My House of Life is weather-stained with years --
(O Child in Me, I wonder why you stay.)
Its windows are bedimmed with rain of tears,
The walls have lost their rose, its thatch is gray.
One after one its guests depart,
So dull a host is my old heart.
(O Child in Me, I wonder why you stay!)
For jealous Age, whose face I would forget,
Pulls the bright flowers you bring me from my hair
And powders it with snow; and yet -- and yet
I love your dancing feet and jocund air.
I have no taste for caps of lace
To tie about my faded face --
I love to wear your flowers in my hair.
O Child in Me, leave not my House of Clay
Until we pass together through the Door,
When lights are out, and Life has gone away
And we depart to come again no more.
We comrades who have travelled far
Will hail the Twilight and the Star,
And smiling, pass together through the Door!
SWEET rois of vertew and of gentilness,
Delytsum lily of everie lustynes,
Richest in bontie and in bewtie clear,
And everie vertew that is wenit dear,
Except onlie that ye are mercyless
Into your garth this day I did persew;
There saw I flowris that fresche were of hew;
Baith quhyte and reid most lusty were to seyne,
And halesome herbis upon stalkis greene;
Yet leaf nor flowr find could I nane of rew.
I doubt that Merche, with his cauld blastis keyne,
Has slain this gentil herb, that I of mene;
Quhois piteous death dois to my heart sic paine
That I would make to plant his root againe,--
So confortand his levis unto me bene.
He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no more of doubting,
For mist and the blowing of winds and the mouthing of words he scorns;
Not the sinuous speech of schools he hears, but a knightly shouting,
And never comes darkness down, yet he greeteth a million morns.
He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no more of roaming;
All roads and the flowing of waves and the speediest flight he knows,
But wherever his feet are set, his soul is forever homing,
And going, he comes, and coming he heareth a call and goes.
He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no more of sorrow,
At death and the dropping of leaves and the fading of suns he smiles,
For a dream remembers no past and scorns the desire of a morrow,
And a dream in a sea of doom sets surely the ultimate isles.
He whom a dream hath possessed treads the impalpable marches,
From the dust of the day's long road he leaps to a laughing star,
And the ruin of worlds that fall he views from eternal arches,
And rides God's battlefield in a flashing and golden car.
YE Mariners of England
That guard our native seas!
Whose flag has braved a thousand years
The battle and the breeze!
Your glorious standard launch again
To match another foe;
And sweep through the deep,
While the stormy winds do blow!
While the battle rages loud and long
And the stormy winds do blow.
The spirits of your fathers
Shall start from every wave--
For the deck it was their field of fame,
And Ocean was their grave:
Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell
Your manly hearts shall glow,
As ye sweep through the deep,
While the stormy winds do blow!
While the battle rages loud and long
And the stormy winds do blow.
Britannia needs no bulwarks,
No towers along the steep;
Her march is o'er the mountain-waves,
Her home is on the deep.
The thunders from her native oak
She quells the floods below,
As they roar on the shore,
When the stormy winds do blow!
When the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy winds do blow.
The meteor flag of England
Shall yet terrific burn;
Till danger's troubled night depart
And the star of peace return.
Then, then, ye ocean-warriors!
Our song and feast shall flow
To the fame of your name,
When the storm has ceased to blow!
When the fiery fight is heard no more,
And the storm has ceased to blow.
JENNY kiss'd me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss'd me.
HE has conn'd the lesson now;
He has read the book of pain:
There are furrows on his brow;
I must make it smooth again.
Lo! I knock the spurs away;
Lo! I loosen belt and brand;
Hark! I hear the courser neigh
For his stall in Fairy-land.
Bring the cap, and bring the vest;
Buckle on his sandal shoon;
Fetch his memory from the chest
In the treasury of the moon.
I have taught him to be wise
For a little maiden's sake;--
Lo! he opens his glad eyes,
Softly, slowly: Minstrel, wake!
This a mystery of Moon
Where silver shadows cast by cactus burr
The shallow fish flash steam
Reflect the jungle ambience of place
Out side the lawn guarded by the Queen's Beasts
and heavy trod by tourists
Retains a spring in the turf that is special.
On through blue bell valley to heavy wood by slow majestic river
Dark is the wood and heavy with a Victorian air
Circumscribed by pampas grass from South America,
This typically English Glade.
The call of Children echoes through the trees
A crunch of plastic sandwich wrapper
Distorted under foot by hurried dinner
departing from the Pagoda Cafe.
Squirrels near by opportunistically twitch
Raised on haunches heads alert for fallen crumbs
Or discarded pork pies
Not a natural diet, but fat squirrels live in Kew
Sustained in the good life of by the droppings of the mainly
Plodding through the gardens,
Receiving a carefully measured dose of beauty
Enough if stored carefully to see them through
The dull, damp slogginess of an Albion Winter.
On wing high above the rough river side field
A hawk waits on the careless mouse,
His dinner to peruse
Still, shimmering in the still warm sky
Further up the Jumbo Roars and coughs it's way to earth
Heathrow & Home, The noise coming later than the plan
But regularly the noise and fumes of commerce damn the sky
A small bell heralds the closing of an other day
Families, Children, Nurses Nannies
Gather up the sheep dog like their charges
And head as if of single mind Gate wards
Homeward.
The penny turnstiles of my youth have gone
Replaced by booths, with computerized tills
Ringing with a muted buzz the difference between
Student, OAP, and me
At last the gardens empty
At least of people
But yet full of life
There were not many at that lonely place,
Where two scourged hills met in a little plain.
The wind cried loud in gusts, then low again.
Three pines strained darkly, runners in a race
Unseen by any. Toward the further woods
A dim harsh noise of voices rose and ceased.
-- We were most silent in those solitudes --
Then, sudden as a flame, the black-robed priest,
The clotted earth piled roughly up about
The hacked red oblong of the new-made thing,
Short words in swordlike Latin -- and a rout
Of dreams most impotent, unwearying.
Then, like a blind door shut on a carouse,
The terrible bareness of the soul's last house.
Smooth white canvas like pen to paper
Artists imagination set to roam free
Eliptical strokes dancing through mid air
Giving small glimpses of me
Looking glass into present and past
Surmounting emotion on demand
Put on display for multitudes to see
Unsurreal ideas brought forth with hand
Myriad of colors to tease the mind
Beauty In one feathered stroke
Masterpiece of my inner worth
Set before you, imagination to invoke