Grant Mason, known as Aesthete on Allpoetry.com, lives in Rapid City, S.D., USA. He can be found here:

http://allpoetry.com/Aesthete

The flaming ship of love that overlooks the frozen sea

The telephone defies a foolish wish

To hear the old voice brought from fatal days

That shrieked and flared the sacred “love you” piss

Of swirling torments raised against the grays;

Salute themselves and burn with raucous joy

That fears collapse and counteracts with dark

Obsession, seething reds and yellows.  Ahoy!

For no land seen from blazing, racing, bark 

That still maintains the preference, despite

The lavish lusting of impassioned freight-

The fire, ideal against the frigid bite

Of oceans deep and dull, though fierce with hate.

To freeze alone, or burn with pained delight?

Whichever way is chosen, sadness blights.

Check him out.

Robert Burns, his most famous poem of all ...

TO A MOUSE

ON TURNING HER UP IN HER NEST WITH THE PLOUGH, NOVEMBER, 1785

by: Robert Burns (1759-1796)

I

 

EE, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,

Oh, what a panic's in thy breastie!

Thou need na start awa sae hasty,

Wi' bickering brattle!

I was be laith to rin an' chase thee,

Wi' murd'ring pattle!

 

II

 

I'm truly sorry man's dominion

Has broken Nature's social union,

An' justifies that ill opinion

Which makes thee startle

At me, thy poor, earth-born companion

An' fellow-mortal!

 

III

 

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;

What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!

A daimen-icker in a thrave

'S a sma' request;

I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,

And never miss't!

 

IV

 

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!

Its silly wa's the win's are strewin!

An' naething, now, to big a new ane,

O' foggage green!

An' bleak December's winds ensuin,

Baith snell an' keen!

 

V

 

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,

An' weary winter comin fast,

An' cozie here, beneath the blast,

Thou thought to dwell,

Till crash! the cruel coulter past

Out thro' thy cell.

 

VI

 

That wee bit heap o' leaves an stibble,

Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!

Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble,

But house or hald,

To thole the winter's sleety dribble,

An' cranreuch cauld!

 

VII

 

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,

In proving foresight may be vain:

The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men

Gang aft a-gley,

An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,

For promis'd joy!

 

VIII

 

Still thou art blest, compared wi' me!

The present only toucheth thee:

But och! I backward cast my e'e,

On prospects drear!

An' forward, tho' I cannot see,

I guess an' fear!

At the age of fifteen, he fell in love and shortly thereafter he wrote his first poem. As a young man, Burns pursued both love and poetry with uncommon zeal. In 1785, he fathered the first of his fourteen children. His biographer, DeLancey Ferguson, had said, "it was not so much that he was conspicuously sinful as that he sinned conspicuously." Between 1784 and 1785, Burns also wrote many of the poems collected in his first book, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, which was printed in 1786 and paid for by subscriptions. This collection was an immediate success and Burns was celebrated throughout England and Scotland as a great "peasant-poet."  (from Wikipedia)

Matthew Hammond comes to us today from England, U.K.

known as HellRaiser21 on Allpoetry.com, he

can be found here:

http://allpoetry.com/HellRaiser21

Watching Oblivion's Inferno Night Sky

I stand on the sands of oblivion

writing with my blue exotic snake

while looking at the inferno night sky,

watching the retreating light

run away from me and my world

I ponder on such thoughts as

truth and its essence,

"reality is just a perception"

therefore right and wrong

cannot possibly exist

and any way of living is

as acceptable as any other,

or perhaps

"reality is true to the individual"

creating resolve from within

from the only real truth known,

I exist.

The purple sun rises from behind

creating chaotic figures 

overlapping each other

and holding each other hand in hand

on a purple hazed background,

the shadows question each other

as how can they truly know

the other's true face.

Enraged flies harass my head

following me as I run across

endless desert while fiery 

night skies set out of reach.  

Check him out.

Kate Sylvia" comes to us from Perth, Western Australia, Australia.

Her pen name on Allpoetry.com is Evil Kate, and she can be found here:

http://allpoetry.com/EvilKate

Someday Maybe Then

 

 

 

 

 

this quiet clock may settle
hands-
rest palms in sunlit patches
of hovered "I-know" smiles.
 
of circles sketched, eyes

might sigh, filtered

by finger-light,

 

content to touch her other

face and the silence unspoken.
 
and arms could embrace

all mystery-

 

of sun and moon,

of pearls drawn from warmth

and blended shadow- from a bed

of bruises, softly held

against those gathered
years,

as small and round

as we might be,

rusted timid

like the breath that trembles

broken under breast,
 
for now, within each pause

a stone

sits idle in my eye, shifts in tide

of narrow skin.

 

 

 

this calligraphy of moments
falls between.
 
 
  

Check her out.

Sharon Anderson is known as NeonRose on Allpoetry.com ...

and can be found here:

http://allpoetry.com/NeonRose

Beyond Tomorrow

The bugler blows his mournful taps
The drummer bows his head.
At dawn the enemy invades,
by dusk he may be dead.

The flag will fly forevermore,
Old Glory will not fall.
But the blood that's shed to save her
stains victory for us all.

Beyond tomorrow's battle
lies a freedom long denied,
and the drummer prays for courage,
while he shivers deep inside.

The troops bed down among the trees,
the campfires shimmer bright;
a beacon for approaching fate,
a balefire in the night.

Amid the oak and fir and pine,
there stalks the phantom dread.
At dawn the enemy invades...
by dusk, all may be dead.

Check her out.

Chandni Hingorani is from the Caribbean, and is known as ...

Never Fall in Love.  She can be found here:

http://allpoetry.com/Never%20Fall%20in%20Love

Pitch Black

Affection stumbled in shadows,
as bloodstains bordered cell walls,
stuffing apathy into emotion.

The stars ignited

as flames were rekindled,

pretending to be casualties

when chaos was cloaked.

Gray asphalt provokes nostalgia,
paralyzing masked expressions
where simple sentences

exposed insecurity

and breakdowns were not songs

sung on musical chords
or choked voices,
but recessions into recollections -
vague memories you chose to forget.

[or forgot to remember]

But while you look in empty holes

for acceptance and conformity

of yourself,

the sun will fade,

again.

Check  her out.

Lowell Poe says he is an Old Irishman from the United States.

He can be found here:

http://allpoetry.com/Lowell%20Poe

The Latter Day Sinners Circus

In the altered states of latter day sinners,
Kaleidoscopes of evil swirl in and out of circus skies.
It hums above them and fills their eyes with rings of fire,
that hit the big top, 
and illuminates the midways.


Children guide the elders 
to the candle lit caravans that surround the carnival.

Fortune tellers rise from the red striped wind blown tents,
as lions with full bellies
who feasted on believers,
fill the bleachers with weeping butterflies and laughing soldiers. 

With horrid screams 
from their lacerated throats,
the sword swallower's fire the human cannon ball up
towards the bleeding Jesus.
Who walks the tight rope using his cross,
to save his life,
and balance his way to the other side 
where his Father awaits.

Check him out.

Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with a brain tumor today ...

and in light of the fact that the Senate virtually came to a full stop today, I decided to post a poem by Walt Whitman:

O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!

by: Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

 O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

 

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up -- for you the flag is flung -- for you the bugle trills,

For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths -- for you the shores a-crowding,

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head!

It is some dream that on the deck,

You've fallen cold and dead.

 

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;

Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

But I with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

Josiah Patterson is a citizen of Montana, USA.

He is known as Scion on Allpoetry.com and can be found here:

http://allpoetry.com/poem/3690050

Canopy

Silver birds, silhouettes on blackened sky,

conceal their flocks in ancient oaks

and dwell in nests of bone.

The fear, dwelling within every soul,

creates a dark canopy over the heavens,

brooding and ominous in a starless sky.

From morning until dark victory,

this fear is building an army

in the hearts of every man.

Only until the earth opens up and

scatters the silver birds from their broken trees

to fly aimlessly until the end of time

will the day come when the ravens

make their homes in sheltered hollows

and cease their vigilant sleep,

the dark canopy will lift from human hearts,

and the earth, again, will be free.

Check him out.

A poem from that incomparable sonneteer, Edna St. Vincent Millay ...

The Dream Love, if I weep it will not matter,   And if you laugh I shall not care; Foolish am I to think about it,   But it is good to feel you there. Love, in my sleep I dreamed of waking, --   White and awful the moonlight reached Over the floor, and somewhere, somewhere,   There was a shutter loose, -- it screeched! Swung in the wind, -- and no wind blowing! --   I was afraid, and turned to you, Put out my hand to you for comfort, --   And you were gone!  Cold, cold as dew, Under my hand the moonlight lay!   Love, if you laugh I shall not care, But if I weep it will not matter, --   Ah, it is good to feel you there!

 

Cheryl Harvey comes to us from Melbourne, Australia.

Known as cannonsfire on Allpoetry.com, she can be found here:

http://allpoetry.com/Cannonsfire

Out of Africa (tribute to Karen Blixen)

And I stand and watch my Africa disappear,
after all the years and shed tears;
droughts and floods, I am weary and alone.
I find myself aching for a warm bed
and strong arms to remove the stabbing pain I feel.

I have buried my love beneath his beloved
Africa, now there is no more left I can give her.

I took the newly formed iron horse,
bellowing smoke and roaring,
to this land so hopeful,
in a marriage of convenience;
for a title and for comfort.

I found Duchess meant so very little here
and the love for Africa so unexpected.
A husband who preferred his trophy hunting
than to stay with a poor Danish wife; who
through no folly of her own, and every
mistake of his, could bear them no children.

then I met the legend that was to become my all,
the great white hunter, Haddon.
He showed me Africa through his eyes
and asked that I told the story through
my own, in a journal he bought from an Egyptian
foray and a quill of ostrich plumes.

I had come so far in a few short years,
seen the jungle reclaim land I had sowed,
fought wars with unseen enemies from
distant shores.
I had survived and grown fond of the wild,
the children's faces in the new school house,
learning of the wider horizon outside their door
and the freedom that was the Africa, shared with
me more than once, in beads and hooting owls.

I watched the lions sleep on Haddon's grave; out
on the savannah's grassland, in warm desert winds;
they embraced him as a brother, or as if
in reverence to a master; he hunted but
he did so with grace to their kind and their realm,
they roared in lonely choirs for him,
a tribute I shall not easily forget.

if Africa had become my one true love,
then leaving it would become my only regret,
but stories don't always have happy endings,
they simply end and the savannah claims them,
takes them back into the soil, returns them to the heart of this land.

I looked back but once, and only briefly,
at the white stuccoed house that held me prisoner
as a wife, and my salvation as a woman of
greater strength and vision, when Africa breathed
its life into my bones, and perhaps;
once more I shall know her beauty, not in body
on an earthly plain, more in spirit-
eternity, when I can soar above her forever.

Check her out.  

Today we have Debbie Downey from Indianola, Iowa, USA.

Aujourd'hui nous avons Debbie Downey d'Indianola, IA, USA.

The Four A.M. Game

I awake to dream remnants whirring.

Undigested morsels of projects

beg for my attention.

Please let me go back to sleep!

I shift slightly with hope of resettling;

The cat does not stir between us.

My partner's snore confirms

he is not sharing this experience.

My published poem strides to the table,

the captain of his team.

Firmly gripping the dark red paddle,

he dares me to begin.

A half-hearted serve floats over the net,

slammed with a crack by the champion.

Will to Sleep never had a chance

against the Muses of Inspiration.

Debbie is a member of our local poetry group in Des Moines, although she is not 

very assiduous at attending the meetings.

Now, a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

Changed


From the outskirts of the town,
Where of old the mile-stone stood,
Now a stranger, looking down
I behold the shadowy crown
Of the dark and haunted wood.

Is it changed, or am I changed?
Ah! the oaks are fresh and green,
But the friends with whom I ranged
Through their thickets are estranged
By the years that intervene.

Bright as ever flows the sea,
Bright as ever shines the sun,
But alas! they seem to me
Not the sun that used to be,
Not the tides that used to run. 

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Many of you will remember him from Evangeline and the Song of Hiawatha.

And now, from Carl Sandburg, a war-poem ...

as we contemplate the madness of yet another war.

Among the Red Guns

Among the red guns, In the hearts of soldiers Running free blood In the long, long campaign: Dreams go on. Among the leather saddles, In the heads of soldiers Heavy in the wracks and kills Of all straight fighting: Dreams go on. Among the hot muzzles, In the hands of soldiers Brought from flesh-folds of women-- Soft amid the blood and crying-- In all your hearts and heads Among the guns and saddles and muzzles: Dreams, Dreams go on, Out of the dead on their backs, Broken and no use any more: Dreams of the way and the end go on.  Carl Sandburg

Paul Revere's Ride, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ...

Paul Revere's Ride

Listen my children and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive^[4] Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, "If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch Of the North Church tower as a signal light,-- One if by land, and two if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through everyMiddlesex village and farm, For the country folk to be up and to arm."

Then he said "Good-night!" and with muffled oar Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, Just as the moon rose over the bay, Where swinging wide at her moorings lay The Somerset, British man-of-war; A phantom ship, with each mast and spar Across the moon like a prison bar, And a huge black hulk, that was magnified By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend through alley and street Wanders and watches, with eager ears, Till in the silence around him he hears The muster of men at the barrack door, The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet, And the measured tread of the grenadiers, Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church, By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, To the belfry chamber overhead, And startled the pigeons from their perch On the sombre rafters, that round him made Masses and moving shapes of shade,-- By the trembling ladder, steep and tall, To the highest window in the wall, Where he paused to listen and look down A moment on the roofs of the town And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead, In their night encampment on the hill, Wrapped in silence so deep and still That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread, The watchful night-wind, as it went Creeping along from tent to tent, And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"

A moment only he feels the spell Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread Of the lonely belfry and the dead; For suddenly all his thoughts are bent On a shadowy something far away, Where the river widens to meet the bay,-- A line of black that bends and floats On the rising tide like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere. Now he patted his horse's side, Now he gazed at the landscape far and near, Then, impetuous, stamped the earth, And turned and tightened his saddle girth; But mostly he watched with eager search

The belfry tower of the Old North Church, As it rose above the graves on the hill, Lonely and spectral and sombre and still. And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height A glimmer, and then a gleam of light! He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns, But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight A second lamp in the belfry burns.

A hurry of hoofs in a village street, A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark, And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet; That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light, The fate of a nation was riding that night;

And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight, Kindled the land into flame with its heat. He has left the village and mounted the steep, And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep, Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides; And under the alders that skirt its edge, Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge, Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock When he crossed the bridge into Medford town. He heard the crowing of the cock, And the barking of the farmer's dog, And felt the damp of the river fog, That rises after the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock, When he galloped into Lexington. He saw the gilded weathercock Swim in the moonlight as he passed, And the meeting-house windows, black and bare, Gaze at him with a spectral glare, As if they already stood aghast At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock, When he came to the bridge in Concord town. He heard the bleating of the flock, And the twitter of birds among the trees, And felt the breath of the morning breeze Blowing over the meadow brown. And one was safe and asleep in his bed Who at the bridge would be first to fall, Who that day would be lying dead, Pierced by a British musket ball.

You know the rest. In the books you have read How the British Regulars fired and fled, How the farmers gave them ball for ball, From behind each fence and farmyard wall, Chasing the redcoats down the lane, Then crossing the fields to emerge again Under the trees at the turn of the road, And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere; And so through the night went his cry of alarm To every Middlesex village and farm, A cry of defiance, and not of fear, A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, And a word that shall echo for evermore! For, borne on the night-wind of the Past, Through all our history, to the last, In the hour of darkness and peril and need, The people will waken and listen to hear The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed, And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

A.E. Housman, on soldiers ...

XXII

The street sounds to the soldiers' tread,   

And out we troop to see: 

A single redcoat turns his head,   

He turns and looks at me.   

My man, from sky to sky's so far,   

We never crossed before; 

Such leagues apart the world's ends are,   

We're like to meet no more;   

What thoughts at heart have you and I   

We cannot stop to tell; 

But dead or living, drunk or dry,   

Soldier, I wish you well. 

XXIII

The lads in their hundreds to Ludlow come in for the fair,   

There's men from the barn and the forge and the mill and the fold, 

The lads for the girls and the lads for the liquor are there,   

And there with the rest are the lads that will never be old.   

There's chaps from the town and the field and the till and the cart,   

And many to count are the stalwart, and many the brave, 

And many the handsome of face and the handsome of heart,   

And few that will carry their looks or their truth to the grave.   

I wish one could know them, I wish there were tokens to tell   

The fortunate fellows that now you can never discern; 

And then one could talk with them friendly and wish them farewell   

And watch them depart on the way that they will not return.   

But now you may stare as you like and there's nothing to scan;   

And brushing your elbow unguessed-at and not to be told 

They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man,   

The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.