Poem of the Day for April 30

Below is a translation of this poem in English. It's good, but still it does not do enough justice to the original poem that Devkota wrote. The translator is myohmyoh .

Which temple will you go oh traveler which temple should you go?
With what would you worship him and what would you offer to your lord?
Riding on people's back which heaven would you go?
With columns made out of your bones, and your skin its walls
With brain as its ceiling, senses its doors
Blood in your veins mystic river, temple is whole in itself.
Which temple will you go oh traveler, which temple's door?
Ruling from your soul is lords beautiful throne,
Feeling the aura, your head the crown,
Beautiful is this body temple in the middle of the world.

Which holy land are you searching with your eyes when inside you is god?
How far will you flow on surface, when lord lives in the depth?
If you want to find him then just open lights of your heart,
Lord is with you my traveler in the middle of road,
He will kiss hands that work selflessly, will touch foreheads with his divine hands.
Lord sings on the songs of the birds by the side of the road,
Lord sings on the pain and suffering of the people,
Yet he does not come before your physical eyes.

Which temple will you go to oh traveler which new country will you go?
Return my traveler and hold peoples feet, help them to heal up their wounds with ointments,
Please your lord oh traveler just by being human.

"Self Conscious" Kanye West (Def Poetry)

Favorite Poem for April 28th

Alone

By Edgar Allen Poe

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring —
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow — I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone —
And all I lov'd — I lov'd alone —
Then — in my childhood — in the dawn
Of a most stormy life — was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still —
From the torrent, or the fountain —
From the red cliff of the mountain —
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold —
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by —
From the thunder, and the storm —
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view —

chosen by David Pilon, the new Vice President of Sigma Tau Delta.

Favorite Poem for April 27th

Wild Animals

by Elma Tancica

I was in a forest
all alone
bright moonlight was showing me the way
steps of unknown animal were written
in a snow
I felt no fear
music was playing in my ears
I tried to dance
but the snow was too deep
so I kept on walking
eyes of a wolf were looking at me
with some strange warmth
he heard my music
he felt my pain
I saw his wild eyes as he was coming closer
he jumped inside my brain
we were the same
not scared, not surprised
running away from humans
finding the answers in a moonlight
snow wasn't untouched when we left
we made a circle while changing our bodies
than we went each following our own way
I went deep into a forest
he went into a worm house among humans
we were still the same
free and wild

This poem is brought to you all the way from Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina , via myspace c/o Terry Gresham.

Poem of the Day for April 26th

Bowl

BY VALERIE MARTÍNEZ

Turn it over and look up

into the sphere of heaven.

The tracery is lucent,

light seeping through to write,

white-ink your face, upturned.

Swing it below

and it's a cradle of blue water,

the sea, a womb.

A mixing bowl

for Babylonian gods.

Here, they whirl up the cosmos.

Pick it up and your hands

form a pedastal,

and all who drink

contain the arcs

of body and the universe—

and between them,

no imaginable tear or distance.

(Selected by Aaron Rudolph)

"Bowl" by Valerie Martinez from World to World, published by University of Arizona Press. Copyright 2004 by Valerie Martinez. It also appeared on the Poetry Foundation website.

Poem of the Day for April 25th

Saw You, Want You

by Sarah J. Sloat

Saw you - corner of 8th
and Crescent, asking
a lady in fur for directions.
My mouth went limp when
you called her “ma’am.”
You smiled, and I felt
I might not have to walk
through life with this boulder
between my hands. I want
to lie down in your drawl, fall
asleep on the tilt of your eyebrow.
I kick myself for wearing
that hippie poncho, for not
having the car to drive you
where you meant to go.
I never did anything
like this before.
I was the 5’5 brunette
carrying a takeout pizza.
The walk signal went green.
I sneezed, and
you blessed me.

Printed at 3rd Muse in 2006.

Selected for the FPP by a Lawton Poets and Writers

member who may or may not look like this.

Poem of the Day for April 24th

Jabberwocky

a poem by Lewis Carroll

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree.
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came wiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

(Selected by Ellis Hooley)

Shakespeare is so emo

Sonnet 57

Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love that in your will,
Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.

Poem of the Day for April 22nd

The Basque Nose

Patrick Rosal (Listen to the poet read this

poem here.)

I may as well be invisible

when Curtis says to Idoia his wife

That Basque nose

Let me touch that nose

and she lets him

and I’m surprised I don’t

repeat him: Let me touch that nose

even though I’ve thought more often

of her chin— what I would abandon

to touch the line along

the muscle of her neck

to the small ridge below her ear —

a place which has no simple word

even in the half dozen languages

we choose not to speak in that room

Curtis—one of the most benign

men I know except for one

New Year’s when he got drunk and vaulted

his six-foot-four Iowa-farmboy frame

over the dinner table to stomp

the gum out of some brute

pushing up on Idoia

But do you blame him?

The brute I mean

for blabbing anything

the liquor—he mistook

for muse—inspired him to say

just to hear Idoia speak—her vowels

thin cool and round as céntimos

dropped in a beggar’s hand

I smoke on their front patio

Idoia stops in the kitchen

And I hold my cigarette

to the window between us—

how (for a moment) she purses

her mouth near the glass

a mock gesture too much

like a kiss for me to ignore

After dinner Curtis Idoia and I drink

wine which gives me courage

to practice my Spanish I think about

the difference between saber and conocer

conjugating each verb beginning

in first person New Jersey familiar

So when Curtis gets drunk

and kisses his wife’s shoulders

they both close their eyes and I’m still

muttering I know... You know... He knows...

The Basque Nose is reprinted from Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive (Persea Books, 2003).

Also published at Fishouse.org.

(Submitted by Tamara L. Mindensall)

Poem of the Day for April 21st

Dude, You Ruined David Bowie For Me by Hannah Wehr

You had weapons for cheekbones
a killer swagger in leather pants
fingers like the Nightstalker
and eyes that asked for nothing

You were black piano keys
the smell of gasoline
Berlin at the fall of the wall
Troy at the fallacy of the gift
I would have fought a war to save that face

A mind like Screwtape and a form like mortal sin
you took everything and loved nothing
incomplete, human parts missing
as dead as you are deadly

We spared and struck
threatened and clung
I learned you to My Bloody Valentine
you forgot me to Ziggy Stardust

Dude, you ruined David Bowie for me
you wound yourself around every song
and wrung the blood out of everything

I climbed the tower of you
threw myself out of the window
for the sake of the view

You metastasized through my life
illuminating and detonating
yours is a cancer of the glow in the dark variety
of the pretty boy variety
of the bare your wrists to me variety

People impale themselves on hope
for your kind of beauty
ruthless, thoughtless, insidious
you peeled women like apples
like we had a history old debt to you
like snakes were a fashion statement for the curious
like the gravity that only the dark knows how hustle.

(submitted by Leroy Jenkins)

Originally published in The Nervous Breakdown.

Poem of the Day for April 20th

Ulysses

a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle —
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me —
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads — you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

(Submitted by William Carney)

Poem of the Day for April 19th

Crazy

Written by :- Laxmi Prasad Devkota.
Translated by :- David Rubin

(submitted by Amit Bashyal)

1.
Oh yes, friend! I'm crazy-
that's just the way I am.

2.
I see sounds,
I hear sights,
I taste smells,
I touch not heaven but things from the underworld,
things people do not believe exist,
whose shapes the world does not suspect.
Stones I see as flowers
lying water-smoothed by the water's edge,
rocks of tender forms
in the moonlight
when the heavenly sorceress smiles at me,
putting out leaves, softening, glistening,
throbbing, they rise up like mute maniacs,
like flowers, a kind of moon-bird's flowers.
I talk to them the way they talk to me,
a language, friend,
that can't be written or printed or spoken,
can't be understood, can't be heard.
Their language comes in ripples to the moonlit Ganges banks,
ripple by ripple-
oh yes, friend! I'm crazy-
that's just the way I am.

3.
You're clever, quick with words,
your exact equations are right forever and ever.
But in my arithmetic, take one from one-
and there's still one left.
You get along with five senses,
I with a sixth.
You have a brain, friend,
I have a heart.
A rose is just a rose to you-
to me it's Helen and Padmini.
You are forceful prose
I liquid verse.
When you freeze I melt,
When you're clear I get muddled
and then it works the other way around.
Your world is solid,
mine vapor,
yours coarse, mine subtle.
You think a stone reality;
harsh cruelty is real for you.
I try to catch a dream,
the way you grasp the rounded truth of cold, sweet coin.
I have the sharpness of the thorn,
you of gold and diamonds.
You think the hills are mute-
I call them eloquent.
Oh yes, friend!
I'm free in my inebriation-
that's just the way I am.

4.
In the cold of the month of Magh
I sat
warming to the first white heat of the star.
the world called me drifty.
When they saw me staring blankly for seven days
after I came back from the burning ghats
they said I was a spook.
When I saw the first marks of the snows of time
in a beautiful woman's hair
I wept for three days.
When the Buddha touched my soul
they said I was raving.
They called me a lunatic because I danced
when I heard the first spring cuckoo.
One dead-quite moon night
breathless I leapt to my feet,
filled with the pain of destruction.
On that occasion the fools
put me in the stocks,
One day I sang with the storm-
the wise men
sent me off to Ranchi.
Realizing that same day I myself would die
I stretched out on my bed.
A friend came along and pinched me hard
and said, Hey, madman,
your flesh isn't dead yet!
For years these things went on.
I'm crazy, friend-
that's just the way I am.

5.
I called the Navab's wine blood,
the painted whore a corpse,
and the king a pauper.
I attacked Alexander with insults,
and denounced the so-called great souls.
The lowly I have raised on the bridge of praise
to the seventh heaven.
Your learned pandit is my great fool,
your heaven my hell,
your gold my iron,
friend! Your piety my sin.
Where you see yourself as brilliant
I find you a dolt.
Your rise, friend-my decline.
That's the way our values are mixed up,
friend!
Your whole world is a hair to me.
Oh yes, friend, I'm moonstruck through and through-
moonstruck!
That's just the way I am.

6.
I see the blind man as the people's guide,
the ascetic in his cave a deserter;
those who act in the theater of lies
I see as dark buffoons.
Those who fail I find successful,
and progress only backsliding.
am I squint-eyed,
Or just crazy?
Friend, I'm crazy.
Look at the withered tongues of shameless leaders,
The dance of the whores
At breaking the backbone on the people's rights.
When the sparrow-headed newsprint spreads its black lies
In a web of falsehood
To challenge Reason-the hero in myself-
My cheeks turn red, friend,
red as molten coal.
When simple people drink dark poison with their ears
Thinking it nectar-
and right before my eyes, friend!-
then every hair on my body stands up stiff
as the Gorgon's serpent hair-
every hair on me maddened!
When I see the tiger daring to eat the deer, friend,
or the big fish the little,
then into my rotten bones there comes
the terrible strength of the soul of Dadhichi
and tries to speak, friend,
like the stormy day crashing down from heaven with the lightning.
When man regards a man
as not a man, friend,
then my teeth grind together, all thirty-two,
top and bottom jaws,
like the teeth if Bhimasena.
And then
red with rage my eyeballs rool
round and round, with one sweep
like a lashing flame
taking in this inhuman human world.
My organs leap out of theirs frames-
uproar! Uproar!
my breathing becomes a storm,
my face distorted, my brain on fire, friend!
with a fire like those that burn beneath the sea,
like the fire that devours the forests,
frenzied, friend!
as one who would swallow the wide world raw.
Oh yes, my friend,
the beautiful chakora am I,
destroyer of the ugly,
both tender and cruel,
the bird that steals the heaven's fire,
child of the tempest,
spew of the insane volcano,
terror incarnate.
Oh yes, friend,
my brain is whirling, whirling-
that's just the way I am.

Published. 1953.

Favorite Poem for April 18th

Romance Sonambulo

by Federico Garcia Lorca

(Translated by William Logan)

(Find the orginal Spanish text here.

Green, how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out on the sea
and the horse on the mountain. 
With the shade around her waist 
she dreams on her balcony, 
green flesh, her hair green, 
with eyes of cold silver. 
Green, how I want you green. 
Under the gypsy moon, 
all things are watching her 
and she cannot see them.
 
Green, how I want you green. 
Big hoarfrost stars 
come with the fish of shadow 
that opens the road of dawn. 
The fig tree rubs its wind 
with the sandpaper of its branches, 
and the forest, cunning cat, 
bristles its brittle fibers. 
But who will come? And from where? 
She is still on her balcony 
green flesh, her hair green, 
dreaming in the bitter sea.
 
--My friend, I want to trade 
my horse for her house, 
my saddle for her mirror, 
my knife for her blanket. 
My friend, I come bleeding 
from the gates of Cabra.
--If it were possible, my boy, 
I'd help you fix that trade. 
But now I am not I, 
nor is my house now my house.
--My friend, I want to die
decently in my bed. 
Of iron, if that's possible, 
with blankets of fine chambray. 
Don't you see the wound I have 
from my chest up to my throat?
--Your white shirt has grown 
thirsy dark brown roses. 
Your blood oozes and flees a
round the corners of your sash. 
But now I am not I, 
nor is my house now my house.
--Let me climb up, at least, 
up to the high balconies; 
Let me climb up! Let me, 
up to the green balconies. 
Railings of the moon 
through which the water rumbles.
 
Now the two friends climb up,
up to the high balconies.
Leaving a trail of blood. 
Leaving a trail of teardrops. 
Tin bell vines
were trembling on the roofs.
A thousand crystal tambourines 
struck at the dawn light.

(Submitted by Sergio Winchester Bhakta)

Favorite Poem for April 17th

An Ancient Egyptian poem translated by John L. Foster

				- I Was Simply Off to See Nefrus My Friend
		I was simply off to see Nefrus my friend, Just to sit and chat at her place (about men). When there, hot on his horses, comes Mehy (Oh god, I said to myself, it's Mehy!) Right over the crest of the road wheeling alng with the boys. O Mother Hathor, what shall I do? Don't let him see me! Where can I hide? Make me a small creeping thing to slip by his eye (sharp as Horus') unseen. Oh, look nat you, feet- (this road is a river!) you walk me right out of my depth! Someone, silly heart, is exceedingly ignorant here- Aren't you a little too easy near Mehy? If he sees that I see him, I know he will know how my heart flutters (Oh, Mehy!) I know I will blurt out, "Please take me!" (I mustn't) No, all he would do is brag out my name, just one of the many... (I know)... Mehy would make me just one of the girls for all of the boys in the palace (Oh Mehy).

(Poem selected by Teri ("Team Mehy" McGrath.)

Favorite Poem for April 16th

Banjo Saturday Nights

by Walt McDonald

Picking a mean, mad banjo
is half showing off, half teasing,
more rhythm than brain waves.
Old Uncle John was skinny and six-five,

half man, half rubber plant,
long fingers around a banjo's neck,
plinking tight strings and tapping
faster than dancers' feet.

Sprawled on a folding chair
in a ballroom or VFW hall,
Uncle John was all knees and neck
with a Stetson flipped back

to give him room, dueling head down
with a hot guitar, cowboys and wives
twirling each other, girls and boys
clapping time, watching Uncle John

at eighty playing the way God made him,
tickling the strings with thumb
and fingers, not many months to go,
but faster than our minds could grasp.

(Submitted by Dr. John Hodgson)

Favorite Poem for April 15th

Delicious Desssert!!!! You are my Favourite Sin!

By Mrs. Feli Renwick- Risbrooke

From the sight of you
I was tempted to taste
I craved you instantaneously
Not a moment did I waste

Tall and desirous
My towering chocolate of flavour
Sweetness placed between each single layer
Increasing my every imaginable desire

Smothered in caramel
So soft...so smooth
Mouth-watering with just the thought
Dessert FIRST please!!!! Who the heck needs food???

Staring at you, I know not where to begin
Top or bottom, centre or side...
No matter where I start I am destined to sin!

For nights on end, awakening with this undeniable craving
So sinfully appealing...I want it ALL NOW!
Not a crumb is worth saving

As I bring you to my mouth
The anxiety increases
Seems that for a moment....
Even my breathing ceases

With just one taste my body begins to shake
My first thought....
You're the most delicious dessert anyone could EVER make
Melting on my tongue
Sweetening my lips
Being served and consumed in mouthfuls, not in sips

This must be wrong
Only the most sinful things feel this good
You must be sin itself indeed....and sin again, I would!!!

What does one do with such pleasure
Making me moan and melt
The MOST satisfying feeling I have EVER EVER felt!

If I continuously succumb to this desire I'll NEVER be thin
Delicious Desssert.....YOU ARE my FAVourite Sin!

(submitted by Ornella Nelson)

Favorite Poem for April 14th

The Sonnet-Ballad
by Gwendolyn Brooks

Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
They took my lover's tallness off to war,
Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess
What I can use an empty heart-cup for.
He won't be coming back here any more.
Some day the war will end, but, oh, I knew
When he went walking grandly out that door
That my sweet love would have to be untrue.
Would have to be untrue. Would have to court
Coquettish death, whose impudent and strange
Possessive arms and beauty (of a sort)
Can make a hard man hesitate--and change.
And he will be the one to stammer, "Yes."
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?

(submitted by Aaron Rudolph)

Favorite Poems Project @ Lawton Poets and Writers

Howdy, everyone. We are in the midst of National Poetry Month. As part of this celebration, Lawton Poets and Writers will post favorite poems.

Starting tomorrow, Wednesday, April 14, we will post a new poem for twenty consecutive days. The poems will come from all of us. Send us your favorite poems to lawtonpoets@gmail.com. Whether the poem is long, short, funny, or dramatic, we want to see it. The poem does not have to be from someone famous. We'd like to see any poems by any authors. We will select one each day. If possible, send it as a document or in the text of the email. Include the title, poet's name, and the full text of the poem. On our blog, we will display the poem along with the names of the poet and the person who submitted the poem.

National Poetry Month celebrates a beautiful art form which often gets overlooked. Certainly, it is under appreciated. Hopefully, we will all share some new poems to add to your own collections of favorites.