I love poetry. Mostly, I prefer shorter works. I tend to get more and more analytical as the poem gets longer and longer. There is a lot of poetry that I like, and to me, poetry can be very evocative of a location, place, or time. I don’t have a single favorite, but these three would always be up near the top of my poetry list.
(Sometimes the formatting and placement doesn’t come through on the computer.)
I love the desert, the dry high plains of Western Kansas, the badlands of South Dakota, Death Valley in California.
georgia o'keefe
great lady painter
what she do now
she goes out with a stick
and kills snakes
georgia o'keefe
all life still
cow skull
bull skull
no bull shit
pyrite pyrite
shes no fool
started out pretty
pretty pretty girl
georgia o'keefe
until she had her fill
painted desert
flower cactus
hawk and head mule
choral water color
red coral reef
been around forever
georgia o'keefe
great lady painter
what she do now
go out and beat the desert
stir dust bowl
go out and beat the desert
snake skin skull
go out and beat the desert
all life still
from Babel, Patti Smith, 1976
When it's a rainy day, and I'm sitting on my pity-pot and absolutely wanna stay put. this is guaranteed to keep me there.
I know a place
it's called pain
it's where love lives
love is pain love is fear
who will wipe away the tears
from my eyes (overflowing with the fullness of my heart)
love is fear love is pain
who will taste the salty rain
when I cry (from the hunger, from the thirst, the emptiness)
Me?? I'm just fine. I'm just fine, thanks
!!
(does it show do they know how I hurt how my heart cries)
??
when my raincoat of serenity turns inside out to dry
warm emotions drip down to the thirsty ground below
and a cloak of many colors for long winters bundled up
around those feelings secret opens up and lets the snow touch
coldly all the warm and sweaty hidden parts all folded up like batwings
and the cold light touches warm dark and sweet blindness doesn't know
my choices wrong AGAIN obsessions strong
Me?? I'll just hide.
No!!
Try once more??
No!!
No?? Then what?
??
I know a place
it's called pain
it's where love lives
Dmitri Dahlquist, 1993
And a beautiful sunrise on Cape Cod, the coast of Maine, or, for that matter, a beautiful sunrise ANYWHERE!
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any ——lifted from the no
of all nothing—— human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
from XAIPE
ee cummings
Ah, life is wonderful again.
Lindy