Tag Archives: Poems

Today is Emily Dickinson’s Birthday. So, I Should Write a Poem

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Everything points your way;
You can see the golden eye.
What the Queen has bequeathed to stay
home runs and apple pies loft back into your sky.

Each ruinous nation
rejects finally even the fallen tree;
Above the skies stares salvation
where still the angels sing.

Where were you when she was born?
You were a tree, a river, and finally a tear.
Whose lips were those that were shorn?
Shaven notes from the throat so none could hear.

This dream awakes you, but you still sleep.
Outside the cold wind sings her favorite winter song.
One can feel something moving beneath the Solstice deep:
Eyes that speak of staying and, yet, in their golden radiance, of moving on.

©2011 Stephen K. Pickering

____________

“Her Face Was in a Bed of Hair”

Her face was in a bed of hair,
Like flowers in a plot-
Her hand was whiter than the sperm
That feeds the sacred light.
Her tongue more tender than the tune
That totters in the leaves_
Who hears may be incredulous,
Who witnesses, believes.

©1880 Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson – Her True Self from Flash Rosenberg on Vimeo.

Poem: “Out There”

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There’s something about standing here.
Purple lake.
You lake monsters curl
around Nessie’s frame
while locked inside
twirls Nessie’s babe.
The bark peeled away,
the arrow fires straight through
the cotton woods
where the vision stood.
One can hear the fields ticking,
the silence purring
Delta blues
Bitches brew.
The vision spirals inward
to that place
where nothing escapes.
The gourd swallows the flame
until we’re full, until we’re done
until we’ve given up
and then smiles it back to us again.

 

© 2011 – Stephen K. Pickering

Poem: The Night Sea

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The Night Sea

 
I want to breath again
beneath the mythic pond.
This presence blows the wind
And bares the dew soaked dawn.
The spirits sing from wells.
The earth’s throat opens wide.
They say what no man tells.
Their secrets dance inside.
The king is sleeping still.
His drawbridge dream released.
His knights ride Isis’ hill.
And dive her bluest seas.
His white deer fly through snow
To kingdoms no man’s known.

This is in iambic trimeter poem with the form of an English Sonnet.

© 2011 Stephen Pickering

It’s National Poetry Month – So I Should Write Some Poems

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I was just glancing at Youtube, and it said that it was national poetry month. Man they have a day and a month for everything, don’t they? Hehehehehe. Well, since I’m a poet, I thought I should write some poems, especially this month! Just wrote this sonnet a few minutes ago. Hopefully I can do one each morning for the remainder of the month, in honor of the month. I’ll just keep posting them here so I don’t have to have a new post for each and every poem. Maybe I’ll do a Youtube video at the end of the Month in honor of “Spoken Word Poetry.”

 

Sonnet – April 11th, 2011

It’s middle April and the rains have come
The silent morning rings to life and sings.
Each note a whisper of our long lost love
that glides on creeks and swims through springs. 

The turtles’ silence guards the lake all night.
The frogs swim through the moistness of our song.
When morning curtains nudge, they plop from sight,
Soul searching for our long lost golden ball.

The crickets provide the strings, the ducks the horns;
An evening symphony that gives us bliss;
To help in healing what the dragons tore,
And bring us comfort for those that we miss.

The flowers bloom, and trees sway in the wind.
They dance lost songs to visit us again.

___________

Sonnet – April 12th, 2011

At dawn we lost the whisper of our song.
Dreams carried us to worlds we’d rather stay.
The mind builds places our souls don’t belong.
And so the heart remains asleep all day. 

Who’s driven long and who has driven far
To face the mountain hiding secret love?
Inside a bower lit with dreams by stars
They’re parted by the birthing rays above.

Below her bathing pool is where they hid:
Two gems of corn who’d seek the northern light.
She knew their power even just as kids
To overcome the monsters which they’d fight.

The road to follow is a mag’cal one
To marry dreams with the light of the Sun.

______________________

Sonnet – April 13th, 2011

I’d like to hold your essence cool and free.
Your hair is waving spirits to rise up.
Your parents are the mountains and the sea.
You dance with legs of deer and arms of dove. 

Your eyes are saying dive and swim this stream.
They speak a language without having sound.
Tonight I dance with you like in a dream.
I can’t describe but know this thing I’ve found.

There are no tensions in this purest form,
Here even where Yeats said the ladder starts.
You are the place where happiness is born,
and fill with light the center of our hearts.

You are the warmth of Sun that’s brought by Spring
We glide on light by saying not a thing.

____________________________________

Sonnet – April 14th

I’ve noticed that the people seem to glide
And sing down by the river through the trees
They seem to have the glow that’s born inside;
Exuberance from not caring what life means. 

A shadow carries water to their Spring.
They’ve always known that someone lived in there.
Was it a spirit or a human being?
They say it breathes the water, drinks the air.

The children leave their houses for the Sun.
They swim like fish this river made of snow.
It feels though time had just begun
The garden nature made so long ago.

And in the forest still the spirit rests.
Upon stars made from Mother Nature’s breasts.

____________________________

Sonnet – April 15th, 2011

We’re meant to glide upon a beam of light
But here in one wave where life splits in two,
Collapsed a notion of what’s wrong and right.
And now there’s nothing but toil and work to do. 

Sometimes I think therefore I’m not so free.
The stagnant water forms where walls are built.
Drowning spirit born effortlessly.
Like burning rays so hot the flowers wilt.

It feels like its only those fleeting times
A moment when the mind naturally rests
A spirit born inside the heart’s red wine
Appears in actual joy and manifests.

A bliss that doesn’t seem the need to show
With pride how far it’s infinite knowledge goes.

_________________________

Sonnet – April 16th

There was a darkness that surrounded her
What do I do I thought as things grew dim.
A feeling of emotions’ vision blur
When she brought night and cold from where she’d been.

What was this night so sad shown through her eyes?
It was an empty stare she laid down cold.
How can you judge a thing through all the lies
And describe a feeling that has not been told?

A path through strife we see a shining truth
Come here again so I can touch the face.
A land of plenty rises from the root
A mouth says things we feel but cannot trace.

Few days of riding through the emotional highs
It disappears up through the nighttime skies.

 

Poem: “Together”

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“Together”

Each day they add
more marble to our wall,
but what is physically kept away
grows larger in the soul each day.
The lake is frozen.
Black Baikul.
Every time we take a glass from the garden,
the serpent grows another head.
The World doesn’t spin
when the rings inside her don’t extend.
What if we didn’t care
about being
lighter than air
caught in her cherubim’s hair?
For the magician in
the Vermontian woods,
below consciousness,
in a field,
keeps the wild
imbalance between us
still.
Sun in the palm of our hands,
the German Mountain moves
us to tears.
The chariot lifts
the curtain of the night.
The gods hold court around the sacred tree
upon which all the stars dance.
Let us give everything away,
everything,
so that we may cup our hands and drink
her moonlight
together.

New Rough Song Demo: “It’s Over Now”

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So, for the first time in a while a tune struck me out of the blue. I’ve been in straight poetry writing mode the last month or so, so I decided to apply the lyrics from one of those recent poems to this tune. I was surprised that it worked out so well. I think its because in the past I’ve been applying tunes (or trying) to five foot iambic lines which just doesn’t work. And this poem was based on two foot lines. I think the basic measure of songs is four feet, which makes sense. Everything in Western Music is based usually on 4s, 4/4 time is probably 99% of all Western songs. So the two feet lines of this poem probably just joined together to make a four foot rhythm that worked with the 4/4 time.

This is from the poem “I Know the Lake” I wrote last week. I just kind of hurried that title. I’ve changed the song title to “It’s Over Now.” Chorus lyrics seem to work better as titles. I think I’ll change that first line from “I know the lake” to “I know it’s late.”

“I Know the Lake”
I know the lake.
There’s nothing more.
What is at stake
Is behind the door.
Up in the sky
Your hair flew wild.
Your sunglassed eyes
They hid the child.
I thought you said
To meet down there.
We’d find the bed
Without a care.
It’s over now.
It died somehow.

©2010 Stephen Pickering

For the song I need to write another verse extra from the poem which is written in 14 line sonnet form. But I notice the song structure needs to change. The chorus needs to come in sooner anyway, so writing another stanza will make a nice two verse two chorus structure without having to repeat the first verse all over again. These lines just popped out of my head:

Remember when
The water fell
We jumped right in
And didn’t tell.