Category: Other People’s Poetry

courtesy of guest poet Robert Colman
 

Bigger Again

What have I done with the world
today? I’m pretty certain I’ve let it
have its way. And that everyone is
tired of me, that I’ve barely tied
a knot in an hour, made it
fast. I don’t think death
more than once, although I do
spend a few days bent double,
trying to breathe, wondering

if it’s possible to forget how.
I haven’t touched anyone for days,
waving from behind sheer curtains.
Had no intention of
withdrawing this far, becoming
cotton wool, dull needle.
I had to leave a friend’s place
tonight – to write, type or at least

make noise that resembles voices
gathering just beyond the back fence.
I needed to give myself up
to something. Gorging on sweets,
the best chocolates, strawberries, spelt
bread, organic bananas. What I wanted
was to eat the sidewalk, and the dirt, and
the basin, and the shoes in my hallway.

This is the only way I know
how to talk – create an absurdity,
cause a scene, burn a memory.
Look at me, I’m drowning again
No. No, no, no. It’s too damn easy,
too fucking usual. The world knows
how to swallow me. But what does it take
to make me bigger again?

 

Beautiful Animals

I carry your telephone love you
out on my lunch hour walk.
The salt and the cold have burnt away
the snow, just a dust of white
rime in the roads, tongue-and-grooving
the tires, the slightest grit of teeth.
Everyone has been coughing
this dry air, the mirrored casings of
offices reflecting themselves
in a clarity of brutal blue and silver –
no equivocations, everything is
what it ought to be. Cars
fresh from the wash drip
like the mouths of dogs.
Smokers, faces chapped, unshaven,
rasp breath into their coats,
sharp-lipped. We are beautiful
animals, pretending this is all
we need, doing it on our own.
I come dangerously close
to forgetting your voice,
the weight of it in my strut,
playing my throat. And then
I worry it is bigger than
me, a mouth run to whispers.
I slide back somewhere between the two,
thirsty to trust, tasting the salt grit air
for balance, leaning
into the beauty,
close.

 

Rob Colman is a writer and editor based in Newmarket, ON. His poems have appeared in a variety of literary journals across Canada and his first collection, The Delicate Line, was published by Exile Editions in 2008.

You can purchase The Delicate Line at Exile Editions or Amazon.ca

For Susan

by Billy Collins

I remember the quick, nervous bird of your love.
I remember the quick, nervous bird of your love.
Always perched on the thinnest, highest branch.
Always perched on the thinnest, highest branch.
Thinnest love, remember the quick branch.
Always nervous, I perched on your highest bird the.
—
It is time for me to cross the mountain.
It is time for me to cross the mountain.
And find another shore to darken with my pain.
And find another shore to darken with my pain.
Another pain for me to darken the mountain.
And find the time, cross my shore, to with it is to.
—
The weather warm, the handwriting familiar.
The weather warm, the handwriting familiar.
Your letter flies from my hand into the waters below.
Your letter flies from my hand into the waters below.
The familiar waters below my warm hand.
Into handwriting your weather flies you letter the from the.
—
I always cross the highest letter, the thinnest bird.
Below the waters of my warm familiar pain,
Another hand to remember your handwriting.
The weather perched for me on the shore.
Quick, your nervous branch flew from love.
Darken the mountain, time and find was my into it was with to to.
—

NOTE: The paradelle is one of the more demanding French fixed forms, first appearing in the langue d’oc love poetry of the eleventh century. It is a poem of four six-line stanzas in which the first and second lines, as well as the third and fourth lines of the first three stanzas, must be identical. The fifth and sixth lines, which traditionally resolve these stanzas, must use all the words from the preceding lines and only those words. Similarly, the final stanza must use every word from all the preceding stanzas and only those words.

Actually, the above note is mostly B.S. Collins made it up as a statement against what he felt was the rigidity of form poetry. Despite that, the paradelle caught on, and remains a popular form of poetry in many circles to this date.

Lore

Job Davies, eighty-five
Winters old, and still alive
After the slow poison
And treachery of the seasons.

Miserable? Kick my arse!
It needs more than the rain’s hearse,
Wind-drawn, to pull me off
The great perch of my laugh.

What’s living, but courage?
Paunch full of hot porridge,
Nerves strengthened with tea,
Peat-black, dawn found me

Mowing where the grass grew,
Bearded with the golden dew.
Rhythm of the long scythe
Kept this tall frame lithe.

Mowing where the grass grey,
Bearded with golden dew.
Rhythm of the long scythe
Kept this tall frame lithe.

What to do? Stay green.
Never mind the machine,
Whose fuel is human souls.
Live large, man, and dream small.

by R.S Thomas