"blake" poems
*I'd love to be your hero
Your knight in shining armor
To take all your pain away*
**I'd love to be your damsel in distress
Your Lois Lane, Daphne Blake
Because you're my Clark Kent, my Fred Jones
You're my everything
And, thanks to you, there is no pain**
Apr 14, 2014
Apr 14, 2014 at 11:46 AM UTC
PICTURE and book remain,
An acre of green grass
For air and exercise,
Now strength of body goes;
Midnight, an old house
Where nothing stirs but a mouse.
My temptation is quiet.
Here at life's end
Neither loose imagination,
Nor the mill of the mind
Consuming its rag and bonc,
Can make the truth known.
Grant me an old man's frenzy,
Myself must I remake
Till I am Timon and Lear
Or that William Blake
Who beat upon the wall
Till Truth obeyed his call;
A mind Michael Angelo knew
That can pierce the clouds,
Or inspired by frenzy
Shake the dead in their shrouds;
Forgotten else by mankind,
An old man's eagle mind.
9.2k
Society has good intentions Bureaucracy is like a friend
5 years ago - other furies other losses -
America's
trying to control the uncontrollable Forest fires, Vice
The essential smile In the essential sleep Of the children Of the essential mind
I'm
all thru playing the American
Now I'm going to live a good quiet life
The
world should be built for foot walkers
Oily
rivers Of spiney Nevady
I
am Jake Cake
Rake
Write like Blake
The
horse is not pleased Sight of his
gorgeous finery
in the dust Its silken
nostrils
did disgust
Cats
arent kind Kiddies anent sweet
April
in Nevada - Investigating Dismal Cheyenne Where the war parties
In fields
of straw
Aimed over oxen At Indian Chiefs
In wild headdress Pouring thru
the gap
In Wyoming plain
To make the settlers
Eat more dust than dust
was eaten In the States From East at Seacoast Where wagons made up To dreadful
Plains
Of clazer vup
Saltry
settlers
Anxious to ********** The Mongol Sea (I'm too tired in Cheyenne -
No sleep in 4 nights now, & 2 to go)
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i left your wine glass
on my bedside table
for seven days
it settled in the very place
that your hands had aimlessly
chosen
staining a ring around a mostly empty bodice.
mostly empty?
barely full?
you see, for me,
the wine glass was
my way of having you
stay as long as I wanted.
I saw your delicate
fingerprints stamped upon
the stem and body
just as they were on mine, under a tin roof
amidst a blanket of summer rain.
......
i washed the glass tonight
as you boarded the plane to the rest of your life.
i wonder if you'll think of me as you sip on your complimentary glass.
rouge ou blanc, mon amour?
rouge comme mon amour?
ou blanc comme mon remise?
-Anna Blake
Oct 1, 2017
Oct 1, 2017 at 9:31 PM UTC
Two, of course there are two.
It seems perfectly natural now——
The one who never looks up, whose eyes are lidded
And balled¸ like Blake's.
Who exhibits
The birthmarks that are his trademark——
The scald scar of water,
The ****
Verdigris of the condor.
I am red meat. His beak
Claps sidewise: I am not his yet.
He tells me how badly I photograph.
He tells me how sweet
The babies look in their hospital
Icebox, a simple
Frill at the neck
Then the flutings of their Ionian
Death-gowns.
Then two little feet.
He does not smile or smoke.
The other does that
His hair long and plausive
*******
************ a glitter
He wants to be loved.
I do not stir.
The frost makes a flower,
The dew makes a star,
The dead bell,
The dead bell.
Somebody's done for.
6.2k
Underneath the leaves of life,
Green on the prodigious tree,
In a trance of grief
Stand the fallen man and wife:
Far away the single stag
Banished to a lonely crag
Gazes placid out to sea,
And from thickets round about
Breeding animals look in
On Duality,
And the birds fly in and out
Of the world of man.
Down in order from the ridge,
Bayonets glittering in the sun,
Soldiers who will judge
Wind towards the little bridge:
Even politicians speak
Truths of value to the weak,
Necessary acts are done
By the ill and the unjust;
But the Judgment and the Smile,
Though these two-in-one
See creation as they must,
None shall reconcile.
Bordering our middle earth
Kingdoms of the Short and Tall,
Rivals for our faith,
Stir up envy from our birth:
So the giant who storms the sky
In an angry wish to die
Wakes the hero in us all,
While the tiny with their power
To divide and hide and flee,
When our fortunes fall
Tempt to a belief in our
Immortality.
Lovers running each to each
Feel such timid dreams catch fire
Blazing as they touch,
Learn what love alone can teach:
Happy on a tousled bed
Praise Blake's acumen who said:
"One thing only we require
Of each other; we must see
In another's lineaments
Gratified desire";
This is our humanity;
Nothing else contents.
Nowhere else could I have known
Than, beloved, in your eyes
What we have to learn,
That we love ourselves alone:
All our terrors burned away
We can learn at last to say:
"All our knowledge comes to this,
That existence is enough,
That in savage solitude
Or the play of love
Every living creature is
Woman, Man, and Child."
5.9k
To behold the daybreak!
-Walt Whitman, Song of Myself from Leaves of Grass
In days like this one,
when rain drops so light
& everything dips
into weeping grey
my sanity longs for memories.
My sanity longs
like impulsive recalling
of plummeting sadness
in greying day
sashaying mournful recollects
from sunrise to daybreak.
Remembering vanishes
in the joyful marrow of life.
There, forgetting lives.
Tell me the last time
bliss comforts your soul.
It is a transient tick
too stiff to evoke.
What about the last time
pain feigns your saneness.
Memories turned into bullets
slitting shrapnel
warping into my soul.
Happiness lasts for a second.
Sadness, a lifetime.
Tell me how to get rid
the hurting clout of ache
existing as a blunt fragment
benign yet reminisced.
Daybreak pours so hard
and my sanity like a waning light
crawls back in a miasmatic cave
along the river known
to be a home of a witch
& her cursing narrative
of throwing silver saucers
making her a spotless shadow
through vestal times
never again a thriving spirit.
Forget Blake. Forget Whitman.
Only in daybreak
where everything
churns into life,
my sanity shrinking back
collapsing
into surreal gaps.
Here & there,
my sanity longs for memories.
Dec 9, 2016
Dec 9, 2016 at 10:31 PM UTC
The short-order cook and the dishwasher
argue the relative merits
of Rilke’s Elegies
against Eliot’s Four Quartets,
but the delivery man who brings eggs
suggests they have forgotten Les fleurs
du mal and Baudelaire. The waitress
carrying three plates and a coffee ***
can’t decide whom she loves more—
Rimbaud or Verlaine,
William Blake or William Wordsworth.
She refills the rabbi’s cup
(he’s reading Rumi),
asks what he thinks of Arthur Whaley.
In the booth behind them, a fat woman
feeds a small white poodle in her lap,
with whom she shares her spoon.
"It’s Rexroth’s translations of the Japanese,"
she says, "that one can’t live without:
May those who are born after me
Never travel such roads of love."
The revolving door proffers
a stranger in a long black coat, lost in the madhouse poems of John Clare.
As he waits to be seated,
the woman who owns the place
hands him a menu
in which he finds several handwritten poems
By Hafiz, Gibran, and Rabindranath Tagore.
The lunch hour’s crowded—
the owner wonders
if the stranger might share
my table. As he sits,
I put a finger to my lips,
and with my eyes ask him
to listen with me
to the young boy and the young girl
two tables away
taking turns reading aloud
the love poems of Pablo Neruda.
4.9k
There is a wildness still in England that will not feed
In cages; it shrinks away from the touch of the trainer's hand,
Easy to **** not easy to tame. It will never breed
In a zoo for the public pleasure. It will not be planned.
Do not blame us too much if we that are hedgerow folk
Cannot swell the rejoicings at this new world you make -
We, hedge-hogged as Johnson or Borrow, strange to the yoke
As Landor, surly as Cobbett (that badger), birdlike as Blake.
A new scent troubles the air -- to you, friendly perhaps
But we with animal wisdom have understood that smell.
To all our kind its message is Guns, Ferrets, and Traps,
And a Ministry gassing the little holes in which we dwell.
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The nature of infinity is this: That everything has its
Own Vortex, and when once a traveller thro' Eternity
Has pass'd that Vortex, he perceives it roll back behind
His path, into a globe itself infolding like a sun,
Or like a moon, or like a universe of starry majesty,
While he keeps onwards in his wondrous journey on the earth,
Or like a human form, a friend with whom he liv'd benevolent.
As the eye of man views both the east & west encompassing
Its vortex, and the north & south with all their starry host,
Also the rising sun & setting moon he views surrounding
His corn-fields and his valleys of five hundred acres square,
Thus is the earth one infinite plane, and not as apparent
To the weak traveller confin'd beneath the moony shade.
Thus is the heaven a vortex pass'd already, and the earth
A vortex not yet pass'd by the traveller thro' Eternity.
from The Illuminated Prophetic Books Milton
Oct 11, 2014
Oct 11, 2014 at 4:28 PM UTC
What will you do when the clocks no longer tell?
After you smash to pieces Cronos' clock
And you slip into the stillpoint as the Eye opens
In the palm of your hand; after you cross
The Threshold and return to offer up your Boon
To man.
When the ego falls away and you begin your
Gift of servitude.
When the trees drip light, and each child you
See has around their head a circle of light.
Light surging up and over,
Bleeding from eyes and hands;
Oceans of light illuminating beaches;
Lovers enveloped in a cocoon of light;
The crow blasting through photons,
Climbing currents into the face of the sun
To erupt in all-consuming flame;
Like William Blake driving Apollo's
Chariot into a supernova;
Walt Whitman pulling from the River
Why a fish erupting and igniting his
Beard, showering him in corpuscles of light;
Like a Devish whirling, shooting off sparks
And laughing like a madman dancing and
Burning in the Dragon's jaws.
And Vincent, in your dreams, deep in a
Sea of sunflowers looking up at you
With the wondrous eyes of a child
And waving his arms like a Sorcerer
Conjuring and you see what he sees:
Heaven in a wildflower.
Oct 30, 2010
Oct 30, 2010 at 6:50 AM UTC
1
Why did Blake say
'Sunflower weary of time'?
Every time I see them
they seem to say
Now! with a crash
of cymbals!
Very pleased
and positive
and absolutely delighting
in their own round brightness.
2
Sorry, Blake!
Now I see what you mean.
Storms and frost have battered
their bright delight
and though they are still upright
nothing could say dejection
more than their weary
disillusioned
hanging heads.
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it's you.
i would have never known
unless i saw
the light meet your face
that morning.
neither of us are early risers,
but i couldn't waste
a second.
above me,
at 6:40 in the morning,
a perfect blend of
blue, gray, and sincerity,
which was born
on the rising sun,
peered through an ivory curtain,
and landed on a gentle face.
infinity soaked gaze,
honey coated touch,
your color was
the crisp mountain air
through a rolled down
Jeep window.
your color was
a John Prine record
and local barbeque
your color was serene.
it was the light's reflection of
a summer enveloped
by two people
in love with
right now.
-Anna Blake
Oct 18, 2017
Oct 18, 2017 at 5:14 PM UTC
What the hell
When I have heaven in my arms?
I see Blake, I see Plath
I see the bike next to the block
Am I good?at your puns?
Spotting these metaphors and sensing
your lust
The Devil himself between these mellowing thighs
Oh, He looked a lot like you Sean.
Undress not your self
But your gown
For me once
Disarm these plausibilities
I know where you're from
Dec 11, 2014
Dec 11, 2014 at 2:21 AM UTC
I'm ****** off with Robert Frost
And the guy who wrote Paradise Lost.
I ain't happy with Aristotle,
And especially John, the weird Apostle.
Don't mention, please, Shelley or Keats,
Blake, Byron or Yeats;
Each and every one you see,
(if you're ready for some truth)
Took their themes from me.
Don't look aghast,
Don't tsk and titter,
Their thievery's left me
Mean and bitter.
Just because they said it first,
Doesn't mean I find it just.
It doesn't give them ownership
Of my themes and authorship.
I write of Roads, Good and Evil,
God and Satan, love and leaving.
I know I'm internally bleating,
But I can't abide this metric beating.
Although they're merely dust and bones,
They don't have the right to own
All the great lines I have sown:
The best laid plans of mice and men.
(I said that before Robbie Burns).
Let me make this poeticaly clear;
***If I was there, or he were here,
I'd sue the *** of Will Shakespeare***.
May 11, 2018
May 11, 2018 at 9:31 AM UTC
Orpheus
by Michael R. Burch
after William Blake
I.
Many a sun
and many a moon
I walked the earth
and whistled a tune.
I did not whistle
as I worked:
the whistle was my work.
I shirked
nothing I saw
and made a rhyme
to children at play
and hard time.
II.
Among the prisoners
I saw
the leaden manacles
of Law,
the heavy ball and chain,
the quirt.
And yet I whistled
at my work.
III.
Among the children’s
daisy faces
and in the women’s
frowsy laces,
I saw redemption,
and I smiled.
Satanic millers,
unbeguiled,
were swayed by neither girl,
nor child,
nor any God of Love.
Yet mild
I whistled at my work,
and Song
broke out,
ere long.
Keywords/Tags: Orpheus, singer, poet, William Blake, whistle, Satanic, mills, manacles, law, leaden, ball, chain, prison, song, freedom
Mar 30, 2020
Mar 30, 2020 at 1:34 AM UTC
I now delight
In spite
Of the might
And the right
Of classic tradition,
In writing
And reciting
Straight ahead,
Without let or omission,
Just any little rhyme
In any little time
That runs in my head;
Because, I’ve said,
My rhymes no longer shall stand arrayed
Like Prussian soldiers on parade
That march,
Stiff as starch,
Foot to foot,
Boot to boot,
Blade to blade,
Button to button,
Cheeks and chops and chins like mutton.
No! No!
My rhymes must go
Turn ’ee, twist ’ee,
Twinkling, frosty,
Will-o’-the-wisp-like, misty;
Rhymes I will make
Like Keats and Blake
And Christina Rossetti,
With run and ripple and shake.
How pretty
To take
A merry little rhyme
In a jolly little time
And poke it,
And choke it,
Change it, arrange it,
Straight-lace it, deface it,
Pleat it with pleats,
Sheet it with sheets
Of empty conceits,
And chop and chew,
And hack and hew,
And weld it into a uniform stanza,
And evolve a neat,
Complacent, complete,
Academic extravaganza!
3.1k
Now I'll record my secret vision, impossible sight of the face of God:
It was no dream, I lay broad waking on a fabulous couch in Harlem
having masturbated for no love, and read half naked an open book of Blake
on my lap
Lo & behold! I was thoughtless and turned a page and gazed on the living
Sun-flower
and heard a voice, it was Blake's, reciting in earthen measure:
the voice rose out of the page to my secret ear never heard before-
I lifted my eyes to the window, red walls of buildings flashed outside,
endless sky sad Eternity
sunlight gazing on the world, apartments of Harlem standing in the
universe--
each brick and cornice stained with intelligence like a vast living face--
the great brain unfolding and brooding in wilderness!--Now speaking
aloud with Blake's voice--
Love! thou patient presence & bone of the body! Father! thy careful
watching and waiting over my soul!
My son! My son! the endless ages have remembered me! My son! My son!
Time howled in anguish in my ear!
My son! My son! my father wept and held me in his dead arms.
1960
2.7k
Wow, what even is this?
Terrible, terrible.
Why do you even bother, it’s no good
Thanks, now get out.
I admit I’m not the next Frost
I may not even be the next anyone.
So, without further ado, I’m sorry.
I apologize.
I’m sorry Blake, Burns, Wordsworth.
I’m sorry Poe, Frost, Ginsburg.
I’m sorry Plath, Petersen, Bremer.
I’m sorry Church, Winter, Dychkowski.
I don’t measure up, I don’t even rhyme
Selfishness is my reason for this
Feelings on paper and thoughts in obscurity
All written without form, no scheme
Is it real if it doesn’t make sense?
I’m not stopping, no, I’ll persevere
But I offer up these apologies to those who are poets
Somehow I got labeled with you
Somehow I ended up here.
Poetry. My one stay. An escape I can always turn to.
I’m sorry.
My apologies.
Forgive my excuse.
Nov 17, 2015
Nov 17, 2015 at 2:38 AM UTC
Is there anything glorious about August the twelfth?
When people privileged with exceptional wealth
Think it their right, to blast the sky
And the birds that fly, ne'er so high.
Is there dignity to the flurry that follows?
To be first delivering corpses to fellows
And consorts, dining in fair London town
On the shot blasted flesh, fallen down ...
To British soil, the land of the free!
So free, to be trapped in iniquity,
In pursuit of what some think to be glorious
But surely Blake's heaven would be furious.
David Applin
2018
Aug 2, 2018
Aug 2, 2018 at 2:39 PM UTC
Summer’s time has come and gone
The walls, floorboards release a yawn
With nine months then to recoup, recover
From being a home, just for the summer.
Eloquent memories freshly remain
Of friends who nestled within her frame
A cabin of bunk beds, cubbies, fresh air
Where girls unwound with little a care.
Her crevice now holds a left-behind letter
Whose parchment hardens with winter’s weather
Yet the season’s sleet knows the warmer reflection
Of late night secrets and encouraged imperfection.
Spring has sprung most slowly for some
The evergreens exclaim a harmonious hum
Her wooden steps defrost, and patiently await
The coming of campers to the cardinal state.
Fall, winter, and spring all pass
Warm rays have woken the mountains at last
Each cabin’s frame stands taller, *****
While girls, all ages, reconnect.
Anna Blake
Mar 27, 2017
Mar 27, 2017 at 11:57 AM UTC
Keats may’ve died of consumption
And Dante in his personal hell
But no one ever died of a broken heart
Or so I’ve heard them tell
Shakespeare’s mortal coil had shuffled
And Byron could a-rove no more
But no one ever died of a broken heart
Of that much they are sure
All of Auden’s clocks had stopped
Dickinson felt death in her brain
But no one ever died of a broken heart
Though it’s heavy as a ball and chain
Blake had entered Jerusalem
For Carroll, Wonderland beckoned
But no one ever died of a broken heart
Yet I wish I could any second
Miss Rossetti’s winter was bleak
Thomas raged into that good night
But no one ever died of a broken heart
At least not without a good fight
Jan 27, 2016
Jan 27, 2016 at 9:03 AM UTC
The roaring alongside he takes for granted,
and that every so often the world is bound to shake.
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,
in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.
The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet
of interrupting water comes and goes
and glazes over his dark and brittle feet.
He runs, he runs straight through it, watching his toes.
--Watching, rather, the spaces of sand between them
where (no detail too small) the Atlantic drains
rapidly backwards and downwards. As he runs,
he stares at the dragging grains.
The world is a mist. And then the world is
minute and vast and clear. The tide
is higher or lower. He couldn't tell you which.
His beak is focussed; he is preoccupied,
looking for something, something, something.
Poor bird, he is obsessed!
The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray
mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst.
2.2k
Read Shakespeare and Milton and all of the rest
Keats, Coleridge and Wordsworth are some of the best
Read Ted Hughes and Sylvia, Motion, Duffy
They say what I want to say better than me
Read Homer and Ovid, Basho and Su Shi
Chaucer and Boccaccio they've stood the test
Read Donne, Spenser, Marlowe, Jonson and Raleigh
Read Shakespeare and Milton and all of the rest
Read Swift, Pope, Blake, Tennyson, and Rossetti
The two Barrett Brownings are of interest
For feelings romantic as true as can be
Keats, Coleridge and Wordsworth are some of the best
Read Larkin and Betjeman if you're depressed
Read Wendy Cope to enjoy all of life's zest
Yes please don't think I despise modernity
Read Ted Hughes and Sylvia, Motion, Duffy
And how about all those I haven't addressed
Yeats, Auden, Joyce, Longfellow, Poe and Shelley
And all of the others I'm bound to have missed
They say what I want to say better than me
But what of the poet, with poets obessed?
In prose I am prolix, in speech stuttery:
So where will you find my emotions expressed?
On MySpace, on Twitter, read my poetry
It says what I want to say
Oct 7, 2009
Oct 7, 2009 at 11:12 AM UTC
Everything is such fun in the beginning,
when it’s new and undiscovered.
i’ll try almost anything.
What is meant by almost?
All these stupid sick **** roles we play,
all this pretending, why?
i want to believe there’s something
behind the curtain
besides a windowless stone wall
Something inexplicable
his/her majesty of everything/
living/dead/never existed.
William Blake said, “Either be a poet or a painter.
Being both muddies audiences, and discredits one or the other.”
Actually, Blake didn’t say that. i am lost.
is it possible to love after what has happened?
the rage, hurt, disappointment of betrayal.
my ex still stalks
as recently as two mornings ago,
all her exaggerations, over-reactions, fury.
Why so desperate to return to crime scene?
An admission of her own guilt?
Excessive compulsive wound licking (psychogenic alopecia)?
Another excuse for getting drunk?
When we waited for the elevator going down
You said, “Let’s just get this over with.”
i understood completely.
i, who worships my own death.
i, who ****** on my own grave.
i, who gets bored faster than speed of light.
i, who suspects killing around every corner.
i, who sleeps restless.
i, who worries.
i, who loves women.
i, who does not understand women.
i, who is a woman.
i, who bangs the dude in L.A. to advance my career.
i, who is a nobody.
i, a man with no place to stand.
i, who belongs to a family of
blustering flirts, flatterers,
kidders, thieves.
We sit at the table,
monkey-wrenching hand over fist lives.
Forget about the eyes.
Watch the fingers.
Don’t listen to the speeches.
Words are intentional distractions.
Where’s your wallet?
Gypsies? No, we’re not gypsies,
more upper-crusty, yes, very well-connected secrets.
Do the names Dante, or Cervantes, or Nabokov mean anything to you?
No, none of them are our kin,
but we know people who know people,
infidelities in very high places.
All i’m saying is,
once you reach a certain level,
we’re all family.
i will make success happen,
with or without you.
Mar 10, 2013
Mar 10, 2013 at 12:23 PM UTC