"faulkner" poems
Jumanji was your favorite Robin Williams movie
Mine was Dead Poets Society
You didn’t think it was too interesting
And you fell asleep on my shoulder
When we watched it on a pixilated
2” by 5” screen
Moving at 1 ½ miles per hour
On a bus
Going 5000 frames per second
Over a burnt sandwich chips
We stopped near Michigan and State
To talk about our favourite books
Yours was As I Lay Dying
Mine was The Old Man And The Sea
We talked about the relationship
Between Faulkner
And Hemmingway
And if they ever kissed
Or shared coffee
Or at least thought about it
If Faulkner liked Jumanji
And Hemmingway was partial
To Dead Poets Society
If it turned out
They were chips of a fractured whole
Did Faulkner ever take Hemmingway home?
Does the Hemmingway house still have Faulkner’s toothbrush
On a splintered wooden nightstand?
Did they ever wake up with the wrong socks on the wrong feet
And laugh it off because it was so funny
Were they ever afraid?
Were they ever happy?
Did Faulkner write to Hemmingway
About the Post office?
Did Hemmingway write to Faulkner
About fishing?
“The old man lay dying in the sea”
We wondered if they ever wrote together
Held hands
Traded coffee cups
But you fell asleep
And I kept writing
And watching Dead Poets Society
Wondering if Hemmingway ever would have
Mar 6, 2014
Mar 6, 2014 at 12:41 AM UTC
“It is time to write,” she says
I open a new Word Document.
A blank sheet.
My mind does not want to write an essay.
I write in verse and
chopped lines
not straight paragraphs that drone on and on about William Faulkner and his acceptance speech.
My mind, it drifts off and thinks in flowery words, much too flowery for an essay.
My fingers start typing and words appear on the screen.
Enter.
Type, type, type.
Enter. Type, type, type. Enter.
My thoughts appear in verse and William Faulkner goes unnoticed.
How many times have I written about the whirlwind of a storm inside my mind instead of
whether or not cohabitation is a good thing or
speeches about equal access and the themes in Harper Lee’s To **** a Mockingbird?
How many times have I given into my urge to write and relieve my brain of the pressure that gets built up instead of writing things that will earn me a grade?
The answer is often.
The grade,
Just a number
The conceptions?
Just words
What I write in procrastination?
Everything that bleeds from my heart.
The low grade I received on my speech because I couldn’t be bothered to write about horrid subjects when my soul yearned for something greater?
Worth it.
Sep 22, 2014
Sep 22, 2014 at 8:06 PM UTC
Hemingway was real
Good at it.
And
Bukowski,London,Faulkner,Joyce,
McCullers
Fitzgerald,Thompson, Kerouac etc.
I've heard 20 year old
Girls
And
40 year old
Women
Speak ill
Of drunks.
I always want to ask
"What did you ever
Accomplish
Sober
That was so
Great?"
Fante always seemed real
Pure to me
The innocence
The young
Burning
Passion
Of his lines.
I read
A biography today
And even
Fante was a *********
Drunk.
I smiled
Exposing the missing tooth
In the back
Cracked the cap
And felt
Even more hopeful.
The blood of
Christ.
Dec 25, 2015
Dec 25, 2015 at 11:24 PM UTC
CROSSROADS
by Beth Faulkner
When you know I'm dead, don't say my name
for I will never move on.
I would hear your voice and return.
I'd live in this eternal waiting room
Watching memories like home videos.
Pausing at the wonderful times,
fast forwarding through the hard,
rewinding and playing over and over
to hear you ask if I shall love you always
,and myself answer "till the end of days"
I need to leave,but I make every excuse not to
Watching the memories until our last moments
Then I hear you call my name and begin again..
******
I know you're dead, and I still whisper your name
for I will never move on.
I hear your voice and beg for you to return
to the eternal waiting room of my mind.
Watching my memories like home videos,
pausing at the time where you belonged to me
fast forwarding through my times without you
rewinding and playing over and over
knowing that I shall love you always
'Til the end of days.
I need to leave, move on.
But every memory is a reason not to.
Watching them until my last moment,
until I whisper your name, and begin again..
Feb 21, 2011
Feb 21, 2011 at 9:22 AM UTC
I know you haven't heard from me in years .
I thought I'd write just to let you know that Tommy Faulkner died , you know passed away . I didn't even know it until it was all over . Don't even know what he died from . Heidi told me . Oh , you don't know Heidi , my fist and third wife . She and Tommy were good friends . Last I heard about you , you were moving to North Carolina , your home by birth . But your home was always with us here on the Southside of Birmingham . Sigh !
I hoped you made a big splash back home when you arrived . Such a polar extreme . I kept your poems for years until Heidi threw out my box of poetry ,with yours included .
Also Steven Sedbury's . You remember him ? Last I heard about you , you had a brain tumor and you passed away . Now I stand alone with my ghosts and I have no address to send my posts .
Love Thomas
Apr 16, 2015
Apr 16, 2015 at 10:13 PM UTC
Oh, Billy!
rebujando el olor acre
de la tierra
encontraste el dolor esencial
de los amantes.
Matando al guerrero Sartoris
resucitaste la voluntad férrea
de Moisés y su vara,
de Absalón y su escala.
¡Acompáñanos!
porque la novela no ha terminado:
se ha detenido
(un poco)
en el agonizante collado
para labrar la tierra
contigo, con ellos
y los otros
que conocen el misterio
pero apenas lo revelan.
Jorge Gómez Arias
Jun 24, 2012
Jun 24, 2012 at 11:00 AM UTC
Aurora Grey Darling
He left bruises more beautiful and detailed than any artist ever could paint, detailed lines and swirls,
Blotches, patches and scratches
Marring the pail canvas of my skin
I had my own collection of northern-lights from where he pressed to hard on delicate skin
Skin tears and dried blood on clothes
Everything was grey when he wasn’t around
Light dim everything an old movie
But when when he was there he light everything up
I was color blind and he brought color back
But he was two faced
Bringing color to my sight, but ******* it from my eyes
I was grey
But he still called me darling
My body was a piece of abstract art, for everyone to gawk at
He was the artist who created me
He signed me AGD
I was a tattered Gray canvas with the Aurora borealis painted on my skin
Yet he still called me his little Darling
I guess he truly listened to William Faulkner
“You must **** your Darlings”
Sep 4, 2015
Sep 4, 2015 at 11:15 AM UTC
I saw you on the bus yesterday.
The first thing I saw was your leather jacket
The one with the orange patch
Your hair was golden brown
And its waves fell down to your shoulder
You pulled out a book
And I see the small scribble of a tattoo on your right hand
As hard as I tried I couldn't see exactly what you were reading
I imagine it was something done by Faulkner, Twain, or Hemingway
I imagine you listen to jazz and drink black coffee
You play the banjo and guitar
You order scotch on the rocks
Every ******* time
You write poetry for your friends sometimes
And You claim its terrible
And your friends claim it brilliant
You would write me some,
and I would recite it when we fight
You would take pictures of me when I wake up in the morning
with nothing but your shirt on
You would take them to the dark room
and hide them in your drawer
You would laugh at me when I put on your big black glasses
and I at you when you would tell me bad jokes
You would drag me with you
to see all of your favorite shows
And I would joke like you actually had to drag me
I would drag you shopping
but you never minded as long as it was a thrift store
Our apartment would be small
Because neither of us cared too much about being wealthy
We would follow our dreams
I would paint
and tell people how they are feeling
And you would play music
and sing
and write
and tell me how I am feeling
We would be rich
with love
The love girls pray for every night
before they go to sleep
See, we would wake up every day with that feeling
like the one you get when your crush in high school says hello in the hall
We wold be mad for each other
But I don't even know you
There on the bus
I watched you, a stranger, walk on
and walk off
In this amount of time
I have constructed
a whole new path of life
A path I might have taken
if I would have picked up my bag
sit two seats closer
If I wasn't so nervous of what you may think of me
and asked you about your book
Do you like it?
What is your name?
If I were to have asked you out for coffee
Life today would be different
I would be saying your name over and over in my head
I would have started the book you are reading
Maybe I would be texting you
right now
Instead of writing a poem
Maybe I would be writing about the man I met on the bus
not the man I never met
Maybe you would break my heart one day
But we may never know now
Maybe I will see you again
Maybe then I will ask for your name
or the book you were reading in February
But this city is a big City
And there might not be such a thing called fate
And so I will miss you
And your scribble tattoo
And the path I was too scared to take.
Jul 28, 2016
Jul 28, 2016 at 12:02 PM UTC
Con ciudades y autores frecuentadosVenecia / Guanajuato / Maupassant /
Leningrado / Sousándrade / Berlín /
Cortázar / Bioy Casares / Medellín /
Lisboa / Sartre / Oslo / Valle Inclán /
Kafka / Managua / Faulkner / Paul Celan /
Ítalo Svevo / Quito / Bergamín /
Buenos Aires / La Habana / Graham Greene /
Copenhague / Quiroga / Thomas Mann /
Onetti / Siena / Shakespeare / Anatole
France / Saramago / Atenas / Heinrich Böll /
Cádiz / Martí / Gonzalo de Berceo /
París / Vallejo / Alberti / Santa Cruz
de Tenerife / Roma / Marcel Proust /
Pessoa / Baudelaire / Montevideo
1.3k
I heard a man
In cowboy clothes
Singing songs
Of life and love
His dazzling sequins and heartbroken stanzas
Boasted mythical tales
Of peyote drifters, hickory winds
And moon-studded shrines
Shrines in the woods around Waycross
Where the words of Flannery and Faulkner
Still drift through the purple swamps
And offer up penance to the moss at midnight
Shrines in the neon river
Of blinking Broadway lights
And the way Hank’s ghost
Yet graces the Ryman stage every dusk
Shrines deep in the desert
Spiraling up in the smoke
Of the cowboy’s last lament
Toward that great gig in the sky
(His ashes sinking like broken glass
Into a horizon
Illuminated by the City of Angels
One hundred miles to the west)
I heard a man in cowboy clothes
Back in my younger days
He stirred to life an old time sound
Within my homesick soul
Sep 18, 2014
Sep 18, 2014 at 12:28 AM UTC
you ******* with your
smirk and your bow tying fingers and your
****** classic ******* rock music:
who let you in here, to lumber
about the lambs like
Putin and Crimea ??
why do you bother
introducing sophomores to
Oedipus and pronouncing the
center O (like it
******* matters; linguistics are
more organic than
carbon-based chemistry) or
teaching seniors of
Two Vast & Trunkless Legs of Stone
standing alone in the desert,
artifice of arrogance just as
graduation and self-congratulatory
partying and revelry and diploma-framing.
I think I know:
masochism is your middle name, and
maybe, after all, it is worth it,
when a collegiate who barely remembers
your face and never remembered
the color of your eyes, or his homework,
name drops Hemingway and Faulkner
to a college professor, blossoming an
argument, and later, a companionship.
maybe, after all, it is worth it.
May 19, 2014
May 19, 2014 at 11:38 AM UTC
I have nothing to share
You take everything
To walk home alone
With nothing
No friend
No dollar
No nothing
That is it
When you want it
That is all
When the breakfast cloud
Breaks
We act until
The morning
Takes what you wished
The night would end up
In fight
And break
Lo' the heart
Her wretched ways
All your desires make you
Wish you had the *****
To fight for what
You wanted
Take the hopes of
Your life
And wrap them
In a Las Vegas Dream
Take your dreams
And Wrap Them
In the Steam of Dreams
End all to be
All
With the thicket
That Faulkner wrote
About
A stream
That melted with
The forefathers
Drifting dream
A wish for
A sort of
Faith for
Mankind
To be lost by the
Monotony of morons obsessed
With their own crusted over
Pillows
We are lost
Towards Hollywood
Quick Fame
Satisfaction
Meaninglessness
We were not meant
To be
Remembered
We were meant
To be
Forgotten
Remembered
Then
Recalled
For soon
Advanced
Upon
Mar 2, 2012
Mar 2, 2012 at 7:28 PM UTC
Slow pains sparkle like tin pans most nights
Most nights when we sleep on our sides and our wrists
Yours; mine; I cannot tell without more pause but
All the same they are inescapable yet effervescent.
[If Faulkner uses abject one more time I will...]
There are troubles with this tongue and this teeth
And I cannot express them now but in time
In time, all the mistakes will be crossed out.
Jun 3, 2010
Jun 3, 2010 at 8:30 PM UTC
People say,
"There are other fish in the sea."
I say,
**** you;**
she was my sea."
Mar 29, 2014
Mar 29, 2014 at 11:26 PM UTC
I’m the Caucasian black guy
Crying out for equal rights.
I’m the white faced coolie
You murdered in the night
So you didn’t have to pay
His salary on the railroad.
I’m the unrelated relative
Of Faulkner’s Tom Joad.
I’m the underappreciated
The **** of many quips.
I’ve known the well of bitterness
And have taken countless sips.
The names they’ve called me
Seldom amounted to praise.
I’m the one they passed over
When giving out a raise.
I was told to not expect
To advance in any job.
I was told to just agree
And to let my silent head bob.
I knew all the best was there
For a man who had a wife.
Otherwise I must do without
The rewards in everyday life.
But we must sleep and eat
And have a roof over our heads.
So we cut up and act the fool
And eat the cheapest breads.
We act like the jokes don’t hurt
While we bleed inside our souls.
We make the best of what we have
And compromise our own goals.
Yes, we’re the modern house slaves
Regardless of the color of our skin.
We’re expected to be satisfied because
They think God has made us from sin.
It’s one of those shameful moments
That blot the history of our planet.
We’re dealt with as if we were ****
And told we simply must stand it.
Mar 12, 2016
Mar 12, 2016 at 12:51 AM UTC
“If I could only paint,” the despondent poet said,
“If I could only paint, I would surely knock’em dead.
Like Rembrandt or Picasso, like Whistler or Van Gogh.
I’d open up a gallery, and everyone would see
The pictures that I’d painted and they would envy me!”
“If I could write a novel,” the painter empathized.
“If I could write a novel, then I’d have realized,
My dream to be like Hemingway, Faulkner or Thoreau.
I’d be in all the book stores, my books would be top shelf,
And I would finally know that I’d made something of myself.”
“If I could hit a baseball,” the author next agreed,
“If I could hit a baseball, I’d be in the major league.
I’d hit home runs like Willie Mays, and run like Shoeless Joe.
The fans would come to all the parks to see me lead the team,
The kids would want my autograph, and all the crowd would scream.”
“If I was smart,” the ballplayer said, “And studied law in school,”
“Then I could be the President, and I’d make all the rules.
I’d be as great as Washington, FDR, and Honest Abe.
I would meet with foreign diplomats, and help the world find peace,
All America would know my name; Play ‘Hail to the Chief’”
“If I could write a poem,” the President bowed his head,
“If I could write a poem, my ego would be fed.
I’d describe the beauty of a flower, and the winds that softly blow;
I’d keep my poems in a journal, let no one ever see,
And be content in knowing that I had done it just for me.”
pwl 3/7/03
Feb 17, 2015
Feb 17, 2015 at 1:03 AM UTC
We are assembled here
this May evening of 2006
to celebrate our own
Leading Lady of
American Letters.
The tall, slender author,
her classic looks
so reminiscent of
ladies in an elegant
Victorian era salon,
reads one of her
earlier short stories
at the Free Library
of Philadelphia.
She speaks with such
feeling and precision,
we close our eyes
and envision her
youthful heroine's
anxiety and naivete
in that familiar setting
of an upstate
New York town.
Later, in another room
of the library,
I will meet her
too briefly at a
book signing.
She stands to greet me,
smiling so pleasantly
and asks, "What do you do?"
in the friendliest way.
I reply "I'm a
proofreader," somewhat
embarrassed at my
flimsy Dickensian
credential.
This was my own
personal brush
with greatness
and I find myself
tongue-tied with
hero worship.
She is gracious
and fragile, exquisitely
feminine and warm and
I would learn I was
not the only groupie
in the library throng
that evening -
a multitude of fans
lined up to meet
the literary icon.
Joyce Carol Oates,
as her critics
rightly rhapsodize,
is a force of nature,
a uniquely powerful
writer whose brilliance
rests not just in the
singularly American
landscapes she paints,
not just in the
idiosyncratic
characters who people
her storytelling,
but in the creation
of rich personal
moments of intimacy,
of revelation and insight;
she makes us witnesses,
eavesdroppers, to her
characters' deepest
thoughts, longings,
her voice reaches out
to us from the pages,
a voice as poignant
as a mother's in the
gloom of night,
reading to her children
just before prayers
are murmured and
sleep tiptoes in.
The path of
literary greatness
leads us to her heroes...
James Joyce, Emily Bronte,
Thoreau, Faulkner,
Flaubert, Hemingway;
like each one of these
celebrated wordsmiths,
she is an iconoclast,
an original...
unique,
incomparable,
our own
quintessential
national treasure.
Jul 29, 2015
Jul 29, 2015 at 4:59 PM UTC
Perhaps they were right putting love into books.
Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.
— William Faulkner
Faulkner said that maybe love
cannot live outside of libraries
If his assessment is accurate
then I want to pen our passion
on every piece of paper I possess
I will produce poetry proclaiming
the severity of our seductions
And scribble you and I between
asterisks on the pages of periodicals
so we can be among the stars as well
Darling, I will turn all of our dates
into diary entries and change the
definitions for words like brilliance and
glorious into descriptions of us
When I’m through, we will
have the most eternal
love stories around
Apr 18, 2016
Apr 18, 2016 at 5:09 PM UTC
Poe--Whitman--
how I cradle your aesthetic!
I sing my body in electrical wires
& hurry the darkness in,
as it is late.
Ms Dickinson,
your fly is now upon my window,
perhaps teasing me at the
sound of my pleas.
Where are you?
Ginsberg you're not talking
to me about god & beauty & life;
Neither shall the
romantic maniacs, nor any
prissy royalty who loved living
their wealth.
Mr. Frost I choose life at the dead end!
Mr. Faulkner I choose to hate you!
Mr. Bukowski I'm sorry you couldn't make it for coffee
you wouldn't have enjoyed the
waitresses anyway.
Neruda, you taught me
nothing of love--you should have--
& W.C. Williams
reading you would defeat
the purpose of trying to die, so as much as it pains me
I'll have to pass,
maybe tomorrow though.
May 12, 2013
May 12, 2013 at 4:00 PM UTC
my head is cloudy I need alcohol,
why am I not drunk,
beware of spyware when the
entire network is composed of spyware
the internet runs on spyware
I should be drunk
mothers I'm too lazy to go out to the liquor store; picking upp & dating anorexic girls outside of TJ Maxx telling them how good they look
I don't need it going for a walk in the park;
those girls are in their graves along w/ those days that bad but it would be tasty right about now
the cache of naked Jennifer Lawrence photos was leaked deliberately to turn men off the naked female body
that was right before #MeToo basically said women
aren't **** anymore
oh, those days are gone
we have crossed our Victorian thesh
hold where what was once is no more
bikinis are embarrassing mmm breeding
Manchurian Candidates
the concept of cyberwars is stupid : how to wage psychological propaganda
superimposed on weak ******* pictures new prophets have been born oh, yeh, I need some hot jazzz
where there s none, Chet Bake r
ought to do me; working on a computer, computers, not programming code
just trying to get decent literature
out of a complex espionage machine that turns the most brilliant poet into a hack; I can see Faulkner & Dostoyevsky trying to use a computer & defenestrating
it like Galileo;
although I think Tolstoy & Shakespeare would
get the hang of it pretty easily;
imagine Socrates using a Mac..
it's like making love to a girl w/ Down
Syndrome , which may not sound bad but
computers are no smarter than the Magic Markers we used to
write on walls before facebook came along; sartorially & in every other way
Mark Zuckerberg
isn't smarter than a Magic Marker;
May 14, 2018
May 14, 2018 at 10:58 PM UTC
"I said, there is home."
to nobody.
different names never changed
a **** thing.
we could see no people
to/who/that learn how idle
doesn't mean "still".
they've made a god of progress;
progress is toothpaste in a sink.
who couldve sown those ideas
together had they not been
all blinking buzzing neon sign
in the window of the page?
probably quite alot of folks
had they not been so busy
wiping dried blue Colgate off
of porcelain.
simple, remember?
so it goes.
always.
dosey doe down long hallways,
around puddles of ****
singing songs long faded
to ambient noise.
please, mumble a myth for the void to posion.
the void in your avoidance.
the void in the poignancy.
the void on the points of stolen steak knives stuck in the hearts of the strigoi
shuffling outside our windows
day and night.
drip gold from the mouths of memorial statues,
we need that.
badly.
Feb 2, 2021
Feb 2, 2021 at 4:27 PM UTC
In the great wasteland of my youth
I buried all my loved ones I'd slaughtered with my own hands
Every girl who ever loved me I shot right between the eyes
& All my brothers I knocked unconscious and burned alive
Why?
Why must I senselessly sever every human connection I've ever made?
Faulkner told me to **** my darlings and so eagerly I obeyed
In the great wasteland of my youth
I alone drift wraithlike from nothing to nothing
Just me and my ******* poems
Which I deliver like resounding benedictions to cathedrals of the ghosts I've created
Lord knows I always wanted a captive audience
In the great wasteland of my youth
I am king of nothing but broken bones
Broken hearts & broken homes
I rule scorched Earth and tattered sky
I command the cruel seas to rise & I command beauty to die
I am king of nothing
In the great wasteland of my youth
I am a demon of some repute
Seeking lovers incapable of love or objective truth
And objective truth I've only found in bottles of pills
Downed by the lovely girls I've later killed
Sacrificed to the emotional gas chamber of my bohemian holocaust
In the great wasteland of my youth
I've destroyed all the places I could hide
& am now forced to comprehend this monster inside
And what I've always suspected has been present all along
Brothers and sisters, I am an atomic bomb
Nov 4, 2014
Nov 4, 2014 at 12:42 AM UTC
I'm spinning around
I'm moving at the speed of sound...
I dance
I prance
I listen to Delerium
In a trance
I jump up in the air like I'm skating on ice..
Imagine a "V"
I touch my toes ~ it feels nice
Energy pulsating through my veins
I'm spinning around...
I don't ever want to touch the ground
I go for a run
when I feel spun
(To the a** hole shrink that said I'd never be William Faulkner)
That's not my style
that's not who I want to be...
n' you're never going to know
what it's like to be free
As I'm spinning around
My vision is clear/I truly see...
You're not in my body..
You're not me.
Sep 10, 2014
Sep 10, 2014 at 1:56 PM UTC
So, you've been to Venice,
kissed at sunset on the gondolas,
sipped Merlot at
Ristorante Albergaccio.
You're very well-read,
you know Tennyson and Tolstoy,
Fitzgerald and Faulkner
("Always dream..."
tattooed on your rib).
You lived in museums for a year,
you spoke with Van Gogh,
his ear turned toward you as
you crawled among the Irises.
My dear, it is impossible
that you are a realist.
It is impossible that you
speak not of love.
It is impossible
that you have forgotten.
Jun 25, 2019
Jun 25, 2019 at 6:57 AM UTC
Hungry for something
I have never seen before,
my eager eyes scour
pages of books.
Opening several books,
I marvel at the lives and stories
of true artisans of their time:
Xiao Hong, Joy Harjo, and William Faulkner.
I stare at each page,
trying to digest
every word
and imitate their style;
however, my mind draws blank
the moment the blank document
reflects back into
my empty mind.
Suddenly
intrusive thoughts rise
to the forefront of
my consciousness.
“How dare you think
you could ever become
a hero like them
without a single reader?”
I finally surmise that
I’m not a poet,
artist, or
author.
I don’t have the
soulless apartment flat
in the middle of a bustling city,
finding muse in every corner of life.
Nor do I have the freedom
to explore outside’s
blank landscapes
as there’s a spike of missing women reports here.
Instead,
I live in my empty childhood home,
bedroom walls plastered with heroes from video games
as I hide away from my mom’s boyfriend.
Afraid of both the outside and inside world,
I remain still.
I am no writer.
I am no hero.
Sep 6, 2020
Sep 6, 2020 at 11:23 PM UTC