"hopkins" poems
They print their lives on a price tag,
Those big fat numbers,
All they do is brag.
My daughter’s a neurosurgeon,
Graduated from Johns Hopkins,
Saving lives by the hundreds.
My son a number-crunching accountant,
A career that keeps his wallet thick,
And his pockets filled.
They wonder what I do,
I tell them I work with words.
They gasp,
Eyes widen.
I tell them that,
I can count the spaces between adjacent letters in a word,
String words together to build a sentence,
Layer each sentence above another like bricks,
Place a single powerful mark of punctuation in between,
The glue that holds the bricks intact and forms a wall.
A wall of stanzas,
Connected by commas and semicolons.
A wall of paragraphs,
Big enough to block numbers out.
Because words fill souls while numbers fill pockets.
Words are immeasurable.
Infinite.
Nov 8, 2018
Nov 8, 2018 at 11:22 AM UTC
This morning we jogged early
I was back in my flat by six-thirty
From my tenth floor view of the Charles River basin,
The morning was incandescently flushed by the peach-colored sun.
The transparent clouds seemed stylistically stained, artfully workshopped, which offered a softened, Tiffany glass effect wholly worthy of worship.
I can’t stop to admire it. I’m jamming things into suitcases.
Cramming things into boxes, giving things away.
I had a second interview Monday afternoon, for Johns Hopkins med school. They put the question to me:
“The semester starts in 18 days - can you do that?”
“Yes,” I replied, and just like that, I'm a Blue Jay.
Of course, I had to withdraw from the masters program but Harvard gave me a full (95K) refund - I think they’re more excited about my med school admission than I am.
I’m not afraid of discordant notes.
They change the landscape.
Take us to new emotional places.
Any major work is going to have them.
.
.
A song for this:
Hang on Little Tomato by Pink Martini
It's Amazing by Jem
Jul 31, 2025
Jul 31, 2025 at 12:45 AM UTC
I see a pattern Everywhere:
Circles and globes (three dimensional circles);
Shiny rings of fire.
Countless manifestations of this same shape.
Star-spangled galaxies wheeling through the sky:
That half-globe dome.
Earth, in circular orbit (more or less) around the Sun,
Escorted by the Moon.
Days give way to seasons,
Repeating every year.
Groundhog Days becoming
Groundhog Creations
Perhaps.
The list seems endless:
Hopkins’ dapples,
Planets, craters, cyclones, anti-cyclones, sea currents,
***** apples, oranges, nuts, potatoes,
Teardrops, heads, faces, eyes, mouths,
Holes!
Coins, bin lids, and plates;
Sunflowers, daisies, pansies,
Rings of mushrooms,
Circling birds of prey,
A cat curled in a circle,
Like a foetus.
Life as we know it
Is a circle
And a cycle too.
Birth, Death, Blossom, Wilt.
Reincarnation?
Renewal?
Clock-faced Time itself.
Eternity might be a circle,
Infinity the same.
Maybe even God,
Some way.
Perhaps we still are building God,
For Him or Her to travel back through time
Like Doctor Who
To Create The Big Bang,
And form this expanding Universe,
Thus taking us full circle.
Or maybe the Universe will fold back in upon itself,
Producing yet one more Big Bang,
In an endless cycle,
Of Big Bangs,
Amongst this ever circling
Multiverse.
Paul Butters
© PB, 14th February, 2011 at 14.00, in Humberside.
Mar 29, 2011
Mar 29, 2011 at 4:14 AM UTC
As the wet wind hums its way through our two tower six-cylinder apartment complex. Birds fall from their naked winter wept branches, braced by stiff bones, mapped out in Alexandria, carrying notes from El Salvador. The corner market is closed, never opened. A hair salon stands in its place, it wrings out the "R's" from a Philadelphia warshing.
And like every night, hot air cakes on an extra layer of indecipherable red dots up the arms and around the neck, minute pustules of hypochondria that steal my finger tips from the keyboard. I scratch and tip them, looking under their fiery scarlet caps for, I-don't-know-what disease. Paul says It's that magic school bus melanoma, typhoid drip, it comes at you from a computer screen and eats at your nervous system until you've got the wambles.
Tuesday's used to be the worst, until I OWNED THAT **** I make a pronoun out of aluminum foil and wear it as a hat on a first date. Tinder is not bad for conceptual art projects. I carry it within me like an anodyne complex, out into the frozenness; into my mouth the air comes around my teeth, behind my uvula until winter freezes my voice and I am breathless.
I abandon my miniature house to enter the pyramidal pinetum to the North. Wild paradise shrubs gather with songless animal noises watching as I take naked photographs of my father to preserve his body from anything less than his great immortal end. He lives on black moss and water from a nearby pond,
he authors the face of Anthony Hopkins, thrown about, another casualty of fervid and blurry dreaming.
May 2, 2014
May 2, 2014 at 3:30 PM UTC
(Song title from Lightnin’ Hopkins’ catalogue, by Whittaker)
He stalks the parks; staring; leering,
Smiling contented,
Hiding behind his façade of walking his dog,
He reveals his true darkness,
As around the roundabout he ambles and strolls,
Looking at the children in their innocent poses,
We crouches by a boy alone in the shadows,
A boy who is happy to sit down and doodle,
He tells this stalker “let me play with your poodle”,
The menace moves in.
Aug 28, 2012
Aug 28, 2012 at 11:37 AM UTC
Old blue is snorting bath salt-
In the same bathroom where he nursed the only battle wound I’ve ever had-
I had swung on the prince of Hopkins county-
My knuckle caught the crystal of his watch-
Pop and howl, edge and line-
Thrown askew by force-
(my) good young blood ferried wolf flowers from one side of the sink-
to the other-
Time kept-
Bone acquiesced-
Verity-
Old blue would tell you that he only remembers contrition-
While humming the Gardenia Waltz.
Nov 30, 2011
Nov 30, 2011 at 10:43 AM UTC
June bugs crash into screens
mosquitoes whine
to get in by any means
dogs howl, frogs croak
like the bass fiddle
in Lightning Hopkins’ blues.
Sticky moisture from the bayou
envelopes, and soaks through,
permeates still night air
like the sad strains of Claude’s La Mer.
Growing up in southern climes
slowed days, stretched years
put me on the edge of tears
yearning for escape from there
from dominion of church
and Mama’s monarch perch.
Hints of her softness
were so rare and spare
that when she let us smooth her hair
we forgot how parched were we
for a trace of this tender intimacy
on summer nights’ scorch
spent on our homestead porch.
Aug 19, 2021
Aug 19, 2021 at 9:22 AM UTC
Father, I saw you last night
In a twilight dream you strolled through the streets of Shiraz,
followed by a fluttering butterfly
Passed the mosques and minarets,
turquoise blue and blood red
The cypress trees and poets' beds wept for you -
and their tears dropped like pomegranate seeds on the dry desert sand.
Father, I saw you yesterday
In a dusk-lit dream you walked through the streets of Baltimore,
followed by a fluttering butterfly
Passed the Hopkins dome and Ravens' home,
steamed crab orange and Oriole black
The patients in hospital beds cried to you -
and their tears fell flat on the soft O.C. sand.
Dear friend, Baba,
Aman, Vafa
We see you every day in an azalea's bloom
You live on in each grandchild's heart
You give our lives hope
In the early spring sun and the late autumn moon,
you breathe again
In your Akhtar's sweet smile, in Taraneh's kind style,
your heart beats again.
Father, I felt you last night
In a deep, dark dream you spoke to me
and with an angel's hands, dried my tears for me
Then hugged me with great joy,
and I read you this poem -
To my father
From his boy.
-Arman Taheri (7/10/2010)
Sep 27, 2013
Sep 27, 2013 at 12:29 PM UTC
With this string
I do tie
your world
to mine
With this ring
I promise you
will be mine
With this ring
I engage
your world
to mine
With this ring
I am marrying you
With my heart
I will always love you.
By Connie Hopkins
May 18, 2021
May 18, 2021 at 8:20 AM UTC
Dom Frederick's book
of the old abbey
I had read
the abbey closed
by Henry VIII,
the new abbey
was my sanctuary
since my first arrival,
et habitaverunt ibi,
George sickened
for the warmer weather
the cold saddened him,
she kissed my pecker
to a new life
some other guy's wife,
for the sake of silence
we ought to abstain
even from good talk
Benedict said,
I picked a cabbage
for the midday lunch
and smelt the mint nearby,
birdsong woke
the gardens and me,
Hugh him of thin frame
moaned of the number
of books on my shelf
even the Hopkins poems
got his goat,
Dieu est à mes yeux,
in my sight
and what I saw,
on the seashore
by the abbey
we threw stones
along the incoming tide
and Dom Joe(Bunny dear) smiled,
and again she said
deeper deeper,
we become what we love
and who we love shapes
what we become
said Clare (saint) that is,
the French peasant monk
cut the tall grass
with a skill
I didn't have
his scythe swung wide,
travailler à prier
he said,
Dom Patrick spoke softly
about the sweeping
and washing
of the refectory floor
and how it was done
and I did as he said,
God is the indwelling
not the transient cause
of all things Gareth said
quoting Spinoza
as we walked
from the abbey orchard
to the cloister,
I kissed her *******
each in turn
as she had said
in her big double bed,
the bell tolled
from the church
for the office of Terce,
Dio è nelle mie orecchie
the Italian monk said,
I watched the monks walk
towards the church
and I walked also,
I am lost I mused
where to go?
Feb 25, 2016
Feb 25, 2016 at 4:17 PM UTC
As the wet wind hums its way through our two tower six-cylinder apartment complex. Birds fall from their naked winter wept branches, braced by stiff bones, mapped out in Alexandria, carrying notes from El Salvador. The corner market is closed, never opened. A hair salon stands in its place, it wrings out the "R's" from a Philadelphia warshing.
And like every night, hot air cakes on an extra layer of indecipherable red dots up the arms and around the neck, minute pustules of hypochondria that steal my finger tips from the keyboard. I scratch and tip them, looking under their fiery scarlet caps for, I-don't-know-what disease. Paul says It's that magic school bus melanoma, typhoid drip, it comes at you from a computer screen and eats at your nervous system until you've got the wambles.
Tuesday's used to be the worst, until I OWNED THAT **** I make a pronoun out of aluminum foil and where it as a hat on a first date. OKCupid's not bad for conceptual art projects. I carry it within me like an anodyne complex, out into the guzzling wind, the air that comes into my mouth and looks for any breath within me that it can go out of me with, and I'm breathless.
I abandon my miniature house to enter the pyramidal pinetum to the North. Wild paradise shrubs gather with songless animal noises watching as I take naked photographs of my father to preserve his body from anything less than his great immortal end. He lives on black moss and water from a nearby bourn,
he's the mien of an Anthony Hopkins, living in a hologram I saw in my dream last night.
Feb 10, 2014
Feb 10, 2014 at 6:25 AM UTC
A poem, to me:
A statement, speech, a view.
Onomatopoeic metaphor
About me and you.
Plotted and planned,
Or just a thing I do.
From instress to inscape,
Hopkins-like,
So very, very true.
A riotous myriad of colours,
Scented roses,
Touches new.
In verses and stanzas,
Pocket pictures you see;
Iambic rhythms and pulses,
Traditional verses,
Or free.
Time for tea.
Jan 22, 2011
Jan 22, 2011 at 5:21 AM UTC
NEVER MIND WHAT THE ****** SHEEP ARE SAYING!
First sheep to second sheep:
"Maaaa!"
which with
subtitles on
comes out as
"He just hasn't got his grandfather's legs!"
Second sheep to first sheep:
"Baaaa!"
Thank God for subtitles
"No...nor the Sheedy stamina!"
And indeed I have
inherited none of these famous attributes.
I, a shortsighted
puny bookworm
not taking to
this cross-country running lark.
The famous runner doesn't run
in my side of the family.
Early morning spiderwebs
bejewel the furze bushes.
A cuckoo calls.
Sheep bleat.
I recite poetry
to the yellow furze
passing slowly by me
I madly in love with Hopkins' words.
"I caught this morning(puff pantpANT!)
morning's(aghhhhh!)glory...!"
"Oh jaysus...he's off on the poetry again!"
first sheep moans to second sheep.
"Poetry at his age..I just don't get it!"
Second sheep bemoans the fact.
I pay no attention to this
sheep commentary.
Hurl Hopkins
at the world.
Slog through the pain
and mud.
"Nothing is so
(gaspgASP!)beautiful as Spring -" I yell!
I become a dot in the distance
of this misty Curragh morning.
Run on into the blue
of these my teenage times.
"The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness;"
"Bè bè" first sheep
to second sheep in Dutch.
"Meh meh!" second sheep
to first in Japanese.
So the sheep I see
are studying foreign languages.
But I don't hear them
and anyway
someone's turned
the subtitles off.
Apr 22, 2019
Apr 22, 2019 at 4:37 PM UTC
I write an evening by the
waterfront with candlelight
Freemasons paving the
boardwalk. In the
morning the newspaper
prints my biography and
I laugh cacophonously.
I stand in my treehouse
and scream a note of
finality. I learn how to
synchronize and mispronounce
waning and soon I
realize.
I have left my voicebox
in my other pants.
Ulysses sang the blues today
but the sirens had more soul.
"So wrap your head in a scarf,"
I say! "Paint your house grey
and your churches red."
Jesus sang the blues today
but the sinners had more heart.
Dare ye burn a cross or
run afoul or sob for the mountain?
Then name yourself an apostle
and head for the hills of your
heaven above.
I sang the blues today
but the liars-
The plane lands with a thunk.
I roll my window shade up.
Sand turns to grain and
rainbows to tornadoes.
I have arrived.
I go to the gun shop and empty
the cash register before it is
too late. My uncle calls from
prison to wish me a happy
Boxing Day. I rent an apartment,
a car, a television, a diploma.
My thoughts are scattered and
my words ring through my head,
but these blues shan't get to
me any longer.
The truth, I decide, is overrated.
I study metaphysics, pataphysics,
and I am going to be sick. Our
hero reads Hopkins and takes
another shot.
Today I stay in bed
and count the cracks
in the ceiling.
May 5, 2011
May 5, 2011 at 1:09 AM UTC
I feel I have done more
than just existed
in my life
Your outlook on life changes
when certain unexpected things happen
things that are out of one's control
When you know
nothing will be different
until the day you die
You tend to live
in the middle
wondering which
way to go
By Connie Hopkins
May 3, 2021
May 3, 2021 at 12:42 AM UTC
When a passing cloud
might meet another
and together unleash
Lightning
On thirsting ground
our significant spark
Strikes
Bone-brittle tinder
buoyed by the quiet
breeze, an ember
smolders until
Evening wind blows,
carries, smoking wisps
upon its wings into
the forest
Sighs into crackling
summer leaves until
the canopy
burns
So take note of every
passing cloud, because
you never know
Mar 24, 2015
Mar 24, 2015 at 10:50 AM UTC
There is a tide
Roaring up to my toes
As I am glued
To this crummy sand
This sand was God's plan
To bread the ashes
So we can store it in Poseidon's belly
I was the leftovers
From the City Hopkins Dance
Be kind
The sob stories
Are locked up
With the " how do you do's"
And the "I'm feeling fine"
There is a tide
Roaring up to my knees
People need to stop pleading
If they noticed me
Lurking in the shadows
Tied down behind them
They were too busy
With the racket ***** on recess
Maybe I could believe in it
Every white lie
Wiped across their unconcerned faces.
There is a tide
Roaring up to my wounded heart
Yes the heart
The heart that lays in my chest
The same chest that you laid on
Strawberries
That was the last thing I remember
About you
Nov 29, 2014
Nov 29, 2014 at 11:38 AM UTC
I cannot explain the record of my own thoughts
Because a true loving heart rarely ever beats
And a true harmonic harmony rarely ever sings
of those who have died, and those who are long dead
I cannot condone any of my own apologies
Because liars never lie, simply misconstrue the truth
And writers never write, simply misconstrue the words
of those who have died, and those who are long dead
I cannot express any more of my own condolences
Because a funeral is not the proper mourning of the loss
And a wedding is not the proper symbol of the bond
Of those who have died, and those who are long dead
I cannot grasp the false sense of my own sanctity
Because artists always disregard the eyes of creativity
And Optimists always peek through the eyes of negativity
Of those who have died, and those who are long dead
By Asha Hopkins
Mar 3, 2012
Mar 3, 2012 at 4:14 PM UTC
I live in this town
This town that holds my childhood memories
Like you holding my clueless hand at the City Hopkins dance.
You seemed to never let go
Like the grass that stains my Blue, Sky Jeans.
I live in this town
This town that hosted many little league baseball games,
Hosted many right fielders prancing around the blue skies
Picking dandelions off of the ground.
These right fielders are looking at the jet streams in the clear skies
Imagining the streams are people are launching into space.
That’s funny
Its crazier than their dreams
Which are sealed up in their own imaginations
Like the fairytales they read about.
Yet their dreams hold opportunities
Holding like my mom dragging me to the bus on the first day of school.
Heh School
A place where reality slowly kicks in
Notes are passed around with pencils being thrown at the ceiling like darts
The girl I've known since pre K gave me a note today
We used to swing on that tire swing near the golf course
But now she kicks my skins and accuses me of “cootieness”
Meanwhile she is sitting on the front porch
Picking petals off of a sunflower
Does he like me?
Does he like me not?
Does he like me?
I live in this Town
This town that holds many monsters in the closet
Although on the outside of the story shows tinker bell shedding her pixie dust
If you flip through the pages
You will fall down the rabbit hole.
Jun 2, 2014
Jun 2, 2014 at 9:39 PM UTC
Margaret, are you grieving
over Hillary’s unseating?
The victory you expected
was denied, and you are dejected.
Fears and tears are your companions
as you grieve for undocumented transients.
But no tears you shed in years gone by
when bombs fell on children from drones on high.
Nor did you protest the stop and frisk
or needless deaths of black men at risk.
Slaughter in Gaza was no cause
for you to protest, or even to pause
from your Twitter feed or drink at Starbucks.
(The world knows you didn’t give two *****
I sit and watch the roosting chickens
who have returned from the wide world sickened.
Nov 22, 2016
Nov 22, 2016 at 9:53 PM UTC
Myth
by Michael R. Burch
Here the recalcitrant wind
sighs with grievance and remorse
over fields of wayward gorse
and thistle-throttled lanes.
And she is the myth of the scythed wheat
hewn and sighing, complete,
waiting, lain in a low sheaf—
full of faith, full of grief.
Here the immaculate dawn
requires belief of the leafed earth
and she is the myth of the mown grain—
golden and humble in all its weary worth.
I believe I wrote the first version of this poem toward the end of my senior year of high school, around age 18 in late 1976. To my recollection this is my only poem directly influenced by the “sprung rhythm” of Dylan Thomas (moreso than that of Gerard Manley Hopkins). But I was not happy with the fourth line and put the poem aside for more than 20 years, until 1998, when I revised it. But I was still not happy with the fourth line, so I put it aside and revised it again in 2020, nearly half a century after originally writing the poem! Keywords/Tags: sprung, rhythm, myth, gorse, thistles, wheat, mown, grain, sheaf, faith, grief, golden, humble
Apr 8, 2020
Apr 8, 2020 at 5:21 AM UTC
..and it hurts
when the blades flash
and blood spurts.
See the face
watch the glass
then smash the mirror
watch as cracking up you'll pass
into the seething red hot boiling mass of indecisions.
Incising with precision and then it's too late
any hate you ever had against yourself
your mum or dad is dripping then it's gone.
Who said life goes on?
it does maybe
you cannot,did not,would not see
the sympathy that wrote itself upon the stone
when laid at rest
three miles from home
in St. Marys churchyard and you thought life was so hard
it's harder now
but not for you.you flew away
leaving family to pray and cry.
...and the awfulness of wondering why or what they said
that brought you to this
dead end
full stop
final resting place.
But you know different,don't you dear?
there's no resting place for you in here.
Like there,
you're just a square peg in a rounded hole
another lost and weary soul.
..and you're not going anyway to anywhere
no floating through the air like you read in some ghostly story book
no angels come to tuck you in
you're on your own again
but this times it's for keeps.
Jun 28, 2013
Jun 28, 2013 at 4:11 AM UTC
Open your legs and show your class.
Haha.
Sing like Elvis,
Freddie, Pavarotti
Or Shirley Bassey.
Belt out Lennon-McCartney tunes
With Beach Boys Harmonies
And Eric’s Slow Hand Guitar.
Be as Magical as Messi,
Supremely Shakespeare with your plays and poems,
Better still. Hopkins and Keats.
Show the genius of Brian Wilson
And Oscar Wilde.
Not forgetting the Table Tennis Kings
Waldner and Ma Long.
Oh Yes
Be Champion
Be Real Madrid
Or Barca if you prefer.
1970 Brazil
Federer, Navratilova
Or Lewis Hamilton.
Be simply the best,
Like Ali,
Or better still,
Be better than yourself
Day after day.
Just keep improving,
That’s the way.
Let this poem be tagged
“Motivational”
To get you off your backside.
There’s nothing like Achieving
To fill us full of Pride.
Paul Butters
© PB 11\5\2020. Hopkins, Keats and Ali added 14\5.
May 11, 2020
May 11, 2020 at 6:40 AM UTC
There once was a turtle
that was bit by a snake
he crawled up on the sand
so I gave him a hand
for two weeks I fed him
keeping his shell wet
you know what he did
one morning he just up and left!
By Connie Hopkins
May 12, 2022
May 12, 2022 at 1:16 AM UTC
Well, well, well, I would hear my grandson say
That was the first thing I would hear, each and every day
With his big blue eyes looking into mine
I just smiled and listened as if I were hearing
It for the very first time.
By Connie Hopkins
May 11, 2021
May 11, 2021 at 12:03 PM UTC