"katharine" poems
In purple checked dresses we are confronted
Behind a piano sits ‘Miss Creak’ head of house
She has one bad eye, unfixable from childhood
But plays beautifully perched on an oakwood
And fabric stool. This is our secondary school.
On the wall above the piano is a framed print
‘Madonna of the Meadows’ by the artist Bellini
I pushed a drawing of a couple intertwining
Under ‘her’ door knowing she never would have
But a boy may have felt affection for ‘that’ affliction.
Here we all ate meals, did fashion shows and sang
I was glad my dress was purple not orange or red
Went better with my blue eyes and blonde hair
The rest of the school diveded into coloured checks
To represent Shakespearean female characters.
Just opened in Wandsworth a new comprehensive
Serving all abilities, behaviours and nationalities
Cordelia, Beatrice, Juliet, Katharine,
Portia, Rosalind, Olivia, Viola a rather unsuitable
Vision for such an uptake of adolescent froth.
Miss Creak was, kindly, I wish I had always been.
Oct 22, 2018
Oct 22, 2018 at 10:59 AM UTC
181 to 200 of 3251 Poets
«891011»Viewsshow detailshide detailsSort by
Joelle Biele
To Katharine: At Fourteen Months
Veronica Patterson
Marry Me
Rick Campbell
Heart
Mary-Sherman Willis
The Laughter of Women
Sharmila Voorakkara
For the Tattooed Man
Max Mendelsohn
Ode to Marbles
Jonathan Holden
Car Showroom
David Tucker
The Dancer
Today’s News
Marianne Boruch (b. 1950)
It includes the butterfly and the rat, the ****
Some dreamily smoke cigarettes, some track
Trish Dugger
Spare Parts
Carrie Shipers
Medical History
Love Poem for Ted Neeley In Jesus Christ Superstar
Steven Huff
Safe
Lee McCarthy
Santa Paula
William Kloefkorn
"I stand alone at the foot "
Jackson Wheeler
How Good Fortune Surprises Us
Steven Orlen (1942–2010)
Three Teenage Girls: 1956
In the House of the Voice of Maria Callas
Steven Schneider
Chanukah Lights Tonight
Jessy Randall
Superhero Pregnant Woman
Anne Pierson Wiese (b. 1964)
Inscrutable Twist
Columbus Park
Regina DeSalva
Snip Your Hair
«891011»
Mar 13, 2014
Mar 13, 2014 at 9:02 PM UTC
The old man groans as he gets up,
Rising from the chair is a job.
He notices now he is getting older
His head is developing a bob.
Not quite Katharine Hepburn,
Not a nod as much as a bounce.
It’s not a palsy, more of a tic.
It’s not really that pronounced.
And stairs seem to be an enemy
They don’t match the cadence.
Between the risers and his feet
There just too much distance.
Or other times, they are too short
And rise up as an ugly surprise
Not coinciding with what he sees
With his own aging naked eyes.
The man complains about TV
How they are mumbling too much.
They seem to be whispering
Or using foreign words and such.
And when he turns the sound up
The action scenes hurt his ears.
A ***** trick to play on people
Who are a bit advanced in years.
The old man gets disgruntled
When people outside make noise
Like they are some kind of teenagers;
But they’re adults, not girls and boys.
Here it is ten o’clock at night
When decent people are asleep.
What kind of schedule is this
For decent people to have to keep?
What is he to make of the music
These young people like to play?
It has to be some kind of abuse
To use a guitar in that way.
In his day there was melody
And words you could understand.
The noise they make is like a collision
Between a dump truck and a sedan.
The old man grumbles in frustration
That things have not stayed the same.
He would write a letter to the President
If he could figure out who to blame.
But one thing sure, he always insists,
It didn’t use to be this way before.
Now a kind of anarchy seems to exist.
Nov 30, 2015
Nov 30, 2015 at 2:58 AM UTC
Not being able to decide between
Audrey
and
Katharine
is not a real problem, my friend!
The hardness of life begins
when you meet
Bette
and
Grace.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAO8vlvPS88]
PS:
have you seen
Lauren
and
Greta?
They might have changed their phone number.
Feb 9, 2017
Feb 9, 2017 at 4:46 AM UTC
This man has a gun pointed at me,
that extends from thumb to index in an L,
at me from his hip.
I can't see much through
my hand. Reflexive, if dampened
by a gristle of curiosity.
Weight shifts from foot
to toe to ball to other
foot. He doesn't speak
to me; to the floor,
but his gesture comes at me
through the atmosphere or
whatever analogous high ground he possesses.
The tip of the pink barrel
menaces like a treble scream
or a broken blackboard.
Shift. Shift and a look around.
It must be done quickly, he
looks at her to ask permission.
I imagine her too cold
for response: atoms
held in hexagons to keep
that inevitable crack from
toppling the salty gravity.
However they must speak
through the superaudible
for her stolid fluidity
resolves his change
(changes his resolve)
and his eyes stop dead on
me.
The laughter of that trigger
rustles through skin
and plays with bone.
Feb 7, 2010
Feb 7, 2010 at 2:40 PM UTC
You told me once that I look like Audrey Hepburn
And walk like Katharine
That I am, in every way, a creature of another world.
They want, you said, gesturing widely around you,
the smallest pastoral pleasures: clothes, money, husbands
You, you said, looking at me, only me
"You want romance,
adventure,
the Stars.
I would run my own feet raw looking for every treasure in the universe
to lay at yours"
May 29, 2013
May 29, 2013 at 9:41 PM UTC
I sat under the quiet trees all the restless afternoon,
Dreaming of what had been and never more could be:
Bitten the clouds, the declining canopy of air
Weary with insects weary with bats.
Black days black nights.
The benches of the dead set out, the dining dead.
At eight I rose, bitten the clouds,
A dog barked dead and long
Down the river of dead sights.
The thistle over which the dead goldfinch dreams of seeds;
The crimson road that marks the accident.
In courts, in currencies of plenty, wherever you are,
Do you hear the frogs croak, “Katharine”?
Nov 30, 2017
Nov 30, 2017 at 7:07 PM UTC
a charming lady
with the most romantic exotic name
sends me a letter
December 2011
online at poemhuntdown.com
once, twice
a note of love
how magical!
she’s enslaved my heart
asking for my reply
via email
and she’ll send me her photo
I quickly resolve
to pen a reply
to put loveless 2011 to rest
and start 2012 with romance
and so I search her page online
and she has comments
on other poets too
But Oh, woe is me!
my love
has approached these others too
with the same message of love:
Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938)
Katharine Mansfield (1888-1923)
Hakim Abu al-Qasim Mansur Firdowsi
(932 A. D. and 941 A. D)
Oh, my love! my love!
do not go unto them
I will email you
and we will love each other
till we both rest in one grave
but you must promise
never to visit the other men;
and as for Katharine Mansfield -
I think
you picked the wrong man
Feb 3, 2012
Feb 3, 2012 at 3:28 PM UTC
My most dear lord, king and husband,
The hour of my death now drawing on, the tender love I owe you forceth me, my case being such, to commend myself to you, and to put you in remembrance with a few words of the health and safeguard of your soul which you ought to prefer before all worldly matters, and before the care and pampering of your body, for the which you have cast me into many calamities and yourself into many troubles. For my part, I pardon you everything, and I wish to devoutly pray God that He will pardon you also. For the rest, I commend unto you our daughter Mary, beseeching you to be a good father unto her, as I have heretofore desired. I entreat you also, on behalf of my maids, to give them marriage portions, which is not much, they being but three. For all my other servants I solicit the wages due them, and a year more, lest they be unprovided for. Lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things.
Katharine the Quene.
7 January 1536
Feb 13, 2016
Feb 13, 2016 at 2:10 PM UTC
In a garden that edged the farm
With cast iron railings as a fence
And windy plants that claimed the bars
Stood a little girl.
Dark her hair and dark her eyes
Against a short and checkered dress
There she was with a birthday cake
On a table on the ground.
Bigger than she herself
This cake two tiers high
Decorated in scalloped lace and yellow
Piped flowers.
Pretty little daughter of mine
Though only two
You smiled away with gladness
And I, so loved you .
Love Mummy x
Mar 10, 2018
Mar 10, 2018 at 6:53 PM UTC
Oh, you have been so lovely and so lost
While May arrived to purple flowers,
Moisten lilies and the early roses show. But no
Skimmering of joy leapt up to gild the glory of those flowers.
Martins built (so suddenly they came)
And all the swallows, too,
But elegies made cloudy dimness glow in heaven’s blue,
And then the pageant May descanted Katharine,
And Katharine’s untrue.
Nov 30, 2017
Nov 30, 2017 at 6:55 PM UTC
Bigger than every stage
she commanded
Greater than the sum
of her parts
Braver than the men
who adored her
Sharper than the image
—that endures
(Tribute To Hepburn-Bryn Mawr College: May, 2023)
May 27, 2023
May 27, 2023 at 11:07 AM UTC
I'm kinda fond of Henry Fonda,
on Golden Pond he played
a blinder,and
Katharine Hepburn,turned
me inside out,
without a doubt
the best film that I ever saw.
Oct 5, 2014
Oct 5, 2014 at 5:50 PM UTC
I remember that first excitement
Flowing through my heart
Pumping the life within
The baby soon to become
A son or daughter.
And I walk in gathered dress
Blue it was, with broderie anglaise
On a square yoke, falling
To above my knee
The doors slid open
Welcoming me in
The reception of life.
Recalling simply kindness,
A resplendent building,
Efficiency.
Open that year, 1970,
All ready for me.
And she was born there
Named after a ward
Katharine Maria
Seven pounds and eight ounces,
Dark hair and eyes,
And I felt loved.
Today, forty seven years on
And where love flourished
Weeds grow
Along the corridors
Of power, the *****
Toilets, empty beds,
No one wants to be
Here anymore.
We all left for home births
Our husbands and families.
Was the decline our fault?
Did our selfish desires
Perpetuate indifference?
I stood and cried
Watching the perfection
Of an idea wash away.
Love Mary x
Jul 2, 2018
Jul 2, 2018 at 2:29 PM UTC