"lowell" poems
Where the sunlight splashes through
The barely moving branches of the Magnolia tree
It makes a fascinating pattern on the patio.
Amy Lowell wrote of patterns in a lovely, angry verse
When she was writing about how she hated war.
I bend to trace the patterns with my toe
And focus on the possibilities of now
With monster canons rolling down the boulevards
And goose-step imitators marching by
While in the stands a devilishly evil Buddha smiles.
A zephyr gently stirs the leaves
And all the patterns rearrange again
I look at them with half closed eyes
And I can’t find the symmetry
That I saw just an hour ago.
The Kraken still is held by chains
And though he gushes fire and venom
The patterns on the wall contain him
As he thrashes to replace the sun
With a new one of his own creation.
Amy walked a peaceful garden path
In dappled sunlight long ago
Creating lines that live today.
I trundle down a brick-lined walk
And hope that I will have tomorrow.
ljm
Mar 2, 2018
Mar 2, 2018 at 12:00 PM UTC
(I hate poets.
They annoy me deeply.)
I.
There are the balladeers,
Working in service of their inner Service,
(Though, despite the seeming impossibility,
Their hackneyed verse is even worse)
Creating tortuous rhyme
Which slows down labyrinthine narratives
Ending up in some deus ex machine
So implausible that it would make Euripides blush
(Most often courtesy of some unforeseen projectile
Or sudden viral contagion;
Would that their creators meet such a fate!)
II.
I come not to praise the so-called sonneteers,
But to bury them.
They are an earnest lot,
(Lord knows that they are earnest)
And they will make their fourteen lines rhyme
(Though sometimes the rhyme scheme screams for mercy)
And hang the cost.
Though their narratives are head-scratching things,
And their iambs proceed with the steadiness
Of a nonagenarian church pianist
Doing her damndest to fight the wedding march to a draw,
They are content, nay, proud of their work
Because babble rhymes with Scrabble
(Though they are not particularly proficient with the latter,
They have the former down to an art.)
III.
Let us not forget the Buk-zombies,
Those apostles of aphorism,
Most of whom speak of their departed deity
As if he were an old drinking buddy
(Never mind that most of them were two or three
Or perhaps not even a bad idea
In the back seat of some mom’s Buick
When he exited this mortal plane, stage left, even.)
One’s mind is boggled whilst considering
The expanse of the bar required to accommodate
Everyone who would like to
(Or worse, have claimed to)
Buy old Charlie a beer, not that he’d stand for a round.
They are a sullen horde, this lot,
Best dealt with by aiming for the base of the skull.
IV.
Ah, the confessionals, Lord have mercy upon their souls
(For they shall have none upon ours.)
They feel so many things so deeply
As such things have never been felt before
(They have not read their Sexton, their Snodgrass,
Their Lowell, their Pl--well, no,
They have all read their Plath.)
It is, from the moment they arise in the morning
Until such time they set aside their fears and let sleep take them,
All too much for them,
And they bravely face the days
Until such time they care bear to take action
And fling themselves from some convenient precipice.
We should, as a service to them and ourselves,
Ensure the soles of their shoes
Are sufficiently worn and slippery.
(I hate poets.
They annoy me deeply.)
Jan 12, 2017
Jan 12, 2017 at 11:22 AM UTC
For Robert Lowell
This is the time of year
when almost every night
the frail, illegal fire balloons appear.
Climbing the mountain height,
rising toward a saint
still honored in these parts,
the paper chambers flush and fill with light
that comes and goes, like hearts.
Once up against the sky it's hard
to tell them from the stars--
planets, that is--the tinted ones:
Venus going down, or Mars,
or the pale green one. With a wind,
they flare and falter, wobble and toss;
but if it's still they steer between
the kite sticks of the Southern Cross,
receding, dwindling, solemnly
and steadily forsaking us,
or, in the downdraft from a peak,
suddenly turning dangerous.
Last night another big one fell.
It splattered like an egg of fire
against the cliff behind the house.
The flame ran down. We saw the pair
of owls who nest there flying up
and up, their whirling black-and-white
stained bright pink underneath, until
they shrieked up out of sight.
The ancient owls' nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down,
and then a baby rabbit jumped out,
short-eared, to our surprise.
So soft!--a handful of intangible ash
with fixed, ignited eyes.
Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!
O falling fire and piercing cry
and panic, and a weak mailed fist
clenched ignorant against the sky!
2.9k
*We lose so much talent to addiction
Some of you may not care, but I do
This is my tribute to them*
**Alan Wilson
Canned Heat
Jimi Hendrix
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Janis Joplin
Jim Morrison
The Doors
Brian Cole
The Association
Billy Murcia
New York Dolls
Danny Whitten
Crazy Horse
Gram Parsons
The Stooges
Gary Thain
Uriah Heep
Elvis Presley
Gregory Herbert
Blood, Sweat & Tears
Keith Moon
The Who
Sid Vicious
*** Pistols
Lowell George
Little Feat
Jimmy McCulloch
Wings
John Bonham
Led Zeppelin
Darby Crash
Germs
James Honeyman-Scott
Pretenders
Pete Farndon
Pretenders
Paul Gardiner
Tubeway Army
Gary Holton
Heavy Metal Kids
Phil Lynott
Thin Lizzy
Andrew Wood
Mother Love Bone
Brent Mydland
Grateful Dead
Steve Clark
Def Leppard
Johnny Thunders
New York Dolls
David Ruffin
The Temptations
Kristen Pfaff
Hole
Shannon Hoon
Blind Melon
Bradley Nowell
Sublime
John Kahn
Jerry Garcia Band
Jonathan Melvoin
The Smashing Pumpkins
Billy Mackenzie
Associates
West Arkeen
The Outpatience
Nick Traina
Link 80
John Baker Saunders
Mad Season
Bobby Sheehan
Blues Traveler
Wes Berggren
Tripping Daisy
Allen Woody
The Allman Brothers Band
Carl Crack
Atari Teenage Riot
Layne Staley
Alice in Chains/Mad Seasons
Kurt Cobain
Nirvana
Dee Dee
Ramones
Robbin Crosby
Ratt
John Entwistle
The Who
Howie Epstein
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Jeremy Michael Ward
De Facto
Tim Hemensley
GOD
Dave Schulthise
The Dead Milkmen
Rick James
Kevin DuBrow
Quiet Riot
Ike Turner
Gidget Gein
Marilyn Manson
Jay Bennett
Wilco
Michael Jackson
The Rev
Avenged Sevenfold
Paul Gray
Slipknot
Mike Starr
Alice in Chains
Amy Winehouse**
*We are not bad people, we just have bad ways
Yet, not many understand*
Dec 1, 2014
Dec 1, 2014 at 4:49 PM UTC
The snow had begun in the gloaming,
And busily all the night
Had been heaping field and highway
With a silence deep and white.
Every pine and fir and hemlock
Wore ermine too dear for an earl,
And the poorest twig on the elm-tree
Was ridged inch deep with pearl.
From sheds new-roofed with Carrara
Came Chanticleer's muffled crow,
The stiff rails were softened to swan's-down,
And still fluttered down the snow.
I stood and watched by the window
The noiseless work of the sky,
And the sudden flurries of snow-birds,
Like brown leaves whirling by.
I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn
Where a little headstone stood;
How the flakes were folding it gently,
As did robins the babes in the wood.
Up spoke our own little Mabel,
Saying, 'Father, who makes it snow?'
And I told of the good All-father
Who cares for us here below.
Again I looked at the snowfall,
And thought of the leaden sky
That arched o'er our first great sorrow,
When that mound was heaped so high.
I remembered the gradual patience
That fell from that cloud like snow,
Flake by flake, healing and hiding
The scar of our deep-plunged woe.
And again to the child I whispered,
'The snow that husheth all,
Darling, the merciful Father
Alone can make it fall! '
Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her;
And she, kissing back, could not know
That my kiss was given to her sister,
Folded close under deepening snow.
Dec 1, 2015
Dec 1, 2015 at 1:28 PM UTC
TELL TALE TALK
Shark's tooth
draws blood
( even though long dead )
a startled red
against the sharp whiteness
lost in a bric-a-brac
box of shells & things.
"Gotcha!"
grins the dead
shark's set of
choppers.
Baby shark
but a shark nonetheless.
I drip a trail
of red
across the Charity
shop
snap up
a tattered HUNTING OF THE SNARK
a battered
AT SWIM TWO BIRDS.
Here
a broken ballerina
on a jewellery box
( minus her music )
there
( I stop dead )
a used
soul
bruised
badly used
Godless
without guile
my fingertip traces my initials
on its dust
tarnished
without hope
immortal and unnoticed
amongst shark's teeth & shells.
I get
a SNARK & TWO BIRDS
for a pound
a piece.
The shark's grin
for a pound again.
"What do you want
for this old thing?"
I nonchalantly
ask
setting the soul
with great care
within the cage
of teeth
perched atop
the books.
"Being dying
to get rid
of that
for ages."
"It just sits there
staring at me!"
"Scares the life
outta me
to tell you
the truth
even though I don't know
what the hell it is!"
"Give us 42p for it
& we'll call it quits!"
I buy back
the soul
( my soul )
I had given away
with some old shirts and shoes
things I thought
I wouldn't ever be needing
. . .again.
But seeing it
discarded amongst shark's teeth & shells
I thought
twice about it.
Maybe
( perhaps )
I can use
it
for a paperweight.
Or a doorstop.
Sedulous
PRONUNCIATION:
(SEJ-uh-luhs)
MEANING:
adjective: Involving great care, effort, and persistence.
ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin se (without) + dolus (trickery, guile). Ultimately from the Indo-European root del- (to count or recount) that is also the source of tell, tale, talk, Aug 9, 2010
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Poetry is the art of saying what you mean but disguising it. -Diane Wakoski, poet (b. 1937) and Dutch taal (speech, language).
USAGE:
"Elizabeth Bishop was sedulous, pernickety, quietly determined; she would work on poems for years."Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell; The Economist (London, UK); Nov 20, 2008.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
<strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><p>A beautiful thing is never perfect. -Egyptian proverb</p></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong>
Aug 12, 2017
Aug 12, 2017 at 4:25 PM UTC
He perches in the slime, inert,
Bedaubed with iridescent dirt.
The oil upon the puddles dries
To colours like a peacock’s eyes,
And half-submerged tomato-cans
Shine scaly, as leviathans
Oozily crawling through the mud.
The ground is here and there bestud
With lumps of only part-burned coal.
His duty is to glean the whole,
To pick them from the filth, each one,
To hoard them for the hidden sun
Which glows within each fiery core
And waits to be made free once more.
Their sharp and glistening edges cut
His stiffened fingers. Through the ****
Gleam red the wounds which will not shut.
Wet through and shivering he kneels
And digs the slippery coals; like eels
They slide about. His force all spent,
He counts his small accomplishment.
A half-a-dozen clinker-coals
Which still have fire in their souls.
Fire! And in his thought there burns
The topaz fire of votive urns.
He sees it fling from hill to hill,
And still consumed, is burning still.
Higher and higher leaps the flame,
The smoke an ever-shifting frame.
He sees a Spanish Castle old,
With silver steps and paths of gold.
From myrtle bowers comes the plash
Of fountains, and the emerald flash
Of parrots in the orange trees,
Whose blossoms pasture humming bees.
He knows he feeds the urns whose smoke
Bears visions, that his master-stroke
Is out of dirt and misery
To light the fire of poesy.
He sees the glory, yet he knows
That others cannot see his shows.
To them his smoke is sightless, black,
His votive vessels but a pack
Of old discarded shards, his fire
A peddler’s; still to him the pyre
Is incensed, an enduring goal!
He sighs and grubs another coal.
Sep 9, 2016
Sep 9, 2016 at 1:24 AM UTC
opening up an eclectic ruddy random selection of books to the sound of classical concerto dimmed to 'whelming' (neither under nor overwhelming), is like entering point after point to perspective to new brain after old brain after subject to object to alluvit, the few, the many-- 'on July 21st, 1936, Lockheed test pilot Elmer C. McLeod, with Amelia as copilot, took the new Electra up for its first official flight..' 'This is the picture of the Djinn making the beginnings of the Magic that brought the Humph to the Camel..' 'A block away from the museum doors, the guards still follow us, until a new group of guards from the next building has us under surveillance..' 'More and more, I suspect that Buddhists and shamans are correct..' 'I liked Bloodworth and in the spring we were going to play outfield together on that Lowell team, he whose name for years had mystified me when I saw it in Lowell High and Lowell Twi League boxscores-' 'if the world at large found it impossible to believe the truth of the Holocaust, even when provided with incontrovertible proof, Berliners presented with piecemeal evidence, rumour and hearsay were bound to dismiss such talk as enemy propaganda, or perverted fantasy. As Ursula Von Kardoff recalled after the war: 'we were realistic and pessimistic. But Auschwitz?'- '"Twenty-five centavos."
"Twenty-five centavos," repeated the Syrian in a firm voice with almost no accent.'--
Mar 4, 2014
Mar 4, 2014 at 7:28 PM UTC
I
Again the larkspur,
Heavenly blue in my garden.
They, at least, unchanged.
II
How have I hurt you?
You look at me with pale eyes,
But these are my tears.
III
Morning and evening--
Yet for us once long ago
Was no division.
IV
I hear many words.
Set an hour when I may come
Or remain silent.
V
In the ghostly dawn
I write new words for your ears--
Even now you sleep.
VI
This then is morning.
Have you no comfort for me
Cold-colored flowers?
VII
My eyes are weary
Following you everywhere.
Short, oh short, the days!
VIII
When the flower falls
The leaf is no more cherished.
Every day I fear.
IX
Even when you smile
Sorrow is behind your eyes.
Pity me, therefore.
X
Laugh--it is nothing.
To others you may seem gay,
I watch with grieved eyes.
XI
Take it, this white rose.
Stems of roses do not bleed;
Your fingers are safe.
XII
As a river-wind
Hurling clouds at a bright moon,
So am I to you.
XIII
Watching the iris,
The faint and fragile petals--
How am I worthy?
XIV
Down a red river
I drift in a broken skiff.
Are you then so brave?
XV
Night lies beside me
Chaste and cold as a sharp sword.
It and I alone.
XVI
Last night it rained.
Now, in the desolate dawn,
Crying of blue jays.
XVII
Foolish so to grieve,
Autumn has its colored leaves--
But before they turn?
XVIII
Afterwards I think:
Poppies bloom when it thunders.
Is this not enough?
XIX
Love is a game--yes?
I think it is a drowning:
Black willows and stars.
**
When the aster fades
The creeper flaunts in crimson.
Always another!
XXI
Turning from the page,
Blind with a night of labor,
I hear morning crows.
XXII
A cloud of lilies,
Or else you walk before me.
Who could see clearly?
XXIII
Sweet smell of wet flowers
Over an evening garden.
Your portrait, perhaps?
XXIV
Staying in my room,
I thought of the new Spring leaves.
That day was happy.
Jul 17, 2015
Jul 17, 2015 at 4:20 AM UTC
1.
Diaphanous dragons disgorge a deluge of diamonds
into the shadowed crevices of cumulus clouds.
Ruby-red sapphires overpopulate the glistening sky
like carbon-hardened locust: gorgeous messengers of the gods.
The Earth wears a crimson helmet, shielded from
the odious absence of ozone above the North and South poles.
Near Minneapolis, John Berryman's wizened body shatters
on the frozen riverbed below the Washington Avenue Bridge.
Angels weep to see him jump, as he waves a vaudevillian goodbye.
The sapphires blanch, then turn an angry, violent violet. Black holes ahead.
2.
Shakespeare and Mr. Bones **** on mortality's skimpy
skeleton of life. Will this broken body be resurrected?
Does it deserve such distinction? Better yet, does its daring,
drunken destroyer? Four hundred Dream Songs nod yes.
Berryman toddled ticklishly toward the last traces of transcendence.
Love & Fame broadcast how terribly his faith failed to trade
daily delirium tremens for the mysterium tremendum.
The God he prayed to demanded a syntax pure, plain.and perfect.
With jolts of jest, He jimmied paradoxes into koans. Berryman
howls for the sound of one diamond scratching the outline of his body on ice.
3.
He left a legacy broader than liquor, lechery and the love-struck ladies.
Lust seeded his fallow lacunae and lazily broke his wife's heart.
Scholarship scooted him to the squeamish, secluded top
of his Shakespearean class: Signal student turns trusted teacher.
Poetry cloned the Oklahoma clown in him. No successors,
no schools, no savvy peers, save Lowell. his fellow manic-depressive.
He dreamed songs of hilarity, humility, history, dehumanization.
Poetry proved serious business until it learned to laugh at itself.
Sapphires crackle under the weight of the creaking sun. They spin a kaleidoscopic rainbow of colors onto Berryman's obituary. Somehow, he has won:
An irreplaceable jewel of the sky.
Jul 23, 2019
Jul 23, 2019 at 4:01 PM UTC
My Old Flame
My old flame, my wife!
Remember our lists of birds?
One morning last summer, I drove
by our house in Maine. It was still
on top of its hill -
Now a red ear of Indian maize
was splashed on the door.
Old Glory with thirteen stripes
hung on a pole. The clapboard
was old-red schoolhouse red.
Inside, a new landlord,
a new wife, a new broom!
Atlantic seaboard antique shop
pewter and plunder
shone in each room.
A new frontier!
No running next door
now to phone the sheriff
for his taxi to Bath
and the State Liquor Store!
No one saw your ghostly
imaginary lover
stare through the window
and tighten
the scarf at his throat.
Health to the new people,
health to their flag, to their old
restored house on the hill!
Everything had been swept bare,
furnished, garnished and aired.
Everything's changed for the best -
how quivering and fierce we were,
there snowbound together,
simmering like wasps
in our tent of books!
Poor ghost, old love, speak
with your old voice
of flaming insight
that kept us awake all night.
In one bed and apart,
we heard the plow
groaning up hill -
a red light, then a blue,
as it tossed off the snow
to the side of the road.
Lowell Robert (1964). “My Old Flame” (p. 5). For the Union Dead. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, NY.
Jan 3, 2017
Jan 3, 2017 at 9:49 AM UTC
Remembering My first taste of coffee--
just another commodity
standing outside Lowell Tech, a local factory,
a city corner in Haverhill snows— a worker's town
Passing out leaflets for a vapid Revolution
Another action/demonstration
to “Seize the Day!”
No computers; no social media
to fill the ranks of rallies at that time
So we froze our ***** off
trying to explain with sound bites, frosted breath
and fogs of rhetoric
A truth-- so tyranic, remote, arcane
too preposterous to even process
let alone explain
Standing there behind
its barbed wire reality
smoking from its stacks
the poisons of its process
Standing there
Stamping blood into my feet
Trying to convince my freezing self
my breaking heart
that all this truth?
was truly worth it!?
as I threw my education and my life away--
Trying to convince
...that inside that building
IT-- was being made
****** and
that Agent of Death and Defoliation
of an orange persuasion
so our war could have its way
with rice paddies and jungles
and people of a browner, poorer smaller bent
While on the home-front
we filled the mill with unwilling bodies
that died somewhere else
off site...
“Outta sight”
...or maybe some years later
from toxins dumped in river
left to leach to cancers somewhere else
into the ground they sink
Through tentacled subsidiaries
restructured divestments
Legal dismissals
of responsibility
the players run like roaches
for the exits
One fast move after another
they dissolve disperse
morph into
renamed ****** entities
Clean up their storefronts
clean out our pockets
while “providing jobs”
“investing in community”
along the way
Putting on a Goodwill Tour
Then
taking it away
“What? We never said....”
We'll take you down
leaving only the stench behind
Mar 6, 2019
Mar 6, 2019 at 3:01 PM UTC
Seafoam green out of the corner of my eye with a windsor knot, sleeping in the window seat, on the windowsill perched like a crow waiting on the spoils of a burger and fries. Stupid whiskey flask follows me from town to town in my breast pocket navy blue with a 40-R in the hemline to let me know the mediocre, average life I should’ve traced along the stencil of… a greywash and black existence. Several openings in the vent by the window ran up my face in a reversal of every law Newton ever jotted on parchment paper and sealed with gravity and a drop of wax. He must’ve wondered about regular things often. Like emotion. He must’ve had it figured out. He must cook one hell of an Alfredo and win a lot of chess matches to tackle something like gravity.
May 28, 2013
May 28, 2013 at 6:42 PM UTC
She's just the country girl. Born and raised in South of Lowell. She **** the midnight hike to the all star Ranch. She got a horse... for a couple thousand dollars . she took him out to the midnight trails. don't stop country. keeping the john deer running. Don't stop country. Galloping all night long. Don't stop country tooonighhht
Jun 10, 2014
Jun 10, 2014 at 10:26 PM UTC
my friend read my poems and said "wheres your point"?
The truth *****
I realized I have no point.
I read robert lowell,
I have john berrymens dream songs.
He seemed disconnected,
I read my journal,
All my secrets confused him.
We all start out ******
But we all end in happiness.
No matter what I read.
My point leaves, I cant find my
True meaning of meanings.
Hes rite my points a dull unsharpened pencil
But with work ill be a poet.
Im a delussional dream.
Please show me
Every moment I failed at
Writing. Its a necassary evil
I needed to feel.
Sep 21, 2013
Sep 21, 2013 at 8:10 AM UTC
my friend read my poems and said "wheres your point"?
The truth *****
I realized I have no point.
I read robert lowell,
I have john berrymens dream songs.
He seemed disconnected,
I read my journal,
All my secrets confused him.
We all start out ******
But we all end in happiness.
No matter what I read.
My point leaves, I cant find my
True meaning of meanings.
Hes rite my points a dull unsharpened pencil
But with work ill be a poet.
Im a delussional dream.
Please show me
Every moment I failed at
Writing. Its a necassary evil
I needed to feel.
Sep 21, 2013
Sep 21, 2013 at 8:10 AM UTC
My best friends name is Lindsay
We like to go and dance
I specialize in the drunken techno prance
Dancing to la la la la la/ la la la la la/ la de da da da
A random guys says and I quote, "Shake what you mamma give ya!"
That's so funny ****
And makes you want to do anything but sit!
We got to go in VIP- up above
DJ Caffeine was up there and the captain of love
He lives to say "make some noise motha fucka's" A LOT
He can't think of anything else to say when put on the spot
Loverboy is a very ugly guy
When you look at him it makes you want to cry!
The girls in the thong contest were *****
but they bared all on stage, which took some guts
The place was surrounded with Russians and Hicks,
But I did learn some new glow stick tricks!
Lindsay had three...and was almost gone...
Like a switch it turned dance mode on!
The drink of choice was *** On The Beach
But that ugly guy was such a leech
That guy was such a bisnatch
That was all up in my motha f'n bis-nass
We owned the stage for half the show
surrounded by objects that glow
"Mind distortion was the name of the thing,
And when we left Lindsay got asked to be a model for a magazine!
She said all she wants to do is sleep
Cuz the guy kinda looked like a creep
So we went back to Jamie's apartment and slept on the floor
up eight hours later and out the door
We decided to go shopping,
But once we started we felt like dropping
Me,Merri Lindsay and Jimb went to a party when we got home
I got really drunk, and really ******
I got to talk to a lot of people I hadn't seen in a while;
I was so happy all I did was SMILE
Lindsay was sad, so I hugged her a lot
It seemed like the right thing to do at that stroke of the clock!
Jesse's dad came out in his whity tighties and said "f'n leave!"
That was the funniest moment of the night, I do believe!
Tim had a party too, but nobody went
By the time we left Lowell, we were all spent
So our weekend turned out to be really fun
And now I think this poem is done!
May 18, 2020
May 18, 2020 at 11:13 AM UTC
It seems that in a small slot of time
You commit another crime
If it means you have to restart
You run away, just to break my heart
I can't imagine what you do
But baby I just wanna save you
I'll rescue you from the darkest hole
From San Diego to Lowell all to protect your soul
You say sorry for what you did
Saying its time to stop the skid
Empty promises and empty eyes
Both filled with lies
If I wasn't here
Your fate is crystal clear
In a bottom of a ditch
Or with a guy who knows you as *****
I can't imagine what you do
But baby I just wanna save you
I'll rescue you from your one-way lane
From Seattle to Portland Maine
No need to be afraid
You'll never have to know what would happen
If I hadn't stayed
Count on me baby I'll help you through
let me save you
let me save you
Nov 27, 2011
Nov 27, 2011 at 9:25 PM UTC
can i please just get to something plausible
in this poem
where the readers are like yeah,
this is it sam, you've done it
now you can go home
lay in your bed
and say that to yourself
as you mow the lawn
the grass will move in a way
that resembles
people clapping for the wind
and some iguana
will sprawl his body out in the language;
he'll clap too
and you'll use him
as some sort of finger that pokes at that
******* clichéd darkness
that every ******* guy
has wrote about before
yeah, sorry
your doomer-ass is ******
because there will
always be that one robert lowell character
in your life
who will find you and say:
you must write sylvia,
write about that dumb dark deconstructive
****
which doesn't even make sense because
they were both confessional modernists and i
haven't confessed to anything
Apr 12, 2023
Apr 12, 2023 at 1:44 PM UTC
Karissa and Kristy's Fishing Adventure
Bought a princess fishing pole in the Indiana Dunes
Which Karissa had yet to use...
Drove to the Illinois Valley with a plan
Stopped at the farm and saw the fam!
Headed to Lowell, River was closed
We went anyway, nobody knows!!
Nothing was biting, but Karissa caught a leaf!
She thought that was pretty funny, I do beleave...
From there we jumped in the car and headed to deer park
We went to the river area, got lost and almost ended up in the dark!
Don't get me wrong at first we did pretty great...
Walked a while, found the river and caught 8
Just kidding, it was only one
Those fish were too smart, but it was still fun!
They managed to eat the worm and stay away from the hook,
So we decided to try once more and that's all it took!
The fish caught the hook in the eye and I couldn't set it free
So I decided to take it with me!
We started walking and saw some stairs
Thought it was a short cut, but ended up a nightmare
Got lost in the woods for 3 hours with no clue what to do
Karissa was brave, but had her moments... I'm sure I did too!
At one point we went off path and tried to walk to the light
But kept getting poked by “pokeys” and it was too much of a fight
Kev and dad were looking for us
My mom was so worried, she put up a big fuss
She was 10 miles away from calling the State Police
And ditched her ride to the play we were supposed to go to with my neice
We saw lots of running deer
And Karissa tried her best to show no fear
We found a trail that was kinda actually marked
And were more confident that we would make it out by dark
Followed the orange poles and eventually came out
We were on the other side of the park, without a doubt!
Kev came and gave us a ride to the car
Made fun of our fish that was in the worm jar
He said, “Hey Krit, the friggin worm is bigger than the fish!”
and asked if it was worth it?
It was a good day and I have no regrets
Even though we got lost and I broke my camera, it was one of the best!
I LOVE spending time with family and friends,
and always will until the end!
By Kristy Robertson
(Guessing Summer of 2009 or 2010)
May 10, 2020
May 10, 2020 at 9:09 AM UTC
Oh Lowell morning
Youth runs quickly east then west
Allies teach no rest.
Dec 8, 2012
Dec 8, 2012 at 1:21 PM UTC
my hair grows long
wheat grass under
the sun
so do our conversations
meandering and young
with no intent
i feel this chapter in our story
coming to an end
Aug 7, 2018
Aug 7, 2018 at 7:51 PM UTC
Our fathers fought for Liberty,
They struggled long and well,
History of their deeds can tell—
But did they leave us free?
Are we free from vanity,
Free from pride, and free from self,
Free from love of power and pelf,
From everything that's beggarly?
Are we free from stubborn will,
From low hate and malice small,
From opinion's tyrant thrall?
Are none of us our own slaves still?
Are we free to speak our thought,
To be happy, and be poor,
Free to enter Heaven's door,
To live and labor as we ought?
Are we then made free at last
From the fear of what men say,
Free to reverence today,
Free from the slavery of the Past?
Our fathers fought for liberty,
They struggled long and well,
History of their deeds can tell—
But ourselves must set us free.
James Russell Lowell (1819-1891)
Jul 4, 2025
Jul 4, 2025 at 1:12 PM UTC