Saturday, November 10, 2012

Harlem Night Sond by Langston Hughes

Come,
Let us roam the night together 
Singing

I love you.

Across 
The Harlem roof-tops
Moon is shining .
Night sky is blue.
Stars are great drops 
Of golden dew.

Down the street 
A band is playing.

I love you.

Come,
Let us roam the night together
Singing.

The Sky Is Low, the Clouds Are Mean by Emily Dickinson

The sky is low, the clouds are mean,
A travelling flake of snow
Across a barn or through a rut
Debates if it will go.

A narrow wind complains all day 
How some one treated him;
Nature, like us, is sometimes caught
Without her diadem.

Concrete Mixers by Patricia Hubbell

The drivers are washing the concrete mixers;
Like elephant tenders they hose them down.
Tough gray-skinned monsters standing ponderous,
Elephant-bellied and elephant-nosed,

Standing in muck up to their wheel-caps,
Like rows of elephants, tail trunk.
Their drivers perch on their backs like mahouts,
Sending the sprays of water up.

They rid the trunk-like trough of concrete,
Direct the spray to the bulging sides,
Turn and start the monsters moving.

Concrete mixers
Movie like elephants
Bellow like elephants
Spray like elephants,
Concrete mixers are urban elephants,
Their trunks are raising a city.

Friday, November 9, 2012

The City Is So Big by Richard Garcia

The city is so big
Its bridges quake with fear
I know, I have seen at night

The lights sliding from house to house
And trains pass with windows shining
Like a smile full of teeth

I have seen machines eating houses 
And stairways walk all by themselves
And elevator doors opening and closing 
And people disappear.

Ring Out , Wild Bells by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out thy mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride  in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Silver by Walter de la Mare


 Slowly, silently, now the moon
 Walks the night in her silver shoon;
 This way, and that, she peers, and sees
 Silver fruit upon silver trees;
 One by one the casements catch
 Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
 Couched in his kennel, like a log,
 With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
 From their shadowy coat the white breasts peep
 Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;
 A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
 With silver claws, and silver eye;
 And moveless fish in the water gleam,
 By silver reeds in a silver stream.

Thumprint by Eve Merriam

On the pad if my thumb
are whorls, whirls, wheels
in a unique design:
mine alone.

What a treasure to own!
My own flesh, my own feelings.
No other, however grand or base,
can ever contain the same.
My signature.

thumbing the pages if my time.
My universe key,
my singularity.

Impress, implant,
I am myself,
of all my atom parts I am the sum.
And out of my blood and my brain
I make my own interior weather,
my own sun and rain,
Imprint my mark upon the world,
whatever I shall become.

Your World by Georgia Douglas Johnson

 Your world is big as you make it.
 I know, for I used to abide
 In the narrowest nest in a corner,
 My wings pressing close to my side.

 But I sighted the distant horizon 
 Where the sky line encircled the sea 
 And I throbbed with a burning desire 
 To travel this immensity.

 I battered the cordons around me
 And cradled my wings on the breeze 
 Then soared to the uttermost reaches 
 With rapture, with power, with ease!

Cat! by Eleanor Farjeon

                                                Cat!
                                                Scat!
                                 After her, after her,
                                 Sleeky flatterer,
                5               Spitfire chatterer,
                                Scatter her, scatter her,
                                         Off her mat!
                                             Wuff!
                                             Wuff!
               10                         Treat her rough!
                                 Git her, git her.
                                 Whiskery spitter!
                                 Catch her, catch her,
                                 Green-eyed scratcher!
               15                       Slathery
                                          Slithery
                                          Hisser,
                                     Don't miss her!
                                  Run till you're dithery,
               20                      Hithery
                                        Thithery
                                     Pftts!   Pftts!
                                  How she spits!
                                  Spitch! Spatch!
               25               Can't she scratch!
                                  Scritching the bark
                                  Of the sycamore tree,
                                  She's reached her ark
                                  And's hissing at me
               30                    Pftts!    Pftts!
                                       Wuff!   Wuff!
                                            Scat,
                                             Cat!
                                           That's
               35                          That!