favorite poem?

[nameraka]

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-jun-03-bk-5682-story.html

[Azalar Hex]

Utsukushī kaba shimai adobenchā.  Some of the scenes are a little too intense and not my taste but the realism is top notch.

[Azalar Hex]

Oh shit you said poEM.  Then I don't have one, no.

[GuyBeardmane]

This reading, the animation, everything about this is gorgeous.

[Bouvre]

I have a lot of favorites but this came to mind as one of my favorite contemporaries

 

Heritage

By Kaveh Akbar

Reyhaneh Jabbari, a 26-year-old Iranian woman, was hanged on October 25th, 2014, 
for killing a man who was attempting to rape her.


the body is a mosque borrowed from Heaven     centuries of time

stain the glazed brick    our skin rubs away like a chip

in the middle of an hourglass        sometimes I am so ashamed 


of my sentience how little it matters        angels don't care about humility       

you shaved your head        spent eleven days half-starved in solitary

and not a single divine trumpet wept into song      now it's lonely all over 


I'm becoming more a vessel of memories than a person        it's a myth

that love lives in the heart       it lives in the throat we push it out

when we speak       when we gasp we take a little for ourselves 


in books love can be war-ending       a soldier drops his sword to lie forking oysters

into his enemy's mouth        in life we hold love up to the light

to marvel at its impotence         you said in a letter to Sholeh 


you weren't even killing the roaches in your cell       that you would take them up

by their antennae and flick them through the bars into a courtyard      

where you could see men hammering long planks of cypress into gallows 


the same men who years before threw their rings in the mud       who watered them

five times daily        who shot blackbirds off almond branches

and kissed the soil at the sight of sprouts       then cursed each other when the stalks 


which should have licked their lips withered dryly at their knees        may God beat

us awake      scourge our brains to life       may we measure every victory

by the momentary absence of pain       there is no solace in history      this is a gift 


we are given at birth     a pocket we fold into at death        goodbye now you mountain      

you armada of flowers         you entire miserable decade in a lump in my throat       

despite all our endlessly rehearsed rituals of mercy       it was you we sent on

Edited December 30, 2019 by Bouvre

[Bouvre]

On 8/16/2019 at 8:28 AM, nameraka said:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-jun-03-bk-5682-story.html

Also, because this poem rekindled my memory of this particular translation from Elizabeth Bishop, of the poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade, I'm going to share this as a sort of honorable mention

 

Don't Kill Yourself

Carlos, keep calm, love
is what you're seeing now;
today a kiss, tomorrow no kiss,
day after day tomorrow's Sunday
and nobody knows what will happen
Monday.

It's useless to resist
or to commit suicide.
Don't kill yourself. Don't kill yourself!
Keep all of yourself for the nuptials
coming nobody knows when,
that is, if they ever come.

Love, Carlos, tellurian,
spent the night with you,
and now your insides are raising
an ineffable racket,
prayers,
victrolas,
saints crossing themselves,
ads for better soap,
a racket of which nobody
knows the why or wherefor.

In the meantime, you go on your way
vertical, melancholy.
You're the palm tree, you're the cry
nobody heard in the theatre
and all the lights went out.
Love in the dark, no, love
in the daylight, is always sad,
sad, Carlos, my boy,
but tell it to nobody,
nobody knows nor shall know.

[avec]

From M Archive: After the End of the World by Alexis Pauline Gumbs (p. 17)

 

it was no longer a matter of sex.

 

this new molecular relationship made distance and intimacy words

that tangled.

or to say it another way.

we were all close.

beyond close.

 

not knowing where one person ended and another began was no

longer love-song advertising or evidence of codependency.

 

it was a real issue. so then identity (x=x) was no longer technically

true. the previous energetic reality of how we are not whole and

change each other and are not ourselves except in the most lim-

ited version of our imagination became impossible to ignore on

the physical level.

 

so love was not about merging or finding exceptional moments

when we could die enough to shrug off the pain of individuality.

it was just a certain sound, a vibration, and when we achieved it,

it was really all of us.

Edited December 31, 2019 by avec

[Bouvre]

I would say this is a final favorite poem, but we all know that's bullshit. 

 

A Rabbit As King of The Ghosts, by Wallace Stevens

 

The difficulty to think at the end of day,   

When the shapeless shadow covers the sun   

And nothing is left except light on your fur—

 

There was the cat slopping its milk all day,   

Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk   

And August the most peaceful month.

 

To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time,   

Without that monument of cat,   

The cat forgotten in the moon;

 

And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light,   

In which everything is meant for you   

And nothing need be explained;

 

Then there is nothing to think of. It comes of itself;

And east rushes west and west rushes down,

No matter. The grass is full

 

And full of yourself. The trees around are for you,   

The whole of the wideness of night is for you,   

A self that touches all edges,

 

You become a self that fills the four corners of night.

The red cat hides away in the fur-light

And there you are humped high, humped up,

 

You are humped higher and higher, black as stone—

You sit with your head like a carving in space   

And the little green cat is a bug in the grass.