the defining spark

those roots grab you back

coffin laden on barley

lifted on the wind,

your voice  i heard once

as cars exploded on the streets

and police batons fell,

i grew listening to you

embracing my heritage

not strangers to a landscape,

scattered  with grass seed

upon heavy peat bogs,

alone with your pages

paper yellowing in the sun

i got to know what

rhythm made the music inside

and caught magical light,

you where a viking

a warrior of words

forged by the great anvil,

i still read you

as many do

your place is deeper

than sinew and bone

you are a molecule

of a fresh soul

coming to a brighter

day

Seamus Heaney
1939-2013

Joanne Kyger – Night Palace

garments that have been pressed

seek her in her grassy tomb

flesh fleece and evening star,

murmurs rise from escaped soul

mouth a shrine to heavens kiss,

text on stone chiseled deep

scythe a scalpel to those around,

to a vow made on cradle key

in binding earth no more a sleep

a million flakes of tempted tremors,

noonday heat rises with the sun,

rise up on quivering breeze

her broken tongue is healing

love a radiant throng

the sick longing eye and dropping of

gossamer veil,

chants names of those  exposed

beyond wither,

whole flesh again

i wish back that angry fist

spirits breathe in sensual undulate

on pages of book no longer departed

i have said my piece up to space,

enameled hand paints gallery in the cave

images as she had been growing wild

reaching out,

some say i am a crook

a felon

a murderer

an abuser

LA has no cheap glories for them to remember

i am hunted,

drone circling over head,

zeal of vocal chords will not be heard

Catherine Wagner- This Is A Fucking Poem

Catherine Wagner

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/catherine-wagner

 

 

 

1926 after D.H

we are among the ruins

and could return to life again,

it was their natural atmosphere

not daunted by either art or ideal politics

out in the open world,

she could use her sexuality to have power over him,

her orgasm and her crisis

amazing, the profound

fulfilled before they knew promise

a vibrating thrill inside the body

and the soul she could not get rid of,

succumbed to the strange male power

a well bred social anarchy

one of the curious obsolete,

she went by without looking at them,

alone he was a lost thing

whole act took place in a vacuum,

why should they last

with layers of dissolution

like geological strata,

sideways, and downwards the light fell on him

he was burningly, poignantly grateful for these

pieces of natural

as was his outcast soul,

they lit the candles in the hall

of unfinished tender flesh

an erasure poem derived from a novel that caused much controversy D H Lawrence Lady Chatterlys Lover