share my favourite poems

I don’t even know where I would be able to find anything to give to anyone else.
I slowly handed everything over to you.
all of my secrets,
all of my quiet quirks,
all of the things that I was never able to give as much of as i did to you.
including my guts.
I never dreamed that you wouldn’t take care of them.
and there they are sitting on a table for everyone to see.
and I don’t know how to put them back in the right way.

- “J”

This is it
I’m not coming after you
I’m going to lie down for half an hour
This is it
I’m not going down
on your memory
I’m not rubbing my face in it any more
I’m going to yawn
I’m going to stretch
I’m going to put a knitting needle
up my nose
and poke out my brain
I don’t want to love you
for the rest of my life
I want your skin
to fall off my skin
I want my clamp
to release your clamp
I don’t want to live
with this tongue hanging out
and another filthy song
in the place
of my baseball bat
This is it
I’m going to sleep now darling
Don’t try to stop me
I’m going to sleep
I’ll have a smooth face
and I’m going to drool
I’ll be asleep
whether you love me or not
This is it
The New World Order
of wrinkles and bad breath
It’s not going to be
like it was before
eating you
with my eyes closed
hoping you won’t get up
and go away
It’s going to be something else
Something worse
Something sillier
Something like this
only shorter

- Leonard Cohen

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

- Elizabeth Bishop

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam’st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou never cam’st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth;
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say: My love! why sufferest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day

- Matthew Arnold

This is actually a song. Written by a poet. :)

Deep in the bosom of the gentle night
Is when I search for the light
Pick up my pen and start to write
I struggle, I fight dark forces in the clear moonlight
Without fear
Insomnia
I can’t get no sleep
I used to worry
Thought I was going mad in a hurry
Getting stressed, making excess mess in darkness
No electricity, something’s all over me, greasy
Insomnia please release me
And let me dream of making mad love to my girl on the heath
Tearing off tights with my teeth
But there’s no release, no peace
I toss and turn without cease
Like a curse, open my eyes and rise like yeast
At least a couple of weeks since I last slept, kept taking sleepers
But now I keep myself pepped
Deeper still, that night
I write by candlelight, I find insight
Fundamental movement, huh, so when it’s black
This insomniac, take an original tack
Keep the beast in my nature
Under ceaseless attack
I gets no sleep
I can’t get no sleep
I can’t get no sleep
I can’t get no sleep
I need to sleep, I can’t get no sleep
I need to sleep, I can’t get no sleep

by Faithless

I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, Eyes -
I wonder if It weighs like Mine -
Or has an Easier size.

I wonder if They bore it long -
Or did it just begin -
I could not tell the Date of Mine -
It feels so old a pain -

I wonder if it hurts to live -
And if They have to try -
And whether—could They choose between -
It would not be—to die -

I note that Some – gone patient long -
At length, renew their smile -
An imitation of a Light
That has so little Oil -

I wonder if when Years have piled -
Some Thousands – on the Harm -
That hurt them early – such a lapse
Could give them any Balm -

Or would they go on aching still
Through Centuries of Nerve -
Enlightened to a larger Pain -
In Contrast with the Love -

The Grieved – are many – I am told -
There is the various Cause -
Death—is but one – and comes but once -
And only nails the eyes -

There’s Grief of Want – and Grief of Cold -
A sort they call “Despair” -
There’s Banishment from native Eyes -
In sight of Native Air -

And though I may not guess the kind -
Correctly – yet to me
A piercing Comfort it affords
In passing Calvary -

To note the fashions – of the Cross -
And how they’re mostly worn -
Still fascinated to presume
That Some – are like My Own -

- Emily Dickinson

When I think of her sparkling face
And of her body that rocked this way and that,
When I think of her laughter,
Her jubilance that filled me,
It’s a wonder I’m not gone mad.

She is away and I cannot do what I want.
Other faces pale when I get close.
She is away and I cannot breathe her in.

The space her leaving has created
I have attempted to fill
With bodies that numbed upon touching,
Among them I expected her opposite,
And found only forgeries.

Her wholeness I know to be a fiction of my making,
Still I cannot dismiss the longing for her;
It is a craving for sensation new flesh
Cannot wholly calm or cancel,
It is perhaps for more than her.

At night above the parks the stars are swarming.
The streets are thick with nostalgia;
I move through senseless routine and insensitive chatter
As if her going did not matter.
She is away and I cannot breathe her in.
I am ill simply through wanting her.

- Brian Patten

I sampled the smooth skin
she had been sentenced
with.

Her Elysian arse slipped
silently onto the mattress,
moulding her flesh
which
rippled
on a
sanguine
sea.

Our tongues touched.

In unison
we spelt out our lurid dreams:
our schemes of fucking, drunk
and damaged
by a cocktail of cocaine
and cannabis.
Here was heaven.

I kissed her breasts,
glistening
in the shards
of moonlight
that cut through
the sliver
of glass between the curtains
and slowly savoured

her summer screen
of perfumed
oils.

- Ian Stewart

PASSING stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone,
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

- Walt Whitman

Don’t talk to me of love. I’ve had an earful
And I get tearful when I’ve downed a drink or two.
I’m one of your talking wounded.
I’m a hostage. I’m maroonded.
But I’m in Paris with you.

Yes, I’m angry at the way I’ve been bamboozled
And resentful at the mess that I’ve been through.
I admit I’m on the rebound
And I don’t care where are we bound.
I’m in Paris with you.

Do you mind if we do not go to the Louvre,
If we say sod off to sodding Notre Dame
If we skip the champs Elysees
And remain here in this sleazy
Old hotel room
Doing this or that
To what and whom
Learning who you are,
Learning what I am.

Don’t talk to me of love. Let’s talk of Paris,
The little bit of Paris in our view.
There’s that crack across the ceiling
And the hotel walls are peeling
And I’m in Paris with you.

Don’t talk to me of love. Let’s talk of Paris.
I’m in Paris with the slightest thing you do.
I’m in Paris with your eyes, your mouth,
I’m in Paris with…..all points south.
Am I embarrassing you?
I’m in Paris with you.

- James Fenton