Poetry180+poems

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= = = =  Vance Jensen 1/9/09   5th period = Forgotten Planet =

// Doug Dorph //
I ask my daughter to name the planets. "Venus ...Mars ...and Plunis!" she says. When I was six or seven my father woke me in the middle of the night. We went down to the playground and lay on our backs on the concrete looking up for the meteors the tv said would shower. I don't remember any meteors. I remember my back pressed to the planet Earth, my father's bulk like gravity next to me, the occasional rumble from his throat, the apartment buildings dark-windowed, the sky close enough to poke with my finger. Now, knowledge erodes wonder. The niggling voce reminds me that the sun does shine on the dark side of the moon. My daughter's ignorance is my bliss. Through her eyes I spy like a voyeur. I travel in a rocket ship to the planet Plunis. On Plunis I no longer long for the past. On Plunis there are actual surprises. On Plunis I am happy. It is always nice to get away from reality and imagine some place where your troubles don’t exist. = Blind =

// Charles Webb //
It's okay if the world goes with //Venetian//; Who cares what Italians don't see?- Or with //Man's Bluff// (a temporary problem Healed by shrieks and cheating)-or with //date//: Three hours of squirming repaid by laughs for years. But when an old woman, already deaf, Wakes from a night of headaches, and the dark Won't disappear-when doctors call like tedious Birds, "If only..." up and down hospital halls- When, long-distance, I hear her say, "Don't worry.   Honey, I'll be fine," is it a wonder If my mind speeds down blind alleys? If the adage "Love is blind" has never seemed So true? If, in a flash of blinding light I see Justice drop her scales, yank off Her blindfold, stand revealed - a monster-god With spidery arms and a mouth like a black hole- While I leap, ant-sized, at her feet, blinded By tears, raging blindly as, sense by sense, My mother is sucked away ? Blindness is apart of life we just have to accept it. = Hate Poem =

// Julie Sheehan //
I hate you truly. Truly I do. Everything about me hates everything about you. The flick of my wrist hates you. The way I hold my pencil hates you. The sound made by my tiniest bones were they trapped in the jaws of a moray eel hates you. Each corpuscle singing in its capillary hates you. Look out! Fore! I hate you. The blue-green jewel of sock lint I’m digging from under by third toenail, left foot, hates you. The history of this keychain hates you. My sigh in the background as you explain relational databases hates you. The goldfish of my genius hates you. My aorta hates you. Also my ancestors. A closed window is both a closed window and an obvious symbol of how I hate you. My voice curt as a hairshirt: hate. My hesitation when you invite me for a drive: hate. My pleasant “good morning”: hate. You know how when I’m sleepy I nuzzle my head under your arm? Hate. The whites of my target-eyes articulate hate. My wit practices it. My breasts relaxing in their holster from morning to night hate you. Layers of hate, a parfait. Hours after our latest row, brandishing the sharp glee of hate, I dissect you cell by cell, so that I might hate each one individually and at leisure. My lungs, duplicitous twins, expand with the utter validity of my hate, which can never have enough of you, Breathlessly, like two idealists in a broken submarine. People will hate other people without a specific reason to hate that person. = What I Would Do =

// Marc Petersen //
If my wife were to have an affair, I would walk to my toolbox in the garage, Take from it my 12" flathead screwdriver And my hickory-handle hammer, The one that helped me build three redwood fences, And I would hammer out the pins In all the door hinges in the house, And I would pull off all the doors And I would stack them in the backyard. And I would empty all the sheets from the linen closet, And especially the flannels we have slept between for nineteen winters; And I would empty all the towels, too, The big heavy white towels she bought on Saturdays at Target, And the red bath towels we got for our wedding, And which we have never used; And I would unroll the aluminum foil from its box, And carry all the pots and pans from the cupboards to the backyard, And lay this one long sheet of aluminum foil over all our pots and pans; And I would dump all the silverware from the drawer Onto the driveway; and I would push my motorcycle over And let all its gas leak out, And I would leave my Jeep running at the curb Until its tank was empty or its motor blew up, And I would turn the TV up full-blast and open all the window; And I would turn the stereo up full-blast, With Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on it, Schiller's "Ode to Joy," really blasting; And I would strip our bed; And I would lie on our stripped bed; And I would see our maple budding out the window. I would see our maple budding out our window, The hummingbird feeder hanging from its lowest bough. And my cat would jump up to see what was the matter with me. And I would tell her. Of course, I would tell her. From her, I hold nothing back. If my wife had an affair I would get a divorce. = 96 Vandam =

// Gerald Stern //
I am going to carry my bed into New York City tonight complete with dangling sheets and ripped blankets; I am going to push it across three dark highways or coast along under 600,000 faint stars. I want to have it with me so I don't have to beg for too much shelter from my weak and exhausted friends. I want to be as close as possible to my pillow in case a dream or a fantasy should pass by. I want to fall asleep on my own fire escape and wake up dazed and hungry to the sound of garbage grinding in the street below and the smell of coffee cooking in the window above. I wouldn’t want to carry my bed around New York, someone would might steal it.