Babak Ziai is a retired union worker who found poetry as a young man. He was immediatley enthralled in the beauty that words on paper can hold. When he began to work full time for the union, he had to place his poetry on the back burner. Since retiring this past year, he has re-kindled his love affair with the written word and has dove back into the poetry world. What can be found on this page is a congregation of all the best pieces of poetry that can be found on the internet. Even some of Babak's own work will be posted here. Please feel free to visit his site.
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
Last Seen Blogs
Quote
This is what it sounds like outside, fat geese and guinea hens holding hands. I am 31, which is very young for my age. That is enough to realize I’m a pencil that has learned how to draw the Internet. I explain squiggles diagramming exactly how I feel and you are drawn to read in ways you cannot yet. Slow goes the drag of creation, how what’s within comes to be without, which is the rhythmic erection of essence. Life’s little deaths, petite orgasms, as the French nearly said but never came to. Feathers outstrip the weather as we stand with binoculars inquiring how winged creatures can hold their blood to warmth without a proper insulation system overlaying circulation. That is, sans fat and simple wooden bones with hair glued on. Mostly though they pulsate on the horizons of backlit vision, where we only meet the subways with handshakes, the rainbow filters of downloaded electronica, the telephone poles as archaic checkpoints to past cultures. They don’t have screens to seek their cues in. We drift from one culture to another and fight the stitcheries of racism, classism, anti-Muslim terrorists among us, with overlaps in the complete dis-ease our bodies settle into for next to no resistance. So we create something else. As in, roughshod moments of fake hate will position a fluid hello of death rattles that settle for the injunction of existence and state: Here am I made manifest by not being you, by not going in the same unsteady destination, by not asking the questions or repeating the paintings that came before me, by not singing in the register of your bubble baths as you hug that person close in a wish to outlast bullets, even as the light leaves your eyes just a little next time we overlap paths. So the hens and geese make us think in terms of help outside, how they flap and move with fat ease in front of trains, across the chopping block, to the hungry winters of final leviathans, even as they land just so on the wires above us, and we go on complaining, murderous, too far out, unspoken. Source: Poetry January 2014 Amy King BiographyMore poems by this author Poem of the Day: Wings of Desire Poem of the Day: Wings of Desire Poem of The Day {$excerpt:n} Source: Poem of The Day
http://babakziai.org/poem-of-the-day-wings-of-desire/
0 notes
Quote
I Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell, and the splendour of winter had passed out of sight, The ways of the woodlands were fairer and stranger than dreams that fulfil us in sleep with delight; The breath of the mouths of the winds had hardened on tree-tops and branches that glittered and swayed Such wonders and glories of blossomlike snow or of frost that outlightens all flowers till it fade That the sea was not lovelier than here was the land, nor the night than the day, nor the day than the night, Nor the winter sublimer with storm than the spring: such mirth had the madness and might in thee made, March, master of winds, bright minstrel and marshal of storms that enkindle the season they smite. II And now that the rage of thy rapture is satiate with revel and ravin and spoil of the snow, And the branches it brightened are broken, and shattered the tree-tops that only thy wrath could lay low, How should not thy lovers rejoice in thee, leader and lord of the year that exults to be born So strong in thy strength and so glad of thy gladness whose laughter puts winter and sorrow to scorn? Thou hast shaken the snows from thy wings, and the frost on thy forehead is molten: thy lips are aglow As a lover’s that kindle with kissing, and earth, with her raiment and tresses yet wasted and torn, Takes breath as she smiles in the grasp of thy passion to feel through her spirit the sense of thee flow. III Fain, fain would we see but again for an hour what the wind and the sun have dispelled and consumed, Those full deep swan-soft feathers of snow with whose luminous burden the branches implumed Hung heavily, curved as a half-bent bow, and fledged not as birds are, but petalled as flowers, Each tree-top and branchlet a pinnacle jewelled and carved, or a fountain that shines as it showers, But fixed as a fountain is fixed not, and wrought not to last till by time or by tempest entombed, As a pinnacle carven and gilded of men: for the date of its doom is no more than an hour’s, One hour of the sun’s when the warm wind wakes him to wither the snow-flowers that froze as they bloomed. IV As the sunshine quenches the snowshine; as April subdues thee, and yields up his kingdom to May; So time overcomes the regret that is born of delight as it passes in passion away, And leaves but a dream for desire to rejoice in or mourn for with tears or thanksgivings; but thou, Bright god that art gone from us, maddest and gladdest of months, to what goal hast thou gone from us now? For somewhere surely the storm of thy laughter that lightens, the beat of thy wings that play, Must flame as a fire through the world, and the heavens that we know not rejoice in thee: surely thy brow Hath lost not its radiance of empire, thy spirit the joy that impelled it on quest as for prey. V Are thy feet on the ways of the limitless waters, thy wings on the winds of the waste north sea? Are the fires of the false north dawn over heavens where summer is stormful and strong like thee Now bright in the sight of thine eyes? are the bastions of icebergs assailed by the blast of thy breath? Is it March with the wild north world when April is waning? the word that the changed year saith, Is it echoed to northward with rapture of passion reiterate from spirits triumphant as we Whose hearts were uplift at the blast of thy clarions as men’s rearisen from a sleep that was death And kindled to life that was one with the world’s and with thine? hast thou set not the whole world free? VI For the breath of thy lips is freedom, and freedom’s the sense of thy spirit, the sound of thy song, Glad god of the north-east wind, whose heart is as high as the hands of thy kingdom are strong, Thy kingdom whose empire is terror and joy, twin-featured and fruitful of births divine, Days lit with the flame of the lamps of the flowers, and nights that are drunken with dew for wine, And sleep not for joy of the stars that deepen and quicken, a denser and fierier throng, And the world that thy breath bade whiten and tremble rejoices at heart as they strengthen and shine, And earth gives thanks for the glory bequeathed her, and knows of thy reign that it wrought not wrong. VII Thy spirit is quenched not, albeit we behold not thy face in the crown of the steep sky’s arch, And the bold first buds of the whin wax golden, and witness arise of the thorn and the larch: Wild April, enkindled to laughter and storm by the kiss of the wildest of winds that blow, Calls loud on his brother for witness; his hands that were laden with blossom are sprinkled with snow, And his lips breathe winter, and laugh, and relent; and the live woods feel not the frost’s flame parch; For the flame of the spring that consumes not but quickens is felt at the heart of the forest aglow, And the sparks that enkindled and fed it were strewn from the hands of the gods of the winds of March. Algernon Charles Swinburne BiographyMore poems by this author Poem of the Day: March: An Ode Poem of the Day: March: An Ode Poem of The Day {$excerpt:n} Source: Poem of The Day
http://babakziai.org/poem-of-the-day-march-an-ode/
0 notes
Quote
Dinner finished, wine in hand, in a vaguely competitive spirit of disclosure, we trail Google Earth’s invisible pervert through the streets of our hometowns, but find them shabbier, or grossly contemporized, denuded of childhood’s native flora, stuccoed or in some other way hostile to the historical reenactments we expect of our former settings. What sadness in the disused curling rinks, their illegal basement bars imploding, in the seed of a Walmart sprouting in the demographic, in Street View’s perpetual noon. With pale and bloated production values, hits of AM radio rise to the surface of a network of social relations long obsolete. We sense a loss of rapport. But how sweet the persistence of angle parking! Would we burn these places rather than see them change, or just happily burn them, the sites of wreckage from which we staggered with our formative injuries into the rest of our lives. They cannot be consigned to the fourfold, though the age we were belongs to someone else. Like our old house. Look what they’ve done to it. Who thought this would be fun? A concert, then, YouTube from those inconceivable days before YouTube, an era boarded over like a bankrupt country store, cans still on its shelves, so hastily did we leave it. How beautiful they are in their poncey clothes, their youthful higher registers, fullscreen, two of them dead now. Is this eternity? Encore, applause, encore; it’s almost like being there. Karen Solie, “Life Is A Carnival” from The Road In Is Not The Same Road Out. Copyright © 2015 by Karen Solie. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. https://ift.tt/38asFtr Source: The Road In Is Not The Same Road Out(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015) Karen Solie BiographyMore poems by this author Poem of the Day: Life is a Carnival Poem of the Day: Life is a Carnival Poem of The Day {$excerpt:n} Source: Poem of The Day
http://babakziai.org/poem-of-the-day-life-is-a-carnival/
0 notes
Quote
Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June's long days, and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. You must praise the mutilated world. You watched the stylish yachts and ships; one of them had a long trip ahead of it, while salty oblivion awaited others. You've seen the refugees going nowhere, you've heard the executioners sing joyfully. You should praise the mutilated world. Remember the moments when we were together in a white room and the curtain fluttered. Return in thought to the concert where music flared. You gathered acorns in the park in autumn and leaves eddied over the earth's scars. Praise the mutilated world and the gray feather a thrush lost, and the gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns. Adam Zagajewski, “Try to Praise the Mutilated World” from Without End: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 2002 by Adam Zagajewski. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC, https://ift.tt/1qc5Is0. All rights reserved. Caution: Users are warned that this work is protected under copyright laws and downloading is strictly prohibited. The right to reproduce or transfer the work via any medium must be secured with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Source: Without End: New and Selected Poems(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002) Adam Zagajewski BiographyMore poems by this author Poem of the Day: Try to Praise the Mutilated World Poem of the Day: Try to Praise the Mutilated World Poem of The Day {$excerpt:n} Source: Poem of The Day
http://babakziai.org/poem-of-the-day-try-to-praise-the-mutilated-world/
0 notes
Quote
i. august 1619 arrived in a boat, named and unnamed, twenty, pirated away from a portuguese slaver, traded for victuals. drowned in this land of fresh, volatile clearings and folk with skin like melted cowrie shells. soon shedding servitude. soon reaping talents sown on african soil. after indenture, christians, colonists. not english, but not yet not-white. antoney and isabella, whose marriage stretched the short shadows of america’s early afternoon into the dusky reaches of evening, whose conjugal coitus spent first the choice coin of africa on rough virginian citizenship, baptized their son, william, into the church of england. ii. december 1638 fear must have shuddered into boston on the backs of true believers—men and women of an unadorned god— deep in the heavy black fabric of their coats and dresses like a stench. black a mark of pride they wore as if branded, never dreaming they could take it off. envy anticipated their advent. glittered at them, settling in, from the knife blades of the massachusetts. seeped like low-pitched humming from the fur lining the natives’ warm blankets. but desire docked in 1638. in from the harbor flocked a people whose eyes sparked like stars, even near death. whose hair promised a mixture of cotton and river water and vines, a texture the fingers ached for. who wholly inhabited a skin the midnight color of grace that clarified the hue of the pilgrims’ woolen weeds. fear and envy claimed pride of place, put desire’s cargo to good use. iii. march 1770 that night, crispus attucks dreamed. how he’d attacked his would-be master and fled in wild-eyed search of self- determination. discarded virginia on the run and ran out of breath in salt-scented boston. found there, if not freedom, fearlessness. a belief in himself that rocked things with the uncontrolled power of the muscular atlantic, power to cradle, to capsize. awoke angry again at the planter who’d taken him for a mule or a machine. had shouldered a chip the size of concord by the time the redcoat dared to dare him. died wishing he’d amassed such revolutionary ire in virginia. died dreaming great britain was the enemy. iv. july 4th: last but not least 17-, 18-, 19-76 and still this celebration’s shamed with gunpowder and words that lie like martyrs in cold blood. africa’s descendents, planting here year after year the seeds of labor, sweating bullets in this nation’s warts, have harvested the rope, the rape, the ghetto, the cell, the fire, the flood, and the blame for you-name-it. so today black folks barbeque ribs and smother the echoes of billie’s strange song in sauces. drink gin. gladly holiday to heckle speeches on tv. pretend to parade. turn out in droves for distant detonations, chaos, controlled as always, but directed away from us tonight. stare into the mirror of the sky at our growing reflection, boggled by how america gawks at the passing pinpoints of flame, but overlooks the vast, ebony palm giving them shape. Evie Shockley, “waiting on the mayflower” from a half-red sea, published by Carolina Wren Press. Copyright © 2006 by Evie Shockley. Reprinted by permission of Evie Shockley. Source: a half-red sea(Carolina Wren Press, 2006) Evie Shockley BiographyMore poems by this author Poem of the Day: waiting on the mayflower Poem of the Day: waiting on the mayflower Poem of The Day {$excerpt:n} Source: Poem of The Day
http://babakziai.org/poem-of-the-day-waiting-on-the-mayflower/
0 notes
Quote
Pale gold and crumbling with crust mottled dark, almost bronze, pieces of honeycomb lie on a plate. Flecked with the pale paper of hive, their hexagonal cells leak into the deepening pool of amber. On your lips, against palate, tooth and tongue, the viscous sugar squeezes from its chambers, sears sweetness into your throat until you chew pulp and wax from a blue city of bees. Between your teeth is the blown flower and the flower’s seed. Passport pages stamped and turning. Death’s officious hum. Both the candle and its anther of flame. Your own yellow hunger. Never say you can’t take this world into your mouth. Source: Poetry July 2001 Paulann Petersen BiographyMore poems by this author Poem of the Day: Appetite Poem of the Day: Appetite Poem of The Day {$excerpt:n} Source: Poem of The Day
http://babakziai.org/poem-of-the-day-appetite/
0 notes
Quote
I Jesús, Estrella, Esperanza, Mercy: Sails flashing to the wind like weapons, sharks following the moans the fever and the dying; horror the corposant and compass rose. Middle Passage: voyage through death to life upon these shores. “10 April 1800— Blacks rebellious. Crew uneasy. Our linguist says their moaning is a prayer for death, ours and their own. Some try to starve themselves. Lost three this morning leaped with crazy laughter to the waiting sharks, sang as they went under.” Desire, Adventure, Tartar, Ann: Standing to America, bringing home black gold, black ivory, black seed. Deep in the festering hold thy father lies, of his bones New England pews are made, those are altar lights that were his eyes. Jesus Saviour Pilot Me Over Life’s Tempestuous Sea We pray that Thou wilt grant, O Lord, safe passage to our vessels bringing heathen souls unto Thy chastening. Jesus Saviour “8 bells. I cannot sleep, for I am sick with fear, but writing eases fear a little since still my eyes can see these words take shape upon the page & so I write, as one would turn to exorcism. 4 days scudding, but now the sea is calm again. Misfortune follows in our wake like sharks (our grinning tutelary gods). Which one of us has killed an albatross? A plague among our blacks—Ophthalmia: blindness—& we have jettisoned the blind to no avail. It spreads, the terrifying sickness spreads. Its claws have scratched sight from the Capt.'s eyes & there is blindness in the fo’c’sle & we must sail 3 weeks before we come to port.” What port awaits us, Davy Jones’ or home? I’ve heard of slavers drifting, drifting, playthings of wind and storm and chance, their crews gone blind, the jungle hatred crawling up on deck. Thou Who Walked On Galilee “Deponent further sayeth The Bella J left the Guinea Coast with cargo of five hundred blacks and odd for the barracoons of Florida: “That there was hardly room ’tween-decks for half the sweltering cattle stowed spoon-fashion there; that some went mad of thirst and tore their flesh and sucked the blood: “That Crew and Captain lusted with the comeliest of the savage girls kept naked in the cabins; that there was one they called The Guinea Rose and they cast lots and fought to lie with her: “That when the Bo’s’n piped all hands, the flames spreading from starboard already were beyond control, the negroes howling and their chains entangled with the flames: “That the burning blacks could not be reached, that the Crew abandoned ship, leaving their shrieking negresses behind, that the Captain perished drunken with the wenches: “Further Deponent sayeth not.” Pilot Oh Pilot Me II Aye, lad, and I have seen those factories, Gambia, Rio Pongo, Calabar; have watched the artful mongos baiting traps of war wherein the victor and the vanquished Were caught as prizes for our barracoons. Have seen the nigger kings whose vanity and greed turned wild black hides of Fellatah, Mandingo, Ibo, Kru to gold for us. And there was one—King Anthracite we named him— fetish face beneath French parasols of brass and orange velvet, impudent mouth whose cups were carven skulls of enemies: He’d honor us with drum and feast and conjo and palm-oil-glistening wenches deft in love, and for tin crowns that shone with paste, red calico and German-silver trinkets Would have the drums talk war and send his warriors to burn the sleeping villages and kill the sick and old and lead the young in coffles to our factories. Twenty years a trader, twenty years, for there was wealth aplenty to be harvested from those black fields, and I’d be trading still but for the fevers melting down my bones. III Shuttles in the rocking loom of history, the dark ships move, the dark ships move, their bright ironical names like jests of kindness on a murderer’s mouth; plough through thrashing glister toward fata morgana’s lucent melting shore, weave toward New World littorals that are mirage and myth and actual shore. Voyage through death, voyage whose chartings are unlove. A charnel stench, effluvium of living death spreads outward from the hold, where the living and the dead, the horribly dying, lie interlocked, lie foul with blood and excrement. Deep in the festering hold thy father lies, the corpse of mercy rots with him, rats eat love’s rotten gelid eyes. But, oh, the living look at you with human eyes whose suffering accuses you, whose hatred reaches through the swill of dark to strike you like a leper’s claw. You cannot stare that hatred down or chain the fear that stalks the watches and breathes on you its fetid scorching breath; cannot kill the deep immortal human wish, the timeless will. “But for the storm that flung up barriers of wind and wave, The Amistad, señores, would have reached the port of Príncipe in two, three days at most; but for the storm we should have been prepared for what befell. Swift as the puma’s leap it came. There was that interval of moonless calm filled only with the water’s and the rigging’s usual sounds, then sudden movement, blows and snarling cries and they had fallen on us with machete and marlinspike. It was as though the very air, the night itself were striking us. Exhausted by the rigors of the storm, we were no match for them. Our men went down before the murderous Africans. Our loyal Celestino ran from below with gun and lantern and I saw, before the cane- knife’s wounding flash, Cinquez, that surly brute who calls himself a prince, directing, urging on the ghastly work. He hacked the poor mulatto down, and then he turned on me. The decks were slippery when daylight finally came. It sickens me to think of what I saw, of how these apes threw overboard the butchered bodies of our men, true Christians all, like so much jetsam. Enough, enough. The rest is quickly told: Cinquez was forced to spare the two of us you see to steer the ship to Africa, and we like phantoms doomed to rove the sea voyaged east by day and west by night, deceiving them, hoping for rescue, prisoners on our own vessel, till at length we drifted to the shores of this your land, America, where we were freed from our unspeakable misery. Now we demand, good sirs, the extradition of Cinquez and his accomplices to La Havana. And it distresses us to know there are so many here who seem inclined to justify the mutiny of these blacks. We find it paradoxical indeed that you whose wealth, whose tree of liberty are rooted in the labor of your slaves should suffer the august John Quincy Adams to speak with so much passion of the right of chattel slaves to kill their lawful masters and with his Roman rhetoric weave a hero’s garland for Cinquez. I tell you that we are determined to return to Cuba with our slaves and there see justice done. Cinquez— or let us say ‘the Prince’—Cinquez shall die.” The deep immortal human wish, the timeless will: Cinquez its deathless primaveral image, life that transfigures many lives. Voyage through death to life upon these shores. Robert Hayden, “Middle Passage” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 1962, 1966 by Robert Hayden. Copyright © 1985 by Emma Hayden. Reprinted with the permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation. Source: Collected Poems(Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1985) Robert Hayden BiographyMore poems by this author Poem of the Day: Middle Passage Poem of the Day: Middle Passage Poem of The Day {$excerpt:n} Source: Poem of The Day
http://babakziai.org/poem-of-the-day-middle-passage/
0 notes
Quote
No matter what the grief, its weight, we are obliged to carry it. We rise and gather momentum, the dull strength that pushes us through crowds. And then the young boy gives me directions so avidly. A woman holds the glass door open, waiting patiently for my empty body to pass through. All day it continues, each kindness reaching toward another—a stranger singing to no one as I pass on the path, trees offering their blossoms, a child who lifts his almond eyes and smiles. Somehow they always find me, seem even to be waiting, determined to keep me from myself, from the thing that calls to me as it must have once called to them— this temptation to step off the edge and fall weightless, away from the world. Poem copyright ©1994 by Dorianne Laux, “For the Sake of Strangers,” from What We Carry, (BOA Editions, Ltd., 1994). Poem reprinted by permission of Dorianne Laux and the publisher. Dorianne Laux BiographyMore poems by this author Poem of the Day: For the Sake of Strangers Poem of the Day: For the Sake of Strangers Poem of The Day {$excerpt:n} Source: Poem of The Day
http://babakziai.org/poem-of-the-day-for-the-sake-of-strangers/
0 notes
Quote
No one ever died for a bite of one, or came back from the dead for a single taste: the cool flesh cellular or stony, white as the belly of the winter hare or a doe's scut, flicking, before she mates. Even an unripe one is delicious, its crisp bite cleaner almost than water and its many names just as inviting: Bartlett and Comice, Anjou, Nashi, Concorde and Seckel, the pomegranate-skinned Starkrimson, even the medieval Bosc, which looks like it dropped from an oil painting. It is not a sin to eat one, though you may think of a woman's body as you do it, the bell-shaped swell of it rich in your hand, and for this reason it was sacred to Venus, Juno, all women celebrated or dismissed in its shape, that mealy sweetness tunneling from its center, a gold that sinks back into itself with age. To ripen a pear, wrap it in paper, lay it in cloth by an open window or slip a rotten one beside it on a metal dish: dying cells call always to the fresh ones, the body's siren song that, having heard it once, we can't stop singing. This is not the fruit that will send you to hell nor keep you there; it will not give you knowledge, childbirth, power, or love; you won't know more pain for having eaten one, or choke on a bite to fall asleep under glass. It has no use for archer or hero, though anything you desire from an apple you can do with the pear, like a dark sister with whom you might live out your secret desires. Cook it in wine, mull it with spices, roast it with honey and cloves. Time sweetens and we taste it, so gather the fruit weeks before ripeness, let summer and winter both simmer inside, for it is a fall fruit whose name in China means separation, though only the fearful won't eat one with those they love. To grow a tree from seed, you'll need a garden and a grafting quince, bees, a ladder, shears, a jug; you'll need water and patience, sun and mud, a reverence for the elders who told no true stories of this fruit's origin, wanting to give us the freedom of one thing that's pleasure alone. Cool and sweet, cellular and stony, this is the fruit I'll never die for, nor come back from the dead for a single taste. The juice of the pear shines on my cheeks. There's no curse in it. I'll eat what I like and throw the rest to the grasses. The seeds will find whatever soils they were meant for. Paisley Rekdal, “Pear” from Nightingale. Copyright © 2019 by Paisley Rekdal. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press, https://ift.tt/KOngNq. Source: Nightingale(2019) Paisley Rekdal BiographyMore poems by this author Poem of the Day: Pear Poem of the Day: Pear Poem of The Day {$excerpt:n} Source: Poem of The Day
http://babakziai.org/poem-of-the-day-pear/
0 notes
Quote
The tint of the sky between sunset and night. And wandering with you and your nephew in that maze, half-lost—Madrid of the Austrias—looking for Plaza of the Green Cross where, days before you arrived, an Opel with false plates was parked, its wheels straddling the curb, and so the van heading for the barracks that morning had to slow to squeeze past . . . Back at the hotel your mom is holding up her gift—Amethyst, she says admiring how light when passing through a prism bends. At his window that morning before we began my student said, ¡Qué bonito!, watching it drift and descend, settling on roofs and cars. And I think of you and your wife and daughter: getting to see Madrid in white, your visit winding down, and how I had wanted that lesson to end to get to the park—Retiro, they say, is the city’s one lung, and the way the feel and sound of steps cease when grass is completely covered as if walking on a cloud. The year before on a visit from the coast, a friend sitting at a window watched the flakes flutter and fall, dissolving before reaching the ground—aguanieve, he said while from a town near Seville B-52s were lifting off . . . I was in a trance that week though like most things the war in the Gulf was soon another backdrop, like the string of car bombs the following year. And yet that morning as soon as I heard, something led me not to the park but down to City Hall, workers in the street evacuated, sipping coffee, though I never reached the site—of course it was cordoned off, the spray of glass, the heap of twisted metal, and so later learned their names their lives. Of the five there was one: a postal clerk who as a boy, would plunge his hands into the white, the cold a sweet jolt whenever he got to touch the stuff, scooping it tightly into a ball like the ones he would dodge and throw years later at his wife-to-be: those weekends, those places—away from city air— a release . . . Miraflores, Siete Picos, Rascafría . . . It’s in his blood, she would come to say chatting with a neighbor about his thing for snow—the way it falls softly, blanketing roofs and groves, villages nestled in the Sierra’s hills: it is February and she is picturing him and the boy, up there now playing, horsing around Francisco Aragón, “February Snow” from Puerta del Sol. Copyright © 2005 by Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe. Reprinted with permission. Source: Puerta del Sol(Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe, 2005) Francisco Aragón BiographyMore poems by this author Poem of the Day: February Snow Poem of the Day: February Snow Poem of The Day {$excerpt:n} Source: Poem of The Day
http://babakziai.org/poem-of-the-day-february-snow/
0 notes
Quote
We have memorized America, how it was born and who we have been and where. In ceremonies and silence we say the words, telling the stories, singing the old songs. We like the places they take us. Mostly we do. The great and all the anonymous dead are there. We know the sound of all the sounds we brought. The rich taste of it is on our tongues. But where are we going to be, and why, and who? The disenfranchised dead want to know. We mean to be the people we meant to be, to keep on going where we meant to go. But how do we fashion the future? Who can say how except in the minds of those who will call it Now? The children. The children. And how does our garden grow? With waving hands—oh, rarely in a row— and flowering faces. And brambles, that we can no longer allow. Who were many people coming together cannot become one people falling apart. Who dreamed for every child an even chance cannot let luck alone turn doorknobs or not. Whose law was never so much of the hand as the head cannot let chaos make its way to the heart. Who have seen learning struggle from teacher to child cannot let ignorance spread itself like rot. We know what we have done and what we have said, and how we have grown, degree by slow degree, believing ourselves toward all we have tried to become— just and compassionate, equal, able, and free. All this in the hands of children, eyes already set on a land we never can visit—it isn’t there yet— but looking through their eyes, we can see what our long gift to them may come to be. If we can truly remember, they will not forget. Miller Williams, “Of History and Hope” from Some Jazz A While: Collected Poems. Copyright © 1999 by Miller Williams. Used with the permission of the poet and the University of Illinois Press. Source: Some Jazz a While(University of Illinois Press, 1999) Miller Williams BiographyMore poems by this author Poem of the Day: Of History and Hope Poem of the Day: Of History and Hope Poem of The Day {$excerpt:n} Source: Poem of The Day
http://babakziai.org/poem-of-the-day-of-history-and-hope/
0 notes
Quote
I’ve been writing this since the summer my grandfather taught me how to hold a blade of grass between my thumbs and make it whistle, since I first learned to make green from blue and yellow, turned paper into snowflakes, believed a seashell echoed the sea, and the sea had no end. I’ve been writing this since a sparrow flew into my class and crashed into the window, laid to rest on a bed of tissue in a shoebox by the swings, since the morning I first stood up on the bathroom sink to watch my father shave, since our eyes met in that foggy mirror, since the splinter my mother pulled from my thumb, kissed my blood. I’ve been writing this since the woman I slept with the night of my father’s wake, since my grandmother first called me a faggot and I said nothing, since I forgave her and my body pressed hard against Michael on the dance floor at Twist, since the years spent with a martini and men I knew I couldn’t love. I’ve been writing this since the night I pulled off the road at Big Sur and my eyes caught the insanity of the stars, since the months by the kitchen window watching the snow come down like fallout from a despair I had no word for, since I stopped searching for a name and found myself tick-tock in a hammock asking nothing of the sky. I’ve been writing this since spring, studying the tiny leaves on the oaks dithering like moths, contrast to the eon-old fieldstones unveiled of snow, but forever works-in-progress, since tonight with the battled moon behind the branches spying on the world— same as it ever was—perfectly unfinished, my glasses and pen at rest again on the night table. I’ve been writing this since my eyes started seeing less, my knees aching more, since I began picking up twigs, feathers, and pretty rocks for no reason collecting on the porch where I sit to read and watch the sunset like my grandfather did everyday, remembering him and how to make a blade of grass whistle. Richard Blanco, “Since Unfinished” from Looking for The Gulf Motel. Copyright © 2012 by Richard Blanco. Reprinted by permission of University of Pittsburgh Press. Source: Looking for The Gulf Motel(University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012) Richard Blanco BiographyMore poems by this author Poem of the Day: Since Unfinished Poem of the Day: Since Unfinished Poem of The Day {$excerpt:n} Source: Poem of The Day
http://babakziai.org/poem-of-the-day-since-unfinished/
0 notes
Quote
Four lanes over, a plump helium heart— slipped, maybe, from some kid’s wrist or a rushed lover's empty front seat through a half-cracked car window— rises like a shiny purple cloudlet toward today’s gray mess of clouds, trailing its gold ribbon like lightning that will never strike anything or anyone here on the forsaken ground, its bold LOVE increasingly illegible as it ascends over the frozen oaks, riding swift currents toward the horizon, a swollen word wobbling out of sight. Source: Poetry February 2002 Michael McFee BiographyMore poems by this author Poem of the Day: Valentine’s Afternoon Poem of the Day: Valentine’s Afternoon Poem of The Day {$excerpt:n} Source: Poem of The Day
http://babakziai.org/poem-of-the-day-valentines-afternoon/
0 notes
Quote
I lived in the first century of world wars. Most mornings I would be more or less insane, The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories, The news would pour out of various devices Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen. I would call my friends on other devices; They would be more or less mad for similar reasons. Slowly I would get to pen and paper, Make my poems for others unseen and unborn. In the day I would be reminded of those men and women, Brave, setting up signals across vast distances, Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values. As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened, We would try to imagine them, try to find each other, To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other, Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves, To let go the means, to wake. I lived in the first century of these wars. Muriel Rukeyser, “Poem” from The Speed of Darkness. Copyright © 1968 by Muriel Rukeyser. Reprinted by permission of International Creative Management. Source: The Speed of Darkness(Vintage Books, 1968) Muriel Rukeyser BiographyMore poems by this author Poem of the Day: Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars) Poem of the Day: Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars) Poem of The Day {$excerpt:n} Source: Poem of The Day
http://babakziai.org/poem-of-the-day-poem-i-lived-in-the-first-century-of-world-wars/
0 notes
Quote
won't you celebrate with me what i have shaped into a kind of life? i had no model. born in babylonbabylon Once a great city in Biblical times, see Psalms 137. both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself? i made it up here on this bridge betweenbetween / starshine and clay Compare to John Keats’s “betwixt damnation and impassion’d clay” in “On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again.” starshine and clay,between / starshine and clay Compare to John Keats’s “betwixt damnation and impassion’d clay” in “On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again.” my one hand holding tight my other hand; come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed. Lucille Clifton, “won’t you celebrate with me” from Book of Light. Copyright © 1993 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press. Source: Book of Light(Copper Canyon Press, 1993) Lucille Clifton BiographyMore poems by this author Poem of the Day: won't you celebrate with me Poem of the Day: won't you celebrate with me Poem of The Day {$excerpt:n} Source: Poem of The Day
http://babakziai.org/poem-of-the-day-wont-you-celebrate-with-me/
1 note
·
View note
Quote
Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. William Ernest Henley BiographyMore poems by this author Poem of the Day: Invictus Poem of the Day: Invictus Poem of The Day {$excerpt:n} Source: Poem of The Day
http://babakziai.org/poem-of-the-day-invictus/
0 notes
Quote
The popcorn is greasy, and I forgot to bring a Kleenex. A pill that’s a bomb inside the stomach of a man inside The Embassy blows up. Eructations of flame, luxurious cauliflowers giganticize into motion. The entire 29-ft. screen is orange, is crackling flesh and brick bursting, blackening, smithereened. I unwrap a Dentyne and, while jouncing my teeth in rubber tongue-smarting clove, try with the 2-inch-wide paper to blot butter off my fingers. A bubble-bath, room-sized, in which 14 girls, delectable and sexless, twist-topped Creamy Freezes (their blond, red, brown, pinkish, lavendar or silver wiglets all screwed that high, and varnished), scrub-tickle a lone male, whose chest has just the right amount and distribu- tion of curly hair. He’s nervously pretending to defend his modesty. His crotch, below the waterline, is also below the frame—but unsubmerged all 28 slick foamy boobs. Their makeup fails to let the girls look naked. Caterpil- lar lashes, black and thick, lush lips glossed pink like the gum I pop and chew, contact lenses on the eyes that are mostly blue, they’re nose-perfect replicas of each other. I’ve got most of the grease off and onto this little square of paper. I’m folding it now, making creases with my nails. May Swenson, “The James Bond Movie” from New and Selected Things Taking Place (Boston: Atlantic/Little Brown, 1978). Copyright © 1978 by May Swenson. Reprinted with the permission of The Literary Estate of May Swenson. Source: New and Selected Things Taking Place(Little Brown and Company, 1978) May Swenson BiographyMore poems by this author Poem of the Day: The James Bond Movie Poem of the Day: The James Bond Movie Poem of The Day {$excerpt:n} Source: Poem of The Day
http://babakziai.org/poem-of-the-day-the-james-bond-movie/
0 notes