Love Poetry For Couple

INTERVIEWER : I know you�ve written about this, but could we begin with the beginning, how you became a poet? KIZER : I began writing poems when I was about eight, with a heavy assist from my mother. She read me Arthur Waley�s translations, and Whitman, and Robinson Jeffers, who have been lifelong influences on me. My father read Keats to me, and then he read more Keats while I was lying on the sofa struggling with asthma. A sort of intellectual seduction: there I am, lying on the sofa breathing with difficulty, while Father pours Keats into the porches of my ear. If Daddy had only read Keats�s letters! They�re so wonderful, but Keats is someone you can�t let yourself be influenced by. There�s that interesting group of poets who are fatal to your style: I�d say Keats, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Dylan Thomas. The Waley led me to my own interest in Chinese and Chinese translations, which has been a major theme in my life. And Whitman, of course, I idolize, though I�m more attracted to met

Silences fill the air. The silence of a jobless face. That of wings as a bird flies off with a darner in its beak, and in the mind's eye the darner flees. Things that are silent require colour, to feel and be seen again; the sound an artist sees with her hands. On this tarred road that feeds the city of Gary, Indiana, only burnt-out cars remain of the riot for freedoms (that are now coming). A silence holds the street with an afro and its white teeth of dissidence or innocence, depending on which side one is. A woman hurries home with colours of a hoopoe in a bag. Red and dark green stalks sticking in the heat. Sacks of potatoes and carrots at our feet. We dance, never knowing what it is they seek who, every time we gather, come to disperse us, the grand silence being of course the first time any body was able to walk in reverse. �from "Things that are silent", Pindrop Press , 2012 Michael Jackson

INTERVIEWER : Do you feel you�re in command when you�re writing? GINSBERG : Sometimes I feel in command when I�m writing. When I�m in the heat of some truthful tears, yes. Then, complete command. Other times�most of the time not. Just diddling away, woodcarving, getting a pretty shape; like most of my poetry. There�s only a few times when I reach a state of complete command. Probably a piece of Howl, a piece of Kaddish, and a piece of The Change. And one or two moments of other poems. INTERVIEWER : By command do you mean a sense of the whole poem as it�s going, rather than parts? GINSBERG : No�a sense of being self-prophetic master of the universe. �more at  The Paris Review Allen Ginsberg

Henry Tanner painted The Banjo Lesson in 1893 after a series of sketches he made while visiting the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina four years before. Tanner had been studying and working in Paris until he developed a bout of typhoid fever and was advised to return to the United States to recover his health and dwindling finances. While taking up a teaching post at Clark University in Atlanta, Tanner�s doctor told him to take in some mountain air. His trip to North Carolina opened his eyes to the poverty of African-Americans living in Appalachia. �https://smarthistory.org/tanner-banjo Henry Ossawa Tanner

Donald Trump

We are alone again tonight (she said) , despite how people stand with us or stand together apart. There is no sense we seek to make of old events. Things are what they are. Life was careless with our condition. Though sleep sends old men up the stairs in a storm to their room & they fall, flail, feel the devil on their legs, I am happy that for now, under our shelter, you are with me�even if your voice gets lost among stars in the galaxy outside. Can you hear me now? (he said). Tokoloho is in dad's arms. Mbera (nickname) is in the black-arm, red-front sweater

Suddenly I realised That my phone was more Than a calling tool All my lifetime memories were in there My beloved earphones That secured every beat of my life The clinging sound of the rands and nairas Echoed in my head Thinking if I could make it home tonight But I lost my major key The one that opens closed doors Then it struck me that my lipstick Enlightened and brightened my lips A spark and some moisture Enough to give someone a kiss My heart sank when I only Found one piece of my favourite shades Realising that I could no longer flex And that I lost all my fleek The damp pages of my visa Made me feel so helpless How would I reach my destinations? Without my passport? Bonolo �Bonita� Makhooane is a 15-year-old originally from Khubetsoana in Maseru, Lesotho. She is currently a student at Morija Girls� High School. Bonolo enjoys playing basketball, dancing and listening to music. She hopes to one day work as a professional lawyer. Bonolo Makhooane

If only I had known The bracelet was her last Word to me If only I had known That it spoke Of joy and forgiveness The letter seemed normal I didn�t know that those words Were coming from deep Within her heart Her picture showed a true Reflection of life A song came into my mind A song was expressed as A sacrifice unto God A scripture that said �The Lord is my shepherd� Kept her going It gave her strength And when I saw her rising up It was then that I knew God gives strength To the weak When I saw her tears And when I saw her smile I remembered the life We used to live If only I had known I would have been heard when I said She is a legend to me Eketsang �Hakelar� T�oaeli is a 15-year-old originally from Quthing, Lesotho. She is currently studying at Morija Girls� High School. Eketsang enjoys writing stories and poems, telling jokes and getting involved in community work. She hopes to pursue her poetry and to work as a doctor. Eketsang T�oaeli

They hanged him on a clement morning, swung between the falling sunlight and the women's breathing like a black apostrophe to pain. All morning while the children hushed their hopscotch joy and the cane kept growing he hung there sweet and low. At least that's how they tell it. It was long ago... [ continue ...] Appreciate the poem further  here . Dennis Scott

I have to tell you, the voice of God, if you really want to know, is Aretha Franklin . � Marianne Faithfull The power that lives in her voice has driven our freedom, power made with sound, with a resonance getting closer but never completely overwhelming, apart from the awareness of how it is able to, like the deep-throated purr of a veldt cat pawing at something near the centre, the way the pour of rain hits tin roofs of houses near the bitter end of town, and, grows as it approaches, held at bay by an invisible baton of physics while the master conductor of a god spares us the unknown. A choir, though robed in the colours of loss, lifts everybody and with lilting tone keeps them there. Aretha sang to the world like a chorale throughout, from season to season, from childhood to the edges of reason, till abruptly from that source one day came no more warmth, of the kind a soothing sound copies from nature; what a baby hears for nine months until in birth it has to come and face the wor

A poem for Aretha Franklin. https://t.co/4ZzbdPOPY9 pic.twitter.com/uerqBSr73C � Poets.org (@POETSorg) August 16, 2018 Aretha Franklin

       

This performance will always make its mark on my psyche, in the way I view music and hope music to sound like. If not like this, then this good, pure, soulful and generous. Like all serious artists, Aretha has given her whole life to reaching this level, and it shows. The woman is untouchable and barely reachable on that top rung where she's sitting. May she live to sing many more songs. Of course Obama shed a tear. I have chills every time I watch this performance and I'm watching a freaking video. Obama was there! Aretha Franklin

" My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy. " �President Barack Obama on cable TV network al-Arabiya (January 27, 2009) Barack Hussein Obama

�for Mahlomola Motuba Every word sown by hand arises and stands on its own, true to the rows of what a farmer meant to plant. In the old south they would grow cotton, white as a sheet against blue-black evenings of panic, lit only by flames that lick the moment's emblazoned cross. In Lesotho the past years have seen a soar in crops that go against the hope of opportunity: red chillies and beets, plums, heirloom tomatoes or even tart cherries, all dying to imitate blood; up in the foothills where our soul is, fruit is crushed and made to run down mouths of open wounds, like liquid from the seso of Mokema, and that of Qoaling, where fruitlets were plucked before maturity; red, red fruit split open in Siloe, and overripe raspberries and berberis everywhere splashed; fruit still on their branches awaiting death. Plants rise up, stand according to where they�re sown, by whom, and for what purpose, even as red remains the colour of severity. A soldier�s boot crushed the currant of our na

+ Who they are: The Soweto Gospel Choir profile + Their story: The Soweto Gospel Choir on Wikipedia + Their Amazon page: The Soweto Gospel Choir on Amazon The Soweto Gospel Choir

I see you everywhere except in dreams �Karl Shapiro Someday this poem will be a memory, like the ten dollars you got winning the spelling bee, like the sweet smell of the tobacco pouch in your grandfather's pocket, the grandfather you adored, how the gold string that tied it vanished like a coin drawn into a magician's sleeve amazing the child who watched, who was you, the child burned by illusions that turned into dreams, the child, awake now to the ruin of old age, but you cannot heal her, you cannot cry. You know no words of comfort. You pronounce her dead and move to a far country, sunless, without air. + Who she is: Joyce Ellen Davis at Canopic Jar + Where she blogs: Joyce Ellen Davis's 'following the little god'  and  Plodding Taurus + Her Amazon page: Joyce Ellen Davis's Amazon page Joyce Ellen Davis

My iris purple skirt� its silky swish� was packed at first for partying in but then the destination changed: I checked in for a flight towards his final journeying. In that petal furl, with a beaded butterfly to curb its wrap, I helped to carry him, a coffined husk, across a patch of rocky ground to dusty burying. At last, a rest for him. For me, the hollow pit of grief, a body's emptying. In a new uncompassed north I dug a hole beneath a tree, through softer soil. For memory, these seeds: a bauble and a photograph, snatched flowers, the match's halo-ing. There it must lie still no longer winged: just a scatter of beads melted in the earth, and a rusted pin. + Who she is: Isobel Dixon bio + Amazon page: Isobel Dixon Amazon page + Interview: Isobel Dixon interview Isobel Dixon

When my father snores he sucks in the whole world and releases it in one pure breath. At night I�d come into his room where he would pass out on the bed� too drunk to change his clothes or put out his cigarette, which had burnt itself down to the embers. I pulled off his shoes and watched him sleep, smelling his sweet, stale breath fill the room in waves. He was so out of it I could put my finger into his mouth and pull it out before he inhaled. Once I let my finger linger a second too long and his tongue touched the flat of my tip. I thought of going in deeper, first a hand, then an arm; the tender cutlet of my body swallowed whole by my father. But I was barely enough to make him cough. He rolled over on his side, leaving a well in the space where his body had been. I crawled back into my own bed, as my father slept the peaceful sleep of ogres, feeling the house shake with his rhythmic tremors. January's blog: January Gill O'Neil's blog Amazon page: January Gill O'Nei

1�Who do you sing for (or to)? I have never thought about this but now that you ask, I think I sing to Africa first, to awaken her pride, tell her stories, her history, tribulations, triumphs... and then to the world to showcase and celebrate that uniqueness and pride. 2�How do you manage time between what I suspect is your first love, singing, and your other love, journalism? Very poorly for now and that makes me very sad. I yearn to find more time to sing, and I hope I can find a way to make it feasible soon. 3�Why, with respect to the question above, did you choose to follow one path fully and not the other? Economic reasons, it is very difficult to make a living as a full time singer in Lesotho, but now that I am in South Africa I hope to change that to at least find a balance. But if there are other opportunities in other places I will gladly take them. 4�When was the last time you sang in public? What was the occasion? It was on 24 December 2016, at the Tourism Jazz Festival in

�for my uncle, Nthaha He is dead; in Oort, the gods know. As the news leaves press rooms eels, from the bottom of the Aegean, ribbon to the surface to wave goodbye; we smear his body with Zambuk and wash the rotted parts with milk, parts that are known as the devil�s cut. His wife washes between the legs then returns later to put the legs straight again, before the thigh muscles stiffen. This is why a man must die before his wife. At the edge of the open grave I pretend to be a man, and proceed to find a stone I spit on, then throw into the hole. This is how a man accompanies relatives on the journey out of life. People look around with downcast faces, longing for a different chemistry of sleep. 10�15 Oct 2016 20th Poetry Africa Festival "A select group of poets from South Africa and around the world will gather together for a week showcasing the face of present day spoken word and storytelling at the 20th Poetry Africa Festival. Hosted by the University of KwaZulu-Natal�s Centr

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. And from there those that lifted eyes could count Five mountain ranges one behind the other Under the sunset far into Vermont. And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled, As it ran light, or had to bear a load. And nothing happened: day was all but done. Call it a day, I wish they might have said To please the boy by giving him the half hour That a boy counts so much when saved from work. His sister stood beside them in her apron To tell them �Supper.� At the word, the saw, As if to prove saws knew what supper meant, Leaped out at the boy�s hand, or seemed to leap� He must have given the hand. However it was, Neither refused the meeting. But the hand! The boy�s first outcry was a rueful laugh, As he swung toward them holding up the hand Half in appeal, but half as if to keep The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all� Since