National Poetry Month | Day 15

One Flower

by Jack Kerouac

One flower
on the cliffside
Nodding at the canyon

The Country Club Contradiction

by Austin Pfeiffer

The parlor is shaped like a tall woman.  The room goes wide and returns to a focus
at the far wall.  The carpet is green, but it does not feel like earth, it feels like money,
a bit of dirty pride and sensational sensuality takes you over, letting Amaretto raft across
the valley of your tongue while snacking on cashews and hearing only the smack of granite globes colliding.

National Poetry Month | Day 14

When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d

by Walt Whitman

(2)

O powerful, western, fallen star!
O shades of night! O moody, tearful night!
O great star disappear’d! O the black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold me powerless! O helpless soul of me!
O harsh surrounding cloud, that will not free my soul!

A Snip

by Austin Pfeiffer

I’ll

take

a haircut.

a snip across my locks,

as if i had much to cut.

its really just about the event now

and the sacchariferous scent of vintage aftershave.

National Poetry Month | Day 13

What We Need Is Here.

by Wendell Berry

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

 

an apple in the cap

by austin pfeiffer

an apple in the cap
does not
taste like anything,
it is simply lounging.

such is the curse of talk and plans,
they do not taste like life.

National Poetry Month | Day 12

Introduction to Poetry

by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

the perfect time for a nap

by Austin Pfeiffer

the perfect time for a nap
is after a mug of coffee is aggressively sipped
in the mid-day,
the sleepy hours between one and one-thirty p.m.
when the wind is bored and the sun is high,
and very little can be accomplished
by way of experiencing each other
in a meal or under dusk or at the sun’s rising.
and then you wake-up and ride the tide
coming in, with its coolness and colors
and days closing radio programs
iced tea, french kisses, dog walks,
and hopefully the satisfaction of a harvest.

National Poetry Month | Day 11

A Drinking Song

by W.B. Yeats

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

 

Import

by Austin Pfeiffer

Hello! I

am import

ant.  This massive earth of ours
requires my presence as a banker,
which is why I bought these designer sunglasses,
so as to see well my domain as a mid-level manager
with a chevrolet lawn and also, I own more golf clubs

than allowed in a standard game.  I dabble in real estate.

Thank you.

National Poetry Month | Day 10

Fog

by Carl Sandburg

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Bricks and Vines

by Austin Pfeiffer

sneaking up

the lines

the vines

how the bricks

climb so high

I sigh

the apex

of man’s bricks

condescends anything

green and breathy.

how then shall

we fall

in awe?

National Poetry Day | Day 9

Do not go gentle into that good night

by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

O king of the sunshine and lightning

by Austin Pfeiffer

O king of the sunshine and lightning
you took your fist and plunged it into
the dusty, dark dirt of a fertile farm
and held the soil to your lips to blow

into it, like a trumpet, like a lifeless lung
and you made a kingdom.

do you weep with me
when your subjects battle
in uncivil war? your baby boy’s
offspring are now your tool for rule…

why?

National Poetry Month | Day 8

Pied Beauty

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things–
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced–fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.

Summer Sunday

by Austin Pfeiffer

My radio rocks my chair
Like a glass of lemonade
On the bow of a row boat.
Sweet Jesus, the summer Sunday.

National Poetry Month | Day 7

Ah! Sunflower

By William Blake

Ah! sunflower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun,
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller’s journey is done;

Where the youth pined away with desire,
And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves and aspire;
Where my sunflower wishes to go.

mercy’s inconvenience

by austin pfeiffer

how mercy inconveniences
to touch the dirt
on the shoulder
of a drifter
is such an inconvenience

National Poetry Month | Day 6

In April

by James Hearst

This I saw on an April day:
Warm rain spilt from a sun-lined cloud,
A sky-flung wave of gold at evening,
And a cock pheasant treading a dusty path
Shy and proud.

And this I found in an April field:
A new white calf in the sun at noon,
A flash of blue in a cool moss bank,
And tips of tulips promising flowers
To a blue-winged loon.

And this I tried to understand
As I scrubbed the rust from my brightening plow:
The movement of seed in furrowed earth,
And a blackbird whistling sweet and clear
From a green-sprayed bough.

White Wine & Green Apples

by Austin Pfeiffer

Its Saturday afternoon and neither of us has had a birthday in a while,
But that is okay. We have other things to celebrate.
Like the Carolina sunshine and the western breeze,
Flirting with our screen window and linen curtains.

You like to eat green apples and oblige my taste for spirits,
By indulging with white wine. I like to cut the apples into
Six pieces, but you are pragmatic, quick to divvy up efficient quadrants
Of the bulging green bulbs, that are bigger than your fist.

You teach me how to tackle life with grace and power.
And I teach you how to sleep and to cut apples into smaller,
More aesthetic pieces, that is to taste and see what is good,
While sipping on the nectar of the nipple of green grapes.