New Songs, Post-Foetry

[Foetry1]

It Depends On Who It Is


What words will you say to me
When you love me?

When you love me
What words will you say to me?

Will they be pretty,
Lingering in brevity like poetry?

Did you learn them in your privacy
Where they are languishing already?

Will they sound like heresy
Or will they be comfortable and familiar to me?

Must I always be ready?
Or will your words be spontaneous in the extreme--
Like a dream?

Will they be hesitant and lengthy--
Or nearly silent, for our safety?

Will they have a ringing finality
Ushering in my satiety?

Or will they murmur endlessly,
Sadly, redolantly?

Must I always be ready?
Will your words be like pepples that shine all day--
Or the stream?





submitted anonymously

[Foetry1]

Before I, Poet, Was

My oblivion won, my sleep wins and my death
Will lose to oblivion too,
So a blank page to leave words
Is more interesting to me than you,
Unless you can be a record
To what I think and do,
A partner to defeat oblivion
Before it smooths out eternally the false and true.

Some, their life materially feeble,
Project their dreams onto gods,
Trading their individuality for authority
And the mindless rituals of their religion,
Converting their smashed selves into happy pawns
Who dream an afterlife with feasts draped on heavenly lawns,
And who can blame them for wanting simple perfection?

But I have huge desires, The New Yorker, the internet and TV.
The simple rabble will never understand
The intricacy of what I say.  
They cannot possibly know me
In their rice boats covered in mist,
Or in their huts surrounded by sand stretching far away.



Submitted anonymously

[Foetry1]

HELLO, EVERYONE

Welcome to my FOET Community--
From criticism we own immunity
Because we are FOETS building a community.
Do not question our sanity,
Nor the quality of our poetry,
And never question our honesty!
For we are a FOET community,
Dear?  Excuse me,
Are you one of us?  Excuse me.
We are FOETS in a FOET community.
Haven't you read your poetry history?
This is how it's been, and how it will always be.
This is the way of poetry,
A community of FOETS--how can I make you see?
The FOET always writes the best poetry,
For FOETRY is community,
The poetry of the community,
The community for poetry
For the good of the community.
Love FOETS and treat them graciously
For they love poetry and the poetry community,
And if you love FOETS and their FOETRY,
They might waive your contest fee
And even love your poetry
As if it were their own.



submitted by Eli Sebastian Codfickle III

[alan]

Eli, you've outdone yourself.

[Foetry1]

The Ballad of F____

"God send every gentleman
Such hawks, such hounds and such leman."  -The Three Ravens

It is David Lehman--
He grows my reputation,
He is the god who makes it possible
For me to dance and whistle.

There's two ways to make it in poetry today--
I guess you've all heard about the MFA
But a better way to get to the top of the tree--
Look like a victim of the KGB.

Wal-mart found me writing poems
And I was fired on the spot--
Big deal, but what if this happened
In the old Soviet?

Locked up in a mental ward
Helps a poet's celebrity,
But even better if you're a nutter
To the KGB!

It's no longer so cool
To get that advanced degree,
Even Ireland's stock is down--
Be a Russain emigree!

Poetry heals the sick
In that exotic land
Where writing bad poems
Can make you a man.

If you escape from the east
And come to the west,
Wear your love of poetry
Up and down your vest.

The big shots in po-biz
Feel a change inside the bar
MFA kids just won't cut it,
There's a higher, sterner star

To guide their ambition,
For association's all
When it comes to immortality
And pictures on the wall.

Not a cheating MFA'er,
But a Russian who has suffered!
Against Foetry charges,
Hard knocks the better buffer.

Time in a KGB prison,
And with a master's degree,
Hey, now we're talking--
Step back, Foetry!

From the K.G.B
To the B.A.P
And now the Russian Editor
Accepts the poetry

Of David Lehman!
How could he do that?
And how could she?
It's like a party being thrown by the KGB!



submitted anonymously

[Foetry1]

Travel, the Poets Say

Travel, the poets say,
For in traveling the soul will stray
To places within places,
Dark places on the bright highway.

Travel, the philosophers cry,
For beauty holding still is always flying by,
Even beauty that holds still for our gaze
Fades before the bright, desperate eye.

Travel, the singers sing,
To your heart, where cunning ships bring
Goods from afar, fruits of tropical days,
The ships amazed by the ports saying, "Come! We will take anything!"






submitted anonymously

[Foetry1]

The Song of the Ipod Wearer

A world creeps into my ear
As it once crept into yours.
You left one room for another,
Pleaded with your exiled drummer,
Slept on the street with your guitar.
I have not gone anywhere
But I know exactly where you are.
You are singing in my ear
In a machine which has captured you
In a slender wire for good.
You’ve lost weight.
Your band is the size of a pea.
And all your dreams and your suffering
Now belong to me.





Submitted anonymously

[Foetry1]

The Flower and the Dream

I am grass,
Dreaming it will pass,
The blandness and the mass
Of being only grass.

This I dimly know,
This, at least, I esteem,
It hovers in my consciousness--
The flower and the dream.

The grass obeys the wind,
The grass must kiss the stream,
And every soothing gardener,
The flower and the dream.

Once fastened to my rock,
I dug in with my team,
And we love, Isadora,
The flower and the dream.



Submitted anonymously

[Foetry1]

Epitaph for an Unknown Soldier
(St. Lo, Normandy, 7/17/1944)

First of the fallen angels I have known,
I came upon you in obscurity
and found your arms embracing all the sky
as life escaped you.  In the midst of dull,
engulfing battle, thunder and black flame,
this peace is terrible.  Your eyes are glacial lakes;
your lips are dry: you are still beautiful.

I twist my helmeted neck to meet your gaze,
but stand dark, unreflected in those lakes
now frozen by an age which has no end.
I bow and hover, too afraid to touch,
unable to breathe life on wrinkling lips,
to see them tremble--and return to pain.
I bend to drink your death, and numbly wish
to halve my useless living and to share
what I have too much of, if you have none.


Antonio Alfredo Giarraputo
1925-1989

[Foetry1]

My Particular Passion

My particular passion
Sent me over the fence behind Cal's Garage running
To the She Witch
Who sent me to the He Witch
Who sent me back to the She Witch
Grinning
And in my particular mind
I tried to be good
But I saw everybody
Sinning
And carrying on
And loading things in secret
And walking a little ways ahead and should I say hello
And what is more important today what is today what shall I do
And even the simple gravel beneath the lamplight confused me
And I saw the slow racehorse condemning moon
Spinning
And I was cruel to my comrades
And I only cared about me
And who what where why was
Winning
And I forgot universal love
I forgot everything I was hating even you, you, my only one
My particular passion





Submitted anonymously

[Foetry1]

To Make It Into The More Fashionable District Alone

You took a train into the vast atmosphere. Maybe a
friend was there, passengers anyway. You had
to wear the suit and stepped into the loud escalator
before it stopped. You flew down the stairs, tie
askew. Toward tomorrow you lounged for one
drink more, the subway schedule looking more
and more odd in your memory. Time to fall. Out
of the songbook the complete lot of old songs
washed the floor. Bands came by in brown,
looking hairy and defeated, dressed like you,
natty, dumb. You stood to go like a deer that
moves in shadows with its loved ones.






submitted anonymously

[Foetry1]

If You Could Make The Lady Swoon

If you could make the lady swoon
Under a palpitating moon--
Did you sing to her once?
You cannot do it again too soon.

I hear the lonely, moaning loon
Piercing the dusk with crying.
The lady almost swooning,
Discovered I was lying.

The poem that sang a life in me
Has no life in her--
And with her charge that I have lied,
I sadly must concur.

I banish my poem to the cold lake,
Beneath the cold moon.
Let no more lovers be deceived
And find life in a swoon.




submitted anonymously

[Foetry1]

Poetry Is Where You Tell All

Poetry is where you tell all.
It takes no talent or skill.
Make yourself small
By telling all.

Poetry does not take learning.
It is but a fury, a burning,
A passion which makes you small
By telling all.

You enter rooms watching your back,
Your life in place, your pride intact.
But you must burn, crash and fall
By telling all.






submitted anonymously

[Foetry1]

Did Poetry On My Tongue


Did poetry on my tongue sound sweet?
Good, but still our lips must meet
In a dark place without sweet sounds.
With no muse, love's mouth still hunts with its hungry hounds.

Are tongues made sweeter by words softly spoken?
Yes, but no word was heard when her will was broken.
When her will served mine in a dark place
No music or poetry lived in her face.

You make these distinctions cruelly, for we know
The sweetest love is private and needs no show.
Vain for you to ask for sweet sounds here.
Dark is silence and silence is dark when my lover is near.

Was it dark and silent, though, when you first met?
No, it was day and beautiful, how could I forget?
A poem was spoken when I met my master,
And I ran, but love was a little faster.




submitted anonymously

[Foetry1]

My Soul Was  Soothed

My soul was soothed
By this scene of a family,
A man and three women with hats on
Playing cards by the sea--

Perhaps Uncle George did not want to be there,
Maybe Aunt Grace hates her job, George, and life.
But this was no concern of mine,
This strife.

All seemed so happy there!
With two children playing in the green water,
Their freckled son,
Their dimpled daughter.

How I longed to be them,
Forever on land,
Forever by the water.




submitted anonymously