Daily Poems
Thread Topic: Daily Poems
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Day 1 -- Don't Ask if I'm Okay
Don't ask me how I'm doing
Don't ask if I'm okay
Don't say they're in a better place
As you won't like what I say
No
Time is not a healer
And this was not God's will
If He knew how much I've really lost
They would be right here still
I won't try to be positive
And this wasn't for the best
My heart's in broken pieces
And it hurts deep in my chest.
Don't say, at least they're out of pain
Well I'm not, and may never be.
Their pain is gone, but mine's still here
It's been passed on to me.
Don't tell me, you know how I feel
Even though, it may be true
This grief is mine,
for what length of time...
It takes me, to get through.
- Toni Kane -
Nice one! đ
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Day 2 â The Night Has A Thousand Eyes
The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one:
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.
- Francis William Bourdillon -
Day 3 â The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is
- Wallace Stevens -
Day 4 â Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who saidââTwo vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.â
- Percy Bysshe Shelley -
Day 5 â Do not go gentle into that good night
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.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- Dylan Thomas -
Day 6 â The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and Iâ
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- Robert Frost -
Day 7 â Because I could not stop for Death
Because I could not stop for Death â
He kindly stopped for me â
The Carriage held but just Ourselves â
And Immortality.
We slowly drove â He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility â
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess â in the Ring â
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain â
We passed the Setting Sun â
Or rather â He passed Us â
The Dews drew quivering and Chill â
For only Gossamer, my Gown â
My Tippet â only Tulle â
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground â
The Roof was scarcely visible â
The Cornice â in the Ground â
Since then â 'tis Centuries â and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity â
- Emily Dickinson -
Day 8 -- The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
- William Carlos Williams -
Day 9 â Dover Beach
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ăgean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earthâs shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
- Matthew Arnolds -
Day 10 â The sederâs order
The songs we join in
are beeswax candles
burning with no smoke
a clean fire licking at the evening
our voices small flames quivering.
The songs string us like beads
on the hour. The ritual is
its own melody that leads us
where we have gone before
and hope...
- Marge Piercy -
Day 11 â If-
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, donât deal in lies,
Or being hated, donât give way to hating,
And yet donât look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dreamâand not make dreams your master;
If you can thinkâand not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth youâve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build âem up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: âHold on!â
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kingsânor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty secondsâ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything thatâs in it,
Andâwhich is moreâyouâll be a Man, my son!
- Rudyard Kipling -
Day 12 â Mother to Son
Well, son, Iâll tell you:
Life for me ainât been no crystal stair.
Itâs had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floorâ
Bare.
But all the time
Iâse been a-climbinâ on,
And reachinâ landinâs,
And turninâ corners,
And sometimes goinâ in the dark
Where there ainât been no light.
So boy, donât you turn back.
Donât you set down on the steps
âCause you finds itâs kinder hard.
Donât you fall nowâ
For Iâse still goinâ, honey,
Iâse still climbinâ,
And life for me ainât been no crystal stair.
- Langston Hughes -
Day 13 -- Guitarrero!
Cyrus, always I try to put my soul
into building a guitar,
here on Cuesta de Gomerez,
full of sovereign guitar-makers,
street slanting up to an arch
of the colossal Alhambra.
What I worship is the feeling of the wood
in my hardworking hands,
wood selected and dried
for a three-decade minimum,
so Iâm refining Mediterranean
or Canadian cypress,
Macassar ebony, and Lebanese cedar
that my paternal grandfather chose,
Abuelo Leonel who perished
the Satan-hot August
right before I was born
into a dynasty of on-fire
flamenco musicians and dancers.
Imagine, a top notch guitar
means perhaps a hundred hours
of dedicated labor, and, so help me,
I donât work by the clockâ
Sometimes it costs me
most of a day to adjust
the nitty-gritty strings and frets,
to insure the vigorous, brave sound
weâre famous for in Granada:
due to the vegaâs dry air,
instruments from the Andalusian school
are (no doubt about it!) lighter,
distinctiveâlike a palace starling
or a peerless voice
that gently breathes and sings
in a stone basilica on Sunday morningâ
acoustic splendor and tone to rival
the able makers in Madridâ
At the fabled Moorish citadelâs hem,
I bring my busy-as-hell hands
to the timeless task of planing
and judge the thickness
of my newly launched guitars
with my tried-and-true fingers.
The tradition, I tell you, is to present
your very first guitar as a gift
to the regal, lullaby-whispering woman
who latched you to this bustling,
wondrous world:
Oh what an exhilarating day
when my never-fail mother, Primavera,
carefully inspected my first ever piece,
proclaiming (almost singing it!):
Guitarrero!
- Cyrus Cassells -
Day 14 â Anthem for the Doomed Youth
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
â Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirsâ
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
- Wilfred Owen
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