http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/-t1.htm Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:34:24 GMT 10 http://hitskin.com/themes/11/10/24/i_logo.png http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/-t1.htm http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/song-t33.htm Min The moon feigning a slow, baleful death. Young restless souls enthralled by the performance. Artists littering the streets with failed aspirations. Money and hunger burning like effigies in back alleys. People crying for truth, people crying for justice, people crying for etc. … A prophet instructing them to sing instead: “The salted earth, the ruins of Carthage, A queen burnt to a redolent smoke Over the Punic sands— O what distinction, Dido or ... Poetry Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:34:24 GMT http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/song-t33.htm#75 http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/song-t33.htm http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/old-big-dogs-t31.htm Min how they ask for affection with such ease. Frankie leaned her head on my leg and I loved her in that instant, that old big bitch. It’s a shame I can’t go around and lean my head on someone without being accused of harassment or risking deportation. No, I’ve got to cut my hair, brush my teeth, put on clothes that hide my belly, fake confidence, and speak the right thing at the right time. And after all that (and more), when I am lucky enough to meet a girl I want ... Poetry Wed, 01 Apr 2009 22:32:47 GMT http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/old-big-dogs-t31.htm#71 http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/old-big-dogs-t31.htm http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/failure-t32.htm Min This is the poem I cannot write. My father, what you would call a self-made man, met my mother while he was off-duty: a café with cheap European décor in a South Korean port city; three men and three women around the table, young, each hoping, waiting, eying. The women spun a fork to decide the evening’s fate. How does one distinguish fate from chance, when it’s the shape of a fork? He had a full head of hair then, caught with an awkward smile in ... Poetry Wed, 01 Apr 2009 22:35:01 GMT http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/failure-t32.htm#72 http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/failure-t32.htm http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/cicada-t29.htm Min I remember sixteen, young and almost nothing: too afraid to chart myself and yet too proud for annexation by approval. Knowing nothing of everything, I had to become a reflection faces turning the leaves of a book running deliquescent before I knew what that meant— to become like water, to become a spirit. Where are they now, those faces I stole, the names and voices I loved and hated out of self-ignorance? Jaded photos in a yearbook I never bought, they ... Poetry Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:23:03 GMT http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/cicada-t29.htm#68 http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/cicada-t29.htm http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/miltonic-verse-t26.htm Adena In my Milton class, we have the option of writing some lines of Miltonic verse (blank verse in as close to Milton's style as we can manage) instead one of the papers. I decided to give it a try and I thought I would put my attempt up here for critique. This will be graded after all. The Last Battle Of Britain’s greatest king, the unknown son Of Uther: Arthur Pendragon, who ruled In glory chivalrous, a lord of men, In verse I aim to set above all else Ere now thus dignified. ... Poetry Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:10:31 GMT http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/miltonic-verse-t26.htm#60 http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/miltonic-verse-t26.htm http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/sunday-evening-t27.htm Min There is no poetry with me tonight. So nothing is here, on this blank page staring down my frustration with nonchalance. What am I looking for? I don't rightly know. Something, I suppose, to emerge from underneath this thinness of wood like a drowned corpse, or just a death mask. I’m not ambitious enough to expect sudden beauty or to beat love out of a woman. Memento mori-- it applies to poems as well. Sometimes we should build monuments for all those things we’ve forgotten ... Poetry Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:49:50 GMT http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/sunday-evening-t27.htm#63 http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/sunday-evening-t27.htm http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/a-dry-season-t10.htm Victoria Once, in a dry season, my body buried a baby. Blast- ocyte subsumed into common tissue, the hope of fingernails and eyebrows and eardrums disassembled into shards of non-bodies. (My own.) My body churns up hopes of skeletons, like the fields of Europe yield up their ivory and metallic pasts here where I had hoped to birth a future. Outside, the black horde shrieks angrily of cheated nourishment, of failure, where rags and faded hat and painted face guard (or would have) ... Poetry Thu, 12 Feb 2009 06:22:56 GMT http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/a-dry-season-t10.htm#26 http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/a-dry-season-t10.htm http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/xes-exes-t20.htm john I'm still not sure how to type the title. I edited this slightly since I showed it at a meeting a few months ago. Also, it's not exactly a poem...at the time I wrote it I was still in a band, and trying to write song lyrics. So the rhymes are wicked cliche but if you take it in the context of a song, it could be more forgivable...maybe? ------- he used to be a skinhead, tattooed Xes on his hands he used to go to shows to see those hardcore bands he used to get in fights to prove ... Poetry Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:19:30 GMT http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/xes-exes-t20.htm#39 http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/xes-exes-t20.htm http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/because-there-was-babel-t25.htm Min They are still falling. The stones, ancient faces, each one a tombstone making a cemetery of your lawn. We are all exiles in our skins flinging gibberish at one another with hound's determination: "Listen, about yesterday..." Perhaps we know that the only way to comfort a friend is through mutual desolation, much like that of the dunes laced with ivory tusks the delicate sunburnt spines of elephants’ demise. … ... Poetry Mon, 23 Feb 2009 19:52:33 GMT http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/because-there-was-babel-t25.htm#57 http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/because-there-was-babel-t25.htm http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/five-fragments-t23.htm Brian The well won’t work, but it gestures at the hole.
Without gesture, one bathes in emptiness.

2.
She knows morality, but not a soul—
Can practice politics.

3.
The human soul is never sold,
Rarely born, and never old.

4.
The fruitful tree is given light;
The tangled weeds resort to spite.

5.
Religion: some assembly required.]]> Poetry Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:46:07 GMT http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/five-fragments-t23.htm#43 http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/five-fragments-t23.htm http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/the-morning-after-inauguration-t13.htm Min The newspaper is wet; it was raining this morning. This cup of coffee, so warm in my hands, came from Bolivia. Che Guevara died there, in the fall of 1967, captured, executed, then displayed in a rather Christlike fashion except without all that glamour. Postmortem and without his cap, he just looked like a guy who hasn't slept in days. He too must've tasted this, this excellent cup of coffee, now so bitter in my mouth, its bitterness hushing me on for another slow, meaningless ... Poetry Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:04:26 GMT http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/the-morning-after-inauguration-t13.htm#30 http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/the-morning-after-inauguration-t13.htm http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/once-in-rome-t22.htm Min on the Senate door,

the bronze nail
denotes

a five-fingered
question;

a better rhetoric
than most.]]> Poetry Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:53:48 GMT http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/once-in-rome-t22.htm#41 http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/once-in-rome-t22.htm http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/451-t19.htm john A poem. -------- I paid more to read Fahrenheit 451 than it cost Bradbury to write it. I can handle this fact, most days. being a student of literature, my reverence lies with the printed word; yet I have second thoughts, sometimes. In a choice between kings and bards, the former are history; the latter, gospel. yet I would take neither, some days. Some days, I wish I wish I could upend my shelves, throwing my treasures to earth I wish I could cast ... Poetry Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:15:46 GMT http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/451-t19.htm#38 http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/451-t19.htm http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/a-pigeon-t17.htm Min
appendages
taped

to body,
too fat

for
flight]]> Poetry Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:35:33 GMT http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/a-pigeon-t17.htm#36 http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/a-pigeon-t17.htm http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/canada-t15.htm Min Here in the great Northwest half my name is lost in translation. 배민욱 used to be my name when I was a schoolboy, an ex-future astronaut or a professional soccer player. I don’t remember which one it was Dad approved of. But now I want to be a bum who writes poetry over stale coffee and my name is Min Bae, Min Buy or Bay or By and Bye-- And it’s no one’s fault, really. A neat compromise between an Oriental tongue and a White one: ... Poetry Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:11:05 GMT http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/canada-t15.htm#32 http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/canada-t15.htm http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/desire-t14.htm Min Sometimes just the smell of some girl passing by hardens me. Sometimes that smell is a fruit basket, overripe bananas and kiwis in wicker. On others it’s a wet towel, or lip gloss, or fresh laundry. Still on others it’s a bowl of soup: to-ma-to, or something else. Not that it matters. Yesterday, it was a nicotine gum jerking between her set of teeth like a clumsy ballerina, outside the library. She was reading the first pages of some feminist book. The faint smell of ink ... Poetry Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:08:25 GMT http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/desire-t14.htm#31 http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/desire-t14.htm http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/an-exhibition-t12.htm Min On a canvas, a scream is melting in perpetuity. Hurled but unheard, an ear is hacked incognito. All through the evening the walls remain silent. Now exiting, neon lights are melting in the streets. whirling, sprawling, tumble-bursting and fizzy-dizzying-- the cacophony of corporate letters paints a cosmic barf we lap up gladly. Redde Caesari quae sunt Caesaris-- but where lies the other half? Quo vadis, this too, goes unheard in the din. Now an Asian man is peeling ... Poetry Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:02:17 GMT http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/an-exhibition-t12.htm#29 http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/an-exhibition-t12.htm http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/a-love-poem-t11.htm Min I understand the revelers. When even the comfort of old beautiful words grows cold, and your voice is as much a ghost upon your solitude as silence, and there are no mothers or lovers or sisters or brothers who can whisper in your stead, that’s when a bottle comes in handy. Or a smoke, or a tub of ice cream, or a fistful of pills, or a needle, or a two-barrel shotgun— anything to pump a little forgetfulness into the folds of your brain ... Poetry Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:00:03 GMT http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/a-love-poem-t11.htm#28 http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/a-love-poem-t11.htm http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/beautiful-sentences-t6.htm Min Beautiful Sentences Min Bae The monotony of work inspires I wanted to write beautiful sentences that’ll free your soul from homebound gravity. Oh babe, that’s all I wanted. I wanted to comb your hair and make you sigh when I read your heartbeat in those chestnut eyes. Babe, I wanted to write beautiful sentences. Remember that song that hushed the night, even those longings we couldn’t sing of? Yeah babe, that’s all I wanted. The moonlight’s ... Poetry Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:40:36 GMT http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/beautiful-sentences-t6.htm#6 http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/beautiful-sentences-t6.htm http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/robson-street-beggars-minilamist-revision-t9.htm Min Robson Street Beggars Min Bae I. The Angry Beggar He opens his mouths to belch; inside, a lightning falls heralding a torn sky and a heavenly horde free falling. Our coins-- petty and loose change not worth an ounce of pity; but enough to appease a wrathful god. a trumpet snuffed cold Christ sighs hoshana, unhorsing. II. The Smiling Beggar That jolly fella dirty hair and dirtier jeans; his spirit undisguised. Sunbeam smiles and how-do-you-dos much ... Poetry Thu, 11 Sep 2008 18:54:34 GMT http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/robson-street-beggars-minilamist-revision-t9.htm#17 http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/robson-street-beggars-minilamist-revision-t9.htm http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/robson-street-beggars-t1.htm Min Robson Street Beggars Min Bae I. The Angry Beggar That angry beggar in the street corner, he’s a loose metaphor for the Second Coming. When he opens his mouth to belch the yellow stains on his crookéd teeth flash like a lightning that heralds to a trumpet call too long overdue-- there, look for the heavenly horde free-falling at last. But we petty passers-by, we paltry pathetic passers-by, offer up ... Poetry Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:55:56 GMT http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/robson-street-beggars-t1.htm#1 http://writersgroup.forumotion.net/poetry-f1/robson-street-beggars-t1.htm