Who will go drive with Fergus now,
And pierce the deep wood's woven shade
And dance upon the level shore?
Young man, lift up your russet brow,
And lift your tender eyelids, maid,
And brood on hopes and fears no more.

And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love's bitter mystery;
For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breast of the dim sea
And all dishevelled, wandering stars.

Earlier I lamented about having no poems memorized, then recalled a few days later I had this one memorized about 20 years ago and am pleased it's still rattling around in there. And "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll will NEVER be shaken. A head injury may knock "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold or "God's Grandeur" by Gerard Manley Hopkins loose.

"Leda and the Swan" by Yeats was part of a high school English class. Other than that, I didn't encounter Yeats until studying, then re-reading, and re-re-reading, then re-studying and re-re-re-reading Ulysses by James Joyce. The younger lead character, Stephen Dedalus, has memories of singing the poem to his dying mother and fragments work their way into his day.

Poetry fragments sometimes pop in while out and about. Often context-free - more an echo of a word or phrase or the rhythm of something nearby. "And no more turn aside and brood" is the one that most often gives its (to my conscious mind) advice flicking its tongue into the corners of the day.

Those frights will go away. At least it will be a while before you ask your body "Why isn't this working?"

I like that you are getting older. I like your observations. Your questions.

I like your curiosity about music we sang to you. I like hearing you start to quietly sing back.

I like walking with you and chatting about cartoon violence, or politics, or Lord of the Rings, or school, or the politics of the Lord of the Rings and that you still grab my hand when we walk together. Or when you run your arm through mine. It usually shifts to tug-o-war where we contend which is the mightier (which I still win for now).

I like biking with you, and your keen memory, and the animosity you still bear toward the Screw You Bridge that bit into you twice. I like when we stop after crossing the bridge and yell taunts at it.

Even though you're becoming less of a boy, you are still very much my son. And I am proud of you and glad to see you get to twelve.

While not astonishingly attractive, there is something to admire about the confidence she has. Make me a hot teacher! Give me a class full of white-shirted cowboys preoccupied with dancing and looking away from me, the one woman around! That edginess gives her a bonus +2 points on the hottie scale.

She has difficulty standing upright, or walking in a straight line. Am left to guess that she has recovered from some trauma that gave her the gumption to fulfill a 20, 30 year-long dream to star in a music video. Bully for her! Don't dream it, BE it!

-3 points for controlling behavior, allowing for three seconds of a wandering eye and then, snap to attention, buster! Contemplate me and my odd fashion choices!

Actually, three seconds is more generous than some who would allow NO visual meandering. Maybe a sense of ovary competition gets her going. "Three seconds of looking at another woman, then I'm taking you HOME and will order you to do what I want." Maybe her album features tracks detailing what she demands in recompense for the three seconds her man's gaze strayed. Each second he stared leads to ten minutes complying with her demands. I'd listen to those songs, would probably stay away from those videos.

Lisa Gail Allred's website

Tick tick tick tick.
What? Whatever. Groggy.
Tap tap tap tap.
For real? Ugh.
Tap TAP tap TAP.
What is IT? Through the hole a prim petite redhead in a company issued suit stands with a cranky keyboard, fidgets, irritated by the course of her day. I've no idea. Angry knuckles reach out to just beneath view.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.
No way I'll make her day worse by subjecting her to my throttled-down lucidity.
Ignore. Another round?
Knock knock knock knock.
After this, bet it'll be done.
Done.

I kept stepping around thinking, they're gonna know this was a put-on, right? But people didn't seem to laugh. They seemed happy. Looked to Snoop over and over to tell the crowd I was just playing at being Tupac, and Snoop gave me a look like: "Nope."

There's talk about taking this on the road, but it's not possible. Daytime and family obligations make touring impractical. Also, the body paint gave me a rash. At least someone got it on video, though!

Always enjoy your gangsta party! Thug life!

The night reflected on the lake,
The fire of stars changed into water.
She cannot see the winds that break
The night reflected on the lake
But knows they motion for her sake.
These are the choices they have brought her:
The night reflected on the lake,
The fire of stars changed into water.

Dana GioiaAnother poem from Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism a friend recommended. The form used here is double triolet (which I had to look up, as I barely understand poetry) defined as " a three stanza poem of eight lines. Its rhyme scheme is ABaAabAB and often all lines are in iambic tetrameter: the first, fourth and seventh lines are identical, as are the second and final lines, thereby making the initial and final couplets identical as well."

I liked this poem (tending to read in bed when grogginess comes galumphing in), and didn't even conceive that "the winds that break" would bring a laugh during alert waking hours.

"California Gurls" [excerpt] by Katy Perry

Daisy dukes, bikinis on top.
Sun-kissed skin, so hot
We'll melt your popsicle.

Uh-whoah-oah. Uh-whoah-oah.

For AGES I took these lyrics to be a flat, scientific statement. Of COURSE human skin, exposed, presumably at normothermia let alone warmed by the sun, would carry sufficient heat to melt a popsicle that will turn liquid well before reaching 98.6 degrees Farenheit (37 degrees Celsius for the rest of the world).

Nearly two years after this poem was released in 2010, it finally occurred to me this was a metaphor. See, a man's popsicle (i.e. penis), normally rigid in a state of arousal, would find itself liquified due to the allure and heat generated by the narrator's Daisy Duked clan. Fine enough considered blithely. To give longer thought to an organ melting, though, seems horrible. Like what happens to that Nazi's face when the Ark of the Covenant is opened in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Thanks but no thanks, Ms. Perry. Has anyone checked that Snoop Dogg is okay?

We are a speck
On the Earth which is a speck
In the Solar system
A speck in a galaxy
Which is a speck in space among other galaxies
In a universe of light matter that is a speck amid dark matter.

Our primate brains seek patterns and causes and effects and correlations.
Loads of primate brains throw a god(s) speck in there
Because they need a speck traffic cop directing these fluffy materials.

Speck and space and Ur-space.
Makes our speck to speck clinging and latching
Everything we can have. Statistically nothing.
But two specks are larger than one speck.

Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath

I was on a roll in high school, sure of a 5 for 5 score on the A.P. English Lit test I was taking until I came to the poem "Sow", and I shanked it. Brain gears ground to a halt. I could not interpret anything beyond "this is a big pig". Crumpled, if there were anything after to fill out the remainder of the test it was probably doodles of approximations of Prince album art.

Years later I was on a walk listening to poetry read by authors, when Sylvia Plath's voice came on reading "Sow". For certain, when I made the connection I stopped in place. Memory flits between either my saying "Oh, fuck!" or taking my headphones off to look at them, as if I could shake that extra 1 point that would have boosted my 4 score to a 5.

Here's a poem by Ted Hughes. Difficult to not read his tempestuous courtship and marriage with Sylvia Plath into it. Though this poem is dedicated to Assia Wevill, a paramour of Hughes' who ALSO killed herself and their daughter by gassing. That was how Plath killed herself, and Anne Sexton killed herself through gassing. What's up with that? Why did suicidal poets in the 50s-70s lack a sense for physical adventure - jumping off a bridge, skydiving without a parachute, hari-kari - and go for passive, slow-fade, wasteful natural gas/gasoline methods for languidly shuffling off their mortal coils?

"Lovesong" by Ted Hughes

He loved her and she loved him
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Ted Hughes and Carol OrchardHer eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Off that moment's brink and into nothing
Or everlasting or whatever there was

Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His words were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assassin's attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Assia WevillHer love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon's gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
Her vows put his eyes in formalin
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall

Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other's face