Old Boy poem – A. Van Jordan poems

If one rainy night you find yourself
leaving a phone booth, and you meet a man
with a lavender umbrella, resist
your desire to follow him, to seek
shelter from the night in his solace.
Later, don’t fall victim to the Hypnotist’s
narcotic of clarity, which proves
a curare for the heart; her salve
is merely a bandage, under which memories
pulse. Resist the taste for something still
alive for your first meal; resist the craving
for the touch of a hand from your past.
We live some memories,
and some memories are planted. There’s
only so much space for the truth
and the fabrications to spread out
in one’s mind. When there’s no more
space, we grow desperate. You’ll ask
if practicing love for years in your mind,
prepares you for the moment,
if practicing to defend one’s life
is the same as living? You’ll
hole up, captive, in a hotel room
for fifteen years and learn to find
a man within you, which will prove
a painful introduction to the trance
into which you were born. Better
to stay under the spell of your guilt,
than to forget; you’ve already released
your pain onto the world; don’t believe
there’s some joy in forgetting.
There’s no joy in the struggle to forget.
And what appears as an endless verdant field,
only spreads across a building’s rooftop;
your peaceful sleep could be a fetal position,
which secures you in a suitcase in this field.
A bell rings, and you fall out of this luggage
like clothes you no longer fit. Now what to do?
You remember when you were the man
who fit those clothes, but you’ve forgotten this
world. Even forgotten scenes from your life,
leave shadows of the memory,
haunting your spirit
until, within a moment’s glance,
strangers passing you on the street,
observe history in your eyes. Experience
lingers through acts of forgetting,
small acts of love or trauma
falling from the same place. Whether
memory comes in the form of a stone
or a grain of sand, they both sink in water.
A tongue—even if it were, say, sworn
to secrecy; or if it were cut from one’s mouth;
yes, even without a mouth to envelop
its truth—the tongue continues to confess.

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Poems in English 

• Sonnet. On A Picture Of Leander poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Sonnet: Oh! How I Love, On A Fair Summer’s Eve poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Sonnet IX. Keen, Fitful Gusts Are poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Sonnet IV. How Many Bards Gild The Lapses Of Time! poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Sonnet III. Written On The Day That Mr. Leigh Hunt Left Prison poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Sonnet II. To ****** poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Sonnet. If By Dull Rhymes Our English Must Be Chain’d poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Sonnet I. To My Brother George poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Sonnet: Before He Went poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Sonnet: As From The Darkening Gloom A Silver Dove poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Sonnet: After Dark Vapors Have Oppress’d Our Plains poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Sonnet. A Dream, After Reading Dante’s Episode Of Paulo And Francesca poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Song. Written On A Blank Page In Beaumont And Fletcher’s Works poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Song Of Four Faries poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Song. I Had A Dove poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Song. Hush, Hush! Tread Softly! poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Sharing Eve’s Apple poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Otho The Great – Act V poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Otho The Great – Act IV poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Otho The Great – Act III poem – John Keats poems by John Keats

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Doska or the Board – write anything

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Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees

Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.

Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.

 

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