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Boston is known for its innovation.

quote by Thomas Menino
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Peter Rugg the Bostonian

I

The mare is pawing by the oak,
The chaise is cool and wide
For Peter Rugg the Bostonian
With his little son beside;
The women loiter at the wheels
In the pleasant summer-tide.

"And when wilt thou be home, Father?"
"And when, good husband, say:
The cloud hangs heavy on the house
What time thou art away."
He answers straight, he answers short,
"At noon of the seventh day."

"Fail not to come, if God so will,
And the weather be kind and clear."
"Farewell, farewell! But who am I
A blockhead rain to fear?
God willing or God unwilling,
I have said it, I will be here."

He gathers up the sunburnt boy
And from the gate is sped;
He shakes the spark from the stones below,

The bloom from overhead,
Till the last roofs of his own town
Pass in the morning-red.

Upon a homely mission
North unto York he goes,
Through the long highway broidered thick
With elder-blow and rose;
And sleeps in sounds of breakers
At every twilight's close.

Intense upon his heedless head
Frowns Agamenticus,
Knowing of Heaven's challenger
The answer: even thus
The Patience that is hid on high
Doth stoop to master us.

II

Full light are all his parting dreams;
Desire is in his brain;
He tightens at the tavern-post

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poem by Louise Imogen Guiney
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Boston

Sicut Patribus, sit Deus Nobis)

The rocky nook with hilltops three
Looked eastward from the farms,
And twice each day the flowing sea
Took Boston in its arms;
The men of yore were stout and poor,
And sailed for bread to every shore.

And where they went on trade intent
They did what freeman can,
Their dauntless ways did all men praise,
The merchant was a man.
The world was made for honest trade,-
To plant and eat be none afraid.

The waves that rocked them on the deep
To them their secret told;
Said the winds that sung the lads to sleep,
'Like us be free and bold!'
The honest waves refuse to slaves
The empire of the ocean caves.

Old Europe groans with palaces,
Has lords enough and more;-
We plant and build by foaming seas
A city of the poor;-
For day by day could Boston Bay
Their honest labor overpay.

We grant no dukedoms to the few,
We hold like rights and shall;-
Equal on Sunday in the pew,
On Monday in the mall.
For what avail the plough or sail,
Or land or life, if freedom fail?

The noble craftsmen we promote,
Disown the knave and fool;
Each honest man shall have his vote,
Each child shall have his school.
A union then of honest men,
Or union nevermore again.

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poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Boston

Where the ferries come to shore
She never really knew how good it would feel
To finally find herself in a place so warm and real
She wears a Red Sox cap
To hide her baby dreads
The girl she was in New England
Is different now and dead
In all the local bars
She flirts and tells the boys while they're talkin'
She's from Boston
She comes from Boston
Talks to her family now and then
Through e-mails and postcards
She tries to explain to them
That education and occupation will have to wait for now
She loves the Rasta, reggae rhythms, her dreams have changed somehow
She wears a Red Sox cap
To hide her baby dreads
The girl she was in New England
Is different now and dead
In all the local bars
She flirts and tells the boys while they're talkin'
She's from Boston
Her toes dig deep and deeper in the sand
She's seduced by the sunsets and her new life at hand
She wears a Red Sox cap
To hide her baby dreads
The girl she was in New England
Is different now and dead
In all the local bars
She flirts and tells the boys while they're talkin'
She's from Boston
She wears a Red Sox cap
To hide her baby dreads
From Boston

song performed by Kenny Chesney
Added by Lucian Velea
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Rescue The Slave

This song was composed while George Latimer, the fugitive slave, was
confined in Leverett Street Jail, Boston, expecting to be carried back
to Virginia by James B. Gray, his claimant.

Sadly the fugitive weeps in his cell,
Listen awhile to the story we tell;
Listen ye gentle ones, listen ye brave,
Lady fair! Lady fair! weep for the slave.

Praying for liberty, dearer than life,
Torn from his little one, torn from his wife,
Flying from slavery, hear him and save,
Christian men! Christian men! help the poor slave.

Think of his agony, feel for his pain,
Should his hard master e'er hold him again;
Spirit of liberty, rise from your grave,
Make him free, make him free, rescue the slave.

Freely the slave master goes where he will;
Freemen, stand ready, his wishes to fulfil,
Helping the tyrant, or honest or knave,
Thinking not, caring not, for the poor slave.

Talk not of liberty, liberty is dead;
See the slave master's whip over our head;
Stooping beneath it, we ask what he craves,
Boston boys! Boston boys! catch me my slaves.

Freemen, arouse ye, before it's too late;
Slavery is knocking, at every gate,
Make good the promise, your early days gave,
Boston boys! Boston boys! rescue the slave.

poem by Anonymous Americas
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M'Fingal - Canto II

The Sun, who never stops to dine,
Two hours had pass'd the mid-way line,
And driving at his usual rate,
Lash'd on his downward car of state.
And now expired the short vacation,
And dinner o'er in epic fashion,
While all the crew, beneath the trees,
Eat pocket-pies, or bread and cheese,
(Nor shall we, like old Homer, care
To versify their bill of fare)
Each active party, feasted well,
Throng'd in, like sheep, at sound of bell;
With equal spirit took their places,
And meeting oped with three Oh Yesses:
When first, the daring Whigs t' oppose,
Again the great M'Fingal rose,
Stretch'd magisterial arm amain,
And thus resumed th' accusing strain.

"Ye Whigs attend, and hear affrighted
The crimes whereof ye stand indicted;
The sins and follies past all compass,
That prove you guilty, or non compos.
I leave the verdict to your senses,
And jury of your consciences;
Which though they're neither good nor true,
Must yet convict you and your crew.

"Ungrateful sons! a factious band,
That rise against your parent land!
Ye viper race, that burst in strife
The genial womb that gave you life,
Tear with sharp fangs and forked tongue
The indulgent bowels whence ye sprung;
And scorn the debt and obligation,
You justly owe the British nation,
Which, since you cannot pay, your crew
Affect to swear was never due.

"Did not the deeds of England's primate
First drive your fathers to this climate,
Whom jails and fines and every ill
Forced to their good against their will?
Ye owe to their obliging temper
The peopling your new-fangled empire,
While every British act and canon
Stood forth your causa sine qua non.

[...] Read more

poem by John Trumbull
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Avon's Harvest

Fear, like a living fire that only death
Might one day cool, had now in Avon’s eyes
Been witness for so long of an invasion
That made of a gay friend whom we had known
Almost a memory, wore no other name
As yet for us than fear. Another man
Than Avon might have given to us at least
A futile opportunity for words
We might regret. But Avon, since it happened,
Fed with his unrevealing reticence
The fire of death we saw that horribly
Consumed him while he crumbled and said nothing.

So many a time had I been on the edge,
And off again, of a foremeasured fall
Into the darkness and discomfiture
Of his oblique rebuff, that finally
My silence honored his, holding itself
Away from a gratuitous intrusion
That likely would have widened a new distance
Already wide enough, if not so new.
But there are seeming parallels in space
That may converge in time; and so it was
I walked with Avon, fought and pondered with him,
While he made out a case for So-and-so,
Or slaughtered What’s-his-name in his old way,
With a new difference. Nothing in Avon lately
Was, or was ever again to be for us,
Like him that we remembered; and all the while
We saw that fire at work within his eyes
And had no glimpse of what was burning there.

So for a year it went; and so it went
For half another year—when, all at once,
At someone’s tinkling afternoon at home
I saw that in the eyes of Avon’s wife
The fire that I had met the day before
In his had found another living fuel.
To look at her and then to think of him,
And thereupon to contemplate the fall
Of a dim curtain over the dark end
Of a dark play, required of me no more
Clairvoyance than a man who cannot swim
Will exercise in seeing that his friend
Off shore will drown except he save himself.
To her I could say nothing, and to him
No more than tallied with a long belief
That I should only have it back again
For my chagrin to ruminate upon,
Ingloriously, for the still time it starved;

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poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson
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Now, Heart' - Some Of What I Remember When I Listen

A river is a process through time, and the river stages are its momentary parts.
—Willard Van Orman Quine

From early poems,1970s, youthful indiscretions/attempts to vocally/poetically arrive at/derive a worthwhile writer's voice. Some explication might serve or enhance these under serving, undeserving though 'striving-after' poems hidden in old journals understandably unpublished but now so with apologies which are these expiatory explanations. Recently rediscovering these early arrivals, derivative yet aspiring I recognized and reembraced an enduring self maturing, arriving into late middle age:

Obsessed newly by jazz, mad about the many miraculous lady singers, entranced all too easily as youth are wont to be by sorrows and sexual infatuations which feel, emphasis on 'feel', like love, here are two of many 'songs' as tributes and life markers to jazz singers who provided soundtrack and felt expression to my angst and easily inflated/deflated sense of self, of beloved others, and of that new territory, independent life away from parental home and childhood community discovering, blundering into the fray of separate hearts and minds, irresponsible genitals and insouciant jouissance ('juiciness', in French) , discovering then and again and again that like Walt Whitman I 'contain worlds' and many disparate selves poorly formed, most of them collective projections and expectations of who or what I wanted to be, what others wanted and expected me to be, resulting in much confusion, tumult and multitudes of momentary throw-away selves. Thus singers like Bessie Smith and Dinah Washington became anchors, warm contexts and containers, for my daily fragmentation and re-formation.

I lived on 3rd street in downtown Chattanooga, a refugee from zealous, politically conservative white evangelicals and the vestigial yet still viral Southern Confederacy. Just a block or two from where Bessie Smith was born, I used to watch from my upstairs porch the steep hilly street's comings and goings with a glimpse of the Tennessee River between tenements across the street, its persistent rich aroma heavy in the air. I imagined Bessie Smith as a little girl playing up and down the street like the kids I saw then - once, two of them gleefully chasing a frighteningly large and confused looking rat.

William—he insisted on 'Willie'—an old man down the street who knew Bessie as a little girl, used to come up to my porch after one day hearing Bessie from my phonograph singing blues onto the always busy but attentive street. One of the first and permanent things I learned from my porch is that a city street has keen, observant eyes, acute ears, omnivorously seeing/hearing everything, indifferently, perhaps, but nothing escapes it, a roving, all-knowing urban Eye of God.

Extremely green and eager as green always is though stutteringly, and without apology, I enjoyed Willie's many stories and back pocket bottles of Old Mr. Boston Apricot Brandy, both of which—story and spirits/spirited story —dissolved or appeared to, age, racial, cultural, and sociological differences, along with those catalysts/cata-lusts, the forever alchemical Bessie and other jazz singers, Billie! Dinah! Ella! Sassy! Lil Ester Phillips! Nina Simone! to name only a few of the sensuous solutio chanteuses resolving sexual confoundaries by Miss-ambiguating sins' plethera with loose lilt and will- o-the-lisp whisper tongues.

One night Willie, much 'in the pocket'—an expression for being well onto tipsy which I've never heard from anyone but him—wanted to dance to a Bessie tune playing, 'Back Water Blues', him recalling nights as a young man in rural Tennessee where he'd worked hard days in oppressive vegetable fields then hit the after hours juke joints for 'colored, twas segregation days, ' he explained, where he would go to drink, dance then dive/delve, as it were, into the sensual mysteries of moist skin, hot breath, mutually open mouths with their commodious moans and mumbles, venial hands, always vital parts, private hearts mutually pounding ancient known rhythms, odors and tastes of gin and those slender, forbidden, now greedily stolen bites in those all too short nights with their damned intrusive dawns.

'Dawnus interuptus, ' I quipped, us both slapping knees, passing the narrative bottle fore and aft hefting moments re-grasped between us, offerings to the equally narrative river, the all-knowing hungry street.

Jumping to his feet, Willie described 'powder dancin'' (pronounced marvelously, 'powdah') which I had never heard of. Talcum powder would be copiously scattered onto the dance floor where couples in stocking or bare feet would ecstatically dance, gliding and sliding sweetly scented, muskily bent toward later glides and slides in the slippery joy of momentary allure and amour on dimmed porches or surrounding woods often enough and gratis upon delicate slabs of moonlight gratuitously dewy providing cushion for Passion's out and in, honoring and dignifying deities of skin wanting more making more skin, headlong Nature's frictional algo-rhythms indelibly scored in every/each his/her yawing yen.

Willie shouted, 'YOU GOT ANY TALC POWDER? ! '

...The jazz us trembled...

'NO! ' I bellowed, curious.

'YOU GOT ANY FLOUR? ! '

Even more curious, 'YEAH! ! '

'GO GIT IT! QUICK! ! '

He grinned an Old Mr. Boston juke-joint night-memories quaff-again grin.

Martha White, a brand of flour sold down South, has never been put to better use. Willie threw handfuls of 'Martha' over the tenement-planked living room floor as I half protested at the mess it (and me and Willie) was and would become. Completely gripped by his present-in-the-past brandy trance, a much younger man now, he suddenly grabbed me, brandied and tranced, too, my long hair flying, and danced me all over the floor the night through with swigs of Old But Now Spry 'n' Sprightly Mr. Boston with pauses to change record albums on the phonograph, 'catching up our breaths, ' he panted.

Next morning (more likely early afternoon) , Willie long gone, I awakened sprawled on the penitent porch—a cool concrete floor my sinner's bench—sweaty and thick as pan gravy, mosquito bitten, marinaded in Tennessee night mists. I staggered into the living room onto the ghostly floor powdery white, 'stroked' with two attached, or close to, sets of foot prints, heel slides and smears, a kind of 'Jackson Pollock meets Tibetan sand painting 'yazzed' yantra'**' with cigarette ashes flicked into the flickering impermanent mix. I've not powder danced since when we drank discovering oral history's joys, opened eager ears and fraternal arms forgetting fears of race and religion, age and expressed/ espressed Desire's multilingual disseminations.

I know that wheat is anciently sacred but now even more so for flour, the sight and feel of it, its unbaked smell, turns me again toward a Chattanooga 3rd street, its compass river swelling like bread nearby bearing witness still for one cannot say too much about rivers—their irreverence of edges scored, spilling themselves, proclaiming natural gods deeper than memory yet dependent upon it for traced they must be in every human activity, no matter the breech, for something there is to teach even deity though it may be wrong to do so, or hearsay to say it or sing, but the song is there for those whose ears are broken onto bottoms from which cry urgencies of Being and between, dutiful banks barely containing the straining Word.

**From Tibetan Buddhism. Visual meditation devices,
Yantras function as revelatory conduits of cosmic truths.

1. To Bessie Smith,3rd Street Chattanooga (circa 1971)

Already the river begins its sweat.
April to September I'll be on the porch
Come sunsets listening to cars in the
Dark and you, remembering the flour
On the floor and me and Willie in
Stocking feet dancing till dawn,

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poem by Warren Falcon
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The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything

arr! Arr! ARr! ARR!
We are the pirates who dont do anything,
We just stay at home and lie around,
And if you ask us to do anything,
We'll just tell you we dont do anything!
Well, Ive never been to Greenland,
And I've never been to Denver,
And Ive never buried treasure in St. Louie or St. Paul,
And Ive never been to Moscow,
And Ive never been to Tampa,
And Ive never been to Boston in the fall!
'Cause We're the pirates who dont do anything,
We just stay at home and lie around,
And if you ask us to do anything,
We'll just tell you we dont do anything!
And Ive never hoist the mainstay,
And Ive never swabbed the poop deck,
And Ive never veer to starboard,
Cause I never sail at all.
And Ive never walked the gangplank,
And Ive never owned a parrot,
And Ive never been to Boston in the fall!
'Cause were the pirates who dont do anything,
We just stay at home and lie around,
And if you ask us to do anything,
We'll just tell you we dont do anything!
Well, I've never plucked a rooster,
And I'm not too good at ping pong,
And Ive never thrown my mashed potaters,
Up against the wall.
And Ive never kissed a chipmunk,
And Ive never gotten head lice,
And Ive never been to Boston in the Fall!
(Spoken part)
Pirate Captain's Log, 2002,
Who be this band Relient K?
And why be they so full of contradictions?
We don't know, what he did,
but we're down with Captain Kidd,
We don't wake up late for lunch,
But we all eat Captain Crunch,
We don't smoke,
We don't chew,
We watch Captain Kangaroo!
And Ive never licked a spark plug,
And Ive never sniffed a stinkbug,
And Ive never painted daises,
On a big red rubber ball.
And Ive never bathed in yogurt,
And I dont look good in leggings,

[...] Read more

song performed by Relient K
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The Landmarks

I.
THROUGH the streets of Marblehead
Fast the red-winged terror sped;

Blasting, withering, on it came,
With its hundred tongues of flame,

Where St. Michael's on its way
Stood like chained Andromeda,

Waiting on the rock, like her,
Swift doom or deliverer!

Church that, after sea-moss grew
Over walls no longer new,

Counted generations five,
Four entombed and one alive;

Heard the martial thousand tread
Battleward from Marblehead;

Saw within the rock-walled bay
Treville's liked pennons play,

And the fisher's dory met
By the barge of Lafayette,

Telling good news in advance
Of the coming fleet of France!

Church to reverend memories, dear,
Quaint in desk and chandelier;

Bell, whose century-rusted tongue
Burials tolled and bridals rung;

Loft, whose tiny organ kept
Keys that Snetzler's hand had swept;

Altar, o'er whose tablet old
Sinai's law its thunders rolled!

Suddenly the sharp cry came
'Look! St. Michael's is aflame!'

Round the low tower wall the fire
Snake-like wound its coil of ire.

Sacred in its gray respect

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poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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A Ballad Of The Boston Tea-Party

Read at a meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

No! never such a draught was poured
Since Hebe served with nectar
The bright Olympians and their Lord,
Her over-kind protector,--
Since Father Noah squeezed the grape
And took to such behaving
As would have shamed our grandsire ape
Before the days of shaving,--
No! ne'er was mingled such a draught
In palace, hall, or arbor,
As freemen brewed and tyrants quaffed
That night in Boston Harbor!
The Western war-cloud's crimson stained
The Thames, the Clyde, the Shannon;
Full many a six-foot grenadier
The flattened grass had measured,
And many a mother many a year
Her tearful memories treasured;
Fast spread the tempest's darkening pall,
The mighty realms were troubled,
The storm broke loose, but first of all
The Boston teapot bubbled!

An evening party,--only that,
No formal invitation,
No gold-laced coat, no stiff cravat,
No feast in contemplation,
No silk-robed dames, no fiddling band,
No flowers, no songs, no dancing,--
A tribe of red men, axe in hand,--
Behold the guests advancing!
How fast the stragglers join the throng,
From stall and workshop gathered!
The lively barber skips along
And leaves a chin half-lathered;
The smith has flung his hammer down,
The horseshoe still is glowing;
The truant tapster at the Crown
Has left a beer-cask flowing;
The cooper's boys have dropped the adze,
And trot behind their master;
Up run the tarry ship-yard lads,--
The crowd is hurrying faster,--
Out from the Millpond's purlieus gush
The streams of white-faced millers,
And down their slippery alleys rush
The lusty young Fort-Hillers--
The ropewalk lends its 'prentice crew,--

[...] Read more

poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes
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For the Union Dead

Relinquunt Ommia Servare Rem Publicam.

The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.

Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the crowded, compliant fish.

My hand draws back. I often sign still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized

fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.

Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
a girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse,

shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.

Two months after marching through Boston,
half of the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.

Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its Colonel is a lean
as a compass-needle.

He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound's gentle tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.

He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man's lovely,
peculiar power to choose life and die-
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Lowell
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A Boston Ballad, 1854

TO get betimes in Boston town, I rose this morning early;
Here's a good place at the corner--I must stand and see the show.

Clear the way there, Jonathan!
Way for the President's marshal! Way for the government cannon!
Way for the Federal foot and dragoons--and the apparitions copiously
tumbling.

I love to look on the stars and stripes--I hope the fifes will play
Yankee Doodle.

How bright shine the cutlasses of the foremost troops!
Every man holds his revolver, marching stiff through Boston town.

A fog follows--antiques of the same come limping,
Some appear wooden-legged, and some appear bandaged and bloodless. 10

Why this is indeed a show! It has called the dead out of the earth!
The old grave-yards of the hills have hurried to see!
Phantoms! phantoms countless by flank and rear!
Cock'd hats of mothy mould! crutches made of mist!
Arms in slings! old men leaning on young men's shoulders!

What troubles you, Yankee phantoms? What is all this chattering of
bare gums?
Does the ague convulse your limbs? Do you mistake your crutches for
fire-locks, and level them?

If you blind your eyes with tears, you will not see the President's
marshal;
If you groan such groans, you might balk the government cannon.

For shame, old maniacs! Bring down those toss'd arms, and let your
white hair be; 20
Here gape your great grand-sons--their wives gaze at them from the
windows,
See how well dress'd--see how orderly they conduct themselves.

Worse and worse! Can't you stand it? Are you retreating?
Is this hour with the living too dead for you?

Retreat then! Pell-mell!
To your graves! Back! back to the hills, old limpers!
I do not think you belong here, anyhow.

But there is one thing that belongs here--shall I tell you what it
is, gentlemen of Boston?
I will whisper it to the Mayor--he shall send a committee to England;
They shall get a grant from the Parliament, go with a cart to the
royal vault--haste! 30

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poem by Walt Whitman
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Rubaiyat Of A Robin - After Edward Fitzgerald - Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam

Jest plays with rubaiyat and, four by four,
unseals for your amusement more and more
verses together thread in rosary
unreeled to bloom till tomb will curtains draw.

Repealed are value judgement and perspective
revealed through standpoint purely introspective,
darkside concealed of moon’s yin-yang shines clear
when we’re in orbit, - option more effective.

Rolled form performs rôle midwife to perception,
sprung tongue in cheek, tweaks sense of imperfection
or willingness to leach between the lines,
impeach entrenched ideas of self-[s]election.

This prose arose as stream deprived of section,
where ‘dip at will’ will still sustain inspection,
the current’s sense, at odds with current views
ignores round holes, square pegs, top-down direction.

Here there’s no fear of critics’ peer rejection,
contention treated with due circumspection
intention is to mention for retention
an overview or clue to extrospection.

Life’s curtains are a veil through which few see,
as many haste taste-waste eternity,
mixed up, ignore life fixes finite sum
to/through infinite opportunity.

Can “Truth” exist? all ask, who seek its core,
we, modest, etch our words to sketch the score,
diverse the verses which converge to link
reflections mirrored many times before.

Vast content, style, a while, united are,
aim at soul stimulation, nothing bar,
to pleasure, treasure, or discard at will
as minds outreach to other minds on par.

Meditating, we shed light on what
tomorrow’s tot may factor into ‘bot’ -
the poet’s lot, forgot, to help all think
ahead of time, enhance life for a lot

Some seek Nirvana, Faith speaks more than “how”.
Others reject Salvation’s wraith, - w[h]ine “now”.
Verifying facts? Inventing dreams?
Each furrow-burrows with a different plough.

[...] Read more

poem by Jonathan Robin
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If You can Keep your Cheese - after Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your cheese while few about you
are holding onto theirs', all envy ease.
If none can get your goat nor cow could doubt you
your scent which, heaven sent, can tell true bries
from gorgonzola, parmesan without you
planning for house mouse contingencies,
or short supply where larder rats may scout to
grind, compromise the tasty rind most please.

If by a whisker cheshire follows trout to
provide fit end for sweet delicacies,
or cheddar meat meal follows leaves no gout to
blur enjoyment, taste buds' harmonies.
If desert heat no threat presents, no pout too
in winter's cold where lizard's blood would freeze,
If neither flood nor drought can mar, throughout you
may triumph over blue mould colonies.

If all kowtow, if none would ever flout you
remembering to bow before ‘big cheese'...
if hole in one you score in club you clout to
take golden trophy - competition flees.
If all above's accomplished taste devout, true,
while others fail to prove their expertise,
your's is the world, which elsewhere's up the spout, few
can make their time your rhyme's real_I_tease!

IF - A Writers' Guild Gild Guile Guide
If you can form and not make norms your master,
conformity, performance formal, flame.
If you inform, share, [fl]airing, flow far faster,
yet let not copyright bind tight to shame.
If you treat critic's inconstructive blaster
with humour, beat him at his game's lame claim,
take not to hea[r]t his tumour, bandage, plaster
half-heartedly, pretend [s]he never came.

If you can couple energy creative
well in advance of others in your field,
without confusing nominative, dative,
rei[g]n arguments through cogency revealed
in context, in a manner innovative,
code palimpsests from all but s[t]age concealed,
If trust in self is never compensative
reaction used when you refused to yield.

If you can link great ends with small beginnings,
and yet not brag, nor tag each copy sold,
If dialogue's more vital than piled winnings,
to trim the quill where will won't be short-sold,

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poem by Jonathan Robin
Added by Poetry Lover
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An American Poem

I was born in Boston in
1949. I never wanted
this fact to be known, in
fact I've spent the better
half of my adult life
trying to sweep my early
years under the carpet
and have a life that
was clearly just mine
and independent of
the historic fate of
my family. Can you
imagine what it was
like to be one of them,
to be built like them,
to talk like them
to have the benefits
of being born into such
a wealthy and powerful
American family. I went
to the best schools,
had all kinds of tutors
and trainers, traveled
widely, met the famous,
the controversial, and
the not-so-admirable
and I knew from
a very early age that
if there were ever any
possibility of escaping
the collective fate of this famous
Boston family I would
take that route and
I have. I hopped
on an Amtrak to New
York in the early
‘70s and I guess
you could say
my hidden years
began. I thought
Well I'll be a poet.
What could be more
foolish and obscure.
I became a lesbian.
Every woman in my
family looks like
a dyke but it's really
stepping off the flag
when you become one.
While holding this ignominious

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poem by Eileen Myles
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I Only Dance With You

Ohh, ohh
Ohhh
Girl, I remember how it all began
You introduced her as your friend
But I knew I was in trouble when
I saw her smile at me
And then she asked me for a dance
But never offered you a glance
Well let me tell you girl with friends like that
Who needs enemies
[chorus:]
Shouldve known better than to trust a friend
Whos jealous of the way we livin
I dont think you know whats happening
Your girl is shading you
Shouldve known better than to trust a friend
Behind your back she gives me rhythm
But Im bout to make her understand
I only dance with you
Girl, you say your friend is just flirting by
Its getting so ridiculous
That shes thinking she can mess with us
But I dont play around
Even when shes saying that youre unaware
And its cool with you to share
No I still ait gonna dance with her
Im telling you right now
[chorus:]
Shouldve known better than to trust a friend
Whos jealous of the way we livin
I dont think you know whats happening
Your girl is shading you
Shouldve known better than to trust a friend
Behind your back she gives me rhythm
But Im bout to make her understand
I only dance with you
Dont try to say I lost the mind
I know your girl has crossed the line (cause I really know that)
She got issues, she trying to diss you
The minute that you turn around
She pulled a switch boo
Cause shes wishing whats yours was hers
So now leave the girl, that aint never gonna work
[chorus:]
Shouldve known better than to trust a friend
Whos jealous of the way we livin
I dont think you know whats happening
Your girl is shading you
Shouldve known better than to trust a friend
Behind your back she gives me rhythm

[...] Read more

song performed by O-town
Added by Lucian Velea
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The White Cliffs

I
I have loved England, dearly and deeply,
Since that first morning, shining and pure,
The white cliffs of Dover I saw rising steeply
Out of the sea that once made her secure.
I had no thought then of husband or lover,
I was a traveller, the guest of a week;
Yet when they pointed 'the white cliffs of Dover',
Startled I found there were tears on my cheek.
I have loved England, and still as a stranger,
Here is my home and I still am alone.
Now in her hour of trial and danger,
Only the English are really her own.

II
It happened the first evening I was there.
Some one was giving a ball in Belgrave Square.
At Belgrave Square, that most Victorian spot.—
Lives there a novel-reader who has not
At some time wept for those delightful girls,
Daughters of dukes, prime ministers and earls,
In bonnets, berthas, bustles, buttoned basques,
Hiding behind their pure Victorian masks
Hearts just as hot - hotter perhaps than those
Whose owners now abandon hats and hose?
Who has not wept for Lady Joan or Jill
Loving against her noble parent's will
A handsome guardsman, who to her alarm
Feels her hand kissed behind a potted palm
At Lady Ivry's ball the dreadful night
Before his regiment goes off to fight;
And see him the next morning, in the park,
Complete in busbee, marching to embark.
I had read freely, even as a child,
Not only Meredith and Oscar Wilde
But many novels of an earlier day—
Ravenshoe, Can You Forgive Her?, Vivien Grey,
Ouida, The Duchess, Broughton's Red As a Rose,
Guy Livingstone, Whyte-Melville— Heaven knows
What others. Now, I thought, I was to see
Their habitat, though like the Miller of Dee,
I cared for none and no one cared for me.

III
A light blue carpet on the stair
And tall young footmen everywhere,
Tall young men with English faces
Standing rigidly in their places,
Rows and rows of them stiff and staid

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poem by Alice Duer Miller
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Please Come To Boston

Please come to Boston
For the springtime
I'm stayin' here with some friends
And they've got lots of room
You can sell your paintings on the sidewalk
By a cafe where I hope to be workin' soon
Please come to Boston
She said no, boy you come home to me
Chorus:
(And) She said, hey ramblin' boy
Why don't you settle down
(Boston, Denver, L.A.) ain't your kind of town
There ain't no gold
And there ain't nobody like me
I'm the number one fan
Of the man from Tennessee
Please come to Denver
To see the snowfall
We'll move up into the mountains
So far that we can't be found
And throw I love you echos
Down the canyons
And then lie awake at night
Until they come back around
Please come to Denver
She said no boy you come home to me
Repeat Chorus:
Now this drifter's world
Goes round and round
And I doubt if it's ever gonna stop
And of all the dreams
I lost or found
And all that I ain't got
I need someone I can cling to
Somebody i can sing to
please come to L.A.
To live forever
A California life alone
Is just too hard to live
We'll live in a house that
Looks out over the ocean
And there's some stars
That fell from the sky
Livin' up on the hill
Please come to L.A.
She said no
Boy, you come home to me
Repeat Chorus
I'm the number one fan
of the man from Tennessee

[...] Read more

song performed by Kenny Chesney
Added by Lucian Velea
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Please Come To Boston (live)

Please come to Boston
For the springtime
I'm stayin' here with some friends
And they've got lots of room
You can sell your paintings on the sidewalk
By a cafe where I hope to be workin' soon
Please come to Boston
She said no, boy you come home to me
[Chorus:]
(And) She said, hey ramblin' boy
Why don't you settle down
(Boston, Denver, L.A.) ain't your kind of town
There ain't no gold
And there ain't nobody like me
I'm the number one fan
Of the band from Tennessee
Please come to Denver
To see the snowfall
We'll move up into the mountains
So far we can't be found
And throw I love you echos
Down the canyons
And then lie awake at night
Until they come back around
Please come to Denver
She said no boy you come home to me
[Repeat Chorus:]
Now that drifter's world
Goes round and round
And I doubt if it's ever gonna stop
But of all the dreams
He's lost or found
And all that I ain't got
I need somebody I can cling to
Somebody he can sing to
He said please come to L.A.
To live forever
A California life alone
Is just too hard to build
I live in a house that
Looks out over the ocean
And there's some stars
That fell from the sky
Livin' up on the hill
Please come to L.A.
I just said no
Boy, you come home to me
[Repeat Chorus]
I'm the number one fan
Of the band from Tennessee

[...] Read more

song performed by Kenny Chesney
Added by Lucian Velea
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Please Come To Boston

(dave loggins)
He said please come to boston
For the springtime
Im stayin here with some friends
And theyve got lots of room
You can sell your paintings on the sidewalk
By a cafe where I hope to be workin soon
Please come to boston
I said no, boy would you come home to me
Chorus:
(and) I said, ramblin boy
Why dont you settle down
(boston, denver, l.a.) aint your kind of town
There aint no gold
And there aint nobody like me
Im the number one fan
Of the man from tennessee
He said, please come to denver
With the snowfall
Well move up into the mountains
So far we cant be found
And throw I love you echos
Down the canyons
And then lie awake at night
Until they come back around
Please come to denver
I just said no boy wont you come home to me
Repeat chorus:
Now that drifters word
Goes round and round
And I doubt if its ever gonna stop
But of all the dreams
Hes lost or found
And all that I aint got
Hes still needs to lean to
Somebody he can sing to
He said please come to l.a.
To live forever
A california life alone
Is just too hard to build
I live in a house that
Looks out over the ocean
And theres some stars
That fell from the sky
Livin up on the hill
Please come to l.a.
I just said no
Boy, wont you come home to me
Repeat chorus
Im the number one fan

[...] Read more

song performed by Reba Mcentire
Added by Lucian Velea
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