The Mad Poets Blog

So, way back in the day when I first started blogging, before I started my current (ongoing) personal blog, and well before I took on the duties of the Mad Poets bloggette, there was thing that went around the blogosphere called The Friday Random 10… folks would put their music players on random & then post to their blog the first 10 songs that came up. It was always fun to see what connections came up.

Inspired by that tradition (does anyone still do it), I’m initiating the Friday Random 2 here on the Mad Poets blog. Every Friday I’ll select 2 random (or not so random, as the case may be) poems from the Mad Poets Review, the Internet, the Norton Anthology, or where ever I feel like. If you’ve got a blog, maybe you can point us in the direction of a few of your favorite poems (let’s keep copyright in mind, so link to external sites, get permission from your friends & be generally conscience of not just posting someone else’s stuff without their say so).

I thought it only fitting that we start off with a poem by the Queen of the Mad Poets, Eileen D’Angelo. This poem appeared in the Mad Poets Review, Volume 20, which was released in 2007.

South Wind
~Eileen M. D’Angelo

It’s one a.m. –
and nothing feels right:
My legs are too long for this small bed,
my feet dangle off the end, into cool air.
The stars outside hang just below the tree line,
and this cabin is not big enough for me
and this country brown spider.

It’s one a.m. –
and I want to pick up the phone,
hear your voice, tell you how cold the sheets are
here in the mountains, where four months
of rainless skies deluged into one day
of drizzle and downpours. The other night,
under cover of overcast sky, I slipped
into the dark cold waters, my nipples
hard as buttons, my eyes skyward
as smoky clouds moved across the moon.

Tomorrow I will walk around the lake,
rain or no rain. I will take what I can
for the journey home: This south wind
blowing off the lake, the damp pines
turning in sunlight. Fallen apples
circled by bees.

The second poem comes from one of my newer favorite web mags, Literary Mama. I read this poem a few months ago & it just rang so true of the pressures (read: neuroticisms of motherhood). Here are the first few lines, please link over for the full poem, it’s well worth it!

Junk food poem
~Rachel Levy

Start stressing about Halloween festivities at the kiddies’ school. Read flyer about Room 9 Halloween party. Experience disbelief that each family is to send in some kind of Halloween junk. Calculate that junk total for each child would equal twenty-five pieces. Wonder how so much junk will fit into little goodie bags that kids are supposed to decorate. Experience some level of disgust with emphasis on materialism given the recent economic downturn. Experience desire to not spend money on little plastic witches with little parachutes that will get destroyed after one day of use and go into a landfill. Realize that before landfill junk will come into home. Experience strong desire to keep junk out of home. Consider possibility of homeschooling kids…. READ THE REST OF THIS POEM.