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What to post on the wall:
Your own poem
A poem by another author with credit to the author
A Found Poem
A Book Spine Poem

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Found Poem on eBay, published in The New Yorker

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Found Poem on eBay, published in The New Yorker

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this truck is 1972
with a 67 nose building for street
was a 72 drag
but so much of the front end was cut away

i put this nose on for street motor
is a 427 tall deck out of a dump truck
new rebuilt with a turbo400 straight gear
trans 9: ford 4 link rear

i put 94 corvette spindles and calipers
on front weld wheels
cab is got n rot Alabama truckfire
wall is removed to set back 427 with fender well headers

i am in the middle of putting on
a 871 bds blower on motor
lack of money at the moment so
i list this as a work in progress?

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Plain language in the service of feeling is congenial to my ear. When I was learning to write, William Maxwell used to tell me, "Use a word from plain speech." Sometimes he would ask me to explain something I had written, and he would write my explanation in the margin, and it surprised me that something I had said could be writing. When people say something apt, I often have a difficult time getting the sound of it out of my ear-it seems to have an extra legitimacy because it happened-and sometimes it comes out on the page, seeming true and clear to me, because I heard it. Such a remark can take its place for me in a paragraph like a board nailed to a stud.

The entry below wasn't written as it appears. It's a listing from eBay which my wife sent me. (She wants a pickup truck.) She thought it read as a poem, and I arranged it in stanzas and fixed a couple of typos and added a comma. It doesn't ask much of the imagination to picture a man in Alabama writing it. The truck is parked in his yard. It is the evening, after work, and he has the door closed against interruptions.

this truck is 1972
with a 67 nose building for street
was a 72 drag
but so much of the front end was cut away

i put this nose on for street motor
is a 427 tall deck out of a dump truck
new rebuilt with a turbo400 straight gear
trans 9: ford 4 link rear

i put 94 corvette spindles and calipers
on front weld wheels
cab is got n rot Alabama truckfire
wall is removed to set back 427 with fender well headers

i am in the middle of putting on
a 871 bds blower on motor
lack of money at the moment so
i list this as a work in progress?

have step side bed that came with 67 step side
i have been using parts from
have cab all
so all in real good shape
remember this was a drag truck so doors windows exc.
you need to finish and i have it all to finish with street legal truck

no rot, i dont care if it sells but for the right money
i will want a 41 willeys
that's my dream car for a long time
got a chance to buy just the body (glass)
so any questions call American Heritage
205 553 3298 and will talk
ask for chief

Photograph by Raymond Depardon/Magnum.

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Plain language in the service of feeling is congenial to my ear. When I was learning to write, William Maxwell used to tell me, "Use a word from plain speech." Sometimes he would ask me to explain something I had written, and he would write my explanation in the margin, and it surprised me that something I had said could be writing.

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The Lie

BY SIR WALTER RALEGH

Go, soul, the body’s guest,

Upon a thankless errand;

Fear not to touch the best;

The truth shall be thy warrant.

Go, since I needs must die,

And give the world the lie.

Say to the court, it glows

And shines like rotten wood;

Say to the church, it shows

What’s good, and doth no good.

If church and court reply,

Then give them both the lie.

Tell potentates, they live

Acting by others’ action;

Not loved unless they give,

Not strong but by a faction.

If potentates reply,

Give potentates the lie.

Tell men of high condition,

That manage the estate,

Their purpose is ambition,

Their practice only hate.

And if they once reply,

Then give them all the lie.

Tell them that brave it most,

They beg for more by spending,

Who, in their greatest cost,

Seek nothing but commending.

And if they make reply,

Then give them all the lie.

Tell zeal it wants devotion;

Tell love it is but lust;

Tell time it is but motion;

Tell flesh it is but dust.

And wish them not reply,

For thou must give the lie.

Tell age it daily wasteth;

Tell honor how it alters;

Tell beauty how she blasteth;

Tell favor how it falters.

And as they shall reply,

Give every one the lie.

Tell wit how much it wrangles

In tickle points of niceness;

Tell wisdom she entangles

Herself in overwiseness.

And when they do reply,

Straight give them both the lie.

Tell physic of her boldness;

Tell skill it is pretension;

Tell charity of coldness;

Tell law it is contention.

And as they do reply,

So give them still the lie.

Tell fortune of her blindness;

Tell nature of decay;

Tell friendship of unkindness;

Tell justice of delay.

And if they will reply,

Then give them all the lie.

Tell arts they have no soundness,

But vary by esteeming;

Tell schools they want profoundness,

And stand too much on seeming.

If arts and schools reply,

Give arts and schools the lie.

Tell faith it’s fled the city;

Tell how the country erreth;

Tell manhood shakes off pity;

Tell virtue least preferreth.

And if they do reply,

Spare not to give the lie.

So when thou hast, as I

Commanded thee, done blabbing—

Although to give the lie

Deserves no less than stabbing—

Stab at thee he that will,

No stab the soul can kill.

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Robert Creeley

Underneath the tree on some
soft grass I sat. I

watched two happy
woodpeckers be dis-

turbed by my presence. And
why not, I thought to

myself, why
not?

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Maggots lace the soil,

Their pulsing white bodies,

Wriggling on the ground,

In agony or ecstasy,

No one can tell.

They came to claim the dead,

Corpses wrapped in white linen,

Saturated with decay,

A mountain of carnage,

Claimed by the Earth.

The underworld beckons them,

With splintered claws,

And a gaping jaw,

Festering with the sins of man,

Rancid and defiled.

The bodies sink beneath soil,

Their gruesome stench,

Pervading the graveyard,

A blood-soaked paradise,

For the wretched and the damned.

Their descent is harrowing,

As they claw mercilessly,

At their earthen prison,

Suffocated by the weight,

Of their eternal guilt.

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by Shel Silverstein

I thought that I had wavy hair

Until I shaved. Instead,

I find that I have straight hair

And a very wavy head.

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That Day, the saucers landed. Hundreds of them, golden,
Silent, coming down from the sky like great snowflakes,
And the people of Earth stood and
stared as they descended,
Waiting, dry-mouthed, to find out what waited inside for us
And none of us knowing if we would be here tomorrow
But you didn’t notice it because

That day, the day the saucers came, by some coincidence,
Was the day that the graves gave up their dead
And the zombies pushed up through soft earth
or erupted, shambling and dull-eyed, unstoppable,
Came towards us, the living, and we screamed and ran,
But you did not notice this because

On the saucer day, which was zombie day, it was
Ragnarok also, and the television screens showed us
A ship built of dead-men’s nails, a serpent, a wolf,
All bigger than the mind could hold,
and the cameraman could
Not get far enough away, and then the Gods came out
But you did not see them coming because

On the saucer-zombie-battling-gods
day the floodgates broke
And each of us was engulfed by genies and sprites
Offering us wishes and wonders and eternities
And charm and cleverness and true
brave hearts and pots of gold
While giants feefofummed across
the land and killer bees,
But you had no idea of any of this because

That day, the saucer day, the zombie day
The Ragnarok and fairies day,
the day the great winds came
And snows and the cities turned to crystal, the day
All plants died, plastics dissolved, the day the
Computers turned, the screens telling
us we would obey, the day
Angels, drunk and muddled, stumbled from the bars,
And all the bells of London were sounded, the day
Animals spoke to us in Assyrian, the Yeti day,
The fluttering capes and arrival of
the Time Machine day,
You didn’t notice any of this because
you were sitting in your room, not doing anything
not even reading, not really, just
looking at your telephone,
wondering if I was going to call.

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I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
—Robert Frost

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Resting, lingering, and causing decay.

Taking control of the blinded ones.

It tracks and follows just moments away.

Release the grip of control, tired of inhalations.

This freedom comes with a high price.

Mocking and engaging, the constraints will suffice.

Undone, by selfless control over the indulgence.

Desires in the foggy windows.

The danger is in killer compounds, deep sleep in their vows.

Returning to death’s table, do not sit but stand alive.

Stay awake, keeping life safe.

Chemical additions will make you pay.

High prices are taxing to loved ones.

In death’s bed to sleep, a debt to stay.

RIP DMX and all the other overdosed losses.

Melinda Radilla

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On the Fabrics of Time and the Tides of Change. 

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On the Fabrics of Time and the Tides of Change. 

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There are fibers to a fabric interwoven with time,
as it so has had a tendency of capturing moments while
they've unfolded.
To each their own story -their own breath- the make up of their soul.
We are in who and what we believe,
but then again
who are we?
Will you remember
or will the need to remember
be reminded?
I wish it were true
but truth is something we draw closer to day by day,
with every moment...
I wish it were easy
but has it ever been to understand
that you've to make your own meaning?
Will you ever understand?

Pages of a book unopened are like that of a life never lived as one who observes such things may be inclined to say.
Yet, without these pages which compose the whole we -as humanity- fall short of our greater potential, or our "improved" self.
"What better to reflect than to dwell?" One may ask, "To reflect must one change?"
-Yes, and change must one do to progress.
Miguel Guerrero

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Landmark                         Jen Nevarez

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Landmark                         Jen Nevarez

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No one in town knows your name,
yet everyone knows you.

We walk past your house everyday,
the cardboard castle next to the railway:
Carefully placed Marlboro boxes,
supported by empty milk crates

I try not to stare at your eyes,
barren like a tree in winter
Or your tobacco stained fingers
Wrapped tightly around a paper cup.
Some days it’s a paper bag.

I pretend not to notice
your lips moving,
your gaze fixed                          on an empty chair across from you.

Do you pretend not to notice
the mother pulling her child close as she passes you?

I take my seat on the train,
from my window I see you.
I stare.
Are you someone’s brother?
No one’s father?
An unanswered prayer?

Slowly the train pulls away from the station.
Perhaps another day
I’ll have the courage to ask you.

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Shine so bright, I question what it all means no doubt on my journey I have seen, but can not recollect, and still question what it all means.

The truths I have come to know mean something,

I wonder if it's all for you? Because I know truly, The things I do are not for me.

Tears have taken the place of my lonely scriptures, Again is it all for you? Because I know truly, I do not regret what I am to be a part of.

My remorse comes from not holding on, But if I could, I would; however that is lie, because I am incapable of holding onto what I love.

You were my addiction, and I was your fixation,

I was captivated by your wave, oh so alluring,

And I never failed to keep you intrigued.

Blessed with a moment of remembrance,
Mnemosyne,

We focused more on being, rather than being with,

I wonder if you think the same? Hopefully our paths will cross once again.

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The poem I'd like to share with you all is from my favorite poet, Pablo Neruda, it comes from his collection titled, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair,
I Remember you as You Were:
I remember you as you were in the last autumn.
You were the grey beret and the still heart.
In your eyes the flames of the twilight fought on.
And the leaves fell in the water of your soul.

Clasping my arms like a climbing plant
the leaves garnered your voice, that was slow and at peace.
Bonfire of awe in which my thirst was burning.
Sweet blue hyacinth twisted over my soul.

I feel your eyes traveling, and the autumn is far off:
Grey beret, voice of a bird, heart like a house
Towards which my deep longings migrated
And my kisses fell, happy as embers.

Sky from a ship. Field from the hills:
Your memory is made of light, of smoke, of a still pond!
Beyond your eyes, farther on, the evenings were blazing.
Dry autumn leaves revolved in your soul.

--Pablo Neruda--