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poetry
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Here is the newest batch of poems but some of our most loved King’s students poets. Enjoy!
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FEAR by Mary Chapman
Sometimes We lie in the dead hours of night, Curled like commas we are together in the yellow darkness. Imperfect in half-sleep and your benevolent body I suffer the agony of inhaling the effervescent stench Of luxurious you, lovely you, all the unbearable kindnessAnd whispers of leaving ballet foot across the mind, Scarring with fear and exquisite loss. I build battlements of fury, trellises of disbelief To weave wonder away with the fairies, And give voice to the screaming heart inside Ruthless desperation of spite to preserve Like salted meat, untouched and untasted The withered and parched kind of me. Tripping slowly onwards to a paranoid doom I falter and fall, slipping back in the slipstream Pulled to the gravity of your thoughts Like a dumb animal with staring eyes, Stupidly afraid of the gentle destruction exacted upon the willing. In the end all there will be is us, explosions And the apocalypse moon, polluted purity of white Those dark craters calling softly, like the pupils of my eyes, Cavernous with drugs.
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POETRY
MUSEUMS OF NATURE by Katie McGinnis
One goes to war museums in order to assimilate disorder to rational planes; strategies, theorems, the simplification of human life into a blot of ink, a line is wholly remarkable; for any other reason but to learn that the fate of Normandy rested in the hands of a weatherman; that a gas mask, converted with ears, a nose, ruddy cheeks, was set to charm a child, and there is no point for pilgrimage. It comes to this: my finger searching out the hole on the left breast of the Reichstag eagle,
MAGICIANS by Mary Chapman
catching as a hook on a worm.
This moment An agony of blazing spring Magician sounds whispering a cloak of freedom There is nothing but the air to breathe Endless sky and space stretching to unfathomable infinity These years and years and years lie in wait Panthers of time, inky black and dangerous To be filled with what but moments Thrown to the wind and the howling inner she She who is fed with titbits of youth and exhilaration Who will set fire to these days Burn to ashes and rise again The supernatural phoenix of womanhood.
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POETRY
LIBRARY DESKS by Felix Franck
Here silent wars are being fought. Small, continuing instances of conquest, most of which go unnoticed, especially by the victor. “That’s my spot!” will fume in your head, as you walk on as if nothing happened. But the checker has, unwittingly?, taken your square. Some of you are the nomads of course, the perpetual raiders. You cannot understand us. What we fight for is that most coveted of haves, not the desk on which the books, Not the light from through the glass nor the face on other side. What we wage all our earliest possible mornings into, although we may not know it, is simply this: it’s a little piece of desk that is home. Here polite wars are being fought that when least expected turn to glares and tongues and sharp snappings of your bones of anthracite. And are no longer quite so polite.
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POETRY
THE UNFAITHFUL by Patrick Davidson When you let drop the waist of your jeans from hip to foot I’d never have thought the space that breathes out, in between my ribcage and heart could turn so cold in a second I’d pictured as warm whenever I’d imagined, before. You stepped across the bed, for once so suddenly tall, but my body was shutting up shop for the day while still awake. I moved and touched in the silence, you let out three, maybe four long gasps. And this was the crux that the quick men would croon over; here were the places you held to your chest. You wanted a whisky, you lacked for nothing. I sailed on, into the Gulf Stream. Tacking to starboard, this marlin attached to me, something pulled down. I threw off clothes like surplus barrels, cannonballs, any spare weight went overboard in abandon, in scratches, in hotel cotton twisted. The boat turned turtle. We lay apart as mere flotsam, you on the bedspread, breasts sunk into you, like air bubbles widening. Me, I was pulling myself onto the wreckage, trying to get my head straight for a second. Your breathing, slowly, fathom-deep. For years the ripples, still widening out, the lump in my throat a nearer my god to thee or hope that, as those in peril on the sea, we could have washed up on similar shores, or two strange lands so far apart no eye could see. But there’s a something every morning, pulling down on line and mooring. Tugging closer to the deep, I think myself forever tied, one leg overboard my soul to keep and the other on-board, a different creature. When will your land become distant, when will the seas cease to boil?
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POETRY
TO MY LOVER by Felix Franck Her. Tall, fair, she holds within her name an unpronounceable aristocracy. I see her every day. We live together. I sleep with her, often. Often I fall asleep where she lies. My lover, you are a different story. Your height speaks not of yesterday; you tower for that is what you are. You strive to serve though that was not your born intent. and forgive me, but, for all the upfront, “it’s what’s inside that counts”. You see, my lover, you are not her, and that is why you are the one who gives. Your just give. She holds her head high, in an attempt, perhaps, to forget that ours was an arranged marriage. Our story is different. It is in our escapades that my essence is poured, in our shared nights that we know it was meant that way. They are far fewer between, but they do hold folly. Sometimes we have spent hours together, forgetting to drink, eat, maybe breath, locked in the embrace of that common striving. You bearing, I stretching time, just a little longer. Always high, even higher! With her it is always low. Monotonous. It seems it must be done, and, sometimes, I wonder why. Those little gems you always posses, locked away for me to breath, each one of them an unexpected hope; she never has them. For all her embroidered face, she is an empty shell. Today I am with her. Tomorrow also so. But you and I know that sooner or later her vacance will have me seeking the refuge of your heights. The anonymity of your embrace. Up there, I’m nothing. The bliss. And so every time she lets me down (or kicks me out – it’s happened before), I know where I am headed. Off past Holborn, towards that green doorstep of yours. I take the service entrance – we are intimates. It wasn’t really meant that way, but I wouldn’t have it otherwise. And though I know you hold no perfection, I’ll place this final bet And though our joint stretches reach their end, I know I won’t forget That you were the bearer of my blood, The one who was there for me. That your pages are the ones that are true. That that I love you, Senate House Library.
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POETRY
ENTREM. by Rachele Dini entrem, entrem. o espaço está desocupado entrem – abriu os olhos... e ouviu. abriu os ouvidos... e olha! a você prometo... ... um colagem de palavras um burro um sapaterio um coerente, nauseabundo, armário de palavras impressionantes. (um armário? porque, um armário?) uff, não ser tão sem imaginação. imagina, ok? venha, imagina comigo. vamos imaginar, juntos. então. imaginaimaginaimaginaimaginaimaginaimaginaimaginaimaginaimaginaimaginaimaginaimaginaimag— um ARMÁRIO— ISOLADO! UM ARMÁRIO—FIELMENTE REVESTIDO! UM ARMÁRIO— BURRO! BURRO! BURRO! (fielmente revestido? que coisa e fielmente revestida? diga-me, que coisa? o armário? o outra coisa...? e sim não uma outra coisa, então porque não uma outra coisa?) oh, siiiim. você está certo, também. e porque não? uma outra coisa, você pergunta. e então você dou.... uma nuvem, talvez. uma nuvem… cor crème. siiiiiiiiiim.... sim, pode ser. sim, sim, por que não? hmmm... vamos tentar? então. uma NUVEM! uma NUVEM (cor crème) uma NUVEM (fielmente revestida) uma NUVEM de ideias… IDEAS GRANDES (mas ideias pequenitas, também) e essas ideias de circuito fechado, essas ideias que se enrolam estes ideias que circulam
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POETRY e que vagueiam no espaço— estes idéias, têm necessidade— GRITÁ-LAS! não, melho, COZINHÁ-LAS. porque o nosso público— o nosso público tem fome. então. ENTREM, público, ENTREM! o espaço não é mais desocupado. e a você prometemos idéias que, com um coador do ar, quando um as exprime... ... perdem um pouco... ... um pouco de elas mesmas... ... mas preenchem-se de outra coisas. outra coisas de um sabor inexprimível— outra coisas, sim, mas coisas sem nom.
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