Okay, so I am in the midst of studying for exams right now. It is a very intensive, annoying process, so I thought I'd distract myself (as if I needed distracting) by posting some of my favorite poems on my mind right now:

From the book (Mother Love by Rita Dove) that got me into poetry this time:

Wiederkehr

He only wanted me for happiness:
to walk in air
and not think so much,
to watch the smile
begun in his eyes
end on the lips
his eyes caressed.
He merely hoped, in darkness, to smell
rain; and though he saw how still
I sat to hold the rain untouched
inside me, he never asked
if I would stay. Which is why,
when the choice appeared,
I reached for it.


-Rita Dove

It's intriguing, you have to admit. But definitely very sad. Being used as an escape for a guy does not sound fun at all.

Most people are familiar with this one, but it does such a good job of exemplifying love to me, that I have to post it:

Sonnet 130 - Shakespeare

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses demasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Absolutely beautiful........ah Shakespeare.

One more, from perhaps my current favorite poet:

At the back of the noisy café
bent over a table sits an old man;
a newspaper in front of him, without company.

And in the scorn of his miserable old age
he ponders how little he enjoyed the years
when he had strength, and the power of the word, and good looks.

He knows he has aged much; he feels it, he sees it.
And yet the time he was young seems
like yesterday. How short a time, how short a time.

And he ponders how Prudence deceived him;
and how he always trusted her -- what a folly! --
that liar who said: "Tomorrow. There is ample time."

He remembers the impulses he curbed; and how much
joy he sacrificed. Every lost chance
now mocks his senseless wisdom.

...But from so much thinking and remembering
the old man gets dizzy. And falls asleep
bent over the café table.

Constantine P. Cavafy (1897)

I'll be back in a second to post my poems that I wrote in the earliest of the morning (i.e. 2AM when I haven't fallen asleep yet.)