18 Birthday poems

Here bounds the gaudy, gilded chair, Bedecked with fringe and tassels gay; The melancholy mourner there Pursues her sad and painful way. Here, guarded by a motley train, The pampered Countess glares along; There, wrung by poverty and pain, Pale Misery mingles with the throng. Here, as the blazoned chariot rolls, And prancing horses scare the crowd, Great names, adorning little souls, Announce the empty, vain and proud. Here four tall lackeys slow precede A painted dame in rich array; There, the sad, shivering child of need Steals barefoot o’er the flinty way. ‘Room, room! stand back!’ they loudly cry, The wretched poor are driven around; On every side they scattered fly, And shrink before the threatening sound. Here, amidst jewels, feathers, flowers, The senseless Duchess sits demure, Heedless of all the anxious hours The sons of modest worth endure. All silvered and embroidered o’er, She neither knows nor pities pain; The beggar freezing at her door She overlooks with nice disdain. The wretch whom poverty subdues Scarce dares to raise his tearful eye; Or if by chance the throng he views, His loudest murmur is a sigh! The poor wan mother, at whose breast The pining infant craves relief, In one thin tattered garment dressed, Creeps forth to pour the plaint of grief. But ah! how little heeded here The faltering tongue reveals its woe; For high-born fools, with frown austere, Condemn the pangs they never know. ‘Take physic, Pomp!’ let Reason say: ‘What can avail thy trappings rare? The tomb shall close thy glittering day, The beggar prove thy equal there!’

Today's the rider's birthday. I see you're already lower-casing him... Would you rather I... What is this "I." You have none. Today's the rider's birthday. Except he's dead. In a contrary mood today? Not in the way you'd think. I'm you're friend, remember? And I can't hurt you. I have no body. Neither does Krang. K-----? The bodiless brain. The Ninja Turtles' nemesis. The guy who oversees all of their activities. And yet you carry him in your pocket like a good luck charm. You perplex your son who can't see the humor in your perversity because to him Krang is just, to put it plainly, disgusting.

On the birthday of the world I begin to contemplate what I have done and left undone, but this year not so much rebuilding of my perennially damaged psyche, shoring up eroding friendships, digging out stumps of old resentments that refuse to rot on their own. No, this year I want to call myself to task for what I have done and not done for peace. How much have I dared in opposition? How much have I put on the line for freedom? For mine and others? As these freedoms are pared, sliced and diced, where have I spoken out? Who have I tried to move? In this holy season, I stand self-convicted of sloth in a time when lies choke the mind and rhetoric bends reason to slithering choking pythons. Here I stand before the gates opening, the fire dazzling my eyes, and as I approach what judges me, I judge myself. Give me weapons of minute destruction. Let my words turn into sparks.

It is important to remember that you will die, lifting the fork with the sheep's brain lovingly speared on it to the mouth: the little piece smooth on the one side as a baby mouse pickled in wine; on the other, blood- plush and intestinal atop its bed of lentils. The lentils were once picked over for stones in the fields of India perhaps, the sun shining into tractor blades slow moving as the swimmer’s arms that pierce, then rise, then pierce again the cold water of this river outside your window called The Heart or The Breast, even, but meaning something more than this, beyond the crudeness of flesh, though what is crude about flesh anyway, watching yourself every day lose another bit of luster? It is wrong to say one kind of beauty replaces another. Isn’t it your heart along with its breast muscles that has started to weaken; solace isn’t possible for every loss, or why else should we clutch, stroke, grasp, love the little powers we once were born with? Perhaps the worst thing in the world would be to live forever. Otherwise, what would be the point of memory, without which we would have nothing to hurt or placate ourselves with later? Look. It is only getting worse from here on out. Thank God. Otherwise the sun on this filthy river could never be as boring or as poignant, the sheep’s brain trembling on the fork wouldn’t seem once stung by the tang of grass, by the call of some body distant and beloved to it still singing through the milk. The fork would be only a fork, and not the cool heft of it between your fingers, the scratch of lemon in the lentils, onions, parsley slick with blood; food that, even as you lift it to your mouth, you never thought you’d eat. And do.

Nine stories high Second Avenue On the roof there’s a party All the friends are there watching By the light of the moon the blazing sun Go down over the side of the planet To light up the underside of Earth There are long bent telescopes for the friends To watch this through. The friends are all in shadow. I can see them from my bed inside my head. 44 years I’ve loved these dreams today. 17 years since I wrote for the first time a poem On my birthday, why did I wait so long? my land a good land its highways go to many good places where many good people were found; a home land, whose song comes up from the throat of a hummingbird & it ends where the sun goes to across the skies of blue. I live there with you.

I’d like to assume from my April birthday, I quickened the womb on the 4th of July. If you suffered as I a sternly fought tendency to endless dependency you’d know why.

i don't know what to wish for anymore everything i needed i've had or found or made i wish for more of this whatever this is it's good

Another year and i didn't expect to be here doing this not in a bad way just: i couldn't have predicted life keeps surprising me mostly in good ways