Holidaze Poem Swap

I traded for this poem in a poem swap arranged by Alexandra Naughton! Happy Holidays!

Haiku by Matt Margo

i am so sorry
thank you for forgiving me
and being my friend

To be, or not to be: the world's a stage

To be, or not to be: the world's a stage
with the fume of sighs. Love is not love
told by an idiot. O brave new world:
now is the winter full of sound and fury!

To sleep: perchance to dream a summer's day
where love is lost. If music be the food
of true minds then let slip the dogs of war
unto the breach! But never doubt I love

to entertain the time with discontent.
Good night! Out, out! Thou hast not loved
my mistress' eyes! Love is a smoke raised
by any other name—that is the question.

Where love is great no traveler returns
to die before all sins are remembered.

I love what I am not. I'm not the ocean

I love what I am not. I'm not the ocean
under a thundering cloud, not the moon
whirling in a narrow ecliptic. I'm not
the righteous man praying myriad times

to a terrific personality. I love what I
may never be. I may not be the cypress
tree waiting for Sunrise, I may not be
the perfect man who doesn't trade in sin.

The awful trials of being have confused
me, left me disoriented in the madness
of a decadent and suffering tradition.

Yet I wish to be saved like the acorn
resting in the soil, waiting until spring
to breach the surface finally liberated.

I write to bring the lazy clouds within

I write to bring the lazy clouds within

the reach of tongues, to give the tall trees

breath, to reveal the mystery of a bayou

or gulf extending quietly to the ocean.

I write to give the heavens a vehicle

for their glory, to bring the mountain down

to the height of a child, to represent

the infinite love that I can't understand.

I chant these high things despite the trials

man has always known, with the knowledge

every utterance will be an awful failure.

But how am I to spend the oblivious days

enamored with the library of existence

if not by giving voice to the unseen?

Clear and cold, the winter night

Clear and cold, the winter night
obscured the moon. A violet wine
poured through the trees like words
or senseless phrases. The long night

chased the devils out of my sleep
and withered the trees. These words
disappeared as quickly as the wine
that kept me warm. She was asleep

in the turning spectacle of sky.
The clouds moved as the Sun rose
and lazy winter trees stood still.

Clear and cold, the winter sky
revealed a golden planet rising
between tall trees standing still.

The taste of fruit, the taste of water

The taste of fruit, the taste of water,
something to make me feel better.
The art and words I cannot master
despite the years of study, after
the myriad libraries I have entered.
She tells me I should come back later

just to see her. Then when it's later
I can't remember the taste of water
or the way the golden light enters
her room like a liquid. She's better
than whatever pleasure I knew after
my first love. I have yet to master

memories, I have yet to master
form and color. It's getting later
in the evening, a little bit after
nine. Her skin is covered with water,
she showers so she'll feel better
than earlier. She sleeps to enter

dreams, I dream that I have entered
her the way the violinist masters
strings and sound. I'm feeling better
now that I've put it off until later,
now that I've cleansed her with water.
But misfortune confounds us after

making love, I'm confused after
she sits quietly listening. I enter
rooms like air or light, I'm water
flowing through a stanza, mastered
poesy recited. Yet now or later
she reveals herself as the better

writer, better thinker, better
sleeping creature. I am after
knowledge and faith, but the later
it gets I don't know which enters
and which exits. She is the master
of the terrible taste of water,

I'm no better even when I enter
communion with her as my master,
when later I still taste the water.

The labyrinth is lost. The incessant mirror

The labyrinth is lost. The incessant mirror
reflects a turquoise sky that was created
by no one. You are the indefinite dream
beyond perception, unrevealed by the suns
of imagination. The unknowable stars
revolve as an elaborate, mysterious puzzle

we cannot solve. The labyrinthine puzzle
of love presents me with a hall of mirrors
that fills the infinite space between stars.
Who is the person that at once created
earth and fire, wind and rain, golden suns
and empty moons? I'm lost within a dream

of repeated vigils. You won't find the dream
in utterances of truth, nor in the puzzles
of mystics. The labyrinth is a purple sun
obscured by a veil, or the eternal mirror
of an ocean holding heaven. I've created
nothing, the bright moon is a sleeping star

of fate. The labyrinth is a lonely star,
or the poetic interpretation of a dream
following a modern program. You create
seasons, months, calendars, lunar puzzles
that occult the faithful servant's mirror.
Take a look at the dazzling, idle Sun

revealing lovers and poets—the ruined Sun
that rules the sky, removes the other stars
and seems to have no ending. In the mirror
of a friend I apprehend the ancient dreams
of priests and prophets enamored by puzzles
or muttering mantra. But who has created

these words? Whose waiting face created
a verse that eclipses the terrible sun?
Whose prayer saves the oblivious puzzle
of time? Whose eyes resemble endless stars
repeated in the impressions of a dream?
The labyrinth is lost in restless mirrors

created underneath the wandering stars,
but suns disclose the incessant dreams
we puzzle over holding up the mirror.

10,000 notes of vainglorious spilled ink

10,000 notes of vainglorious spilled ink
theorizing about alternative literature:
another meme that's Robert Frost-esque
in Helvetica font. I found my true love
in the archive of a blog between "I hate you"
and another juvenile stupid love poem.

But wait! I found another stupid love poem
in my GChat, in the awful spilled ink
of an email conversation. She said, "I hate you
and the way you write, you're literature
I don't care about." That's when true love
revealed itself as a Walt Whitman-esque

song about mad bodies. The fluxus-esque
shares fill out my feed, stupid love poems
show me what a kid thinks of true love
with the tattoo on her arm. The spilled ink
of a digital artist, experimental literature
shared on the Internet, another "I hate you"

in a comment thread. I thought I hated you
before I read your blog of cummings-esque
nonsense, before the modern literature
became so underwhelming. Stupid love poems
sustain me, I remember the spilled ink
of Yeats or Petrarch, the pure, true love

of prophets singing aubades. My true love
is not love, but the marriage of hate
with common tags. There isn't even ink
in all these shares, Emily Dickinson-esque
poems lie forgotten. A stupid love poem
is hidden in the extant literature

just waiting for a remix, the literature
before this technology. Yet, my true love
yearns for a simple and pure love poem
that reaches far beyond any "I hate you."
O no! Let me not write a net art-esque
diatribe about my brand! Let the spilled ink

of literature forget I said I hated you,
disclosing my true faith in a flarf-esque
love poem that's much more than spilled ink.