Poet's Corner: The Poem of Chalk by Philip Levine

The Poem of Chalk by Philip Levine

On the way to lower Broadway
this morning I faced a tall man
speaking to a piece of chalk
held in his right hand. The left
was open, and it kept the beat,
for his speech had a rhythm,
was a chant or dance, perhaps
even a poem in French, for he
was from Senegal and spoke French
so slowly and precisely that I
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My poem: Fried Plantains

Title: Fried Plantains
Poetic form: shadorma
Length: 21
Rating: Gen

dark ripe gold
streaked with veins of brown
caramelized
thick warm sweet
hunks swimming in melting cream
taste of borrowed home

Video: Art Heists

I am mainly posting this for my friend smallhobbit because this reminded me of her ficlet series with BBC Sherlock's Jim Moriarty and Sebastian Moran where Jim travels and often steals art and other valuables as souvenirs. An art recovery detective and a former art thief look at scenes from films and rate their realism. The art thief was giving me major Seb vibes. There are many videos like this of X rating the realism of film scenes (bank robbers, mafia, safe crackers, event planners, bakers). These two guys do another on just jewel heists, and it's equally good

Watch on YouTube

Poet's Corner: White Night by Anna Akhmatova

White Night by Anna Akhmatova [trans. by Liz Rosenberg and Nadia Zarembo)

I did not lock the door
I didn’t light the candles
You don’t know how, tired as I was,
I didn’t dare go to sleep.

To watch the streaks of light dying
in the twilight dark of the pines
I am getting drunk on the sound
of a voice like yours in the hall.

And to know that everything is lost,
that life—is a cursed hell.
O, I was so certain
you would come back.

Translator's note: In early summer, Russia experiences nearly twenty-four hours of light a day, a time period called a "white night." "White night" is also an expression used to describe insomnia, a condition in which one doesn't sleep at all. With this poem, as it happens, both meanings are correct.

My poem: Jeeves & Wooster: A touch of the hidalgo: Gen

Title: A touch of the hidalgo
Fandom: Jeeves & Wooster
Length: 55
Rating: Gen
Poetic form: quintilla (and because there are 2, it is called a copa real)
Notes: referencing "Aunt Agatha Makes a Bloomer"

a touch of the old hidalgo
bestows this scarlet cummerbund
all who catch a flash come to know
its pow’r, are rendered silent, stunned
by noble, red, Spanish squire glow

no, sir, to tipping windmills, no
that article, that ruddy sash
about your bull-fighting torso
resembles satiny bloody gash
the cummerbund, sir, it must go

Poet's Corner: two by Walt Whitman

Look Down Fair Moon by Walt Whitman

Look down, fair moon, and bathe this scene;
Pour softly down night's nimbus floods, on faces ghastly, swollen,
purple;
On the dead, on their backs, with their arms toss'd wide,
Pour down your unstinted nimbus, sacred moon.

Sometimes with One I Love by Walt Whitman

Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturn’d love,
But now I think there is no unreturn’d love, the pay is certain one way or another
(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return’d,
Yet out of that I have written these songs).