Burning In The Rain by Richard Blanco

My House

Ode to the Republic by Tony Hoagland

A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

Yours Truly by Leonard Nathan

Reconnaissance by Carl Phillips

Fame by William Stafford

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head, 
To work my mind, when body's work's expired:
For then my thoughts (from far where I abide) 
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee, 
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide, 
Looking on darkness which the blind do see: 
Save that my soul's imaginary sight 
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night, 
Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.
   Lo, thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
   For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.

Sonnet 27 by William Shakespeare

Oh love! that stronger art than Wine,
Pleasing Delusion, Witchery divine,
Wont to be priz'd above all Wealth,
Disease that has more Joys than Health;
Though we blaspheme thee in our Pain,
And of Tyranny complain,
We are all better'd by thy Reign.

What Reason never can bestow,
We to this useful Passion owe:
Love wakes the dull from sluggish ease,
And learns a Clown the Art to please:
Humbles the Vain, kindles the Cold,
Makes Misers free, and Cowards bold;
And teaches airy Fops to think.

When full brute Appetite is fed,
And choakd the Glutton lies and dead;
Thou new Spirits dost dispense,
And fine'st the gross Delights of Sense.

Virtue's unconquerable Aid
That against Nature can persuade;
And makes a roving Mind retire
Within the Bounds of just Desire.
Chearer of Age, Youth's kind Unrest,
And half the Heaven of the blest!

Song by Aphra Behn

Chameleons feed on light and air:
   Poets’ food is love and fame:
If in this wide world of care
   Poets could but find the same
With as little toil as they,
   Would they ever change their hue
   As the light chameleons do,
Suiting it to every ray
      Twenty times a day?

Poets are on this cold earth,
   As chameleons might be,
Hidden from their early birth
   In a cave beneath the sea;
Where light is, chameleons change:
   Where love is not, poets do:
   Fame is love disguised: if few
Find either, never think it strange
      That poets range.

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power
   A poet’s free and heavenly mind:
If bright chameleons should devour
   Any food but beams and wind,
They would grow as earthly soon
   As their brother lizards are.
   Children of a sunnier star,
Spirits from beyond the moon,
      Oh, refuse the boon!

An Exhortation by Percy Bysshe Shelley

and of course he’s beautiful         
goosebumps over his ribs 
like tiny fists under a thin sheet     the sheet
all mudwet and taste of walnut

and of course I’m afraid of him
of the way keeping him a secret will make him 
inevitable       I will do anything to avoid 
getting carried away       sleep nightly with coins

over my eyes       set fire to an entire 
zodiac      mecca is a moth 
chewing holes in a shirt I left 
at a lover’s house       a body loudly

consumes days and awaits the slow 
fibrillation of its heart      a lightning rod
sits in silence until finally      the storm
now the boy is scooping up minnows

and swallowing them like a heron      
I’m done trying to make sense 
of any of this      no one will believe anything 
that comes out a mouth like mine

Micah

Popular tracks