HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: wachtel@canon.co.uk (Tom Wachtel)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: Poem - Suffocation
Date: 29 Sep 92 10:14:04 GMT
Reply-To: wachtel@canon.co.uk
Organization: Canon Research Centre Europe Ltd

RVESTERM@vma.cc.nd.edu writes:

> if it weren't for carbon dioxide, you'd be dead.
> 
> hence, i find it hard to call carbon dioxide an air impurity.


	if it weren't for words, I'd be speechless
	hence, I find it hard to call
-- 

Tom Wachtel (wachtel@canon.co.uk)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
From: 78witherspoo@cua.edu
Subject: A Surrealist Poem
Organization: The Catholic University of America
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 13:11:35 GMT

HI all--

A surrealist poem written by my 20th Century Theatres class.

We used a surrealist party game called "The Exquisite Cadaver".

Why a surrealist poem?  Just because it's Tuesday....


_________________________________

From a mile away
Under the lagoon
Two horses running wildly
Jumping Jehosophat sank
No smoking guns permissable


Love and DADA,

Tom Witherspoon

78witherspoo@cua.edu
From: ktw@polaris.att.com (79243-wolman)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: My Mother's God
Date: 5 Oct 92 19:30:46 GMT
Article-I.D.: cbfsb.1992Oct5.193046.12732
Organization: AT&T
Originator: news@cbnewsb.cb.att.com


 
      MY MOTHER'S GOD

      She seemed relieved the day I left Hebrew School,
      became bar mitzvah and fled into being the son
      not of the Commandments but of her spirit, undivided.
      Perhaps she saw God as a competitor:
      like one who has lost a child to a plague,
      she feared losing me to what had taken her husband
      without warning, and was, as she saw the matter,
      starting to work his way, systematically,
      like a serial killer, through her older sisters:
      and though the killing would start only later,
      even now afflicting them with the aches of middle age.

      For her, the world was a killing field:
      she was shocked but not surprised
      when my father brought the _Mirror_ home in May '45,
      and she saw the images of Buchenwald: the Golgotha
      of eyeglasses and false teeth
      for her extended the created world,
      where everyone was an enemy, and God indeed existed,
      presiding with the indifference of a half-drunk
      Night Court judge banished to the graveyard shift,
      sentencing mankind to live in a world
      of muggers and alleyway sluts.

      How many Yizkors did we go to together,
      Yom Kippur morning into afternoon,
      lumping my father into the bottomless mess of dead family
      with her parents: forgotten of himself,
      part of her transformation of God
      into an sacrificial deity propitiated
      by attending on him, suspending our disbelief
      except in him as the eater of our dead,
      the eater of our children,
      the destroyer of worlds.

      It was many years later, when I found my way back,
      that I saw into her hatred,
      saw the spurned mistress pumping bullets
      into the inert body of the killer God
      she had asked for love but who returned
      only scorn and silence, demanding still more of her:
      her husband, her sisters, her only son
      come to her vision of no good, forever cursed
      by her belief in the power of nullity.
      Her legacy, springing free of the grave
      and the coffin marked with David's Shield
      that could not shield us,
      was her gift of vision,
      clamoring for its place in the world,
      my world, standing astride her grave,
      laughing through tears like a curse
      borne on Heaven's air.

Kenneth Wolman, October 5, 1992
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
From: deborahz@titan.ucc.umass.edu (DEBORAH L ZANDELL)
Subject: Re: Cold hearted
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1992 22:32:43 GMT

Flying along, with spears back of you,
Tender thoughts, heartfelt, are missing inside,
Noone and nothing can cause them to hide,
The spear that you're throwing, fire-tipped, glowing,
Its piercing, and rhythmic, and hot-blooded arc
Will wound, and embody, the blood of the bird,
Which, flying along, the spear-sound never heard,
Was foolish enough to fly near where you hid,
And, launching your fire-tipped spear, to its path,
Pierced its heart through with your gun-firing wrath,

And dead, is the bird, if not slowly dying, its wings flap no more,
And soon, it is lying, on top of the waves, on the endless ocean,
Bird-dog sent to fetch it, grabs it in slow-motion, 
Retrieves it, and throws it, up onto the sand, awaiting,
Your small motion of hand, then the dog comes to you,
And expects its reward,    
For all its hard labors, a biscuit, to it. 
            
A biscuit, for doggie, a bird for its owner,
A wound and a fiery spear brought the honor,
And home you go, you, the most proud of bird hunters,
Your bounty, your ransom, and, most, your bird-dog,
All he got was a biscuit, he's worth most, in the end,
Taking least of rewards, the most loyal, best hunter,
He swims without fear, and hunts without fire,
And barks and makes cheer, as you drive home, so tired.

How short, though, the bird-hunting season,
The few weeks it takes in the year,
For hunting dog also for hunter,
It's the one time that they receive cheer,

The birds fly above,
Hunter and dog below,
An ancient art, started,
In years long ago,
Continued unto now, for all of time.

Deborah Zandell,
October 3, 1992,
deborahz@titan.ucc.umass.edu

Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
From: ralph@wixer.cactus.org (Ralph Cherubini)
Subject: Poem--Committed to the wind
Organization: Real/Time Communications
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 92 13:05:32 GMT


                               Committed to the wind

Committed to the wind
like the faith of a bird
all built-in
when she spreads her wings
there must surely be air
some support beneath her effort
else she would not have been born
here on this same earth
which supports my life
which gave me birth.

-- 
ralph@wixer.cactus.org
cactus.org!wixer!ralph
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
From: tolman%mindblow.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Kenneth Tolman)
Subject: No more love poems
Date: 27 Sep 92 21:16:08 MDT
Organization: University of Utah, CompSci Dept

Don't love your mate with heat
it is a symbol of death
your procreation
creates the children
and discards your husk to time
love means death and forgotten dreams

love your mate for life
along with the earth
your destruction
will be meaningless
as your love passes beyond it
love your friend and the birds and the cool blue seas which always dream
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: the elevator in the library is broken
From: sturner@vax1.umkc.edu (bring that ear a little closer.)
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 02:04:31 GMT
Reply-To: sturner@vax1.umkc.edu (bring that ear a little closer.)
Organization: University of Missouri - Kansas City

From:	VAX1::STURNER      "they look so decomposed together..." 31-AUG-1992 19:36:15.99
To:	@HONORS_SCRATCH:EVERYONE
CC:	
Subj:	a poem

THE ELEVATOR IN THE LIBRARY IS BROKEN

alas, the elevator in the library is broken
once again and as I trudge up and
down these putrid stairways reminding me
of some sixties or seventies architect on
mother's milk I think about if I was
and ancient greek mortal and got punished
by jupiter
i'd be trudging up and down these 

 -sharon
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
From: sheilah@wam.umd.edu (Sheila Herndon)
Subject: So silly to be frightened of words
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 19:14:47 GMT

-- 
I am always wrong. Don't believe me ever.
stark raving sane  sheilah@wam.umd.edu
From: tshields@unssun.nevada.edu (Looking at me?)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: So what's in this for me?
Date: 3 Oct 92 05:08:06 GMT
Reply-To: tshields@unssun.nevada.edu (Looking at me?)
Organization: University of Nevada, Reno

So what's in this for me?


Told her, 
I   mean    I 
really told her
not to hang.
Because I knew 
then
she might.

See
I've got this need.
Need 
to twist     things
all up.
I mean I 
really like to twist
            things 
all sorts of kinked.

She was brilliant
so   damn    so
assertive about 
every    damn    thing.

Wanted to twist her
  real good.

So 
I 
made  her   need,
   understand.
Slow
so     damn      so
slow till.
She stood like 
china
in a bull shop.
Then 
I mowed her 
down.

      Timothy Shields
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: blushing on her Earth
From: sturner@vax1.umkc.edu (if i was made of brillo...id be scratchy...)
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 04:06:49 GMT
Reply-To: sturner@vax1.umkc.edu (if i was made of brillo...id be scratchy...)
Organization: University of Missouri - Kansas City

blushing on her Earth,
the sunset gives rise to the night
with which if the day
could glance upon
would rise blood red
everyday and not
just the Fall.

sharon
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
From: beh@kropotkin.gnu.ai.mit.edu (various Howellses)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: for the child of pain
Date: 6 Oct 92 21:31:07 GMT
Distribution: rec
Organization: Internet access via the Free Software Foundation


For the child of pain, 
One night, I sang
open, soul open,
wide to the souls in front of me.

Each note was a preparation,
a past, and a future
in one small discord
or one small harmony, 
I will never know which.

The nights leading to that
song
(for him, then)
were an agony of
sweet remembrances,
of self-discovery,
each song a new song
even as it was an old song.

Roses in vases
and old, musty rugs,
red and pink and
still, I smell the scent of roses
in the chilled autumnal air
when I sang in threads of silver fire,
in chords of raging warmth
spread from the fingers of the piano.

It was power, then,
yes, power,
no matter what they say,
and I,
I turned my head,
for seconds, minutes,
hours, so it seemed, and looked,
searched, called out in my voice
for him
who never came.

It was a black dress then,
the colour of mourning,
worn over my pale white flesh,
draped with the scent of my longing,
with the scent of the roses,
with the color of nothingness;
and we exited, and returned, and sang,
and performed
over and over again.

I smiled.
It was a false smile.

Yet, now, I wonder.

He never came.
And I finished the evening,
borne on the flames of power
flung forth from my own voice
like refuse from a secure house;
but there was no security
and there was no home.

Though many people came,
no one was there.

And the scent of pink and crimson
roses,
spread in vases,
here and there,
haunts me still.

--Nancy Howells
(beh@gnu.ai.mit.edu through the good graces of my husband)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
From: kammerer@cwis.unomaha.edu (Al Kammerer)
Subject: Re: Elegy
Organization: University of Nebraska at Omaha
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 16:43:38 GMT


Larry:
     I liked the elegy, the scene at the cafe,
with the grandparent arguing over the check no more,
a universal habit of grandparents from what I've
noticed.  I like the notion of improved tactics
of snatching, also a universal skill practiced by
all waitresses.  I wasn't sure what the furtive
words to her signified.  I also might need to know
how richer, how poorer, how lost and won.  
                              Al Kammerer
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
From: mcoffin@IASTATE.EDU (Marie Coffin)
Subject: coffee with n. / Marie Coffin
Reply-To: mcoffin@IASTATE.EDU (Marie Coffin)
Organization: Iowa State University
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 18:32:36 GMT


	coffee with n.
	------------------------------------------------------------
	
	once you were the talisman
	of my confusion.
	once i looked at you
	across the room,
	set down my drink
	and followed you to bed.
	
	once there was an electric
	field between us:
	it threw off sparks.
	
	i must have spent 
	half my waking life
	sitting across tables from you
	drinking tea.
	tonight is an evil parody of that.
	
	i struggled too long 
	to hide  my love,
	trying to save our friendship.
	
	now, i have nothing to hide.
	i am a page you don't bother reading
	and our friendship stretches empty between us
	a smooth highway no one will drive.
	
	

Marie Coffin
September 29, 1992
From: michaeln@cs.uq.oz.au (Bunweasel)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: perching look Re: Creation of Urdu newsgro
Date: 6 Oct 92 19:59:07 GMT
Reply-To: michaeln@cs.uq.oz.au
Organization: Department of Computer Science, The University of Queensland

In article 28258@wam.umd.edu, sheilah@wam.umd.edu (Sheila Herndon) writes:
>In article <260@uiunix.ui.org> donz@ui.org (Posthumous O'Toole) writes:
>>the initials r.a.p.u. are the same as my proposed newsgroup:
>>	REC.ARTS.POEMS.UNICORNS

>I suggest newsgroup rec.arts.poems.hummingbirds.perched.look

How's this for a new rap hierarchy?

rec.arts.poems.unicorns.no.zoo.ever.labelled
rec.arts.poems.how.angels.eat.lollipops
rec.arts.poems.trance
rec.arts poems.insipid.sexist.twaddle
rec.arts.poems.taking.up.rabid.evangelists
rec.arts.poems.immediately.digestible

-/\/\/\/-

p.s. Marek is right, of course.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
From: lichter@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Michael I. Lichter)
Subject: sentimental slop
Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 92 08:25:32 GMT

[Three in one night!  How can he do this to us?  Please, please, 
net police, make him stop!  Aaaaarrrgggghhhh!!!]


		sentimental slop
		--------------------------------------------------------

		selfish isn't it?
		to want you like this
		and though i embarass
		myself to myself
		i won't make myself stop

		movies hypnotize 
		and speak to me 

		grab the woman and kiss her
		until she realizes the eager
		passion that was hidden even
		to herself but now bursting
		through her pale shoulders into her
		slender arms and tender lips
		completing the circuit
		of want her want him want

		but if she wanted me she'd
		let me know a little more directly
		and who am i to think i understand
		her when i have so much trouble figuring
		myself out?

		what i feel for you is mine
		what i need from you i can
		only wish that someday it will
		complement your own
		you hurt me by healing me
		but hold me again and i will wait

				Michael Lichter
				October 5, 1992
				Santa Monica
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
From: areeve@neptune.cs.clemson.edu (Alan Reeve )
Subject: Poem
Organization: Clemson University Computer Science Dept.
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 21:07:54 GMT

Life's so great, so sweet to breathe separated by these voids, these
dreams or perhaps nightmares would be more appropriate, but when I awake
it's all worth it. In my life I do what I want. I'm rich. Famous. The women
adore me. I can sing, dance with the best and I control things. I can't
die. I know it. They know it. But now I'm tired. Hell! It's like being
tied down and force fed. I don't want to eat. I shake...I cry...BUT they
can't see anything less than the horizontal line on my face. I fool them
all. I laugh. HA! No one knows or will ever know because I know. I will
resist because I WILL awake. But this time when I awake you're there.
I can't see you, but I know it's you and I'm scared. Oh, God... why do I
say that? I'm atheist? So I drink my ale and wonder if I'll ever get up the
nerve to chant about Mary because I don't believe, but it doesn't matter if
I sleep near the TV or in my own bed...you're still here. "Who are you?" 
fleets through my mind or whatever's left of it after a night on the town.
It doesn't affect me though. I'm immune. I'm stone. I'm rock and I'm
scared. I can only cry as I think of the few, true friends I have.
I love your grey face, but you're so far away. I wish I could touch
you now, be with you, because I know you don't expect anything back.
I don't have to perform to please you. I don't have to succeed. I don't
have to win this time. When viewed through your eyes things seem so simple.
You're cute and I love taking your picture, but I didn't even bring one
with me except for the one permanently etched in my head. If I can't
even get through this then how can I get through tomorrow. I can pretend
I'm big and strong and remember the quotes that keep me going, but inside
I'm just a fuse attached to nothing I hope...
*************************************************************************
 That old dog has chained you up alright, give you everything you need,
 To live inside a twisted cage, sleep beside an empty rage,
  I had a dream I was your hero
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
From: magpie@next06wor.wam.umd.edu (Hail to the Redskins)
Subject: sh*tty poetry to drink wine 2
Keywords: castle, hand, shotgun
Organization: Workstations at Maryland, University of Maryland, College Park
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 07:04:51 GMT

A Day

Drips from the ceiling like milk.
The splatterings whiten the rainbow houses of the cul-de-sac.
The sun soaks the houses in new colors
Then melts into the buttered hills. 
The unbreathable smoke, coal black.
The sun's ashes; the odor of charred ants.
The Earth inhales the sun,
Its throat dries and burns.
The Earth shakes, its lungs on fire.
It explodes.
The horizon burns to dust.
From: donz@ui.org (Posthumous O'Toole)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Apollo's Children
Date: 2 Oct 92 15:57:40 GMT
Organization: UNIX International, Parsippany, NJ

What follows is a feeble attempt to follow up Fang O'Toole's brilliant
poem, "Dionysus' Children":

Apollo's Children


A red sporty coupe lies in my driveway
like a sleeping fawn.
O, Apollo, God of Poets,
she is beautiful.
"Those were YOUR words," she said.
"I spoke them FOR you."
--crumble, crumble, she's making cookies--
In the window the sunrise silhouettes her.
I PAID for that exposure.
O, Apollo, God of Poets,
she is beautiful.

Sarah loves her new job.
She gets lots and lots of money.
Sarah loves her new job.
She dresses very pretty.
Sarah loves her new job.
She smiles every day,
every working day for years and years,
smiling with red lips and white teeth
for years and years.
Sarah loves her new position.
She didn't have to sleep with anyone.
She just did it to make sure.
Sarah loves her new position.
She will get lots and lots of more money.
Sarah is Apollo's child.
So am I.  Apollo's children
sleep together.
O, Apollo, God of Poets,
she is beautiful.

Every day, pain hurts less.
Mommy loves her children,
would never leave me
and why would I leave her
when I lose nothing by having her?
It's arithmetically impossible.
We are Apollo's children.
We have so much figured out
that we don't even have to talk to each other.
We are bright and intense (and tanned)
and gaining speed:  as we feel less
time hastens until we are light speed
towards retirement, the next event
of import to our lives,
and death, the event after that.


Posthumous O'Toole
10-2-92
-- 
nobody/not even the rain/              	/	   /      /  /    
 /   /   /     /   /   / /     /       /    /    // /    /  /         /    
/     / / /   /   /     /   / /    / /   / / /  /  /   /      /      /
   / /   /   /	/	 / /      //    /   / /     / /      / / /
From: tshields@unssun.nevada.edu (Looking at me?)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: 100 miles from Orange Country. . .
Date: 3 Oct 92 04:59:19 GMT
Reply-To: tshields@unssun.nevada.edu (Looking at me?)
Organization: University of Nevada, Reno

100 miles from Orange County where a kilo waits

"Feverish ?" he says, 
fumbling for
another Winston.
All taste the same.  
I hate them, 
prefer Malboros.
Rolling down the window, 
searching for home, 
unfamiliar as sleep.

I blame her she 
me he someone else.
Hideous crimes require corpses.
Fidget and sweat, 
can I bum a Winston?

	Timothy Shields
From: beh10@DUTS.ccc.amdahl.com (Barry Holsinger)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: mobaeus - At Birth
Date: 28 Sep 92 15:24:43 GMT
Reply-To: beh10@DUTS.ccc.amdahl.com (Barry Holsinger)
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA

"mobaeus" 

AT BIRTH

Awaken now the blue cool morning
Crisp leaves in air, a scent adorning

Through hazes slice, mist shroud removing
Keen edge through darkness pierces


Awake! Arise! thou nestled morsel
With pat, then scream, then huddled gurgle

Rest in mothered blanket, nutured
Appeal, thy nature's blessed us, tears us



--
Barry Holsinger       | I ain't git'n et by no gators to make my wage!
Sunnyvale, CA         | There are better ways to make a buck in dis
beh10@DUTS.amdahl.com | nutty town!!  -Ralph Snart
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
From: ralph@wixer.cactus.org (Ralph Cherubini)
Subject: Poem--Chair--an epistolary tale
Organization: Real/Time Communications
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 92 15:43:55 GMT


                                Chair--an epistolary tale

Now
I will tell you
perhaps to your dismay
about chair
not about particulars
which are everywhere
but in a Platonist mood
about that which they all share
in me
the intersection
of all experiences
for one person
of chair
not recipes
algorithms galore
for constructing
deconstructing
re-fashioning exemplars
but the combined perceptions
all inter-weighted and -laced
of all I have ever seen of them
and felt too
even smelled
though I don't sniff chairs anymore
did as a child
telling you of
me and chair
extends liberally
connections to the entire world
for chairs
for me
imply occupancy
and not by dogs
but by human beings
myself and others
I have seen
and otherwise known
even empty chair
connects me to them
for a chair is an implication
of humanity
no chair was ever there
was it?
which was not intended to accommodate persons.

II.

Now that I have lost all of you
but those who are still reading
I will tell of a misdirection I made
all intentional
this is not
only
an epistolary tale
but epistemological too
its shows how everything
is implicated for us
to everything other
in the web of meaning
which our beings weave
momentarily
each new time
we are the sum of all impressions
integrated within
chair
might just as well have been
hair
so surely does each and every thing in the world
connect us to all others
and in leaving now
I encourage you to start with your favorite datum
and trace it through the world
let it be your vehicle
to every thing
as chair was
today
for me.
From: zen@death.Corp.Sun.COM (d)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: saint john
Date: 5 Oct 92 18:30:23 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems Inc., Mountain View, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: death.corp.sun.com
comments_n_flames: welcome

i dreamed i saw st john
he said your time has come, little one
follow me past the third cloud
and to the left of the son

i said -- wait a minute, john
theres so much i havent done
will i ever walk on water again
or feel the cool morning dew in my lungs
or warmth and love of my lovers tongue
or burn in the bright light of the midnight sun

i wanna walk through brick walls
and though im still young
i dont necessarily want to live long
i wanna write one poem
that keeps going on and on when im gone

i dont want immortality
in this world or the next
i want my loves to remember me
when im dead
  (im still working on that)

he didnt say another word
just walked away
but his music still plays
and theres a lightness
a brightness
a certain sense of rightness
 in my life now

i dreamed i saw st john
or was he dreaming of me?
i always get them switched
dreams and reality
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
From: dkmishra@caen.engin.umich.edu (Dhanada K Mishra)
Subject: Wild Flower..
Date: Mon, 05 Oct 92 15:06:02 EDT
Organization: University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor
Summary: A short poem.. 
Distribution: usa



@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Wild Flower..

I see the shades of evening
in the dark of your hair
and hear the songs of joy
as your lips fill the air.  

The smile in your eyes
so loveley and so rare
like on trails through the woods
I smell the wild flower.
                   

**********************************
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