Poems I Love

Okay--since I've spent the past two days at work searching for poetry, I've stumbled across quite a few poems that really struck me. I thought I'd share them with you...

WOMAN
by Nikki Giovanni

she wanted to be a blade
of grass amid the fields
but he wouldn't agree
to be the dandelion

she wanted to be a robin singing
through the leaves
but he refused to be
her tree

she spun herself into a web
and looking for a place to rest
turned to him
but he stood straight
declining to be her corner

she tried to be a book
but he wouldn't read

she turned herself into a bulb
but he wouldn't let her grow

she decided to become
a woman
and though he still refused
to be a man
she decided it was all
right

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

MIXED SINGLES
by Arnold Adoff

She tosses the tennis ball high
into the air.
Her
racket comes down harder than I ever
knew
a
racket could hit.
It
is a serve into the inside corner,
that I barely see: kicking chalk
as
it flies away, untouched by me.
I know this will be love.

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

YOU WANT A SOCIAL LIFE, WITH FRIENDS
by Kenneth Koch

You want a social life, with friends
A passionate love life and as well
To work hard every day. What's true
Is of these three you may have two
And two can pay you dividends
But never may have three.

There isn't enough time, my friends--
Though dawn begins, yet midnight ends--
To find the time to have love, work, and friends.
Michelangelo had feeling
For Vittoria and the Ceiling
But did he go to parties at day's end?

Homer nightly went to banquets
Wrote all day but had no lockets
Bright with pictures of his Girl.
I know one who loves and parties
And has done so since his thirties
But writes hardly anything at all.

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

IT'S RAINING IN LOVE
by Richard Brautigan

I don't know what it is,
but I distrust myself
when I start to like a girl
a lot.
It makes me nervous.
I don't say the right things
or perhaps I start
to examine,
evaluate,
compute
what I am saying.

If I say, "Do you think it's going to rain?"
and she says, "I don't know,"
I start thinking: Does she really like me?

In other words
I get a little creepy.

A friend of mine once said,
"It's twenty times better to be friends
with someone
than it is to be in love with them."

I think he's right and besides,
it's raining somewhere, programming flowers
and keeping snails happy.
That's all taken care of.

BUT
if a girl likes me a lot
and starts getting real nervous
and suddenly begins asking me funny questions
and looks sad if I give the wrong answers
and she says things like,
"Do you think it's going to rain?"
and I say, "It beats me,"
and she says, "Oh,"
and looks a little sad
at the clear blue California sky,
I think: Thank God it's you, baby, this time
instead of me.


Seriously, all you need to do with that last poem is swap the sexes, and you have my situation exactly!