Frank Bidart Poems
A collection of select Frank Bidart famous poems that were written by Frank Bidart or written about the poet by other famous poets. PoetrySoup is a comprehensive educational resource of the greatest poems and poets on history.
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In love they wore themselves in a green embrace.
A silken rain fell through the spring upon them.
In the park she fed the swans and he
whittled nervously with his strange hands.
And white was mixed with all their colours
as if they drew it from the flowering trees.
At night his two finger whistle brought her down
the waterfall stairs to his shy smile
which...Read more of this...
by
Bidart, Frank
He stared up into my eyes with a look
I can almost see now.
He had that look in his eyes
that bore right into mine.
I could sense that he knew I was
envious of what he was doing—; and knew that I'd
always wish I had known at the time
what he was doing was something I'd always
crave in later life, just as he...Read more of this...
by
Bidart, Frank
The only thing I miss about Los Angeles
is the Hollywood Freeway at midnight, windows down and
radio blaring
bearing right into the center of the city, the Capitol Tower
on the right, and beyond it, Hollywood Boulevard
blazing
--pimps, surplus stores, footprints of the stars
--descending through the city
fast as the law would allow
through the lights, then rising to the stack
out of the city
to...Read more of this...
by
Bidart, Frank
(John of the Cross)
In a dark night, when the light
burning was the burning of love (fortuitous
night, fated, free,--)
as I stole from my dark house, dark
house that was silent, grave, sleeping,--
by the staircase that was secret, hidden,
safe: disguised by darkness (fortuitous
night, fated, free,--)
by darkness and by cunning, dark
house that...Read more of this...
by
Bidart, Frank
Bound, hungry to pluck again from the thousand
technologies of ecstasy
boundlessness, the world that at a drop of water
rises without boundaries,
I push the PLAY button:—
...Callas, Laurel & Hardy, Szigeti
you are alive again,—
the slow movement of K.218
once again no longer
bland, merely pretty, nearly
banal, as it is
in all but Szigeti's hands
*
Therefore you and I and Mozart
must thank the Twentieth Century, for
it...Read more of this...
by
Bidart, Frank
up or down from the infinite C E N T E R
B R I M M I N G at the winking rim of time
the voice in my head said
LOVE IS THE DISTANCE
BETWEEN YOU AND WHAT YOU LOVE
WHAT YOU LOVE IS YOUR FATE
*
then I saw the parade of my loves
those PERFORMERS comics actors singers
forgetful of my very self...Read more of this...
by
Bidart, Frank
"When I hit her on the head, it was good,
and then I did it to her a couple of times,--
but it was funny,--afterwards,
it was as if somebody else did it ...
Everything flat, without sharpness, richness or line.
Still, I liked to drive past the woods where she lay,
tell the old lady and the kids I had to take a piss,
hop...Read more of this...
by
Bidart, Frank
Whatever lies still uncarried from the abyss within
me as I die dies with me....Read more of this...
by
Bidart, Frank
It is what recurs that we believe,
your face not at one moment looking
sideways up at me anguished or
elate, but the old words welling up by
gravity rearranged:
two weeks before you died in
pain worn out, after my usual casual sign-off
with All my love, your simple
solemn My love to you, Frank....Read more of this...
by
Bidart, Frank
(Dante, Vita Nuova)
To all those driven berserk or humanized by love
this is offered, for I need help
deciphering my dream.
When we love our lord is LOVE.
When I recall that at the fourth hour
of the night, watched by shining stars,
LOVE at last became incarnate,
the memory is horror.
In his hands smiling LOVE held my burning
heart, and in his arms, the body...Read more of this...
by
Bidart, Frank
. . . telling those who swarm around him his desire
is that an appendage from each of them
fill, invade each of his orifices,—
repeating, chanting,
Oh yeah Oh yeah Oh yeah Oh yeah Oh yeah
until, as if in darkness he craved the sun, at last he reached
consummation.
—Until telling those who swarm around him begins again
(we are the wheel to which we...Read more of this...
by
Bidart, Frank
He's still young--; thirty, but looks younger--
or does he?... In the eyes and cheeks, tonight,
turning in the mirror, he saw his mother,--
puffy; angry; bewildered... Many nights,
now, when he stares there, he gets angry:--
something unfulfilled there, something dead
to what he once thought he surely could be--
Now, just the glamour of habits...
Once, instead,
he thought insight would remake him, he'd reach
--what?...Read more of this...
by
Bidart, Frank
What I hope (when I hope) is that we'll
see each other again,--
. . . and again reach the VEIN
in which we loved each other . .
It existed. It existed.
There is a NIGHT within the NIGHT,--
. . . for, like the detectives (the Ritz Brothers)
in The Gorilla,
once we'd been battered by the gorilla
we searched the walls, the intricately carved
impenetrable paneling
for...Read more of this...
by
Bidart, Frank