Best Destabilize Poems

Coplas on Wine

( here, the famous AntiPoetic Chilean Poet Nicanor Parra, b. 1914, uses the more popular form of the « copla » genre that he contains in quatrains of 8 to 10 syllables with two lines of each quatrain rhyming at random, though not...

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World, beware of the turmoil to come, don't be caught in your hiding
succumbing to erratic fear, oppress all shivers and face the vile assailant
with a defying glance, then bite him...be that hornet with a venomous sting
to end his brutality: he came to destabilize your land...

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Some folks tend to awfulize
Others prefer to dramatize,
There are those who fantasize
Many people will improvise.
I know a few who tantalize
Even resort to marginalize
Those who are short in size,
Which will often destabilize
Because they may internalize,
Which is not always wise!
Three times a week, I advise,
It’s a good...

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The Panther
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

His weary vision's so overwhelmed by iron bars,
his exhausted eyes see only blank Oblivion.
His world is not our world. It has no stars.
No light. Ten thousand bars. Nothing beyond.
Lithe, swinging with a rhythmic easy stride,
he circles,...

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Fall..
Fall in battles acts for china tyrants all by nemesis bring to them by ways of good or gods. Battle arrays come for nothing fun. Jokes about the wars are not so easy. Juggled history may hide our ethnic sins. Free the Tibet must be...

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This is my translation of the first of Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Rilke began the first Duino Elegy in 1912, as a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, at Duino Castle, near Trieste on the Adriatic Sea.

First Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael...

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Archaic Torso of Apollo
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We cannot know the beheaded god
nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still
the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality
of a lamp lit from within, while his composed will
emanates dynamism. Otherwise
the firmly muscled abdomen could...

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The menacing clouds of war 
Often pounce to create havoc, 
The pigeons of peace 
Scared and scattered, fly away. 

The storm of hatred 
The storm of enmity 
The storm of death 
The storm of destruction, 
These devastating forces 
Design the ugly face of war. 
Men...

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Come, You
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

This was Rilke’s last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the Valmont Sanatorium, of leukemia and its complications. I had a...

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I had a niece named Karen who
at twenty has mapped out a plan
for a 'strong, independent life',
she’d be 'dependent on no man.'

And, oh, she took such pride in that,
her college had made her this way,
but badmouthing men for the past
seems quite dumb, so I had...

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Dawn has broken the thick darkness
To engender the shining morning sun;
I see, calm and nice is the blue sky
Birds of all wings flock and fly freely

Humans on the land breathe fresh air,
Watching birds’ traffic up in the sky.
Animals in the bush grazing at peace,
Bees being...

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Like stormy raindrops of terror sowing panic and greed;                             
Like a dark and deadly cloud descending upon...

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The world is changing in a profound way,
by the philosophy of fear and lies.
You can't trust a word politicians say;
they connive and editorialize.
And legislate laws that legitimize
corruption and greed for personal gain.
The tactics they employ to terrorize
are indispensable to hate's campaign.

Dictators strip democracy away
slowly, so...

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One second you're floating on air
  Turn around, your cupboard's bare

In April you're up on Cloud Nine
   Come May, the stars don't align

In June you croon a sweet tune
   By July, life's a wreck and a ruin

Today you cruise the...

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rite of days spoiled and stagnant...
half of that would be enough
to destabilize the soul of things
as if happiness only came
to illuminate a misguided life
tree without shade and useless
empty gaze of stacked mannequins
despised on the dirty floor of the old life
someone destroyed the world
while I dreamed
I...

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