Best Virginia Woolf Poems
"And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves..." - Virginia Woolf
When sun grows stingy in the sky
melancholy wilts happy flowers
summer’s long days will be fading away
when trees announce fall’s coming
in their brightest attire
Gold and Crimson waltz
in autumn’s cooling breezes.
Pumpkins wear strange grins!
Summer’s obituary
by this time has been planted.
when rivers and lakes
solidify into ice . . .
december skates in
September 16, 2020
for Brian Strand's
Completely Your Choice (22)Any Form AnyTheme Poetry Contest
(for Virginia Woolf)
She wanted to buy some flowers but drowned Herself instead,
drifting along the ebbing flow of time, with warm
water cracking Her slim figure and airless lungs.
‘will I freeze the river?’ She thought, wondering if the trees
would still rustle in the wind if She wasn’t alive to notice it,
thinking if Her man’s heart would still beat if She could
no longer shock its rhythmical thump-thud-stop with kisses.
the wood was chopped down around Her home. The
veranda from which She surveyed the world was but
deafened by cruel hacking chopping and sawing at the
hands of men whom took Her feminine beauty away.
She became the water as She died, became the weeds,
became the bark that broke her own back, the pen and the phallus.
‘this isn’t purgatory’ She realised, ‘this is revenge and reward’.
‘I am a sacrifice to literature. I am a sacrifice for the word’.
from writer to death to glory to ink
to the lies under rocks uncovered,
to god to me to the taking of Her own life,
She is the paper in our very hands.
“Remember, You”
This one is for you,
when you forget to remember
why, what and who
This one is for you,
when you understand
the why and what you do;
This one is for you,
when you search for words
buried deep within your hidden heart
elevated Shadow in skies of lapis lazuli blue, when
clouds of poetic mists distract your heady lofty view
This one is for You,
when you forget to remember
why, what and who.
Poet -
Remember, You.
Candide Diderot. ‘25
"The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mold of the body and mind."
Virginia Woolf
"A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds."
Percy Bysshe Shelley
"At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet."
Plato
"A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman."
Wallace Stevens
(hmmmm, that could be good or bad).
as i began to understand Virginia Woolf
her voice from a room of her own
i realized i was upon a mountain
she had exposed the molehill it was
the dirt soon revealed a tunnel
entering it opened a new horizon
where i finally fully grasped the world
surrounding Jane Austen
in that moment the mist upon the horizon
disappeared and i could finally grasp
her words between the lines
denied a seat upon the Parthenon
forbidden attending The School of Athens
she displays the truth about her gender
that soft restraint we find in mother
its wisdom resplendent
in that hardened fist of reality
covered in a glove of soft lamb
we forgive ignorance
or become yet another in the mirror
who denies the freedom the world
breathes in every breath
the child's first cry
should echo, i am born free
deserving a room of my own
all warrant the miracle life is
nascent in the gratitude within
OKC 6/22
“If you don’t tell the truth about yourself, you can’t tell it about other people”~ Virginia Woolf
'Say who am I'
is a great challenge hurled on me,
necessitating great introspection
and clarity of thoughts.
I am learning to find who I really am.
Though never perfect, am without serious flaws.
I wish to improve with each step,
as I know, if I’m not growing, I am dying.
I'm a poet,
and a true aspiring artist.
I try to be a beautiful person,
kind and compassionate.
More than anything, I am a sweet child of God.
A teacher from hilt to heel and proud to be so.
An erudite soul with vision,
A sculptor who sees an angel within a rock!
Imagine an oil stroke on a virgin canvass
an image coaxed out by a velvet hand
pas de deux artist and brush
here comes the wind
and suddenly, I appear out of nowhere
Imagine my memories invisible as air
a non violate kiss somewhere out there
here comes the image,
of a two step process, the artist and I
wonderfully etched, I pop up;
Imagine my visage, aging flower of old
existing in a turbulent rotation
eyes of a cougar, soul of a lion
I am Virginia Woolf the writer
like a binding book I appear pressed
Continued survival on a canvass of dry,
parched as a stone in a pocket, alone...
The most imperfectly
Compatible almost-couple…
Framed in unwanted proximity
Coated in fool’s gold
In worst case, we’ll hold onto each other forever
You’re always just a drink away
Along with every Honey that ever came by
You’ll end up on the bathroom floor
Crush the ice between your teeth
And smile as it melts in your mouth
Don’t provoke me
I’ll get you back, just you wait
Let’s invent a new game
‘Cause this is as good as it gets
Baby, this is our fun
Someday you’ll sober up
But for now:
We’re Martha and George
And I just killed our son.
When wracked with suff'ring even more,
I all alone bemoan my fate,
as one who drowns in sorrows sore
which harm, harass, and maul his state.
Aggrieved for what feels like forever,
I trouble God with bootless cries
as I endure my manic fever
with tearful, red, psychotic eyes.
The minute hand lands on midnight!
I can't find clear words to express
feelings of falling a headlong height
b'neath heaven's reach 'yond grief's excess.
Inside, I feel the Reaper’s scythe
as I think out my mordant plan:
razor, pills, or a kitchen knife,
a way to end it by my hand!?
Like Sylvia Plath, if I can
plant my head in a GE gas oven,
then it’d be painless!? (But why plan
a death so cliche, and unproven?)
I think, too, of Virginia Woolf,
how she drowned her life in a lake;
I, too, feel swallowed in a gulf
of swirling misery that'd take
me to my death! Why do I feel
forsak'n, and heavy as lead now? Am
I so hopeless? Why do I feel
so worthless, and so so dead? How am
I to end my life (to kill myself)—
if all loved ones were then to miss me?
“Help yourself!” I then heard. "Heal thyself!"
I hear aloud. As angels kiss me,
I thus then found comfort in this:
that family and friends all care,
and if I'd died I would be missed;
so, I war 'gainst profound despair.
And then, Hope dawns! And soon comes peace…
And in the morn, I wake arising—
Joy breaks in, and I have new lease.
And then my state I cease despising!
RIVER RISING
you creep up to my feet
after days and days
of rain (not forty days,
forty nights), but biblical
nonetheless.
you beckon me to perform
a virginia woolf, to slide
a stone into my pocket
and dip myself
into your healing
rush of silt and mud.
it is a possibility,
it is inviting,
but there are no stones
on the shore.
you have washed
them all away.
you have taken
even the possibility
of taking a swim
away from me.
(you cannot (will not) be forgiven).
i have thought about it.
thought about accepting
your invitation, but
you have promised me
nothing in return.
not even the possibility
of spitting me out
whole, bruised,
horribly damaged.
perhaps, you should have offered
me the chance to rise up, like you,
like lazarus. horribly damaged,
yes, but a second chance,
nonetheless.
Copyrighted
March 13, 2011
The world is spinning
and you refuse to fall off.
Yesterday,
you stabbed a crooked finger
into my hidden diary
criticized my Fascist inflections -
debated my scribblings
on Marxism,
noted the notations
indicating Munchausen by Proxy
and then
choked and lamented
upon vague references I made
concerning Virginia Woolf,
Sylvia Plath,
Anne Sexton,
Cruella De Vil
and Hitler.
You literally littered through
my private Pandora’s box
of personal prose and poetry -
with an unbridled
crazed compulsion
and without my
permissible permission.
Pointing to bold typed words,
such as “ebony”
and “vacuous”
and “sociopath”
and the one
you couldn’t evenly pronounce –
“phlegmatic.”
You stomped your hot heavy hooves -
screaming with the dire urgency
of a rape victim:
“What the hell are you talking about?”
It didn’t take very long before
I simply shrugged,
slugged the remaining remains
of my Rolling Rock,
took your index finger
guided it across
your ratted sweater
and placed it
upon your
hopeless,
hapless
heart.
“I don't care what anybody says about me as long as it isn't true.” -Dorothy Parker
“Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone” -Dorothy Parker
Angels connecting
in real live
Thinking reflecting
and keeping us strive
'Say no to consensuality
that's your best quality
You've the audibility
so keep on your prosody'
Always on time
Mr/Miss/Ms/Mrs I'm...
'Shhhhhhh'
with an eye rhyme
"That heinous crime"
Jumping off the metrics
Holy sculls!
Writing isn't mathematics
Such as friendship
Do everything intensively on your trip
If you stumble in the footpath
It's just a turn on
High in raciness
No Life Span
In the wrath
I am You Sylvia Plath
Nightmares and Dreams
In your life
You were anarchical
one of a kind
my new heteronym
named Wolfed Golf
because is worth being Virginia Woolf
In my paintings: pastels oils pencils and markers Paranoia(s) converter(s)
In being a reporter
In my disorder
sometimes being dark and darker
I am you,
Mrs Dorothy Parker
“cat o' 9 tales”
Like a cat has 9 lives
every witch in every Lilith
lives to write another day
woe bedtide the poor oaf
who gets in Her way
like Heathcliffe he’ll be tortured
from here to kingdom come
and back under the Hades rug again
where all good sinners
and their sordid secrets stray
to die another day -
roses placed just so by the fresh roadkill
let hungry eyed vultures have their wicked way
don't you know?
the broomstick’s not just for sweeping floors clean each day ...
Dorothy has Her way
like a cat has 9 lives
every witch in every Lilith
learns to fly strong again,
lives to write Her grimoire spells forever
each and every other powerful day
Candide Diderot. ‘24
“When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very unremarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
(Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own)
“What fresh hell can this be?”
(Dorothy Parker)
"If the doorbell rang in her apartment, she would say, 'What fresh hell can this be?' - and it wasn't funny; she meant it."
betide. :)
As I sit tonight, of all nights
I think, what the hell!?
As I smoke and drink and smoke and
drink,
I think what the hell,
I cant finish,
I cant start
and I cant love
without dying over and over
Gameover.
I am bad at the game of love,
a poker match with high stacks
the girl is the pot
and I bet all in
I fold.
Get out of town,
live a little,
drive a car into a bridge,
drown in water with stones in my pockets,
a metaphoric death,
Virginia Woolf I love you,
kiss me off!
Game over,
I lost again,
what the hell,
what cant I get right
I always lose.
Not in Poetry though,
And those so-called fans clap for me,
when I light another cigarette
and die with the stoke of a pen to paper.
They eat my **** up
and I sit and think
What the Hell!?
My stuff isn't even that good...
goodnight...
An inebriated vixen promoted duress
as she and George played "Get the Guests."
A fractured malevolence mirroring Macbeth
resulted in her first-born's death.
Atop his imagined coffin, a snapdragon rests.
Author's Note:
Vignette inspiration:
Play - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962)
Playwright - Edward Albee
...for Virginia Woolf
Submerged 'neath the surface,
stones weighting her body,
gremlins and goblins
are hobbling her soul.
Images jar,
and memories jostle,
her compass is gone
but she's in full control.
Lungs overflowing,
her faculties failing,
she's one with the fishes,
at last she is whole.