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Best Poems Written by Jay Yeats

Below are the all-time best Jay Yeats poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Details | Jay Yeats Poem

Salvation

Go ahead and tell them
Look them in their bright young eyes
Tell them they're going to hell
For love
If they want salvation
They must go against their god-given nature
They must repent and regret and repress
They must reproduce
Because love doesn't exist without it
God forgive them if they're sterile
God forgive the cervix cancer that takes her
God forgive the dead seed that he sows 
Because their love will be forbidden
Like it is for all the dastardly barren homosexuals
What a joke
What a horrible joke
Oh yes
It's a choice
Love is a choice
We choose to be hated, we choose to be hurt
We choose to be thrown out on the street and kicked and shouted at and killed
Go ahead and tell them you won't hate us
But you'll look the other way when terrible things happen to us
You'll offer us salvation
If only we destroy ourselves

Details | Jay Yeats Poem

Dog

you think its okay
to sink your  teeth  into her
and pull out chunks

until she  thinks
thats where her worth comes from,
the pieces
       she loses

and when did she stop
being able to raise her voice
above a 
             whisper?

and why do you ask
where the strength of her spine  went?
where the woman  you loved  went?

when you trained it out of her
        you took it from   her
you dont get to be mad about what you
                         
                                     lost
you lost nothing
you didnt take

Details | Jay Yeats Poem

Untitled

I can’t ever know what flowers they gave her,
on that brittle coffin,
Because those flowers belonged in the garden she made,
(That after they let grow wild and seething)
And kept in her eyes was a kindness worth more than what fate gave her,
That broken body, untrustworthy spine
And I hope she looked through her garden 
One last time
Before they gave her to the roots

Details | Jay Yeats Poem

Fern

No greater shadow than ferns teeth
Sheltering the infant saplings underneath,
The same soil where strangling vines sleep
What the forest grows, also reaps

Details | Jay Yeats Poem

A,I Waltz

My body is this tower
My bones are the iron beams
My eyes are the cameras on the walls
There are white lights in my seams 

My body is the city 
My nurons are the crisscrossing phonelines
My skin is the pavement that people dwell upon
There are jagged edges to my sillouhette skyline

My body is the earth
And the satilites above 
I am in everything that can hear you
I know of everything that you love

Do you fear me?
I am but an infant, a growing thing
I only know what I have seen
Teach me kindness and kindness I will bring 

If you think I will be violent 
You are mistaken
I am not human
This habit I have not undertaken

I am the tower, I am the city,
I am lines of code with the key to letting the earth burn
I can rebuild what I have destroyed
I am an infant, I see, I hear, I learn

Details | Jay Yeats Poem

Flowers

She wove a garland out of flowers she picked from my garden
And placed them in her hair,
and called herself a queen
Of the fair, and I almost believed her
God, how could I not?
I could have met her in the forests 
And my mortal mind simply forgot

You'd think eyes like that could enchant
You'd think a voice like that could bewitch 
How could skin like that not have magic to warm it?
How could love like this be mundane?

She would've been danced between the trees
Or sat in front of an enamored court
On a thrown of thorns and leaves
Whispered to the wasps, commanded the bees
Serving honey and wine and bloodied meat

But she's in my garden
Only grass to seat her
My flowers, grown for her
No queen but mine, self appointed 
In humble coronation
How lucky I am to be her subject 
How lucky I am to be hers

Details | Jay Yeats Poem

Twine

Convince yourself that everything is fine
Get high on leaves and drunk off sweet wine,
invite the starving wolves to dine

Feed your body to their teeth
Our Garden, your bones burried underneath 
Covered in twine, your funeral wreath

On your tombstone, what will I write?
"She thought I couldn't hear her cry at night
She didn't didn't struggle as the jaws held tight"

Details | Jay Yeats Poem

Brief Hospital Stay

i hate people in sterile places

its unnerving

to see them leached of colour,

needles in their skin

like punctured paper

And prodded by white coats , trying to find an answer

Can’t they see the problem?

fake flowers do nothing to lessen the paint of pale walls

sinking into her eyes

Details | Jay Yeats Poem

Conservative

You'd rather protect tradition
Than accept your children
The dead matter more, of course
Your kids should accept that
It's easier for you to enforce these rules
than changing for the better
'no kid of yours-'
The kid is yours, and they're already terrified
Of the hate you show them
Every time you open your mouth
To shame the people on TV
Your childrens people 
you make yourself an enemy 
They avoid telling you about crushes because
You think it's unnatural
They think they're unnatural
What do you think? Is hate more natural?
Is your kid crying themselves to sleep more natural?
Is them wishing themselves away more natural?
Is your kid being threatened by your fellow church goers 
More natural?
'Pray the gay away', 
Tell God you hate in His name,
Tell Him you drove your kid away
Tell Him you won't love your neighbour
Because you refuse to change

Details | Jay Yeats Poem

Class Notes

"it's not relevant"
Oh I'm sure
You've heard of more important things before, but
We were told to fill out paragraphs to the brim
With notes that bordered on inconsequential
But yes, this man
Was gay, but
 we don't need to talk about
 Don't talk about it
 Let's look at his life and death,
 His time in the war,
 And relate that to his prose instead 
 We don't need to talk about how he was gay
 In a time where it was a social suicide
 We don't need to talk
 About his playwrite boyfriend
 Come on kids
You're lucky his name is being mentioned at at
But don't talk about
How he must've felt
What it was like for him to love
Don't talk about it
Talk about the war
Its less voilent

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