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Best Poems Written by Paul Sylvester

Below are the all-time best Paul Sylvester poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Paul Sylvester Poem

The Private Lives of Those I'Ve Loved

The hutch 
like everything else in this house is
crooked.  A slanting hardwood floor 
and the burnished ends 
of an ancient table. 

An ever rounding table 
"a table with history" she says, 
a lineage with the cut 
and lineaments 
of the eight-score man who built it. 

The eerie, beautiful portrait 
of some great-  great-  great- 
someone-or-other 
hangs so solemnly with Victorian grace 
the nail has begun to bend, 
but she will never fall. 

One cabinet for the silver 
and wine glasses 
has been painted triple-white 
and sunk into the wall like a safe. 
Its shelves boiled clean 
to hide their ignoble wood
(probably pine).

Not like the Oak left bare-  
the smell and musk 
of those dark hand-hewn ceiling beams 
and the redolence  
from somewhere behind the house 
of deep-purple lilacs 
growing fat like grapes. 

Outside, the painted gardens swirl together 
in a dizzying carousel of color and light
with short, fat brush strokes
and heavy, bold shadows;
the flowers burn from the healthy soil 
replacing sand from ten years ago.
200 bags of fertilizer and now: 

A nightgowned woman plays firefighter 
every morning with a green hose, 
keeping up with the investment.

Details | Paul Sylvester Poem

T.V.

Boxed in prize-fighter
Spinning punches for a sold-out crowd
Tubes and tubes

Run chain for miles, rust spots baring
Stark, empty Jews
Playing corn in a field, as
Nazi golems keep track of the moves.

A dusty field lying naked and bruised
Soaking a fever 
Like a garden patch, mid-Sundayafternoon.
A mindless hum and the funereal gloom

Turns black to life - avarice Mary; my wife
Has been sick Seven years - with undying green eyes
Her clock springs sprung, like the misshapen tide.

Details | Paul Sylvester Poem

This Is a Place To Live

the lake sits glassy and smooth
	songbirds of noon
have long since retired
in their place sound shrill chirp
        squawk and croon

faded peach and blue,
diffuse light yet left,
spread their peaceful, off-tint hues
while mortal reds lighten and bloom;
this is a place to die.

unlike the bleach bright White
of a temporary cot and room:
this is a place to be consumed 
by patchwork green,
and the ponderous weight of night

to relax the coil and tangles
of the knotted life I choose;
this is a place to die
		drowse enchanted
lose my sturdy suit and tie.

I will trade for the industrial tomb
these womblike evergreens
to play nursemaid and tray-in
the last cups of clean dusk air
quietly.

Details | Paul Sylvester Poem

Garden Hose

Coiled up like a garden hose, 
Lying dormant on the basement floor. 
These paints, they run together, 
Greens and Blues, blend forever. 
Your life was wasted as the colors delve: 
into a poem... into a well... 
Into the concrete that's become your home.

Details | Paul Sylvester Poem

The First Time I Rode a Horse

Big hands taxied me up
to the seat
I took for a cradle

on a back already bent
and filled with rutted lines and bite scars,
his hair was still brown
but in spots, 
where the skin panicked for cover,
age sprang up like the General’s venerable gray

and He stood there laughing with the crows
about how regal I looked
with a toy whip in one hand

but how I looked 
   was unimportant
as we moved my smell bled through
and two aggressive rings flared
and figured me out-
a few more feet and I could feel the unsettling shift
of unhappy weight beneath my reach.

So I held fast
to the great Van Dyke brush
(its fibers and bristle 
magnetized from front to back)
with a handle carved
from thick muscle, 
that clung for life to the bones 

but He did not notice
the flex in the gelding’s arcing neck,
and He must have sneezed, or blinked,
through the vital twitch 
that shook 
and dissolved into
hyperbolic, bay curves:

when it upset the Dauphin’s new throne
with a weak kick,
everyone was surprised.

Details | Paul Sylvester Poem

I Wish This Train More Empty

She sits there
electric as the third rail.

Entering Charles M.G.H.
but we’re still moving quickly
(finally
just three of us now).
Each disgorged passenger
leaves a seat
looking back at me
with a shiny black grin.

The wheels and track
wail
as a dilapidated wall
comes into view.
                                  (He gets off)
so I look up
excited
and try to catch her eye
without being obvious-
I miss
and read an ad
for Citibank or something.

We're out over the bridge already
and the sailboats are sitting at odd angles 
like Battleship pieces, 
and I am stuck like the red peg
in a clear plastic hole.
Dazed, I watch the boats sway-
when they move,
it’s effortless.

I wish this train more empty.

Next Stop, Kendall / M.I.T.    
                         jarred
back underground
to an unnatural dark,
but the city's full
and we've run out of bridge
so it's this ridiculous down.

The lights flicker
and I look around
desperate for an excuse
to talk 
or to split a smile,
but nothing comes

and nothing is coming
but estranged 
body language.

She is a queen
as I close my eyes
and step out of focus,
and the hypnotic wall
goes blurry

	  - - -

We climb the perfect angle steps
that some civil engineer designed
(with the darkbrown grimestain
that will never come off)
so that each step puts us closer, 
and I can feel the design:
one false step
and I will bump her side,
stand up straight
and find her fingers in mine

        - - -

Please take a moment to collect your belongings. 
This train will soon be cleared.
			
And I’m jabbed again
but this time there is no whooshing
urban rush,
no manic kinetic
or artsy tunnel-black

I am awake
in this godawful sandtrap
9:30 AM

I am alone
with this girl
and her miserable long hair
and pretty pink skin.
We've gotten nowhere
as the lights lose their drive
and can’t make it to my eye.
We’re still sitting 
and I can’t remember how walking feels.

In the dark she looks confused
and her face is awkward
and her body sore.
She shifts her uncomfortable weight
from one side to the other.

In the dark,
I wish this train more empty.

Details | Paul Sylvester Poem

I'M Too Tired To Write This Poem

I'm too tired to write this poem
with meaningless words and
clauses. Showy, proper diction
feigned through years of misuse

I am too tired to think up
the crypt - some long standing
metaphor - with its stained-glass
transparency?/obscurity?/opacity?

I am too hot in this room
to describe the way the heat
takes me back
to the years I never spent in 
Georgia

I am too itchy from bug bites
to liken my skin to a rug
; 
too swollen with pride
to let a facetious poem like this
out of its shell. Out where it can
breathe and be real.
;
I am too scared to say what
I really mean - and too callow to see
a discrepancy

Details | Paul Sylvester Poem

The Three Princes of Serendip

Swiftly swallowing resentment of play
Acting and dancing to music
Shallow beats and tambourines
There are wild hills full of echo
Mindless ghouls and children skipping through fog
Thick and wet - pouring through my hair
Clever retort from beleaguered little men and women
Rheum, flowing mind, draining into a styrofoam cup
Hot with pulp and grit, my body purges
Life's collar-key broken by bone and rock
I am left alone to wander the plains
Of my self-consciousness. 
I search.
Something is always missing, always running
Away from hands that will not catch
My eyes are not quick enough to see.

Details | Paul Sylvester Poem

The Boy Who Took Medication For His Problems

I heard about a boy
who had lots of friends 
but most of them weren’t real:

they would sit with him 
at the restaurant and read the Times
while he decided what to order

and they came fairly complete 
with their own
clothes
and books
and combs
and thoughts
and 
baggage;
his friends had birthdays too

and it wasn’t that he made them up
(not exactly) but that he understood
the way time works

he had read 
Feynman + Einstein + Michio Kaku
and he could see what they saw:
		an inevitability:
     
3. contracted pneumonia 
at the vulnerable age of 8
and when she was brought to the hospital
the nurse administered too much potassium
and stopped her heart;
                 
the rest were never born

but he saw those people
that live in other worlds:
each one with just one tiny spin

and so he sat 
alone every morning at the breakfast table
with his friends
		his real friends
and pointed out problems in the economy
and he loved
all the interesting things they had to say
about foreign policy.

but then the boy
started choking on white pills

and soon his life started to change
things became more clear
and his friends stopped calling
and slowly, they stopped coming over 
to spend the night or to play baseball.

and so now he’s sitting 
alone every morning at the breakfast table
with his friends
                         his real friends

what a bore.

Details | Paul Sylvester Poem

Breakfast of Champions

my anonymity is stalking the streets 
like a preoccupation. mornings, slowly I creep
into august daylight, filling beat boroughs.
passing the time: digging fake burrows: 
motel rabbitrooms don't come with sheets: 
boxes gloomy in the dinge; dead-end streets.

dark corners; alleys; clean and replete.
rowers; faces; kept random, entreat
to be shadowed and cut - copied and reprinted:
E. de Silhouette: silk-screen and tinted.
marionette hands are fire-flies nigh night
like acariasis-itchy eyes: broken from sight

watching the downpour: 
downbeat and worn 			
like tire-worm whitewalls: 
peeling and torn.

the blanched, arched faces 
(trampled like elephant’s acacia)
are garnets staring blankly at me
between the tiny gaps of a wintertime fleece
a paisley studded blanket, wrapped knee-high round niece. 

running tubes from great maple: palsied cold saps
berry's blood ulcer pours like paint with no cap
from a bucket it spills: unravels, unwraps.
It splashes my feet then runs red and abrupt;
silvery and smooth, sanguis from a cup.