I, I can remember
Standing by the wall
And the guns shot above our heads
And we kissed,
as though nothing could fall

And the shame was on the other side
Oh we can beat them,
Forever and ever
Then we could be Heroes,
just for one day...
-- david bowie

Politics
by William Butler Yeats

'In our time the destiny of man presents its meanings in political terms.' -Thomas Mann

How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here's a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there's a politician
That has both read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms.

prob. date 1928

This Is Just to Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Sex Without Love
by Sharon Olds

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

I found this at C. Little's blog.

twice five syllables
plus seven can't say much but
that's haiku for you.

Morning verses

There is little to look at now,
sitting on the back stoop
drinking coffee--alone before dawn,
without the company of birds.
Beneath a sickly gray cover of clouds
(sickly because they reflect the gaseous
light of human occupation)
noise carries from the Radnor Yards,
squeals and siren soundings,
couplings and uncouplings all night long,
an orgy of trains.

Kurt Brobeck

CRAZY WORLD by Carol Graduate

We destroy our collections
of grisly offenses.
Bombs, bullets, anthrax disappear
as if they never were.
Rich purple tulips, dazzling daisies,
grain and milk
are exchanged. Everyone
has plenty.
We smile at one another
dissolving confusion, accepting differences.
Aberrant evil and conflicts are resolved
in courts.
We go about our lives
in peace.