Category: Poetry

Sep 07 2007

State of the Onion II

Art Link
Purple with Beading

Thursday is Queersday

Long away and far ago
when I was young and naive
wearing purple on Thursday
meant one was most likely queer
as it was called at the time
Though I didn’t truly know
couldn’t really comprehend
what it entailed to be queer
I still didn’t wear purple
on Thursdays or any day
For that I am yet ashamed
The power of fear is great

–Robyn Elaine Serven
–March 16, 2006

Sep 06 2007

State of the Onion I

Art Link
Pencil and Wax

Words

The words take control
demand to be written
I help guide them
dress them up
slim them down
searching for
clarity, brevity, emotion
hopefully all three
I’m not sure
where they come from
perhaps from the pains
and joys of my life
The words are the blood
in the vessels of my mind
just as feelings are
the blood feeding my soul
Is there any separation
between me and the words?

–Robyn Elaine Serven
–January 10, 2006

Sep 05 2007

Profiles in Literature: Emily Dickinson

Greetings, literature-loving DocuDharmists (do we have a name for readers yet?), and welcome to the latest installment of my series on writers great and small, ancient and modern, popular and obscure.  Last week we spent time with the grand dean of Czech literature, Karel Capek, and watched him weave his humanistic philosophy through a dizzying mix of comedy, science fiction, and drama.  This week’s subject stuck mainly to one genre – lyric poetry – but she used her deceptively simple lines to open a world of equally dizzying complexity.

If you think you know everyone’s favorite New England agoraphobe, think again!  Let’s jump back to 19th century Amherst for tea and sympathy with one of America’s leading poetic voices.

Aug 30 2007

Academic Years II


Lace

Like the Pixels

The pixels
laid singly
or in short segments
pixilated sand
intricately woven
into a meaningful
pattern
pixie dust
spread
to simulate
complexity

My world grows
takes new form
until it gets
to the point
where it can be
flipped,
flopped
flooped
it’s the flooping
that makes it
distinctly mine

Moments
are the pixels
of being
by which we color
the larger
tapestry
of our lives
living
in the instant
in the now
is our floop

–Robyn Elaine Serven
–November 8. 2005

Aug 29 2007

A Poem for Pinche

Oh this will be easy, because I just know Pinche will never read this poem,  having vowed never to read poetry — I believe he said something to the effect it’s … icky.

So here’s a poem just for you, Pinche, even though you will never read it.

Aug 29 2007

Grace

This is a test of my first diary at DocuDharma.  It is also a bit of personal philosophy.

With reference to the phrase: start as you mean to go on, I give you this…..

Aug 29 2007

A Christening

Poem du Jour:

Art Link
Body

The Body

Some people call it
pornography…
people who quite probably
think my existence is
pornography personified.

But it’s just a bunch of
blood red dots on a
yellow background
a stark symbolization
of much of my life

I say to them (to you?)
eliminate war, the worst obscenity,
from my tv news, from the planet,
from existence, from conception
and then we’ll talk

–Robyn Elaine Serven
–October 28, 2005

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