MOTHER TO SON by Langston

Hughes
Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal
stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the
floor --
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now --
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no
crystal stair.









METAPHORS by Sylvia Plath
I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous
house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty
rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat
purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in
calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no
getting off.



POEM 10 by Jose Garcia Villa
First, a poem must be magical,
Then musical as a sea-gull.
It must be a brightness moving
And hold secret a bird's
flowering.
It must be slender as a bell,
And it must hold fire as well.
It must have the wisdom of bows
And it must kneel like a rose.
It must be able to hear
The luminance of dove and deer.
It must be able to hide
What it seeks, like a bride.
And over all I would like to hover
God, smiling from the poem's
cover.
SIX P.M. by Nick Joaquin
Trouvere at night, grammarian in
the morning,
ruefully architecting syllables
but in the afternoon my ivory
tower falls.
I take a place in the bus among
people returning
to love (domesticated) and the
smell of onions burning
and women reaping the
washlines as the Angelus tolls.

But Iwhere am I bound?
My garden, my four walls
and you project strange shores
upon my yearning:
Atlantis? the Caribbeans? Or
Cathay?
Conductor, do I get off at Sinai?
Apocalypse awaits me: urgent
my sorrow
towards the undiscovered world
that I
roam warm responding flesh for
a while shall borrow:
conquistador tonight,
clockpuncher tomorrow.