Some very different poems. The first is a song which has all the elements of first class poetry: style, strong imagery and a broken heart flagging suicide. I’ve included the song in the link below.

Bye Bye Pride

Grant McLennan

(The Go-Betweens)

A white moon appears
Like a hole in the sky,
The mangroves go quiet.
In la Brisa de la Palma
A teenage Rasputin
Takes the sting from a gin

When a woman learns to walk
She’s not dependent anymore
A line front her letter May twenty-four
And out on the bay
The current is strong
A boat can go lost.

But I didn’t know someone
Could be so lonesome
Didn’t know a heart
Could be tied up
And held for ransom.

Until you take your shoes
And go outside, stride over stride.
Walk to that tide because
The door is open wide.

Turned the fan off
And went for a walk
By the lights down on Shield Street.

The birds in the trees
Open their wings
He goes home again.

He dreams resistance,
They talk commitment,
Things change over long distance.

Took the shirt off his back
The eyes from his head
And left him for dead.

But I didn’t know someone
Could be so lonesome
Didn’t know a heart
Could be tied up
And held for ransom.

Until you take your shoes
And go outside, stride over stride,
Walk to that tide because
The door is open wide.

Little lies, they’ll take your pride.
Until you take your shoes
And go outside, stride over stride,
Walk to that tide because
The door is open wide.

Stride over stride
Walk to that tide.
Bye bye pride.

Because the door is open wide.
The door is always open wide.
The door is always open wide.

Ode to Tropical Skiing

John Forbes

After breakfast in the Philippines

I take a bath

                                         & it’s a total fucking gas

Enjoy the ice cream, Gerald,

                           the sun sparkling

                           on its white frostiness

is the closest you’ll ever get to St Moritz

racing up the tiny snow fields on the side of a pill

                           as beside you the young girl’s

mirrored goggles reflect all Switzerland

like a chocolate box at the speed of sound

                           & like the ashtray he/she you & it

                           are a total fucking gas

Asleep in

the milk bars

daylight saving annuls our tuxedo

                                       & happy to breathe again

like a revived dance craze

we gulp fresh air, our speeches to the telephone

                            so various,

                                                    so beautiful—

                                      who loves at close range

                                      like they do thru a tube?

& when the sun polishes the wires gold then invisible

                                      a million cheer-up telegrams

                                      collapse in the snow

while Mandy & I have a glass of Coca-Cola

                                      as we fly past the moon &

after the piano goes to sleep in our arms

                                                 we wake up

                                                 & it’s a total fucking gas

                                                 Was that a baby

or a shirt factory?

no one can tell in this weather, for tho

the tropics are slowly drifting apart & a

                                       vicious sludge blurs

                             the green banks of the river, a chalet

drifts thru the novella where I compare thee

                             to a surfboard lost in Peru,

                             flotsam like a crate of strong liquor

                                                            that addles our skis

                                                            & when they bump

                                                                    it’s a total fucking gas

A Step Away from Them

Frank O’Hara

It’s my lunch hour, so I go
for a walk among the hum-colored
cabs. First, down the sidewalk
where laborers feed their dirty
glistening torsos sandwiches
and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets
on. They protect them from falling
bricks, I guess. Then onto the
avenue where skirts are flipping
above heels and blow up over
grates. The sun is hot, but the
cabs stir up the air. I look
at bargains in wristwatches. There
are cats playing in sawdust.

                                          On

to Times Square, where the sign
blows smoke over my head, and higher
the waterfall pours lightly. A
Negro stands in a doorway with a
toothpick, languorously agitating.
A blonde chorus girl clicks: he
smiles and rubs his chin. Everything
suddenly honks: it is 12:40 of
a Thursday.

                Neon in daylight is a
great pleasure, as Edwin Denby would
write, as are light bulbs in daylight.
I stop for a cheeseburger at JULIET’S
CORNER. Giulietta Masina, wife of
Federico Fellini, è bell’ attrice. 
And chocolate malted. A lady in
foxes on such a day puts her poodle
in a cab.

             There are several Puerto
Ricans on the avenue today, which
makes it beautiful and warm. First
Bunny died, then John Latouche,
then Jackson Pollock. But is the
earth as full as life was full, of them?

And one has eaten and one walks,
past the magazines with nudes
and the posters for BULLFIGHT and
the Manhattan Storage Warehouse,
which they’ll soon tear down. I
used to think they had the Armory
Show there.

                A glass of papaya juice
and back to work. My heart is in my
pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy.