[MISC] My friend and I made an iMessage stickers app like refrigerator poetry magnets. It's free for today only. Poetry

http://ift.tt/2eis394

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So a while back, when iOS 10 came out, I was ridiculing the concept of stickers to my girlfriend when my friend Joe sent me a collage of a sticker cat shooting laser eyes while on top of a drawing he made of a cat tree. Then stickers started to seem pretty funny and interesting. Within a day, Joe and I had started a company called You Enjoy My Stickers to make all sorts of sticker packs.

Poetry Stickers is our second sticker pack, and we thought you all at /r/poetry would find it fun to use with your friends. Here's an example video we made showing how to use stickers in iMessage: http://ift.tt/2fkqNqr

YEMStickers is set up to be a collaborative sticker design business. Our goal is to crowdsource ideas for stickers people want to see, and even have our community vote on which theme we should make. One idea (that's not related to poetry) we’re considering for a new sticker pack is of icons representing a specific city, but we’d put 4 or 5 cities (e.g. Seattle, San Francisco, New York, London, Chicago) to the community vote and make stickers for the one the community wants most. We just want to make stickers that people enjoy. We’re open to ideas if you have any suggestions for making this a more fun experience for everyone involved!

If you want to be part of this crowdsourcing community, you should join our email list: http://ift.tt/2fhe6dQ

Poetry Stickers is free for launch today (Friday) only. You can download here: http://ift.tt/2elWdZ2

Submitted November 04, 2016 at 10:41PM by pineapplepaul http://ift.tt/2f99tlq Poetry

[Misc] Jack Monroe's poem "you did not speak out" Poetry

First they came for the socialists

But you did not speak out

Because you were definitely not a socialist

Those mad bastards campaigning for decent wages and universal healthcare

Waving their hand painted placards through the streets of Westminster

You were definitely not a socialist

Then they came for the Trade Unionists

And you did not speak out

Because Unions are awful

The Daily Mail said so

Those people representing ordinary workers

And fighting for decent pay

And human working conditions

And maternity and paternity leave

And adequate rest between shifts

And making sure people have a voice

They’re definitely terrible self-aggrandising egotists

And they get paid to represent people

And you had to get a bus to work once because of a strike you didn't bother to research beyond a screaming scheming headline

So you are not a Trade Unionist

Then they came for the Muslims and the refugees

And you did not speak out

Because they are not your people

Coming over here

Why can’t they integrate?

Religion causes all the problems right

All the wars Leave them to it

Close the borders

We’re full up

Can’t take any more

Of this PC multicultural bullshit

Who do they think they are?

You spoke over

And you spat and you raged in hatred and fear

But you did not speak out

Because you were not a Muslim nor a refugee

And then they came for the poor and the unemployed the single parents on benefits the workless

And you did not speak out

Because you thought they were lazy

Loads of jobs out there innit

Easy to eat cheaply on the dole, you claim

Having never had to make £71 last a week with a broken refrigerator or holes in the bottom of a pair of school shoes

Bet they’ve all got Sky TV and iPhones and how did she pay for her tattoos?

And you saw someone smoking outside a food bank once

So you did not speak out

Then they came for the disabled

Shame, you thought, but you did not speak out

Most of them could probably work, you thought

You saw that chronically depressed woman smile once

And the guy in the disabled parking space looks young and healthy to you

We all get down sometimes, you shout

What's wrong with you anyway?

Bunch of fucking scroungers, you thought

So you did not speak out Then they came for the teachers

And the doctors

And the nurses

And the firefighters

And the domestic abuse workers

And the rubbish collections

And the rape crisis centres

And the social workers

And the childrens centres

And the education funding

And by the time they come for you

By the time they fucking come for you

There will be nobody left to speak out for you

Nobody left at all.

Submitted May 10, 2016 at 05:36PM by InstantIdealism http://ift.tt/1WXPhDZ Poetry

[Discussion] Favorite poems about death/loss? Poetry

Here are two of my favorites; they are both so simple, yet so powerful:

"Separation" by W. S. Merwin

Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle Everything I do it stitched with its color. 

"Married" by Jack Gilbert

I came back from the funeral and crawled around the apartment, crying hard, searching for my wife’s hair. For two months got them from the drain, from the vacuum cleaner, under the refrigerator, and off the clothes in the closet. But after other Japanese women came, there was no way to be sure which were hers, and I stopped. A year later, repotting Michiko’s avocado, I find a long black hair tangled in the dirt. 

What are some other good poems dealing with death or loss of a loved one?

Submitted August 10, 2015 at 04:38AM by handsopen http://ift.tt/1N1UeXE Poetry

[MISC] Free Review Copies of My Fourth Book Poetry

Hi, folks. For anyone who's interested, my fourth book of poems, What To Do If You're Buried Alive, is out now! I'm doing a little promo run, trying to build up reviews. So for the next few days, if anyone would like a FREE electronic copy, send me a private message and I'll send you a pdf. (Sorry, the Kindle version isn't ready yet, so I only have pdf at the moment.) If you'd like info on my previous books, feel free to cruise over to my website. I'll include some sample poems below, as well. Thanks, in advance, for your consideration! :)

Cheers, Michael Meyerhofer

ONCE AGAIN, I FAIL TO LEARN QUANTUM PHYSICS

Now I fear I’m too far behind,
having failed to learn the names of birds,
let alone the trees they live between,
plus the nouns of the body
whispering from their rooty Latin throats.
So too the logic of chopsticks,
the exquisite currency of synonyms,
a better word than parallax
for the moon-jump over hay fields.
Even shop class seemed like witchcraft—
the strange philosophy of jigsaws,
how a crankshaft’s dervish
brought us from horse to Lamborghini.
Plus the coordinated gibberish
of bones, foreign as the after school innards
of a piano. So for years, I sidestepped
the stoic glint of Bunsen burners,
maps of the ocean floor,
the sad genealogy of the Caesars.
But now, one by one, they call me back.
Here, some fool strings horsehair
over a hollowed coconut
and makes music. Elsewhere, Cree mothers
swaddle their babies in peat moss.
Thus, the names of the Orkney Islands,
still life of the Nazca spider,
symphony of the periodic table.
Until I am told to watch as two light beams
fired through cardboard prove
the existence of alternate universes.
And that quickly, I forget
the capital of France. The formula for milk.
Which blossoms open first, and why,
to the sun’s wild, pyrite tongue.

AN UNREPENTANT CONFESSION

That was the year I shoplifted
a bottle of Aunt Jemima pancake syrup.
Homecoming weekend. I was out
with a carload of boys I hated
but needed desperately to impress.
We were chugging beers on back roads,
tapping each empty can against
the window before tossing it out,
tin flashing in the windy moonlight.
Somebody said we should
vandalize the coach’s Camaro,
suggested we stop for shaving cream
and syrup and maybe toilet paper
to toss through the dark biceps
of the cedars wreathing his backyard.
Somebody paid for a twelve pack
of toilet tissue (how to steal that?)
while another boy slipped a can
of shaving cream in his varsity jacket,
and I—who played no position,
who never lettered in anything
and didn’t even have to take P.E.
thanks to a doctor’s excuse—volunteered
to walk out with that plump bottle
stuffed halfway down my jeans.
I got away with it. Somebody else
called the privilege of leaving
sticky figure-8s all over the windshield,
squeezing until his knuckles went white
and the bottle wheezed in protest,
but I was the one who snuck it out.

GOVERNMENT CHEESE

We called it Reagan Cheese then—
handed out by the government
in thinly-boxed loaves

to poor Midwestern families, part
of Ronald Reagan’s plan to gain support
while using up excess dairy supplies.

I remember its odd nuclear-yellow
color, its thick processed taste
and the way it never melted right

but at least the boxes fit perfectly
around my brother’s baseball cards,
at least as box after box

was stacked in the refrigerator,
my parents slicing hunks over crackers
or plain white bread, covering them

in mustard and butter until
it could be called a meal, for a time
their eyes glowed. This was free

they stressed—as though victory
could be obtained simply by getting back
the leftovers from what was taken.

MY MOTHER SENT ME

a text message
from her coffin.
It said Glad
you're not here.
She's always doing
stuff like that. She says
it's to help me
savor my remaining
days. But I know
it's because I'm
the only one left
who hasn't changed
his number.

Submitted May 20, 2015 at 05:11AM by troublewithhammers http://ift.tt/1FtCnp8 Poetry

[General] One of my Favorite Fall Poem,"How To Like It" by Stephen Dobyns Poetry

How To Like It

These are the first days of fall. The wind

at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,

while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns

is like an unsettled feeling in the blood,

the desire to get in a car and just keep driving.

A man and a dog descend their front steps.

The dog says, Let's go downtown and get crazy drunk.

Let's tip over all the trash cans we can find.

This is how dogs deal with the prospect of change.

But in his sense of the season, the man is struck

by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories

which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid

until it seems he can see remembered faces

caught up among the dark places in the trees.

The dog says, Let's pick up some girls and just

rip off their clothes. Let's dig holes everywhere.

Above his house, the man notices wisps of cloud

crossing the face of the moon. Like in a movie,

he says to himself, a movie about a person

leaving on a journey. He looks down the street

to the hills outside of town and finds the cut

where the road heads north. He thinks of driving

on that road and the dusty smell of the car

heater, which hasn't been used since last winter.

The dog says, Let's go down to the diner and sniff

people's legs. Let's stuff ourselves on burgers.

In the man's mind, the road is empty and dark.

Pine trees press down to the edge of the shoulder,

where the eyes of animals, fixed in his headlights,

shine like small cautions against the night.

Sometimes a passing truck makes his whole car shake.

The dog says, Let's go to sleep. Let's lie down

by the fire and put our tails over our noses.

But the man wants to drive all night, crossing

one state line after another, and never stop

until the sun creeps into his rearview mirror.

Then he'll pull over and rest awhile before

starting again, and at dusk he'll crest a hill

and there, filling a valley, will be the lights

of a city entirely new to him.

But the dog says, Let's just go back inside.

Let's not do anything tonight. So they

walk back up the sidewalk to the front steps.

How is it possible to want so many things

and still want nothing. The man wants to sleep

and wants to hit his head again and again

against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?

But the dog says, Let's go make a sandwich.

Let's make the tallest sandwich anyone's ever seen.

And that's what they do and that's where the man's

wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator

as if into the place where the answers are kept-

the ones telling why you get up in the morning

and how it is possible to sleep at night,

answers to what comes next and how to like it.

From VELOCITIES: NEW & SELECTED POEMS (Penguin, 1994)

Submitted October 01, 2014 at 08:52AM by Primatepolice http://ift.tt/1uAa43X Poetry