AuthorsDen.com   Join | Login    
Where Authors and Readers come together!

SIGNED BOOKS    AUTHORS    BOOKS    SAMPLE CHAPTERS    AUDIOBOOKS    eBOOKS    STORIES    ARTICLES    POETRY    BLOGS    NEWS    VIDEOS    SUCCESS    TESTIMONIALS

Featured Authors:  Bob Boze, iPeter Jessop, iElla Rydzewski, iWilliam Martell, iTeresa Walker, iMyra Darwish, iLisa DAnnolfo Levey, iDr. Patrick ODougherty, iFrank Whyte, iNeenah Davis-Wilson, i

  Home > Poetry > Articles Popular: Books, Stories, Articles, Poetry      Authors: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z     

Mark Sebring

 Follow Me  

· Contact Me
· Articles
· Poetry
· Stories
· Blog
· 128 Titles
· 140 Reviews
· Save to My Library
· Share with Friends!
·
Member Since: Aug, 2009

Mark Sebring, click here to update your pages on AuthorsDen!


Poetry
by Mark Sebring   
Rated "G" by the Author.
     
Last edited: Monday, July 13, 2026
Posted: Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Recent articles by
Mark Sebring

• Who I Am
• Things I've Written - Part 1
• Things I've Written - Part 2
• Things I've Written - Part 3
• Things I've Written - Part 4
           >> View all

"I will talk to you of art." - Charles B. Griffith

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A Ritual to Read to Each Other
(William Stafford)

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider -
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give - yes or no, or maybe -
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.



A Secret Life
(Stephen Dunn)

Why you need to have one
is not much more mysterious than
why you don't say what you think
at the birth of an ugly baby.
Or, you've just made love
and feel you'd rather have been
in a dark booth where your partner
was nodding, whispering yes, yes,
you're brilliant. The secret life
begins early, is kept alive
by all that's unpopular
in you, all that you know
a Baptist, say, or some other
accountant would object to.
It becomes what you'd most protect
if the government said you can protect
one thing, all else is ours.
When you write late at night
it's like a small fire
in a clearing, it's what
radiates and what can hurt
if you get too close to it.
It's why your silence is a kind of truth.
Even when you speak to your best friend,
the one who'll never betray you,
you always leave out one thing;
a secret life is that important.



Wild Geese
(Mary Oliver)

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.



Ice Storm
(Jane Kenyon)
 
For the hemlocks and broad-leafed evergreens
a beautiful and precarious state of being....
Here in the suburbs of New Haven
nature, unrestrained, lops the weaker limbs
of shrubs and trees with a sense of aesthetics
that is practical and sinister....
 
I am the guest in this house.
On the bedside table Good Housekeeping, and
A Nietzsche Reader.... The others are still asleep.
The most painful longing comes over me.
A longing not of the body....
 
It could be for beauty -
I mean what Keats was panting after,
for which I love and honor him;
it could be for the promises of God;
or for oblivion, nada; or some condition even more
extreme, which I intuit, but can't quite name.
 
 
 
  


Want to review or comment on this article?


Need a FREE Reader Membership?
Reviewed by Mark Sebring
Reviewed on October 30, 2018
There are many others I could have included:
Shakespeare's "Sonnet 116" (I recited it at my wedding),
Poe's "The Raven", Carroll's "The Walrus And The Carpenter" or "Jabberwocky",
Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle into that good night", Pablo Neruda's "If You Forget Me",
Thomas Lux' "The Swimming Pool", Sharon Olds' "I Go Back to May 1937".

Some of my other favorites are scattered throughout my posts.
Look for Lord Byron, Walt Whitman, EMILY DICKINSON, Jennifer Michael Hecht.
And there's a somewhat convoluted path
which leads to Wordsworth's "Splendour In The Grass".
(See "Bernice" for a selection of my grandmother's poems.)

I will talk to you of Art,
for there is nothing else to talk about.
For there is nothing else.
Life is an obscure hobo
bumming a ride on the omnibus of Art.
Burn gas buggies, and whip your sour cream of circumstance,
and hope, and go ahead and sleep your bloody heads off.
Creation is. All else is not.
What is not Creation is graham crackers.
Let it all crumble to feed the Creator.
The Artist is. All others are not.
Charles B. Griffith (A Bucket of Blood)

Many of my poems, articles, and commentaries contain quotations
and references to classic literature, poetry, popular songs, and movies.
Are you familiar with them? (Some of them are a bit obscure.)
Do you recognize their relevance?
And how many anagrams of Mark Sebring have you spotted?

I haven't written any original poetry for some time. (I think I'm done now.)
Nowadays I just write bits of dialog and prose, observations on human nature
interspersed with quotations, literary references, snippets from my own poetry,
and then look for an appropriate place to insert them into the commentaries in
the review sections of my poems. As a result, some of my commentaries have
evolved into weird sermons. And some might find them difficult to understand.

At this point my commentaries may tell more of my story than my poetry does,
but that story is often told non-chronologically and I sometimes switch between
different points of view. This particular storytelling style is somewhat similar to
Faulkner's "The Sound And The Fury". (The main characters in My story are:
🧙Roger T. Slug, and 🤡Bozo The Magic Weasel.)

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
that struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
and then is heard no more.
It is a tale told by an idiot,
full of Sound and Fury,
signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare (Macbeth)

Check out "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"
at the end of "A House Divided". 🧙🏻‍♂️|🤡
(Based on the parable by Robert Louis Stevenson
and a few lines from Cohen's "Bird On A Wire",
it summarizes the primary message of my book.)

📚 Currently reading:
"The Call Of The Wild" by Jack London
"Shattered" by Dean Koontz

Reviewed by Ronald Hull
Reviewed on October 30, 2018
The first poem has a lesson to it, I think. At one point you refer to a dyke (derogatory word for a lesbian) rather than dike… Unless you meant to?

While reading I began to gather that you did not write these poems. As I read A Secret Life, I realized that we all have a secret life. Some are probably just a little bit more heavy on our minds. Why the Catholic Church capitalizes on secret lives by offering a confessional for people to get their secrets off their chest to the delight of voyeuristic priests.

While Geese is a real inspiration to put aside despair and move forth loudly like geese returning for another season.

Ice Storm is a very realistic depiction of someone's perception during a dreary winter day.

Ron

Popular Poetry Articles
  1.  Desperation Breeds Desperation
  2.  Anatomy Of A Poem
  3.  The Poetic Genius of William Blake
  4.  Hridaya-22, a love note on Guru purnim
  5.  Poetry
  6.  'Beach Poetry'
  7.  A New Lifestyle
  8.  Book Review: All Red by Anna Casamento
  9.  Floating along: A Review Essay on Some
  10.  Book Review: Aurora Beyond the Horizon
  11.  Syrian Poet Adonis: Snapshot of a Dist
  12.  A Treasured Gift
  13.  Ian's List of Foundation Books for Con
  14.  Book Review: House Built on Fog & Sand
  15.  My Mischievous Time Machine
  16.  Snow
  17.  Targets Be Warned
  18.  Book Review: 365 by Cindy J. Smith
  19.  Book Review: Smoke and Shadows by Joan
  20.  Safa Tempo: Poems New and Selected
  21.  Response to Wordsworth - by The Daffod
  22.  Seduced, Once Again, by Poetry
  23.  Book Review: Why Poetry? by Cindy J. S
  24.  Thoughts On Writing Poetry
  25.  Noble House Publishing-London, UK

Free Book Review Program
Select a book to read and review today!

The Hanging Man Dreams by Aberjhani

David Hightower’s lyrically expansive meditation on the whims of fate and the unpredictability of the human condition fill the pages of THE HANGING MAN DREAMS with thrilling music and mesmerizing imagery. Hightower’s richly infused voice echoes the e  
Member BookAds

Beat Writings & Ramblings by William haynes

beat poetry like Corso, Ginsberg and Kerouac  
Member BookAds

Sunrise of Thought by Bruce Humphrey

Welcome! The poems in this beautifully bound book are a result of over twenty years of observations. Observations of the world around us and on the telecommunications network. All of the hate, love, heroism, disasters, and those who help. Beautiful  
Member BookAds