Tootfinder

"Every Time"
- an #improv #poem -
https://muz4now.com/2015/every-time-an

Every Time - an #improv #poem
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

Sunny cool morning
A warning of later heat
Ontario life.
#dailyhaikuprompt - cool morning
#haiku
#poem

Looking For Light
- an #improv #poem -
https://muz4now.com/2015/looking-for-light/

Looking For Light
A spontaneous (improvised, unedited) poem by Stan Stewart.

In profuse blossoms
I see the promise of a
Prolific harvest.
#dailyhaikuprompt - profuse
#haiku
#poem

Calamus 45 Full of life, sweet-blooded, compact, visible
A remarkably effective poem for the end of the cluster. Whitman talking directly to us, the reader, about the import of his poems. And with some ambition: "To one a century hence, or any number of centuries hence".
But even better, he's horny for us:
Now it is you ... seeking me,
Fancying how happy you were, if I could be with you, and become your lover
The poet is imagining us, his future readers, thinking about how we will want to be his lover. What a lusty man! Whitman is not modest.
I love it. And it's a fitting end to this series. I've greatly enjoyed reading them. Over the past 45 days I've learned better how to read Whitman, to understand his poems. And to relate to them in at least one simple way, teasing out the gayest and sexiest parts of these poems. Making them fun for myself.
I'm not quite done yet. I hope to identify my favorites of the group. I may also try my hand at reading one or two aloud.

Sheer, skimpy, light clothes
To feel cool and to look cool
There is a limit.
#dailyhaikuprompt - light clothes
#haiku
#poem

Democrats request copy of Epstein 'birthday book' that reportedly contains Trump poem (Lauren Gambino/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/25/democrats-epstein-birthday-book
http://www.memeorandum.com/250726/p27#a250726p27

Last days of summer:
Weekend of boisterous fun,
Labour Day, then school.
#dailyhaikuprompt - boisterous
#haiku
#poem

The Medicine I Carry #grief #poem https://muz4now.com/2025/the-medicine-i-carry

The Medicine I Carry
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

“What destroys the poetry of a city? Automobiles destroy it,” Lawrence Ferlinghetti said, but ban cars and the poetry comes back!
#sundayStreets #SundayStreetsSF #SundayStreetsMission

Ice cold from the fridge
I have eaten the cherries
That you were saving.
#dailyhaikuprompt - cherries
#haiku
#poem

Calamus 43 O you whom I often
A short and sweet love poem, Whitman at his most writerly. The spare and simple words have a light musicality that's often missing from his more didactic blank verse.
The literal meaning is Whitman telling someone how his very presence inspires feelings of love. It's so short and precise I'm just going to quote the whole poem.
O you whom I often and silently come where you are, that I may be with you,
As I walk by your side, or sit near, or remain in the same room with you,
Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is playing within me.
I love the lack of action. Whitman simply wants to sit in the same room as his beloved, a quiet devotion I appreciate. And that phrase "subtle electric fire". Electric had a different meaning in pre-Edison America but it works both ways.
Mostly this poem is just a lovely mood.
(The linked video and commentary are more than usually good.)

One card from Maria Popova's book of cards. They're also available as stationery cards.
#Poetry

When You Fall – a #poem with photos of the #waterfall that #inspired it #inspiration

When You Fall - a #poem with photos of the #waterfall that #inspired it
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

Shade – an improvised poem #improv #poem https://muz4now.com/2022/shade-an-improvised-poem

Shade - an improvised poem
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

alright im going through my old files again and rediscovered a shitty unfinished sci-fi epic poem thing i was writing sometime when i was 14/15/idfk. all i remember about it is that it was gonna keep doing this countdown and changing structure accordingly for a really long time, i was thinking of depicting the character finding love in an ethereal sorta way for the ending, and it was gonna incorporate a enochian number square for some reason.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
-- Rumi
#poem

Calamus 42 To the young man
A short poem but very hot, dripping with latent queer meaning. Or pederasty, if I'm being honest.
The poem is literally Whitman offering to teach a young man. "To absorb, to engraft, to develop". And "to help him become élève", a fancy French word for student, and the choice there certainly raises an eyebrow.
But then what qualifications does this student require? Here, in the negation:
If he be not silently selected by lovers, and do not silently select lovers
That's not the usual test scores and sports achievements! Instead Whitman seems to have a specific extracurricular activity in mind. (And note the "select" directly echoes the "picking me out" in the previous poem.)
This poem becomes particularly bold when understanding it as Whitman speaking directly to the reader. Perhaps a young man that Whitman can take under his wing.
I'm being a bit silly but this kind of mentorship has a long, sexy gay history.

So predictable.

Smoldering glances
Are pointless in a heat wave
No one is that hot.
#dailyhaikuprompt - smoldering
#haiku
#poem

“Family values do not stop south of the Rio Grande,” he told the crowd. “Why do you think they are here? It’s because they love their family. You and I would do the same thing if we were in their position.”
Guess who said that? Answer below
https://ww…

77-year-old poem explains protestors' ICE anger
Later set to music, Guthrie’s ode decries the dehumanization of immigrants that we’re seeing today

“Family values do not stop south of the Rio Grande,” he told the crowd. “Why do you think they are here? It’s because they love their family. You and I would do the same thing if we were in their position.”
Guess who said that? Answer below
https://ww…

77-year-old poem explains protestors' ICE anger
Later set to music, Guthrie’s ode decries the dehumanization of immigrants that we’re seeing today

Pause For A Poem
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: #GreatAusPods

A poem by Stan Stewart: The Medicine I Carry. Written during a grief circle and ritual on the 23rd of August, 2025.
#poem #grief
https://

The Medicine I Carry
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

Cascades of sweet peas
Volunteer in unkempt yards
For those who need them.
#dailyhaikuprompt - peas
#haiku
#poem

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #Expansions
Pirahna Head:
🎵 Poem 4 a Lost One (Black Music remix)
#PirahnaHead
https://moodsandgroovesrecords.bandcamp.com/album/pirahna-head-feat-diviniti-poem-4-a-lost-one-remixes

Boy On A Bicycle
- an #improv #poem -
https://muz4now.com/2015/boy-on-a-bicy…

Boy On A Bicycle - an improv #poem
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

Calamus 34 I dreamed in a dream
On the surface this short poem is a sort of City on a Hill vision. But I'm going to go with a more radical reading.
This poem reads to me as a fantasy of a gay society. A city of men, lovers, set apart from the rest of the world.
a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth ...
the quality of robust love ...
the actions of the men of that city
And in all their looks and words.
I can't plausibly argue Whitman conceived of a city set apart in the way I imagine. Although all of Calamus is him constructing the idea of a society of lovers, comrades, brothers, robust love. That to me is very gay.
Intriguingly, in the unpublished Live Oak draft of this poem it is even more explicitly gay:
I saw them tenderly love each other ...
Nothing was greater there than manly love
It seems to me he dreamed a very gay city.

Strange Parables - an #improv #poem
https://m…

Strange Parables - an #improv #poem
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

The lotus eaters
Give no thought to those of us
Whose lives they disrupt.
#dailyhaikuprompt - lotus
#haiku
#poem

Faces to the sun
Roses climb the trellis bars
Plotting their escape.
#dailyhaikuprompt - trellis
#haiku
#poem

I thought suffering kept things interesting. How funny
that I called it love and the whole time it was pain.
--Ada Limón,
from the poem "Calling Things What They Are",
from the book "The Hurting Kind"
#Poetry

Strange Parables - an #improv #poem https://muz4now.com/2025/strange-parables-an-improv-poem/

Strange Parables - an #improv #poem
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

Calamus 38 Primeval my love for the woman I love
Finally a love poem with a female subject! Or is it?
Primeval my love for the woman I love,
It starts off obviously heterosexual, his love for a woman. But then most of the poem is about another love, for "O man", "the last athletic reality". It sounds like he's elevating the love of this other man to "the ethereal", something more spiritual in contrast to the primeval of the first line. But in the context of the rest of Calamus maybe he's saying more about that love for this athletic man, the "sharer of my roving life".
Edit: the Calamus Project reading suggests an extra meaning of "sharer of my roving life". It sounds like Whitman is stepping out on his wife, "roving" with a man on the side.

#JBK 2 - a spontaneous poem https://muz4now.com/2019/jbk-2-spontaneous-poem/

#JBK 2 - a spontaneous poem
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

Gentle evening rain
Is just the thing we needed
But not what we got.
#dailyhaikuprompt - evening rain
#haiku
#poem

Under the new moon
There's less reflected sunlight
And maybe less heat.
#dailyhaikuprompt - new moon
#haiku
#poem

Calamus 41 Among the men and women, the multitude
A sweet poem about having a conceptual soulmate. What's interesting to me is how clandestine the connection is
one picking me out by secret and divine signs...
I meant that you should discover me so, by my faint indirections
This feels very gaydar / cruisy to me.

Our Hearts Are Like the Waterfall #heart #improv #poem

Our Hearts Are Like the Waterfall
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

Calamus 40 That shadow, my likeness
An odd little poem to find in Calamus. I like it, I connect to the existential doubt.
How often I question and doubt whether that is really me
The self Whitman is unsure of is the quotidian self, the one that works and talks and shops. What does he embrace as the real him?
among my lovers, and carolling my songs, I never doubt whether that is really me.
There's our lusty Whitman, finding his true self in his lovers and his poetry.
PS: this poem introduced me to the lovely word chaffer.

The summer meadow
Full of grasses and grazers
Feeding each other.
#dailyhaikuprompt - meadow
#haiku
#poem

Heartburn - a poem by Stan Stewart
#inspiration #poem
https://muz4now.com/2013/heartburn-a-p

Heartburn - a poem by Stan Stewart
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

Calamus 31 What ship, puzzled at sea
Just when I'm beginning to think I have some facility reading Whitman I meet a head-scratcher like this. Taken literally this is a poem about Whitman offering to guide a boat at sea, or to offer military troops to a besieged city.
But presumably it's a metaphor. Whitman offering to guide and help those in need. It's a little strange?
Hard-pressed for a gay reading here but I'll focus on this:
Here, sailor! Here, ship! take aboard the most perfect pilot.
Here Whitman is offering himself to a sailor, naming himself the most perfect pilot. I could imagine that being a metaphor of sexual mentorship. But honestly that's a stretch.

Planted years ago
Retroactive genius
Today in its shade.
#dailyhaikuprompt - shade
#haiku
#poem

Morning Darkness – an #improv #poem
https://

Morning Darkness - an #improv #poem
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

Calamus 36 Earth! my likeness!
Woah! This poem is such a strong statement of queer love I want to jump right to it
an athlete is enamoured of me—and I of him.
But toward him there is something fierce and terrible in me, eligible to burst forth,
I dare not tell it in words—not even in these songs.
A same-sex love, bursting, terrible. A secret he must keep even from his poems. My heart aches for his suppressed passion.
I don't want to overlook the rest of the poem: Whitman compares his love for the athlete to the Earth. The Earth which also has something terrible ready to break forth. It's really quite grandiose and apocalyptic.
(The Live Oak draft is worth comparing because it's even more direct. "an athlete loves me, and I him").

Caught in a mix-up
When life hands you a melon
You make lemonade.
#dailyhaikuprompt - melon
#haiku
#poem

To The Edge – piano and poetry improvisations
#improvise #piano #poem

To The Edge – piano and poetry improvisations
#improvise #piano #poem

To The Edge - piano and poetry improvisations
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

Waves scour the beach sand
And leave behind coarser stone
To thwart the tourists.
#dailyhaikuprompt - beach
#haiku
#poem

Easter – an improvised poem #improv #poem https://muz4now.com/2023/easter-an-improvised-poem…

Easter - an improvised poem
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

Work in the garden
Where your colleagues are diverse
And better looking.
#dailyhaikuprompt - garden
#haiku
#poem

Interdependence Day 3 - an #improv #poem about understanding
https://muz4now.com/2018/interdependen

Interdependence Day 3 - an #improv #poem about understanding
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

Wave the white blanket
It's too hot for a picnic
Maybe this evening.
#dailyhaikuprompt - picnic
#haiku
#poem

Calamus 32 What think you...
A funny gotcha of a poem: Whitman starts by suggesting he is going to write about battleships, or cities, or "splendors". But then he switches gears:
two simple men I saw to-day ... parting the parting of dear friends
And then goes into fully romantic
The one to remain hung on the other's neck, and passionately kissed him,
While the one to depart, tightly prest the one to remain in his arms.
Hot, right? A passionate kiss, a tight embrace, never wanting to let go.
Again I am astonished that a poem this gay would be published in 1860. Or that generations of bloodless scholars would sputter and say "they were just pals".

This improvised (spontaneous, unedited) poem by Stan Stewart is titled "Strange Parables". Everything else you need to know is in the poetry.
#improvised #poetry

Strange Parables - an #improv #poem
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

Fear and Openness
- a #poem -
https://muz4now.com/2014/fear-and-openness-poem/

Fear and Openness
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

Calamus 35 To you of New England
Honestly I find this Whitman entreaty to national unity kind of tedious. It's charming and American but it's just so earnest. And this poem doesn't have much music.
Stretching for a gay reading...
a superb friendship, exalté, previously unknown,
... it waits ... latent in all men.
Once again his calls for unity are partly rooted in relationships between men: "friendship" here, the least sexual of his words. But it's also a sort of hidden connection, unknown, latent, and that's a little queer-coded to me.

Calamus 29 One flitting glimpse
What a sweet poem of quiet love. One of my favorites so far.
The setup is voyeuristic: we're spying on a bar full of men. And we see Whitman in a corner, and then
a youth who loves me, and whom I love, silently approaching, and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand
It astonishes me that these poems of clear homosexual love were published in 1860!
What's particularly nice is the contrast between the rowdy bar scene
drinking and oath and smutty jest
and the quiet intimacy of Whitman and his lover
we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word.
The expression of love here is universal. But it is a man writing about a man, in the company of men. And thus it is particularly mine.

Bursting through the lawn
An eruption of bright pinks
Overflow with joy.
#dailyhaikuprompt - pinks
#haiku
#poem

Birthday Bonfire - an #improv #poem https://muz4now.com/2018/birthday-bonfire-improv-poem/…

Birthday Bonfire - an #improv #poem
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

Calamus 33 No labor-saving machine
Another poem in a style I don't care for. A series of negations, Whitman declaiming all the things he is not doing. On a theme I also don't care for, Whitman talking about his own legacy.
The nice part is what he does imagine his legacy to be:
these carols, vibrating through the air, I leave,
For comrades and lovers.
I love that phrase "vibrating through the air", delicious poetry. And once again Whitman's declares his passion for comrades and lovers, a return to the central gay theme of Calamus.

A couple fresh peas
Somehow break free from their pod
And into my mouth.
#dailyhaikuprompt - fresh peas
#haiku
#poem

grace - an #improv #poem
(And couldn't we all use a little more grace these days?)
https://muz4now.com/2015/grace-an-impr

grace - an #improv #poem
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

The long days are here
But only for a short time
Love them while they last.
#dailyhaikuprompt - long days
#haiku
#poem

Longest day or night
According to hemisphere
Celebrate solstice.
#dailyhaikuprompt - solstice
#haiku
#poem

A Poem: interdependence day
- An #improv #poem -
https://muz4now.com/2011/poem-0163-for

A Poem: interdependence day
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

Calamus 30 A promise and gift to California
Well they can't all be winners. A tedious poem of Western fantasy. Appropriately aspirational for 1860 but not a particularly interesting nor unique sentiment. Also an unkept promise: Whitman never reached the west coast.
Looking for my gay reading, all I have is this:
I and robust love belong among you
I do like Whitman's lustiness, in this case his "robust love". We know a thing or two about that in California.

First we overheat
Then we cool off too quickly
Earth as a sauna.
#dailyhaikuprompt - cool off
#haiku
#poem

When Bees Were Bees – an improvised poem
https://muz4now.com/web-stories/when-bees-were-bees-an-improvised-poem/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=muz4now/magazine/Muz4Now W…

When Bees Were Bees - an improvised poem
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

Fireflies in forests
Blipping the light romantic
Morse-coding a mate.
#dailyhaikuprompt - fireflies
#haiku
#poem

Calamus 27 O love!
Odd little poem. On the surface it's a celebration of reinvention, of metaphorically dying and leaving your corpse behind, "always living". I don't find it particularly compelling but it's a mood.
I can't honestly find a particularly gay reading here. Broadly speaking maybe, "coming out" is a kind of reinvention gay people do, leaving our old closeted persona dead and gone. I wouldn't argue Whitman is talking about that though.
One odd thing is the 1860 poem starts "O love!", but there's no love mentioned in the rest of the text. Whitman removed this line in later versions. So who or what is the love referring to?

Turning with the sun
Tournesol or sunflower
Always sees the light.
#dailyhaikuprompt - sunflower
#haiku
#poem

Calamus 19 Mind you the timid models of the rest, the majority?
A declaration of intellectual independence and a celebration of brotherly love. Honestly this poem feels a little clumsy to me, I can see why Whitman struck the awkward introducing lines in later editions.
As always, looking for the gay content:
Yet comes one, a Manhattanese, and ever at parting, kisses me lightly on the lips with robust love.
And I, in the public room, or on the crossing of the street, or on the ship's deck, kiss him in return
We observe that salute of American comrades
But I can't in all honestly read this use of "kissing" as erotic. Here the public kissing and the "salute of comrades" makes me think it's more of a fraternal kiss.
Which doesn't exclude a romantic kiss as well, or an erotic one. What's so vital about Calamus is how Whitman blends masculine sexual love with the love of comrades. I think both meanings are latent in every poem.

By its own nature
A sunflower cannot help
But look down on us.
#dailyhaikuprompt - sunflower
#haiku
#poem

Interdependence Day 3 - an #improv #poem about understanding https://muz4now.com/2018/interdependen

Interdependence Day 3 - an #improv #poem about understanding
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

Calamus 20 I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing
What a heartaching poem of loneliness and the need for the love of another! Just wonderful. I understand now why this poem is so popular, particularly as a gay poem. It is full of meaning and is quite clear about it.
I wondered how it could utter joyous leaves, standing alone there, without its friend, its lover near—for I knew I could not
There's a more cerebral interpretation of this work, particularly if you understand "leaves" to mean "pages in my poetry book Leaves of Grass". Whitman talking about his own poetic inspiration from lovers.
Which well enough. But I'm more interested in Whitman's expressed need for "manly love". Which is clearly on his mind constantly:
my own dear friends ... I believe lately I think of little else than of them
Also Whitman's own eroticization of nature and himself. Here speaking of the tree,
its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself

Compost or decay
Is it wanted or wasteful
Rotten perspective.
#dailyhaikuprompt - decay
#haiku
#poem

Delicate wind chimes
Outside single-pane windows
Make it hard to sleep.
#dailyhaikuprompt - wind chimes
#haiku
#poem

Some call it "Eggplant"
Others prefer "Aubergine"
Cartoon emoji.
#dailyhaikuprompt - eggplant
#haiku
#poem

One more coat of paint
Lightly sand between each coat
Yearly perfection.
#dailyhaikuprompt - sand
#haiku
#poem

Strange Parables – an #improv #poem #improvisation #spirituality

Strange Parables - an #improv #poem
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

Friend to butterflies
The common yarrow stands tall
Offering a snack.
#dailyhaikuprompt - yarrow
#haiku
#poem

When serving shaved ice
One simply must remember:
Syrup, not shave cream.
#dailyhaikuprompt - shaved ice
#haiku
#poem

Waterless so long
Parched to the point of cracking
The window box wilts.
#dailyhaikuprompt - parched
#haiku
#poem

The tulips are done
Time for the green leaves above
To bring needed shade.
#dailyhaikuprompt - green leaves
#haiku
#poem

Spring water washes
The greenest part of the glade
Fresh, cool, clear, and clean.
#dailyhaikuprompt - spring water
#haiku
#poem

Engaging in a
True traditional cookout
Must involve charcoal.
#dailyhaikuprompt - cookout
#haiku
#poem

Sweat without relief
Lying languid in the heat
Awaiting autumn.
#dailyhaikuprompt - languid
#haiku
#poem

Above the car lots
The tubular creatures dance
With a joyful air.
#dailyhaikuprompt - dance
#haiku
#poem

A distant rumble
A hush of expectancy
And a chance of rain.
#dailyhaikuprompt - rain
#haiku
#poem

When weeding the yard
It's maddening that tall grass
Has the deepest roots.
#dailyhaikuprompt - tall grass
#haiku
#poem