Showing posts with label Poems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poems. Show all posts

2/4/19

Decline - Friedrich Nietzsche

“He sinks, he falls, he’s done”—says who?
The truth is: he climbs down to you.
His over-bliss became too stark,
His over-light pursues your dark.

12/9/17

Strangers - Richard Shelton

we find ourselves at the exact place
where the light becomes darkness
and turn our faces toward one another

realizing we could be lovers we could
be anything we could even be friends
we could carry our scars
like banners we could pray to each other
and answer each other’s prayers
                 
this is the earth we can touch it
the mountains expose their nipples
to the last rays of the sun
and day lingers on the undersides of leaves

with so much need on the horizon
surely there is a heart around here somewhere
but we are characters from a book who have
come here on vacation
to listen to the pulse of the sea
which makes an affirmation beyond despair

those who have heard it
do not recommend it to anybody

we have heard the hypnotized telephone
ring itself into a trance of silence we have
seen the poor pass by on borrowed legs
we have been enameled by the sun

and as we are slowly going under water
where all light
is the light of a green stone broken open
we keep our distance it is all we have

8/10/17

LENS - Andrea Gibson


I’ve been practicing gratitude.
I’ve been skipping entire weeks.
Practicing a wider lens. Listening
for the bully’s heartbeat
Hearing it in my own chest.

I’ve been remembering the time I cried
in a cloud of tear gas at a peaceful protest.
How I decided I was too soft to last,
and then I decided to be softer.

I’ve been remembering way way back
to the moment they told me Jesus walked on water.
How I knew whatever I’d grow up to believe

I would never try to wrestle a miracle
away from anyone’s reason to live.
I’ve been remembering how I wrestled a miracle
away from your reason to live.

If only shame could wash me clean,
but that is never how healing works.
Nobody ever won anything from anyone
thinking the whole world was out of their league.
I’m sorry you know

what I look like when no one is looking.
I don’t expect anyone to believe
in justice and forgiveness at the same time.

If it’s any consolation
I feel like a ferris wheel in a snowbank
twenty years after they shut down the park.

If it’s any consolation I’ve been living in my head
whenever anyone tells me I have a good heart.
And I think about you. I think about you. 

11/22/16

TODAY MY ALARM WENT OFF AT 12:30PM - Mira Gonzalez


I stayed in bed for over an hour
looked at things on my phone
I felt slightly anxious about nothing particular
I walked downstairs and poured coffee into a jar
I asked a person on the internet if I should take drugs
I took drugs before the person had time to respond

I feel alienated by people who express concern about me without
defining their concern in terms of a specific solution or goal
I dont feel comforted by the idea of an afterlife
I dont want to continue experiencing things after I die
I want someone to pull my hair because I like the idea of someone
controlling my head without touching my head

what is the difference between being an independent person
and being a person who is accepting of loneliness

11/19/16

REPLICAS - Lawrence Raab

We were tooling along in Fred’s old jalopy,
thrown off our game
because the directions to the lunatic asylum were confusing.
I decided not to mention how appropriate
getting lost might be, maybe later

having to battle the elements to stay alive.
I’d been reading the old myths
and liked to imagine sailing through the clashing rocks
with only an oar for a weapon,
which wasn’t the most useful idea since we were heading

south of Tampa, trying to find our old friend
Adam, who might be waiting for a visit.
On the other hand, I thought, and then recalled
Adam having said far too often: On the other hand––
a knife is up close and personal.

People didn’t like to hear that kind of thing,
but we were sure he meant no harm,
even if in fact he did. We figured by now
he’d have forgotten the dangerous inclinations
of his youth, those days when he insisted

we’d all been misled by the voices
in our heads, then turned into replicas
of the people we thought we were. “Of course,”
Adam explained, “certain men choose
to be tempted by sirens. Others just let it happen.”

I told Fred that last part made sense, or sounded
like it should. “Damn,” Fred replied,
having taken another wrong turn.
“Not every kind of craziness makes sense.
Believe me, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.”

At first Adam was upset about being sent away,
but since then we’d heard
he’d grown accustomed to the quiet gardens
they let him putter about in. We imagined
him kneeling down in the soil

like his name-sake and weeding
something small and green,
wondering why he’d ever believed
what he had, or else why no one
had ever understood what he believed.

Or perhaps both thoughts vanished
while he concentrated on his task, half-listening
to the murmuring of the more distracted guests
as they explained to each other how easily
they had been deceived by their lives.

4/8/16

Do Not Make Things Too Easy - Martha Baird

Do not make things too easy.
There are rocks and abysses in the mind
As well as meadows.
There are things knotty and hard: intractable.
Do not talk to me of love and understanding.
I am sick of blandishments.
I want the rock to be met by a rock.
If I am vile, and behave hideously,
Do not tell me it was just a misunderstanding.

Debt - Sara Teasdale

What do I owe to you
     Who loved me deep and long?
You never gave my spirit wings
     Nor gave my heart a song.

But oh, to him I loved,
     Who loved me not at all,
I owe the little open gate
     That led through heaven’s wall.

3/2/16

The Crunch - Charles Bukowski

too much too little

too fat
too thin
or nobody.

laughter or
tears

haters
lovers

strangers with faces like
the backs of
thumb tacks

armies running through
streets of blood
waving winebottles
bayoneting and fucking
virgins.

an old guy in a cheap room
with a photograph of M. Monroe.

there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners

it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.

people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.

I suppose they never will be.
I don't ask them to be.

but sometimes I think about
it.

the beads will swing
the clouds will cloud
and the killer will behead the child
like taking a bite out of an ice cream cone.

too much
too little

too fat
too thin
or nobody

more haters than lovers.

people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad.

meanwhile I look at young girls
stems
flowers of chance.

there must be a way.

surely there must be a way that we have not yet
thought of.

who put this brain inside of me?

it cries
it demands
it says that there is a chance.

it will not say
"no."

2/8/16

when you wait for the dawn to crawl through the screen like a burglar to take your life away-- - Charles Bukowski

the snake had crawled the hole,
and she said,
tell me about
yourself.

and
I said,
I was beaten down
long ago
in some alley
in another
world.

and she said,
we're all
like pigs
slapped down some lane,
our
grassbrains
singing
toward the
blade.

by
god,
you're an
odd one,
I said.

we
sat there
smoking
cigarettes
at
5
in the morning.

My Father - Yehuda Amichai

The memory of my father is wrapped up in
white paper, like sandwiches taken for a day at work.

Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits
out of his hat, he drew love from his small body,

and the rivers of his hands
overflowed with good deeds.

1/31/16

If no one ever marries me - Laurence Alma-Tadema

If no one ever marries me,—
And I don't see why they should,
For nurse says I'm not pretty,
And I'm seldom very good—

If no one ever marries me
I shan't mind very much;
I shall buy a squirrel in a cage,
And a little rabbit-hutch:

I shall have a cottage near a wood,
And a pony all my own,
And a little lamb quite clean and tame,
That I can take to town:

And when I'm getting really old,—
At twenty-eight or nine—
I shall buy a little orphan-girl
And bring her up as mine.

12/11/15

What She Wanted - Topher Cusumano

She’s walking down the street in a pair of six-inch, red, patent leather heels.
She always wished she was taller.
She shaves off her eyebrows and paints them back on.
She’ll be the first to tell you she enjoys the attention—
She’s okay with that.

‘Damn, I wanna fuck this girl,’
he thinks to himself as he follows her home,
the Boston streets slowly becoming narrower,
fewer streetlights scattered in front of the old, brick row-houses,
thick, circular patches of light surrounded by shadow.

He can hear her clicking as she walks.
She walks fast.
She knows where she’s going.
He could hear her clicking only half a block ahead of him.

“Damn, I wanna fuck this girl, yo.
Yo honey, with the fat ass!”
She stops.
She turns.
“Me?” she asks.
Softly, ladylike.
The voice he wants her to have.
The voice you can fuck, and still muffle with only one hand.

“Yeah you mommy—
You wanna come home with me tonight?
You looking real good, girl—
I wanna fuck that ass of yours real good, girl.”

“Me?” she asks again.
“You wanna fuck… me?”

She wears her tits like panties,
She’s got tits built for warfare, this girl.
She’s a battleship, unsinkable by nature.
Scars from girlhood across her thighs,
Wears short skirts so they wonder where she’s been.
She’s been… everywhere.

She walks back toward him.
“Yeah that’s right mommy.
You know what you want.”

And she does.
She knows exactly what she wants.

“You wanna fuck me?” she asks.
They’re face-to-face now.
She notices how dead his eyes are.
She knows how many girls he’s seen ripped apart,
Lying under him.

“You wanna fuck me?”
“Yeah mommy.”
She remembers fourteen.
“You wanna fuck me?”

12/9/15

Leo, His Life - Gösta Ågren

It was difficult to be, not
for the human in him, but for
the animal, which had not the strength to carry
the leaden weight of consciousness. The knowledge
that he was alive prevented him
from living. It formed
a sleepless face that looked
at his emotions until they crept
away like actors
from a bad performance
and that thought that he thought,
until each thought deepened to
nothing in this cold light. He
was himself the enemy, and wrote
books in order to defeat himself,
but in such a battle the only
possible victory is too great.
He won. In the silence
afterwards came a few
last fumbling words.

10/25/15

The Picture of Grandfather and Grandmother - Gösta Ågren

There they stand, seemingly without
secrets, for years and poverty
have made them distinct. Yet
the camera lies, like all who
say nothing except merely
the truth. He did as others do,
became a father, built his house.
She helped sick folk, practiced
kindness. But all his movements
were fingers of ash, fumbling
as the cold floor-draught
willed. Her kindness resembled all
other: a sternness that never
exhorts, but demands. Early
she knew it was
her only protection. So
it may have been, but perhaps
our life is only a line
in the poem about our life. Perhaps
we are not the name
we write, but
the nameless hand
that grasps the pen.