Showing posts with label childhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label childhood. Show all posts

7/12/22

The Derelict - Sharon Olds

He passes me on the street, his hair
matted, skin polished with grime,
muttering, suit stained and stiffened—
and yet he is so young, his blond beard like a
sign of beauty and power. But his hands,
strangely flat, as if nerveless, hang and
flap slightly as he walks, like hands of
someone who has had polio, hands
that cannot be used. I smell the waste of his
piss, I see the ingot of his beard,
and think of my younger brother, his beauty,
coinage and voltage of his beard, his life
he is not using, like a violinist whose
hands have been crushed so he cannot play—
I who was there at the crushing of his hands
and helped to crush them.

3/27/20

Lost - Charles Bukowski

they say that hell is crowded, yet,
when you’re in hell,
you always seem to be alone.
& you can’t tell anyone when you’re in hell
or they’ll think you’re crazy
& being crazy is being in hell
& being sane is hellish too.

those who escape hell, however,
never talk about it
& nothing much bothers them after that.
I mean, things like missing a meal,
going to jail, wrecking your car,
or even the idea of death itself.

when you ask them,
“how are things?”
they’ll always answer, “fine, just fine…”

once you’ve been to hell and back,
that’s enough
it’s the greatest satisfaction known to man.

once you’ve been to hell and back,
you don’t look behind you when the floor creaks
and the sun is always up at midnight
and things like the eyes of mice
or an abandoned tire in a vacant lot
can make you smile
once you’ve been to hell and back.

1/30/19

COLLECTING FUTURE LIVES - Stephen Dunn

Now that everybody was dead
only he and his brother knew
the blood secrets, the unequal
history each nervous system
keeps and rehearses
into a story, a life.
Over the years they’d agreed
to invent and remember
a long hum of good times,
love breaking through
during card games,
their father teaching them
to skip stones
under the Whitestone Bridge.
The smart liar in them
knew these stories
were for their children
who, that very moment
over dinner, were collecting
their future lives.
But sometimes
in their twice-a-year visits
late at night
when their wives had tired
of the old repetitions,
they’d bring up the silences
in the living room
after a voice had been raised,
father’s drinking, mother’s
long martyrdom before the gods
of propriety and common sense.
In their mannerisms
each could see the same ghosts.
And if they allowed themselves
to keep talking,
if they’d had enough to drink,
love would be all
that mattered, the love
they were cheated of
and the love they got,
the parental love
that if remembered at all
had been given, they decided,
and therefore could be given again.

10/31/18

The Sign of Saturn - Sharon Olds

Sometimes my daughter looks at me with an
amber black look, like my father
about to pass out from disgust, and I remember
she was born under the sign of Saturn,
the father who ate his children. Sometimes
the dark, silent back of her head
reminds me of him unconscious on the couch
every night, his face turned away.
Sometimes I hear her talking to her brother
with that coldness that passed for reason in him,
that anger hardened by will, and when she rages
into her room, and slams the door,
I can see his vast blank back
when he passed out to get away from us
and lay while the bourbon turned, in his brain,
to coal. Sometimes I see that coal
ignite in her eyes. As I talk to her,
trying to persuade her toward the human, her little
clear face tilts as if she can
not hear me, as if she were listening
to the blood in her own ear, instead,
her grandfather’s voice.

10/5/18

1988 - Andrea Gibson

It was the year your mother
put her cigarette out on your arm.
The year you forgave her so hard
you stopped crying for good.

I was on the other side of the world
watching my father shine his knives.
I was trying to get the nerve to tell him
who to kill.

But he never figured out
there was someone to kill.
Collected knives like art
and hung them on our walls.

That autumn I made a person
by stuffing a pile of dead leaves
into an old pair of clothes.
Maybe you did too. Maybe

you found a pumpkin for a head
and dug it hollow with your hands.

Friend, if memories had been seeds
we could have chosen not to plant
do you think we would have ever found each other?

Do you believe in the magnet of scars? I believe

people who have been through hell
will build their love from the still burning coals.

Our friendship is a well-heated home
where we always agree on what is art

and what is something to sharpen
and hold in our ready hands.

10/3/18

VOLUNTARY - JR Walsh

My little sister said why a lot. Why this? Why that? Why everything.
My father said, Stop trying to answer every question every time.
So I said, She wants to know why so I’m telling her.

My father said, She doesn’t care. It’s involuntary.
She’s two years old and wants you to talk to her.
I’m tired of both of you. 

I didn’t ask why. 

My father left for work.
My sister wanted to know why.
So I said, To get away from you.

Then my mother said, Why’s your sister crying?
I didn’t answer why.
Maybe my father was right.

9/27/18

The Fear of Oneself - Sharon Olds

As we get near the house, taking off our gloves,
the air forming a fine casing of
ice around each hand,
you say you believe I would hold up under torture
for the sake of our children. You say you think I have
courage. I lean against the door and weep,
the tears freezing on my cheeks with brittle
clicking sounds.
I think of the women standing naked
on the frozen river, the guards pouring
buckets of water over their bodies till they
glisten like trees in an ice storm.

I have never thought I could take it, not even
for the children. It is all I have wanted to do,
to stand between them and pain. But I come from a
long line
of women
who put themselves
first. I lean against the huge dark
cold door, my face glittering with
glare ice like a dangerous road,
and think about hot pokers, and goads,
and the skin of my children, the delicate, tight,
thin, top layer of it
covering their whole bodies, softly
glimmering.

7/9/18

DAUGHTER - Lisel Mueller

My next poem will be happy,
I promise myself. Then you come
with your deep eyes, your tall jeans,
your narrow hands, your wit,
your uncanny knowledge, and
your loneliness. All the flowers
your father planted, all
the green beans that have made it,
all the world’s recorded pianos
and this exhilarating day
cannot change that.

3/11/18

intellectualism - Nikki Giovanni

sometimes i feel like i just get in
everybody’s way
when i was a little girl
i used to go read
or make fudge
when i got bigger i
read
or picked my nose
that’s what they called
intelligence
or when i got older
intellectualism
but it was only
that i was in the way

3/5/18

a wild, fresh wind blowing... - Charles Bukowski


I should not have blamed only my father, but,
he was the first to introduce me to
raw and stupid hatred.
he was really best at it: anything and everything made him
mad—things of the slightest consequence brought his hatred quickly
to the surface
and I seemed to be the main source of his
irritation.
I did not fear him
but his rages made me ill at heart
for he was most of my world then
and it was a world of horror but I should not have blamed only
my father
for when I left that... home... I found his counterparts
everywhere: my father was only a small part of the
whole, though he was the best at hatred
I was ever to meet.
but others were very good at it too: some of the
foremen, some of the street bums, some of the women
I was to live with,
most of the women, were gifted at
hating—blaming my voice, my actions, my presence
blaming me
for what they, in retrospect, had failed
at.
I was simply the target of their discontent
and in some real sense
they blamed me
for not being able to rouse them
out of a failed past; what they didn't consider was
that I had my troubles too—most of them caused by
simply living with them.
I am a dolt of a man, easily made happy or even
stupidly happy almost without cause
and left alone I am mostly content.

but I've lived so often and so long with this hatred
that
my only freedom, my only peace is when I am away from
them, when I am anywhere else, no matter where—
some fat old waitress bringing me a cup of coffee
is in comparison
like a fresh wild wind blowing.

3/2/18

The Forms - Sharon Olds

I always had the feeling my mother would
die for us, jump into a fire
to pull us out, her hair burning like
a halo, jump into water, her white
body going down and turning slowly,
the astronaut whose hose is cut
falling
         into
              blackness. She would have
covered us with her body, thrust her
breasts between our chests and the knife,
slipped us into her coat pocket
outside the showers. In disaster, an animal
mother, she would have died for us,

but in life as it was
she had to put herself
first.
She had to do whatever he
told her to do to the children, she had to
protect herself. In war, she would have
died for us, I tell you she would,
and I know: I am a student of war,
of gas ovens, smothering, knives,
drowning, burning, all the forms
in which I have experienced her love.

3/1/18

The Clasp - Sharon Olds

She was four, he was one, it was raining, we had colds,
we had been in the apartment two weeks straight,
I grabbed her to keep her from shoving him over on his
face, again, and when I had her wrist
in my grasp I compressed it, fiercely, for a couple
of seconds, to make an impression on her,
to hurt her, our beloved firstborn, I even almost
savored the stinging sensation of the squeezing, the
expression, into her, of my anger,
"Never, never again," the righteous
chant accompanying the clasp. It happened very
fast—grab, crush, crush,
crush, release—and at the first extra
force, she swung her head, as if checking
who this was, and looked at me,
and saw me—yes, this was her mom,
her mom was doing this. Her dark,
deeply open eyes took me
in, she knew me, in the shock of the moment
she learned me. This was her mother, one of the
two whom she most loved, the two
who loved her most, near the source of love
was this.

5/24/17

HEAVENLY CREATURE - Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz


For Missy


I remember the day you showed up at the bus stop:
quiet, pale, a thick veil of dark hair, we stared

at each other through overgrown bangs. We were just
beginning our dry sentences at Baldi Middle School.

In those days, our jeans would be tattooed weekly
with the coded names of every boy who flicked

his eyes our way. The backs of our hands became
necks and lips for practicing on. I once even

doused my backpack with my brother’s cologne,
a sad effort to at least smell like I’d had a boyfriend.

Walking around your housing complex, we’d stare
through the windshields of every man who drove by.

We thought of our bodies as dangerous chemicals,
our breasts as match tips waiting for love’s flinty gaze

We were sure all the boys around had firecracker hearts
just waiting to explode. And look, I know I know I know

I am not telling the whole truth. Things in your house
were different, were not right, were accepted because

maybe no one knew any better, or maybe they did
and didn’t care. And whenever the whole dark truth

would spill out, I remember I’d gather my features
into the center of my face, unable to figure out

the right combination for my concern, for fresh alarm.
I’d forget how to sit, how to blink, breathe. It’s true,

sometimes you look back and all the things
you should have done rise up like volcanic islands,

whole civilizations, whole existences, whole lifetimes.
But what did we know then? Fourteen, I took

the hammer of my dumb tongue and tried to tap
comfort into your impossibly small ears,

your impossibly small fists. We were kids,
and the future was our dependable escape plan.

We’d be gone soon, so you had just better suffer through
it all now. We’d be gone, so until then, I tried

to make you laugh. I’m sorry I never realized
I could’ve unlocked your exit earlier, that I

could’ve released your story from the shogun
of my own throat. The letters you send me now

are like postcards from that hopeful future:
you are okay, you are alright, with no return address.

So this poem is a telegram to let you know that
I still think about you, that I’m still proud of you,

that when I remember you, I always remember you
as beautiful.

12/15/16

when the one you thought, finally, wouldn't, does, - Marty McConnell

where do you go? the hole in your hands
keeps getting bigger. first a pencil falls through.
then your teacup, then entire bodies

like light, like you’re made of nothing stronger
than tissue, than sugar heated and spread
to look like glass. not the real thing. not you.
your atoms sit so far apart, your lovers

walk right through. one might say, over
the top of you. but no need for that, when you
can bend around their many departures, the most
porous door. she came back. they always

come back. why not. you are not a creature
of consequences. one way to survive a fall
is to believe very strongly that you
do not have bones. another

is to watch the hole in your body grow
until you are nothing but hole, and who
doesn’t love a hole. you’re the great circle
they can write their lives inside, a flat

unused womb they can crawl into. in this
way, you are useful. this way, you can sleep
in the house that raised you.

11/7/16

Backwards (For Saaid Shire) - Warsan Shire

The poem can start with him walking backwards into a room.
He takes off his jacket and sits down for the rest of his life;
that's how we bring Dad back.
I can make the blood run back up my nose, ants rushing into a hole.
We grow into smaller bodies, my breasts disappear,
your cheeks soften, teeth sink back into gums.
I can make us loved, just say the word.
Give them stumps for hands if even once they touched us without consent,
I can write the poem and make it disappear.
Step-Dad spits liquor back into glass,
Mum's body rolls back up the stairs, the bone pops back into place,
maybe she keeps the baby.
Maybe we're okay kid?
I'll rewrite this whole life and this time there'll be so much love,
you won't be able to see beyond it.

You won't be able to see beyond it,
I'll rewrite this whole life and this time there'll be so much love.
Maybe we're okay kid,
maybe she keeps the baby.
Mum's body rolls back up the stairs, the bone pops back into place,
Step-Dad spits liquor back into glass.
I can write the poem and make it disappear,
give them stumps for hands if even once they touched us without consent,
I can make us loved, just say the word.
Your cheeks soften, teeth sink back into gums
we grow into smaller bodies, my breasts disappear.
I can make the blood run back up my nose, ants rushing into a hole,
that's how we bring Dad back.
He takes off his jacket and sits down for the rest of his life.
The poem can start with him walking backwards into a room.

9/7/16

BROTHER - Richard Shelton

you still carry
your guilt around for company
I will not deprive you of it
but I have an empty space
where my hate lived
while I nursed it
as if it were a child

brother my only
brother it was too late for us
before we were born

it was too late
before you learned to be brutal
and I learned to be weak

your childhood
was a hallway of doors
each closing just as you
got to it
but I was younger
and all the doors were closed
before I could walk

how could I have expected you
to save me when you could
not save yourself

brother my only
brother if not from you
from whom did I learn
so much despair

I went in search
of a father and found you
with a whip in your hand
but what were you searching for
in such dark places
where I was searching for love

7/10/16

On An Unsociable Family - Elizabeth Hands

O what a strange parcel of creatures are we,
Scarce ever to quarrel, or even agree;
We all are alone, though at home altogether,
Except to the fire constrained by the weather;
Then one says, ‘’Tis cold’, which we all of us know,
And with unanimity answer, ‘’Tis so’:
With shrugs and with shivers all look at the fire,
And shuffle ourselves and our chairs a bit nigher;
Then quickly, preceded by silence profound,
A yawn epidemical catches around:
Like social companions we never fall out,
Nor ever care what one another’s about;
To comfort each other is never our plan,
For to please ourselves, truly, is more than we can.