flower’s
petals to know that
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
3/3/19
1/29/19
AT HIS HOUSE - Stephen Dunn
In my friend's face it's not easy to separate
what's serenity, what's despair.
What the mouth suggests the eyes correct,
and what looks like acceptance
is a kind of détente, the world allowed
to encroach only so far.
At his house, we put aside
the large questions: Is there? And if so?
replace them with simple chores.
We bring vegetables in from the garden.
We shuck corn. Is it possible
to be a good citizen without saying a word?
Both his wives thought not, wanted love
to have a language he never learned.
He'd make wine for them from dandelions.
Sundays he'd serve them breakfast in bed.
In his toolbox he was sure he had a tool
for whatever needed to be fixed.
The deed reveals the man, he says.
I don't tell him that it's behind deeds
he and I often hide.
I've got a face for noon, a face for dusk,
a fact he lets slide. Both of us think friendship
is about what needn't be said.
It seems we're a couple of halves, men
almost here, hardly there. At his house less
feels good. I always come back for more.
10/23/18
HURLING CROWBIRDS AT MOCKINGBARS - Buddy Wakefield
If
we were created in God’s image
then
when God was a child
he
smushed fire ants with his fingertips
and
avoided tough questions.
There
are ways around being the go-to person.
Even
for ourselves.
Even
when the answer is clear
like
the holy water gentiles were drinking
when
they realized
“Forgiveness
is the release of all hope for a better past.”
I
thought those were chime shells in your pocket
so
I chucked a quarter at it
hoping
to hear some part of you respond on a high note.
You
acted like I was hurling crowbirds at mockingbars
then
you abandoned me for not making sense.
Evidently
I don’t experience things as rationally as you do.
For
example, I know mercy
when
I have enough money to change the jukebox
at
a gay bar.
You
know mercy whenever
someone
shoves a stick of morphine
straight
up into your heart.
Goddamn
it felt amazing
the
days you were happy to see me.
So
I smashed a beehive against the ocean
to
try and make our splash last longer.
Remember
all the honey
had
me looking like a jellyfish ape
but
you walked off the water
in
a porcupine of light, strands of gold
drizzled
out to the tips of your wasps.
This
is an apology letter to the both of us
for
how long it took me to let things go.
It
was not my intention to make such a production
of
the emptiness between us,
playing
tuba on the tombstone of a soprano
to
try and keep some dead singer’s perspective alive.
It’s
just that I could have swore you sung me a love song back there
and
that you meant it
but
I guess some people just chew with their mouth open.
So
I ate ear plugs alive with my throat, hoping they’d get lodged
deep
enough inside the empty spots that I wouldn’t have to hear you
leaving,
so I wouldn’t have to listen to my heart keep saying
all
my eggs were in a basket of red flags, all my eyes to a bucket
of
blindfolds in the cupboard with the muzzles and the gauze.
I
didn’t mean to speed so far out and off, trying to drive
your
nickels to a well
when
you were happy to let those wishes drop.
But
I still show up for gentleman practice
in
the company of lead dancers
hoping
their grace will get stuck in my shoes.
Is
that a handsome shadow on my breath, sweet woman,
or
is it a cattle call in a school of fish? Still
dance
with me. Less like a waltz for panic,
more
for the way we’d hoped to swing
the
night we took off everything
and
we were swinging for the fences.
Don’t
hold it against my love. You know I wanna breathe deeper
than
this. I didn’t mean to look so serious, didn’t mean
to
act like a filthy floor, didn’t mean to turn us both
into
some cutting board
but
there were knives stuck
in
the words where I came from.
Too
much time in the back of my words.
I
pulled knives from my back and my words.
I
cut trombones from the moment you slipped away.
And
I know it left me lookin’ like a knife fight, lady.
Boy
I know it left me feelin’ like a shotgun shell.
You
know I know I might’ve gone and lost my breath
but
I wanna show you how I found my breath to death.
It
was buried under all the wind instruments
hidden
in your castanets. Goddamn. If you ever wanna know
how
it felt when you left, if you ever wanna come inside
just
knock on the spot
where
I finally pressed stop
playing
musical chairs with your exit signs.
I’m
gonna cause you a miracle
when
you see the way I kept God’s image alive.
“Forgiveness
is for anyone
who
needs safe passage through my mind.”
If
I really was created in God’s image
then
when God was a boy
he
wanted to grow up to be a man.
A
good man.
And
when God was a man - a good man - he started
telling
the truth in order to get honest responses.
He’d
say,
Yeah, I know… I
really should’ve worn my cross.
Again. But I don’t
wanna scare the gentiles off.
That is not what I
came here to do.
He
said,
I’m pretty sure
I just came here
to love you.
10/22/18
FLIGHT - J.E. Foerster
As
a child I tossed
all
my imaginary friends
out
the window of a fast moving train
because
I wanted to feel my fist
break
open as I freed them,
as
each of their bodies
whipped
against the siding,
their
insides: snow
dispersing
into wind,
their
little heads rolling
across
the yellow plains.
Because
I believed they would return.
But
none have since.
Not
even the ones I didn’t love.
9/30/18
CONVERSATION WITH A STONE - Wisława Szymborska
I knock at the stone's front door.
“It's only me, let me come in.
I want to enter your insides,
have a look round,
breathe my fill of you.”
“Go away,” says the stone.
“I'm shut tight.
Even if you break me to pieces,
we'll all still be closed.
You can grind us to sand,
we still won't let you in.”
I knock at the stone's front door.
“It's only me, let me come in.
I've come out of pure curiosity.
Only life can quench it.
I mean to stroll through your palace,
then go calling on a leaf, a drop of water.
I don't have much time.
My mortality should touch you.”
“I'm made of stone,” says the stone,
“and must therefore keep a straight face.
Go away.
I don't have the muscles to laugh.”
I knock at the stone's front door.
“It's only me, let me come in.
I hear you have great empty halls inside you,
unseen, their beauty in vain,
soundless, not echoing anyone's steps.
Admit you don't know them well yourself.”
“Great and empty, true enough,” says the stone,
“but there isn't any room.
Beautiful, perhaps, but not to the taste
of your poor senses.
You may get to know me, but you'll never know me through.
My whole surface is turned toward you,
all my insides turned away.”
I knock at the stone's front door.
“It's only me, let me come in.
I don't seek refuge for eternity.
I'm not unhappy.
I'm not homeless.
My world is worth returning to.
I'll enter and exit empty-handed.
And my proof I was there
will be only words,
which no one will believe.”
“You shall not enter,” says the stone.
“You lack the sense of taking part.
No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part.
Even sight heightened to become all-seeing
will do you no good without a sense of taking part.
You shall not enter, you have only a sense of what that sense
should be,
only its seed, imagination.”
I knock at the stone's front door.
“It's only me, let me come in.
I haven't got two thousand centuries,
so let me come under your roof.”
“If you don't believe me,” says the stone,
“just ask the leaf, it will tell you the same.
Ask a drop of water, it will say what the leaf has said.
And, finally, ask a hair from your own head.
I am bursting with laughter, yes, laughter, vast laughter,
although I don't know how to laugh.”
I knock at the stone's front door.
“It's only me, let me come in.”
“I don't have a door,” says the stone.
9/28/18
Popular Romance - Paul Guest
To hum in a smoke-dank alley a song
by Elvis
was not the height of my love for
you. To turn
my arm from its socket like a
hateful thing
was not devotion only. To speak your
name
like a spell to my imagined foes was
not
peace, no, not ever. Rather, you
were a stone
I licked and pretended to eat. You
were
ever a dream of falling. An odor of
smoke.
You were the design of my worst
crimes. What I stole for love added
up.
It added up to nothing. To the air
perfumed
by an absent woman. To a box
filled with crushed chalk. God save
me
from the stars, once and for all—
I have had enough. Let me love
anything
but that: let me go free and dream
of green oceans and the surf
that batters some other world to
sleeplessness.
O. It is enough to whisper only
this. To speak to the flame in your
breast
and hear nothing else. Once
I believed I could possess
what touched you: the worn sweater,
or the song on the radio
that meant nothing and all in that
instant.
Against your door I pressed
my ear, and heard nothing, the
whisper
of water, maybe, a breath of cool
air—
the gossip of your absence—
and nothing in me could knock or
wait,
and all around me the night
spread like water through a rag,
and I let my hands drop whatever
they held.
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.
9/26/18
THE POEM - Franz Wright
It
was like getting a love letter from a tree
Eyes
closed forever to find you—
There
is a life which
if
I could have it
I
would have chosen for myself from the beginning
7/10/18
After Years - Ted Kooser
Today,
from a distance, I saw you
walking
away, and without a sound
the
glittering face of a glacier
slid
into the sea. An ancient oak
fell
in the Cumberlands, holding only
a
handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering
corn to her chickens looked up
for
an instant. At the other side
of
the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the
size of our own sun exploded
and
vanished, leaving a small green spot
on
the astronomer's retina
as
he stood in the great open dome
of
my heart with no one to tell.
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.
Labels:
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emotional abuse,
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sharon olds,
The Forms
12/2/17
Do the Dead Know What Time It Is? - Kenneth Patchen
The old guy put down his beer.
Son, he said,
(and a girl came over to the table where we were:
asked us by Jack Christ to buy her a drink.)
Son, I am going to tell you something
The like of which nobody ever was told.
(and the girl said, I've got nothing on tonight;
how about you and me going to your place?)
I am going to tell you the story of my mother's
Meeting with God.
(and I whispered to the girl: I don't have a room,
but, maybe . . .)
She walked up to where the top of the world is
And He came right up to her and said
So at last you've come home.
(but maybe what?
I thought I'd like to stay here and talk to you.)
My mother started to cry and God
Put His arms around her.
(about what?
Oh, just talk . . . we'll find something.)
She said it was like a fog coming over her face
And light was everywhere and a soft voice saying
You can stop crying now.
(what can we talk about that will take all night?
and I said that I didn't know.)
You can stop crying now.
10/8/17
Thank-You Note - Wisława Szymborska (Translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak)
I owe a lot
to those I do not love.
Relief in accepting
others care for them more.
Joy that I am not
wolf to their sheep.
Peace be with them
for with them I am free
––love neither gives
nor knows how to take these
things.
I don't wait for them
from window to door.
Almost as patient
as a sun dial,
I understand
what love never could.
I forgive
what love never would.
Between rendezvous and letter
no eternity passes,
only a few days or weeks.
Our trips always turn out
well:
concerts are enjoyed,
cathedrals toured,
landscapes in focus.
And when seven rivers and
mountains
come between us,
they are the rivers and
mountains
found on any map.
The credit's theirs
if I live in three
dimensions,
in a non-lyrical and
non-rhetorical space,
with a real, ever-shifting
horizon.
They don't even know
how much they carry in their
empty hands.
"I owe them
nothing,"
love would have said
on this open topic.
The More Loving One - W. H. Auden
Looking up at the stars, I
know quite well
That, for all they care, I
can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is
the least
We have to dread from man or
beast.
How should we like it were
stars to burn
With a passion for us we
could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be
me.
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a
damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all
day.
Were all stars to disappear
or die,
I should learn to look at an
empty sky
And feel its total dark
sublime,
Though this might take me a
little time.
5/5/17
The Swan At Edgewater Park - Ruth L. Schwartz
Isn’t one of your prissy richpeoples’ swans
Wouldn’t
be at home on some pristine pond
Chooses
the whole stinking shoreline, candy wrappers,
condoms
in its tidal fringe
Prefers
to curve its muscular, slightly grubby neck
into the body of a Great Lake,
Swilling
whatever it is swans swill,
Chardonnay
of algae with bouquet of crud,
While
Clevelanders walk by saying Look
at that big duck!
Beauty
isn’t the point here; of course
the swan is beautiful,
But
not like Lorie at 16, when
Everything
was possible—no
More
like Lorie at 27
Smoking
away her days off in her dirty kitchen,
Her
kid with asthma watching TV,
The
boyfriend who doesn’t know yet she’s gonna
Leave
him, washing his car out back—and
He’s
a runty little guy, and drinks too much, and
It’s
not his kid anyway, but he loves her, he
Really
does, he loves them both—
That’s
the kind of swan this is.
5/3/17
Five of Swords, for all my death girls - Marty McConnell
Betsy’s in the second stall
practicing
with a plastic razor, so I
lie on the floor
to listen for the janitor,
the cart’s
loose wheel squeaking our
names down
the evening-empty hallway.
the weeks
she was at Lutheran General,
I didn’t
go to visit. but I know from
her stories
what the doors looked like,
closing,
how they strapped her to the
bed
for her own protection. we’re 17
and I adore her despair. I
think she’s shining,
fearless, carving herself a
body that’s nothing
but light. on the way home,
she lets me
drive. tells me there’s a
trick
to disintegrating in
increments subtle enough
not to trip the alarm wires,
to hiding cigarettes
and death from therapists and
parents and this,
all my girls have had down:
how to go and go
until the night is too
fragile or grimy
and then the fanfare, the
wild dive
from the spire, the water
tower, the clock
yanking its hands back, how
to dangle
from the spotlight once
everybody’s
watching. 1999: we lie on
Angie’s futon
searching the phonebook for
institutions
that will take her without
insurance, curl
our bodies into still commas
of want
to wait for morning. they
take
her shoelaces, and her
cigarettes, and I watch.
they give her forms and more
forms
and I watch. they walk her to
the room
with its single bed and
single dresser
and unsmashable mirror and I
ride
the long, high buzz of the
door back
to New York. 2003: Georgiana
is an expert
in suicide and poetry. her
medicine cabinet rattles
like a jar of vengeful bees.
she wants me
to find her. all our idols
are martyrs, not one of them
a saint. her hair drops like
cabernet all the way
to her waist. and how she
needs me. my simple body
becomes bread in her mouth,
I’m whiskey,
an obliteration who’ll get up
in the morning
to call the hospital and make
coffee. oh,
my pretty ones in love with
the beast
of disappearing, there are
many ways
to give birth. not one is
without pain.
there are almost as many ways
to die
as there are to love.
tonight, I drink to you
who chose to keep going, who
moved
through my body like a
chemical
I could not keep. the night
stands outside
like a hungry dog on an old
chain, the scent
of lilies rising from the
half moons of his teeth.
go ahead. tuck your babies
into bed
and lovers’ hair behind their
soft ears, as if
there’s nothing left to fear.
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