flower’s
petals to know that
Showing posts with label relationships. Show all posts
Showing posts with label relationships. Show all posts
3/3/19
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
The Art of Disappearing - Naomi Shihab Nye
When
they say Don't I know you?
say
no.
When
they invite you to the party
remember
what parties are like
before
answering.
Someone
telling you in a loud voice
they
once wrote a poem.
Greasy
sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then
reply.
If
they say We should get together
say
why?
It's
not that you don't love them anymore.
You're
trying to remember something
too
important to forget.
Trees.
The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell
them you have a new project.
It
will never be finished.
When
someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod
briefly and become a cabbage.
When
someone you haven't seen in ten years
appears
at the door,
don't
start singing him all your new songs.
You
will never catch up.
Walk
around feeling like a leaf.
Know
you could tumble any second.
Then
decide what to do with your time.
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.
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.
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.
9/25/18
THE MAN WHO NEVER LOSES HIS BALANCE - Stephen Dunn
He walks the high wire in his sleep.
The tent is blue, it is perpetual
afternoon. He is walking between
the open legs of his mother
and the grave. Always. The audience knows this
is out of their hands. The audience
is fathers whose kites are lost, children
who want to be terrified into joy.
He is so high above them, so capable
(with a single, calculated move)
of making them care for him
that he's sick of the risks
he never really takes.
The tent is blue. Outside is a world
that is blue. Inside him
a blueness that could crack
like china if he ever hit bottom.
Every performance, deep down,
he tries one real plunge
off to the side, where the net ends.
But it never ends.
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.
3/5/18
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.
Labels:
a wild,
ANGER,
avoidant,
blame,
Bukowski,
Charles,
Charles Bukowski,
child,
child abuse,
childhood,
children,
dysfunctional family,
father,
fresh wind blowing...,
hate,
parent,
parents,
psychology,
relationships
10/11/17
LONELY - Natalie Wee
I have taken to being in
public places
by myself. My cleverest trick
was
to hold intimacy against bone
without telling it my name.
Like any
unloved thing, I don’t know
if I’m real
when I’m not being touched.
Because who am I but who
I am to someone else?
I know now the ways of
nameless
birds & the cost of a
life built
from waiting. I go to any
window
I please, bare-handed,
hovering
a/part. Watching when
devotion
becomes duty. When soft
becomes
stranger. Look. I was soft
once, &
then I was a stranger to
myself. No tender mouth is
worth
a slow death. No heart is
worth
the belly of a beast. The
secret is:
tender attends the heels of
bruises.
The secret is: be bigger
than your alone.
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.
8/11/17
Depression, Too, Is a Kind of Fire - Taylor Mali
I’m an idiot because once
before we were married she
asked me whether I knew
that we would not be having
children
if we did get married, and I
said yes.
And because she knew I was
lying,
she asked if I was really
okay with that.
And because I’m an idiot I
said yes again.
And once during a fight, not
married
more than two years, she said
she felt like my first wife,
and I, like an idiot, assured
her that she was.
She worked out at the gym
five times a week
and smoked as many packs of
ultra lights,
and I’m an idiot because when
I asked her why,
She said, Because I hate myself and I want to die.
And I laughed and said
something I don’t recall,
something completely and
utterly insufficient.
From the roof of our
apartment,
I saw 40 or 50 people jump from
the towers
on a Tuesday morning—we used
to be able to see them to the south,
just as, to the north, we can
still see
(and by “we” I guess I mean
now just me)
the Empire State Building,
which still steeps me in
gratitude
because I’m an idiot—
out of the smoke with arms
flailing.
And I swear I saw a perfect
swan.
And I was going to write a
poem
about how fire is the only
thing
that can make a person jump
out a window.
And maybe I’m an idiot for
thinking I could have saved her—
call me her knight in shattered
armor—
could have loved her more,
or told the truth about
children.
But depression, too, is a
kind of fire.
And I know nothing of either.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)