4/8/16

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.

you fit into me - Margaret Atwood

you fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye

4/3/16

"In the desert" - Stephen Crane

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said: “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.”

3/8/16

THE FAIRY REEL - Neil Gaiman

If I were young as once I was, and dreams
     and death more distant then,
I wouldn't split my soul in two, and keep
     half in the world of men,
So half of me would stay at home, and
     strive for Faërie in vain,
While all the while my soul would stroll up
     narrow path, down crooked lane,
And there would meet a fairy lass and
     smile and bow with kisses three,
She'd pluck wild eagles from the air and
     nail me to a lightning tree
And if my heart would run from her or
     flee from her, be gone from her,
She’d wrap it in a nest of stars and then
     she'd take it on with her
Until one day she'd tire of it, all bored
     with it and done with it
She'd leave it by a burning brook, and off
     brown boys would run with it.
They'd take it and have fun with it and
     stretch it long and cruel and thin,
They'd slice it into four and then they'd
     string with it a violin.
And every day and every night they'd
     play upon my heart a song
So plaintive and so wild and strange that
     all who heard it danced along
And sang and whirled and sank and trod and
     skipped and slipped and reeled and rolled
Until, with eyes as bright as coals, they'd
     crumble into wheels of gold....

But I am young no longer now; for sixty
     years my heart's been gone
To play its dreadful music there, beyond
     the valley of the sun.
I watch with envious eyes and mind, the
     single–souled, who dare not feel
The wind that blows beyond the moon,
     who do not hear the Fairy Reel.
If you don't hear the Fairy Reel, they will
     not pause to steal your breath.
When I was young I was a fool. So wrap
     me up in dreams and death.

3/3/16

Breakfast - Jacques Prévert (translation by Lawrence Ferlinghetti)

He put the coffee
In the cup
He put the milk
In the cup of coffee
He put the sugar
In the café au lait
With the coffee spoon
He stirred
He drank the café au lait
And he set down the cup
Without a word to me
He lit
A cigarette
He made smoke-rings
With the smoke
He put the ashes
In the ash-tray
Without a word to me
Without a look at me
He got up
He put
His hat upon his head
He put his raincoat on
Because it was raining
And he left
In the rain
Without a word
Without a look at me
And I       I took
My head in my hand
And I cried.

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."