3/4/18

Untitled - Ryokan

I don't regard my life
as insufficient.
Inside the brushwood gate
there is a moon;
there are flowers.

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.

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

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.

10/11/17

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.