PARABLE OF FAITH - Louise Glück

Now, in twilight, on the palace steps

the king asks forgiveness of his lady.

He is not

duplicitous; he has tried to be

true to the moment; is there another way of being

true to the self?

The lady

hides her face, somewhat

assisted by the shadows. She weeps

for her past; when one has a secret life,

one's tears are never explained.

Yet gladly would the king bear

the grief of his lady: his

is the generous heart,

in pain as in joy.

Do you know

what forgiveness means? It means

the world has sinned, the world

must be pardoned—

"A man saw a ball of gold in the sky;" - Stephen Crane

A man saw a ball of gold in the sky;

He climbed for it,

And eventually he achieved it—

It was clay.

Now this is the strange part:

When the man went to the earth

And looked again,

Lo, there was the ball of gold.

Now this is the strange part:

It was a ball of gold.

Aye, by the heavens, it was a ball of gold.

A Simple Story - Gwen Harwood

A visiting conductor

     when I was seventeen,

took me back to his hotel room

     to cover the music scene.

I'd written a composition.

     Would wonders never cease –

here was a real musician

     prepared to hold my piece.

He spread my score on the counterpane

     with classic casualness,

and put one hand on the manuscript

     and the other down my dress.

It was hot as hell in The Windsor.

     I said I'd like a drink.

We talked across gin and grapefruit,

     and I heard the ice go clink

as I gazed at the lofty forehead

     of one who led the band,

and guessed at the hoarded sorrows

     no wife could understand.

I dreamed of a soaring passion

     as an egg might dream of flight,

while he read my crude sonata.

     If he'd said, ‘That bar's not right,’

or, ‘Have you thought of a coda?’

     or, ‘Watch that first repeat,’

or, ‘Modulate to the dominant’

     he'd have had me at his feet.

But he shuffled it all together,

     and said, ‘That's lovely, dear,’

as he put it down on the washstand

     in a way that made it clear

that I was no composer.

     And being young and vain,

removed my lovely body

     from one who'd scorned my brain.

I swept off like Miss Virtue

     down dusty Roma Street,

and heard the goods trains whistle

     WHO? WHOOOOOO? in aching heat.

"Living on hope is like being locked in a prison cell and the sun is shining so brightly through the window that your eyes become blind to the bars." - Henry Rollins

Living on hope is like being locked in a prison cell and the sun is

shining so brightly through the window that your eyes become blind

to the bars. As soon as you're blind and drunk on hope, they gotcha.

For a Senior Killed on Prom Night - Gail White

It's useless to pretend you would have been

a genius. I taught you and I know.

You made the team, but others made it win.

A ready smile made up for being slow.

You'd have been ordinary in the end:

the hardest worker someone ever had,

one woman's husband and one man's best friend,

recipient of cards for "world's best dad."

So why, where you'd have been, is there a blank

so huge, a hole where all thoughts go to die?

The world has only lost one of its rank

and file. You didn't even make me cry.

Why do I go outside at one a.m.

and search the stars as though I'd numbered them?

Telemachus' Kindness - Louise Glück

When I was younger I felt

sorry for myself

compulsively; in practical terms,

I had no father; my mother

lived at her loom hypothesizing

her husband's erotic life; gradually

I realized no child on that island had

a different story; my trials

were the general rule, common

to all of us, a bond

among us, therefore

with humanity: what

a life my mother had, without

compassion for my father's

suffering, for a soul

ardent by nature, thus

ravaged by choice, nor had my father

any sense of her courage, subtly

expressed as inaction, being

himself prone to dramatizing,

to acting out: I found

I could share these perceptions

with my closest friends, as they shared

theirs with me, to test them,

to refine them: as a grown man

I can look at my parents

impartially and pity them both: I hope

always to be able to pity them.

"There were things I wanted to tell you" - Henry Rollins

There were things I wanted to tell you

I couldn't get it together

I couldn't get past your eyes

After you were gone it hurt to have kept quiet

So easy to not say what you think

To not do what you want

Hard to take rejection

Easy to hurt someone else and not know it

Easy to make it hard

Telemachus' Guilt - Louise Glück

Patience of the sort my mother

practiced on my father

(which in his self-

absorption he mistook

for tribute though it was in fact

a species of rage--didn't he

ever wonder why he was

so blocked in expressing

his native abandon?): it infected

my childhood. Patiently

she fed me; patiently

she supervised the kindly

slaves who attended me, regardless

of my behavior, an assumption

I tested with increasing

violence. It seemed clear to me

that from her perspective

I didn't exist, since

my actions had

no power to disturb her: I was

the envy of my playmates.

In the decades that followed

I was proud of my father

for staying away

even if he stayed away for

the wrong reasons;

I used to smile

when my mother wept.

I hope now she could

forgive that cruelty; I hope

she understood how like

her own coldness it was,

a means of remaining

separate from what

one loves deeply.

Telemachus' Detachment - Louise Glück

When I was a child looking

at my parents' lives, you know

what I thought? I thought

heartbreaking. Now I think

heartbreaking, but also

insane. Also

very funny.

Death's Secret - Gösta Ågren

Poem (for Ema) - Nikki Giovanni

though i do wonder

why you intrigue me

i recognize that an exceptional moth

is always drawn

to an exceptional flame

you’re not at all what you appear

to be

though not so very different

i've not learned

the acceptable way of saying

you fascinate me

i’ve not even learned

how to say i like you

without frightening people

away

sometimes i see things

that aren’t really there

like warmth and kindness

when people are mean

but sometimes i see things

like fear and want to soothe it

or fatigue and want to share it

or love and want to receive it

is that weird

you think everyone is weird

though you’re not really hypocritical

you just practice not being

what you want to be

and fail to understand

how others would dare

to be otherwise

that’s weird to me

flames don’t flicker

forever

and moths are born to be burned

it’s an unusual way

to start a friendship

but nothing lasts forever

Love Poem - Richard Brautigan

It’s so nice

to wake up in the morning

all alone

and not have to tell somebody

you love them

when you don’t love them

any more

Picture by Unknown, found on Public Domain (if you own the rights and would like it removed, just contact me!). This is the full poem, not an excerpt.

Untitled - Franz Wright

Will I always be eleven,

lonely in this house,

reading books

that are too hard for me,

in the long fatherless hours.

The terrible hours of the window,

the rain-light

on the page,

awaiting the letter,

the phone call,

still your strange elderly child.

You Must Accept - Kate Light

You must accept that’s who he really is.

You must accept you cannot be his

unless he is yours. No compromise.

He is a canvas on which paint never dries;

a clay that never sets, steel that bends

in a breeze, a melody that when it ends

no one can whistle. He is not who

you thought. He’s not. He is a shoe

that walks away: “I will not go where you

want to go.” “Why, then, are you a shoe?”

“I’m not. I have the sole of a lover

but don’t know what love is.” “Discover

it, then.” “Will I have to go where you go?”

“Sometimes.” “Be patient with you?” “Yes.” “Then, no.”

You have to hear what he is telling you

and see what he is; how it is killing you.

At Dusk - Gösta Ågren

I will be forgotten,

he thinks. Oblivion is

a deep mother. No one

will touch you there; no one

will forget you any more.

Advice - Gösta Ågren

When the silence begins to feel

oppressive

people ought to talk to one another; otherwise

it will stop.

It's Good To Be Here - Alden Nowlan

I'm in trouble, she said

to him. That was the first

time in history that anyone

had ever spoken of me.

It was 1932 when she

was just fourteen years old

and men like him

worked all day for

one stinking dollar.

There's quinine, she said.

That's bullshit, he told her.

Then she cried and then

for a long time neither of them

said anything at all and then

their voices kept rising until

they were screaming at each other

and then there was another long silence and then

they began to talk very quietly and at last he said

well, I guess we'll just have to make the best of it.

While I lay curled up,

my heart beating,

in the darkness inside her.

Delay - Elizabeth Jennings

The radiance of the star that leans on me

Was shining years ago. The light that now

Glitters up there my eyes may never see,

And so the time lag teases me with how

Love that loves now may not reach me until

Its first desire is spent. The star's impulse

Must wait for eyes to claim it beautiful

And love arrived may find us somewhere else.

To the One Upstairs - Charles Simic

Boss of all bosses of the universe.

Mr. know-it-all, wheeler-dealer, wire-puller,

And whatever else you're good at.

Go ahead, shuffle your zeros tonight.

Dip in ink the comets' tails.

Staple the night with starlight.

You'd be better off reading coffee dregs,

Thumbing the pages of the Farmer's Almanac.

But no! You love to put on airs,

And cultivate your famous serenity

While you sit behind your big desk

With zilch in your in-tray, zilch

In your out-tray,

And all of eternity spread around you.

Doesn't it give you the creeps

To hear them begging you on their knees,

Sputtering endearments,

As if you were an inflatable, life-size doll?

Tell them to button up and go to bed.

Stop pretending you're too busy to take notice.

Your hands are empty and so are your eyes.

There's nothing to put your signature to,

Even if you knew your own name,

Or believed the ones I keep inventing,

As I scribble this note to you in the dark.

Homage to Isaac Newton - Janos Pilinszky

We commit what we do not commit,

and we do not commit what we commit.

Somewhere there is a terrible silence.

Towards that we gravitate.

Habits - Nikki Giovanni

i haven’t written a poem in so long

i may have forgotten how

unless writing a poem

is like riding a bike

or swimming upstream

or loving you

it may be a habit that once acquired

is never lost

but you say i’m foolish

of course you love me

but being loved of course

is not the same as being loved because

or being loved despite

or being loved

if you love me why

do i feel so lonely

and why do i always wake up alone

and why am i practicing

not having you to love

i never loved you that way

remains - Charles Bukowski

things are good as I am not dead yet

and the rats move in the beercans,

the papersacks shuffle like small dogs,

and her photographs are stuck onto a painting

by a dead German and she too is dead

and it took 14 years to know her

and if they give me another 14

I will know her yet . . .

her photos stuck over the glass

neither move nor speak,

but I even have her voice on tape,

and she speaks some evenings,

her again

so real she laughs

says the thousand things,

the one thing I always ignored;

this will never leave me:

that I had love

and love died;

a photo and a piece of tape

is not much, I have learned late,

but give me 14 days or 14 years,

I will kill any man

who would touch or take

whatever's left.

Poem To Be Read at 3 a.m. - Donald Justice

Excepting the diner

On the outskirts

The town of Ladora

At 3 a.m.

Was dark but

For my headlights

And up in

One second-story room

A single light

Where someone

Was sick or

Perhaps reading

As I drove past

At seventy

Not thinking

This poem

Is for whoever

Had the light on

One Art - Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

There is no greater crime than leaving - Bertolt Brecht

There is no greater crime than leaving.

In friends, what do you count on? Not on what they do.

You never can tell what they will do. Not on what they are. That

May change. Only on this: their not leaving.

He who cannot leave cannot stay. He who has a pass

In his pocket – will he stay when the attack begins? Perhaps

He will not stay.

If it goes badly with me, perhaps he will stay. But if it goes

Badly with him, perhaps he will leave.

Fighters are poor people. They cannot leave. When the attack

Begins they cannot leave.

He who stays is known. He who has left was not known. What left

Is different from what was here.

Before we go into battle I must know: have you a pass

In your coat pocket? Is a plane waiting for you behind the battlefield?

How many defeats do you want to survive? Can I send you away?

Well, then, let’s not go into battle.

Lamium - Louise Glück

This is how you live when you have a cold heart.

As I do: in shadows, trailing over cool rock,

under the great maple trees.

The sun hardly touches me.

Sometimes I see it in early spring, rising very far away.

Then leaves grow over it, completely hiding it. I feel it

glinting through the leaves, erratic,

like someone hitting the side of a glass with a metal spoon.

Living things don't all require

light in the same degree. Some of us

make our own light: a silver leaf

like a path no one can use, a shallow

lake of silver in the darkness under the great maples.

But you know this already.

You and the others who think

you live for truth and, by extension, love

all that is cold.

The Geranium - Theodore Roethke

When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,

She looked so limp and bedraggled,

So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,

Or a wizened aster in late September,

I brought her back in again

For a new routine--

Vitamins, water, and whatever

Sustenance seemed sensible

At the time: she'd lived

So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,

Her shriveled petals falling

On the faded carpet, the stale

Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.

(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)

The things she endured!--

The dumb dames shrieking half the night

Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,

Me breathing booze at her,

She leaning out of her pot toward the window.

Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me--

And that was scary--

So when that snuffling cretin of a maid

Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can,

I said nothing.

But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,

I was that lonely.