Decline - Friedrich Nietzsche

“He sinks, he falls, he’s done”—says who?

The truth is: he climbs down to you.

His over-bliss became too stark,

His over-light pursues your dark.

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

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. 

TODAY MY ALARM WENT OFF AT 12:30PM - Mira Gonzalez

I stayed in bed for over an hour
looked at things on my phone
I felt slightly anxious about nothing particular
I walked downstairs and poured coffee into a jar
I asked a person on the internet if I should take drugs
I took drugs before the person had time to respond

I feel alienated by people who express concern about me without
defining their concern in terms of a specific solution or goal
I dont feel comforted by the idea of an afterlife
I dont want to continue experiencing things after I die
I want someone to pull my hair because I like the idea of someone
controlling my head without touching my head

what is the difference between being an independent person
and being a person who is accepting of loneliness

REPLICAS - Lawrence Raab

We were tooling along in Fred’s old jalopy,

thrown off our game

because the directions to the lunatic asylum were confusing.

I decided not to mention how appropriate

getting lost might be, maybe later

having to battle the elements to stay alive.

I’d been reading the old myths

and liked to imagine sailing through the clashing rocks

with only an oar for a weapon,

which wasn’t the most useful idea since we were heading

south of Tampa, trying to find our old friend

Adam, who might be waiting for a visit.

On the other hand, I thought, and then recalled

Adam having said far too often: On the other hand––

a knife is up close and personal.

People didn’t like to hear that kind of thing,

but we were sure he meant no harm,

even if in fact he did. We figured by now

he’d have forgotten the dangerous inclinations

of his youth, those days when he insisted

we’d all been misled by the voices

in our heads, then turned into replicas

of the people we thought we were. “Of course,”

Adam explained, “certain men choose

to be tempted by sirens. Others just let it happen.”

I told Fred that last part made sense, or sounded

like it should. “Damn,” Fred replied,

having taken another wrong turn.

“Not every kind of craziness makes sense.

Believe me, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.”

At first Adam was upset about being sent away,

but since then we’d heard

he’d grown accustomed to the quiet gardens

they let him putter about in. We imagined

him kneeling down in the soil

like his name-sake and weeding

something small and green,

wondering why he’d ever believed

what he had, or else why no one

had ever understood what he believed.

Or perhaps both thoughts vanished

while he concentrated on his task, half-listening

to the murmuring of the more distracted guests

as they explained to each other how easily

they had been deceived by their lives.

Do Not Make Things Too Easy - Martha Baird

Do not make things too easy.

There are rocks and abysses in the mind

As well as meadows.

There are things knotty and hard: intractable.

Do not talk to me of love and understanding.

I am sick of blandishments.

I want the rock to be met by a rock.

If I am vile, and behave hideously,

Do not tell me it was just a misunderstanding.

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.

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."

when you wait for the dawn to crawl through the screen like a burglar to take your life away-- - Charles Bukowski

the snake had crawled the hole,

and she said,

tell me about

yourself.

and

I said,

I was beaten down

long ago

in some alley

in another

world.

and she said,

we're all

like pigs

slapped down some lane,

our

grassbrains

singing

toward the

blade.

by

god,

you're an

odd one,

I said.

we

sat there

smoking

cigarettes

at

5

in the morning.

My Father - Yehuda Amichai

The memory of my father is wrapped up in

white paper, like sandwiches taken for a day at work.

Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits

out of his hat, he drew love from his small body,

and the rivers of his hands

overflowed with good deeds.

If no one ever marries me - Laurence Alma-Tadema

If no one ever marries me,—

And I don't see why they should,

For nurse says I'm not pretty,

And I'm seldom very good—

If no one ever marries me

I shan't mind very much;

I shall buy a squirrel in a cage,

And a little rabbit-hutch:

I shall have a cottage near a wood,

And a pony all my own,

And a little lamb quite clean and tame,

That I can take to town:

And when I'm getting really old,—

At twenty-eight or nine—

I shall buy a little orphan-girl

And bring her up as mine.

What She Wanted - Topher Cusumano

She’s walking down the street in a pair of six-inch, red, patent leather heels.

She always wished she was taller.

She shaves off her eyebrows and paints them back on.

She’ll be the first to tell you she enjoys the attention—

She’s okay with that.

‘Damn, I wanna fuck this girl,’

he thinks to himself as he follows her home,

the Boston streets slowly becoming narrower,

fewer streetlights scattered in front of the old, brick row-houses,

thick, circular patches of light surrounded by shadow.

He can hear her clicking as she walks.

She walks fast.

She knows where she’s going.

He could hear her clicking only half a block ahead of him.

“Damn, I wanna fuck this girl, yo.

Yo honey, with the fat ass!”

She stops.

She turns.

“Me?” she asks.

Softly, ladylike.

The voice he wants her to have.

The voice you can fuck, and still muffle with only one hand.

“Yeah you mommy—

You wanna come home with me tonight?

You looking real good, girl—

I wanna fuck that ass of yours real good, girl.”

“Me?” she asks again.

“You wanna fuck… me?”

She wears her tits like panties,

She’s got tits built for warfare, this girl.

She’s a battleship, unsinkable by nature.

Scars from girlhood across her thighs,

Wears short skirts so they wonder where she’s been.

She’s been… everywhere.

She walks back toward him.

“Yeah that’s right mommy.

You know what you want.”

And she does.

She knows exactly what she wants.

“You wanna fuck me?” she asks.

They’re face-to-face now.

She notices how dead his eyes are.

She knows how many girls he’s seen ripped apart,

Lying under him.

“You wanna fuck me?”

“Yeah mommy.”

She remembers fourteen.

“You wanna fuck me?”

Leo, His Life - Gösta Ågren

It was difficult to be, not

for the human in him, but for

the animal, which had not the strength to carry

the leaden weight of consciousness. The knowledge

that he was alive prevented him

from living. It formed

a sleepless face that looked

at his emotions until they crept

away like actors

from a bad performance

and that thought that he thought,

until each thought deepened to

nothing in this cold light. He

was himself the enemy, and wrote

books in order to defeat himself,

but in such a battle the only

possible victory is too great.

He won. In the silence

afterwards came a few

last fumbling words.

The Picture of Grandfather and Grandmother - Gösta Ågren

There they stand, seemingly without

secrets, for years and poverty

have made them distinct. Yet

the camera lies, like all who

say nothing except merely

the truth. He did as others do,

became a father, built his house.

She helped sick folk, practiced

kindness. But all his movements

were fingers of ash, fumbling

as the cold floor-draught

willed. Her kindness resembled all

other: a sternness that never

exhorts, but demands. Early

she knew it was

her only protection. So

it may have been, but perhaps

our life is only a line

in the poem about our life. Perhaps

we are not the name

we write, but

the nameless hand

that grasps the pen.