"Sorry" - Ntozake Shange

one thing i don’t need

is any more apologies

i got sorry greetin me at my front door

you can keep yrs

i don’t know what to do wit em

they dont open doors

or bring the sun back

they dont make me happy

or get a mornin paper

didnt nobody stop usin my tears to wash cars

cuz a sorry

i am simply tired

of collectin

i didnt know

i was so important to you

i’m gonna haveta throw some away

i cant get to the clothes in my closet

for alla the sorries

i’m gonna tack a sign to my door

leave a message by the phone

‘if you called

to say yr sorry

call somebody

else

i dont use em anymore’

i let sorry/ didnt meanta/ & how cd i know abt that

take a walk down a dark & musty street in brooklyn

i’m gonna do exactly what i want to

& i wont be sorry for none of it

letta sorry soothe yr soul/ i’m gonna soothe mine

you were always inconsistent

doin somethin & then bein sorry

beatin my heart to death

talkin bout you sorry

well

i will not call

i’m not goin to be nice

i will raise my voice

& scream & holler

& break things & race the engine

& tell all yr secrets bout yrself to yr face

& i will list in detail everyone of my wonderful lovers

& their ways

i will play oliver lake

loud

& i wont be sorry for none of it

i loved you on purpose

i was open on purpose

i still crave vulnerability & close talk

& i’m not even sorry bout you bein sorry

you can carry all the guilt & grime ya wanna

just dont give it to me

i cant use another sorry

next time

you should admit

you’re mean/ low-down/ triflin/ & no count straight out

steada bein sorry alla the time

enjoy bein yrself

dial tone - Riley R.

The saddest poem I ever wrote

was the “goodbye” I whispered

on the skin of your temple

so softly you didn’t hear it

until the fifth time you called

and I didn’t pick up

when the voicemail you left

was ten seconds of silence

followed by a sigh

as you took the phone from your ear.

Lightness - Meg Bateman (translated from the Gaelic)

It was your lightness that drew me,

the lightness of your talk and your laughter,

the lightness of your cheek in my hands,

your sweet gentle modest lightness;

and it is the lightness of your kiss

that is starving my mouth,

and the lightness of your embrace

that will let me go adrift.

Semi Semi Dash - Jillian Weise

The last time I saw Big Logos he was walking

to the Quantum Physics Store to buy magnets.

He told me his intentions. He was wearing

a jumpsuit with frayed cuffs. I thought the cuffs

got that way from him rubbing them against

his lips but he said they got that way

with age. We had two more blocks to walk.

“Once I do this, what are you going to do?”

he asked. “I wish you wouldn’t do it,” I said.

Big Logos bought the magnets and a crane

delivered them to his house. After he built

the 900-megahertz superconductor, I couldn’t go

to his house anymore because I have all kinds

of metal in my body. I think if you love someone,

you shouldn’t do that, build something like that,

on purpose, right in front of them.

Being in Love - Marvin Bell

with someone who is not in love with

you, you understand my predicament.

Being in love with you, who are not

in love with me, you understand my dilemma.

Being in love with your being in love

with me, which you are not, you understand

the difficulty. Being in love with your

being, you can well imagine how hard it is.

Being in love with your being you,

no matter you are not your being being in

love with me, you can appreciate and pity

being in love with you. Being in love

with someone who is not in love, you know

all about being in love when being in love

is being in love with someone who is not

in love being with you, which is

being in love, which you know only too well,

Love, being in love with being in love.

Icarus in Love. - Unknown

I loved you as

Icarus loved

The sun –

Too close,

Too much.

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.

"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.”

Remember How Sad That Was When - Paul Guest

I missed sadness because I no longer missed you,

how emotionally counterintuitive it was

as my citizenship in the nation I made of you

gradually lapsed. I woke some other

place with lakes and blue skies and rush hours

and strangers I worried about. But no you.

No ages of you. No your name three times

when I walked somewhere or lay down at night

to bargain with sleep. No you

falling from my mouth everywhere I went.

No you anywhere to be seen.

A secret to keep. And mostly I did,

even beside other women who asked

with the privilege of their bodies

if you had ever existed and what did you do

and did you have a name I’d share

and had you been good to me

but I never gave you up. I left the last of you

to be lost in the fog inside me.

Napping in bomb craters, haggling

over debts I couldn’t deny were mine,

memorizing every month’s horoscope.

It seemed then the days

you had left me stained in sadness

were like that. Good apples on back order from God

and the steaks full of blood

you taught me to love, rationed.

At least I told myself this,

thinking of all the never you were.

But there were limits and lengths

and limits again. There were

songs inside the fog inside the world.

Intrusion - Denise Levertov

After I had cut off my hands

and grown new ones

something my former hands had longed for

came and asked to be rocked.

After my plucked out eyes

had withered, and new ones grown

something my former eyes had wept for

came asking to be pitied.

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.

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

SONGS FOR AN ENDING - Theodore Spencer

                      1

Goodbye, goodbye my darling,

Goodbye to all our past.

Love that hovered trembling

Has sprung away at last.

But Oh before that shudder,

Before that final spring,

The towering of his glory,

The splendor of his wing!

                     2

The quiet and usual word

We took for granted,

The word we wanted

And always heard,

Two vowels, two consonants,

The female and male word

Monosyllabically one

That was our union --

The word 'Love' has fallen

Most suddenly apart,

And my hampered tongue

Lacking the vowels it wants,

Stricken to consonants,

Speaks everything wrong,

Has no speech at all,

Has lost its calling,

The sweet vowels gone.

                     3

Now, my darling,

Oh now good-bye:

Love's wings are furling

In our present sky.

And we walk apart

Away from the other's

Abandoned heart,

While difficultly

The mind smothers

Grief for We

Become You and I.

Oh we walk slowly,

But forever, away

From the once half holy

Place of our day,

Knowing our love

Is done, is done.

Yet though we starve,

Braver alone.

                     4

"The longest love is this:

     To love and not to have.

To thrust love overboard,

     Makes love most safe."

I'd heard such things before;

     Foolish (I thought)

To save by loss.  But now

     I know it's not.

Oh lovers, learn that love

     Does more than drown

When thrust overboard; it forever

     Anchors you for its own. 

Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines - Pablo Neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is shattered

and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms

I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.

How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.

And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.

The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.

My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.

My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.

We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.

My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.

Her voide. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.

Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms

my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer

and these the last verses that I write for her.