Rug Hydrangea - Alexander Vvedensky

I regret that I’m not a beast,

running along a blue path,

telling myself to believe,

and my other self to wait a little,

I’ll go out with myself to the forest

to examine the insignificant leaves.      

I regret that I’m not a star,

running along the vaults of the sky,

in search of the perfect nest

it finds itself and earth’s empty water,

no one has ever heard of a star giving out a squeak,

its purpose is to encourage the fish with its silence.

And then there’s this grudge that I bear,

that I’m not a rug, nor a hydrangea.

I regret I’m not a roof,

falling apart little by little,

which the rain soaks and softens,

whose death is not sudden.

I don’t like the fact that I’m mortal,

I regret that I am not perfect.

Much much better, believe me,

is a particle of day a unit of night.

I regret that I’m not an eagle,

flying over peak after peak,

to whom comes to mind

a man observing the acres.

I regret I am not an eagle,

flying over lengthy peaks,

to whom comes to mind

a man observing the acres.

You and I, wind, will sit down together

on this pebble of death.

It’s a pity I’m not a grail

I don’t like that I am not pity.

"They left like you knew they would." - Henry Rollins

They left you like you knew they would. They went away and you

fell like a stone. All the way to the bottom of your room. I see you,

yes I see you. Sitting in your chair, hating every minute of it. Falling

like a stone without even moving. It hurt you to know that you were

right about all the shit you wanted to be wrong about. They always

leave you. You put yourself in the right place to get left.

The Man He Killed - Thomas Hardy

Had he and I but met

By some old ancient inn,

We should have set us down to wet

Right many a nipperkin!

But ranged as infantry,

And staring face to face,

I shot at him as he at me,

And killed him in his place.

I shot him dead because--

Because he was my foe,

Just so: my foe of course he was;

That's clear enough; although

He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,

Off-hand like--just as I--

Was out of work--had sold his traps--

No other reason why.

Yes; quaint and curious war is!

You shoot a fellow down

You'd treat, if met where any bar is,

Or help to half a crown.

Escapist's Song - Theodore Spencer

The first woman I loved, he said--

Her skin was satin and gold.

The next woman I loved, he said--

Her skin was satin and gold.

The third woman I loved, he said--

Was made in a different mold.

She was deeper than me, and said so;

She was stronger than me, and said so;

She was wiser than me, and proved it;

I shivered, and grew cold.

The fourth woman I loved, he said--

Her skin was satin and gold.

Those Winter Sundays - Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

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.