Celestial Music - Louise Glück

I have a friend who still believes in heaven.

Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to god,

she thinks someone listens in heaven.

On earth she's unusually competent.

Brave, too, able to face unpleasantness.

We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it.

I'm always moved by weakness, by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality.

But timid, also, quick to shut my eyes.

Whereas my friend was able to watch, to let events play out

according to nature. For my sake, she intervened,

brushing a few ants off the torn thing, and set it down across the road.

My friend says I shut my eyes to god, that nothing else explains

my aversion to reality. She says I'm like the child who buries her head in the pillow

so as not to see, the child who tells herself

that light causes sadness—

My friend is like the mother. Patient, urging me

to wake up an adult like herself, a courageous person—

In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We're walking

on the same road, except it's winter now;

she's telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music:

look up, she says. When I look up, nothing.

Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees

like brides leaping to a great height—

Then I'm afraid for her; I see her

caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth—

In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set;

from time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall.

It's this moment we're both trying to explain, the fact

that we're at ease with death, with solitude.

My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar doesn't move.

She's always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image

capable of life apart from her.

We're very quiet. It's peaceful sitting here, not speaking, the composition

fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air

going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering—

it's this stillness that we both love.

The love of form is a love of endings.

for one I knew - Charles Bukowski

Of all the iron beds in paradise

yours was the most cruel

and I was smoke in your mirror

and you sluiced your hair with jade,

but you were a woman and I was a

boy, but boy enough for an iron bed

and man enough for wine

and you.

now I am a man,

man enough for all,

and you are, you

are

        old

not now so cruel,

now your iron bed

is empty.

Sonnet (from "50 Sonnets") - Eleanor Brown

Not if you crawled from there to here, you hear?

Not if you begged me, on your bleeding knees.

Not if you lay exhausted at my door,

and pleaded with me for a chance.

Not if you wept (am I making this clear?)

or found a thousand different words for 'Please',

ten thousand for 'I’m sorry'; I’d ignore

you so sublimely; every new advance

would meet with such complete indifference.

Not if you promised me fidelity.

Not if you meant it. What impertinence,

then, is this voice that murmurs, 'What if he

didn’t? That isn’t his line of attack.

What if he simply grinned, and said, I’m back?'

"Some people don't need much to live on" - Henry Rollins

Some people don't need much to live on

Hell some folks live on pennies a day

I was right about to wrap my arms around that girl

But at the last minute

I jumped back and wrapped them around myself

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.

how is your heart? - Charles Bukowski

during my worst times

on the park benches

in the jails

or living with

whores

I always had this certain

contentment--

I wouldn’t call it

happiness--

it was more of an inner

balance

that settled for

whatever was occurring

and it helped in the

factories

and when relationships

went wrong

with the

girls.

it helped

through the

wars and the

hangovers

the backalley fights

the

hospitals.

to awaken in a cheap room

in a strange city and

pull up the shade--

this was the craziest kind of

contentment

and to walk across the floor

to an old dresser with a

cracked mirror--

see myself, ugly,

grinning at it all.

what matters most is

how well you

walk through the

fire.