Popular Romance - Paul Guest

To hum in a smoke-dank alley a song by Elvis

was not the height of my love for you. To turn

my arm from its socket like a hateful thing

was not devotion only. To speak your name

like a spell to my imagined foes was not

peace, no, not ever. Rather, you were a stone

I licked and pretended to eat. You were

ever a dream of falling. An odor of smoke.

You were the design of my worst

crimes. What I stole for love added up.

It added up to nothing. To the air perfumed

by an absent woman. To a box

filled with crushed chalk. God save me

from the stars, once and for all—

I have had enough. Let me love anything

but that: let me go free and dream

of green oceans and the surf

that batters some other world to sleeplessness.

O. It is enough to whisper only

this. To speak to the flame in your breast

and hear nothing else. Once

I believed I could possess

what touched you: the worn sweater,

or the song on the radio

that meant nothing and all in that instant.

Against your door I pressed

my ear, and heard nothing, the whisper

of water, maybe, a breath of cool air—

the gossip of your absence—

and nothing in me could knock or wait,

and all around me the night

spread like water through a rag,

and I let my hands drop whatever they held.

The Fear of Oneself - Sharon Olds

As we get near the house, taking off our gloves,

the air forming a fine casing of

ice around each hand,

you say you believe I would hold up under torture

for the sake of our children. You say you think I have

courage. I lean against the door and weep,

the tears freezing on my cheeks with brittle

clicking sounds.

I think of the women standing naked

on the frozen river, the guards pouring

buckets of water over their bodies till they

glisten like trees in an ice storm.

I have never thought I could take it, not even

for the children. It is all I have wanted to do,

to stand between them and pain. But I come from a

long line

of women

who put themselves

first. I lean against the huge dark

cold door, my face glittering with

glare ice like a dangerous road,

and think about hot pokers, and goads,

and the skin of my children, the delicate, tight,

thin, top layer of it

covering their whole bodies, softly

glimmering.

THE POEM - Franz Wright

It was like getting a love letter from a tree

Eyes closed forever to find you—

There is a life which

if I could have it

I would have chosen for myself from the beginning

THE MAN WHO NEVER LOSES HIS BALANCE - Stephen Dunn

He walks the high wire in his sleep.

The tent is blue, it is perpetual

afternoon. He is walking between

the open legs of his mother

and the grave. Always. The audience knows this

is out of their hands. The audience

is fathers whose kites are lost, children

who want to be terrified into joy.

He is so high above them, so capable

(with a single, calculated move)

of making them care for him

that he's sick of the risks

he never really takes.

The tent is blue. Outside is a world

that is blue. Inside him

a blueness that could crack

like china if he ever hit bottom.

Every performance, deep down,

he tries one real plunge

off to the side, where the net ends.

But it never ends.

"I was at this guy's house." - Henry Rollins

I was at this guy’s house. I met this girl who was hanging out

there. She was real pretty, she had brown eyes and dark hair. She

was soft-spoken and real nice. I know that everyone has their

own life and they can do what they want and you shouldn’t think

anything of it or anything. But man, I couldn’t help but flinch a

little when I saw all those needle marks in her arm, they looked

so sore. Hateful little holes. I wanted to say something, but I

didn’t.

The Poet With His Face in His Hands - Mary Oliver

You want to cry aloud for your

mistakes. But to tell the truth the world

doesn’t need any more of that sound.

So if you’re going to do it and can’t

stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can’t

hold it in, at least go by yourself across

the forty fields and the forty dark inclines

of rocks and water to the place where

the falls are flinging out their white sheets

like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that

jubilation and water-fun and you can

stand there, under it, and roar all you

want and nothing will be disturbed; you can

drip with despair all afternoon and still,

on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched

by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,

puffing out its spotted breast, will sing

of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.