intellectualism - Nikki Giovanni

sometimes i feel like i just get in

everybody’s way

when i was a little girl

i used to go read

or make fudge

when i got bigger i

read

or picked my nose

that’s what they called

intelligence

or when i got older

intellectualism

but it was only

that i was in the way

a wild, fresh wind blowing... - Charles Bukowski

I should not have blamed only my father, but,

he was the first to introduce me to

raw and stupid hatred.

he was really best at it: anything and everything made him

mad—things of the slightest consequence brought his hatred quickly

to the surface

and I seemed to be the main source of his

irritation.

I did not fear him

but his rages made me ill at heart

for he was most of my world then

and it was a world of horror but I should not have blamed only

my father

for when I left that... home... I found his counterparts

everywhere: my father was only a small part of the

whole, though he was the best at hatred

I was ever to meet.

but others were very good at it too: some of the

foremen, some of the street bums, some of the women

I was to live with,

most of the women, were gifted at

hating—blaming my voice, my actions, my presence

blaming me

for what they, in retrospect, had failed

at.

I was simply the target of their discontent

and in some real sense

they blamed me

for not being able to rouse them

out of a failed past; what they didn't consider was

that I had my troubles too—most of them caused by

simply living with them.

I am a dolt of a man, easily made happy or even

stupidly happy almost without cause

and left alone I am mostly content.

but I've lived so often and so long with this hatred

that

my only freedom, my only peace is when I am away from

them, when I am anywhere else, no matter where—

some fat old waitress bringing me a cup of coffee

is in comparison

like a fresh wild wind blowing.

Untitled - Ryokan

I don't regard my life

as insufficient.

Inside the brushwood gate

there is a moon;

there are flowers.

The Forms - Sharon Olds

I always had the feeling my mother would

die for us, jump into a fire

to pull us out, her hair burning like

a halo, jump into water, her white

body going down and turning slowly,

the astronaut whose hose is cut

falling

         into

              blackness. She would have

covered us with her body, thrust her

breasts between our chests and the knife,

slipped us into her coat pocket

outside the showers. In disaster, an animal

mother, she would have died for us,

but in life as it was

she had to put herself

first.

She had to do whatever he

told her to do to the children, she had to

protect herself. In war, she would have

died for us, I tell you she would,

and I know: I am a student of war,

of gas ovens, smothering, knives,

drowning, burning, all the forms

in which I have experienced her love.

The Clasp - Sharon Olds

She was four, he was one, it was raining, we had colds,

we had been in the apartment two weeks straight,

I grabbed her to keep her from shoving him over on his

face, again, and when I had her wrist

in my grasp I compressed it, fiercely, for a couple

of seconds, to make an impression on her,

to hurt her, our beloved firstborn, I even almost

savored the stinging sensation of the squeezing, the

expression, into her, of my anger,

"Never, never again," the righteous

chant accompanying the clasp. It happened very

fast—grab, crush, crush,

crush, release—and at the first extra

force, she swung her head, as if checking

who this was, and looked at me,

and saw me—yes, this was her mom,

her mom was doing this. Her dark,

deeply open eyes took me

in, she knew me, in the shock of the moment

she learned me. This was her mother, one of the

two whom she most loved, the two

who loved her most, near the source of love

was this.

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