November 2011
17 posts
all that is glorious around us | barbara crooker
is not, for me, these grand vistas, sublime peaks, mist-filled overlooks, towering clouds, but doing errands on a day of driving rain, staying dry inside the silver skin of the car, 160,000 miles, still running just fine. or later, sitting in a café warmed by the steam from white chicken chili, two cups of dark coffee, watching the red and gold leaves race down the street, confetti from...
draft #2006 | adrienne rich
viii they asked me, is this time worse than another i said, for whom? wanted to show them something. while i wrote on the chalkboard they drifted out. i turned back to an empty room. maybe i couldn’t write fast enough. maybe it was too soon.
you do not need many things | ryokan
my house is buried in the deepest recess of the forest every year, ivy vines grow longer than the year before. undisturbed by the affairs of the world i live at ease, woodmen’s singing rarely reaching me through the trees. while the sun stays in the sky, i mend my torn clothes and facing the moon, i read holy texts aloud to myself. let me drop a word of advice for believers of my faith. to enjoy...
a working list of things i will never tell you |...
my friend sarah wrote a poem about pink ponies. i’m scared you’re my pink pony. hers is dead. it is really sad. you’re not dead. you live in ohio, or washington, or wherever. you are a shadow my body leaves on other girls. i have a growing queue of things i know will make you laugh and i don’t know where to put them. i mourn like you’re dead. if you had asked me to stay, i would not have said no....
one parting | carl sandburg
why did he write to her, “i can’t live without you”? and why did she write to him, “i can’t live without you”? for he went west, she went east, and they both lived.
two cures for love | wendy cope
1. don’t see him. don’t phone or write a letter. 2. the easy way: get to know him better.
as much as i ever could | city and colour
love, love of mine won’t you lay by my side and rest your weary eyes before we’re out of time? give me one last kiss for soon such distance will stretch between our lips now the day’s losing light bring me your love tonight bring me your love tonight lost at sea my heart beat was growing weak hoping you’d hear my plea and come save my life as the storm grew fierce and...
on last lines | suzanne buffam
the last line should strike like a lover’s complaint. you should never see it coming. and you should never hear the end of it.
to build a quiet city in his mind | weldon kees
to build a quiet city in his mind: a single overwhelming wish; to build, not hastily, for there is so much wind, so many eager smilers to be killed, obstructions one might overlook in haste: the ruined structures cluttering the past, a little at a time and slow is best, crawling as though through endless corridors, remembering always there are many doors that open to admit the captured guest once...
misgivings | william matthews
“perhaps you’ll tire of me,” muses my love, although she’s like a great city to me, or a park that finds new ways to wear each flounce of light and investiture of weather. soil doesn’t tire of rain, i think, but i know what she fears: plans warp, planes explode, topsoil gets peeled away by floods. and worse than what we can’t control is what we could; those drab, scuttled marriages we shed so...
how to miss a man | kerrin mccadden
breathing is just a rhythm. tell yourself this so that the breathing becomes a song. sing this song all day while you shop in the hardware store for things you do not need. sing it again while you cook supper for yourself. cook supper for yourself, even if you don’t want to. go for a walk, even if you don’t want to. put your shoes on and get the leash and even bring the dog. she will be so pleased...
the promise | marie howe
in the dream i had when he came back not sick but whole, and wearing his winter coat, he looked at me as though he couldn’t speak, as if there were a law against it, a membrane he couldn’t break. his silence was what he could not not do, like our breathing in this world, like our living, as we do, in time. and i told him: i’m reading all this buddhist stuff, and listen, we don’t die when we die....
the laughing heart | charles bukowski
your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is a light somewhere. it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the watch. the gods will offer you chances. know them. take them. you can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. and the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. your life...
untitled | e. ethelbert miller
when there are no more poems to be written go & wake the dead tell them that the war is over that victory is ours tell them that the living too have found peace
failing and flying | jack gilbert
poetry365:
everyone forgets that icarus also flew. it’s the same when love comes to an end, or the marriage fails and people say they knew it was a mistake, that everybody said it would never work. that she was old enough to know better. but anything worth doing is worth doing badly. like being there by that summer ocean on the other side of the island while love was fading out of her,...
separation | w.s. mervin
your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle. everything i do is stitched with its color.
how it adds up | hemant mohapatra
what they don’t tell you is how it all ends. sure it was spring:
volcanoes exploding in the opposite hemisphere. moon was igneous and adrift while they cheered your airship dreams of love and you felt soft and scared like a child lowered into a well or some balloon returning to a vast ocean....
