June 2011
19 posts
don't go far off | pablo neruda
hopesichord:
don’t go far off, not even for a day, because — because — i don’t know how to say it: a day is long and i will be waiting for you, as in an empty station when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep. don’t leave me, even for an hour, because then the little drops of anguish will all run together, the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift into me, choking my lost...
ego | denise duhamel
i just didn’t get it— even with the teacher holding an orange (the earth) in one hand and a lemon (the moon) in the other, her favorite student (the sun) standing behind her with a flashlight. i just couldn’t grasp it— this whole citrus universe, these bumpy planets revolving so slowly no one could even see themselves moving. i used to think if i could only concentrate hard enough i could be the...
america (try saying wren) | joseph lucas
try saying wren. it’s midnight in my body, 4 a.m. in my body, breading and olives and cherries. wait, it’s all rotten. how am i ever. oh notebook. a clown explains the war. what start or color or kind of grace. i have to teach. i have to run, eat less junk. oh CNN. what start or color. there’s a fist of meat in my solar plexus and green light in my mouth and...
i think i could turn and live with animals | walt...
i think i could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d, i stand and look at them long and long. they do not sweat and whine about their condition, they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, they do not make me sick discussing their duty to god, not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, not one kneels to another,...
fossils | ogden nash
at midnight in the museum hall, the fossils gathered for a ball, there were no drums or saxophones, but just the clatter of their bones, rolling, rattling carefree circus, of mammoth polkas and mazurkas, pterodactyls and brontosauruses sang ghostly prehistoric choruses, amid the mastodonic wassail i caught the eye of one small fossil, “cheer up sad world,” he said and winked, “it’s kind of fun to...
kiss the sun | mary ruefle
if, as they say, poetry is a sign of something among people, then let this be prearranged now, between us, while we are still peoples: that at the end of time, which is also the end of poetry (and wheat and evil and insects and love), when the entire human race gathers in the flesh, reconstituted down to the infant’s tiniest fold and littlest nail, i will be standing at the edge of that...
here's to opening and upward - e.e. cummings
here’s to opening and upward, to leaf and to sap and to your(in my arms flowering so new) self whose eyes smell of the sound of rain and here’s to silent certainly mountains;and to a disappearing poet of always,snow and to morning;and to morning’s beautiful friend twilight(and a first dream called ocean)and let must or if be damned with whomever’s afraid down with ought...
the hours | michael cunningham
what a thrill, what a shock, to be alive on a morning in June, prosperous, almost scandalously privileged, with a simple errand to run.
gonnamakeit-mine | scout
risk | anais nin
goodpoetry:
and then the day came, when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
173 "she walks in beauty, like the night" | lord...
goodpoetry:
She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellow’d to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impair’d the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress, Or softly lightens o’er her face; Where thoughts serenely...
wilderness | lorine niedecker
goodpoetry:
you are the man you are my other country and i find it hard going
you are the prickly pear you are the sudden violent storm
the torrent to raise the river to float the wounded doe.
this is just to say | william carlos williams
goodpoetry:
i have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold
into my arms | nick cave
goodpoetry:
i don’t believe in an interventionist god but i know, darling, that you do but if i did i would kneel down and ask him not to intervene when it came to you not to touch a hair on your head to leave you as you are and if he felt he had to direct you then direct you into my arms.
in paris with you | james fenton
goodpoetry:
don’t talk to me of love. i’ve had an earful and i get tearful when i’ve downed a drink or two. i’m one of your talking wounded. i’m a hostage. i’m maroonded. but i’m in paris with you. yes i’m angry at the way i’ve been bamboozled and resentful at the mess i’ve been through. i admit i’m on the rebound and i don’t care where are we bound. i’m in paris with...
when death comes | mary oliver
goodpoetry:
when death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measles-pox; when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, i want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? and therefore i...
the fury of flowers and words | anne sexton
goodpoetry:
listen world. if you’d just take the time to pick the white flowers, the penny heart, all would be well. they are so unexpected. they are as good as salt. if someone had brought them to van gogh’s room daily his ear would have stayed on. i would like to think that no one would die anymore if we all believed in daisies but the worms know better, don’t they? they slide into the ear of...
edges | kris t. kahn
goodpoetry:
lately i am fascinated with lines, with the edges of things: where i end and where the world begins. what once used to seem fuzzy and ephemeral is now jarring and actually conceivable, the borderlines of countries marking territory the way a cat marks hers, the way you marked me. with charcoal. with treaties. the world is never enough for the wanderer. this is a...
forgetting someone | yehuda amichai
goodpoetry:
forgetting someone is like forgetting to turn off the light in the backyard so it stays lit all the next day. but then it is the light that makes you remember.
requiem | kurt vonnegut
goodpoetry:
when the last living thing has died on account of us, how poetical it would be if earth could say, in a voice floating up perhaps from the floor of the grand canyon, “it is done.” people did not like it here.
