counting at war (
kerpingtack) wrote2011-11-13 11:24 pm
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Entry tags:
in the recurrence
I don't really "get" poetry but I like reading it lol. Actually I like reading poetry that's literally easy to read; I am legit super lazy and simple. Plus I don't think there is any inherent value in difficulty in art, in that I don't think being hard to understand makes things deeper or qualitatively better. I mean, it doesn't necessarily make it worse either; it's personal preference whether you enjoy it. For me, I like short poems that aren't too dense and that I can literally understand, or, failing that, just things I think are pretty. Anyway here are a bunch of my favorite poems.
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
- Mary Oliver
Elephants Are Different to Different People
Wilson and Pilcer and Snack stood before the zoo elephant.
Wilson said, "What is its name? Is it from Asia or Africa? Who feeds
it? Is it a he or a she? How old is it? Do they have twins? How much does
it cost to feed? How much does it weigh? If it dies, how much will another
one cost? If it dies, what will they use the bones, the fat, and the hide
for? What use is it besides to look at?"
Pilcer didn't have any questions; he was murmering to himself, "It's
a house by itself, walls and windows, the ears came from tall cornfields,
by God; the architect of those legs was a workman, by God; he stands like
a bridge out across the deep water; the face is sad and the eyes are kind;
I know elephants are good to babies."
Snack looked up and down and at last said to himself, "He's a tough
son-of-a-gun outside and I'll bet he's got a strong heart, I'll bet he's
strong as a copper-riveted boiler inside."
They didn't put up any arguments.
They didn't throw anything in each other's faces.
Three men saw the elephant three ways
And let it go at that.
They didn't spoil a sunny Sunday afternoon;
"Sunday comes only once a week," they told each other.
- Carl Sandburg
Sonnet 6
Is he native to this realm? No,
his wide nature grew out of both worlds.
They more adeptly bend the willow's branches
who have experience of the willow's roots.
When you go to bed, don't leave bread or milk
on the table: it attracts the dead
But may he, this quiet conjurer, may he
beneath the mildness of the eyelid
mix their bright traces into every seen thing;
and may the magic of earthsmoke and rue
be as real for him as the clearest connection.
Nothing can mar for him the authentic image;
whether he wanders through houses or graves,
let him praise signet ring, gold necklace, jar.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.
- Elizabeth Bishop
What Work Is
We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is--if you're
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it's someone else's brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, "No,
we're not hiring today," for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who's not beside you or behind or
ahead because he's home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You've never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you're too young or too dumb,
not because you're jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don't know what work is.
- Philip Levine
#24 from Sonnets from the Portuguese
Let the world's sharpness, like a clasping knife,
Shut in upon itself and do no harm
In this close hand of Love, now soft and warm,
And let us hear no sound of human strife
After the click of the shutting. Life to life
I lean upon thee, Dear, without alarm,
and feel as safe as guarded by a charm
Against the stab of worldlings, who if rife
Are weak to injure. Very whitely still
The lilies of our lives may reassure
Their blossoms from their roots, accessible
Alone to heavenly dews that drop not fewer,
Growing straight, out of man's reach, on the hill.
God only, who made us rich, can make us poor.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Purposefully Ungrammatical Love Song
There's many and many, and not so far,
Is willing to dry my tears away;
There's many to tell me what you are,
And never a lie to all they say.
It's little the good to hide my head,
It's never the use to bar my door;
There's many as counts the tears I shed,
There's mourning hearts for my heart is sore.
There's honester eyes than your blue eyes,
There's better a mile than such as you.
But when did I say that I was wise,
And when did I hope that you were true?
- Dorothy Parker
Two Bowls of Milk
Are two bowls of milk. They are round
and white and have nothing to do
with the moon. They have no implications
of blindness, or sight. They wait
on the doorstep like bowls
or like things that closely resemble
bowls in their stillness. The bowls do not
foreshadow cats. There are two
because two hands set them out
and each wanted to hold something.
Milk because not water. The curve of
milk against the curve of bowl.
- Stephanie Bolster
Offering and Rebuff
I could love you
as dry roots love rain.
I could hold you
as branches in the wind
brandish petals.
Forgive me for speaking so soon.
Let your heart look
on white sea spray
and be lonely.
Love is a fool star.
You and a ring of stars
may mention my name
and then forget me.
Love is a fool star.
- Carl Sandburg
How It Will Happen, When
There you are, exhausted from another night of crying,
curled up on the couch, the floor, at the foot of the bed,
anywhere you fall you fall down crying, half amazed
at what the body is capable of, not believing you can cry
anymore. And there they are: his socks, his shirt, your
underwear, and your winter gloves, all in a loose pile
next to the bathroom door, and you fall down again.
Someday, years from now, things will be different:
the house clean for once, everything in its place, windows
shining, sun coming in easily now, skimming across
the thin glaze of wax on the wood floor. You'll be peeling
an orange or watching a bird leap from the edge of the rooftop
next door, noticing how, for an instant, her body is trapped
in the air, only a moment before gathering the will to fly
into the ruff at her wings, and then doing it: flying.
You'll be reading, and for a moment you'll see a word
you don't recognize, a simple word like cup or gate or wisp
and you'll ponder it like a child discovering language.
Cup, you'll say it over and over until it begins to make sense,
and that's when you'll say it, for the first time, out loud: He's dead.
He's not coming back, and it will be the first time you believe it.
- Dorianne Laux
Three of Cups
at some point it becomes true that all stories
are love stories. all making, love making.
I didn't make this rule. but it binds me
all the same. I wish there were a law
against condescending against love. against
the economy of fear that says your joy
means less joy for me as if love
were pie, or money, or fossil fuel
dug or pumped from the earth, gone
when it's gone. it's just not true. the heart
with its gift for magnificent expansion
is not coal. not fruit set to spoil or the dollar
cringing in its wallet. when you say darling,
the world lights up at its edges. when mouths
find mouths and minds follow or minds find
minds and mouths, hands, hips, toes, follow –
how about you call that sacred. how about you raise
your veined right hand and swear on the blood
that branches there, yes. I take this crush
to be my lawful infatuation. I will bend toward joy
until the bending's its own pleasure. I will memorize
photographs and street maps, I will acquiesce
to the maudlin urgency of pop songs and dance,
and dance – there's a perfection only the impossible kiss
possesses. there are notes you can only hear naked
in the dark of a room to which you will never
return. anything that moves the world toward light
is a blessing. why not take it with both hands,
lift it to your lips like a broth of stars. this
is the substance that holds our little atoms together
into bodies. this sweet paste of longing
is all that binds us to the earth.
and all we know of the gods.
- Marty McConnell
Autobiography (Polish It Like a Piece of Silver)
I am standing in the cemetery at Byrds, Texas.
What did Judy say? "God forsaken is beautiful, too."
A very old man who has cancer on his face and takes
care of the cemetery, is raking a grave in such a
manner as to almost (polish it like a piece of silver.
An old dog stands beside him. It's a hot day: 105.
What am I doing out here in west Texas, standing in
a cemetery? The old man wonders about that, too.
My presence has become a part of his raking. I know
that he is also polishing me.
- Richard Brautigan
What We Heard About the Japanese
We heard they would jump from buildings
at the slightest provocation: low marks
On an exam, a lovers' spat
or an excess of shame.
We heard they were incited by shame,
not guilt. That they
Loved all things American.
Mistrusted anything foreign.
We heard their men liked to buy
schoolgirls' underwear
And their women
did not experience menopause or other
Western hysterias. We heard
they still preferred to breastfeed,
Carry handkerchiefs, ride bicycles
and dress their young like Victorian
Pupils. We heard that theirs
was a feminine culture. We heard
That theirs was an example of extreme
patriarchy. That rape
Didn't exist on these islands. We heard
their marriages were arranged, that
They didn't believe in love. We heard
they were experts in this art above all others.
That frequent earthquakes inspired insecurity
and lack of faith. That they had no sense of irony.
We heard even faith was an American invention.
We heard they were just like us under the skin.
What the Japanese Perhaps Heard
Perhaps they heard we don't understand them
very well. Perhaps this made them
Pleased. Perhaps they heard we shoot
Japanese students who ring the wrong
Bell at Hallowe'en. That we shoot
at the slightest provocation: a low mark
On an exam, a lovers' spat, an excess
of guilt. Perhaps they wondered
If it was guilt we felt at the sight of that student
bleeding out among our lawn flamingos,
Or something recognizable to them,
something like grief. Perhaps
They heard that our culture
has its roots in desperate immigration
And lone men. Perhaps they observed
our skill at raising serial killers,
That we value good teeth above
good minds and have no festivals
To remember the dead. Perhaps they heard
that our grey lakes are deep enough to swallow cities,
That our landscape is vast wheat and loneliness.
Perhaps they ask themselves if, when grief
Wraps its wet arms around Montana, we would not prefer
the community of archipelagos
Upon which persimmons are harvested
and black fingers of rock uncurl their digits
In the mist. Perhaps their abacus echoes
the shape that grief takes,
One island
bleeding into the next,
And for us grief is an endless cornfield,
silken and ripe with poison.
- Rachel Rose
Reverence
Love not the rider but the old rider,
the ghost in the saddle: Obey that ghost.
A good horse runs even at the shadow of the whip.
But we are not good horses.
We bolt. We stand still in bad weather.
We rely on things we know are unreliable,
it feels so good just to "rely."
We are relied on.
But I do not know who knows that bad secret.
I do not see who sits astride my back,
who cuts my flank so lovingly on our way to the dark mountain.
- Sarah Manguso
Sometimes
Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.
A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.
Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.
- Sheenagh Pugh
This Hour and What Is Dead
Tonight my brother, in heavy boots, is walking
through bare rooms over my head,
opening and closing doors.
What could he be looking for in an empty house?
What could he possibly need there in heaven?
Does he remember his earth, his birthplace set to torches?
His love for me feels like spilled water
running back to its vessel.
At this hour, what is dead is restless
and what is living is burning.
Someone tell him he should sleep now.
My father keeps a light on by our bed
and readies for our journey.
He mends ten holes in the knees
of five pairs of boy=s pants.
His love for me is like his sewing:
various colors and too much thread,
the stitching uneven. But the needle pierces
clean through with each stroke of his hand.
At this hour, what is dead is worried
and what is living is fugitive.
Someone tell him he should sleep now.
God, that old furnace, keeps talking
with his mouth of teeth,
a beard stained at feasts, and his breath
of gasoline, airplane, human ash.
His love for me feels like fire,
feels like doves, feels like river water.
At this hour, what is dead is helpless, kind
and helpless. While the Lord lives.
Someone tell the Lord to leave me alone.
I've had enough of his love
that feels like burning and flight and running away.
- Li Young Lee
God Says Yes To Me
I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes
- Kaylin Haught
nablopomo is making me really feel how I don't have anything to say and how boring my life and I are. <semantic/syntax? I am not my life>
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
- Mary Oliver
Elephants Are Different to Different People
Wilson and Pilcer and Snack stood before the zoo elephant.
Wilson said, "What is its name? Is it from Asia or Africa? Who feeds
it? Is it a he or a she? How old is it? Do they have twins? How much does
it cost to feed? How much does it weigh? If it dies, how much will another
one cost? If it dies, what will they use the bones, the fat, and the hide
for? What use is it besides to look at?"
Pilcer didn't have any questions; he was murmering to himself, "It's
a house by itself, walls and windows, the ears came from tall cornfields,
by God; the architect of those legs was a workman, by God; he stands like
a bridge out across the deep water; the face is sad and the eyes are kind;
I know elephants are good to babies."
Snack looked up and down and at last said to himself, "He's a tough
son-of-a-gun outside and I'll bet he's got a strong heart, I'll bet he's
strong as a copper-riveted boiler inside."
They didn't put up any arguments.
They didn't throw anything in each other's faces.
Three men saw the elephant three ways
And let it go at that.
They didn't spoil a sunny Sunday afternoon;
"Sunday comes only once a week," they told each other.
- Carl Sandburg
Sonnet 6
Is he native to this realm? No,
his wide nature grew out of both worlds.
They more adeptly bend the willow's branches
who have experience of the willow's roots.
When you go to bed, don't leave bread or milk
on the table: it attracts the dead
But may he, this quiet conjurer, may he
beneath the mildness of the eyelid
mix their bright traces into every seen thing;
and may the magic of earthsmoke and rue
be as real for him as the clearest connection.
Nothing can mar for him the authentic image;
whether he wanders through houses or graves,
let him praise signet ring, gold necklace, jar.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.
- Elizabeth Bishop
What Work Is
We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is--if you're
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it's someone else's brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, "No,
we're not hiring today," for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who's not beside you or behind or
ahead because he's home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You've never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you're too young or too dumb,
not because you're jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don't know what work is.
- Philip Levine
#24 from Sonnets from the Portuguese
Let the world's sharpness, like a clasping knife,
Shut in upon itself and do no harm
In this close hand of Love, now soft and warm,
And let us hear no sound of human strife
After the click of the shutting. Life to life
I lean upon thee, Dear, without alarm,
and feel as safe as guarded by a charm
Against the stab of worldlings, who if rife
Are weak to injure. Very whitely still
The lilies of our lives may reassure
Their blossoms from their roots, accessible
Alone to heavenly dews that drop not fewer,
Growing straight, out of man's reach, on the hill.
God only, who made us rich, can make us poor.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Purposefully Ungrammatical Love Song
There's many and many, and not so far,
Is willing to dry my tears away;
There's many to tell me what you are,
And never a lie to all they say.
It's little the good to hide my head,
It's never the use to bar my door;
There's many as counts the tears I shed,
There's mourning hearts for my heart is sore.
There's honester eyes than your blue eyes,
There's better a mile than such as you.
But when did I say that I was wise,
And when did I hope that you were true?
- Dorothy Parker
Two Bowls of Milk
Are two bowls of milk. They are round
and white and have nothing to do
with the moon. They have no implications
of blindness, or sight. They wait
on the doorstep like bowls
or like things that closely resemble
bowls in their stillness. The bowls do not
foreshadow cats. There are two
because two hands set them out
and each wanted to hold something.
Milk because not water. The curve of
milk against the curve of bowl.
- Stephanie Bolster
Offering and Rebuff
I could love you
as dry roots love rain.
I could hold you
as branches in the wind
brandish petals.
Forgive me for speaking so soon.
Let your heart look
on white sea spray
and be lonely.
Love is a fool star.
You and a ring of stars
may mention my name
and then forget me.
Love is a fool star.
- Carl Sandburg
How It Will Happen, When
There you are, exhausted from another night of crying,
curled up on the couch, the floor, at the foot of the bed,
anywhere you fall you fall down crying, half amazed
at what the body is capable of, not believing you can cry
anymore. And there they are: his socks, his shirt, your
underwear, and your winter gloves, all in a loose pile
next to the bathroom door, and you fall down again.
Someday, years from now, things will be different:
the house clean for once, everything in its place, windows
shining, sun coming in easily now, skimming across
the thin glaze of wax on the wood floor. You'll be peeling
an orange or watching a bird leap from the edge of the rooftop
next door, noticing how, for an instant, her body is trapped
in the air, only a moment before gathering the will to fly
into the ruff at her wings, and then doing it: flying.
You'll be reading, and for a moment you'll see a word
you don't recognize, a simple word like cup or gate or wisp
and you'll ponder it like a child discovering language.
Cup, you'll say it over and over until it begins to make sense,
and that's when you'll say it, for the first time, out loud: He's dead.
He's not coming back, and it will be the first time you believe it.
- Dorianne Laux
Three of Cups
at some point it becomes true that all stories
are love stories. all making, love making.
I didn't make this rule. but it binds me
all the same. I wish there were a law
against condescending against love. against
the economy of fear that says your joy
means less joy for me as if love
were pie, or money, or fossil fuel
dug or pumped from the earth, gone
when it's gone. it's just not true. the heart
with its gift for magnificent expansion
is not coal. not fruit set to spoil or the dollar
cringing in its wallet. when you say darling,
the world lights up at its edges. when mouths
find mouths and minds follow or minds find
minds and mouths, hands, hips, toes, follow –
how about you call that sacred. how about you raise
your veined right hand and swear on the blood
that branches there, yes. I take this crush
to be my lawful infatuation. I will bend toward joy
until the bending's its own pleasure. I will memorize
photographs and street maps, I will acquiesce
to the maudlin urgency of pop songs and dance,
and dance – there's a perfection only the impossible kiss
possesses. there are notes you can only hear naked
in the dark of a room to which you will never
return. anything that moves the world toward light
is a blessing. why not take it with both hands,
lift it to your lips like a broth of stars. this
is the substance that holds our little atoms together
into bodies. this sweet paste of longing
is all that binds us to the earth.
and all we know of the gods.
- Marty McConnell
Autobiography (Polish It Like a Piece of Silver)
I am standing in the cemetery at Byrds, Texas.
What did Judy say? "God forsaken is beautiful, too."
A very old man who has cancer on his face and takes
care of the cemetery, is raking a grave in such a
manner as to almost (polish it like a piece of silver.
An old dog stands beside him. It's a hot day: 105.
What am I doing out here in west Texas, standing in
a cemetery? The old man wonders about that, too.
My presence has become a part of his raking. I know
that he is also polishing me.
- Richard Brautigan
What We Heard About the Japanese
We heard they would jump from buildings
at the slightest provocation: low marks
On an exam, a lovers' spat
or an excess of shame.
We heard they were incited by shame,
not guilt. That they
Loved all things American.
Mistrusted anything foreign.
We heard their men liked to buy
schoolgirls' underwear
And their women
did not experience menopause or other
Western hysterias. We heard
they still preferred to breastfeed,
Carry handkerchiefs, ride bicycles
and dress their young like Victorian
Pupils. We heard that theirs
was a feminine culture. We heard
That theirs was an example of extreme
patriarchy. That rape
Didn't exist on these islands. We heard
their marriages were arranged, that
They didn't believe in love. We heard
they were experts in this art above all others.
That frequent earthquakes inspired insecurity
and lack of faith. That they had no sense of irony.
We heard even faith was an American invention.
We heard they were just like us under the skin.
What the Japanese Perhaps Heard
Perhaps they heard we don't understand them
very well. Perhaps this made them
Pleased. Perhaps they heard we shoot
Japanese students who ring the wrong
Bell at Hallowe'en. That we shoot
at the slightest provocation: a low mark
On an exam, a lovers' spat, an excess
of guilt. Perhaps they wondered
If it was guilt we felt at the sight of that student
bleeding out among our lawn flamingos,
Or something recognizable to them,
something like grief. Perhaps
They heard that our culture
has its roots in desperate immigration
And lone men. Perhaps they observed
our skill at raising serial killers,
That we value good teeth above
good minds and have no festivals
To remember the dead. Perhaps they heard
that our grey lakes are deep enough to swallow cities,
That our landscape is vast wheat and loneliness.
Perhaps they ask themselves if, when grief
Wraps its wet arms around Montana, we would not prefer
the community of archipelagos
Upon which persimmons are harvested
and black fingers of rock uncurl their digits
In the mist. Perhaps their abacus echoes
the shape that grief takes,
One island
bleeding into the next,
And for us grief is an endless cornfield,
silken and ripe with poison.
- Rachel Rose
Reverence
Love not the rider but the old rider,
the ghost in the saddle: Obey that ghost.
A good horse runs even at the shadow of the whip.
But we are not good horses.
We bolt. We stand still in bad weather.
We rely on things we know are unreliable,
it feels so good just to "rely."
We are relied on.
But I do not know who knows that bad secret.
I do not see who sits astride my back,
who cuts my flank so lovingly on our way to the dark mountain.
- Sarah Manguso
Sometimes
Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.
A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.
Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.
- Sheenagh Pugh
This Hour and What Is Dead
Tonight my brother, in heavy boots, is walking
through bare rooms over my head,
opening and closing doors.
What could he be looking for in an empty house?
What could he possibly need there in heaven?
Does he remember his earth, his birthplace set to torches?
His love for me feels like spilled water
running back to its vessel.
At this hour, what is dead is restless
and what is living is burning.
Someone tell him he should sleep now.
My father keeps a light on by our bed
and readies for our journey.
He mends ten holes in the knees
of five pairs of boy=s pants.
His love for me is like his sewing:
various colors and too much thread,
the stitching uneven. But the needle pierces
clean through with each stroke of his hand.
At this hour, what is dead is worried
and what is living is fugitive.
Someone tell him he should sleep now.
God, that old furnace, keeps talking
with his mouth of teeth,
a beard stained at feasts, and his breath
of gasoline, airplane, human ash.
His love for me feels like fire,
feels like doves, feels like river water.
At this hour, what is dead is helpless, kind
and helpless. While the Lord lives.
Someone tell the Lord to leave me alone.
I've had enough of his love
that feels like burning and flight and running away.
- Li Young Lee
God Says Yes To Me
I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes
- Kaylin Haught
nablopomo is making me really feel how I don't have anything to say and how boring my life and I are. <semantic/syntax? I am not my life>
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