Christmas

sonnet

All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
and after this one just a dozen
to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on here wile we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing and heartache will find an end,
where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.

Billy Collins

Dogs

Dogs

When I was six years old I hit one with
a baseball bat. An accident, of course,
and broke his jaw. They put that dog to sleep,
a euphemism even then I knew
could not excuse me from the lasting wrath
of memory's flagellation. My remorse
could dog me as it would, it wouldn't keep
me from the life sentence that I drew:

For I've been barked at, bitten, nipped, knocked flat,
slobbered over, humped, sprayed, beshat,
by spaniel, terrier, retriever, bull and Dane.
But through the years what's given me most pain
of all the dogs I've been the victim of
are those whose slow eyes gazed at me, in love.

-Ronald Wallace

Incident

I look across the table and think
(fiery with love)
Ask me, go on, ask me
to do something impossible,
something freakishly useless,
something unimaginable and inimitable

Like making a finger break into blossom
or walking for half an hour in twenty minutes
or remembering tomorrow.

I will you to ask it.
But all you say is
Will you give me a cigarette?
And I smile and,
returning to the marvelous world
of possibility
I give you one
with a hand that trembles
with a human trembling.

Norman MacCaig

balances

in life
one is always
balancing

like we juggle our mothers
against our fathers

or one teacher
against another
(only to balance our grade average)

3 grains of salt
to one ounce truth

our sweet black essence
or the funky honkies down the street


and lately i've begun wondering
if you're trying to tell me something

we used to talk all night
and do things alone together

and i've begun

(as a reaction to a feeling)
to balance
the pleasure of loneliness
against the pain
of loving you

Nikki Giovanni

I hated the fact that they had planned me, she had taken
a cardboard out of his shirt from the laundry
as if sliding the backbone up out of his body,
and made a chart of the month and put
her temperature on it, rising and falling,
to know the day to make me - I would have
liked to have been conceived in heat,
in haste, by mistake, in love, in sex,
not on cardboard, the little x on the
rising line that did not fall again.

But when a friend was pouring wine
and said that I seem to have been a child who had been wanted,
I took the wine against my lips
as if my mouth were moving along
that valved wall in my mother's body, she was
bearing down, and then breathing from the mask, and then
bearing down, pressing me out into
the world that was not enough for her without me in it,
not the moon, the sun, Orion
cartwheeling across the dark, not
the earth, the sea - none of it
was enough, for her, without me.

Sharon Olds

;)

destin d'Amelie

Just got fired from school, after showing my 14 y.o. students "Amelie". :))))))

the previously posted poem is the worst one i ever ever wrote, possibly.
which only proves that trying to "make art" is stupid when one's happy. when there's nothing to be altered.

i wish you all good madness and lots of tasty breakfasts in the coming week. bessytoes.

today i am home.
doing laundry, cleaning and making a cake for Mikele (which is for you, really).
by about seven pm
i want our room soft and warm, and dinner ready to have
and then you're back and fall on the bed like a star fish,
and lie there in your jeans, tired
then your smile travels slowly in direction to me and the kitchen behind (i am at the door, aproned)
and the room is suddenly lit with it, baby

time to hybernate and dream of summer

Mira, no pido mucho,
solamente tu mano, tenerla
como un sapito que duerme así contento...
Así la tomo y la sostengo, como
si de ello dependiera
muchísimo el mundo,
la sucesión de las cuatro estaciones,
el canto de los gallos,
el amor de los hombres

Julio Cortázar

These boys have never really grown into men,
despite their disguises, despite their adult ways,
their sophistication, the camouflage of their kindly smiles.
They are still up to their old tricks,
still at the wing-plucking stage. Only now
their prey answers to women's names.
And the girls, likewise, despite their disguises,
despite their adult ways, their camouflage of need,
still twist love till its failure seems not of their making.
Something grotesque migrates hourly
between our different needs,
and is in us all like a poison.
How strange I've not understood so clearly before
how liars and misers, the cruel and the arrogant
lie down and make love like all the others,
how nothing is ever as expected, nothing is ever as stated.
Behind doors and windows nothing is ever as wanted.
The good have no monopoly on love.
All drink from it. All wear its absence like a shroud.

Brian Patten

And it's only doubts that we're counting
On fingers broken long ago
I read with every broken heart we should become
More adventurous
And if you banish me from your profits
And if I get banished from the kingdom up above
I'd sacrifice money and heaven all for love
Let me be loved, let me be loved

Jenny Lewis

"What if...

...the water that came out of the shower was treated with a chemical that responded to a combination of things, like your heartbeat, and your body temperature, and your brain waves, so that your skin changed color according to your mood? If you were extremely excited your skin would turn green, and if you were angry you'd turn red, obviously, and if you felt like shiitake you'd turn brown, and if you were blue you'd turn blue.

Everyone could know what everyone else felt, and we could be more careful with each ohter, because you'd never want to tell a person whose skin was purple that you're angry at her for being late, just like you would want to pat a pink person on the back and tell him, "Congratulations!"

Another reason it would be a good invention is that there are so many times when you know you're feeling a lot of something, but you don't know what the something is. Am I frustrated? Am I actually just panicky? And that confusion changes your mood, it becomes your mood, and you become a confused, gray person. But with the special water, you could look at your orange hands and think, "I'm Happy! That whole time I was actually happy! What a relief! "

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Jonathan Safran Foer.

*

I touch you
as a blind man touches the dice
and finds he has won

Richard Shelton

baby:)

Tengo miedo a perder la maravilla
de tus ojos de estatua y el acento
que de noche me pone en la mejilla
la solitaria rosa de tu aliento.
Tengo pena de ser en esta orilla
tronco sin ramas; y lo que más siento
es no tener la flor, pulpa o arcilla,
para el gusano de mi sufrimiento.
Si tú eres el tesoro oculto mío,
si eres mi cruz y mi dolor mojado,
si soy el perro de tu señorío,
no me dejes perder lo que he ganado
y decora las aguas de tu río
con hojas de mi otoño enajenado.

Lorca

wind snags on the gap
between timbers a tongue
against my teeth

disturbs breath
drawn across languages
as air in a room

settles and circulates
around a body full of oxygen
open to a clear morning

the sound of breath
complicates the room
I brush my lips against

your ear to make
a small patch of
air I can live in

Zoe Skoulding

I like you and I know why.

I like you because you are a good person to like.

I like you because when i tell you something special, you know it's special

And you remember it a long, long time.

You say, Remember when you told me something special

And both of us remember

When I think something is important

You think it's important too
We have good ideas

When I say something funny, you laugh

I think I'm funny and you think I'm funny, too

Huh-huh!

I like you because you know where I'm ticklish

And you don't tickle me there except just a tiny little bit sometimes

But if you do, then I know where to tickle you too

You know how to be silly

That's why I like you

Boy are you ever silly

I never met anybody sillier than me till I met you

I like you because you know when it's time to stop being silly

Maybe day after tomorrow

Maybe never

Too late, it's a quarter past silly

Sometimes we don't say a word

We snurkle under fences

We spy secret places

If I'm a goofus on the roofus hollering my head off

You are one too

If I pretend I'm drowning, you pretend you are saving me

If I am getting ready to pop a paper bag,

Then you are getting ready to jump

HOORAY

That's because you really like me

You really like me, don't you

And I really like you back

And you like me back and I like you back

And that's the way we keep on going every day

If you go away then I go away too

Or if I stay home you send me a postcard

You don't just say Well see you around sometime, bye

I like you a lot because of that

If I go away, I send you a postcard, too

And I like you because if we go away together

And if we are in Grand Central Station

Anf if I get lost

Then you are the one that is yelling for me

And I like you because when I'm feeling sad

You don't always cheer me up right away

Sometimes it is better to be sad

You can't stand the others being so googly and gaggly every single minute

You want to think about things

It takes time

I like you because if I am mad at you

Then you are mad at me too

It's awful when the other person isn't

They are so nice and hoo-hoo you could just about punch them in the nose

I like you because if I think I 'm going to throw up

Then you are really sorry

You don't just pretend you are looking at birdies and all that

You say, maybe it was something you ate

You say, the same thing happened to me one day

And the same thing did

If you find two four-leaf clovers, you give me one

If I find four, I give you two

If we only find three, we keep on looking

Sometimes we have good luck, and sometimes we don't

If I break my arm, and if you break your arm too

Than it's fun to have a broken arm

I tell you about mine, you tell me about yours

We are both sorry

We write our names and draw pictures

We show everybody and they wish they had a broken arm too

I like you because I don't know why but

Everything that happens is nicer with you

I can't remember when I didn't like you

It must have been lonesome then

I like you because because because

I forget why I like you but I do

So many reasons

On the 4th of July I like you because it's the 4th of July

On the fifth of July, I like you too

If you had and I had some drums and some horns and some horses

If we had some hats and some flags and some fire engines

We could be a HOLIDAY

We could be a CELEBRATION

We could be a WHOLE PARADE

See what I mean?

Even if it was the 999th of July

Even if it was August

Even if it was way down at the bottom of November

Even if it was no place particular in January

I would go on choosing you

And you would go on choosing me

Over and over again

That's how it would happen every time

I don't know why

I guess I don't know why I really like you

Why do I like you

I guess I just like you

I guess I just like you because I like you

Sandol Stoddard Warburg

rave on

In the early morning hour,
just before dawn, lover and beloved wake
and take a drink of water.

She asks, "Do you love me or yourself more?
Really, tell the absolute truth."

He says, "There's nothing left of me.
I'm like a ruby held up to the sunrise.
Is it still a stone, or a world
made of redness? It has no resistance
to sunlight.

Rumi

First love, last love Only love, it's only love

Do you miss home?
Do you miss home?
And are you cool?
Symmetrical?

Everything is holding its breath inside me. Everything is waiting to explode like Christmas.

Sandra Cisneros

	Elephant Parade - Thirteen Things
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Love

"Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby - awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess."

lemony snicket, horseradish: bitter truths you can’t avoid

if you leave it alone

If I was the kind who was inclined to cry
I'd cry for the strings I cut loose
And I'd cry for the bridges I burned
Just to make myself a little room to move

I'm full up with lessons learned
And the days that I made just to throw them away
Now I'm closing all the curtains, I'm switching off the phone
Now I took down all your cameras, and I opened the fridge

And hung from the hinges with the
Eggs and garlic, the cheese and tomatoes, the milk and the beer
The strings and the bridges of a brand new year
The first tear was a note and a note made a song

And I hung the song from the hinges of the door
And I carried on just the same as before
And nothing got different, and nothing got changed
But a new tune gets sweeter and simpler with age

If you leave it alone
If you leave it alone
If you leave it alone

It gets sweeter and simpler and softer
and slower and younger the longer
you leave it alone

So I wrote you a note and, the note read
There's so much good silence in the emptiest heads
And her tipped my mouth towards pillowless beds
And poured out my brains and my guts into his

And for each dear black sentence a sheer lack of tears
No I don't want those words back I don't miss those years
But if I could hold your knees again, under my chin again
If I could kiss your nose us both brittle and thin again

Maybe then maybe then I could get light again
Maybe then maybe then I could get light again
If I could kiss your toes
Kiss your ribs, kiss your fingers

Well maybe then maybe then I could get light and then
I would be light, I would be light, I would be light, I would be light

Oh but, If you leave it alone
If you leave it alone
If you leave it alone

It gets sweeter and simpler and softer
And slower and younger the longer
You leave it alone

Leave it alone
Leave it alone
Leave it alone

Gate C22

At gate C22 in the Portland airport
a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed
a woman arriving from Orange County.
They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after
the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons
and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,
the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other
like he’d just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,
like she’d been released at last from ICU, snapped
out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down
from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing.

Neither of them was young. His beard was gray.
She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine
her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish
kisses like the ocean in the early morning,
the way it gathers and swells, sucking
each rock under, swallowing it
again and again. We were all watching—
passengers waiting for the delayed flight
to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots,
the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling
sunglasses. We couldn’t look away. We could
taste the kisses crushed in our mouths.

But the best part was his face. When he drew back
and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost
as though he were a mother still open from giving birth,
as your mother must have looked at you, no matter
what happened after—if she beat you or left you or
you’re lonely now—you once lay there, the vernix
not yet wiped off and someone gazed at you
as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth.
The whole wing of the airport hushed,
all of us trying to slip into that woman’s middle-aged body,
her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses,
little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

Ellen Bass

take good care of your dreams

photo by http://mr-twingo.deviantart.com/

hey baby, where are you*

*

How it feels to be touching
you: an Io moth, orange
and yellow as pollen,
wings through the night
miles to mate,
could crumble in the hand.

Yet our meaning together
is hardy as an onion
and layered.
Goes into the blood like garlic.
Sour as rose hips,
gritty as whole grain,

fragrant as thyme honey.
When I am turning slowly
in the woven hammocks of our talk,
when I am chocolate melting into you,
I taste everything new
in your mouth.

You are not my old friend.
How did I used to sit
and look at you? Now
though I seem to be standing still
I am flying flying flying
in the trees of your eyes.

Marge Piercy

Bird-Understander

Of many reasons I love you here is one

the way you write me from the gate at the airport
so I can tell you everything will be alright

so you can tell me there is a bird
trapped in the terminal all the people
ignoring it because they do not know
what do with it except to leave it alone
until it scares itself to death

it makes you terribly terribly sad

You wish you could take the bird outside
and set it free or (failing that)
call a bird-understander
to come help the bird

All you can do is notice the bird
and feel for the bird and write
to tell me how language feels
impossibly useless

but you are wrong

You are a bird-understander
better than I could ever be
who make so many noises
and call them song

These are your own words
your way of noticing
and saying plainly
of not turning away
from hurt

you have offered them
to me I am only
giving them back

if only I could show you
how very useless
they are not

Craig Arnold

Arrival

During our first few dates, we
scribbled our confessions on paper,

sending them like fast-forward
letters back and forth across the table.

Then you relented and taught me sign-
language, demonstrating how "like"

is the drawing forth of an invisible
string from the centre of your chest

like a loosened thread, freed from
the constraining fabric of your body,

while "love" is the crossing of
both arms in an act of self-defence

and a warning, or simply that "X"
which marks the point of arrival

upon the very treasure map of you.


Cyril Wong

*

because yes, yes, yes

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

i think this is so beautiful

The Constant of the Universe

I

And under the stars tonight
I wonder if someone cares.
I’m lonely, that’s the way I feel.
(Frank Black, “Man of Steel”)

And so it’s springtime
and every fool has his lips
pursed for the kiss,
the world has spattered
on love like a cheap cologne.
But let’s chop through the false fronts,
peel off the plaster and open the walls
to the bare slats—the meat of the matter,
as they say. Loneliness is the only constant
in this universe

because your head is weighted to fall forward to the ground.
because Layton lied to us; death is never a name for beauty not in use.
because the dog keeps humping your leg and licking his balls and humping your leg and licking his balls and...and, let’s be honest, you’re starting to look forward to it.
because if you say Heraclitus too quickly while contemplating sex he’s bound to become your favourite pre-Socratic.
because people die on the last day of every war.
because of telescopes and the long gaze into darkness.
because Picasso had his blue period.
because there are parts of your lover’s body you’ll wish you hadn’t memorized: the shallow cup at the back of her knee, the soft hills of her resting palms, the galaxy of bone and muscle surrounding her ribs.
because you’ll forget the slow changes in her day-to-day scent.
because memory is a glass filled with earth.
because if loneliness wasn’t the constant, rubber consumption for condoms would destroy the rainforest, pro-sports leagues would collapse, Madonna’d be elected President, and everyone would need constant spine re-adjustments.
because Gould was humming just to himself.
because Bach, on the quiet afternoons, doubted.
because if life were an instrument, it would be a single cello.
because there’s nothing metaphysical about tears.

II

Every song has a you
A you that the singer sings to
(Ani Difranco, “Dilate”)

Ah, where are you, my
ocean, my sapphire, my lovely spring robin,
my flood, my hawk, my scarlet ribbon;
why aren’t you here in the night, my seashell,
taking my hand and whispering
“Bloom”?

because I’ve been raised in a language with no words to give her.
because of the airplane trip, the clouds stretched out like quilts over rolling lovers—and the empty seat beside me. I'm gone and her rhythms go on without me.
because I’ve flown 3000 miles only to ask the hotel clerk for a corkscrew, missing my dark beauty who is not my dark beauty at all.
because the opening of flowers after an eclipse is nothing like her quick, dark, brown eyes.
because we’ve all lived through these country songs.
because I’d welcome birds into my house, hear their tired wings flapping against the windows like heavy rose petals, and wait.
because if she and I were birds, we’d be great and terrible one-winged eagles.
because I’ve read my future in the long dark tunnel of the beer glass, and because I’ve forgotten to write it down.
because of this wanting, and because we’ve forgotten the true meaning of the word: to lack, to wane.
because Tarzan is the perfect metaphor for love: we’re all stuck in a jungle and love is the only vine—we grab hold and are in motion, but its arc ends and we must reach out, fumbling, blindly, knowing there might be nothing to grab in your hand. That anyone ever lets go of the old vine is the miracle.
because there can be no metaphor for loneliness, the form forbids it; and no simile—loneliness isn’t even like loneliness.
because I’m finally ready to buy that “Too Fucked For Zen” bumper sticker.
because love is a knife: love triangles, rectangles, pentagons or octagons—more people means more angles and more angles means more cutting edges.
because I am not a swinger of birches.
because you run and run, not away from or to something, but at, at exhaustion, throwing yourself at it like wind at a candle-flame.

III

You’re the sweetest thing, darlin’
I ever did see,
Really like your peaches
Want to shake your tree.
(Steve Miller, “The Joker”)

And maybe all this is silly,
this courting of the double edge of love
and loss. Maybe it’s a changing of priorities
that’s required; forget about falling in love,
concentrate on tripping head-first into lust,

because her body is the evolutionary tigress of love.
because the bed’s starting to creak and my hands are getting calluses and good God what if my roommate hears me moaning alone up there.
because there’s kum/
quats all over the place.
because I’d lounge with her through the night like a cat in a window facing east.
because we’ve all heard the crowing of the cock.
because of the press of lips into the soft rippling flesh of the belly, the slow curve of hands around thighs, the sudden blossom moist on the tongue, the taste of birth in your mouth. Because after this, all your words are bruised by the new language of her body.
because the lonely have always spoken in tongues, dreaming of speaking with hands, with lips.
because I’ve seen a mole on her thigh and almost asked to touch that darkened ruby.
because all the Elvis in your hips is awful forced, pretty mama.
because it’s been a long time since I’ve rubbed the magic lamp and let loose the genie, went fishing with the flesh pole, set up the tripod and used my telescope to explore the milky way, if you know what I mean.
because you all know what I mean.
because I have no right to read her love poems.
because I’ve forgotten the geography of a woman’s shoulder, how hard and brittle in places, how supple and stemlike in others.
because my desire alone isn’t enough for both of us.
because if I showed her the stars at night, she might see them as nothing but light cracking through a frail wall, and I’d have no words to comfort her.

IV

These words are dedicated to those who died
because they had no love and felt alone in the world
(Irena Klepfisz, “Bashert”)

And there is no hand
to reach for mine, to take
this pen from me, stop it from reaching
the end.
And so loneliness, in the end,
is the dotted yellow line you follow, mindless,

because it’s there, that desire to gut every painting of lovers, to poke your fingers through their eyes, and, maybe, touch your tongue to their cheeks, taste that permanence just once.
because there are days when the birds turn their backs and sing their songs away from you.
because of the bad jokes: Beethoven’s ears, Rembrandt’s eyes, Thomas’s parched Welsh tongue.
because I’ve lost hours at work from trying to picture the exact tilt of her head when she laughs.
because there was another a young woman once, with delicate, deep, deep scars on her wrists and an emptied bottle of pills and I loved her very much.
because now I don’t, and a friend has called that progress; because he’s probably right, and a part of me hates him for that—just hold your tongue and let me love.
because I’ve cut my wrists and don’t even have the scars to show for it, the unstoppable betrayal of healing.
because we have all entered rooms and wept.
because sometimes you’ve got to cry to keep from laughing.
because it’s not abstract at all.
because love, at times, isn’t either.
because of the marble in your mind you can’t get aligned to centre that tells you you’ve lived in this city two years and still don’t call it home, that it’s over, chewed up, time to move on.
because you’ve seen the clouds pulse into the sky like opened veins.
because you’ve been nothing but a visitor, an anomaly, a passing train to everyone you’ve met.
because we’re not Degas’ dancers, our bold strokes don’t blend easily into grace.
because I’d like to fall asleep and wake up someone else, watch everything that I am blow away in the wind like smouldering ash.
because only fire makes dead flowers bloom.
because fuck this prissiness. I am lonely, you are lonely, there is nothing pretty to say. Because fuck the stars, fuck the metaphors, fuck me, fuck you, fuck the walls, fuck it all. We’re all just characters in a nursery rhyme waiting to fall down.
because this is over, and I throw away all these pointless, stupid words except one.
Why?




Andy Weaver

i love you guys:)

The Wave Pictures

Tonight in Teatro de Lloseta!!!!

AAAAAAAAA!!!

I'll be there, jumping like a sillyhead.

De Momento Abril

by Anthony:)

The Forgotten Dialect Of The Heart

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say, God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according to which nation. French has no word for home, and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people in northern India is dying out because their ancient tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would finally explain why the couples on their tombs are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated, they seemed to be business records. But what if they are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light. O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper, as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor. Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script is not language but a map. What we feel most has no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.


~Jack Gilbert

El Garabato

Con un trozo de carbon
Con mi gis roto y mi lapiz rojo
dibujar tu nombre
el nombre de tu boca,
el signo de tus piernas
en la pared de nadie.
En la puerta prohibida
grabar el nombre de tu cuerpo
Hasta que la hoja de mi navaja
sangre
y la piedra grite
y el muro respire como un pecho.

Octavio Paz
1914

A River Is Not Too Much To Love

April is...

... the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

[...]



Shantih shantih shantih

T.S.Eliot

kissing the rain

I want you and you are not here. I pause
in this garden, breathing the colour thought is
before language into still air. Even your name
is a pale ghost and, though I exhale it again
and again, it will not stay with me. Tonight
I make you up, imagine you, your movements clearer
than the words I have you say you said before.

Wherever you are now, inside my head you fix me
with a look, standing here whilst cool late light
dissolves into the earth. I have got your mouth wrong,
but still it smiles. I hold you closer, miles away,
inventing love, until the calls of nightjars
interrupt and turn what was to come, was certain,
into memory. The stars are filming us for no one.

Carol Ann Duffy

and last night last night i saw a miracle. top of the car covered with a hundred snails of all sizes it was beautiful

i got caught in the store
and carried away
i got turned, turned around

i got caught in the store
that's what happened to me
so i didn't call
and you can't see me for a while

i was rising up
hitting the ground
and breaking, and breaking

i got caught in the store
things were flying around
and doors were slamming, and windows weren't breaking
and i couldn't hear what you were saying
and i couldn't hear what you were saying
i couldn't hear what you were saying

i was rising up
hitting the ground
and breaking, and breaking

rising up

rising up

kissms

tel que tu es

victoria

the xmass tree is down

Thulani

girl
what you do is your business
who you love or who you want to love
does not set the sun in my life
there are enough miracles for everyone
girl
i wish you happiness
like a nice home in the country
good playgrounds & schools for the kids
i hope they even learn a second language
& translate neruda from english back to spanish
girl
when that man comes along
& tells you that you are like poetry
that in your eyes are all the things he ever imagined
ever wanted
ever needed
never/never mind what you're gonna wear
just dance with him into forever
girl
don't let no one tell you it ain't time
especially when the fever you have
calls your man doctor & the medicine
is so good you know you can't be well without it
girl
take it & keep it with you
always

E. Ethelbert Miller


:)

photo by N http://4uzhaya.livejournal.com/632628.html

A Little Love Poem

Someone who hates scrabble.

Someone who sleeps on her back near an open window in winter, her breath rolling like a river into night.

Someone who wants me to wake her in the morning by reading ee cummings' love poems, giving a small candle-flicker of a smile just before opening her eyes.

Someone who appreciates the architecture of churches, but refuses to step inside.

Someone who has hands fit to hold hurt sparrows and robins.

Someone who threw out an her Alice Cooper records when she found out he loves to golf.

Someone who would swerve a new car into the ditch to avoid a frog crossing the road.

Someone who would tattoo my name on her arm in writing the same colour as her skin, so it would appear slowly from nowhere when she suntanned, people thinking her blood was telling secrets to the world of its own accord.

Someone who learned Spanish to read Marquez, or Lorca, or Neruda.

Someone whose hips whisper their own stories of the serpent and the garden of Eden.

Someone who bites the back of my neck like a leopardess carrying her kitten to safety.

Someone who'll make me wait for her to come out of the shower.

Someone whose smallest movements amaze me: her hair falling over her eyes, the soft swell of her hips when she ties down, a deep sigh when she sleeps.

Someone who maps every ticklish part of my body and then uses her knowledge strictly for evil.

Someone who paints our bodies black and makes love with me under the stars.

Someone who burns through my chest like that first shot of scotch.

Someone whose tongue, if we're kept apart too long, would nervously trace my face into the roof of her mouth.

Someone who practises her signature with her wrong hand, in case of accidents or a sudden arrest.

Someone whose fingrnails smell faintly of her hair.

Someone who reminds me of the soft tickle of fog.

Someone who would rush outside in the middle of the night, setting a spider onto the lawn, never admitting it's because she hates rain.

Someone who understands the unforgivable importance of ravens.

Someone wholl flicker into my lips with the ferocity of a dragonfly.

Someone who will open, thick, pungent and vital, like a Mapplethorpe flower.

Someone who has searched for me like a near-sighted woman groping for her glasses, stubbing her toes and swearing in Yiddish.

Someone who would understand why Steve and Dave and Paul and I sat in a bar staring at the mirror behind us for twenty minutes because somebody had asked what would happen if you looked at yourself in a mirror using a pair of binoculars unti1 we had to admit the question was too big for us, and we turned back to the safe optics of the beer bottle.

Someone who would just happen to cut my wrist shortly after reading Ondaatje's "The Time Around Scars. "

Someone who'll stare softly but straight at me, smiling reassuringly when I tell her how my 73 year old Medieval lit prof looked up from Chaucer, stared blankly over the class's heads and said that even the happiest marriage will end in death.

Someone who understands the efficiency inherent in suicide.

Someone who knows that love can be the thickest slice of hell we’ll ever taste.

Someone who would dance with me by the sides of highways.

Andy Weaver (i think i love him just for this)

let good seasons begin

18 degrees plus and glorious sunshine:)
it's dark in the living room though, shutters closed, xmass lights on. i should take it down , really i should...

today

two major events are going to take place in my life

one- i am seeing the boy who never grew up, and we are going to have fun

two - i am taking down the xmass tree (it is almost certain)

Snow and Dirty Rain

Close your eyes. A lover is standing too close
to focus on. Leave me blurry and fall toward me
with your entire body. Lie under the covers, pretending
to sleep, while I'm in the other room. Imagine
my legs crossed, my hair combed, the shine of my boots
in the slatted light. I'm thinking My plant, his chair,
the ashtray that we bought together. I'm thinking This is where
we live. When we were little we made houses out of
cardboard boxes. We can do anything. It's not because
our hearts are large, they're not, it's what we
struggle with. The attempt to say Come over. Bring
your friends. It's a potluck, I'm making pork chops, I'm making
those long noodles you love so much. My dragonfly,
my black-eyed fire, the knives in the kitchen are singing
for blood, but we are at the crossroads, my little outlaw,
and this is the map of my heart, the landscape
after cruelty which is, of course, a garden, which is
a tenderness, which is a room, a lover saying Hold me
tight, it's getting cold. We have not touched the stars,
nor are we forgiven, which brings us back
to the hero's shoulders and a gentleness that comes,
not from the absence of violence, but despite
the abundance of it. The lawn is drowned, the sky on fire,
the gold light falling backward through the glass
of every room. I'll give you my heart to make a place
for it to happen, evidence of a love that transcends hunger.
Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars
for you? That I would take you there? The splash
of my tongue melting you like a sugar cube? We've read
the back of the book, we know what's going to happen.
The fields burned, the land destroyed, the lovers left
broken in the brown dirt. And then it's gone.
Makes you sad. All your friends are gone. Goodbye
Goodbye. No more tears. I would like to meet you all
in Heaven. But there's a litany of dreams that happens
somewhere in the middle. Moonlight spilling
on the bathroom floor. A page of the book where we
transcend the story of our lives, past the taco stands
and record stores. Moonlight making crosses
on your body, and me putting my mouth on every one.
We have been very brave, we have wanted to know
the worst, wanted the curtain to be lifted from our eyes.
The dream going on with all of us in it. Penciling in
the bighearted slob. Penciling in his outstretched arms.
Our Father who art in Heaven. Our Father who art buried
in the yard. Someone is digging your grave right now.
Someone is drawing a bath to wash you clean, he said,
so think of the wind, so happy, so warm. It's a fairy tale,
the story underneath the story, sliding down the polished
halls, lightning here and gone. We make these
ridiculous idols so we can pray to what's behind them,
but what happens after we get up the ladder?
Do we simply stare at what is horrible and forgive it?
Here is the river, and here is the box, and here are
the monsters we put in the box to test our strength
against. Here is the cake, and here is the fork, and here's
the desire to put it inside us, and then the question
behind every question: What happens next?
The way you slam your body into mine reminds me
I'm alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling,
and they're only a few steps behind you, finding
the flaw, the poor weld, the place where we weren't
stitched up quite right, the place they could almost
slip right through if the skin wasn't trying to
keep them out, to keep them here, on the other side
of the theater where the curtain keeps rising.
I crawled out the window and ran into the woods.
I had to make up all the words myself. The way
they taste, the way they sound in the air. I passed
through the narrow gate, stumbled in, stumbled
around for a while, and stumbled back out. I made
this place for you. A place for you to love me.
If this isn't the kingdom then I don't know what is.
So how would you catalog it? Dawn in the fields?
Snow and dirty rain? Light brought in in buckets?
I was trying to describe the kingdom, but the letters
kept smudging as I wrote them: the hunter's heart,
the hunter's mouth, the trees and the trees and the
spaces between the trees, swimming in gold. The words
frozen. The creatures frozen. The plum sauce
leaking out of the bag. Explaining will get us nowhere.
I was away, I don't know where, lying on the floor,
pretending I was dead. I wanted to hurt you
but the victory is that I could not stomach it. We have
swallowed him up, they said. It's beautiful, it really is.
I had a dream about you. We were in the gold room
where everyone finally gets what they want.
You said Tell me about your books, your visions made
of flesh and light and I said This is the Moon. This is
the Sun. Let me name the stars for you. Let me take you
there. The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugar
cube...We were in the gold room where everyone
finally gets what they want, so I said What do you
want, sweetheart? and you said Kiss me. Here I am
leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome
burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack,
my silent night, just mash your lips against me.
We are all going forward. None of us are going back.

By Richard Siken

a deceptively fine exterior

Like an unfinished painting
I change colors
reverse images
rework topography
rub textures
varnish over

like an incomplete poem
i alter meaning
change word order
repeat sounds
scan dictionaries
varnish over

like an unfinished kitchen
i move dishes
rearrange stools
hang new pictures
water old plants
varnish over

like an incomplete breath
i watch every moment
worry about tomorrow
plan out the day
ask for forgiveness
and varnish over

and then inevitably
i begin to see
my reflection
in the haze.

-Bill Schneberger

in defence of a dream

"Dreams pass into the reality of action.
From the action stems the dream again;
and this interdependence produces
the highest form of living."

Anais Nin

borracho según lo bebido

Borracho según lo bebido en la trementina de sus besos abiertos, su
cuerpo mojado acuñado entre mi cuerpo mojado y la aleta de nuestro
barco que se haga de flores, banqueteado, la dirigimos - nuestros
dedos como los sebos adornados con el metal amarillo - sobre el borde
caliente del cielo, la respiración pasada del día en nuestras velas.

Fijado por el sol entre el solsticio y el equinoccio, soñoliento y
enredado juntos mandilamos por meses y despertamos con el gusto amargo
de la tierra en nuestros labios, párpados todo pegajosos, y deseamos
cal y el sonido de una cuerda que bajaba un cubo abajo de su pozo.
Entonces, vinimos por noche a las islas afortunadas, y endecha como
pescados bajo red de nuestros besos.

Neruda

Beauty makes me hopeless. I don't care why anymore I just want to get away. When I look at the city of Paris I long to wrap my legs around it. When I watch you dancing there is a heartless immensity like a sailor in a dead calm sea. Desires as round as peaches bloom in me all night, I no longer gather Anne Carson: On Hedonism

So I take my
Good fortune
And I fantasize
Of our leaving
Like some modern-day
Gypsy landslide
Like some modern-day
Bonnie and Clyde

Twenty-One Love Poems

I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming.
Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other,
you've been at your desk for hours. I know what I dreamed:
our friend the poet comes into my room
where I've been writing for days,
drafts, carbons, poems are scattered everywhere,
and I want to show her one poem
which is the poem of my life. But I hesitate,
and wake. You've kissed my hair
to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem,
I say, a poem I wanted to show someone...
and I laugh and fall dreaming again
of the desire to show you to everyone I love,
to move openly together
in the pull of gravity, which is not simple,
which carried the feathered grass a long way down
the upbreathing air.

~ Adrienne Rich

*

I wish in the city of your heart
you would let me be the street
where you walk when you are most
yourself. I imagine the houses:
It has been raining, but the rain
is done and the children kept home
have begun opening their doors.

Robley Wilson

smiling into a wobbly mirror i say

YOU VE TRRNED MEINTO A LANGUAGE I CANNOT SPEAK WITHOUT YOU

up into the silence the green
silence with a white earth in it

you will(kiss me)go

out into the morning the young
morning with a warm world in it

(kiss me)you will go

on into the sunlight the fine
sunlight with a firm day in it

you will go(kiss me

down into your memory and
a memory and memory

i)kiss me,(will go)

--ee cummings

only the best

In the slaughterhouse of love
they kill only the best,
none of the weak or deformed.

Do not run away from this dying.
Whoever is not killed for love is dead meat.

Rumi

Excerpts from Shane Koyczan's "Apology"

When you've got no time to save anyone but yourself you better believe
you're worth it and you are worth the time it takes to take the time to get to know you.
We've managed to muddle through the awkward stages of "I like you" and "do you like me"
and when we both said yes life became a multiple choice test; not knowing anything,
we became each others best guess. And holding your hand is less like exploration and more like discovery.
Lady, I don't have to study you to be sure you were the choice I made before
I knew what the other choices were.

and

I also want amnesia so I can relive each kiss with a perfect newness
that leaves me smashed in the arms of rapture. I want the sky to fracture under
the impossible weight of an apology because I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I want so much.
I'm sorry that I'm using "I'm sorry" as a crutch to lean on for so long
but if you sing me that song of sweet logic again then I promise to make the effort
to stand on my own. There is a reason that our hearts are more like a muscle
and less like a bone. I've known so many people who've have grown up flexing
in front of mirrors and falling for their own reflection as if that's adequate but that's bullshit.
Because we only get now until the time we go and if they've only got time to love themselves
then nobody is going to be around to hear the sound of their heartbeat echo.
So lady, don't expect an apology when I tell you I'm only held together
by a heart that pumps blue, it's the strongest muscle in my body and I'm flexing it for you.

the beginning of things

Tonight, we make up our own legends.
As we go along we discover
Buried treasure. Why, when


Touched, does skin raise rows
Of budding flowers, a castle,
Lightning shows? Did you hear
Of the two lovers too entwined
They made the gods so jealous
They had to spend their entire lives
Aching for each other, one turned
Into a rock, the other a bay?
Only, for a few minutes each day
With the tide could they, with rage
And mad laughter, embrace. And so
I recall their tragedy in the midst
Of our pleasure, taking even more
Time to name and rename the sudden
Dip between the waist and hip,
The regions where lips rest most
At home. I conjure up a full
Moon, chant a forbidden word
Three times, and stir in our
Bed, a pool in whose clear water
I see our future. Kingdom
Of locked limbs, shared breath.
The answers now come flying
Like a winged horse or gold coins
Spilling from a magic purse.
Barefoot, I dance through fire.
I tower over trees. And I bring
To you, still smoking and warm,
The beggar hands of a goddess.


by Fatima Lim-Wilson

el amenazado

Es el amor. Tendré que ocultarme o huir.

Crecen los muros de su cárcel, como en un sueño atroz. La
hermosa máscara ha cambiado, pero como siempre es la única.
¿De qué me servirán mis talismanes: el ejercicio de las letras,
la vaga erudición el aprendizaje de las palabras que usó
el áspero Norte para cantar sus mares y sus espadas, la serena amistad,
las galerías de la Biblioteca, las cosas comunes, los hábitos, el joven
amor de mi madre, la sombra militar de mis muertos, la noche
intemporal, el sabor del sueño?
Estar contigo o no estar contigo, es la medida de mi tiempo.
Ya el cántaro se quiebra sobre la fuente, ya el hombre se levanta a la voz
del ave, ya se han oscurecido los que miran por la ventana, pero la
sombra no ha traído la paz.
Es ya lo se, el amor: la ansiedad y el alivio de oír tu voz, la espera y la
espera y la memoria, el horror de vivir en lo sucesivo.
Es el amor con sus mitologías, con su pequeñas magias inútiles.
Hay una esquina por la que no me atrevo a pasar.
Ya los ejércitos que cercan, las hordas.
(Esta habitación es irreal; ella no la ha visto.)
El nombre de una mujer me delata.
Me duele una mujer en todo el cuerpo.

Jorge Luis Borges

*

Look, it's spring.

And last year's loose dust has turned into this soft willingness. The wind-flowers have come up trembling, slowly the brackens are uplifting their curvaceous and pale bodies. The thrushes have come home, none less than filled with mystery, sorrow, happiness, music, ambition.

And i am walking out into all of this with nowhere to go and no task undertaken but to turn the pages of this beautiful world over and over, in the world of my mind.

Mary Oliver

it happens like this

I was outside St. Cecelia's Rectory
smoking a cigarette when a goat appeared beside me.
It was mostly black and white, with a little reddish
brown here and there. When I started to walk away,
it followed. I was amused and delighted, but wondered
what the laws were on this kind of thing. There's
a leash law for dogs, but what about goats? People
smiled at me and admired the goat. "It's not my goat,"
I explained. "It's the town's goat. I'm just taking
my turn caring for it." "I didn't know we had a goat,"
one of them said. "I wonder when my turn is." "Soon,"
I said. "Be patient. Your time is coming." The goat
stayed by my side. It stopped when I stopped. It looked
up at me and I stared into its eyes. I felt he knew
everything essential about me. We walked on. A police-
man on his beat looked us over. "That's a mighty
fine goat you got there," he said, stopping to admire.
"It's the town's goat," I said. "His family goes back
three-hundred years with us," I said, "from the beginning."
The officer leaned forward to touch him, then stopped
and looked up at me. "Mind if I pat him?" he asked.
"Touching this goat will change your life," I said.
"It's your decision." He thought real hard for a minute,
and then stood up and said, "What's his name?" "He's
called the Prince of Peace," I said. "God! This town
is like a fairy tale. Everywhere you turn there's mystery
and wonder. And I'm just a child playing cops and robbers
forever. Please forgive me if I cry." "We forgive you,
Officer," I said. "And we understand why you, more than
anybody, should never touch the Prince." The goat and
I walked on. It was getting dark and we were beginning
to wonder where we would spend the night.

James Tate

if

If you bring forth what is within you,
what is within you will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you,
what is within you will destroy you.

Gospel of Thomas

Sunday

The mint bed is in
bloom: lavender haze
day. The grass is
more than green and
throws up sharp and
cutting lights to
slice through the
plane tree leaves. And
on the cloudless blue
I scribble your name.

James Schuyler