Nearly A Valediction
 

You happened to me. I was happened to
like an abandoned building by a bull-
dozer, like the van that missed my skull
happened a two-inch gash across my chin.
You were as deep down as I've ever been.
You were inside me like my pulse. A new-
born flailing toward maternal heartbeat through
the shock of cold and glare: when you were gone,
swaddled in strange air I was that alone
again, inventing life left after you.


I don't want to remember you as that
four o'clock in the morning eight months long
after you happened to me like a wrong
number at midnight that blew up the phone
bill to an astronomical unknown
quantity in a foreign currency.
The U.S. dollar dived since you happened to me.
You've grown into your skin since then; you've grown
into the space you measure with someone
you can love back without a caveat.

While I love somebody I learn to live
with through the downpulled winter days' routine
wakings and sleepings, half-and-half caffeine-
assisted mornings, laundry, stock-pots, dust-
balls in the hallway, lists instead of longing, trust
that what comes next comes after what came first.
She'll never be a story I make up.
You were the one I didn't know where to stop.
If I had blamed you, now I could forgive
you, but what made my cold hand, back in prox-
imity to your hair, your mouth, your mind,
want where it no way ought to be, defined
by where it was, and was and was until
the whole globed swelling liquefied and spilled
through one cheek's nap, a syllable, a tear,
was never blame, whatever I wished it were.
You were the weather in my neighborhood.
You were the epic in the episode.
You were the year poised on the equinox.

~ Marilyn Hacker

To Earthward
By Robert Frost

Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on air

That crossed me from sweet things,
The flow of - was it musk
From hidden grapevine springs
Down hill at dusk?

I had the swirl and ache
From sprays of honeysuckle
That when they're gathered shake
Dew on the knuckle.

I craved strong sweets, but those
Seemed strong when I was young;
The petal of the rose
It was that stung.

Now no joy but lacks salt
That is not dashed with pain
And weariness and fault;
I crave the stain

Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove.

When stiff and sore and scarred
I take away my hand
From leaning on it hard
In grass and sand,

The hurt is not enough:
I long for weight and strength
To feel the earth as rough
To all my length.

Mowing

There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

--Robert Frost

Live Oaks, New Orleans
by Jennifer Maier

They square off along Napoleon avenue,
opposing armies of dark women, leaning out
so far their branches meet at the top, like hands
grabbing fistfuls of tangled hair;
and some of them are old, with the thick,
scarred trunks of Storyville madams, and
roots so strong their suck heaves
up the sidewalk like so many broken
saltines. And some are young, with the
straightbacked bodies of girls who dream
of horses and the brown arms of the neighbor boys,
but underground the red roots grow together,
fuse in a living circuitry spun deep and
stronger than the whims of emperors, as if
they've known all along that earth's the right
place for love, as though, planted in battle lines,
they incline toward the circle, and hold it open,
vaulted and welcoming.

I loved you…
by Alexander Pushkin

I loved you, and I probably still do,
And for a while the feeling may remain...
But let my love no longer trouble you,
I do not wish to cause you any pain.
I loved you; and the hopelessness I knew,
The jealousy, the shyness - though in vain -
Made up a love so tender and so true
As may God grant you to be loved again.

Myself
by Edgar Albert Guest

I have to live with myself and so
I want to be fit for myself to know.
I want to be able as days go by,
always to look myself straight in the eye;
I don't want to stand with the setting sun
and hate myself for the things I have done.
I don't want to keep on a closet shelf
a lot of secrets about myself
and fool myself as I come and go
into thinking no one else will ever know
the kind of person I really am,
I don't want to dress up myself in sham.
I want to go out with my head erect
I want to deserve all men's respect;
but here in the struggle for fame and wealth
I want to be able to like myself.
I don't want to look at myself and know that
I am bluster and bluff and empty show.
I never can hide myself from me;
I see what others may never see;
I know what others may never know,
I never can fool myself and so,
whatever happens I want to be
self respecting and conscience free.

Deeper
by Quentin Huff

He poured it in her ear, the idea

of him on top, slowing time down
to enter her, convincing her
that everything would stay between them,
with his back to the air
and her bottom on the mattress,
their motions surrounded by
the smell of love and fabric softener.

She wanted him behind her, a position
of trust, tossing aside suspicions
of what he might do behind her back
and how easily he could hide
who else he might be thinking of.

But he did not want to look over her shoulder,

he wanted to be in her eyes,
moving his hips in slow clock-
wise
rotation,

making the cold stone expression
on her face crumble.
She'd been wearing her countenance that way

since the first day they met,
after one lover refused to stay inside her
and another was so indecisive, she was forced
to mount the problem and dominate.

But no more.

And she cried because he did everything
he said he would do to her
but when he was finished, he did not leave.

SONETO XVII

No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio
o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego:
te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.

Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva
dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores,
y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo
el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra.

Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,
te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:
así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera,

sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres,
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.

~ Pablo Neruda

Poesia~Pablo Neruda
 

"Fireflies" by Omar Musa
 

"When they promise us everything and treat us like nothing,
I live for the little winds.
I live for the things I am ready to die for.
I stand for the things for which I am ready to fall...
This poem is for the survivors,
It's for the outcasts,
It's for the eccentrics who never let coolness
Whitewash their madness...
They will treat your voice like a crime
for which you have no alibi.
So make it a crime of passion."

More Staceyann ... <3 ... 'cause I'm crushing on her energy today ;)

Often Misattributed
 

Come to the edge.

We might fall.

Come to the edge.

It's too high!

COME TO THE EDGE!

And they came

And he pushed

And they flew.


Christopher Logue's poem "Come to the Edge" from New Numbers.

One Art
 

by Elizabeth Bishop

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 loved 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!) like disaster.

March

by James Wright

A bear under the snow
Turns over to yawn.
It's been a long, hard rest.

Once, as she lay asleep, her cubs fell
Out of her hair,
And she did not know them.

It's hard to breathe
In a tight grave:

So she roars,
And the roof breaks.
Dark rivers and leaves
Pour down.

When the wind opens its doors
In its own good time,
The cubs follow that relaxed and beautiful woman
Outside to the unfamiliar cities
Of moss.

Eres el regalo
 

YES!
 

You are the sun in drag.
You are God hiding from yourself.
Remove all the “mine” – that is the veil.
Why ever worry about Anything?
Listen to what your friend Hafiz Knows for certain:
The appearance of this world
Is a Magi’s brilliant trick,
though its affairs are Nothing into nothing.
You are a divine elephant with amnesia,
Trying to live in an ant Hole.
Sweetheart, O sweetheart,
You are God in Drag!

- Hafiz

The Coming of Light
by Mark Strand

Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.

http://cdn.dornob.com/wp-content/upl...h-concrete.jpg

Strange Fruit
 

Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the popular trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
[ From: http://www.elyrics.net/read/b/billie...it-lyrics.html ]
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop
Here is a strange and bitter cry


[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs"]Billie Holiday - Strange Fruit - YouTube[/nomedia]

"What Teachers Make" - Taylor Mali
 

Here's to the teachers who make so much happen. This poem 'makes' you want to scream "Yes!"



http://www.slideshare.net/ethos3/wha...rs-make-515731

He says the problem with teachers is, "What's a kid going to learn
from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?"

He reminds the other dinner guests that it's true what they say about
teachers:

Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.

I decide to bite my tongue instead of his
and resist the temptation to remind the other dinner guests
that it's also true what they say about lawyers.

Because we're eating, after all, and this is polite company.

"I mean, you're a teacher, Taylor," he says.
"Be honest. What do you make?"

And I wish he hadn't done that
(asked me to be honest)
because, you see, I have a policy
about honesty and ass-kicking:
if you ask for it, I have to let you have it.

You want to know what I make?

I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional medal of honor
and an A- feel like a slap in the face.
How dare you waste my time with anything less than your very best.

I make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall
in absolute silence. No, you may not work in groups.
No, you may not ask a question.
Why won't I let you get a drink of water?
Because you're not thirsty, you're bored, that's why.

I make parents tremble in fear when I call home:
I hope I haven't called at a bad time,
I just wanted to talk to you about something Billy said today.
Billy said, "Leave the kid alone. I still cry sometimes, don't you?"
And it was the noblest act of courage I have ever seen.

I make parents see their children for who they are
and what they can be.

You want to know what I make?

I make kids wonder,
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write, write, write.
And then I make them read.
I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely
beautiful
over and over and over again until they will never misspell
either one of those words again.
I make them show all their work in math.
And hide it on their final drafts in English.
I make them understand that if you got this (brains)
then you follow this (heart) and if someone ever tries to judge you
by what you make, you give them this (the finger).

Let me break it down for you, so you know what I say is true:
I make a goddamn difference! What about you?

The Centaur

By May Swenson (1919 - 1989)

The summer that I was ten --
Can it be there was only one
summer that I was ten?

It must have been a long one then --
each day I'd go out to choose
a fresh horse from my stable

which was a willow grove
down by the old canal.
I'd go on my two bare feet.

But when, with my brother's jack-knife,
I had cut me a long limber horse
with a good thick knob for a head,

and peeled him slick and clean
except a few leaves for the tail,
and cinched my brother's belt

around his head for a rein,
I'd straddle and canter him fast
up the grass bank to the path,

trot along in the lovely dust
that talcumed over his hoofs,
hiding my toes, and turning

his feet to swift half-moons.
The willow knob with the strap
jouncing between my thighs

was the pommel and yet the poll
of my nickering pony's head.
My head and my neck were mine,

yet they were shaped like a horse.
My hair flopped to the side
like the mane of a horse in the wind.

My forelock swung in my eyes,
my neck arched and I snorted.
I shied and skittered and reared,

stopped and raised my knees,
pawed at the ground and quivered.
My teeth bared as we wheeled

and swished through the dust again.
I was the horse and the rider,
and the leather I slapped to his rump

spanked my own behind.
Doubled, my two hoofs beat
a gallop along the bank,

the wind twanged in my mane,
my mouth squared to the bit.
And yet I sat on my steed

quiet, negligent riding,
my toes standing the stirrups,
my thighs hugging his ribs.

At a walk we drew up to the porch.
I tethered him to a paling.
Dismounting, I smoothed my skirt

and entered the dusky hall.
My feet on the clean linoleum
left ghostly toes in the hall.

Where have you been? said my mother.
Been riding, I said from the sink,
and filled me a glass of water.

What's that in your pocket? she said.
Just my knife. It weighted my pocket
and stretched my dress awry.

Go tie back your hair, said my mother,
and Why Is your mouth all green?
Rob Roy, he pulled some clover
as we crossed the field, I told her.

http://www.deviantart.com/download/2...ch-d4gw4c5.jpg

Gather
by Rose McLarney

Some springs, apples bloom too soon.
The trees have grown here for a hundred years, and are still quick
to trust that the frost has finished. Some springs,
pink petals turn black. Those summers, the orchards are empty
and quiet. No reason for the bees to come.

Other summers, red apples beat hearty in the trees, golden apples
glow in sheer skin. Their weight breaks branches,
the ground rolls with apples, and you fall in fruit.

You could say, I have been foolish. You could say, I have been fooled.
You could say, Some years, there are apples

This is my beloved~Walter Benton
 

Each time I know beauty, it shall be through you.
When joy lifts me high...or sorrow breaks me,
When I love again,
My senses conditioned to you will be forgetting you anew.
Each kiss that fills my mouth shall fill it with your lips,
Yes, each time my eyelids crumble and close
Under blood's fired impact,
When love strikes home...yours will be the mouth.

BECOMING



Listen, heart
Listen close-listen
To the melancholy
Melody of your own voice
I am weary from my own dreaming
I am tired of waiting
So this time I'm leaping
I reach beyond myself to see
What I find beyond my mind
There is no time
In this place beyond my sight
My :heartbeat: knows what is not yet seen
I'm witnessing my own becoming
Lash myself to the mantle of my desire-I will
Turn from it's temptations
But the wanting takes me higher
I am hurting
I am not yet born
I am the mother and the father
Of what is not yet known
Darkness surrounds me
I scratch, I struggle, I breathe
That's when suddenly
Everything fades and falls away
Because the chains that once held us...
Are only the chains we've made.

She said it didn't matter
All hy had to do was flatter

she said she didnt care
what hy chose to wear

When they arrived,
she said
Hys shoes don't match his socks, slacks or tie!
Oh me oh my
What's a girl to do?

I suggested
A shopping trip for two

gaea051812

Encounter

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was not long ago. Today, neither of them is alive,
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going,
The flash of a hand, streak of a movement, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

-Cheslaw Milosz-

I'm gonna try to recite from memory...appologize now if I get a few words wrong.

From childhoods hour
I have not been
As others were
I have not seen
As others saw
I could not bring
My passions from
A common spring
My heart to joy
At the same tone
And all that loved
I've loved alone.
Edgar Allen Poe

I'm gonna try to recite from memory...appologize now if I get a few words wrong.

From childhoods hour
I have not been
As others were
I have not seen
As others saw
I could not bring
My passions from
A common spring
My heart to joy
At the same tone
And all that loved
I've loved alone.
Edgar Allen Poe

LOVE POEM FOR A NON-BELIEVER~by Sandra Cisneros



Because I miss you
I run my hand
Along the flat of my thigh
Curve of the hip
Mango of the a*s...Imagine
it's your hand
Across the thrum of ribs
Arpeggio of the breasts
Collarbones you adore that I don't

My neck is thin
You could cup it with one hand
Yank the life from me
If you wanted

I've cut my hair
You can't tug my hair anymore
A jet of black
Through the fingers now

Your hands cool
Along the jaw
Skin of the eyelids
Soft as a mouth

And when we open like apple
Split each other in half
And have seen the heart
Of the heart
That part that you don't...
I don't show anyone
The part we want to reel in

Back as soon as it
Is suddenly unreeled like silk
Flag or the prayer call
of a mohammed we won't
Have a word for this except
Perhaps religion.

<3
 

The Laughing Heart by 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 is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

Yesterday was the birthday of Alexander Pope who wrote -
 

"To err is human; to forgive, divine."

And, "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

and the deliciously fun "Essay on Man."

From "An Essay on Man" -

"Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul;
Reason's comparing balance rules the whole.
Man, but for that, no action could attend,
And but for this, were active to no end:
Fix'd like a plant on his peculiar spot,
To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot;
Or, meteor-like, flame lawless through the void,
Destroying others, by himself destroy'd."

THE RIVAL~Sylvia Plath


If the moon smiled, she would resemble you
You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating.
Both of you are great light borrowers
Her O-mouth grieves at the world, yours is unaffected

And your first gift is making stone out of everything
I wake to a mausoleum, you are here
Ticking your fingers on the marble table, looking for cigarettes
Spiteful as a woman, but not so nervous
And dying to say something unanswerable

The moon, too, abases her subjects,
But in the daytime she is ridiculous
Your dissatisfactions, on the other hand,
Arrive through the mailslot with loving regularity
White and blank, expansive as carbon monoxide
No day is safe from news of you
Walking about in Africa maybe, but thinking of me.

GLOIRE de DIJON~D.H. Lawrence

When she rises in the morning
I linger to watch her
She spreads the bath-cloth underneath the window
Glistening white on the shoulders,
While down her sides the mellow
Golden shadow glows as
She stoops to the sponge, and her swung breasts
Sway like full-blown yellow
Gloire de Dijon roses.

:rose:

http://cdn.calyxflowers.com/Images/F...mmivisnaga.jpe

Queen-Anne’s Lace
By William Carlos Williams

Her body is not so white as
anemony petals nor so smooth—nor
so remote a thing. It is a field
of the wild carrot taking
the field by force; the grass
does not raise above it.
Here is no question of whiteness,
white as can be, with a purple mole
at the center of each flower.
Each flower is a hand’s span
of her whiteness. Wherever
his hand has lain there is
a tiny purple blemish. Each part
is a blossom under his touch
to which the fibres of her being
stem one by one, each to its end,
until the whole field is a
white desire, empty, a single stem,
a cluster, flower by flower,
a pious wish to whiteness gone over—
or nothing.

http://webecoist.com/wp-content/uplo...annes-lace.jpg

Invictus

by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2092/2...674c191d_z.jpg

St. Francis And The Sow

The bud
stands for all things,
even those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as St. Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of
the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking
and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.


~ Galway Kinnell

Be Kind

we are always asked to understand the other person's viewpoint no matter how out-dated foolish or obnoxious.

one is asked to view their total error their life-waste with kindliness, especially if they are aged.

but age is the total of our doing. they have aged badly because they have lived out of focus, they have refused to see.

not their fault?

whose fault? mine?

I am asked to hide my viewpoint from them for fear of their fear.

age is no crime

but the shame of a deliberately wasted life

among so many deliberately wasted lives

is.

Charles Bukowski