Your Favorite Poems

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Have I ever told you
that if I sit really still and silent,
sometimes. I like to think
I can hear your heart beating
in time with mine?

Have I ever told you
that when I watch you speak to me
through lines and cords,
and bytes and ram,
I imagine
your voice,
whispering into my ear?

Have I ever told you
that I wait out each day
in anticipation,
wanting
only an hour or two,
just a second in space and time,
to feel close to you?

Have I ever told you
that there has been times,
when I ached for you,
ached for you so badly,
that the emotions overwhelmed me..
and so I sat and cried?

Have I ever told you
that sometimes,
I will reach out,
touching your name
on this cold screen before me,
wishing
I could reach in
and pull you to me?

Have I ever told you
that I would give everything up,
just for one night
to be able to lay near you,
to feel your chest rise and fall
with each breath you take,
just to know that you are real?

Have I ever told you
that I dream of you often,
I dream of you reaching out
and touching my hand,
simply to let me know
that you are there,
and everything is okay?

Have I ever told you,
have I still yet to tell you . . .
that I love you?

--I am not sure who the correct author is, Ive seen different variations.. but I think.. it fits the medium .. that we are in here on the Planet..

[puddin']

geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. and we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. what we need is here.

~wendell berry

[Hominid]

Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes


First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer's dividing water,
and slip inside.

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women's undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything -
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.

What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.
-- Billy Collins

[Hollylane]

Bless Their Hearts

by Richard Newman

At Steak 'n Shake I learned that if you add
"Bless their hearts" after their names, you can say
whatever you want about them and it's OK.
My son, bless his heart, is an idiot,
she said. He rents storage space for his kids'
toys—they're only one and three years old!
I said, my father, bless his heart, has turned
into a sentimental old fool. He gets
weepy when he hears my daughter's greeting
on our voice mail. Before our Steakburgers came
someone else blessed her office mate's heart,
then, as an afterthought, the jealous hearts
of the entire anthropology department.
We bestowed blessings on many a heart
that day. I even blessed my ex-wife's heart.
Our waiter, bless his heart, would not be getting
much tip, for which, no doubt, he'd bless our hearts.
In a week it would be Thanksgiving,
and we would each sit with our respective
families, counting our blessings and blessing
the hearts of family members as only family
does best. Oh, bless us all, yes, bless us, please
bless us and bless our crummy little hearts.

[Hollylane]

Ode to the Vinyl Record

by Thomas R. Smith

The needle lowers into the groove
and I'm home. It could be any record
I've lived with and loved a long time: Springsteen
or Rodrigo, Ray Charles or Emmylou
Harris: Not only the music, but
the whirlpool shimmering on the turntable
funneling blackly down into the ocean
of the ear—even the background
pops and hisses a worn record
wraps the music in, creaturely
imperfections so hospitable to our own.
Since those first Beatles and Stones LPs
plopped down spindles on record players
we opened like tiny suitcases at sweaty
junior high parties while parents were out,
how many nights I've pulled around
my desires a vinyl record's cloak
of flaws and found it a perfect fit,
the crackling unclarity and turbulence
of the country's lo-fi basement heart
madly spinning, making its big dark sound.