Arrival

Morning, a glass door, flashes
Gold names off the new city,
Whose white shelves and domes travel
The slow sky all day.
I land to stay here;
And the windows flock open
And the curtains fly out like doves
And a past dries in a wind.

Now let me lie down, under
A wide-branched indifference,
Shovel-faces like pennies
Down the back of the mind,
Find voices coined to
An argot of motor-horns,
And let the cluttered-up houses
Keep their thick lives to themselves.

For this ignorance of me
Seems a kind of innocence.
Fast enough I shall wound it:
Let me breathe till then
Its milk-aired Eden,
Till my own life impound it-
Slow-falling; grey-veil-hung; a theft,
A style of dying only.

By Philip Larkin
Photo above found at:
http://browse.deviantart.com/photography/?q=curtains blowing&order=9&offset=24#/d188q6r

A Week Later

A week later, I said to a friend: I don't
think I could ever write about it.
Maybe in a year I could write something.
There is something in me maybe someday
to be written; now it is folded, and folded,
and folded, like a note in school. And in my dream
someone was playing jacks, and in the air there was a
huge, thrown, tilted jack
on fire. And when I woke up, I found myself
counting the days since I had last seen
my husband-only two years, and some weeks,
and hours. We had signed the papers and come down to the
ground floor of the Chrysler Building,
the intact beauty of its lobby around us
like a king's tomb, on the ceiling the little
painted plane, in the mural, flying. And it
entered my strictured heart, this morning,
slightly, shyly as if warily,
untamed, a greater sense of the sweetness
and plenty of his ongoing life,
unknown to me, unseen by me,
unheard, untouched-but known, seen,
heard, touched. And it came to me,
for moments at a time, moment after moment,
to be glad for him that he is with the one
he feels was meant for him. And I thought of my
mother, minutes from her death, eighty-five
years from her birth, the almost warbler
bones of her shoulder under my hand, the
eggshell skull, as she lay in some peace
in the clean sheets, and I could tell her the best
of my poor, partial love, I could sing her
out with it, I saw the luck
and luxury of that hour.

by Sharon Olds

photo above found at:
http://browse.deviantart.com/?q=broken hearts&order=9&offset=0#/d127m5q

Blessed Is the Match

Blessed is the match, consumed in kindling flame.
Blessed is the flame that burns in the heart's secret places.
Blessed is the heart that knows, for honors sake, to stop its beating.
Blessed is the match, consumed in kindling flame.

By Hannah Senesh


http://astore.amazon.com/poetryshoah-20/detail/1580232124

Happy Thoughts, Happy Thoughts

O Sisyphus, O Tantalus

So there it is, the fact of life,
a heart is not so hard to break.
And twisted, tragic irony
will indeed a good story make
but won't seal the eggshell
cracked and bleeding blood-red yoke –
thus the breaker and the broken spoke.


O Sisyphus, I feel your pain –
despite myself, I lift the rock again
and beat myself over the head:
he said, she said, I thought… I wish
I had not forgotten to bury the dead,
to take out the trash, and sleep
where I chose to make my bed.


Time heals all wounds but those that fester:
like Tantalus (of tantalizing)
the fruit still beckons, aggrandizing
dreams of what may have come to be
had Hubris not yet taken hold,
made me reach for all that gold
when all along we shared the Midas touch.


Irony, you stupid bitch, I'll tear your heart
out of your chest, just let me rest
and think these happy thoughts;
happy thoughts not to forget but overlay
the spite, the void, the shame, those days
I bit off more than I could chew
and lost a tooth, and took it out on you.


By Anonimous Mistake at
http://sintaxandsemantix.blogspot.com/2010/02/happy-thoughts-happy-thoughts.html

Photo above found at
http://skittishsynapses.deviantart.com/art/See-you-when-I-get-there-38874626

Wilderness

Do animals make a human cry
when their loved one staggers
fowled dragged down
the blue veined river

Does the female wail
miming the wolf of suffering
do lilies trumpet the pup
plucked for skin and skein

Do animals cry like humans
as I having lost you
yowled flagged
curled in a ball

This is how
we beat the icy field
shoeless and empty handed
hardly human at all

Negotiating a wilderness
we have yet to know
this is where time stops
and we have none to go

by Patti Smith
The Guardian, Saturday 2 December 2006

The Red Poppy

The great thing
is not having
a mind. Feelings:
oh, I have those; they
govern me. I have
a lord in heaven
called the sun, and open
for him, showing him
the fire of my own heart, fire
like his presence.
What could such glory be
if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters,
were you like me once, long ago,
before you were human? Did you
permit yourselves
to open once, who would never
open again? Because in truth
I am speaking now
the way you do. I speak
because I am shattered.

by Louise Gluck
Photo above found at:
http://isnt-pretty.deviantart.com/art/Poppy-89769288

Poem for Aretha

Cause nobody deals with Aretha—a mother with four children—
having to hit the road
they always say "after she comes
home" but nobody ever says what it's like
to get on a plane for a three week tour
the elation of the first couple of audiences the good
feeling of exchange the running on the high
you get from singing good
and loud and long telling the world
what's on your mind.

Then comes the eighth show on the sixth day the beginning
to smell like the plane or bus the if-you-forget-your-toothbrush
in-one-spot-you-can't-brush-until-the-second-show
the strangers
pulling at you cause they love you but you having no love
to give back
the singing the same songs night after night day after day
and if you read the gossip columns the rumors that your husband
is only after your fame
the wondering if your children will be glad to see you and maybe
the not caring if they are scheming to get
out of just one show and go just one place where some doe-doe-dupaduke
won't say "just sing one song, please!".

Nobody mentions how it feels to become a freak
because you have talent and how
no one gives a damn how you feel
but only cares that Aretha Franklin is here like maybe that'll stop
chickens from frying
eggs from being laid
crackers from hating

and if you say you're lonely or tired how they always
just say "oh come off it" or "did you see
how they loved you did you see, huh, did you?"
which most likely has nothing to do with you anyway
and I'm not saying Aretha shouldn't have talent and I'm certainly
not saying she should quit
singing but as much as I love her I'd vote "yes" to her
doing four concerts a year and staying home or doing whatever
she wants and making records cause it's a shame
the way we're killing her.
We eat up artists like there's going to be a famine at the end
of those three minutes when there are in fact an abundance
of talents just waiting let's put some
of the giants away for a while and deal with them like they have
a life to lead.

Aretha doesn't have to relive Billi Holiday's life doesn't have
to relive Dinah Washington's death but who will
stop the pattern?

She's more important than her music—if they must be separated—
and they should be separated when she has to pass out before
anyone recognizes she needs
a rest and I say I need
Aretha's music
she is undoubtedly the one who put everyone on
notice.
She revived Johnny Ace and remembered Lil Green. Aretha
sings
"I say a little prayer" and Dionne doesn't
want to hear it anymore
Aretha sings "money won't change you"
but James can't sing "respect" the advent
of Aretha pulled Ray Charles from marlboro country
and back into
the blues made Nancy Wilson
try one more time forced
Dionne to make a choice (she opted for the movies)
and Diana Ross had to get an afro wig pushed every
Black singer into his Blackness and negro entertainers
into negroness you couldn't jive
when she said "you make me feel" the Blazers
had to reply "gotta let a man be/a man"
Aretha said "when my soul was in the lost and found/you came
along to claim it" and Joplin said "maybe"
there has been no musician whom her very presence hasn't
affected when Humphrey wanted her to campaign for him she said
"woeman's only hueman"
and he pressured James Brown
they removed Otis cause the combination was too strong the Impressions had to say "lord have mercy/we're moving on up"
the Black songs started coming from the singers on stage and the dancers
in the streets
Aretha was the riot was the leader if she had said "come
let's do it" it would have been done
temptations say why don't we think about it
why don't we think about it
why don't we think about it

—Nikki Giovanni
from Women Working: An Anthology of Stories and Poems (The Feminist Press, Old Westbury, New York)

My apologies to Ms. Giovanni for inadvertent changes made to her original punctuation, spelling, and spacing. Poem above copies from a Spanish translation. :-)
Aretha Franklin sketch above found at:
http://guitarsallly.deviantart.com/art/aretha-22201165

i carry your heart

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

by e.e. cummings

The Secret

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can't find,

and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for

assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.

by Denise Levertov

Untitled Prayer

Beloved
The sun lingers on the blossom
I am lost in you
Wandering rivers in the lush jungle of tomorrow
I see leopards preening
My heart thunders as I open my mouth to rain
I hear the bird of paradise
Her call blows over our heads like the muezzin at noon
Alive, I smell sacred cows, buffalo
The burning ghats
I drink the ghee-d tea
As dawn breaks over pale pink mountains crested with your snow.
A dry wind breaks against my neck
Mud covers my bare feet
Close by, Durga rides a lion, her ten arms poised for battle.
The demon kings lust after her, their serpents tremble in her path.
In an office in Beijing, a man is typing.
In a market in Rome, a woman cries.
On a beach in Goa, the dancers whirl in a techno trance.
In the darkness, the dark light glows like blackest pearl.
Years, Centuries, Millennia, Epochs, Aeons, Eternities kneel.

Claudia L'Amoreaux - January 30, 1999
Above photo found here:
http://hypertech.deviantart.com/art/Prayer-112785312

Matthew 7:7,8

Ask, and it shall be given you;
seek, and you shall find;
knock, and it shall be opened to you.
For whoever asks, receives;
and he who seeks, finds;
and to him who knocks, the door is opened.

Jesus of Nazareth

I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
enough
to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small
enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.

I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,
never be blind or too old
to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.
I want to unfold.
Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;
for there I would be dishonest, untrue.
I want my conscience to be
true before you;
want to describe myself like a picture I observed
for a long time, one close up,
like a new word I learned and embraced,
like the everday jug,
like my mother's face,
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Photo above found here:
http://limnides.deviantart.com/art/Vapour-Trails-77774305

I Am Not Yours

I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.

Oh plunge me deep in love--put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in a rushing wind.

Sara Teasdale

Photo found at:
http://moejo.deviantart.com/art/Daylight-42814780

Eulogy for the Martyred Children - Martin Luther King, Jr. - 1963

Now I say to you in conclusion,
life is hard,
at times as hard as crucible steel.
It has its bleak and difficult moments.
Like the ever-flowing waters of the river,
life has its moments of drought and its moments of flood.
Like the ever-changing cycle of the seasons,
life has the soothing warmth of its summers
and the piercing chill of its winters.
But if one will hold on,
he will discover that God walks with him,
and that God is able to lift you from the fatigue of despair
to the buoyancy of hope
and transform dark and desolate valleys
into sunlit paths of inner peace.

Pray for Peace

by Ellen Bass

Pray to whoever you kneel down to:

Jesus nailed to his wooden or marble or plastic cross,

his suffering face bent to kiss you,

Buddha still under the Bo tree in scorching heat,

Adonai, Allah, raise your arms to Mary

that she may lay her palm on our brows,

to Shekinhah, Queen of Heaven and Earth,

to Inanna in her stripped descent.

Hawk or Wolf, or the Great Whale, Record Keeper

of time before, time now, time ahead, pray. Bow down

to terriers and shepherds and siamese cats.

Fields of artichokes and elegant strawberries.

Pray to the bus driver who takes you to work,

pray on the bus, pray for everyone riding that bus

and for everyone riding buses all over the world.

If you haven't been on a bus in a long time,

climb the few steps, drop some silver, and pray.

Waiting in line for the movies, for the ATM,

for your latté and croissant, offer your plea.

Make your eating and drinking a supplication.

Make your slicing of carrots a holy act,

each translucent layer of the onion, a deeper prayer.

Make the brushing of your hair

a prayer, every strand its own voice,

singing in the choir on your head.

As you wash your face, the water slipping

through your fingers, a prayer: Water,

softest thing on earth, gentleness

that wears away rock.

Making love, of course, is already a prayer.

Skin and open mouths worshipping that skin,

the fragile case we are poured into,

each caress a season of peace.

If you're hungry, pray. If you're tired.

Pray to Gandhi and Dorothy Day.

Shakespeare. Sappho. Sojourner Truth.

Pray to the angels and the ghost of your grandfather.

When you walk to your car, to the mailbox,

to the video store, let each step

be a prayer that we all keep our legs,

that we do not blow off anyone else's legs.

Or crush their skulls.

And if you are riding on a bicycle

or a skateboard, in a wheel chair, each revolution

of the wheels a prayer that as the earth revolves

we will do less harm, less harm, less harm.

And as you work, typing with a new manicure,

a tiny palm tree painted on one pearlescent nail

or delivering soda or drawing good blood

into rubber-capped vials, writing on a blackboard

with yellow chalk, twirling pizzas, pray for peace.

With each breath in, take in the faith of those

who have believed when belief seemed foolish,

who persevered. With each breath out, cherish.

Pull weeds for peace, turn over in your sleep for peace,

feed the birds for peace, each shiny seed

that spills onto the earth, another second of peace.

Wash your dishes, call your mother, drink wine.

Shovel leaves or snow or trash from your sidewalk.

Make a path. Fold a photo of a dead child

around your VISA card. Gnaw your crust

of prayer, scoop your prayer water from the gutter.

Mumble along like a crazy person, stumbling

your prayer through the streets.

The Nativity

by John O'Donohue

No man reaches where the moon touches a woman.
Even the moon leaves her when she opens
Deeper into the ripple in her womb
That encircles dark, to become flesh and bone.

Someone is coming ashore inside her,
A face deciphers itself from water,
And she curves around the gathering wave,
Opening to offer the life it craves.

In a corner stall of pilgrim strangers,
She falls and heaves, holding a tide of tears.
A red wire of pain feeds through every vein,
Until night unweaves and the child reaches dawn.

Outside each other now, she sees him first,
Flesh of her flesh, her dreamt son safe on earth.