poetic.now ✷

@poetic.now

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From leaves of grass, by Walt Whitman: I think I could turn, and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, they do not make me sick discussing their duty to god, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth
Text from the poem Mayakovsky by Frank O'Hara, reads: 1 My heart’s aflutter! I am standing in the bath tub crying. Mother, mother who am I? If he will just come back once and kiss me on the face his coarse hair brush my temple, it’s throbbing! then I can put on my clothes I guess, and walk the streets. 2 I love you. I love you, but I’m turning to my verses and my heart is closing like a fist. Words! be sick as I am sick, swoon, roll back your eyes, a pool, and I’ll stare down at my wounded beauty which at best is only a talent for poetry. Cannot please, cannot charm or win what a poet! and the clear water is thick with bloody blows on its head. I embrace a cloud, but when I soared it rained. 3 That’s funny! there’s blood on my chest oh yes, I’ve been carrying bricks what a funny place to rupture! and now it is raining on the ailanthus as I step out onto the window ledge the tracks below me are smoky and glistening with a passion for running I leap into the leaves, green like the sea 4 Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern. The country is grey and brown and white in trees, snows and skies of laughter always diminishing, less funny not just darker, not just grey. It may be the coldest day of the year, what does he think of that? I mean, what do I? And if I do, perhaps I am myself again.
FOR AARON BUSHNELL Wendy Trevino In just a few months, he could have been an Anti-war vet & anarchist. But that He be active duty was important. It was important to put on the uniform. It was important to not put it off. It was important to speak clearly. It Was important to set the phone down Just right. It was important to put the Hat on over the accelerant. It Was important not to panic when the Lighter didn't immediately light. It was Important his last words be FREE PALESTINE. It was important he die An anarchist. It was that important.
Gay Pride Weekend, S.F., 1992 By Brenda Shaughnessy I forgot how lush and electrified it was with you. The shaggy fragrant zaps continually passing back and forth, my fingertip to your clavicle, or your wrist rubbing mine to share gardenia oil. We so purred like dragonflies we kept the mosquitoes away and the conversation was heavy, mother-lacerated childhoods and the sad way we'd both been both ignored and touched badly. Knowing that being fierce and proud and out and loud was just a bright new way to be needy. Please listen to me, oh what a buzz! you're the only one I can tell. Even with no secret, I could come close to your ear with my mouth and that was ecstasy, too. We barely touched each other, we didn't have to speak. The love we made leapt to life like a cat in the space between us (if there ever was space between us), and looked back at us through fog. Sure, this was San Francisco, it was often hard to see. But fog always burned off, too, so we watched this creature to see if it knew what it was doing. It didn't.
Essay on Craft by Ocean Vuong Because the butterfly’s yellow wing flickering in black mud was a word stranded by its language. Because no one else was coming — & I ran out of reasons. So I gathered fistfuls of  ash, dark as ink, hammered them into marrow, into a skull thick enough to keep the gentle curse of  dreams. Yes, I aimed for mercy —  but came only close as building a cage around the heart. Shutters over the eyes. Yes, I gave it hands despite knowing that to stretch that clay slab into five blades of light, I would go too far. Because I, too, needed a place to hold me. So I dipped my fingers back into the fire, pried open the lower face until the wound widened into a throat, until every leaf shook silver with that god -awful scream & I was done. & it was human.
Having a Coke with You Frank O’Hara is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together for the first time and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully as the horse it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it
Redemption by Pauli Murray Suffused in April twilight I lie beside you. Still as a sepulchre The room is vibrant with soundless voices. Each nerve and sinew finds its counterpart, Clings, blends and communes Without touch or speech. In this moment of benediction You have retrieved your Siegfried’s blade From years of rusted grief, While I, bright sword redeemed, Will flash once more in battle To blind the eyes of tyrants.
Movement Song, by Audre Lorde I have studied the tight curls on the back of your neck moving away from me beyond anger or failure your face in the evening schools of longing through mornings of wish and ripen we were always saying goodbye in the blood in the bone over coffee before dashing for elevators going in opposite directions without goodbyes. Do not remember me as a bridge nor a roof as the maker of legends nor as a trap door to that world where black and white clericals hang on the edge of beauty in five oclock elevators twitching their shoulders to avoid other flesh and now there is someone to speak for them moving away from me into tomorrows morning of wish and ripen your goodbye is a promise of lightning in the last angels hand unwelcome and warning the sands have run out against us we were rewarded by journeys away from each other into desire into mornings alone where excuse and endurance mingle conceiving decision. Do not remember me as disaster nor as the keeper of secrets I am a fellow rider in the cattle cars watching you move slowly out of my bed saying we cannot waste time only ourselves.
When I Heard at the Close of the Day By Walt Whitman When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv’d with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that follow’d, And else when I carous’d, or when my plans were accomplish’d, still I was not happy, But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health, refresh’d, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn, When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the morning light, When I wander’d alone over the beach, and undressing bathed, laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise, And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming, O then I was happy, O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food nourish’d me more, and the beautiful day pass’d well, And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came my friend, And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly continually up the shores, I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to me whispering to congratulate me, For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night, In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me, And his arm lay lightly around my breast – and that night I was happy.
"burning in the rain" by richard blanco Someday compassion would demand I set myself free of my desire to recreate my father, indulge in my mother’s losses, strangle lovers with words, forcing them to confess for me and take the blame. Today was that day: I tossed them, sheet by sheet on the patio and gathered them into a pyre. I wanted to let them go in a blaze, tiny white dwarfs imploding beside the azaleas and ficus bushes, let them crackle, burst like winged seeds, let them smolder into gossamer embers— a thousand gray butterflies in the wind. Today was that day, but it rained, kept raining. Instead of fire, water—drops knocking on doors, wetting windows into mirrors reflecting me in the oaks. The garden walls and stones swelling into ghostlier shades of themselves, the wind chimes giggling in the storm, a coffee cup left overflowing with rain. Instead of burning, my pages turned into water lilies floating over puddles, then tiny white cliffs as the sun set, finally drying all night under the moon into papier-mâché souvenirs. Today the rain would not let their lives burn.
Words by Pauli Murray We are spendthrifts with words, We squander them, Toss them like pennies in the air — Arrogant words, Angry words, Cruel words, Comradely words, Shy words tiptoeing from mouth to ear. But the slowly wrought words of love And the thunderous words of heartbreak — These we hoard.
intifada incantation: Poem #8 for b.b.L. by June Jordan I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED GENOCIDE TO STOP I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AND REACTION I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED MUSIC OUT THE WINDOWS I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED NOBODY THIRST AND NOBODY NOBODY COLD I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED I WANTED JUSTICE UNDER MY NOSE I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED BOUNDARIES TO DISAPPEAR I WANTED NOBODY ROLL BACK THE TREES! I WANTED NOBODY TAKE AWAY DAYBREAK! I WANTED NOBODY FREEZE ALL THE PEOPLE ON THEIR KNEES! I WANTED YOU I WANTED YOUR KISS ON THE SKIN OF MY SOUL AND NOW YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME AND I STAND DESPITE THE TRILLION TREACHERIES OF SAND YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME AND I HOLD THE LONGING OF THE WINTER IN MY HAND YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME AND I COMMIT TO FRICTION AND THE UNDERTAKING OF THE PEARL YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME AND I HAVE BEGUN I BEGIN TO BELIEVE MAYBE MAYBE YOU DO I AM TASTING MYSELF IN THE MOUTH OF THE SUN
The old man at the wheel by Frank Bidart Measured against the immeasurable universe, no word you have spoken brought light. Brought light to what, as a child, you thought too dark to be survived. By exorcism you survived. By submission, then making. You let all the parts of that thing you would cut out of you enter your poem because enacting there all its parts allowed you the illusion you could cut it from your soul. Dilemmas of choice given what cannot change alone roused you to words. As you grip the things that were young when you were young, they crumble in your hand. Now you must drive west, which in November means driving directly into the sun.
Want, by Joan Larkin She wants a house full of cups and the ghosts of last century’s lesbians; I want a spotless apartment, a fast computer. She wants a woodstove, three cords of ash, an axe; I want a clean gas flame. She wants a row of jars: oats, coriander, thick green oil; I want nothing to store. She wants pomanders, linens, baby quilts, scrapbooks. She wants Wellesley reunions. I want gleaming floorboards, the river’s reflection. She wants shrimp and sweat and salt; she wants chocolate. I want a raku bowl, steam rising from rice. She wants goats, chickens, children. Feeding and weeping. I want wind from the river freshening cleared rooms. She wants birthdays, theaters, flags, peonies. I want words like lasers. She wants a mother’s tenderness. Touch ancient as the river. I want a woman’s wit swift as a fox. She’s in her city, meeting her deadline; I’m in my mill village out late with the dog, listening to the pinging wind bells, thinking of the twelve years of wanting, apart and together. We’ve kissed all weekend; we want to drive the hundred miles and try it again.
I On n'est pas sérieux, quand on a dix-sept ans. - Un beau soir, foin des bocks et de la limonade, Des cafés tapageurs aux lustres éclatants ! - On va sous les tilleuls verts de la promenade. Les tilleuls sentent bon dans les bons soirs de juin ! L’air est parfois si doux, qu'on ferme la paupiére ; Le vent chargé de bruits - la ville n’est pas loin - A des parfums de vigne et des parfums de biére... II - Voila qu'on aperçoit un tout petit chiffon D'azur sombre, encadré d'une petite branche, Piqué d'une mauvaise étoile, qui se fond Avec de doux frissons, petite et toute blanche... Nuit de juin ! Dix-sept ans ! - On se laisse griser. La sève est du champagne et vous monte a la téte... On divague ; on se sent aux lèvres un baiser Qui palpite là, comme une petite bête... III Le coeur fou robinsonne à travers les romans, - Lorsque, dans la clarté d'un pâle réverbère, Passe une demoiselle aux petits airs charmants, Sous l'ombre du faux col effrayant de son père. Et, comme elle vous trouve immensément naif, Tout en faisant trotter ses petites bottines, Elle se tourne, alerte et d'un mouvement vif... - Sur vos lèvres alors meurent les cavatines... IV Vous êtes amoureux. Loué jusqu'au mois d'août. Vous êtes amoureux. - Vos sonnets La font rire. Tous vos amis s‘en vont, vous êtes mauvais goût. - Puis l'adorée, un soir, a daigné vous écrire !... - Ce soir-àa..., - vous rentrez aux cafés éclatants, Vous demandez des bocks ou de la limonade... - On n'est pas sérieux, quand on a dix-sept ans Et qu'on a des tilleuls verts sur la promenade.
"novel", by arthur rimbaud" I We aren't serious when we're seventeen. —One fine evening, to hell with beer and lemonade, Noisy cafés with their shining lamps! We walk under the green linden trees of the park The lindens smell good in the good June evenings! At times the air is so scented that we close our eyes. The wind laden with sounds—the town isn't far— Has the smell of grapevines and beer . . . II —There you can see a very small patch Of dark blue, framed by a little branch, Pinned up by a naughty star, that melts In gentle quivers, small and very white . . . Night in June! Seventeen years old! —We are overcome by it all The sap is champagne and goes to our head... We talked a lot and feel a kiss on our lips Trembling there like a small insect... III Our wild heart moves through novels like Robinson Crusoe, —When, in the light of a pale street lamp, A girl goes by attractive and charming Under the shadow of her father's terrible collar And as she finds you incredibly naïve, While clicking her little boots, She turns abruptly and in a lively way... —Then cavatinas die on your lips... IV You are in love. Occupied until the month of August. You are in love. —Your sonnets make Her laugh. All your friends go off, you are ridiculous. —Then one evening the girl you worship deigned to write to you...! —That evening, ... —you return to the bright cafés, You ask for beer or lemonade ... —We're not serious when we are seventeen And when we have green linden trees in the park.
For the young who want to by Marge Piercy Talent is what they say you have after the novel is published and favorably reviewed. Beforehand what you have is a tedious delusion, a hobby like knitting. Work is what you have done after the play is produced and the audience claps. Before that friends keep asking when you are planning to go out and get a job. Genius is what they know you had after the third volume of remarkable poems. Earlier they accuse you of withdrawing, ask why you don’t have a baby, call you a bum. The reason people want M.F.A.’s, take workshops with fancy names when all you can really learn is a few techniques, typing instructions and some- body else’s mannerisms is that every artist lacks a license to hang on the wall like your optician, your vet proving you may be a clumsy sadist whose fillings fall into the stew but you’re certified a dentist. The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved.
The Early Bird by Ted Kooser Still dark, and raining hard on a cold May morning and yet the early bird is out there chirping, chirping its sweet sour wooden-pulley notes, pleased, it would seem, to be given work, hauling the heavy bucket of dawn up from the darkness, note over note, and letting us drink.
Awaking in New York By Maya Angelou Curtains forcing their will against the wind, children sleep, exchanging dreams with seraphim. The city drags itself awake on subway straps; and I, an alarm, awake as a rumor of war, lie stretching into dawn, unasked and unheeded.
What Belongs to Us by Marie Howe Not the memorized phone numbers. The carefully rehearsed short cuts home. Not the summer shimmering like pavement, when Lucia pushed Billy off the rabbit house and broke his arm or our tiny footprints in the black files. Not the list of kings from Charlemagne to Henry not the boxes under our beds or Tommy's wedding day when it was so hot and Mark played the flute and we waved at him waving from the small round window in the loft the great gangs of people stepping one by one into the cold water. I have, of course, a photograph you and I getting up from a couch. Full height, I stand almost two inches taller than you but the photograph doesn't show that just the two of us in motion not looking at each other, smiling. Not even the way we said things, leaning against the kitchen counter. Not the cabin where I burned my arm and you said, oh, you're the type that even if it hurt, you wouldn't say. Not even the blisters. Look.
Happiness by Raymond Carver So early it's still almost dark out. I'm near the window with coffee, and the usual early morning stuff that passes for thought. When I see the boy and his friend walking up the road to deliver the newspaper. They wear caps and sweaters, and one boy has a bag over his shoulder. They are so happy they aren't saying anything, these boys. I think if they could, they would take each other's arm. It's early in the morning, and they are doing this thing together. They come on, slowly. The sky is taking on light, though the moon still hangs pale over the water. Such beauty that for a minute death and ambition, even love, doesn't enter into this. Happiness. It comes on unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really, any early morning talk about it.
song of myself by walt whitman 19 This is the press of a bashful hand, this the float and odor of hair, This the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of yearning, This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face, This the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again. Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side of a rock has. Do you take it I would astonish? Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering through the woods? Do I astonish more than they? This hour I tell things in confidence, I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.
What kind of times are these by Adrienne Rich There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted who disappeared into those shadows. I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here, our country moving closer to its own truth and dread, its own ways of making people disappear. I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods meeting the unmarked strip of light— ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise: I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear. And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these to have you listen at all, it's necessary to talk about trees.
A White City by James Schuyler My thoughts turn south a white city we will wake in one another's arms. I wake and hear the steam pipe knock like a metal heart and find it has snowed.
If you fall into it it will catch you, the way it caught everything you lost as a child. Silver thread of cloud. Gold earring, bright & worldly things with their polymer onwardness, a willingness not to decay. Tell me, I said, about what has survived. Tell it with only two threads & your hands swimming over & under & over again, until the fabric speaks & the textile is a text – warp: what reminds us of love is worth keeping weft: all your failed experiments might yet be of use Even a rug of dust & earth is fit for prayer. The land holds as lovingly as any mother. The land holds, it’s true, & it’s not too late to call that holy, even now; to touch your brow to the ground knowing this.
Amor Fati, by Sandra Lim Inside every world there is another world trying to get out, and there is something in you that would like to discount this world. The stars could rise in darkness over heartbreaking coasts, and you would not know if you were ruining your life or beginning a real one. You could claim professional fondness for the world around you; the pictures would dissolve under the paint coming alive, and you would only feel a phantom skip of the heart, absorbed so in the colors. Your disbelief is a later novel emerging in the long, long shadow of an earlier one— is this the great world, which is whatever is the case? The sustained helplessness you feel in the long emptiness of days is matched by the new suspiciousness and wrath you wake to each morning. Isn’t this a relationship with your death, too, to fall in love with your inscrutable life? Your teeth fill with cavities. There is always unearned happiness for some, and the criminal feeling of solitude. Always, everyone lies about his life.
it was a dream by lucille clifton it was a dream in which my greater self rose up before me accusing me of my life with her extra finger whirling in a gyre of rage at what my days had come to. what, i pleaded with her, could i do, oh what could i have done? and she twisted her wild hair and sparked her wild eyes and screamed as long as i could hear her. This. This. This.
a song with no end by charles bukowski a song with no end when Whitman wrote, "I sing the body electric" I know what he
 meant 
I know what he 
wanted: to be completely alive every moment
 in spite of the inevitable. we can't cheat death but we can make it
work so hard
 that when it does take 
us it will have known a victory just as 
perfect as 
ours.
The Thing Is By Ellen Bass The thing is to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you down like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again.
While Everything Else Was Falling Apart by Ada Limón In the Union Square subway station nearly fifteen years ago now, the L train came clanking by where someone had fat-Sharpied a black heart on the yellow pillar you leaned on during a bleak day (brittle and no notes from anyone you crushed upon). Above ground, the spring sun was the saddest one (doing work, but also none). What were you wearing? Something hopeful to show the world you hoped? A tall man was learning from a vendor how to pronounce churro. High in the sticky clouds of time, he kept repeating churro while eating a churro. How to say this made you want to live? No hand to hold still here it was: someone giving someone comfort and someone memorizing hard how to ask for it again.
You see, I want a lot by Rainer Maria Rilke translated by Robert Bly You see, I want a lot. Perhaps I want everything: the darkness that comes with every infinite fall and the shivering blaze of every step up. So many live on and want nothing, and are raised to the rank of prince by the slippery ease of their light judgments. But what you love to see are faces that do work and feel thirst. You love most of all those who need you as they need a crowbar or a hoe. You have not grown old, and it is not too late to dive into your increasing depths where life calmly gives out its own secret.
For Grace, After A Party by Frank O’Hara You do not always know what I am feeling. Last night in the warm spring air while I was blazing my tirade against someone who doesn't interest me, it was love for you that set me afire, and isn't it odd? for in rooms full of strangers my most tender feelings writhe and bear the fruit of screaming. Put out your hand, isn't there an ashtray, suddenly, there? beside the bed? And someone you love enters the room and says wouldn't you like the eggs a little different today? And when they arrive they are just plain scrambled eggs and the warm weather is holding.
Viola d'Amore By Moya Cannon Sometimes love does die, but sometimes, a stream on porous rock, it slips down into the inner dark of a hill, joins with other hidden streams to travel blind as the white fish that live in it. It forsakes one underground streambed for the cave that runs under it. Unseen, it informs the hill, and, like the hidden strings of the viola d’amore, makes the hill reverberate, so that people who wander there wonder why the hill sings, wonder why they find wells.
Distant Regard, by Tony Hoagland If I knew I would be dead by this time next year I believe I would spend the months from now till then writing thank-you notes to strangers and acquaintances, telling them, “You really were a great travel agent,” Or “I never got the taste of your kisses out of my mouth.” Or “Watching you walk across the room was part of my destination.” It would be the equivalent, I think, of leaving a chocolate wrapped in shiny foil on the pillow of a guest in a hotel– “Hotel of earth, where we resided for some years together,” I start to say, before I realize it is a terrible cliche, and stop, and then go on, forgiving myself in a mere split second because now that I’m dying, I just go forward like water, flowing around obstacles and second thoughts, not getting snagged, just continuing with my long list of thank-yous, which seems to naturally expand to include sunlight and wind, and the aspen trees which gleam and shimmer in the yard as if grateful for being soaked last night by the irrigation system invented by an individual to whom I am quietly grateful. Outside it is autumn, the philosophical season, when cold air sharpens the intellect; the hills are red and copper in their shaggy majesty. The clouds blow overhead like governments and years. It took me a long time to understand the phrase “distant regard,” but I am grateful for it now, and I am grateful for my heart, that turned out to be good, after all; and grateful for my mind, to which, in retrospect, I can see I have never been sufficiently kind.