Point of Attachment

First dream of a place where dreams don't

exist. Of lengthening a tiresome pace before

you can catch your breath. Or that a thousand puddles could

prevent the rising tide. Point your eyes to the stars,

now point them to the sea, breathe deeply and swipe away

the fog. Now give a wave of your hand when I pass by, don't

stand up so the waves can wash over your feet.

Sleep late but don't let those dreams fool you

into thinking that the hours don't mean anything. Or

that the weather is going to change, or that the

birds love to make amends. Nobody knows their names

anyways. All one really needs is the green grass, the

view from someone's lap and a sturdy umbrella.

The leaves will always change and sever their point of attachment;

autumn will leave while winter beats down your windows.

Do not worry. It is too often that worry darkens your door.

Listen to the weaving of the clouds and

the whirling of trees,

keep your ear to the ground and your teeth

gnashed, ready to fight for the amazing place

we called home.


by Matt St. Peter

Hell

The second-hardest thing I have to do is not be longing’s slave. Hell is that. Hell is that, others, having a job, and not having a job. Hell is thinking continually of those who were truly great.

Hell is the moment you realize that you were ignorant of the fact, when it was true, that you were not yet ruined by desire.

The kind of music I want to continue hearing after I am dead is the kind that makes me think I will be capable of hearing it then.

There is music in Hell. Wind of desolation! It blows past the egg-eyed statues. The canopic jars are full of secrets.

The wind blows through me. I open my mouth to speak.

I recite the list of people I have copulated with. It does not take long. I say the names of my imaginary children. I call out four-syllable words beginning with B. This is how I stay alive.

Beelzebub. Brachiosaur. Bubble-headed. I don’t know how I stay alive. What I do know is that there is a light, far above us, that goes out when we die,

and that in Hell there is a gray tulip that grows without any sun. It reminds me of everything I failed at,

and I water it carefully. It is all I have to remind me of you.


by Sarah Manguso

Mayakovsky

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 embraced 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.

by Frank O'Hara


Don Draper of Mad Men reads the 4th part.

No Direction Home

After a certain age, there's no one left to turn to.
You've got to find Eurydice on your own,

you've got
To find the small crack
between here and everywhere else all by yourself.

How could it be otherwise?
Everyone's gone away, the houses are all empty,
And overcast starts to fill the sky like soiled insulation

by Charles Wright

Tracks in the Snow

"How was it I did not see that lofty sky before?
And how happy I am to have found it at last."
Tolstoy

He lived in the house closest to the cemetery
and after a fresh snow
he liked to ski among the headstones.
New graves had an incline and a downward slope
that was gently exhilarating.
If people cared they never said so,
and his tracks were plainly legible,
a practiced signature
leading to and from his door.
He was as honest as the snow.

Old graves had settled and grown flatter
though he could still feel them under his skis.
Some years the snow rose so deep
that even the headstones were buried.
Then the quiet intensified, and he could forget
it was a graveyard
but for those rare occasions when, midstride,
he stabbed his pole into the snow
and struck granite.

Rarely, but sometimes,
he fell: a lapse in concentration,
and then he thought,
“That’s all it takes,” and lying there,
“This is how it will be.”
His skis formed an X at his feet
and the heart he seldom consulted
made itself known to him,
throbbing urgently in his ears:
Get up, get up, get up, get up.


by Connie Wanek

A Sad Child

You're sad because you're sad.
It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.
Go see a shrink or take a pill,
or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll
you need to sleep.

Well, all children are sad
but some get over it.
Count your blessings. Better than that,
buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet.
Take up dancing to forget.

Forget what?
Your sadness, your shadow,
whatever it was that was done to you
the day of the lawn party
when you came inside flushed with the sun,
your mouth sulky with sugar,
in your new dress with the ribbon
and the ice-cream smear,
and said to yourself in the bathroom,
I am not the favorite child.

My darling, when it comes
right down to it
and the light fails and the fog rolls in
and you're trapped in your overturned body
under a blanket or burning car,

and the red flame is seeping out of you
and igniting the tarmac beside you head
or else the floor, or else the pillow,
none of us is;
or else we all are.

by Margaret Atwood

Poppies in October

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly——

A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky

Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.

O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.


by Sylvia Plath

How The Winters Once Were

That cold green streak
that was morning
had nothing in common
with us.

And the proud plumes of chimney smoke
rose straight up.
To some god who liked
such vertical movements.

And the scrunching underfoot!
Oh that indescribable scrunching:

no one could approach unheard
that was for sure.

And the suspicion that life
perhaps really was meaningless

and not just in Schopenhauer
and the other daring old guys.

But here, too
under the sky’s white plumes of smoke.


by Lars Gustafsson

A Small Motor

The easiest sadness is a boy
Watching another boy
Walk with a barefooted girl, clean

Perfect feet, that kind of nose,
Eyes like those he’s dreamed
In the dream that comes back.

A boy watching another boy lucky
Gets an ache
That is a small motor.

In me there is an animal
And in that animal
There is a hunger.

I remember the boy
Watching a boy.
It was me.

Watching, I was a little bit
The boy walking.
I was both of us.

That’s how it felt.
What I could not have,
That’s what I was

Inside, an ache
Coming as I stood
Too many places.


by Alberto Alvaro Rios

Meeting at Night

I.

The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

II.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

by Robert Browning

Manners

Prig offered Pig the first chance at dessert,
So Pig reached out and speared the bigger part.

"Now that," cried Prig, "is extremely rude of you!"
Pig, with his mouth full, said, "Wha, wha' wou' 'ou do?"

"I would have taken the littler bit," said Prig.
"Stop kvetching, then, it's what you've got," said Pig .

So virtue is its own reward, you see.
And that is all it's ever going to be.


by Howard Nemerov

Days

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

by Philip Larkin

Waiting

Is part of something: a blue door opens,
Portuguese fishermen walk from a coffee shop

In Providence, Rhode Island—or Lisbon—
And head for the pier with buckets.

Part of something, they ride the sea:
The Atlantic, part of something.

Mornings on the coast, houses
In fog on the hills, the paint

Like carnival pastels . . . People believe
The whole world is part of something.

The phone rings . . . they give it away.
I spoke last night with a friend . . . He might

One day become your friend, or sometime,
Far off, a friend to your children—

Part of something. I told him
About the English poet

Who, deserting God, still loved
With clean irony the churches

On country roads . . . He’d lean his bike
And go inside—not certain of motive

But to wait, because others had waited
In just that place, sitting through the sunset

Beneath the slender windows.


by Stephen Kuusisto

Slow Dance

More than putting another man on the moon,
more than a New Year’s resolution of yogurt and yoga,
we need the opportunity to dance
with really exquisite strangers. A slow dance
between the couch and dining room table, at the end
of the party, while the person we love has gone
to bring the car around
because it’s begun to rain and would break their heart
if any part of us got wet. A slow dance
to bring the evening home. Two people
rocking back and forth like a buoy. Nothing extravagant.
A little music. An empty bottle of whiskey.
It’s a little like cheating. Your head resting
on his shoulder, your breath moving up his neck.
Your hands along her spine. Her hips
unfolding like a cotton napkin
and you begin to think about
how all the stars in the sky are dead. The my body
is talking to your body slow dance. The Unchained

Melody,
Stairway to Heaven, power-chord slow dance. All my life
I’ve made mistakes. Small
and cruel. I made my plans.
I never arrived. I ate my food. I drank my wine.
The slow dance doesn’t care. It’s all kindness like

children
before they turn four. Like being held in the arms
of my brother. The slow dance of siblings.
Two men in the middle of the room. When I dance with him,
one of my great loves, he is absolutely human,
and when he turns to dip me
or I step on his foot because we are both leading,
I know that one of us will die first and the other will suffer.
The slow dance of what’s to come
and the slow dance of insomnia
pouring across the floor like bath water.
When the woman I’m sleeping with
stands naked in the bathroom,
brushing her teeth, the slow dance of ritual is being spit
into the sink. There is no one to save us
because there is no need to be saved.
I’ve hurt you. I’ve loved you. I’ve mowed
the front yard. When the stranger wearing a sheer white dress
covered in a million beads
slinks toward me like an over-sexed chandelier suddenly come to life,
I take her hand in mine. I spin her out
and bring her in. This is the almond grove
in the dark slow dance.
It is what we should be doing right now. Scraping
for joy. The haiku and honey. The orange and orangutan slow dance.


by Matthew Dickman

An Impasse

Jacques writes from Paris,
"What are the latest news?"

I have told him, time
and time again, "What are"

is not English, "news"
is not plural, "news"

is a singular term,
as in "The news is good."

He replies, "Though 'The news'
may be singular in America,

it is not so in France.
Les nouvelles is a plural term.

To say, 'The news is good'
in France would be bad grammar,

and absurd, which is worse.
On the other hand, 'What are

the news?' makes perfect sense."


by Louis Simpson

Gone

About the little chambers of my heart
Friends have been coming - going - many a year.
The doors stand open there.
Some, lightly stepping, enter; some depart.

Freely they come and freely go, at will.
The walls give back their laughter; all day long
They fill the house with song.
One door alone is shut, one chamber still.


by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

To Memory

I spent last weekend rummaging through old books and things in my great-great-grandmother's house, and I came across a wonderful collection of poetry. The book didn't even have the author's name written in it! Only a note explaining that "These poems owe much to one whose name I honour too highly to set it here." Amazing. A google search revealed the author to be Mary Elizabeth Coleridge. The poems are exquisite. This is the first:

To Memory

Strange Power, I know not what thou art
Murderer or mistress of my heart.
I know I'd rather meet the blow
Of my most unrelenting foe
Than live - as I now live - to be
Slain twenty times a day by thee.

Yet, when I would command thee hence,
Thou mockest at the vain pretence,
Murmuring in mine ear a song
Once loved, alas! forgotten long;
And on my brow I feel a kiss
That I would rather die than miss.


by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

An Unexpected Meeting

We treat each other with exceeding courtesy,
we say, it`s great to see you after all these years.

Our tigers drink milk.
Our hawks tread the ground.
Our sharks have all drowned.
Our wolves yawn beyond the open cage.

Our snakes have shed their lighting,
our apes their flights of fancy,
our peacocks have renounced their plumes.
The bats flew our of our hair long ago.

We fall silent in midsentence,
all smiles, past help.
Our humans
don`t know how to talk to one another.

Wislawa Szymborska

No Deal

And when I died, the devil came and said,
"Now here's the deal: I'll give you your old life
all over once again, no strings attached.
Like an actor in a play, of course, you'll have
to follow the same script that you rehearsed
the first time through—you cannot change a glance,
a word, a gesture; but think of taking your first
steps again, and having your first romance

repeat itself, your love back from the dead,
beautiful and new and seventeen.
What matter if you see the future coming—
The cloven hoof of sorrow, loss's horn—
her dreamy eye, her nodding head?"
Get thee behind me, Satan, I should have said.


by Ronald Wallace

Venetian Air

Row gently here, my gondolier; so softly wake the tide,
That not an ear on earth may hear, but hers to whom we glide.
If Heaven had but tongues to speak, and starry eyes to see,
Oh! think what tales 'twould have to tell of wandering youths like me!
Now rest thee here, my gondolier; hush, hush, for up I go,
To climb yon light balcòny's height, while thou keep'st watch below.
Ah! did we take for Heaven above but half such pains as we
Take day and night for woman's love, what angels we should be!


by Thomas Moore

Radar

No one exactly knows

Exactly how clouds look in the sky

Or the shape of the mountains below them

Or the direction in which fish swim.

No one exactly knows.

The eye is jealous of whatever moves

And the heart

Is too far buried in the sand

To tell.

They are going on a journey

Those deep blue creatures

Passing us as if they were sunshine

Look

Those fins, those closed eyes

Admiring each last drop of the ocean.

I crawled into bed with sorrow that night

Couldn’t touch his fingers. See the splash

Of the water

The noisy movement of cloud

The push of the humpbacked mountains

Deep at the sand’s edge.

by Jack Spicer

Morning

I've got to tell you
how I love you always
I think of it on grey
mornings with death

in my mouth the tea
is never hot enough
then and the cigarette
dry the maroon robe

chills me I need you
and look out the window
at the noiseless snow

At night on the dock
the buses glow like
clouds and I am lonely
thinking of flutes

I miss you always
when I go to the beach
the sand is wet with
tears that seem mine

although I never weep
and hold you in my
heart with a very real
humor you'd be proud of

the parking lot is
crowded and I stand
rattling my keys the car
is empty as a bicycle

what are you doing now
where did you eat your
lunch and were there
lots of anchovies it

is difficult to think
of you without me in
the sentence you depress
me when you are alone

Last night the stars
were numerous and today
snow is their calling
card I'll not be cordial

there is nothing that
distracts me music is
only a crossword puzzle
do you know how it is

when you are the only
passenger if there is a
place further from me
I beg you do not go


by Frank O'Hara

No Regret

resenting all
who with charm and beauty
cultivate all that
I let go to weed

but I study the beauty
and know the names
of many of these
wild flowers


by Rochelle Kraut

Happy the Man

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
Be fair or foul or rain or shine
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.


by John Dryden

We Laughed

my friend
we flirted
and we were so smart
we were witty
and we knew what we
were thinking
and we were surprised
by our own thoughts
and we laughed
and we laughed

by Rochelle Kraut

Bedside Manners

How little the dying seem to need—
A drink perhaps, a little food,
A smile, a hand to hold, medication,
A change of clothes, an unspoken
Understanding about what's happening.
You think it would be more, much more,
Something more difficult for us
To help with in this great disruption,
But perhaps it's because as the huge shape
Rears up higher and darker each hour
They are anxious that we should see it too
And try to show us with a hand-squeeze.

We panic to do more for them,
And especially when it's your father,
And his eyes are far away, and your tears
Are all down your face and clothes,
And he doesn't see them now, but smiles
Perhaps, just perhaps because you're there.
How little he needs. Just love. More Love.


by Christopher Wiseman

We Bring Democracy to the Fish

It is unacceptable that fish prey on each other.
For their comfort and safety, we will liberate them
into fishfarms with secure, durable boundaries
that exclude predators. Our care will provide
for their liberty, health, happiness, and nutrition.
Of course all creatures need to feel useful.
At maturity the fish will discover their purposes.

by Donald Hall

Glow

When I wake up earlier than you and you
are turned to face me, face
on the pillow and hair spread around,
I take a chance and stare at you,
amazed in love and afraid
that you might open your eyes and have
the daylights scared out of you.
But maybe with the daylights gone
you'd see how much my chest and head
implode for you, their voices trapped
inside like unborn children fearing
they will never see the light of day.
The opening in the wall now dimly glows
its rainy blue and gray. I tie my shoes
and go downstairs to put the coffee on.


by Ron Padgett

Starting from Scratch

To begin with, none of your neighbors began here.
Everyone moved in years before you moved into
a pattern you found yourself part of
before you intended: flowers, fences,
attention to the details your mother always took care of,
duller than film on dishes it was always your job to wipe.
Nobody spoke about courage.

Nobody said you could choose this life.
It happened, it didn't, the fact
you could choose to remain would become
what's yours to control: hours
of sleeping and waking, meals, the home
you need to go out in the world from.
Neighborhood customs you know you can count on.

Recipes, grapes exchanged for zucchini, the garden
someone will know when to plant.
The book you suggest. The pattern of limits
no one has asked for, told over coffee, lives
like yours you could have become
starting from scratch. Each day
the way you will live before what comes next.


by Ingrid Wendt

Requiem: The Soldier

Down some cold field in a world outspoken
the young men are walking together, slim and tall,
and though they laugh to one another, silence is not broken;
there is no sound however clear they call.

They are speaking together of what they loved in vain here,
but the air is too thin to carry the things they say.
They were young and golden, but they came on pain here,
and their youth is age now, their gold is grey.

Yet their hearts are not changed, and they cry to one another,
'What have they done with the lives we laid aside?
Are they young with our youth, gold with our gold, my brother?
Do they smile in the face of death, because we died?

Down some cold field in a world uncharted
the young seek each other with questioning eyes.
They question each other, the young, the golden hearted,
of the world that they were robbed of in their quiet paradise


by Humbert Wolfe

may i feel said he

may i feel said he
(i'll squeal said she
just once said he)
it's fun said she

(may i touch said he
how much said she
a lot said he)
why not said she

(let's go said he
not too far said she
what's too far said he
where you are said she)

may i stay said he
which way said she
like this said he
if you kiss said she

may i move said he
is it love said she)
if you're willing said he
(but you're killing said she

but it's life said he
but your wife said she
now said he)
ow said she

(tiptop said he
don't stop said she
oh no said he)
go slow said she

(cccome? said he
ummm said she)
you're divine! said he
(you are Mine said she)


by e. e. cummings

Rationality

-------there is no 'cure'

Of it, a reversal
Of some wrong decision------merely

The length of time that has passed
And the accumulation of knowledge.

To say again: the massive heart
Of the present, the presence
Of the machine tools

In the factories, and the young workman
Elated among the men
Is homesick

In that instant
Of the shock
Of the press

In which the manufactured part

New in its oil
On the steel bed is caught
In the obstinate links

Of cause, like the earth tilting
To its famous Summers-----that 'part

of consciousness'...



by George Oppen