"Nothing misleads people like the truth."

Self-Help by Michael Ryan

What kind of delusion are you under?

The life he hid just knocked you flat.

You see the lightning but not the thunder.

What God hath joined let no man put asunder.

Did God know you’d marry a rat?

What kind of delusion are you under?

His online persona simply stunned her

as it did you when you started to chat.

You see the lightning but not the thunder.

To the victors go the plunder:

you should crown them with a baseball bat.

What kind of delusion are you under?

The kind that causes blunder after blunder.

Is there any other kind than that?

You see the lightning but not the thunder,

and for one second the world’s a wonder.

Just keep it thrilling under your hat.

What kind of delusion are you under?

You see the lightning but not the thunder.

Stressed Out (but not today!)

Such as thou art, sometime I was.

Such as I am, such shalt thou be. 

To You Again by Mary Szybist

Again this morning my eyes woke up too close 

to your eyes,

their almost green orbs

too heavy-lidded to really look back.

To wake up next to you

is ordinary. I do not even need to look at you

to see you.

But I do look. So when you come to me

in your opulent sadness, I see 

you do not want me

to unbutton you

so I cannot do the one thing

I can do.

Now it is almost one a.m. I am still at my desk

and you are upstairs at your desk a staircase 

away from me. Already it is years

of you a staircase

away from me. To be near you

and not near you 

is ordinary.

You

are ordinary.

Still, how many afternoons have I spent 

peeling blue paint from

our porch steps, peering above 

hedgerows, the few parked cars for the first

glimpse of you. How many hours under 

the overgrown, pink Camillas, thinking

the color was wrong for you, thinking 

you'd appear

after my next 

blink.

Soon you'll come down the stairs 

to tell me something. And I'll say,

okay. Okay. I'll say it 

like that, say it just like

that, I'll go on being 

your never-enough.

It's not the best in you

I long for. It's when you're noteless,

numb at the ends of my fingers, all is 

all. I say it is. 

Her Politeness by Kay Ryan

It's her politeness
one loathes: how she
isn't insistent, how
she won't impose, how
nothing's so urgent
it won't wait. Like
a meek guest you tolerate
she goes her way- the muse
you'd have leap at your throat,
you'd spring to obey.

Your Other Heart by Natalie Shapero

Mossy and thumping, bare of logic, red:

             why do they say your other head

                          and not your other heart? 

The snack cakes of Smut Wonderland

turn Alice smaller than her dress. She stirs,

nude in the folds of so much baby blue. 

             To think, they called this lesser art.

I ate mostly orders then, and you—

you were thinking with your other heart. 

I took in a dog the way some might take in

             a dress (I had become just skin).

                          It coughed. I cried for it

to stop, I fed it meat, its malady

recurrent and untreatable. I had 

to give it up, like some bum body part 

             whose incidental benefit

the human form has out-evolved. Don’t start.

That dog: I called it Help, and I cried for it.

You told me you couldn't see

a better day coming

so I gave you my eyes

Jim Harrison

Ted Kooser

The Secret by Robert Nichols

Suddenly with a shy, sad grace
She turns to me her lighted face,
And I, who hear some idle phrase,
    Watch how her wry lips move
And guess that the poor words they frame
Mean naught for they would speak the same
Message I read in the dark flame
    Within her eyes, which say, “I love.”
        But I can only turn away.

I, that have heard the deep voice break
Into a sing-song, sobbing shake,
Whose flutter made my being quake,
    What ears have I for women's cries?
I, that have seen the turquoise glaze
Fixed in the blue and quivering gaze
Of one whom cocaine cannot daze,
    How can I yield to women's eyes?
        I, who can only turn away.

I, that have held strong hands which palter,
Borne the full weight of limbs that falter,
Bound live flesh on the surgeon's altar,
    What need have I of women's hand?
I, that have felt the dead's embrace?
I, whose arms were his resting-place?
I, that have kissed a dead man's face?
    Ah, but how should you understand?
        Now I can only turn away.

Sonnet VI: Dearest, I never knew such loving by Hayden Carruth

Dearest, I never knew such loving. There
in that glass tower in the alien city, alone,
we found what somewhere I had always known
exists and must exist, this fervent care,
this lust of tenderness. Two were aware
how in hot seizure, bone pressed to bone
and liquid flesh to flesh, each separate moan
was pleasure, yes, but most in each other’s share.
Companions and discoverers, equal and free,
so deep in love we adventured and so far
that we became perhaps more than we are,
and now being home is hardship. Therefore are we
diminished? No. We are of the world again
but still augmented, more than we’ve ever been.

My Cup by Robert Friend

They tell me I am going to die.
Why don't I seem to care?
My cup is full. Let it spill.

A Dialogue of Watching by Kenneth Rexroth

Let me celebrate you. I
Have never known anyone
More beautiful than you. I
Walking beside you, watching
You move beside me, watching
That still grace of hand and thigh,
Watching your face change with words
You do not say, watching your
Solemn eyes as they turn to me,
Or turn inward, full of knowing,
Slow or quick, watching your full
Lips part and smile or turn grave,
Watching your narrow waist, your
Proud buttocks in their grace, like
A sailing swan, an animal,
Free, your own, and never
To be subjugated, but
Abandoned, as I am to you,
Overhearing your perfect
Speech of motion, of love and
Trust and security as
You feed or play with our children.
I have never known any
One more beautiful than you.

"So I know I am right not to settle, but it doesn't make me feel better as my friends pair off and I stay home and make myself an extravagant meal and tell myself, This is perfect, as if I'm the one dating me. As I go to endless rounds of parties and bar nights, perfumed and sprayed and hopeful, rotating myself around the room like some dubious dessert. I go on dates with men who are nice and good-looking and smart-perfect on paper men who make me feel I'm in a foreign land, trying to explain myself, trying to make myself known. Because isn't that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood? He gets me. She gets me. Isn't that the simple magic phrase?"

Ne’ilah by Marge Piercy

The hinge of the year
the great gates opening
and then slowly slowly
closing on us.
I always imagine those gates
hanging over the ocean
fiery over the stone grey
waters of evening.
We cast what we must
change about ourselves
onto the waters flowing
to the sea. The sins,
errors, bad habits, whatever
you call them, dissolve.
When I was little I cried
out I! I! I! I want, I want.
Older, I feel less important,
a worker bee in the hive
of history, miles of hard
labor to make my sweetness.
The gates are closing
The light is failing
I kneel before what I love
imploring that it may live.
So much breaks, wears
down, fails in us. We must
forgive our broken promises—
their sharp shards in our hands.

MURDERER

"That's the thing about pain. It demands to be felt."

"Because every time I look at it, I am reminded of the way I treated _____ and about the way she treated me, of about how I threatened her and all that came of it, how I was just another guy. How that killed me once I really thought about it. A gimme-gimme asshole. Maybe I was. Still, after I thought about it for a long time- in fact, all my life- I wanted to be something better."

Redemption Song by Kevin Young

  Finally fall.

At last the mist,
heat's haze, we woke
these past weeks with

has lifted. We find
ourselves chill, a briskness
we hug ourselves in.
Frost greying the ground.

Grief might be easy
if there wasn't still
such beauty — would be far
simpler if the silver

maple didn't thrust
it's leaves into flame,
trusting that spring
will find it again.

All this might be easier if
there wasn't a song
still lifting us above it,
if wind didn't trouble

my mind like water.
I half expect to see you
fill the autumn air
like breath — 

At night I sleep
on clenched fists.
Days I'm like the child
who on the playground

falls, crying
not so much from pain
as surprise.
I'm tired of tide

taking you away,
then back again —
what's worse, the forgetting
or the thing

you can't forget.
Neither yet —
last summer's
choir of crickets

grown quiet.

"When you realize the person you loved is a bad person, it's extremely painful."

"Some males are smarter than others."

"Delicious to lie somewhere between sleep and wakefulness overhearing the judiciously useful movements towards dailiness downstairs."

How does one apologize for not loving someone enough to wanna share the rest of life with them?

A Sunday Kind Of Love

"I wonder at the steepness of my focus."

You're No Good

Bitch by Carolyn Kizer

Now, when he and I meet, after all these years,

I say to the bitch inside me, don’t start growling.   

He isn’t a trespasser anymore,

Just an old acquaintance tipping his hat.

My voice says, “Nice to see you,”

As the bitch starts to bark hysterically.

He isn’t an enemy now,

Where are your manners, I say, as I say,

“How are the children? They must be growing up.”   

At a kind word from him, a look like the old days,   

The bitch changes her tone; she begins to whimper.   

She wants to snuggle up to him, to cringe.

Down, girl! Keep your distance

Or I’ll give you a taste of the choke-chain.

“Fine, I’m just fine,” I tell him.

She slobbers and grovels.

After all, I am her mistress. She is basically loyal.   

It’s just that she remembers how she came running   

Each evening, when she heard his step;

How she lay at his feet and looked up adoringly   

Though he was absorbed in his paper;

Or, bored with her devotion, ordered her to the kitchen   

Until he was ready to play.

But the small careless kindnesses

When he’d had a good day, or a couple of drinks,

Come back to her now, seem more important

Than the casual cruelties, the ultimate dismissal.

“It’s nice to know you are doing so well,” I say.

He couldn’t have taken you with him;

You were too demonstrative, too clumsy,

Not like the well-groomed pets of his new friends.   

“Give my regards to your wife,” I say. You gag

As I drag you off by the scruff,

Saying, “Goodbye! Goodbye! Nice to have seen you again.”

excerpt from The Idea of Revelation by Tina Chang

"You stop the clock in your paltry chest.

The one that says choose, choose.

Wind that desired backward. Ring

the alarm. When you wake, no more

pain. A mirror like a window looking out.

What can your past now say to you

that has never been said before? What

of that clock that forbade you to move

 

forward. What of the clock that asked

for nothing but passage, the minutes

careening into you like a fitful arrow.

 

What of the clock that summoned nothing,

not even mercy. Once you tired of wanting,

a face to break, you started the clock again."

Day 1: Persimmon Vinegar!

"Self-knowledge isn't always good news."

The Healing Time by Pesha Joyce Gertler

Finally on my way to yes
I bump into
all the places
where I said no
to my life
all the untended wounds
the red and purple scars
those hieroglyphs of pain
carved into my skin, my bones,
those coded messages
that send me down
the wrong street
again and again
where I find them
the old wounds
the old misdirections
and I lift them
one by one
close to my heart
and I say holy
holy.

Do Not Be Ashamed by Wendell Berry

You will be walking some night
in the comfortable dark of your yard
and suddenly a great light will shine
round about you, and behind you
will be a wall you never saw before.
It will be clear to you suddenly
that you were about to escape,
and that you are guilty: you misread
the complex instructions, you are not
a member, you lost your card
or never had one. And you will know
that they have been there all along,
their eyes on your letters and books,
their hands in your pockets,
their ears wired to your bed.
Though you have done nothing shameful,
they will want you to be ashamed.
They will want you to kneel and weep
and say you should have been like them.
And once you say you are ashamed,
reading the page they hold out to you,
then such light as you have made
in your history will leave you.
They will no longer need to pursue you.
You will pursue them, begging forgiveness.
They will not forgive you.
There is no power against them.
It is only candor that is aloof from them,
only an inward clarity, unashamed,
that they cannot reach. Be ready.
When their light has picked you out
and their questions are asked, say to them:
"I am not ashamed." A sure horizon
will come around you. The heron will begin
his evening flight from the hilltop.

Listen:

 Unconditional Love- Tara Brach

"All you need is already within you, only you must approach your self with reverence and love. Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors. Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for your self, all I plead with you is this: make love of your self perfect. Deny yourself nothing -- give your self infinity and eternity and discover that you do not need them; you are beyond.”

"When we are caught in our struggles about feeling good about ourselves, we shut down our access to creativity, intelligence, and love."

“Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.”

-Henri Nouwen

"I want to make you feel beautiful."

“look at other people and ask yourself if you are really seeing them or just your thoughts about them.... Without knowing it, we are coloring everything, putting our spin on it all.” 

                                                                                                 

“There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too.”

                                                                                                               —Margaret Atwood

Unsaid by A. R. Ammons

Have you listened for the things I have left out?
I am nowhere near the end yet and already
               hear
           the hum of omissions,
the chant of vacancies, din of

silences:

there is the other side of matter, antimatter,
              the antiproton:
           we
have measured the proton:    it has mass:    we
have measured the antiproton:   it has negative mass:

you will not

hear me completely even at this early point
unless you hear my emptiness:
              go back:
           how can I
tell you what I have not said:   you must look for it

yourself:   that

side has weight, too, though words cannot bear it
out:   listen for the things I have left out:
            I  am
         aware
of them, as you must be, or you will miss

the non-song

in my singing:   it is not that words cannot say
what is missing:   it is only that what is missing
              cannot
          be missed if
spoken:   read the parables of my unmaking:

feel the ris-

ing bubble's trembling walls:    rush into the domes
these wordy arches shape:    hear
                me
            when I am
silent:      gather the boundaried vacancies.

"it seemed wise

  to let

the currents be

whatever they would be,

allowing possibility 

to chance

where choice 

   could not impose itself"

-excerpt from Raft by A.R. Ammons
                       
Expressions of Sea Level 

''All Great Art is Praise'." John Ruskin

The City Limits by A. R. Ammons

When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold
itself but pours its abundance without selection into every
nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider

that birds’ bones make no awful noise against the light but
lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider
the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest

swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,
not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you consider
the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue

bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped
guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in no
way winces from its storms of generosity; when you consider

that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,
each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then
the heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks about, the

leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and the dark
work of the deepest cells is of a tune with May bushes
and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.

 

"

Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.

"I never loved you."

Lines Written In The Days of Growing Darkness by Mary Oliver

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends
into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing, as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?
I don't say
it's easy, but
what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?
So let us go on

though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.

Crossroads by Joyce Sutphen

The second half of my life will be black
to the white rind of the old and fading moon.
The second half of my life will be water 
over the cracked floor of these desert years.
I will land on my feet this time,
knowing at least two languages and who
my friends are. I will dress for the
occasion, and my hair shall be
whatever color I please.
Everyone will go on celebrating the old
birthday, counting the years as usual,
but I will count myself new from this
inception, this imprint of my own desire.

The second half of my life will be swift,
past leaning fenceposts, a gravel shoulder,
asphalt tickets, the beckon of open road.
The second half of my life will be wide-eyed,
fingers shifting through fine sands,
arms loose at my sides, wandering feet.
There will be new dreams every night,
and the drapes will never be closed.
I will toss my string of keys into a deep
well and old letters into the grate.

The second half of my life will be ice
breaking up on the river, rain
soaking the fields, a hand
held out, a fire,
and smoke going
upward, always up.

Scenic World by Beirut

Scenes From The Arguments by Stephen Dunn

You slam the door and walk out,
or you leave quietly,
pulsing the static air
with what you believe is a statement.
You come back with lilies
and her favorite steamed dumplings
as a way of saying you were wrong,
or you go to The Feel Sorry For Yourself
Bar down the street and put some dents
in your infrastructure, hurt yourself good.
You come back singing an old song,
or are mumbling when
she fetches you and drives you home.
Or you stay and fight it out,
or stay and let rough sex
calm you into mere resentment.
Or you turn on the television
as a way of being together
without having to be present.
Or you say nothing and carry it with you,
or you say nothing and let it go.
And your dreams become populated
with other people you could have loved,
and her dreams, too, are shameless
and equally full, aren’t they? you ask,
even if she hasn’t volunteered a thing.

Connubial by Stephen Dunn

Because with alarming accuracy
she'd been identifying patterns
I was unaware of-this tic, that
tendency, like the way I've mastered
the language of intimacy
in order to conceal how I felt-

I knew I was in danger
of being terribly understood.

Variations on the Word Love by Margaret Atwood

This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love , you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn't what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
This word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.

To the Air by W. S. Merwin

Just when I needed you
there you were
I cannot say
how long you had been
present all at once
color of the day
as it comes to be seen
color of before
face of forgetting
color of heaven
out of sight within
myself leaving me
all the time only
to return without
question never
could I live without you
never have you
belonged to me
never do I want
you not to be with me
you who have been
the breath of everyone
and of each word spoken
without needing to know
the meaning of any of them
or who was peaking
when you are the wind
where do you start from
when you are still
where do you go
you who become
all the names I have known
and the lives in which
they came and went
invisible friend
go on telling me
again again

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Wild is the Wind-Nina Simone

Poem to an Unnameable Man by Dorothea Lasky

You have changed me already. I am a fireball
That is hurtling towards the sky to where you are
You can choose not to look up but I am a giant orange ball
That is throwing sparks upon your face
Oh look at them shake
Upon you like a great planet that has been murdered by change
O too this is so dramatic this shaking
Of my great planet that is bigger than you thought it would be
So you ran and hid
Under a large tree. She was graceful, I think
That tree although soon she will wither
Into ten black snakes upon your throat
And when she does I will be wandering as I always am
A graceful lady that is part museum
Of the voices of the universe everyone else forgets
I will hold your voice in a little box
And when you come upon me I won’t look back at you
You will feel a hand upon your heart while I place your voice back
Into the heart from where it came from
And I will not cry also
Although you will expect me to
I was wiser too than you had expected
For I knew all along you were mine

Syringe by Joanne Diaz

Perhaps you’ve always known her obvious desire,
her thirst for more, then more: the way she’d wish
for more kissing after the warmth of sex
had risen and gone; the way she’d beg
dinner guests to stay long after the servant
had cleaned the plates and the oil in the lamps
had burned dry; the way she always asked,
even in courtship, the how and the why
of your every declaration, wringing
the roots of thought as if the answers could
fill what existed before the pain began—
that presence that came unannounced, uninvited,
rejected at first then welcomed as part
of daily life.
              Even so, if heat is all she feels
in the throbbing, each filament a knife
of fire, a guarantee that cinders through
the night; if she wakes to weep
in the certainty of pain, its circling
through each pathway in the cheeks,
the eyes, the upper lip, so that only
the sweep of a finely woven handkerchief
can count as a kind of washing; if she
can spend all day tending to its need as if
it were the child you never had; then one day
you will have to acknowledge that she might
love the pain, and you won’t be able to
imagine when or how she learned to love
anything to such excess. After
the tooth extractions have failed to relieve
the shooting; after the melancholy
has withered in her temples and refused
to leave; after you have seen the nets of nerves
unfurl in a revolt of heat; after you
and she have exhausted your search for a word
that encompasses the largeness of this woe;
remember this: the garden of lilacs
that she planted before the pain began.
Go there and see the buds clustered,
enclosed and clean, then their limbs, the lean
from left to right, the dew-glistened drift
to the mulch, the blossoms that do not unfold
in time. Think syringa vulgaris. Think
tube, pipe, fistula. Think of filling
the barrel of the syringe, then plunging it
deep in her skin to fill the canals
of her nerves with a dark, sweet dream
of forgetting, then imagine her loving
that opposite of sense, the moment
at which the hairs of your moustache
branch into lilacs, common pinks
and blues flourishing behind her closed eyelids.
The poppy’s milk has a voice
that will sing her into sleeping, and a word
for every thought as she rises
beyond the small feather bed.

"I've had it with all stingy-hearted sons of bitches.
A heart is to be spent. As for me, I'll share
my mulcher with anyone who needs to mulch."

The Reverse Side by Stephen Dunn

The reverse side also has a reverse side.

—A Japanese Proverb

It’s why when we speak a truth
some of us instantly feel foolish
as if a deck inside us has been shuffled
and there it is—the opposite
of what we said.

And perhaps why as we fall in love
we’re already falling out of it.

It’s why the terrified and the simple
latch onto one story,
just one version of the great mystery.

Image & afterimage, oh even
the open-minded yearn for a fiction
to reign things in—
the snapshot, the lie of the frame.

How do we not go crazy,
we who have found ourselves compelled
to live with the circle, the ellipsis, the word
not yet written.

"Last year in a room where survivors
were gathered 
I watched one man's obstinate calm
when it was his turn to thank God,
how he kept what was his
his, the lovely discrepancy
between what the world expected
and what he gave.
or perhaps he was just shy, and I made him
into a man I needed just then. Either way,
I was happy
to witness and be part of something
that ever-so-little could rock the heart, 
tip it
toward fullness." 

#loveliness

Monogamy by Stephen Dunn (excerpt)

"After all, there's the suddenly desirable
mono in monogamy to celebrate,
the new freedom of wanting
only one person. Start again,
but admit you wouldn't advocate this
for anyone save yourself. Acknowledge
it's a state you've traveled far
to reach, motels and the overly careful
spelling of aliases behind you.
Acknowledge it takes long experience
in order to think of sameness
as an opportunity for imagination."

Beliefs by Stephen Dunn

I believed in nothing, so I thought
no system of smoke and desire
got in the way of what I saw.

There is another world
if only it could be seen,
slag heaps and golden valleys,
crime and celibacy-

visible companions-if say,
your politics could braid them,
and there were all the gods
in the darkness of our needs.

That was when I realized
that to believe in nothing
is a belief too, and not much fun
either, and acceptance

of the world as it is is as dumb
as standing still when floodwaters rise.
Fortunately in the midst of it all

you came along with your singular beauty,
the truth of things for a while
tactile and unequivocal.

But often when you left the room
a few questions replaced you.
When you returned, they remained.

Is it possible to be in love
and wise at the same time?

In love, I might be so intuitively right
I'd be banned from a republic.  In love
I might believe any foolish thing I felt.

Over time, questions formed curlicues
in your hair. They became part of what
I thought when I thought about you.

So good then, when you stayed in the room,
giving them flesh, making them real.

"....It's over. It's time for loss to build
its tower in the yard where you
are merely a spectator now.

Admit you'd like to find something
discarded or damaged, even gone,
and lift it back into the world."

Stephen Dunn
                                   

Pure Balance by Galway Kinnell

Wherever we are is unlikely.
Our few kisses-I don't know if
they're of goodbye or of
what-or if she knows either.

neither do I understand why it's
exhilarating-as well as the other things it is-
to know one doesn't have a future,
or how much longer one won't have one.

Future tramples all prediction.
Hope loses hope. Clarity
turns out to be
an invisible form of sadness.

We look for a bridge to cross
to the other shore where our other
could be looking for us
but all the river crossings

all the way to the sea
have been bombed. We look for a tree-
touch it-touch
right through it-sometimes nowhere

is there anything to hitch oneself to,
and we must make our way by pure balance.
This is so and can't be helped
without doing damage to oneself.

Antilamentation by Dorianne Laux

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook, not
the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication, not
the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punch line, the door or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don't regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the living room couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You've walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You've traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the window.
Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied of expectation.
Relax. Don't bother remembering any of it. Let's stop here,
under the lit sign on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

If your eyes are not deceived by the mirage
Do not be proud of the sharpness of your understanding;
It may be your freedom from this optical illusion
Is due to the imperfectness of your thirst.
                         
                                          -Sohrawardi

“We’re all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if you’ve been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect there’s no right person, just different flavors of wrong. Why is this? Because you yourself are wrong in some way, and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complementary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness. And it isn’t until you finally run up against your deepest demons, your unsolvable problems—the ones that make you truly who you are—that we’re ready to find a lifelong mate. Only then do you finally know what you’re looking for. You’re looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: the right wrong person—someone you lovingly gaze upon and think, “This is the problem I want to have."

I will find that special person who is wrong for me in just the right way.

Let our scars fall in love.”

Galway Kinnell

True Love by Wisława Szymborska

True love. Is it normal

is it serious, is it practical?

What does the world get from two people

who exist in a world of their own?

Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason,

drawn randomly from millions but convinced

it had to happen this way – in reward for what?

For nothing.

The light descends from nowhere.

Why on these two and not on others?

Doesn’t this outrage justice? Yes it does.

Doesn’t it disrupt our painstakingly erected principles,

and cast the moral from the peak? Yes on both accounts.

Look at the happy couple.

Couldn’t they at least try to hide it,

fake a little depression for their friends’ sake?

Listen to them laughing – it’s an insult.

The language they use – deceptively clear.

And their little celebrations, rituals,

the elaborate mutual routines -

it’s obviously a plot behind the human race’s back!

It’s hard even to guess how far things might go

if people start to follow their example.

What could religion and poetry count on?

What would be remembered? What renounced?

Who’d want to stay within bounds?

True love. Is it really necessary?

Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence,

like a scandal in Life’s highest circles.

Perfectly good children are born without its help.

It couldn’t populate the planet in a million years,

it comes along so rarely.

Let the people who never find true love

keep saying that there’s no such thing.

Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.

YES!!!!

"We have been raised to fear...our deepest cravings. And the fear of our deepest cravings keeps them suspect, keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, and leads us to settle for...many facets of our own oppression." Audre Lorde

We are hard by Margaret Atwood

i

We are hard on each other
and call it honesty,
choosing our jagged truths
with care and aiming them across
the neutral table.

The things we say are
true; it is our crooked
aim, our choices
turn them criminal.

ii

Of course your lies
are more amusing:
you make them new each time.

Your truths, painful and boring
repeat themselves over & over
perhaps because you own
so few of them

iii

A truth should exist,
it should not be used
like this. If I love you

is that a fact or a weapon?

iv

Does the body lie
moving like this, are these
touches, hairs, wet
soft marble my tongue runs over
lies you are telling me?

Your body is not a word,
it does not lie or
speak truth either.

It is only
here or not here.

Freedom of Speech by Lucie Brock-Broido

If my own voice falters, tell them hubris was my way of adoring you.

The hollow of the hulk of you, so feverish in life, cut open,

Reveals ten thousand rags of music in your thoracic cavity.

The hands are received bagged and examination reveals no injury.

Winter then, the body is cold to the touch, unplunderable,

                                 Kept in its drawer of old-world harrowing.

Teeth in fair repair. Will you be buried where; nowhere.

Your mouth a globe of gauze and glossolalia.

And opening, most delft of blue,

                                                                  Your heart was a mess—

A mob of hoofprints where the skittish colts first learned to stand,

Catching on to their agility, a shock of freedom, wild-maned.

The eyes have hazel irides and the conjunctivae are pale,

With hemorrhaging. One lung, smaller, congested with rose smoke.

The other, filled with a swarm of massive sentimentia.

                                                                   I adore you more. I know

The wingspan of your voice, whole gorgeous flock of harriers,

Cannot be taken down. You would like it now, this snow, this hour.

                                 Your visitation here tonight not altogether unexpected.

The night-laborers, immigrants all, assemble here, aching for to speaking,

                                                                                        Longing for to work.