Age is not

all dry rot.

It’s never too late.

Sweet is your real estate.

Party Ship by Kay Ryan

You are a

land I can’t

stand leaving

and can’t not.

My party ship

is pulling out.

We all have

hats. I try to

toot some notes

you’ll understand

but this was not

our instrument

or plan.

He could let her go.
He let it all go,
desire and grief
and raw need
going out of him
moment by moment
into the mild
immaculate night,
love by love
into a last
passion of pure
attention, nerves,
readiness...

Morning by Frank O'Hara

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

Malcolm Gladwell | Paul Holdengraber: Live at NYPL

"That’s your responsibility as a person, as a human being — to constantly be updating your positions on as many things as possible. And if you don’t contradict yourself on a regular basis, then you’re not thinking."





Malcolm Gladwell | Paul H

Excerpts from Replacable Until You're Not by Brenda Shaughnessy

I’ll always be the same woman you loved,

              this woman I no longer am,

I’ll be her and re-be her

             because I can’t replace myself.

Hers is the body you loved, she was yours,

              this future corpse;

no matter how many lovers she, her body, and I have,

              only you know the curvature that stops your heart...

Love At First Sight by Wislawa Szymborska/ Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

Love at First Sight

They’re both convinced
that a sudden passion joined them.
Such certainty is beautiful,
but uncertainty is more beautiful still.

Since they’d never met before, they’re sure
that there’d been nothing between them.
But what’s the word from the streets, staircases, hallways –
perhaps they’ve passed each other a million times?

I want to ask them
if they don’t remember –
a moment face to face
in some revolving door?
perhaps a “sorry” muttered in a crowd?
a curt “wrong number” caught in the receiver?
but I know the answer.
No, they don’t remember
They’d be amazed to hear
that Chance has been toying with them
now for years.

Not quite ready yet
to become their Destiny,
it pushed them close, drove them apart,
it barred their path,
stifling a laugh,
and then leaped aside.

There were signs and signals,
even if they couldn’t read them yet.
Perhaps three years ago
or just last Tuesday
a certain leaf fluttered
from one shoulder to another?
Something was dropped and then picked up.
Who knows, maybe the ball that vanished
into childhood’s thicket?

There were doorknobs and doorbells
where one touch had covered another
beforehand.
Suitcases checked and standing side by side.
One night, perhaps, the same dream,
grown hazy by morning.

Every beginning
is only a sequel, after all,
and the book of events
is always open halfway through.

love at first sight by wisława szymborska/ translated by walter whipple

Both are convinced that a sudden surge of emotion bound them together. Beautiful is such a certainty, but uncertainty is more beautiful. Because they didn't know each other earlier, they suppose that nothing was happening between them. What of the streets, stairways and corridors where they could have passed each other long ago? I'd like to ask them whether they remember-- perhaps in a revolving door ever being face to face? an "excuse me" in a crowd or a voice "wrong number" in the receiver. But I know their answer: no, they don't remember. They'd be greatly astonished to learn that for a long time chance had been playing with them. Not yet wholly ready to transform into fate for them it approached them, then backed off, stood in their way and, suppressing a giggle, jumped to the side. There were signs, signals: but what of it if they were illegible. Perhaps three years ago, or last Tuesday did a certain leaflet fly from shoulder to shoulder? There was something lost and picked up. Who knows but what it was a ball in the bushes of childhood. There were doorknobs and bells on which earlier touch piled on touch. Bags beside each other in the luggage room. Perhaps they had the same dream on a certain night, suddenly erased after waking. Every beginning is but a continuation, and the book of events is never more than half open.

Consolation by Wislawa Szymborska

Darwin.

They say he read novels to relax,

But only certain kinds:

nothing that ended unhappily.

If anything like that turned up,

enraged, he flung the book into the fire.   

True or not,

I’m ready to believe it.

Scanning in his mind so many times and places,

he’d had enough of dying species,

the triumphs of the strong over the weak,

the endless struggles to survive,

all doomed sooner or later.

He’d earned the right to happy endings,

at least in fiction

with its diminutions.

Hence the indispensable

silver lining,

the lovers reunited, the families reconciled,

the doubts dispelled, fidelity rewarded,

fortunes regained, treasures uncovered,

stiff-necked neighbors mending their ways,

good names restored, greed daunted,

old maids married off to worthy parsons,

troublemakers banished to other hemispheres,

forgers of documents tossed down the stairs,   

seducers scurrying to the altar,

orphans sheltered, widows comforted,

pride humbled, wounds healed over,

prodigal sons summoned home,

cups of sorrow thrown into the ocean,   

hankies drenched with tears of reconciliation,

general merriment and celebration,

and the dog Fido,

gone astray in the first chapter,

turns up barking gladly

in the last.

You Can't Always Get What You Want

"I always miss you until you're here. Then I realize the mom I miss must have been someone I invented when I was a kid."

True love contains respect.

The Great Fires by Jack Gilbert

Love is apart from all things.
Desire and excitement are nothing beside it.
It is not the body that finds love.
What leads us there is the body.
What is not love provokes it.
What is not love quenches it.
Love lays hold of everything we know.
The passions which are called love
also change everything to a newness
at first. Passion is clearly the path
but does not bring us to love.
It opens the castle of our spirit
so that we might find the love which is
a mystery hidden there.
Love is one of many great fires.
Passion is a fire made of many woods,
each of which gives off its special odor
so we can know the many kinds
that are not love. Passion is the paper
and twigs that kindle the flames
but cannot sustain them. Desire perishes
because it tries to be love.
Love is eaten away by appetite.
Love does not last, but it is different
from the passions that do not last.
Love lasts by not lasting.
Isaiah said each man walks in his own fire
for his sins. Love allows us to walk
in the sweet music of our particular heart.

Like

Lullaby by Kevin Young

Sleep, shelter me.
Shuffle

me back into the deck
where I belong-

Sing no shout
your favorite song

until I fall
into your empty arms.

Let me be what
dust has to be, settling

over everything
& I promise to dream

of new houses & old
loves no longer. I swear,

sweet sleep,
I will summon no one

if you make me
again mine.

Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin

There is a woman who goes to sleep
every night wishing she had broken
your sternum reached up inside your
chest momentarily borrowing your
heart to hold before your screaming
face and with her other hand still
clutching her lover’s broke next into
her own sternum plucking next her
own heart dangling them both there
sterling silver sign language for you
tell me what is the difference.

Nikki Finney

The Fix-it Man by Simone Muench

I want a man who can fix things:

solder and suture the mechanical

entrails of appliances, redeem

beef stew from too much salt, sew

coat pockets so I don't lose 

my wallet with a picture of him

rehanging the chandelier

that dropped like a meteor when I danced

lambada beneath it. I'm high

maintenance, a natural disaster-

light bulbs shatter when I pass, toilets

overflow, children next door in bright white rooms dream

of car collisions, collapsing

buildings. I want a man

who can install a notch filter

at the end of a coaxial cable 

for free access to the Playboy channel-

which we'll watch while he fixes me

Capellini de Mare, removes knots 

from my cataclysmic hair, makes me come

with his fingers alone. A man with hands

the span of a plate, but fingers so skin-

sensitive they can shave my legs, the summits

of knees without a nick. Replace

strings on my Martin then play it like he's

dialing my number. Not a plumber

or a surgeon but a fix-it man

who repairs and installs at no extra fee.

"I could love you... I'm not saying that I do...I'm saying that I could...which is rare for me and deserves to be acknowledged. You understand me better than any guy I've ever met...you get me...and that, that has been the nicest feeling..."

Lik

"The bud

stands for all things,

even for those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;   

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing"

Verge by Mark Doty

A month at least before the bloom
and already five bare-limbed cherries
by the highway ringed in a haze
of incipient fire
                      —middle of the afternoon,
a faint pink-bronze glow. Some things
wear their becoming:
                                the night we walked,
nearly strangers, from a fevered party
to the corner where you’d left your motorcycle,
afraid some rough wind might knock it to the curb,
you stood on the other side
of the upright machine, other side
of what would be us, and tilted your head
toward me over the wet leather seat
while you strapped your helmet on,
engineer boots firm on the black pavement.

Did we guess we’d taken the party’s fire with us,
somewhere behind us that dim apartment
cooling around its core like a stone?
Can you know, when you’re not even a bud
but a possibility poised at some brink?

Of course we couldn’t see ourselves,
though love’s the template and rehearsal
of all being, something coming to happen
where nothing was…
                                    But just now
I thought of a troubled corona of new color,
visible echo, and wondered if anyone
driving in the departing gust and spatter
on Seventh Avenue might have seen
the cloud breathed out around us
as if we were a pair
of—could it be?—soon-to-flower trees.

Is/Not by Margaret Atwood

I. 
Love is not a profession
genteel or otherwise
sex is not dentistry
the slick filling of aches and cavities

you are not my doctor
you are not my cure,

nobody has that
power, you are merely a fellow traveller

Give up this medical concern,
buttoned, attentive,

permit yourself anger
and permit me mine

which needs neither
your approval nor your surprise

which does not need to be made legal
which is not against a disease

but against you,
which does not need to be understood

or washed or cauterized,
which needs instead

to be said and said.
Permit me the present tense.


II. 
I am not a saint or a cripple,
I am not a wound; now I will see
whether I am a coward.

I dispose of my good manners,
you don’t have to kiss my wrists.

This is a journey, not a war,
there is no outcome,
I renounce predictions

and aspirins, I resign the future
as I would resign an expired passport:
picture and signature gone
along with holidays and safe returns.

We’re stuck here
on this side of the border
in this country of thumbed streets and stale buildings

where there is nothing spectacular
 to see
and the weather is ordinary

where love occurs in its pure form only
on the cheaper of the souvenirs

where we must walk slowly,
where we may not get anywhere

or anything, where we keep going,
fighting our ways, our way
not out but through.