"A thing is a thing, not what is said of that thing."

"You confuse love for admiration."

"Truth is always interesting."

My beautiful boy...2 years ago at Judy's

Has it ever occurred to you to consider the possibility that I don't want to be a part of your world? I guess it must be hard to imagine that I have higher standards for myself. ;)

Mommymonk

Loving Boyhood :)

"Forget your past and live a happy life now."

Appeal to the Grammarians

We, the naturally hopeful,

Need a simple sign

For the myriad ways we’re capsized.

We who love precise language

Need a finer way to convey

Disappointment and perplexity.

For speechlessness and all its inflections,

For up-ended expectations,

For every time we’re ambushed

By trivial or stupefying irony,

For pure incredulity, we need

The inverted exclamation point.

For the dropped smile, the limp handshake,

For whoever has just unwrapped a dumb gift

Or taken the first sip of a flat beer,

Or felt love or pond ice

Give way underfoot, we deserve it.

We need it for the air pocket, the scratch shot,

The child whose ball doesn’t bounce back,

The flat tire at journey’s outset,

The odyssey that ends up in Weehawken.

But mainly because I need it – here and now

As I sit outside the Caffe Reggio

Staring at my espresso and cannoli

After this middle-aged couple

Came strolling by and he suddenly

Veered and sneezed all over my table

And she said to him, “See, that’s why

I don’t like to eat outside.”

Paul Violi

" I would give a limb to rewrite that chapter of my life. But I can't."

Arthur Aron Test

Set I

1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?

2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?

3. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?

4. What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?

5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?

6. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?

7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?

8. Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.

9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?

10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?

11. Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.

12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?

Set II

13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?

14. Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?

15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?

16. What do you value most in a friendship?

17. What is your most treasured memory?

18. What is your most terrible memory?

19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?

20. What does friendship mean to you?

21. What roles do love and affection play in your life?

22. Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.

23. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s?

24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?

25. Make three true “we” statements each. For instance, “We are both in this room feeling ... “

26. Complete this sentence: “I wish I had someone with whom I could share ... “

27. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.

28. Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you’ve just met.

29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.

30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?

31. Tell your partner something that you like about them already.

32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?

33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?

34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?

35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?

36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.

Fragment 31 by Anne Carson

He seems to me equal to gods that man 
whoever he is who opposite you 
sits and listens close 
           to your sweet speaking

and lovely laughing—oh it 
puts the heart in my chest on wings 
for when I look at you, even a moment, no speaking 
           is left in me

no: tongue breaks and thin 
fire is racing under skin 
and in eyes no sight and drumming 
           fills ears

and cold sweat holds me and shaking 
grips me all, greener than grass 
I am and dead—or almost 
           I seem to me. 

"I appreciate that it’s accurate of what I both have and choose to have as my effect on people. I don’t know exactly why that’s the case."

Stanzas, Sexes, Seductions by Anne Carson

It’s good to be neuter.
             I want to have meaningless legs.
                          There are things unbearable.
                                       One can evade them a long time.
Then you die.

The ocean reminds me
             of your green room.
                          There are things unbearable.
                                       Scorn, princes, this little size
of dying.

My personal poetry is a failure.
             I do not want to be a person.
                          I want to be unbearable.
                                       Lover to lover, the greenness of love.
Cool, cooling.

Earth bears no such plant.
             Who does not end up
                          a female impersonator?
                                       Drink all the sex there is.
Still die.

I tempt you.
             I blush.
                         There are things unbearable.
                                      Legs, alas.
Legs die.

Rocking themselves down,
             crazy slow,
                          some ballet term for it —
                                       fragment of foil, little
spin,
             little drunk,
                          little do,
                                       little oh,
                                                    alas.

note to self:

Thank you for helping me open my eyes.

“If you can't love everything, he said, Try to love what, in the end, will matter.”

“ is it true that
nothing lacks, given 
the right comparison,
its charm?”

"Don't blame/me, if I am everything your heart/ has led to"

"There was one whose eyes, from

certain angles, seemed 

different depths of the same mistake." 

#lateintgetimeofsplendor

“Closing my eyes
I open them inside your eyes.”
— Octavio Paz, “Across”

The Lovers by Timothy Liu

I was always afraid 

of the next card

the psychic would turn 

over for us—

                              Forgive me 

for not knowing 

how we were

every card in the deck.

In This Light by Carl Phillips

Sure, I used to say his name like a truth that, just
by saying it aloud, I could make more true, which
makes no more sense than having called it sorrow,
when it was only the rain making the branches hang
more heavily, so that some of them, sometimes,
even touched the ground…I see that now.  I can see

how easy it is to confuse estrangement with what
comes before that, what’s really just another form
of being lost – lost, and trying to spell out wordlessly,
hand-lessly, the difference between I fell and Sir,
I’m falling.  As for emptiness spilling where no one
ever wanted it to, and becoming compassion, as for

how that happens – What if all we do is all we
can do?  What if longing, annihilation, regret are all this
life’s ever going to be, a little music thrown across and
under it, ghost-song from a cricket-box when the last
crickets have again gone silent, now, or be still forever,
as the gathering crowd, ungathering, slowly backs away?

Mind by Jorie Graham

The slow overture of rain,
each drop breaking
without breaking into
the next, describes
the unrelenting, syncopated
mind. Not unlike
the hummingbirds
imagining their wings
to be their heart, and swallows
believing the horizon
to be a line they lift
and drop. What is it
they cast for? The poplars,
advancing or retreating,
lose their stature
equally, and yet stand firm,
making arrangements
in order to become
imaginary. The city
draws the mind in streets,
and streets compel it
from their intersections
where a little
belongs to no one. It is
what is driven through
all stationary portions
of the world, gravity’s
stake in things, the leaves,
pressed against the dank
window of November
soil, remain unwelcome
till transformed, parts
of a puzzle unsolvable
till the edges give a bit
and soften. See how
then the picture becomes clear,
the mind entering the ground
more easily in pieces,
and all the richer for it.

“contained damage makes for beauty.” 

"Why is sex the definition of being close to someone?"

"Waiting for you to tell me to stop."

From Estuaries, from Casinos by John Ashbery

It’s almost two years now.
The theme was articulated, the brightness filled in.
And when we tell about it
no wave of recollection comes gushing back—
it’s as though the war had never happened.
There’s a smooth slightly concave space there instead:
not the ghost of a navel. There are pointless rounds to be made.

No one who saw you at work would ever believe that.
The memories you ground down, the smashed perfection:
Look, it’s wilted, but the shape of a beautiful table remains.
There are other stories, too ambiguous even for our purposes,
but that’s no matter. We’ll use them and some day,
a name-day,
a great event will go unreported.

All that distance, you ask, to the sun?
Surely no one is going to remember to climb
where it insists, poking about
in an abstract of every-day phrases? People have better
things to do with their lives than count how many
bets have been lost, and we all know the birds were here once.
Here they totter and subside, even in surviving.

In history, the best bird catchers were brought before the king,
and he did something, though nobody knows when.
That was before you could have it all
by just turning on the tap, letting it run
in a fiery stream from house to garage—
and we sat back, content to let the letter of the thing notice us,
untroubled by the spirit, talking of the next gull to fly away
on the cement horizon, not quibbling, unspoken for.

We should all get back to the night that bore us
but since that is impossible a dream may be the only way:
dreams of school, of travel, continue to teach and unteach us
as always the heart flies a little away,
perhaps accompanying, perhaps not. Perhaps a familiar spirit,
possibly a stranger, a small enemy whose boiling point
hasn’t yet been reached, and in that time
will our desire be fleshed out, at any rate
made clearer as the time comes
to examine it and draw the rasping conclusions?

And though I feel like a fish out of water I
recognize the workmen who proceed before me,
nailing the thing down.
Who asks anything of me?
I am available, my heart pinned in a trance
to the notice board, the stone
inside me ready to speak, if that is all that can save us.

And I think one way or perhaps two; it doesn’t matter
as long as one can slip by, and easily
into the questioning but not miasmal dark.
Look, here is a stance—
shall you cover it, cape it? I
don’t care he said, going down all those stairs
makes a boy of you. And I had what I want
only now I don’t want it, not having it, and yet it defers
to some, is meat and peace and a wooden footbridge
ringing the town, drawing all in after it. And explaining the way to go

After all this I think I
feel pretty euphoric. Bells chimed, the sky healed.
The great road unrolled its vast burden,
the climate came to the rescue—it always does—
and we were shaken as in a hat and distributed on the ground.
I wish I could tell the next thing. But in dreams I can’t,
so will let this thing stand in for it, this me
I have become, this loving you either way.

Hellebore by Mary Ruefle

Lord, I am all

stretched out to quality,

but I fear I wear

a ring of hellebore

on my brow, as I am

a daughterish son

and my torment is that

I fed the flowers

to a circle of friends

not knowing their sudden

life-changing effect—

so a boy poisons his dog

and Hamlet his mother

and all beings

of whatever kind

afterwards walk trampled

as if crushing with

their own bare hands

(things are not familiar!

things are not familiar!)

the love they were

saving for a more

opportune moment

such as this

on my mind

An Adventure by Louise Gluck

I.

It came to me one night as I was falling asleep 
that I had finished with those amorous adventures 
to which I had long been a slave. Finished with love? 
my heart murmured. To which I responded that many profound discoveries 
awaited us, hoping, at the same time, I would not be asked 
to name them. For I could not name them. But the belief that they existed— 
surely this counted for something? 

2.

The next night brought the same thought, 
this time concerning poetry, and in the nights that followed 
various other passions and sensations were, in the same way, 
set aside forever, and each night my heart 
protested its future, like a small child being deprived of a favorite toy. 
But these farewells, I said, are the way of things. 
And once more I alluded to the vast territory 
opening to us with each valediction. And with that phrase I became 
a glorious knight riding into the setting sun, and my heart 
became the steed underneath me. 

3.

I was, you will understand, entering the kingdom of death,
though why this landscape was so conventional
I could not say. Here, too, the days were very long
while the years were very short. The sun sank over the far mountain.
The stars shone, the moon waxed and waned. Soon
faces from the past appeared to me:
my mother and father, my infant sister; they had not, it seemed,
finished what they had to say, though now
I could hear them because my heart was still. 

4.

At this point, I attained the precipice
but the trail did not, I saw, descend on the other side;
rather, having flattened out, it continued at this altitude
as far as the eye could see, though gradually
the mountain that supported it completely dissolved
so that I found myself riding steadily through the air—
All around, the dead were cheering me on, the joy of finding them
obliterated by the task of responding to them—

5.

As we had all been flesh together,
now we were mist.
As we had been before objects with shadows,
now we were substance without form, like evaporated chemicals.
Neigh, neigh, said my heart,
or perhaps nay, nay—it was hard to know. 

6.

Here the vision ended. I was in my bed, the morning sun
contentedly rising, the feather comforter
mounded in white drifts over my lower body.
You had been with me—
there was a dent in the second pillowcase.
We had escaped from death—
or was this the view from the precipice? 

"At what point should you ever stop trying?"

"Our love a difficult instrument we are learning to play. Practice, practice."

On Quitting by Edgar Albert Guest

How much grit do you think you’ve got? 

Can you quit a thing that you like a lot? 

You may talk of pluck; it’s an easy word, 

And where’er you go it is often heard; 

But can you tell to a jot or guess 

Just how much courage you now possess? 

You may stand to trouble and keep your grin, 

But have you tackled self-discipline? 

Have you ever issued commands to you 

To quit the things that you like to do, 

And then, when tempted and sorely swayed, 

Those rigid orders have you obeyed? 

Don’t boast of your grit till you’ve tried it out, 

Nor prate to men of your courage stout, 

For it’s easy enough to retain a grin 

In the face of a fight there’s a chance to win, 

But the sort of grit that is good to own 

Is the stuff you need when you’re all alone. 

How much grit do you think you’ve got? 

Can you turn from joys that you like a lot? 

Have you ever tested yourself to know 

How far with yourself your will can go? 

If you want to know if you have grit, 

Just pick out a joy that you like, and quit. 

It’s bully sport and it’s open fight; 

It will keep you busy both day and night; 

For the toughest kind of a game you’ll find 

Is to make your body obey your mind. 

And you never will know what is meant by grit 

Unless there’s something you’ve tried to quit.

Lucky by Stephen Dunn

Loyal obedience to the rules jointly defined 

and freely accepted.

-Albert Camus, on why his true lessons

in morality came from sports

Lucky that we didn't know the games we played
  were teaching us about boundaries
and integrity; it would have smacked of school,

we who long for recess. And lucky- when exiled
  to right field, or not chosen at all-
we didn't know the lesson was injustice,

just how much of it we could tolerate.
  But always there'd be the boys
who never got it, calling foul after foul

there wasn't, marking with an X spot
  where the ball didn't hit.
Where are they now? What are they doing?

Lucky that some of us who loved recess
  came to love school,
found the books that gave us a few words

for what the aggrieved already knew. Lucky
  that within rules
freely accepted we came to recognize a heart

can be ferocious, a mind devious and fair.

Temple On My Knees by Lisa Russ Spaar

When this day returns to me

I will value your heart, 

long hurt in long division,

over mine. Mouth above mine too —

say you love me, truth never more

meant, say you are angry.

Words, words we net with our mouths.

Soul is an old thirst but not as first

as the body’s perhaps,

though on bad nights its melancholy

eats us out, to a person.

True, time is undigressing.

Yet true is all we can be:

rhyming you, rhyming me.

I Hate by C.K. Williams

I hate how this unsummoned sigh-sound, sob-sound, 

not sound really, feeling, sigh-feeling, sob-feeling, 

keeps rising in me, rasping in me, not in its old disguise 

as nostalgia, sweet crazed call of the blackbird; 

not as remembrance, grief for so many gone, 

nor either that other tangle of recall, regret   

for unredeemed wrongs, errors, omissions, 

petrified roots too deep to ever excise; 

a mingling rather, a melding, inextricable mesh   

of delight in astonishing being, of being in being, 

with a fear of and fear for I can barely think what, 

not non-existence, of self, loved ones, love; 

not even war, fuck war, sighing for war, 

sobbing for war, for no war, peace, surcease; 

more than all that, some ground-sound, ground-note,   

sown in us now, that swells in us, all of us,   

echo of love we had, have, for world, for our world, 

on which we seem finally mere swarm, mere deluge, 

mere matter self-altered to tumult, to noise, 

cacophonous blitz of destruction, despoilment, 

din from which every emotion henceforth emerges, 

and into which falters, slides, sinks, and subsides: 

sigh-sound of lament, of remorse; sob-sound of rue,   

of, still, always, ever sadder and sadder sad joy