This Ecstasy

It’s not paradise I’m looking for

but the naming I hardly gave a thought to.

Call it the gift I carried in my loneliness

among the animals before I started

listening to the news. Call it the hint

I had about the knowledge that would explode.

In the meantime, which is real time

plus the past, you’re swishing your skirt

and speaking French, which is more

than I can take, which I marvel at

like a boy from the most distant seat 

in the Kronos Dome, where I am one

of so many now I see the point 

of falling off. There’s not enough seats 

for us all to attend the eschaton.

This ecstasy that plants beauty

on my tongue, so that if it were

a wing, I’d be flying with the quickness

of a hummingbird and grace of a heron,

is so much mercy in light of the darkness 

that comes. Who would say consolation?

Who would say dross? Not that anyone

would blame them. All night I hear

so many echoes in the forest I’m tempted

to look back, to save myself in hindsight,

where all I see is the absence of me.

Where all I hear is your voice,

which couldn’t be more strange.

How to go on walking hand in hand

without our bodies on the path

we made for our feet, talking, talking?

Of Dark Love

there has never been sunlight for this love,

like a crazed flower it buds in the dark,

is at once a crown of thorns and

a spring garland around the temples

a fire, a wound, the bitterest of fruit,

but a breeze as well, a source of water,

your breath—a bite to the soul,

your chest—a tree trunk in the current

make me walk on the turbid waters,

be the ax that breaks this lock,

the dew that weeps from trees

if I become mute kissing your thighs,

it’s that my heart eagerly

searches your flesh for a new dawn

I'm used to the emperor's bitterness
I can't find the sweet place unless you make me

This face that is not my face I may
look made but when you touch me you make me

Make the oak say blossom The stripped say swell
The avenue pavement say river Make me

This shirt I can't take off The one
the nights without you gathered to make me

The new day The sweet place Tomorrow
whispering from tonight's last light Make me

Kissing you without authorization
If you want me to stop you'll have to make me

The ruined city Or is it a woman
interrupting your sleep to say Now To say Make me

Algonquin Afterthoughts

Or else our drunken tumble was

   too true for daylight’s pleasure,

too much in vino veritas

   troubled the gods of measure

who sent bright draughts of sunshine down

   and sobered up my treasure.

All night rapacity had come

   as naturally as breathing;

we nibbled on each other’s necks

   like greedy babies teething.

How soon an empty bottle makes

   one feel a blissful free thing.

“Aspirin, aspirin,” he implored;

   I fed him several pills,

and when he wondered where he was

   it gave me frightful chills,

but still I told him of the party’s

   unexpected thrills.

Words woke us up, reflection turned

   affection to regret:

“After she left me I tried not

   to do this, but I get

so lonely”...so I showed him out,

   warbling “I’m glad we met.”

But now I crave the swift return

   of scotch-transfigured nights,

like Chaplin, horrified by his

   rich friend in City Lights

who only recognizes him

   from liquor-gladdened heights,

sticking a tall glass in the man’s

   upstanding hand (the clink

or worse awaits poor tramps like us

   if scamps like you won’t think)

and meekly scolding, in a voice

   weak with nostalgia, “Drink.”

❤️

Bits of Tablets...

She pressed her ear against the shell:

she wanted to hear everything

he never told her.

A single inch

separates their two bodies

facing one another

in the picture:

a framed smile

buried beneath the rubble.

Whenever you throw stones

into the sea

it sends ripples through me. 

My heart’s quite small:

that’s why it fills so quickly.

How thrilling to appear in his eyes.

She can’t understand what he’s saying:

she’s too busy chewing his voice.

She looks at the mouth she’ll never kiss,

at the shoulder she’ll never cry on,

at the hand she’ll never hold,

and at the ground where their shadows meet.

On Quitting by Edgar 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.

The Rain by Ronert Creeley

All night the sound had

come back again,

and again falls

this quiet, persistent rain.

 

What am I to myself

that must be remembered,

insisted upon

so often? Is it

 

that never the ease,

even the hardness,

of rain falling

will have for me

 

something other than this,

something not so insistent—

am I to be locked in this

final uneasiness.

 

Love, if you love me,

lie next to me.

Be for me, like rain,

the getting out

 

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-

lust of intentional indifference.

Be wet

with a decent happiness.

I can’t go to the ___________ anymore

because it is like going on a tour

of my worst dates. I get older, my heart

leaps at the sight of children

who don’t belong to me, I pronounce

everything like an Italian opera title.

I used to listen to songs and have someone

in mind for the you parts, now I just want

to be where the light is intense, I want

the kind of heat that kills you

if you drive into it unprepared. This

isn’t a metaphor for anything else.

When I speak of the light, I mean the light.

I go to church and sing along and feel

just as moved as if my faith were blind.

When I speak of the blind, I mean

the light. Truly the only things Lindsay Lohan and I

have in common are our preoccupations

with fame and weight loss, and yet I recognize

a kinship there, as if those two things mattered

more than anything. When I speak of

the darkness, I mean this living.

In a restaurant called Caracas,

I once spent fifteen minutes arguing

about an Ayn Rand book because

every time he said Anthem I thought

he meant We the Living and I said

what dystopia, what about the woman,

and he said what about the Home

of the Infants and I said what

Home of the Infants? What about

loving a man so much you’ll sleep

with another man in order to finance

the first man’s tuberculosis treatment?

Welcome to Russia, I said, and we

were looking at each other and then

not. I tried to picture Caracas, tried

to leave him for elsewhere, a fever.

Lips

What is the structure of lips

That take care of sounds,

That can scream loud and long,

That can wait and be silent?

Yesterday I was mastering words

And kissing lips lightly—

Their loving weakness

Now remains on my own

Hardworking lips, 

Exacting, as if forever,

My terrible punishment.

If Feeling Isn't In It by John Brehm

Dogs will also lick your face if you let them.

Their bodies will shiver with happiness.

A simple walk in the park is just about

the height of contentment for them, followed

by a bowl of food, a bowl of water,

a place to curl up and sleep. Someone

to scratch them where they can't reach

and smooth their foreheads and talk to them.

Dogs also have a natural dislike of mailmen

and other bringers of bad news and will

bite them on your behalf. Dogs can smell

fear and also love with perfect accuracy.

There is no use pretending with them.

Nor do they pretend. If a dog is happy

or sad or nervous or bored or ashamed

or sunk in contemplation, everybody knows it.

They make no secret of themselves.

You can even tell what they're dreaming about

by the way their legs jerk and try to run

on the slippery ground of sleep.

Nor are they given to pretentious self-importance.

They don't try to impress you with how serious

or sensitive they are. They just feel everything

full blast. Everything is off the charts

with them. More than once I've seen a dog

waiting for its owner outside a café

practically implode with worry. “Oh, God,

what if she doesn't come back this time?

What will I do? Who will take care of me?

I loved her so much and now she's gone

and I'm tied to a post surrounded by people

who don't look or smell or sound like her at all.”

And when she does come, what a flurry

of commotion, what a chorus of yelping

and cooing and leaps straight up into the air!

It's almost unbearable, this sudden

fullness after such total loss, to see

the world made whole again by a hand

on the shoulder and a voice like no other.

Doctor Drink # 1 by J.V. Cunningham

In the _________ year of life
I took my heart to be my wife,

And as I turn in bed by night
I have my heart for my delight.

No other heart may mine estrange
For my heart changes as I change,

And it is bound, and I am free,
And with my death it dies with me. 

Superbly Situated by Robert Hershon

you politely ask me not to die and i promise not to   

right from the beginning—a relationship based on   

good sense and thoughtfulness in little things 

i would like to be loved for such simple attainments   

as breathing regularly and not falling down too often   

or because my eyes are brown or my father left-handed 

and to be on the safe side i wouldn’t mind if somehow 

i became entangled in your perception of admirable objects   

so you might say to yourself: i have recently noticed 

how superbly situated the empire state building is 

how it looms up suddenly behind cemeteries and rivers   

so far away you could touch it—therefore i love you 

part of me fears that some moron is already plotting   

to tear down the empire state building and replace it   

with a block of staten island mother/daughter houses 

just as part of me fears that if you love me for my cleanliness   

i will grow filthy if you admire my elegant clothes   

i’ll start wearing shirts with sailboats on them 

but i have decided to become a public beach an opera house   

a regularly scheduled flight—something that can’t help being   

in the right place at the right time—come take your seat 

we’ll raise the curtain fill the house start the engines   

fly off into the sunrise, the spire of the empire state 

the last sight on the horizon as the earth begins to curve

Afternoon Happiness by Carolyn Kizer

At a party I spy a handsome psychiatrist,

And wish, as we all do, to get her advice for free.

Doctor, I’ll say, I’m supposed to be a poet.

All life’s awfulness has been grist to me.

We learn that happiness is a Chinese meal,

While sorrow is a nourishment forever.

My new environment is California Dreamer.

I’m fearful I’m forgetting how to brood.

And, Doctor, another thing has got me worried:

I’m not drinking as much as I should . . .

 

At home, I want to write a happy poem

On love, or a love poem of happiness.

But they won’t do, the tensions of every day,

The rub, the minor abrasions of any two

Who share one space. Ah, there’s no substitute for tragedy!

But in this chapter, tragedy belongs

To that other life, the old life before us.

Here is my aphorism of the day:

Happy people are monogamous.

Even in California. So how does the poem play

 

Without the paraphernalia of betrayal and loss?

I don’t have a jealous eye or fear

And neither do you. In truth, I’m fond

Of your ex-mate, whom I name “my wife-in-law.”

My former husband, that old disaster, is now just funny,

So laugh we do, in what Cyril Connolly

Has called the endless, nocturnal conversation

Of marriage. Which may be the best part.

Darling, must I love you in light verse

Without the tribute of profoundest art?

 

Of course it won’t last. You will break my heart

Or I yours, by dying. I could weep over that.

But now it seems forced, here in these heaven hills,

The mourning doves mourning, the squirrels mating,

My old cat warm in my lap, here on our terrace

As from below comes a musical cursing

As you mend my favorite plate. Later of course

I could pick a fight; there is always material in that.

But we don’t come from fighting people, those

Who scream out red-hot iambs in their hate.

 

No, love, the heavy poem will have to come

From temps perdu, fertile with pain, or perhaps

Detonated by terrors far beyond this place

Where the world rends itself, and its tainted waters

Rise in the east to erode our safety here.

Much as I want to gather a lifetime thrift

And craft, my cunning skills tied in a knot for you,

There is only this useless happiness as gift.

"I know there are some people out there
who think I am supposed to end up
                in a room by myself

with a gun and a bottle full of hate, 
a locked door and my slack mouth open
          like a disconnected phone. 

But I hate those people back
from the core of my donkey soul
and the hatred makes me strong
and my survival is their failure, 

and my happiness would kill them
so I shove joy like a knife
into my own heart over and over

and I force myself toward pleasure, 
and I love this _______ life
where I run like a train
deeper and deeper
into the land of my enemies."

"Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know."

❤️

“Don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens - The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.”

"What you think of me is none of my business."

Works and Loves by Jane Hirshfield

               1 

Rain fell as a glass 

breaks,

something suddenly everywhere at the same time.

               2 

To live like a painting 

looked into from more than one angle at once —

eye to eye with the doorway,

down at the hair,

up at your own dusty feet. 

               3 

“This is your house,”

said my bird heart to my heart of the cricket, 

and I entered.

               4 

The happy see only happiness,

the living see only life,

the young see only the young,

as lovers believe

they wake always beside one also in love.

               5 

However often I turned its pages,

I kept ending up 

as the same two sentences of the book:

The being of some is: to be. Of others: to be without.

Then I fell back asleep, in Swedish.

               6 

A sheep grazing is unimpressed by the mountain

but not by its flies.

               7 

The grief

of what hasn’t yet happened —

a door closed from inside.

The weight of the grass 

dividing

an ant’s five-legged silence

walking through it.

               8 

What is the towel, what is the water, 

changes,

though of we three, 

only the towel can be held upside down in the sun.

               9 

“I was once.”

Said not in self-pity or praise.

This dignity we allow barn owl, 

ego, oyster.

Round by James Hoch

Perhaps you covet something of 

               its emptiness, its uselessness 

in matters of  yearning or feeling 

               another’s yearn, that it can’t 

know a damn thing, yet damns 

               everything it touches: the water 

it gathers along its passage, 

               the air it pushes through,

swallow-like. It is no bird,

               though you envy the song 

you hear only after it’s gone, 

               even if  it sings through paper, 

a goat, the neck of a man 

               wearing a scarf that tufts just as 

the rest of   him flies out of

               his shoes and collapses in dirt.

Or, how it is like the dirt

               receiving him, the privilege 

of not knowing if   he was 

              kind or unkind, as you

chamber another, waiting for 

              someone to come for his shoes.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Related Poem Content D

i

Tell me it was for the hunger

& nothing less. For hunger is to give

the body what it knows

it cannot keep. That this amber light

whittled down by another war

is all that pins my hand

to your chest.

i

You, drowning

between my arms —

stay.

You, pushing your body

into the river

only to be left

with yourself —

stay.

i

I’ll tell you how we’re wrong enough to be forgiven. How one night, after

backhanding

mother, then taking a chainsaw to the kitchen table, my father went to kneel

in the bathroom until we heard his muffled cries through the walls.

And so I learned that a man, in climax, was the closest thing

to surrender.

i

Say surrender. Say alabaster. Switchblade.

Honeysuckle. Goldenrod. Say autumn.

Say autumn despite the green

in your eyes. Beauty despite

daylight. Say you’d kill for it. Unbreakable dawn

mounting in your throat.

My thrashing beneath you

like a sparrow stunned

with falling.

i

Dusk: a blade of honey between our shadows, draining.

i

I wanted to disappear — so I opened the door to a stranger’s car. He was divorced. He was still alive. He was sobbing into his hands (hands that tasted like rust). The pink breast cancer ribbon on his keychain swayed in the ignition. Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here? I was still here once. The moon, distant & flickering, trapped itself in beads of sweat on my neck. I let the fog spill through the cracked window & cover my fangs. When I left, the Buick kept sitting there, a dumb bull in pasture, its eyes searing my shadow onto the side of suburban houses. At home, I threw myself on the bed like a torch & watched the flames gnaw through my mother’s house until the sky appeared, bloodshot & massive. How I wanted to be that sky — to hold every flying & falling at once.

i

Say amen. Say amend.

Say yes. Say yes

anyway.

i

In the shower, sweating under cold water, I scrubbed & scrubbed.

i

In the life before this one, you could tell

two people were in love

because when they drove the pickup

over the bridge, their wings

would grow back just in time.

Some days I am still inside the pickup.

Some days I keep waiting.

i

It’s not too late. Our heads haloed

with gnats & summer too early

to leave any marks.

Your hand under my shirt as static

intensifies on the radio.

Your other hand pointing

your daddy’s revolver

to the sky. Stars falling one

by one in the cross hairs.

This means I won’t be

afraid if we’re already

here. Already more

than skin can hold. That a body

beside a body

must make a field

full of ticking. That your name

is only the sound of clocks

being set back another hour

& morning

finds our clothes

on your mother’s front porch, shed

like week-old lilies.