A Meeting after Many Years by Ted Kooser

Our words were a few colorful leaves
afloat on a very old silence,
the kind with a terrifying undertow,
and we stood right at its edge,
wrapping ourselves in our own arms
because of the chill, and with old voices
called back and forth across all those years
until we could bear it no longer,
and turned from each other,
and walked away into our countries.

You Probably Did

I remember the first time you told me that you stopped drinking. 
My heart took flight and the idea of having a sober father became the root of my happiness. 
You got drunk that night. 

I remember the first time you let me down. 
I stood alone among my peers because you had better things to do. 
You got drunk that night. 

I remember the first time I slit my porcelain skin open for you. 
As blood trickled from my veins I begged you to come and rescue me from the demons in my mind. 
You got drunk that night. 

I remember the first time I tried to put an end to all the madness that engulfed my life. 
I grabbed your gun from the safe and shot a bullet through my head. 
I will never know if you got drunk that night. 
You probably did.

Rumirules

“I know you're tired but come, this is the way...

In your light, I learn how to love. 
In your beauty, how to make poems. 
You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, 
but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.”        

"If the power were granted you
to break out of your cells,
but the imagination fails
and the doors of the senses close
on the child within,
you would dare to be changed,
as you are changing now,
into the shape you dread
beyond the merely human."

#stanleykunitz

Thank God for Moonlight

Rendezvous in Greenwich by Jenny Factor

Today I’m Under Construction and
can hardly circumnavigate my brain

without running into orange cones.
This makes driving in the City quite a challenge,

alone with myself in a locked car, no place to go,
damned traffic report blaring on the radio:

“Pipework on Agape Street. A hotspot in the vicinity
of Occupation. Expect twenty-minute delays

in Self-Esteem. Head-on collision
at the intersection of Child Custody and Visitation.

Sig Alert in Digestion; had to completely
shut down Sleep.” So don’t expect an easy answer,

no immediate delivery. I’m stuck on the highway
in heavy traffic, wrapped in internal debate

and making my slow way toward Greenwich
Street. I may be impossibly late.

Razor Love by Neil Young

my favorite things

The Burning Girl by Mary Karr

While the tennis ball went back and forth in time

A girl was burning. While the tonic took its greeny

Acid lime, a girl was burning. While the ruby sun fell

From a cloud’s bent claws and Wimbledon was won

And lost, we sprawled along the shore in chairs,

We breathed the azure airs alongside

A girl with the thinnest arms all scarred and scored

With marks she’d made herself —

She sat with us in flames

That not all saw or saw but couldn’t say at risk

Of seeming impolite. And later we’d all think

Of the monk who’d doused himself with gas,

Lit a match, then sat unmoving and alert amid

Devouring light. She didn’t speak. She touched

No aspect of our silly selves.

I was the awkward guest everybody hardly knew.

She was an almost ghost her mother saw

Erasing the edges of herself each day

Smudging the lines like charcoal while her parents

Redrew her secretly into being over and

Again each night and dawn and sleepless

All years long. Having seen that mother’s love,

I testify: It was ocean endless. One drop could’ve

Brought to life the deadest Christ, and she

Emptied herself into that blazing child with all her might

And stared a hundred million miles into

The girl’s slender, dwindling shape.

Her father was the devoted king of helicopter pad

And putting green. His baby burned as we

All watched in disbelief.

I was the facile friend of friends insisting on a hug

Who hadn’t been along for years of doctors, wards,

And protocols. I forced her sadness close. I said

C’mon let’s hug it out. Her arms were white

Birch twigs that scissored stiffly at my neck till she

Slid on. That night we watched

Some fireworks on the dewy lawn for it was

Independence Day. Soon after, she was gone.

She was the flaming tower we all dared

To jump from. So she burned.

Advertisement by Wislawa Szymborska

I’m a tranquilizer. 

I’m effective at home. 

I work in the office. 

I can take exams 

on the witness stand. 

I mend broken cups with care. 

All you have to do is take me, 

let me melt beneath your tongue, 

just gulp me 

with a glass of water. 

I know how to handle misfortune, 

how to take bad news. 

I can minimize injustice, 

lighten up God’s absence, 

or pick the widow’s veil that suits your face. 

What are you waiting for— 

have faith in my chemical compassion. 

You’re still a young man/woman. 

It’s not too late to learn how to unwind. 

Who said 

you have to take it on the chin? 

Let me have your abyss. 

I’ll cushion it with sleep. 

You’ll thank me for giving you 

four paws to fall on. 

Sell me your soul. 

There are no other takers. 

There is no other devil anymore.

bit from A Really Big Lunch

"My art turns to shit by the next day." Mario Batali

This is a list of what I cooked at home last week:

Caldo Verde (w Chorizo) 

Bhindi Masala with caramelized onions

Spiced Chickpeas with potatoes and kale in coconut curry

Lentils Provençal
Harmony's Daenjangguk 

Buttered Kimchi Fried Rice w Danish Bacon
Croque Monsieur

Turkey and Havarti 

Hoppin John

Seared Bone-in Ribeye 

Traditional baked potato with double smoked bacon and colby jack cheese

Chopped Romaine Salad with Maytag Blue and my evolving vinaigrette

Pasta Puttanesca

Mushroom Bolognese

Miyuk guk 

Cabbage Kimchi w/ Korean Leeks

My beloved boy requires vegan preparations so I mostly make him dishes that travel well and get better with a little time and adjust what I can to my taste (anchovies to puttanesca, chorizo to caldo verde)

Dining out isn't a priority to me anymore. 

Who would've thunk it?

Rinkolove

                            amours shrink

Into the compass and curriculum

Of introspective exiles, lecturing.

#wallacestevens

RYAN!!!

The Way to Keep Going in Antarctica by Bernadette Mayer

Be strong Bernadette 

Nobody will ever know 

I came here for a reason 

Perhaps there is a life here 

Of not being afraid of your own heart beating 

Do not be afraid of your own heart beating 

Look at very small things with your eyes 

& stay warm 

Nothing outside can cure you but everything's outside 

There is great shame for the world in knowing 

You may have gone this far 

Perhaps this is why you love the presence of other people so much 

Perhaps this is why you wait so impatiently 

You have nothing more to teach 

Until there is no more panic at the knowledge of your own real existence 

& then only special childish laughter to be shown 

& no more lies no more 

Not to find you no 

More coming back & more returning 

Southern journey 

Small things & not my own debris 

Something to fight against 

& we are all very fluent about ourselves 

Our own ideas of food, a Wild sauce 

There's not much point in its being over: but we do not speak them: 

I had written: "the man who sewed his soles back on his feet" 

And then I panicked most at the sound of what the wind could do 

               to me 

       if I crawled back to the house, two feet give no position, if 

       the branches cracked over my head & their threatening me, if I 

       covered my face with beer & sweated till you returned 

If I suffered what else could I do

Damn

My Body Is An Injury The World by Natalie Shapero

My body is an injury the worldcan’t seem to heal from— you would expect it goneby now, and yet each nextday it persists, still implementingits same staunch pain, atrocious,railed against, assumedby the world to be an ingeniouscomeuppance, a vengeanceagainst it—what did it do

what did the world do

to warrant my body within it,smarting, to warrant each of ourbodies within it, crowdingthe sites of abuse, assessing ticketprices, asking how much to see the slave house, how muchto touch the indented names of the killed, how much to enterthe slatted cell and size it, close behind us its wrought door, oh 

actually that one’s free

Mrs. Neverbody's Recipe for Making Crocodile Tears

To a slice of hanky-panky
Add some artificial cranky.
Moisten well with canned boo-boo.
Flavor with a spoof or two.
Drip this slowly- as it falls
Roll it into little bawls.
If you're careful, while they're cooling
You can spread on only-fooling.
(This recipe is not worthwhile
Unless you are a crocodile.)

Pondering

"In offering a critique, you must be honest and kind. To be dishonest is to be unkind. And, to be unkind is to be dishonest to yourself and your art."

Adam Schiff is gonna be POTUS one day.

The Little Ways that Encourage Good Fortune by William Stafford

Wisdom is having things right in your life
and knowing why.
If you do not have things right in your life,
you will simply be overwhelmed.
You may be heroic, but you will not be wise.
If you have things right in your life, and you
do not know why, you are just lucky,
And you will not move in the little ways that
encourage good fortune.
The saddest of all are those who are not right
in their own lives who are acting to make
things right for others.
They act only from the self, and that
self will never be right;
No luck, no help, no wisdom.

Time For Serenity, Anyone? by Wiiliam Stafford

I like to live in the sound of water, 
in the feel of mountain air. A sharp
reminder hits me: this world is still alive,
it stretches out there shivering toward its own
creation. and I'm part of it. Even my breathing 
enters into this elaborate give-and-take,
this bowing to sun and moon. day or night.
winter, summer, storm, still--this tranquil
chaos that seem to be going somewhere.
This wilderness with a great peacefulness in it.
This motionless turmoil, this everything dance.

sooooo good

Apology by William Carlos Williams

    Why do I write today?
The beauty of
The terrible faces
Of our nonentities
Stirs me to it :

    Colored women
Day workers,
Old and experienced,
Returning home at dusk
In cast-off clothing,
Faces like
Old Florentine oak.

    Also
The set pieces
Of your faces stir me-
Leading citizens :
But not
In the same way.

Wish you were here

Internal Rhymes

Last night, I waltzed with a faceless someone in my dreams and woke up feeling exhilarated by the residual pleasure lingering inside me.

How can the memory of joyfully dancing in my subconscious mind be as good as it gets in the satisfaction department these days?

How do I begin to describe the delight I draw from finally being able to feel that any incarnation of happiness is a gift?

The Rider by Naomi Shihab Nye

A boy told me
if he roller-skated fast enough
his loneliness couldn't catch up to him,

the best  reason I ever heard
for trying to be a champion.

What I wonder tonight
pedaling hard down King William Street
is if it translates to bicycles.

A victory! To leave your loneliness
panting behind you on some street corner
while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,
pink petals that have never felt loneliness,
no matter how slowly they fell.

You Know Who You Are by Naomi Shihab Nye

Why do your poems comfort me, I ask myself.
Because they are upright, like straight-backed chairs.
I can sit in them and study the world as if it too
were simple and upright.

Because sometimes I live in a hurricane of words
and not one of them can save me.
Your poems come in like a raft, logs tied together,
they float.
I want to tell you about the afternoon
I floated on your poems
all the way from Durango Street to Broadway.

Fathers were paddling on the river with their small sons.
Three Mexican boys chased each other outside the library.
Everyone seemed to have some task, some occupation,
while I wandered uselessly in the streets I claim to love.

Suddenly I felt the precise body of your poems beneath me,
like a raft, I felt the words as something portable again,
a cup, a newspaper, a pin.
Everything happening had a light around it,
not the light of Catholic miracles,
the blunt light of a Saturday afternoon.
Light in a world that rushes forward with us or without us.
I wanted to stop and gather up the blocks behind me
in this light, but it doesn't work.
You keep walking, lifting one foot, then the other,
saying "This is what I need to remember"
and then hoping you can.

"I wasn’t paying attention: I was watching the thing

you had just said to me still hanging in the air between us,

its surfaces beading up with a shiny liquid like contempt
that might have been seeping from the words themselves

or else condensing from the air, its inscrutable humidity—"

❤️

You Refuse to Own by Margaret Atwood

You refuse to own
yourself, you permit
others to do it for you:

you become slowly more public,
in a year there will be nothing left
of you but a megaphone

or you will descend through the roof
with the spurious authority of a
government official,
blue as a policeman, grey as a used angel,
having long forgotten the difference between the annunciation and a parking ticket

or you will be slipped under
the door, your skin furred with cancelled
airmail stamps, your kiss no longer literature
but fine print, a set of instructions.

If you deny these uniforms
and choose to repossess
yourself, your future

will be less dignified, more painful, death will be
sooner,
(it is no longer possible
to be both human and alive): lying piled with
the others, your face and body
covered so thickly with scars
only the eyes show through

The Sigh by Ted Kooser

You lie in your bed and sigh,

and the springs in the mattress

sing out with the same low note,

mocking your sadness. It's hard-

not the mattress, but life.

Life is hard. All along

you thought you could trust in

your own bed, your own sorrow.

You thought you were sleeping alone. 

Stray by Carl Phillips

When he speaks of deserved and undeserved as more

than terms — how they can matter, suddenly — I can tell

he believes it. Sometimes a thing can seem star-like

when it’s just a star, stripped of whatever small form of joy

likeness equals. Sometimes the thought that I’m doomed

to fail — that the body is — keeps me almost steady, if

steadiness is what a gift for a while brings — feathers, burst-

at-last pods of milkweed, October — before it all fades away.

Before the drugs and the loud music, before tears and

restraining orders and the eventual go fuck yourself get your

ass out of here don’t go, the apartments across the street

were a boys’ grammar school — before that, a convent,

the only remains of which, ornamenting the far parking lot,

is a marble pedestal with some Latin on it that translates as

Heart of Jesus, have mercy, as if that much, at least, still

remained relevant, or should. If it’s true that secrets resist

always the act of telling, how come secrets, more often than

not, seem the entire story? Caladium, Cleome — how delicate,

this holding of certain words in the mouth, the all but lost

trick of lifting for salvage the last windfalls as, across them,

the bees make their slow-muscled, stunned, moving scab ...

Ryan working on the facade of Violet Hour Chicago-May 2017