The Rival by Sylvia Plath

If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating.
Both of you are great light borrowers.
Her O-mouth grieves at the world; yours is unaffected,

And your first gift is making stone out of everything.
I wake to a mausoleum; you are here,
Ticking your fingers on the marble table, looking for cigarettes,
Spiteful as a woman, but not so nervous,
And dying to say something unanswerable.

The moon, too, abuses her subjects,
But in the daytime she is ridiculous.
Your dissatisfactions, on the other hand,
Arrive through the mailslot with loving regularity,
White and blank, expansive as carbon monoxide.

No day is safe from news of you,
Walking about in Africa maybe, but thinking of me.

XII

If we have become incapable
of thought, then the brute-thought
of mere power and mere greed
will think for us.

If we have become incapable
of denying ourselves anything,
then all that we have
will be taken from us.

If we have no compassion,
we will suffer alone, we will suffer
alone the destruction of ourselves.

These are merely the laws of this world
as known to Shakespeare, as known to Milton.

When we cease from human thought,
a low and effective cunning
stirs in the most inhuman minds.

Wendell Berry

The Inside Out Mermaid by Matthew Harvey

 

The Inside Out Mermaid is fine with letting it all hang out–veins, muscles, the bits of fat at her belly, her small gray spleen. At first her lover loves it–with her organs on the outside, she's the ultimate open book. He can pump her lungs like two bellows and make her gasp; ask her difficult questions and study the synapses firing in her brain as she answers to see if she's lying; poke a pleasure center in the frontal lobe and watch her squirm. No need for bouquets or sad stories about his childhood. He just plucks a pulmonary vein and watches the left ventricle flounder. But before long, she starts to sense that her lover, like all the others before him, is getting restless. This is when she starts showing them her collections–the basket of keys from all over the world, the box of zippers with teeth of every imaginable size–all chosen to convey a sense of openness. As a last resort, she’ll even read out loud the entries from her diary about him to him. But eventually he’ll become convinced she’s hiding things from him and she is. Her perfect skin. Her long black hair. Her red mouth, never chapped from exposure to sun or wind, how she secretly loves that he can’t touch her here or here.

“nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals 

the power of your intense fragility.”

e.e. cummings

Questions Before Dark by Jeanne Lohmann

Day ends, and before sleep
when the sky dies down, consider
your altered state: has this day
changed you? Are the corners
sharper or rounded off? Did you
live with death? Make decisions
that quieted? Find one clear word
that fit? At the sun’s midpoint
did you notice a pitch of absence,
bewilderment that invites
the possible? What did you learn
from things you dropped and picked up
and dropped again? Did you set a straw
parallel to the river, let the flow
carry you downstream?

BIBLE ALL OUT OF ORDER by Tony Hoagland

One thing’s for sure; in the future, the morgues

are going to be full of tattoos.

It’s going to be more colorful and easier to 

manage:

“Hey Jeff, move Dolphin-Shoulder-Girl to tray

seven.”

“And get Mr. Flames-on-My-Neck out for the

doc.”

In Italy the tabloids are talking about

  L’Ambulanza della Morte,

The Ambulance of Death;

a medic who was killing his passengers

to provide business for his brother’s funeral

parlor.

I think we can agree that the world is a Bible

with chapters shuffled all out of order.

I think we still can’t decide which we want

in the end: Justice or Mercy.

When my doctor asks what my symptoms are, I

tell her

self-pity and a desire to apologize.

She says my insurance policy covers self-pity,

but not, unfortunately, remorse.

Remember the movie in which Sidney Portier

plays a school teacher

who returns the love letter from one of his 

students,

returns it with all the grammatical errors

corrected in red, heartbreaking ink?

I'm sometimes afraid that’s what I’ve done with

life.

Yet here’s what I have to say to all you travelers

-

Moses doesn’t make it to the Promised Land.

Cain and Abel don’t get reunited in the end.

Belief is not a requirement to go on living.

It’s possible I have this all out of order.

We’ll end up at a funeral parlor run by

somebody’s brother,

Our bodies covered with scars and invisible ink.

While I’m lying there naked, flat on my back,

I hope I remember all that I went through-

the storms and the lovers and mountains;

Complaining at the top of my lungs;

salting my grief with my mirth

USE ME

Do I have USE ME tattooed on my forehead in invisible ink that's only visible to users and abusers?

Why do I have such horrendous luck with people?

Why do I allow greedy people to take advantage of me repeatedly? 

What is it about me that brings out the absolute worst in people?

Why does going above and beyond for my nearest and dearest get taken for granted to the point where I am expected to give beyond reason?

Why do I end up becoming friends with people who take and take and take every last drop they can use until I’m wrung out? 

What is it about these miserly, opportunistic fucks who take what they would NEVER give with more entitlement and impunity than most anyone who knows them would believe?

Why do I befriend so many master manipulators and actors who have managed to pull the wool over the eyes of most of the dumb motherfuckers they call friends? Or is it that I recognize their highs as well as how low they can go, but hope wholeheartedly they won’t go so low with me; only to find they go even lower bc they recognize  they can get away with doing things to me they would never dream of doing to anyone else bc they can take advantage of negative narratives about me and use me to justify doing the wrong thing?

Why do I befriend cowardly people who puss out and don't have the integrity or decency to have an honest and direct conversation when there's major to minor conflict, and/or use said conflict as an excuse to bow out of any semblance of reciprocity when I need a modicum level of support?

Why is it that people don't recognize that I need compassion and a helping hand from time to time? Or is it that they never gave a shit about me or considered me a friend at all, so considering my needs never occurred to them? Is it that they befriended me for all the perks and benefits of being in my orbit and bailed when there wasn’t anything worth taking? Are these former friends and their cohorts meant to teach me to stop being overly giving to people who were only there to take advantage of my generosity and interpret my kindness for weakness? Am I finally ready to stop giving my love away haphazardly to anyone who shows me any level of kindness bc I’m that desperate for love, attention, validation, and approval?

Maybe all these failed relationships were a series of unfortunate trauma bonding incidents between interim members of the lonely hearts club (cheesy and too true) who keep circling thru a revolving door for refusing to learn lessons we should’ve figured out by now?

Maybe I need to find solace in failing better as I grow older. Maybe I need to find a tiny bit of satisfaction in my unwillingness to betray myself or my friends to placate my insecurities. Maybe I just need to be learn to be ok knowing i was a real friend til the end.

🪷Use me properly🪷

 “It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.” 

      -Confucius 

 "You are the hummingbird that comes"

Craig Arnold

You are the hummingbird that comes
a pure vibration wings a blur
propeller-burring a million beats
to keep still the world's littlest pivot
spinning the heaven's hemisphere
as a wineglass with a wet finger
laid on the rim to make it ring

Feathers a rainbow how you reel 

hovering over blossom cheeks
tucked into the honeysuckle
to lap a single drop of nectar
onto your tongue messenger-goddess
kicking a gold-dust of pollen
out of your winged heel

The slow promise of your approach
makes my throat thick the joy gathers
deep in my spine as if it were a snake
making a smooth wave of muscle
toward the taste of water

Love Cook 

Ron Padgett 

Let me cook you some dinner.   

Sit down and take off your shoes   

and socks and in fact the rest   

of your clothes, have a daquiri,   

turn on some music and dance   

around the house, inside and out,   

it’s night and the neighbors   

are sleeping, those dolts, and   

the stars are shining bright,   

and I’ve got the burners lit   

for you, you hungry thing.

Test # 1: 김밥

 

I Come Home Wanting To Touch Everyone

Stephen Dunn

The dogs greet me, I descend

into their world of fur and tongues

and then my wife and I embrace

as if we’d just closed the door

in a motel, our two girls slip in

between us and we’re all saying

each other’s names and the dogs

Buster and Sundown are on their hind legs,

people-style, seeking more love.

I’ve come home wanting to touch

everyone, everything; usually I turn

the key and they’re all lost

in food or homework, even the dogs

are preoccupied with themselves,

I desire only to ease

back in, the mail, a drink,

but tonight the body-hungers have sent out

their long-range signals

or love itself has risen

from its squalor of neglect.

Everytime the kids turn their backs

I touch my wife’s breasts

and when she checks the dinner

the unfriendly cat on the dishwasher

wants to rub heads, starts to speak

with his little motor and violin–

everything, everyone is intelligible

in the language of touch,

and we sit down to dinner inarticulate

as blood, all difficulties postponed

because the weather is so good.

(I ❤️ playoff bb)

***I forgive ***

Going There

Jack Gilbert

Of course it was a disaster.

The unbearable, dearest secret

has always been a disaster.

The danger when we try to leave.

Going over and over afterward

what we should have done

instead of what we did.

But for those short times

we seemed to be alive. Misled,

misused, lied to and cheated,

certainly. Still, for that

little while, we visited

our possible life.

Dandelion Insomnia

Ada Limon

The big-ass bees are back, tipsy, sun drunk

and heavy with thick knitted leg warmers

of pollen. I was up all night again so today’s

yellow hours seem strange and hallucinogenic.

The neighborhood is lousy with mowers, crazy

dogs, and people mending what winter ruined.

What I can’t get over is something simple, easy:

How could a dandelion seed head seemingly

grow overnight? A neighbor mows the lawn

and bam, the next morning, there’s a hundred

dandelion seed heads straight as arrows

and proud as cats high above any green blade

of manicured grass. It must bug some folks,

a flower so tricky it can reproduce asexually,

making perfect identical selves, bam, another me

bam, another me. I can’t help it–I root

for that persecuted rosette so hyper in its

own making it seems to devour the land.

Even its name, translated from the French,

dent de lion, means lion’s tooth. It’s vicious,

made for a time that requires tenacity, a way

of remaking the toughest self while everyone

else is asleep.

The Abandoned Valley

Can you understand being alone so long
you would go out in the middle of the night
and put a bucket into the well
so you could feel something down there
tug at the other end of the rope? 

Jack Gilbert

Charity

Tracy K. Smith

She is like a squat old machine,

Off-kilter but still chugging along

The uphill stretch of sidewalk

On Harrison Street, handbag slung

Crosswise and, I’m guessing, heavy.

And oh, the set of her face, her brow’s

Profound tracks, her mouth cinched,

Lips pressed flat. Watching her

Bend forward to tussle with gravity,

Watching the berth she allows each

Foot (as if one is not on civil

Terms with the other), watching

Her shoulders braced as if lashed

By step after step after step, and

Her eyes’ determination not to

Shift, or blink, or rise, I think:

I am you, one day out of five,

Tired, empty, hating what I carry

But afraid to lay it down, stingy,

Angry, doing violence to others

By the sheer freight of my gloom,

Halfway home, wanting to stop, to quit

But keeping going mostly out of spite.

 “Do you ever stop and think how lucky you are to have failed at certain things? Not to have gotten the job that would have sent you further down the path you later realized was wrong. Not to have convinced that old flame to patch things up and make them work. Not to have won, when losing is what instilled in you the humility to see where you were coming up short, and the determination to grow into a better version of the person you are.”

Reverse Suicide

Matt Rasmussen

The guy Dad sold your car to
comes back to get his money,

leaves the car. With filthy rags
we rub it down until it doesn’t shine

and wipe your blood into
the seams of the seat.

each snowflake stirs before
lifting into the sky as I

learn you won’t be dead.
The unsuffering ends

when the mess of your head
pulls together around

a bullet in your mouth.
You spit it into Dad’s gun

before arriving in the driveway
while the evening brightens

and we pour bag after bag
of leaves on the lawn,

waiting for them to leap
onto the bare branches.

 

“It’s true, no one really knows how to live. I don’t know

how to live. I don’t know if redemption is possible, something

inside us like flowering, a kind of leakage, spillway over

rough concrete dam where a life washes outside its fixed

habits and resistance, its gaping absences, abscesses, horrible

mistakes, petty avoidances. I don’t know if this life will be

enough to make me wise. I don’t know if I can wake up.

I can only carry everyone with me, ferry every atom

like a fire brigade, like an ant.”