"To save myself, I destroyed another, and in doing so, I destroyed myself."

(You know who you are.)

In Favor of One's Time

The spent purpose of a perfectly marvellous
life suddenly glimmers and leaps into flame
it's more difficult than you think to make charcoal
it's also pretty hard to remember life's marvellous
but there it is guttering choking then soaring
in the mirrored room of this consciousness
it's practically a blaze of pure sensibility
and however exaggerated at least somethings going on
and the quick oxygen in the air will not go neglected
will not sulk or fall into blackness and peat

an angel flying slowly, curiously singes its wings
and you diminish for a moment out of respect
for beauty then flare up after all that's the angel
that wrestled with Jacob and loves conflict
as an athlete loves the tape, and we're off into
an immortal contest of actuality and pride
which is love assuming the consciousness of itself
as sky over all, medium of finding and founding
not just resemblance but the magnetic otherness
that that that stands erect in the the spirit's glare
and waits for the joining of an opposite force's breath

so come the winds into our lives and last
longer than despair's sharp snake, crushed before it conquered
so marvellous is not just a poet's greenish namesake
and we live outside his garden in pure tempestuous rights

Frank O'Hara

A Blessing by James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

Darken with kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows

To welcome my friend and me.

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture

Where they have been grazing all day, alone.

They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness   

That we have come.

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.

There is no loneliness like theirs.   

At home once more,

They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.   

I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

For she has walked over to me   

And nuzzled my left hand.   

She is black and white,

Her mane falls wild on her forehead,

And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear

That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.

Suddenly I realize

That if I stepped out of my body I would break

Into blossom. 

Mark Steinmetz: Summer Camp

I miss my father

Your absence has gone through me 
Like thread through a needle. 
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

W. S. Merwin

Carnivorous

Bone-In Ribeye 

The False Coin--Paris Spleen--Charles Baudelaire

As we were leaving the tobaccoist’s, my friend carefully sorted his coins.  Into his left vest pocket he slipped little pieces of gold; into his right, silver pieces; into the left pocket of his trousers, a clutch of pennies; and finally, into the right, a two-franc silver coin he had carefully checked.

“Odd and fussy distribution,” I said to myself.

We came upon a beggar who held his hat out shakily. –I find nothing more disquieting than the mute eloquence of such suppliant eyes, containing a once, for who can read it, so much humility, with as much reproach.  Something nearing that profoundly complicated feeling can be seen in the eyes of dogs when they are whipped.

My friend’s offering was much larger than mine and I said to him, “You are right; except for the pleasure of being astonished, there is no greater than to cause surprise.”---“That was the false coin,” he replied tranquilly, as if to justify his prodigality. But my poor brain, always scouting out imaginary byways (what a tiresome head nature foisted on me), suddenly arrived at the idea that my friend’s conduct was excusable only if it meant to create an event in the life of this poor devil, maybe even to understand the diverse consequences, baleful or other, that could result from a false coin in a beggar’s hand.  Might it not multiply into genuine coins?  Could it not get him thrown in prison?  An inn-keeper, for instance, or a baker, could have him arrested as counterfeiter or passer of false coins.  Just as likely, the false coin might prove, for a petty speculator, he germ of a few days wealth.  So my fantasy went on, lending wings to my friend’s wit and deducing all the possibilities of all possible hypothesis.

But then my reverie was rudely broken by my own words recurring: “Yes, you are right; no pleasure can be sweeter than a man’s surprise, getting more than he hoped for.”

Looking at my friend squarely in the eye, I was appalled to see his eyes shining with uncontestable candor. Clearly then I saw how much he wanted to make at once a charitable act and a good deal; a bit of gain along with God’s approval; to win paradise at a bargain; finally, to get for nothing a reputation of being charitable. I could almost have pardoned the desire for criminal enjoyment I had just thought him capable of; I could have found curious, singular, that he was amused to compromise the poor; but I would never pardon the ineptitude of his calculation. Meanness is never excusable, but there is some merit in knowing you are mean. The most unredeemable vice is to do evil from stupidity.

Charles Baudelaire