Admit Something by Hafiz

Admit something:
Everyone you see, you say to them,
"Love me."

Of course you do not do this out loud;
Otherwise, someone would call the cops.

Still though, think about this,
This great pull in us
to connect.

Why not become the one
who lives with a full moon in each eye
that is always saying

With that sweet moon
language,

What every other eye in this world
is dying to
hear.

"Never give up on anyone." Chogyam Trungpa

Museum Of The Thing by Karen Solie

Sad storm of objects becoming things,

the objective correlative, tired of me

as I am of it. I embody everything it hates

about itself. People don't stand in for each other

The way things do. Someone

For whom Wednesday means groceries

might animate Wednesday with, among other

realities, the inability to possess it,

As one might a derelict potato chip factory

co-opted to ventriloquize one's state

of mind. It's impossible to know, entirely,

what a trip to the Real Canadian Superstore

suggests to someone else. Even animals,

notoriously difficult to work with,

whose very mention in this context invites

derision, illuminate a failure of perception

no less informative for being true.

It does not satisfy. Dear being, how might I

responsibly interpret your incomprehensible

behaviour? Where am I in it?

The imagination, whole yet incomplete,

feels it's edges. Gestures from its windows

as if into a city whose language no one speaks. 

A dilemma unresolvable, but mutual.

What's Left by W. S. Shapiro

How often now, raging weeping for the days

love gives then takes away, takes from you

the slightly chapped hand laid on the one

you’re pointing at a tree, and the voice 

that breathes coffeeberry bush into your mouth.  

The finger that taps and feathers your ear

but the giggle’s gone before you turn around.

The sandalwood scent hanging in the room,

the auburn strand like a flaw in the porcelain,

the off-course nail clipping in the carpet.

The days eat into your stomach, knife you

with longing for relief from love

that you cannot leave or leave alone,

from its rings of fire where you won’t

burn down to ash or be transformed.

You become them, and they keep burning

and have a coffeeberry voice.

           Listen how

                     their rhymes sing

                               the little deaths you live.

We asked the captain what course
of action he proposed to take toward
a beast so large, terrifying, and 
unpredictable. He hesitated to 
answer, and then judiciously: 
"I think I shall praise it."

Love is stronger than pride