I'll put up some real poetry - by real poets. And I'll throw in some of the junk I've come up with as well.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I no longer pray -
now I drink dark chocolate
and let the moon sing to me.
I no longer pray -
I let my ancestors dance
through my hips
at the slightest provocation.
I no longer pray -
I go to the river
and howl my ancient pain
into the current.
I no longer pray -
I ache, I desire,
I say 'yes' to my longing.
I no longer pray as i was taught,
but as the stars crawl
onto my lap like soft animals
at nighttime,
and God tucks my hair behind my ears
with the gentle fingers of her wind
and a new intimacy is uncovered
in everything,
perhaps it's that I'm finally learning
how to pray.
--Chelan Harkin
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE TRUTH AND THE LIE
Samantha Stephens
The Lie said to the Truth, "Let's take a bath together, the water is very nice.
The Truth, still suspicious, tested the water and found out it really was nice.
But suddenly, the Lie leapt out of the water and fled, wearing the clothes of the Truth.
The Truth, furious, raced out of the pond to get her clothes back.
But the World, upon seeing the naked Truth, looked away, with anger and contempt.
Poor Truth returned to the pond and disappeared forever, hiding her shame.
Since then, the Lie runs around the world, dressed as the Truth, and society is very happy -because the world has no desire to know the naked Truth.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Is it getting better
Or do you feel the same?
Will it make it easier on you now
You got someone to blame?
You say, one love, one life
When it's one need in the night
One love, we get to share it
Leaves you, baby, if you don't care for it
Did I disappoint you
Or leave a bad taste in your mouth?
You act like you never had love
And you want me to go without
Well, it's too late tonight
To drag the past out into the light
We're one, but we're not the same
We get to carry each other, carry each other
One
Have you come here for forgiveness?
Have you come to raise the dead?
Have you come here to play Jesus?
To the lepers in your head
Did I ask too much? More than a lot
You gave me nothing, now it's all I got
We're one but we're not the same
Well, we hurt each other then we do it again
You say love is a temple, love a higher law
Love is a temple, love the higher law
You ask me to enter but then you make me crawl
And I can't be holdin' on to what you got
When all you got is hurt
One love, one blood
One life, you got to do what you should
One life with each other
Sisters, brothers
One life but we're not the same
We get to carry each other, carry each other
One
One
----------------------------------------------------------------------“Condolence” by Dorothy Parker
They hurried here, as soon as you had died,
Their faces damp with haste and sympathy,
And pressed my hand in theirs, and smoothed my knee,
And clicked their tongues, and watched me, mournful-eyed.
Gently they told me of that Other Side -
How, even then, you waited there for me,
And what ecstatic meeting ours would be.
Moved by the lovely tale, they broke, and cried.
And when I smiled, they told me I was brave,
And they rejoiced that I was comforted,
And left, to tell of all the help they gave.
But I had smiled to think how you, the dead,
So curiously preoccupied and grave,
Would laugh, could you have heard the things they said.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
So I asked of Grief, "How long will you be here?"
"For as many days as you loved her", Grief replied.
"Then you'll be here long after I'm gone", I said.
----------------------------------------------------------------------(paraphrasing Deb Shepherd)
So Begins The Task --Stephen Stills
And so begins the task
I have dreaded the coming of
For so long
I wait for the sun
To remind my body
It needs restin'
And I must learn to live without you now
I must learn to give only part some how
Camping on the edge
Of your city I wait
Hoping someday
You might
See
Beyond yourself
The shadows on the ceiling
Hard
But not real
Like the bars that cage
You within yourself
And I must learn to live without you now
I must learn to give only part some how
And I must learn to live without you now
As I cannot learn to give only part some how
All of these cages
Must
And shall be set aside
They will only
Keep
Us from the knowing
Actors
And stages
Now fall before the truth
As the love
Shared
Between us
Remains
Growing
And I must learn to live without you now
As I cannot learn to give only part some how
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Pretender --Jackson Browne
I'm going to rent myself a house
In the shade of the freeway
Gonna pack my lunch in the morning
And go to work each day
And when the evening rolls around
I'll go on home and lay my body down
And when the morning light comes streaming in
I'll get up and do it again, Amen
Say it again, Amen
I want to know what became of the changes
We waited for love to bring
Were they only the fitful dreams
Of some greater awakening?
I've been aware of the time going by
They say, in the end, it's the wink of an eye
When the morning light comes streaming in
You'll get up and do it again, Amen
Caught between the longing for love
And the struggle for the legal tender
Where the sirens sing and the church bells ring
And the junk man pounds his fender
Where the veterans dream of the fight
Fast asleep at the traffic light
And the children solemnly wait
For the ice cream vendor
Out into the cool of the evening
Strolls the pretender
He knows that all his hopes and dreams
Begin and end there
Ah, the lovers as they run through the night
leaving nothing but to choose off and fight
And tear at the world with all their might
While the ships bearing their dreams
Sail out of sight
I'm gonna find myself a girl
Who can show me what laughter means
And we'll fill in the missing colors
In each other's paint-by-number dreams
And then we'll put our dark glasses on
And we'll make love until our strength is gone
And when the morning light comes streaming in
We'll get up and do it again
Get it up again
I'm gonna be a happy idiot
And struggle for the legal tender
Where the ads take aim and lay their claim
To the heart and the soul of the spender
And believe in whatever may lie
In those things that money can buy
Where true love could have been a contender
Are you there? Say a prayer for the pretender
Who started out so young and strong only to surrender
Say a prayer for the pretender
Are you there for the pretender?
Say a prayer for the pretender
Are you there for the pretender?
Are you prepared for the pretender?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Waiting for the day
when the pain
of your memory
is greater than the fear
of letting it go
----------------------------------------------------------------------
AFTER YOU DIE
--Marva Lee Weigelt
Just so you know
after you die
I will not wonder
why you didn’t do
your dishes or
how long it’s been
since you
cleaned your
oven or microwave or
mopped your floors
or why there were
dust bunnies under
the bed and
behind the door
After you’re gone
I will not wonder
how you could
have allowed the
piles of old mail to
accumulate or
why you saved so
many bits and pieces
of this and that or
why you weren’t
more goal-oriented and
well-organized or
why your refrigerator
contained so many
expired condiments
When you are
absent from all your
familiar places
I vow to avoid wondering
why you didn’t
eat less and
exercise more or
why you waited so
long to stop smoking
or drinking or
whatever else was
simultaneously
soothing and
deadly or
why you took
whatever risk may
seem to have hastened
your exit or why
you left so much unsaid
unfinished or
unresolved
I will only wonder
if you knew how much
you mattered to me
just as you are
as you were when we
met in our temporary
human disguises and
laughed in the
dressing room of the
world at how funkily
our skin suits fit
at times
I will wonder and
hope you knew
you were beloved
I will wonder when
we last hugged
and whether you
felt how our
heartbeats
converged
and our bellies
bumped like boats
and then we
both sighed
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The best I've ever felt
Was being with a woman
And the worst I've ever felt
Was being without her
There's no way for me to think I'm better off
now she's gone
But there's no believing it could be better
if she'd stayed
She's poison
She's addictive
I'm her junkie
One day at a time is too many
And not enough
Valentine's Day 2024
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I die a little
Every time we say good-bye
I wonder why a little
Why the gods above me
Who must be in the know
Think so little of me
They allow you to go
--Cole Porter
Never Be Me --Miley Cyrus
I know I do this every time
I walk the line, I play with fire
And I stop myself before the crime
I walk the line, yeah, I play with fire
I don't wanna push you way too much
I don't wanna lean that way too far
I don't wanna ever learn the hard way
But if you're looking for stable, that'll never be me
If you're looking for faithful, that'll never be me
If you're looking for someone to be all that you need
That'll never be me (hard as I try)
That'll never be me (I play with fire)
Dry your tears now, don't you cry
I'm by your side, at least for a while
I know I do this every time
I walk the line, yeah, I play with fire
I don't wanna push you way too much
I don't wanna lean that way too far
I don't wanna ever learn the hard way, no
I don't wanna keep you in the dark
I don't wanna gamble with your heart
I don't wanna ever leave you lonely
But if you're looking for stable, that'll never be me
If you're looking for faithful, that'll never be me
If you're looking for someone to be all that you need
That'll never be me (hard as I try)
That'll never be me (I play with fire)
Can't get too close to the sun (fire)
Baby, you're the only one, oh, I
I'd never lie to you, baby, oh (fire)
You give me a reason to run from the fire
'Cause baby, you're the only one
Oh, I swear I'd never lie
If you're looking for stable, that'll never be me
But I hope that I'm able to be all that you need
If you think that I'm someone to give up and leave
That'll never be me, no
If you think that I'm someone to give up and leave
That'll never be me (hard as I try)
That'll never be me, no (I play with fire)
That'll never be me
Funny how I loved the things you gave me
In my hands and in my head
In my heart and in my bed
Funny how the thing that saved me
Was knowing and seeing
That loving all those things
Meant I wasn't loving you instead
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.
How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will
never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.
Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.
--Mary Oliver
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Could I rest here for a while
Near that medal 'round your neck
St. Jude's wearing a smile
He wouldn't mind I bet
I can't go face the world
My bones won't hold me up
So tell the saint of lost souls where to find me
Softly sleeping
Here in the deep end of someone who loves me
You'll let me cry it out
Because you know that sometimes I can't stop and
Still I'm seeking how
To stand up when the bottom drops
The weight of all the world
Can blind me to its beauty
But every time I need to be reminded
I know you will
And say you're still someone who loves me
I try to push it down
But it comes back faster and harder
Tides are changing on a dime
And I'm just trying
To keep my head above the water
Surrender's just a word
Till you try it out
And see how hard it is to hurt
With someone else around
I'm the worst I've ever been
Afraid of almost everything
The skies are clear
But storms are always coming
Your gift to me
Is just to be
Bracing for the winds I always summon
My home, my heart
Thank God you are
Someone who loves me
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't do that much talking these days
These days
These days I seem to think a lot
About the things that I forgot to do for you
And all the times I had the chance to
And I had a lover
But it's so hard to risk another, these days
These days
Now, if I seem to be afraid
To live the life that I have made in song
Well, it's just that I've been losin' for so long
Things are bound to be improving these days
One of these days
These days I sit on corner stones
And count the time in quarter tones to ten, my friend
Don't confront me with my failures
I had not forgotten them
----------------------------------------------------------------------
If I'm up and around, I'm thinking about you
If I'm not thinking about you
Then I'm asleep, dreaming about you
If I'm not thinking about you
And I'm not dreaming about you
Call the coroner
And schedule my wake
----------------------------------------------------------------------
A woman wants a man
who can speak of his love for her
with a sincere and open heart.
A man wants a woman
with a trustworthy heart
so he can believe she deserves to hear it.
Oct 2023
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ain't it funny how a moment could just change your life And you don't want to face what's wrong or right Ain't it strange how fate can play a part In the story of your heart
--Jennifer Lopez
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Between what is said, and not meant -
and what is meant, but not said -
most of love is lost.
--Kahlil Gibran
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Audacity Of Heartbreak (exerpt)
--Kristina Mahr
I dug us too shallow a grave,
and things keep digging us up.
Things like your smile.
Things like my heart.
Things like memories -
memories like a spade,
like a shovel,
like two desperate cupped hands.
Truth be told,
I don't know how to bury us
any more than you knew how not to.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
It's a fearful thing
to love what death can touch.
A fearful thing
to love, to hope, to dream, to be –
to be,
And then, to lose.
A thing for fools, this,
And a holy thing,
a holy thing
to love.
For your life has lived in me,
your laugh once lifted me,
your word was gift to me.
To remember this brings painful joy.
It's a human thing, love,
a holy thing, to love
what death has touched.
--Yehuda HaLevi (1075 – 1141)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Kae Tempest - People's Faces
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I am not your Angel Michael
If that's the way you see me now
There's something here needs telling
If only I knew how.
There's a darkness here beside me
standing opposite my shadow
It walks in perfect step with me
Always going where I follow.
--Tyler Knott Gregson
On Children --Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931)
And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
those who watch the news & wonder
what is going on in this country
& those who always knew
Those who feel less safe
& those who never felt safe
Those whose bodies hold memories
Whose DNA holds memories
Which tell us clearly
That never again
Is now.
--Jessica Kantrowitz
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Meditations Before Kaddish, from the Mishkan T’filah
When I die give what’s left of me away
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You ain't got what it takes
And it takes what you ain't got
Now I'm no prize
But when I close my eyes
There's something better'n you
Playing on this side of my eyelids
So if you don't mind
Or even if you do
Please take your kindly offer
And miss me with it.
-- Mike Roberts 2020
----------------------------------------------------------------------
At Least For Now For You
For just this moment
Let me lose myself in you
Let a woman's tender heart abide me
Hide me
From the curious eyes and the wearisome lies of the rest of the world.
Yours is such a quiet spirit
Given to the deep'ning crimson half-lights after dusk
And mine a constant flailing churn
A black and buzzing lightless fire burning down inside me
Waiting for the walls to crack
Letting in your gently tumbling tide
To wash away the wait of countless ages
-- Mike Roberts 1977
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Feeding The Worms - from "Bonfire Opera"
Ever since I found out that earth worms have taste buds
all over the delicate pink strings of their bodies,
I pause dropping apples into the compost bin,
imagining the dark writhing ecstasy,
the sweetness of apples permeating their pores.
I offer beets and parsley,
avocado and melon,
and the feathery tops of carrots.
I'd always thought theirs a menial life,
eyeless and hidden,
almost vulgar - though now it seems,
they bear a pleasure so sublime, so decadent,
I want to contribute however I can,
forgetting, a moment, my place on the menu.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Four and a half billion years are gone behind us
Another 4 or 5 are stretched ahead
I'm content to spend these few moments
right here
right now
with you
--Mike Roberts 2021
-------------------------------------------------------------------
March 2021 - Mass Shooting In Boulder - 10 dead
Red Rocks at Sunrise
What has just happened to our beautiful home,
Our peace and our joy, our lush freedom to roam?
Where gone our flowing beauty, our friends and live environs?
Now it’s blood and tears that flood over the Flatirons.
Those red rocks at sunrise now drip with new memories.
More guns, many clamor - More guns? Guns? Oh, Please!
Once again, they gun us down, buckle us to our knees.
No government solution, so many still say.
If not, what evolution will ever come into play?
This writ of execution comes by whose right?
Is there no resolution to cast a new light?
I ask for imagination from all who can choose.
Escape thought pollution, and walk a mile in my shoes.
Envision where you walk, shop and banter with friends.
Now see them torn apart, your times shared—bled out to their ends.
Then see “We the People” rising up, past such nightmares of dissolution.
Look in the mirror; it’s us looking back, urging us past confusion.
Please find your own quiet, strong place of connection—
Yes, it’s so vital
To all our relations, to all life, to all love which we’re all so entitled.
Let go all those ‘why’ questions, all those blank thoughts and prayers.
It’s past time to act, past time to declare,
Past time for those among us who still pretend unawares.
--JR Roberts, Boulder CO
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The most beautiful part of loving a guarded girl is this:
When she lets you in, it's not because she needs you.
She stopped needing people a while ago,
And that's not because she's somehow broken and cynical.
She just knows she doesn't require anyone's permission or approval.
It's because she wants you.
She's invited you in.
You.
She's telling you that her want for you
Is greater than her need to feel safe.
For her, that's the purest love of all.
Take that to heart.
Be true to it.
Tend it well.
Make it part of you
And she'll make you happy beyond your dreams of paradise.
--Mike Roberts 2017
-------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------
I walk thru the world resisting the realization
That the dreams I had last night
Are wishes made by my subconscious
That my waking mind knows can never be fulfilled
-----------------------------------------------------
But really, it's not about what fills her shirt
or what's between her legs
Aim higher
The rewards you discover between her ears will take your breath away
And leave you wondering -
Why all this fuss about oxygen?
-----------------------------------------------------
It helps that you look delicious
But that's not why I feel this way
It helps that I like what you like
But that's not why I feel this way
It helps that your laughter fills my day with smiles
But I feel this way because
Once I really listened
I knew you sang a song that only I could hear
And that's everything
-----------------------------------------------------
It's Just Me
ca 1982
When you're wondering who the voice is
in the darkness late at night
And you think your only choice is
fading quickly out of sight
When my reasons for good-bye
are ringing hollow in your head
And the bitter empty mem'ry's
what you lay beside in bed
It's just me
Running from the daylight
It's just me
Running from a fight
That illusion really took me
where I thought I'd like to go
Phony dreams had really hooked me
and we've just survived the blow
I guess what kills the most of us
is not knowing how to live
And what takes the most from all of us
is not knowing how to give
It's just me
Lost in my delusion
It's just me
Seems I need the confusion
If there's a darkness now inside you
where the moonlight used to glow
And you know that you've been lied to
Cuz the truth is just for show
Then blame me for your taste of hell
for the way I broke the rule
That darkness lives in me as well
for being such a fool
But that's just me
Wondering how I could lose you
It's just me
Knowing how I still use you
-----------------------------------------------------
Lobocraspis Griseifusa
-- Ted Kooser
This is the tiny moth who lives on tears,
who drinks like a deer at the gleaming pool
at the edge of the sleeper's eye, the touch
of its mouth as light as a cloud's reflection.
In your dream, a moonlit figure appears
at your bedside and touches your face.
He asks if he might share the poor bread
of your sorrow. You show him the table.
The two of you talk long into the night,
but by morning the words are forgotten.
You awaken serene, in a sunny room,
rubbing the dust of his wings from your eyes.
-----------------------------------------------------
A Toast For Memorial Day:
This is a day for remembering the fallen
The lost
Those who won't grow old with us
And yet they're still right here
Forever young
Forever by our sides
And will remain for as long as we don't forget their names
I raise my glass to them
-----------------------------------------------------
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again."
-- Langston Hughes
-----------------------------------------------------
May we raise children
who love the unloved things -
the dandelion, the worms, and spiderlings.
Children who sense the rose needs the thorn
and run into rainswept days
the same way they turn towards the sun
And when they're grown
and someone has to speak for those
who have no voice
may they draw upon that wilder bond,
those days of tending tender things,
and be the ones.
-- Nicolette Sowder
-----------------------------------------------------
i found her beside the river,
a few tears frozen to her lips
her hands palms up,
holding the moon
and the stars
she’s asleep now,
but not asleep
her frail forgetfulness has expired
all makes sense to her
now, the moonlight and everything
-- Elizabeth Moura
-----------------------------------------------------
You'll never change a mind
Unopened
But you can slip a mad man
Water
From the well he's poisoned.
-- Grant Peeples
-----------------------------------------------------
I’ve learned that grief is love - but seen from a different angle.
Grief is all the love you want to give but can’t.
All of the unspent love piles up in the corners of your eyes.
It gathers to make a lump in your throat, as it leaves that aching hollow in your chest.
Grief is love with nowhere to go.
Remembering,
and knowing how others have been where we are now
is how we go from despair to celebration
We will find each other in the darkness
and move the light to where we need it
(I borrowed that first part from Jamie Anderson)
-----------------------------------------------------
A Glass Face In The Rain
Sometime you'll walk all night.
You'll come where the sky bends down.
You'll turn aside at a fold in the earth and
be gone from the day.
When the sky turns light again
the land will stare blank for miles at itself.
You won't be there to see any more.
Back where you lived,
for those who remember well,
there will come a glass face,
invisible but still and real,
all night outside in the rain.
--Wm Stafford
-----------------------------------------------------
How many times will I come to my senses
And go to great lengths to make myself lonely
-----------------------------------------------------
Somebody said it couldn’t be done
But he with a chuckle replied,
"Maybe it wouldn’t, but I will be one
who'll never say no till I've tried."
So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
on his face - if he worried he hid it.
And he tackled that thing that couldn’t be done,
And he couldn't do it.
--The Return of Edwin Carp, The Dick Van Dyke Show
-----------------------------------------------------
We sit and talk,
softly,
with long lapses of silence
And I am aware of the stream
that has no language,
coursing beneath the quiet heaven
of your eyes
--Wm Carlos Williams
-----------------------------------------------------
I can see my way back.
Never to be that dead moldering stump again
Cut down, burned up and chipped into nothing.
I will retake my place among men.
-----------------------------------------------------
I listen for the quiet eloquence of your heart
to cut thru the noise of my conversational armor
Breathe me in and be my voice
Shout me to the wind
Fill my empty words and whisper them back to me
-----------------------------------------------------
The look in your eyes
is what I see in my mind every night as I fall asleep
And the memory of you
is so strong
it puts your scent in my nostrils every morning as I wake up
-----------------------------------------------------
The lips of this woman move me when they approach,
naked,
for a kiss
They undress me completely,
from the top of my words to the bottom of my soul
I am disarmed
-----------------------------------------------------
Loving must never be a simple transaction,
But we shouldn't want for anything for being together.
Satisfied, no matter the balance of accounts,
We start fresh every day
Even. Equal. Renewed.
-----------------------------------------------------
My One-Eyed Love ©
--Andrew Jefferson
Published: May 2014
I've fallen in love - I don't know why
I've fallen in love with a girl with one eye.
I knew from the start. It was plain to see
That this wonderful girl had an eye out for me
She's charming and witty and jolly and jocular
Not what you'd expect from a girl who's monocular.
Of eyes - at the moment - she hasn't full quota
But that doesn't change things for me one iota.
It must be quite difficult if you're bereft.
If your left eye is gone and your right eye is left.
But she's made up her mind. She's made her decision.
She can see it quite clearly in 10/20 vision.
She'll not leave me waiting, not left in the lurch
If she looks slightly sideways she'll see me in church.
I'll marry my true love who's gentle and kind.
And thus prove to everyone that love's not quite blind.
-----------------------------------------------------
like a lava flow
tasting the edge of the sea
the way you kiss me
--Derek Firenze
-----------------------------------------------------
Something Missing (A Light in the Attic)
I remember I put on my socks,
I remember I put on my shoes.
I remember I put on my tie
That was printed
In beautiful purples and blues.
I remember I put on my coat,
To look perfectly grand at the dance,
Yet I feel there is something
I may have forgot—
What is it? What is it?...
--Shel Silverstein
-----------------------------------------------------
When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
--Wendell Berry
-----------------------------------------------------
I get up every day thinking
There can be no better day than this
Knowing every tomorrow with you
Will prove that statement false
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It's like she had a tattoo across her Mons
"Abandon hope, all ye who enter here"
I did and I did
And now I pretend I wouldn't do it again
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"Fly home to me" is what you said
But you never meant to bring me close
You promised hearts and kisses every day
Then panicked when I came to share them
"You had my heart a long long time ago"
Is nothing but an empty song
when there's nothing where that heart belongs
Never any point in flying to where there is no home
No point in chasing kisses where there is no heart to find
You may love the thought of loving
But you refuse to do the work of love
If it's not perfect from the start
You bail, claiming there's no spark
And then deny it all
Conveniently forgetting
you've run this whole stupid game on me before
But no more
Faithless
Coward
Liar
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We were together
I forget the rest
--Walt Whitman
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Let's dance to the song in our heads
Singing to the rhythm of our hearts
In the language of the love in our souls
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She came and filled my world with her emptiness
But she didn't take it all with her when she left
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Factory of Souls
It takes just two people to bring the world
to ruin. So goes the history of love.
At the end of the day we tally the casualties
of war, victory for the one who gets wounded
the least. You say it’s time for a change
but I don’t know to what end, change being
just the skin of some incandescent creature
whose grotesque beauty is what we adore,
whom some people call love, whom we
venerate because it consumes us, slim pickings
for its huge soul. My people say, don’t look
or you’ll go blind. You say the end was always
just around the bend. I say all we have
is unconditional surrender to the future.
So unreliable is the past that I feel compelled
to leave unmourned the blind, relentless loves
that may have scorched into our hearts
the way the saints accepted stigmata. My people say,
look back or lose your way. Or, walk backwards,
if you can. So I found myself on a bus to New York City
to lose myself completely. Past Hunters Point
we hit the factory of souls—a thousand tombstones
from which a silk-like canopy of smoke rose to meet
God knows what—a spacious emptiness, the end.
I’ve heard the world’s never going to end.
I’ve heard it will go on and on, and we will be
as nebulous as Nebuchadnezzar, our lives
not worth a footnote, our grandest schemes
no more than feeble whispers, all memory
shifting like the continental plates. In the future,
all science will finally come around; genetic
engineering, I’ve been told, will be all the rage,
and we will be a super race in a world
infallibly perfected, where trains run on time,
love never dies, and hope can be purchased
by the pound. It’s called immortalization
of the cell lines. We will choose what will survive.
Our destiny made lucid, we will find the world
contemplating itself, like the young Narcissus,
one hand about to touch the pool, his body
lurched towards that marvelous reflection.
I suppose we’ve always felt compelled
to desensitize our failures. My people say,
to go unnoticed, you play dead. I myself
may have chosen to forget a face, a name,
some cruel word uttered carelessly, but not,
after all the harm is done, intending any pain.
And many others may have chosen to forget me.
It works both ways. My people say, nasa huli
ang pagsisi: regret is the final emotion.
It’s what you see when you look back.
It’s what’s no longer there.
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Making Peace
A voice from the dark called out,
‘The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster.
Peace, not only
the absence of war.’
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can’t be imagined before it is made,
can’t be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.
A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs,
allowed long pauses . . .
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light - facets
of the forming crystal.
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I taste you
And realize I've been starving
--Jody Picoult
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You roll thru my bones
Like the sweet crash of thunder
Breaking windows
and fever
and drought
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Sorrow is how we learn to love
Your heart isn't breaking
It hurts because it's getting larger
The larger it gets, the more love it holds
--Rita Mae Brown
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