Shake Loose

I picked up Shake Loose My Skin for a dose of poetry long overdue this winter. Unfortunately, this dosage must be someone else's. I didn't like it much. It all felt dated and just not it. I did enoy "The Blues" and "Set No. 1" from "Wounded in the House of a Friend", but the rest just didn't resonate with me. I only give this one a 2.

Now Long Ago

http://www.flickr.com/photos/amstersam/517386614/
Originally uploaded by http://www.flickr.com/people/amstersam/

"Now Long Ago" by Maya Angelou

One innocent spring
your voice meant to me
less than tires turning
on a distant street.

Your name, perhaps spoken,
led no chorus of batons
unrehearsed
to crush against my
empty chest.

That cool spring was shortened by
your summer, bold impatient
and all forgotten
except when silence
turns the key
into my midnight bedroom
and comes to sleep upon your
pillow.

Hold on

A Pueblo Indian Prayer

Hold on to what is good,
even if it's a handful of earth.

Hold on to what you believe,
even if it's a tree that stands by itself.

Hold on to what you must do,
even if it's a long way from here.

Hold on to your life,
even if it's easier to let go.

Hold on to my hand,
even if I've gone away from you.

each hurt swallowed

"Promises" by Rita Dove


"Each hurt swallowed
is a stone." Last words
whispered to his daughter
as he placed her fingertips
lightly into the palm
of her groom.

She smiled upwards
to Jesus, then Thomas,
turning her back as
politely as possible.
If that were the case
he was a mountain of shame.

Poised on the stone
steps of the church,
she tried to forget
his hulk on the vestibule,
clumsy in blue serge,
his fingers worrying the
lucky bead in his pocket.

Beneath the airborne bouquet
was a meadow of virgins
urging "Be water, be light."
A deep breath, and she plunged
through the sunbeams and kisses,
rice drumming
the both of them blind.

I don't owe them anything

"Thank-you Note" - Wislawa Szymborska

There is much I owe
to those I do not love.

The relief in accepting
they are closer to another.
Joy that I am not
the wolf to their sheep.

My peace be with them
for with them I am free,
and this, love can neither give,
nor know how to take.

I don't wait for them
from window to door.
Almost as patient
as a sun dial,

I understand
what love does not understand.
I forgive
what love would never have forgiven.

Between rendezvous and letter
no eternity passes,
only a few days or weeks.

My trips with them always turn out well.
Concerts are heard.
Cathedrals are toured.
Landscapes are distinct.

And when seven rivers and mountains
come between us,
they are rivers and mountains
well known from any map.

It is thanks to them
that I live in three dimensions,
in a non-lyrical and non-rhetorical space,
with a shifting, thus real, horizon.

They don't even know
how much they carry in their empty hands.

"I don't owe them anything",
love would have said
on this open topic.

it won't last

"There is Only One of Everything" by Margaret Atwood

Not a tree but the tree
we saw, it will never exist, split by the wind and bending down
like that again. What will push out of the earth

later, making it summer, will not be
grass, leaves, repetition, there will
have to be other words. When my

eyes close language vanishes. The cat
with the divided face, half black half orange
nests in my scruffy fur coat, I drink tea,

fingers curved around the cup, impossible
to duplicate these flavours. The table
and freak plates glow softly, consuming themselves,

I look out at you and you occur
in this winter kitchen, random as trees or sentences,
entering me, fading like them, in time you will disappear

but the way you dance by yourself
on the tile floor to a worn song, flat and mournful,
so delighted, spoon waved in one hand, wisps of roughened hair

sticking up from your head, it's your surprised
body, pleasure I like. I can even say it,
though only once and it won't

last: I want this. I want
this.







(This poem makes me ache. Don't you love poems like that?)

A narrow room, and tall,

"Interior" by Dorothy Parker

Her mind lives in a quiet room,
A narrow room, and tall,
With pretty lamps to quench the gloom
And mottoes on the wall.

There all the things are waxen neat
And set in decorous lines;
And there are posies, round and sweet,
And little, straightened vines.

Her mind lives tidily, apart
From cold and noise and pain,
And bolts the door against her heart,
Out wailing in the rain.

beautiful and brave

How should we be able to forget those ancient myths
that are at the beginning of all peoples,
the myths about dragons that at the
last moment turn into princesses;
perhaps all the dragons
of our lives are princesses,
who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.
Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being,
something helpless that wants help from us.
- Rainer Maria Rilke

Summons

"Summons" by Robert Francis

Keep me from going to sleep too soon
Or if I go to sleep too soon
Come wake me up. Come any hour
Of night. Come whistling up the road.
Stomp on the porch. Bang on the door.
Make me get out of bed and come
And let you in and light a light.
Tell me the northern lights are on
And make me look. Or tell me clouds
Are doing something to the moon
They never did before, and show me.
See that I see. Talk to me till
I'm half as wide awake as you
And start to dress wondering why
I ever went to bed at all.
Tell me the walking is superb.
Not only tell me but persuade me.
You know I'm not too hard persuaded.


One of my very favorite poems ever.

Vocabulary

"Ex Machina" by Lisel Mueller

My word processor does not know Shakespeare.
It balks at ripeness, stops me at Othello
and Desdemona. They are not
in its vocabulary. On the other hand
it does not question arrogance and power,
accepts betrayal, jealousy and grief,
uncomprehending. They are on the list.

I am reminded of the face
of the young killer on the screen
the other night. He knew the words
gun and crime and prison.
He even knew the word guilty,
but when he said it, his eyes were blank.

I love my Sun subscription

For good reason. Check out this poem from their December issue:

"Christmas Eve, Almost Midnight" by David Denney

Driving through the mist after delivering
packages, I come upon a family of deer
palking down the middle of the street.
I cut my lights and engine and coast
behind them awhile. They are cruising
the neighborhood, nibbling the frosty lawns,
looking for nasturtiums. I glide behind them
around a corner and down another street,
the only sound the crunching of newly formed ice
beneath my tires, until they disappear onto the dark,
soggy soccer fields of the middle school.
I tell you I can count on one hand
the number of times I’ve been happier.

Hunt a dream through rain and thunder

One of my favorites:


"For It All" - Emma Bull

Fantasies of violence, breaking bottles on the wall
Hungry for the motion, for the action, for it all.
Road noise on the night street, see the taillights through the blinds
Out there where your dreams slide toward the night side, for it all.

For it all, for it all, what you’re aching for
When the magic’s real and like a fire in the sky
When the deal calls for a sacrifice and you know you cannot die
For the edge the best ones live on, for it all.

You want to be a hero, with the ax about to fall
You’d buy it for the love and for the glory, for it all.
You want to dress in black and lose your heart beyond recall
Hunt a dream through rain and thunder, on your honor, for it all.

In your head, no car is fast enough
In your heart, no love is true
Would it ruin all your solitary fancies
If I tell you that it isn’t only you?

Keep your ankles off the tailpipe, keep your bootheels off the street
We’ll hit the throttle, we’ll hit the redline
We’ll find the edge
We’ll make it sweet
We’ll go for it all.

as no matter what

"Happy as a Dog's Tail" by Anna Swir

Happy as something unimportant
and free as a thing unimportant.
As something no one prizes
and which does not prize itself.
As something mocked by all
which mocks at their mockery.
As laughter without serious reason.
As a yell able to outyell itself.
Happy as no matter what,
as any no matter what.

Happy
as a dog's tail.



Gosh I love that poem.

God she's good

Icarus

t h e . b i r t h . o f . m a n
Originally uploaded by Whisquissos

Love this shot from Whisquissos on flickr. Very dreamlike. Reminded me of the following poem:

Waiting for Icarus - Muriel Rukeyser

He said he would be back and we'd drink wine together
He said that everything would be better than before
He said we were on the edge of a new relation
He said he would never again cringe before his father
He said that he was going to invent full-time
He said he loved me that going into me
He said was going into the world and the sky
He said all the buckles were very firm
He said the wax was the best wax
He said Wait for me here on the beach
He said Just don't cry

I remember the gulls and the waves
I remember the islands going dark on the sea
I remember the girls laughing
I remember they said he only wanted to get away from me
I remember mother saying: Inventors are like poets, a trashy lot
I remember she told me those who try out inventions are worse
I remember she added: Women who love such are the worst of all
I have been waiting all day, or perhaps longer.
I would have liked to try those wings myself.
It would have been better than this.

Dancing rabbits

I love this poem. I had to share.

CASSEL ROAD by Sandra Maddux-Creech

Look…
the rabbits actually danced
on their hind legs
in the smoky moonlight
all about the black fields
and gray gravel road
staring us down
in the trail of our headlights
How dare we come there?

I swear
we drove backward
for two miles

Found here.

Cowboys and the End of the World

Loved the first season of Deadwood! At first I was worried that it was gonna be way too voilent and dark for me to handle, but I ended up loving it. The lady who plays Calamity Jane is marvelous.

In other randomness, here's a poem I like:

Song on the End of the World by Czeslaw Milosz

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A Fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through fields under their umbrellas
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet,
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
No other end of the world there will be,
No other end of the world there will be.


Don't forget to put a bag of canned goods next to your mail box or slot on Saturday morning. Letter carriers are picking them up for the local food banks and pantries. Easy and a good cause - you don't get that very often!