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My love, I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined. So close you look past me when wondering where I am. It’s Ok. I know that to be human is to be farsighted. But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living. Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive? Ask me the altitude of heaven, and I will answer, “How tall are you?” In my back pocket is a love note with every word you wish you’d said. At night I sit ecstatic at the loom weaving forgiveness into our worldly regrets. All day I listen to the radio of your memories. Yes, I know every secret you thought too dark to tell me, and love you more for everything you feared might make me love you less. When you cry I guide your tears toward the garden of kisses I once planted on your cheek, so you know they are all perennials. Forgive me, for not being able to weep with you. One day you will understand. One day you will know why I read the poetry of your grief to those waiting to be born, and they are all the more excited. There is nothing I want for now that we are so close I open the curtain of your eyelids with my own smile every morning. I wish you could see the beauty your spirit is right now making of your pain, your deep seated fears playing musical chairs, laughing about how real they are not. My love, I want to sing it through the rafters of your bones, Dying is the opposite of leaving. I want to echo it through the corridor of your temples, I am more with you than I ever was before. Do you understand? It was me who beckoned the stranger who caught you in her arms when you forgot not to order for two at the coffee shop. It was me who was up all night gathering sunflowers into your chest the last day you feared you would never again wake up feeling lighthearted. I know it’s hard to believe, but I promise it’s the truth. I promise one day you will say it too– I can’t believe I ever thought I could lose you.

med_cat

Day of Rest

Blessed Sunday, day of rest,
a day on which to catch your breath
and put the busy world on pause,
while cracking on with all the chores.

The hoovering, the weekly shop.
The housework, laundry, washing up.
The futile war on disarray –
Sunday, such a restful day.

A chance to let yourself unwind,
to spend some precious family time
when on your phones or arguing
about the state the bathroom’s in;

to shake off last night’s beer and wine
by being made to run the line
at your youngest’s football game,
while getting yelled at in the rain.

Long may the reign of peace prevail
so you can answer work emails
and start the coming week less stressed –
blessed Sunday, day of rest.

(Brian Bilston)

med_cat

If you are struggling to write a poem for a loved one for Valentine's Day, take heart: even the great poets had to start somewhere.

Selected Early Writings of the Poets

I

the roses are red
and all the violets are blue
oh look, a haiku

-Basho

II

Roses are red,
unlike those daffs,
I wander lonely
as a ~~giraffe~~ cloud.

-William Wordsworth

III

Look--the roses are red!
They make my heart sing!
They fill me with hope--
Like a feathery thing!

-Emily Dickinson

IV

ROSES ARE...NO!
WHAT HAVE I DONE?
I MUST HAVE LEFT
MY CAPS LOCK ON

-ee cummings

V

Roses are dead,
see how they droop.
All of us die:
life's only truth.

-Philip Larkin

VI

The roses had gone
(unlike my bunion)
so got this instead--
here, have an onion.

-Carol Ann Duffy

(Brian Bilston)

med_cat

Sunset on the Spire

All that I dream
By day or night
Lives in that stream
Of lovely light.

Here is the earth,
And there is the spire;
This is my hearth,
And that is my fire.

From the sun's dome
I am shouted proof
That this is my home,
And that is my roof.

Here is my food,
And here is my drink,
And I am wooed
From the moon's brink.

And the days go over,
And the nights end;
Here is my lover,
Here is my friend.

All that I
Can ever ask
Wears that sky
Like a thin gold mask.

(Elinor Wylie)

med_cat

Love: The Basics

Start with something harmless—
a stone perhaps. Choose one
large enough to sit on, one so heavy
it cannot get up and hit you of its own accord.

After that try loving a leaf—
preferably one lying nearby,
preferably a dead one. Do not taste it.
Next: something with a rudimentary
brain—an insect, or the spider on your shoe.

This is where it gets tricky. The most beautiful
are often toxic and their interest in you
is minimal. When you turn to mammals
hunger becomes an issue.

You can even open yourself
to another of your species, with a brain
and body like yours, capable of anything.
But if you are afraid, stay
with the rock. Remember though—
it will not feed you,
or speak, or answer.

(Kathleen Lynch)

med_cat

How do I love you?

How do I love you?
Oh, this way and that way.
Oh, happily. Perhaps
I may elaborate by

demonstration? Like
this, and
like this and

no more words now

med_cat

Velvet Shoes

Let us walk in the white snow
In a soundless space;
With footsteps quiet and slow,
At a tranquil pace,
Under veils of white lace.

I shall go shod in silk,
And you in wool,
White as white cow's milk,
More beautiful
Than the breast of a gull.

We shall walk through the still town
In a windless peace;
We shall step upon white down,
Upon silver fleece,
Upon softer than these.

We shall walk in velvet shoes:
Wherever we go
Silence will fall like dews
On white silence below.
We shall walk in the snow.

med_cat

A poem begins
with a lump in the throat;
a homesickness or
a love sickness.
It is a reaching-out toward expression;
an effort to find fulfillment.
A complete poem is one where an emotion
has found its thought
and the thought has found words.

(Robert Frost)

duathir.livejournal.com

Cross-post from

war_poetry:

Stone Mother

I.
I was born in the desert
learned to cherish water
like it was created from tears.

I grew up hearing the legend, the lesson
of the Stone Mother who cried
enough cries to make an entire lake
from sadness. From her, we learned
what must be done and that the sacrifices
you make for your people are sacred.
We are all related
and sometimes it takes
a revolution to be awakened.

You see, the power of a single tear lies in the story.
It’s birthed from feeling and following
the pain as it echoes into the canyon of grieving.
It’s the path you stumble and walk
until you push and claw your way through to acceptance.
For us, stories have always been for lessons.

II.
( I remember my grandmother was well versed in dirt, )

By Tanaya Winder

med_cat

When against earth a wooden heel
Clicks as loud as stone on steel,
When stone turns flour instead of flakes,
And frost bakes clay as fire bakes,
When the hard-bitten fields at last
Crack like iron flawed in the cast,
When the world is wicked and cross and old,
I long to be quit of the cruel cold.
Little birds like bubbles of glass
Fly to other Americas,
Birds as bright as sparkles of wine
Fly in the nite to the Argentine,
Birds of azure and flame-birds go
To the tropical Gulf of Mexico:
They chase the sun, they follow the heat,
It is sweet in their bones, O sweet, sweet, sweet!
It's not with them that I'd love to be,
But under the roots of the balsam tree.
Just as the spiniest chestnut-burr
Is lined within with the finest fur,
So the stoney-walled, snow-roofed house
Of every squirrel and mole and mouse
Is lined with thistledown, sea-gull's feather,
Velvet mullein-leaf, heaped together
With balsam and juniper, dry and curled,
Sweeter than anything else in the world.
O what a warm and darksome nest
Where the wildest things are hidden to rest!
It's there that I'd love to lie and sleep,
Soft, soft, soft, and deep, deep, deep!

(Elinor Wylie)

(from best-poems.net)

med_cat

A Brief History of Modern Art in Poetry

1. Impressionism

Roses sway in softened reds,
Violets swim in murky blues,
Sugar sparkles in the light,
Blurring into golden you.

2. Surrealism

Roses are melting,
Violets are too.
Ceci n’est pas le sucre.
Keith is a giant crab

3. Social Realism

Roses are dead,
Violence is rife.
Don’t sugar coat
This bitter life.

4. Abstract Expressionism

Are and.
Violets roses so.
You sweet blue.
Are are red is sugar

5. Pop Art

Roses go BLAM!
Violets go POW!
Sugar is COOL!
You are so WOW!

6. Conceptual Art

Roses are red,
Coated in blood:
A deer’s severed head
Drips from above

7. Pointillism

Roses have black spot,
You’re spotty, too.
Sugar is granulated.
I’m dotty for you

8. Minimalism

aquamarcia.livejournal.com

The Course of Empire

There is no American meter
Only American compromise solutions
And American unconscious mimicries

We American poets are keeping
This patched-together language alive
By intravenous feedings of foreign matter
Filtered through individual native madnesses

There is no American meter
Only American desperate repetitions
Grasping for mental handholds
In the American constant flux

No meter, but only meter-like tricks
To hypnotize chaos

Our job is only to survive
From line to line, awaiting the first tick
Of a manageable American reality
That would have no place for us

We are holding the crumbling outposts
Of American pride
In the last days of its empire

Our thoughts are giddy and thin
Our stock of words is running low

We will be forgotten

by Peter Schjeldahl

med_cat

Mnemonic

Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November.
Unless a leap year is its fate,
February hath twenty-eight.

All the rest hath three days more,
excepting January,
which hath six thousand,
one hundred and eighty-four.

(Brian Bilston)

aquamarcia.livejournal.com

All Is Sold, All Is Lost

All is sold, all is lost, all is plundered,
Death's wing has flashed black on our sight,
All's gnawed bare with sore want and sick longing,—
Then how are we graced with this light?

By day the town breathes a deep fragrance
Of cherry from woods none descries;
By night new and strange constellations
Shine forth in the pale summer skies.

And these houses, this dirt, these mean ruins,
Are touched by the miracle, too;
It is close: the desired, despaired of,
That all longed for, but none ever knew.

by Anna Akhmatova
translated by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky
from Russian Poetry: An Anthology, published in 1927 by International Publishers Co., Inc.

duathir.livejournal.com

Get Drunk

One should always be drunk.
That's all that matters;
that's our one imperative need.
So as not to feel Time's horrible burden
that breaks your shoulders and bows you down,
you must get drunk without ceasing.

But what with?
With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose.
But get drunk.

And if, at some time,
on the steps of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the bleak solitude of your room,
you are waking up when drunkenness has already abated,

ask the wind, the wave, a star, the clock,
all that which flees, all that which groans,
all that which rolls, all that which sings,
all that which speaks, ask them what time it is;
and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock will reply:

'It is time to get drunk!
So that you may not be the martyred slaves of Time,
get drunk; get drunk, and never pause for rest!
With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose!'

By Charles Baudelaire

duathir.livejournal.com

The Realm of IfOnly

If broken hearts were bread, the yield
of this land’s fields of sorrow
would be sufficient to reprieve
a starving world from want and leave
plenty for tomorrow.

If our ideals and hopes were blooms
the consequential flora
would flood all latitudes with hues
so brave and brilliant, and infuse
the age with choice aromas.

If lives destroyed by greed were bricks
the wreckage of our valleys
could be piled into a tower so high
it would punch a hole clean through the sky
to where God drools and dallies.

By Alun Rees

aquamarcia.livejournal.com

J.R.R. Tolkien turns 133 today!

I Sit Beside the Fire and Think

I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been;
Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair.
I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see.

For still there are so many things that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring there is a different green.
I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago,
and people who will see a world that I shall never know.
But all the while I sit and think of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet and voices at the door.

by J.R.R. Tolkien

elenbarathi.livejournal.com

Did You See the Sky

Did you see the sky through me
tonight, carbon blues and clouds like ropes
of wool behind a fringe of branches,
great combs of black stilling in their sap,
stiffening with winter. I like to imagine
love can pull your essence like red thread
through the cold needle of my life now
without you. I was just driving home
from the grocery store and looking up
over the roofs, I remembered once when
I was overthrowing my thoughts
for doubts you said, I know how to love you
because I hitchhiked, and it was never the same sky twice.
Now, I hear you say, this music is like wind
moving through itself to wind, intricate
as the chimes of light splintering into
everything while glowing more whole.
It is nothing like those dusty chords
on your radio, each an ego
of forced air, heavy with the smells
of onions, mushrooms, sage and rain.
Drink it in, you say, those corded clouds
and throaty vocals. You will miss all this
when you become the changing.

~Rachel Jamison Webster

duathir.livejournal.com

Cross-post from

war_poetry:

The Freebooter’s Prayer
(Scotland, 1405)

Thou That willed us naked-born,
Send us meat against the morn—
Got with right or got with wrong
So we fast not overlong.
Prosper “Snaffle, Spur and Spear!”
Grant us booty, horse and gear;
Save our necks from hempen thrall,
Bless the souls of them that fall.

Anonymous

The Freebooter’s Prayer
A Modern Version
(U. S. A., 1905)

Thou, Whom rich and poor adore,
Grant me fifty millions more,
Earned or pilfered, foul or pure;
From man’s law hold me secure.
So, when I have gained of gold
All my coffers well can hold,
I may give, O Lord, for Thee,
One-sixteenth in Charity.

By Arthur Guiterman

aquamarcia.livejournal.com

Two options for the new year with W.S. Merwin: melancholy, or melancholy but hopeful. Happy New Year to everyone!

Another Year Come

I have nothing new to ask of you,
Future, heaven of the poor.
I am still wearing the same things.

I am still begging the same question
By the same light
Eating the same stone,

And the hands of the clock still knock without entering.

by W.S. Merwin

To the New Year

With what stillness at last
you appear in the valley
your first sunlight reaching down
to touch the tips of a few
high leaves that do not stir
as though they had not noticed
and did not know you at all
then the voice of a dove calls
from far away in itself
to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you
here and now whether or not
anyone hears it this is
where we have come with our age
our knowledge such as it is
and our hopes such as they are
invisible before us
untouched and still possible

by W.S. Merwin