(no subject)

[silverflurry.livejournal.com]

What kind of thing is love, it seems so much like pain,
It never touched me, never touched you
Never knew how to, or wished to, or tried to.
That's why you aren't with me....

Because we never even met
And in all the time we lost
Each one of us lived his part
But each one always apart
Because you can't extinguish
What has never been ignited,
Because you can't restore to health
Something that has never languished.
Because you'd never understand
My weariness, my manias,
Because to you it'd be just the same
If I fell into the abyss.
This love you've scorned so long
Because you never even looked for me
Where I wouldn't have been anyway,
Nor would you have loved me.

That's why you aren't with me.
That's why I'm not with you.

-Liliana Felipe

Les Murray - 'An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow'

[verian.livejournal.com]

The word goes round Repins, the murmur goes round Lorenzinis,
At Tattersalls, men look up from sheets of numbers,
The Stock Exchange scribblers forget the chalk in their hands
And men with bread in their pockets leave the Greek Club:
There's a fellow crying in Martin Place. They can't stop him.

The traffic in George Street is banked up for half a mile
And drained of motion. The crowds are edgy with talk
And more crowds come hurrying. Many run into the back streets
Which minutes ago were busy main streets, pointing:
There's a fellow weeping down there. No one can stop him.

The man we surround, the man no one approaches
Simply weeps, and does not cover it, weeps
Not like a child, not like the wind, like a man
And does not declaim it, not beat his breast, not even
Sob very loudly --- yet the dignity of his weeping

Holds us back from his space, the hollow he makes about him
In the midday light, in his pentagram of sorrow,
And uniforms back in the crowd who tried to seize him
Stare out at him, and feel, with amazement, their minds
Longing for tears as children for a rainbow.

Some will say, in the years to come, a halo
Or force stood around him. There was no such thing.
Some will say they were shocked and would have stopped him
But they will not have been there. The fiercest manhood,
The toughest reserve, the slickest wit amongst us

Trembles with silence, and burns with unexpected
Judgements of peace. Some in the concourse scream
Who thought themselves happy. Only the smallest children
And such as look out of Paradise come near him
And sit at his feet, with dogs and dusty pigeons.

Ridiculous, says a man near me, and stops
His mouth with his hands, as if it uttered vomit ---
And I see a woman, shining, stretch out her hand
And shake as she receives the gift of weeping;
As many as follow her also receive it.

And many weep for sheer acceptance, and more
Refuse to weep for fear of all acceptance,
But the weeping man, like the earth, requires nothing,
The man who weeps ignores us, and cries out
Of his writhen face and ordinary body

Not words, but grief, not messages, but sorrow
Hard as the earth, sheer, present as the sea ---
And when he stops, he simply walks between us
Mopping his face with the dignity of one
Man who has wept, and now has finished weeping.

Evading believers, he hurries off down Pitt Street.

Tess Gallagher - 'The Hug'

[verian.livejournal.com]

A woman is reading a poem on the street
and another woman stops to listen. We stop too,
with our arms around each other. The poem
is being read and listened to out here
in the open. Behined us
no one is entering or leaving the houses.

Suddenly a hug comes over me and I'm
giving it to you, like a variable star shooting light
off to make itself comfortable, then
subsiding. I finish but keep on holding
you. A man walks up to us and we know he hasn't
come out of nowhere, but if he could, he
would have. He looks homeless because of how
he needs. 'Can I have one of those?' he asks you,
and I feel you nod. I'm surprised,
surprised you don't tell him how
it is - that I'm yours, only
yours, etc., exclusive as a nose to
its face. Love - that's what we're talking about, love
that nabs you with 'for me
only' and holds on.

So I walk over to him and put my
arms around him and try to
hug him like I mean it. He's got an overcoat on
so thick I can't feel
him past it. I'm starting the hug
and thinking, 'How big is this huf supposed to be?
How long shall I hold this hug?' Already
we could be eternal, his arms falling over my
shoulders, my hands not
meeting behined his back, he is so big!

I putmy head into his chest and snuggle
in. I lean into him. I lean my blood and my wishes
into him. He stands for it. This is his
and he's starting to give it back so well I know he's
getting it. This hug. So truly, so tenderley
we stop having arms and I don't know if
my lover has walked away or what, or
if the woman is still reading thepoem, or the houses -
what about them? - the houses.

Clearly, a little permission is a dangerous thing.
But when you hug someone you want it
to be a masterpiece of connection, the way the button
on his coat will leave an imprint of
a planet on my cheek
when I walk away. When I try to find some place
to go back to.

(no subject)

[penguinboy.livejournal.com]

Stuck for an Ending

"... if design govern in a thing so small."
~Frost

Stuck for an ending to a poem,
I see a large brown moth banging between
two plates of glass. I can't just leave it there

so I open the windows to shoo it out.
It careens into the room, tiny helicopter
with a busted joystick, the pilot drunk

on what might have been his last few gulps
of air. Since no good deed goes unpunished, etc.,
this winged dirt clod lands

in my fresh Ron Rico and Diet Coke,
thrashing around like it's a birdbath.
So I toss the Cuba Libre con Polilla

into an already-dead potted plant (anthurium),
where the bug staggers a bit before
trying flight. It blunders back into the air

and circumnavigates the globe burning
above me before smashing against Being
and Nothingness, the fattest tome on my shelves.

Then the moth rights itself. Shakes itself alert
and flutters right into, it appears, the exact center
of my cat's open mouth. This is the end

of my attempt to play savior, and I wonder
who among us could argue now
against the idea of God.

by Jeff Worley