To the chase

[heevoling.livejournal.com]

If What we could -- were what we would --
Criterion -- be small --
It is the Ultimate of Talk --
The Impotence to Tell --
-Emily Dickinson

(no subject)

[seamusd.livejournal.com]

Michael Ryan

Consider a Move

The steady time of being unknown,
in solitude, without friends,
is not a steadiness which sustains.
I hear your voice waver on the phone:

"Haven't talked to anyone for days.
I drive around. I sit in parking lots."
The voice zeroes through my ear, and waits.
What should I say? There are ways

to meet people you will want to love?
I know of none. You come out stronger
having gone through this? I no longer
believe that, if I once did. Consider a move,

a change, a job, a new place to live,
someplace you'd like to be. "That's not it,"
you say. Now time curves back. We almost touch.
Then what is? I ask. What is?

(from In Winter, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, 1981)

sonnet 17 -pablo neruda

[drowningbabies.livejournal.com]

i do not love you as if you were the salt rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
i love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret,between the shadow and the soul.

i love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

i love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
i love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so i love you because i know no other way

than this: where i does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as i fall asleep*

(no subject)

[oheunoia.livejournal.com]

After Work
by Gary Snyder

The shack and a few trees
float in the blowing fog

I pull out your blouse,
warm my cold hands
        on your breasts.
you laugh and shudder
peeling garlic by the
        hot iron stove.
bring in the axe, the rake,
and the wood

we'll lean on the wall
against each other
stew simmering on the fire
as it grows dark
        drinking wine.

flight -james tate

[drowningbabies.livejournal.com]

like a glum cricket
the refrigerator is singing
and just as I am convinced

that it is the only noise
in the building, a pot falls
in 2B. the neighbors on

both sides of me suddenly
realize that they have not
made love to their wives

since 1947. the racket
multiplies. the man down hall
is teaching his dog to fly.

the fish are disgusted
and beat their heads blue
against a cold aquarium. I too

loose control and consider
the dust huddled in the corner
a threat to my endurance.

were you here, we would not
tolerate mongrels in the air,
nor the conspiracies of dust.

we would drive all night
your head tilted on my shoulder.
at dawn, I would nudge you
with my anxious fingers and say
already we are in Idaho.

John Berryman

[alaric3.livejournal.com]

Recently read Berryman's The Dream Songs in its entirety. I've found a new favorite in John Berryman. Here's a few of my favorites of his Dream Songs:

40
I'm scared a lonely. Never see my son,
easy be not to see anyone,
combers out to sea
know they're goin somewhere but not me.
Got a little poison, got a little gun,
I'm scared a lonely.

I'm scared a only one thing, which is me,
from othering I don't take nothin, see,
for any hound dog's sake.
But this is where I livin, where I rake
my leaves and cop my promise, this' where we
cry oursel's awake.

Wishin was dyin but I gotta make
it all this way to that bed on these feet
where peoples said to meet.
Maybe but even if I see my son
forever never, get back on the take,
free, black & forty-one.

( two more Dream Songs )