request

[stitchesandlace.livejournal.com]

Hi :)

I'm looking for poems that deal with falling for someone when you know it can't work out, or poems about long distance relationships.

Not really looking for unrequited love, but poems that are kind of like a relationship that has everything stacked against it from the get go, especially distance.

Thanks so much!

Comments

Frances Horovitz - Poem of Absence

[bloodrebel333.livejournal.com]

Poem Of Absence
Frances Horovitz

to be alone for a month is good
I follow the bright fish of memory
falling deeper into myself
to the endless present
the child's cry is my only clock

yet your singing echoes in corners
who clatters the red tea-pot
or opens the door with a bang
to look at the evening sky?
your typewriter lies silent
it is reproachful
I cannot make it stutter like you

I sit in the woods at dusk
listening for the sound of your singing
there are letters from a thousand miles
you wrote a week ago
like leaves from an autumn tree
they fall on the mat

it was your voice woke me
and the absent touch of your hand

Jim Daniels - What I Did

[bloodrebel333.livejournal.com]

What I Did
Jim Daniels

What are you going to do
when your girlfriend's pregnant
neither of you have health
insurance or a decent job
and you've both been taking enough
drugs to kill a horse
or two?

What are you going to do
when she calls you from Wisconsin
three states away to tell you
she's pregnant, that she slipped
away the night before

she's telling you
and she's crying and she's telling you
she's going to the clinic
in the morning?

You know.
You know what you're going to do.
You're going to drive
your Plymouth Satellite all night

your head jangling
like the coins you use to call her
from the rest stops to make sure
she'll wait
wait till you get there

drive all night to her sister's
in Madison and sit with her in the morning
wringing your hands and going over it
all again, slowly, and again

and you can't let yourself
think for more than a second
of the actual child
you might have together,
what you imagined while driving
when the cold air and darkness
when the lack of a radio
made all things possible

you kiss her and hold her
and wipe her nose
and wipe your nose
and you try to ignore
and not feel embarrassed by
the presence of her sister
silently circling the house.

What do you do? You drive her down
in the painful sun, the forced
squint, you pull out the wrinkled wad of bills you conned
from friends half-gone in the bar,
you lick your fingers,
you count out your half.

Re: Jim Daniels - What I Did

[exceptindreams.livejournal.com]

I do love this poem. Thanks for reminding me of it.