Writing out (or typing out) poetry I love, for some reason, makes me feel closer to the words, if that makes any sense whatsoever.
My personal:: heavyheartedlove
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, ‘The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another’s. She will be another’s. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
Do not stand at my grave and weep by Mary Elizabeth Frye (1932)
Reblog every time.
when I die, I’m going to have this read at my funeral. So everyone who’s affected by my passing can find comfort in the fact that I’m not gone, not really…
-Dorothy Parker
What gets you up in the morning?
For me it is the thought
that someday, I will be
as far away from here
as I can get
Watch me
rubbing out the lines behind me
I recommend it
I recommend
fooling everyone into thinking
that you have settled down
and then heading for the hills
The dog will bare his teeth
if instructed and meet up
with you later. It’s good
you named him Bandito:
he’ll watch your back
This, by the way, this is not a fantasy
It is page 69 (ha ha!) of the manual
I read when we were planning
the takeover
So it didn’t happen—so what?
This is better
Wait until I tell you
what’s on the next page
~Eleanor Lerman
Here is the poem I meant to write
But didn’t
Because you walked into my study
Without any clothes on.
I had just been thinking of how the Aegean sun
Must have lit up the faces of Troy’s fallen heroes
When you walked into my study
Without any clothes on—
Walked in and stood there,
Holding a glass of sherry
Over your left breast,
Which looked soft and firm as Brie.
Your tone of voice this morning
Should have warned me
That you might walk into my study
Without any clothes on.
I should have lashed myself to my chair
And stoppered my ears with wax.
But I forgot.
And I’m glad I forgot
Because when you walked into my study
Without any clothes on
You sang sweetly, sang sweetly,
And I died nobly, like a man.
~Robert Hass
Have a nice day. Have a memorable day.
Have (however unlikely) a life-changing day.
Have a day of soaking rain and lightning.
Have a confused day thinking about fate.
Have a day of wholes.
Have a day of poorly marked,
unrecognizable wholes you
cannot fathom.
Have a ferocious day, a bleak
unbearable day. Have a
riotously unproductive day;
a grim jaw-clenched, Clint Eastwood vengeful
law enforcement day.
Have a day of raging, hair-yanking
jealousy and meanness. Have a day
of almost grasping
how whole you are; a finely tuned,
empty day.
Have a nice day of walking and circling;
a day of stalking and hunting,
of planting strange seeds and wandering in the woods.
Have a day of endearing nonsense,
of hopelessly combing your hair,
a day of yielding, of swallowing
hard, breathing more deeply,
a day of fondness for beetles
and macabre spectacles, or irreverence
about anything you want, of just
sitting and wondering.
Have a day of wondering if it’s
going to help, or if it just doesn’t matter;
a day of dark winds
and torrents flowing though the valley,
of diving into cool water
and gasping for breath,
a day of sudden hunger for communion.
Have a day where the crusts you each
were given are lost and you stumble
with your fellows
searching endlessly together.
~Lou Lipsitz
I was satisfied with haiku until I met you,
jar of octopus, cuckoo’s cry, 5-7-5,
but now I want a Russian novel,
a 50-page description of you sleeping,
another 75 of what you think staring out
a window. I don’t care about the plot
although I suppose there will have to be one,
the usual separation of the lovers, turbulent
seas, danger of decommission in spite
of constant war, time in gulps and glitches
passing, squibs of threnody, a fallen nest,
speckled eggs somehow uncrushed, the sled
outracing the wolves on the steppes, the huge
glittering ball where all that matters
is a kiss at the end of a dark hall.
At dawn the officers ride back to the garrison,
one without a glove, the entire last chapter
about a necklace that couldn’t be worn
inherited by a great-niece
along with the love letters bound in silk.
~Dean Young
He comes every day to eat lunch and sit
with her in the sun room. Sometimes he reads
letters out loud from their children or friends;
sometimes he reads the paper as she sleeps.
One day the staff makes her favorite cake
to celebrate their anniversary,
and he tells how, to buy her ring, he worked
months of overtime at the factory,
so she thought he was seeing someone else.
“As if I would look at other women
when I have Pearl,” he says, shaking his head.
She begins to cry and tells him, “You’re sweet,
but I miss my husband.” He pats her hand.
“I know,” he says, “It’s all right. Try some cake.”
~Joseph Mills
