30 Dec: "Tasting the Earth" by James Oppenheim

In a dark hour, tasting the Earth.

As I lay on my couch in the muffled night, and the rain lashed my window,
And my forsaken heart would give me no rest, no pause and no peace,
Though I turned my face far from the wailing of my bereavement....
Then I said: I will eat of this sorrow to its last shred,
I will take it unto me utterly,
I will see if I be not strong enough to contain it....
What do I fear? Discomfort?
How can it hurt me, this bitterness?

The miracle, then!
Turning toward it, and giving up to it,
I found it deeper than my own self....
O dark great mother-globe so close beneath me...
It was she with her inexhaustible grief,
Ages of blood-drenched jungles, and the smoking of craters, and the roar of tempests,
And moan of the forsaken seas,
It was she with the hills beginning to walk in the shapes of the dark-hearted animals,
It was she risen, dashing away tears and praying to dumb skies, in the pomp-crumbling tragedy of man...
It was she, container of all griefs, and the buried dust of broken hearts,

Cry of the christs and the lovers and the child-stripped mothers,
And ambition gone down to defeat, and the battle overborne,
And the dreams that have no waking....

My heart became her ancient heart:
On the food of the strong I fed, on dark strange life itself:
Wisdom-giving and sombre with the unremitting love of ages....

There was dank soil in my mouth,
And bitter sea on my lips,
In a dark hour, tasting the Earth.

29 Dec: "To Be Alive" by Gregory Orr

To be alive: not just the carcass
But the spark.
That's crudely put, but…
If we're not supposed to dance,
Why all this music?


28 Dec: "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

27 Dec: "This Be The Verse" by Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
  They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
  And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
  By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
  And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
  It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
  And don't have any kids yourself.

23 Dec: " Locals" by James Lasdun

They peopled landscapes casually like trees,
being there richly, never having gone there,
and whether clanning in cities or village-thin stands
were reticent as trees with those not born there,
and their fate, like trees, was seldom in their hands.

Others to them were always one of two
evils: the colonist or refugee.
They stared back, half disdaining us, half fearing;
inferring from our looks their destiny
as preservation or as clearing.

I envied them. To be local was to know
which team to support: the local team;
where to drop in for a pint with mates: the local;
best of all to feel by birthright welcome
anywhere; be everywhere a local...

Bedouin-Brython-Algonquins; always there
before you; the original prior claim
that made your being anywhere intrusive.
There, doubtless, in Eden before Adam
wiped them out and settled in with Eve.

Whether at home or away, whether kids
playing or saying what they wanted,
or adults chatting, waiting for a bus,
or, in their well-tended graves, the contented dead,
there were always locals, and they were never us.

20 Dec: "Devotion" by Robert Frost

The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to ocean -
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.

17 Dec: "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats



    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.
    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

15 Dec: "Muir Song" from Janssen Powers

Muir Song from Janssen Powers on Vimeo.


The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls…

We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us. …thrilling with the air and trees, streams and rocks, in the waves of the sun,—a part of all nature, neither old nor young, sick nor well, but immortal.

…and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love.

14 Dec: "The Lamp of Mutual Aid" by Joshua Edwards

13 Dec: "Imaginary Book" by Julien Poirier

12 Dec: "Soonest Mended" by John Ashbery


Barely tolerated, living on the margin
In our technological society, we were always having to be rescued   
On the brink of destruction, like heroines in Orlando Furioso
Before it was time to start all over again.
There would be thunder in the bushes, a rustling of coils,   
And Angelica, in the Ingres painting, was considering
The colorful but small monster near her toe, as though wondering whether forgetting
The whole thing might not, in the end, be the only solution.   
And then there always came a time when
Happy Hooligan in his rusted green automobile
Came plowing down the course, just to make sure everything was O.K.,   
Only by that time we were in another chapter and confused   
About how to receive this latest piece of information.   
Was it information? Weren’t we rather acting this out   
For someone else’s benefit, thoughts in a mind
With room enough and to spare for our little problems (so they began to seem),
Our daily quandary about food and the rent and bills to be paid?   
To reduce all this to a small variant,
To step free at last, minuscule on the gigantic plateau—
This was our ambition: to be small and clear and free.   
Alas, the summer’s energy wanes quickly,
A moment and it is gone. And no longer
May we make the necessary arrangements, simple as they are.   
Our star was brighter perhaps when it had water in it.   
Now there is no question even of that, but only
Of holding on to the hard earth so as not to get thrown off,   
With an occasional dream, a vision: a robin flies across   
The upper corner of the window, you brush your hair away
And cannot quite see, or a wound will flash
Against the sweet faces of the others, something like:   
This is what you wanted to hear, so why
Did you think of listening to something else? We are all talkers   
It is true, but underneath the talk lies
The moving and not wanting to be moved, the loose
Meaning, untidy and simple like a threshing floor.

These then were some hazards of the course,
Yet though we knew the course was hazards and nothing else   
It was still a shock when, almost a quarter of a century later,   
The clarity of the rules dawned on you for the first time.   
They were the players, and we who had struggled at the game   
Were merely spectators, though subject to its vicissitudes
And moving with it out of the tearful stadium, borne on shoulders, at last.
Night after night this message returns, repeated
In the flickering bulbs of the sky, raised past us, taken away from us,   
Yet ours over and over until the end that is past truth,   
The being of our sentences, in the climate that fostered them,   
Not ours to own, like a book, but to be with, and sometimes   
To be without, alone and desperate.
But the fantasy makes it ours, a kind of fence-sitting
Raised to the level of an esthetic ideal. These were moments, years,   
Solid with reality, faces, namable events, kisses, heroic acts,   
But like the friendly beginning of a geometrical progression
Not too reassuring, as though meaning could be cast aside some day   
When it had been outgrown. Better, you said, to stay cowering   
Like this in the early lessons, since the promise of learning   
Is a delusion, and I agreed, adding that
Tomorrow would alter the sense of what had already been learned,   
That the learning process is extended in this way, so that from this standpoint
None of us ever graduates from college,
For time is an emulsion, and probably thinking not to grow up   
Is the brightest kind of maturity for us, right now at any rate.
And you see, both of us were right, though nothing
Has somehow come to nothing; the avatars
Of our conforming to the rules and living
Around the home have made—well, in a sense, “good citizens” of us,   
Brushing the teeth and all that, and learning to accept
The charity of the hard moments as they are doled out,
For this is action, this not being sure, this careless
Preparing, sowing the seeds crooked in the furrow,
Making ready to forget, and always coming back
To the mooring of starting out, that day so long ago.

11 Dec: "But What Is the Reader to Make of This?" by John Ashbery


10 Dec: "Wakefulness" by John Ashbery

An immodest little white wine, some scattered seraphs,
recollections of the Fall—tell me,
has anyone made a spongier representation, chased
fewer demons out of the parking lot
where we all held hands?

Little by little the idea of the true way returned to me.
I was touched by your care,
reduced to fawning excuses.
Everything was spotless in the little house of our desire,
the clock ticked on and on, happy about
being apprenticed to eternity. A gavotte of dust motes
came to replace my seeing. Everything was as though
it had happened long ago
in ancient peach-colored funny papers
wherein the law of true opposites was ordained
casually. Then the book opened by itself
and read to us: “You pack of liars,
of course tempted by the crossroads, but I like each
and every one of you with a peculiar sapphire intensity.
Look, here is where I failed at first.
The client leaves. History natters on,
rolling distractedly on these shores. Each day, dawn
condenses like a very large star, bakes no bread,
shoes the faithless. How convenient if it’s a dream.”

In the next sleep car was madness.
An urgent languor installed itself
as far as the cabbage-hemmed horizons. And if I put a little
bit of myself in this time, stoppered the liquor that is our selves’
truant exchanges, brandished my intentions
for once? But only I get
something out of this memory.
A kindly gnome
of fear perched on my dashboard once, but we had all
been instructed
to ignore the conditions of the chase. Here, it
seems to grow lighter with each passing century. No matter
how you twist it,
life stays frozen in the headlights.
Funny, none of us heard the roar.

9 Dec: “They Knew What They Wanted” by John Ashbery

THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED

They all kissed the bride.
They all laughed.
They came from beyond space.
They came by night.

They came to a city.
They came to blow up America.
They came to rob Las Vegas.
They dare not love.

They died with their boots on.
They shoot horses, don’t they?
They go boom.
They got me covered.

They flew alone.
They gave him a gun.
They just had to get married.
They live. They loved life.

They live by night.
They drive by night.
They knew Mr Knight.
They were expendable.

They met in Argentina.
They met in Bombay.
They met in the dark.
They might be giants.

They made me a fugitive.
They made me a criminal.
They only kill their masters.
They shall have music.

They were sisters.
They still call me Bruce.
They won’t believe me.
They won’t forget.

6 Dec: "The Harper's Song for Inherkhawy" by someone in ancient Egypt

The poem below is from a tomb dating back to 1160 B.C. It is an excerpt translated by J.L. Foster, author unknown.
 

"The Harper's Song for Inherkhawy"

So seize the day! hold holiday!
Be unwearied, unceasing, alive
you and your own true love;
Let not the heart be troubled during your
sojourn on Earth,
but seize the day as it passes!

5 Dec: "Lying Litteration" by Jimmy Nameles

I lie lazy and lonely.
Laying the laptop alongside the lamp,
I lied.

Lighting striking, laughing I laid you down.
Living loathly where you lay luminating love.
The first lethal elaboration, I had lied.

Longing I've lain with lots of lovers.
Lust lays left and right leaving lapses in time.
Lying leaves lasting lacerations.

I have laid the last memory,
Us lying in Longview. Locked in the medial lateral lobe,
I lie.

3 Dec: "June 11 Sir John Franklin" by Lord Alfred Tennyson

I came across this poem at The Fram Museum - Home of the world's strongest polar vessel. Fridtjof Nansen, (1861-1930) one of Norway's greatest, became a legend. He was a first among sportsmen, explorers, research workers, statesmen and humanitarians. Long after his death millions continued to remember him as the foremost exponent of human compas­sion. He liked poetry, and especially Lord Tennyson, so that is why this poem is in the museum. The poem is more meaningful after learning about these wild adventures to the north pole.


Not here:
The white North
has thy bones;
and thou.
Heroic sailor-soul,
Art passing on thine happier voyage now
Toward no earthly pole.

2 Dec: "The Rose that Grew from Concrete" by Tupac Shukur

Did you hear about the rose that grew
from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's law is wrong it
learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams,
it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else ever cared.

1 Dec: "This We Have Now" by Rumi

This we have now
is not imagination.

This is not grief,
or joy, not a judging state,
or an elation, or a sadness.

Those come and go.
This is the presence
that doesn't.

It's dawn, Husam,
here is the splendor of coral,
inside the Friend, in the simple truth
of what Hallaj said.

What else could human beings want?
When grapes turn to wine,
they're wanting this.
When the night sky pours by,
it's really a crowd of beggars,
and they all want some of this.

This we are now
created the body, cell by cell,
like bees building a honeycomb.

The human body and the universe
grew from this, not this
from the universe and the human body.


*translated by Coleman Barks

30 Nov: "The Old Wisdom" by Jane Goodall


When the night wind makes the pine trees creak
And the pale clouds glide across the dark sky,
Go out my child, go out and seek
Your soul: The Eternal I.


For all the grasses rustling at your feet
And every flaming star that glitters high
Above you, close up and meet
In you: The Eternal I.


Yes, my child, go out into the world; walk slow
And silent, comprehending all, and by and by
Your soul, the Universe, will know
Itself: the Eternal I.


29 Nov: "Reflection" by Jimmy Nameles

Beautiful, smart, dark…

It didn't take long to acquirer your bittersweetness.
You stimulated me, and left me sleepless.
Is there a God? Is there a purpose?

Among friends, I played it cool- pretended,
While you played the witness.
You didn’t care about her;
That I always thought of her;
Didn't care I’d’ve left you for her;
If she'd've taken me back.

You knew she wouldn't.

Before after her, I never noticed.
You were always there, always down.
Now I know this.

After a few, I thought there'd be no end.
What we did,
we did as one,
I won.

Reflection, my dear,
By any other name,
You’d be the same:

Beautiful, smart, dark...

28 Nov: "Key to the Highway" by Mark Halliday

Key To The Highway

I remember riding somewhere in a fast car
with my brother and his friend Jack Brooks
and we were listening to Layla & Other Love Songs
by Derek & the Dominos. The night was dark,
dark all along the highway. Jack Brooks was 
a pretty funny guy, and I was delighted
by the comradely interplay between him and my brother,
but I tried not to show it for fear of inhibiting them.
I tried to be reserved and maintain a certain
dignity appropriate to my age, older by four years.
They knew the Dominos album well having played the cassette
many times, and they knew how much they liked it.
As we rode on in the dark I felt the music was,
after all, wonderful, and I said so
with as much dignity as possible. "That's right,"
said my brother. "You're getting smarter," said Jack.
We were listening to "Bell Bottom Blues"
at that moment. Later we were listening to
"Key to the Highway", and I remembered how
my brother said, "Yeah, yeah." And Jack sang
one of the lines in a way that made me laugh.
I am upset by the fact that that night is so absolutely gone.
No, "upset" is too strong. Or is it.
But that night is so obscure—until now
I may not have thought of that ride once
in eight years—and this obscurity troubles me.
Death is going to defeat us all so easily.
Jack Brooks is in Florida, I believe,
and I may never see him again, which is
more or less all right with me; he and my brother
lost touch some years ago. I wonder
where we were going that night. I don't know;
but it seemed as if we had the key to the highway.
—Mark Halliday

27 Nov: "Dutch Boy" by Doug Dorph

To one side, the North Sea like lead,
to the other, tulips, too bright, too colorful,
and your finger hurts. You are tied
to the big belly of the dike, your finger
a reverse umbilicus that sucks the boyish
into responsible sea. My complaint concerns
childhood, the premature loss thereof.
Mother, from under one of her headaches, told me - cook dinner:
fish sticks, spaghetti sauce,
beef Wellington, hummingbird's tongue under glass.
How did I know we wouldn't wash away
like silt in the burst? The Provider,
the Protector, the Pleaser, Good Boy - 
it's ingrained like the fat that marbles 
choice beef. But there's no choice.
When the gloomy sea threatens, you're there
with your trusty finger. The bicycle lies forlorn
on the gravel bicycle path in the shadow of the dike.
The family windmill is brittle and blue as a scene on a plate.
Yet your other hand, the one with the free digit,
reaches for the painted flower heads
bobbing in their painted flowerbeds.

26 Nov: "Caelica - Sonnet 2" by Fulke, 1st Baron Brooke Greville

Death used to be a sexual euphemisms for orgasms in the Renaissance era.

Faire Dog, which so my heart dost teare asunder,
That my liues-blood, my bowels ouerfloweth,
Alas, what wicked rage conceal'st thou vnder
These sweet enticing ioyes, thy forehead showeth?
Me, whom the light-wing'd God of long hath chased,
Thou hast attain'd, thou gau'st that fatall wound,
Which my soules peacefull innocence hath rased,
And reason to her seruant humour bound.

Kill therefore in the end, and end my anguish,
Give me my death, me thinks euen time vpbraideth
A fulnesse of the woes, wherein I languish:
Or if thou wilt I liue, then pittie pleadeth
Helpe out of thee, since Nature hath reuealed,
That with thy tongue thy bytings may be healed.

25 Nov: "Loyal" by William Matthews

They gave him an overdose
of anesthetic, and its fog
shut down his heart in seconds.
I tried to hold him, but he was 
somewhere else. For so much of love
one of the principals is missing,
it's no wonder we confuse love
with longing. Oh I was thick 
with both. I wanted my dog
to live forever and while I was
working on impossibilities
I wanted to live forever, too.
I wanted company and to be alone.
I wanted to know how they trash
a stiff ninety-five-pound dog
and I paid them to do it
and not tell me. What else?
I wanted a letter of apology
delivered by decrepit hand,
by someone shattered for each time
I'd had to eat pure pain. I wanted
to weep, not "like a baby,"
in gulps and breath-stretching
howls, but steadily, like an adult,
according to the fiction
that there is work to be done,
and almost inconsolably.

24 Nov: "I never saw a discontented tree" by John Muir

I never saw a discontented tree. 
They grip the ground 
as though they liked it, 
and though fast rooted 
they travel about as far as we do.


23 Nov: "Sonnets from the Portuguese 1" by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING


I thought once how Theocritus had sung 
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished for years, 
Who each one in a gracious hand appears 
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young: 
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue, 
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, 
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, 
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung 
A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware, 
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move 
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair, 
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove, ... 
Guess now who holds thee?'—Death,' I said. But there, 
The silver answer rang ... Not Death, but Love.'

22 Nov: "Love has nothing to do with the five senses" by Rumi

Love has nothing to do with
the five senses and the six directions:
its goal is only to experience
the attraction exerted by the Beloved.
Afterwards, perhaps, permission
will come from God:
the secrets that ought to be told with be told
with an eloquence nearer to the understanding
that these subtle confusing allusions.
The secret is partner with none
but the knower of the secret:
in the skeptic's ear
the secret is no secret at all.

-Rumi

I found a problem with the second "with" in the seventh line, so I looked up the poem. I found another translation/version.


Love has nothing to do with
the five senses and the six directions:
its goal is only to experience
the attraction exerted by the Beloved.
Afterwards, perhaps, permission
will come from God:
the secrets that ought to be told will be told
with an eloquence nearer to the understanding
of these subtle confusing allusions.
The secret is partner with none
but the knower of the secret:
in the skeptic's ear
the secret is no secret at all. 

21 Nov: "I dwell in possibility" by Emily Dickinson

I dwell in possibility,
A fairer house than prose,
More numerous of windows,
Superior for doors.

Of chambers as the cedars,
Impregnable of eye.
And for an everlasting roof
The gambrels of the sky.

Of visitors, the fairest.
For occupation, this:
The spreading wide my narrow hands
To gather paradise.


20 Nov: "Forgotten Planet" by Doug Dorph

"Forgotten Planet" by Doug Dorph

I ask my daughter to name the planets.
"Venus ...Mars ...and Plunis!" she says.
When I was six or seven my father
woke me in the middle of the night.
We went down to the playground and lay
on our backs on the concrete looking up
for the meteors the tv said would shower.

I don't remember any meteors. I remember
my back pressed to the planet Earth,
my father's bulk like gravity next to me,
the occasional rumble from his throat,
the apartment buildings dark-windowed,
the sky close enough to poke with my finger.

Now, knowledge erodes wonder.
The niggling voce reminds me that the sun
does shine on the dark side of the moon.
My daughter's ignorance is my bliss.
Through her eyes I spy like a voyeur.

I travel in a rocket ship to the planet Plunis.
On Plunis I no longer long for the past.
On Plunis there are actual surprises.
On Plunis I am happy.

19 Nov:"Heat" by Michael Chitwood


Old Scratch or Mr. Scratch is a name of the Devil, chiefly in Southern US English. The name likely continues Middle English scrat, the name of a demon or goblin, derived from Old Norse skratte.

"Heat" by Michael Chitwood

A Coke bottle stopped
with a sprinkle head
sat at one end of the board.
She'd swap iron for bottle,
splash the cloth,
then go at it with the iron.
The crooked was made straight,
the wrinkled smooth,
and she'd lecture from that altar
where rumpled sheets went crisp.
"If Old Scratch gets his claws
in your thigh or neck,
you burn a thousand years
and that is the first day."
Our clothes got rigid,
seam matched seam.
Our bodies would ruin her work.

18 Aug: "Caelica - Sonnet 1" by Fulke, 1st Baron Brooke Greville

Caelica (feminine, caelicus masculine, neuter caelicum) adjective is latin for celestial, heavenly; magnificent

In case you missed AJ's comment on Day 1. Caelica is a series of poems written between three friends, Fluke Greville, Phillip Sydney, and Edward Dyer. The poems are sequenced sonnets in response to each other's poems. The main theme throughout Caelica is soul-struggle. Sydney writes to a mistress Stella while Greville dedicates his poems to the sky (Caelica). For fullest understanding we should read these poems in their sonnet sequences, but since this is the first sonnet of the series, we should be good. When the narrator speak of "her" below he is personifying the sky/heavens.

"Caelica - Sonnet 1" by Fulke, 1st Baron Brooke Greville

Love, the delight of all well-thinking minds, 
Delight, the fruit of virtue dearly loved, 
Virtue, the highest good that reason finds, 
Reason, the fire wherein men's thoughts be proved, 
      Are from the world by nature's power bereft, 
      And in one creature for her glory left. 

Beauty her cover is, the eye's true pleasure; 
In honour's fame she lives, the ear's sweet music; 
Excess of wonder grows from her true measure; 
Her worth is passion's wound and passion's physic; 
     From her true heart clear springs of wisdom flow, 
     Which, imaged in her words and deeds, men know. 

Time fain would stay that she might never leave her, 
Place doth rejoice that she must needs contain her, 
Death craves of heaven that she may not bereave her, 
The heavens know their own and do maintain her. 
     Delight, Love, Reason, Virtue, let it be 
     To set all women light but only she.



bereave/bereft- deprive/deprived
fain- (adj) pleased; (adv) with pleasure
"set light" to something- to burn it down.



resource for info and poem here.

17 Nov: "Dandelion" by Julie Lechevsky

My science teacher said 
there are no monographs
on the dandelion.

Unlike the Venus fly-trap
or Calopogon pulchellus,
it is not a plant worthy of scrutiny.

It goes on television
between the poison squirt bottles,
during commercial breakaways from Ricki Lake.

But that's how life
parachutes
to my home.

Home, 
where they make you do
what you don't want to do.

Moms with Uzis of reproach,
dads with their silencers.
(My parents watch me closely because I am their jewel.)

So no one knows how strong
a dandelion is inside,
how its parts stick together,
bract, involucre, pappus,
how it clings to its fragile self.

There are 188 florets in a bloom,
which might seem a peculiar number,
but there are 188,000 square feet
in the perfectly proportioned Wal-Mart,
which allows for circulation
without getting lost.

I wish I could grow like a dandelion,
from gold to thin white hair,
and be carried on a breeze
to the next yard.

14 Nov: "Unconditional Day" by Julie Lechevsky

At 13 they brought me on television
to tell of my first love
under the bleachers.
I thought it was the real thing.
And the country shared it the way
they share candy on Halloween,
when I could dress up in anything as anyone,
and strangers would open their doors,
bending kindly to ask, Who are you?

Sometimes I'd say,
I am a Dallas Cheerleader!
or The Wicked Witch of the West!
I was myself one evening every year
from six to eight o'clock,
as the orange lanterns gleamed
on my claws, my beak, my fangs,
or my star, my wand, my slippers.

Halloween was the perfect holiday.
No songs about snow and families,
no creamed onions or long, fantastic graces,
no football games I had to watch in the yard,
just a night of flowing capes and almond eye slits,
of makeup without quarrels,
and sheets without memories.
Mother would slave over my costume
as though I was a turkey dinner for my uncles.
After a while, only my dog could recognize me.

Even now, nineteen, I go out,
gaudy with ugliness and streaming with beauty.
the doors are opened and I feel
I could not have turned out better.

13 Nov: "Mentor" by Timothy Murphy

"Mentor"

For Robert Francis
Had I known, only known
when I lived so near,
I'd have gone, gladly gone
foregoing my fear
of the wholly grown
and the nearly great.
But I learned alone,
so I learned too late.


12 Nov: "Herd Of Buffalo Crossing The Missouri On Ice" by William Matthews

If dragonflies can mate atop the surface tension
of water, surely these tons of bison can mince
across the river, their fur peeling in strips like old

wallpaper, their huge eyes adjusting to how far
they can see when there's no big or little bluestem,
no Indian grass nor prairie cord grass to plod through.

Maybe because it's bright in the blown snow
and swirling grit, their vast heads are lowered
to the gray ice: nothing to eat, little to smell.

They have their own currents. You could watch a herd
of running pronghorn swerve like a river rounding
a meander and see better what I mean. But

bison are a deeper, deliberate water, and there will 
never be enough water for any West but the one
into which we watch these bison carefully disappear.

11 Nov: Sonnet II "But only three in all God's universe..." by Elizabeth Barrett Browning


But only three in all God's universe
Have heard this word thou hast said,---Himself, beside
Thee speaking, and me listening! and replied
One of us . . . that was God, . . . and laid the curse
So darkly on my eyelids, as to amerce
My sight from seeing thee,---that if I had died,
The deathweights, placed there, would have signified
Less absolute exclusion. 'Nay' is worse
From God than from all others, O my friend!
Men could not part us with their worldly jars,
Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend;
Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars:
And, heaven being rolled between us at the end,
We should but vow the faster for the stars.

9 Nov: "The Blind Men and the Elephant" by John Godfrey Saxe

John Godfrey Saxe's ( 1816-1887) version of the famous Indian legend


It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approach'd the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
"God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!"

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, -"Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!"

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a snake!"

The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
"What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain," quoth he,
"'Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!"

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!"

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Then, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a rope!"

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

8 Nov: "Legs" by Mark Halliday

In the last year of my marriage,
among a hundred other symptoms I wrote a poem called
"The Woman across the Shaft"—she was someone
I never met—she had long bare legs
on a summer night when she answered the phone
in her kitchen and lifted her legs to the table
while she talked and laughed and I tried to listen
from my window across an airshaft between buildings
and watched her legs. I doubt she was beautiful
but her legs were young and long
and she laughed on the phone

while I sat in my dark of dissolving faith

and I tried to capture or contain the unknown woman
in a poem: the real and the ideal,
the mess of frayed bonds versus untouched possibility,
so forth. Embarrassed now
I imagine a female editor
who received "The Woman across the Shaft"
as a submission to her magazine—the distaste she felt—
perhaps disgust she felt—I imagine her
grimacing slightly as she considers writing "Pathetic"
on the rejection slip but instead lets the slip stay blank
and then returns to another envelope
from a writer she has learned to trust,
crossing her long legs on her smart literary desk.

7 Nov: "Forgiving Buckner" by John Hodgen

The world is always rolling between our legs.
It comes for us, dribbler, slow roller,
humming its goat song, easy as pie.

We spit in our gloves, bend our stiff knees,
keep it in front of us, our fathers' advice,
but we miss it every time, its physic, its science,
and it bleeds on through, blue streak, heart sore,
to the four-leaf clovers deep in right field.

The runner scores, knight in white armor,
the others out leaping, bumptious, gladhanding,
your net come up empty, Jonah again.
Even the dance of the dead won't come near you,
heart in your throat, holy of holies,
the oh of your mouth as the stone rolls away,
as if it had come from before you were born
to roll past your life to the end of the world,
till the world comes around again, gathering steam,
heading right for us again and again,
faith of our fathers, world without end.

6 Nov: "The Good-Morrow" by John Donne

Donne from the "Whispers of Mortality." This wasn't from the book I read, but it relates to the last two poems. He is a metaphysical poet. Metaphysical poetry was a literary movement in the 1600s. Poets shifted how they expressed themselves. They used exaggerated and grotesque comparisons, often regarding love, religion, and death. Their investigations were through witty and rational discussions versus mystical expressions. A key literary device used by the metaphysical poets was conceits which are symbols beyond their meaning into philosophical symbols. In one sentence, metaphysical poets used crazy metaphors to investigate love, death, and religion in a rational and philosophical manner.


I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

5 Nov: "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell

4 Nov: "Whispers of Immortality" by T. S. Eliot

Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.

Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.

Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense,
To seize and clutch and penetrate;
Expert beyond experience,

He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.
                         .  .  .  .  .

Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye
Is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.

The couched Brazilian jaguar
Compels the scampering marmoset
With subtle effluence of cat;
Grishkin has a maisonnette;

The sleek Brazilian jaguar
Does not in its arboreal gloom
Distil so rank a feline smell
As Grishkin in a drawing-room.

And even the Abstract Entities
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm.