#20 The Hurt - Nayyirah Waheed

The Hurt
Nayyirah Waheed

you
not wanting me
was
the beginning of me
wanting myself
thank you

#19 And The Days Are Not Long Enough - Ezra Pound

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
      Not shaking the grass. 

#18 I Will Keep You, Forever, In This Poem - Allie Frazier

It's been a year since I lost my best friend and I've finally realized now that I will never get him back. It's time to fully move on - sometimes, things don't come full circle. Sometimes, God's timeline for your life is vastly different than your own. Do you know that I completely stopped writing poetry while I was with him? He cocooned me somehow. 

So in this spirit, I present to you the only poem I ever wrote about him:

I Will Keep You, Forever, In This Poem

I promised I wouldn’t write a poem about

you 

but 

I got drunk and waded through your old voicemails.

I wasn’t strong enough to 

face them 

on my own. With whiskey-hot veins, I 

listen to your bullshit.

You coo to me from the past.

Your voice is soft and vulnerable, filled with 

tenderness. 

I want to crawl through the earpiece and hit you.

Call you on your bluffs

your dishonesty

these false futures

and lies of love

scream and yell and

interrupt you:

“Here is proof that you loved me, spoken from

the same lips that pressed and fluttered, 

moth-like,

against my skin at night.”

If I could, I would leave a message for my future self. 

No,  

not a message.

A warning -

“Prepare yourself, girl.

He’s about to destroy you,

Wake up in the middle of the night to realize

he doesn’t love you, he's no longer
drawn to you.

Move to kiss the back of your neck but stops.

He will cocoon you.

He will swaddle you in love and then flee you.

He will leave your heart tangled around something that 

never existed -

Just a smashed mosquito with your own blood in it.
Prepare.”

But now, all I do is listen. 

I delete them one by one.

They are crumpled love letters in a wastebasket 

that you couldn’t quite get right - 

Just practice for the

next one.

#17 - from "Book of Hours" I, 59 - Rainer Maria Rilke

A century ago, Rilke went on a spiritual journey to Russia and then wrote a book of love poems to God. This poem is really speaking to me right now - 

"Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final."

from "Book of Hours" section  I, 59

Rainer Maria Rilke

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

#16 Wild Geese - Mary Oliver

Wild Geese
Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

#15 - Those Winter Sundays - Robert Hayden

Dedicated to my Father, who sacrificed so much to provide for his family and make sure we could follow our own dreams. And who had to navigate taking care of two young motherless girls on his own for a year or two - Trials of how to clean a fresh ear piercing, how to answer our questions about our bodies, how to play dress up and paint nails, how to condition and brush knotted hair, all while waking up at 4 in the morning to commute into work at NASA in DC. No matter how tired he was or late he'd get home, he'd always have time to help us with our homework or to throw around a baseball. I have so much respect and love for this reserved man of faith that has taught me so many life lessons (and instilled in me a love for nature, taught me how to fish, raised me a tom-boy, and made sure I was raised to be thankful for everything I've been given!) Happy Father's Day! 

Those Winter Sundays
Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early 

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached 

from labor in the weekday weather made 

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. 
When the rooms were warm, he’d call, 
and slowly I would rise and dress, 
fearing the chronic angers of that house, 

Speaking indifferently to him, 
who had driven out the cold 
and polished my good shoes as well. 
What did I know, what did I know 
of love’s austere and lonely offices? 

#14 - [Sometimes I don't know if I'm having a feeling] - Matthew Siegal

How I'm feeling today:

[Sometimes I don’t know if I’m having a feeling]
Matthew Siegal

Sometimes I don’t know if I’m having a feeling
so I check my phone or squint at the window
with a serious look, like someone in a movie
or a mother thinking about how time passes.
Sometimes I’m not sure how to feel so I think
about a lot of things until I get an allergy attack.
I take my antihistamine with beer, thank you very much,
sleep like a cut under a band aid, wake up
on the stairs having missed the entire party.
It was a real blast, I can tell, for all the vases
are broken, the flowers twisted into crowns
for the young, drunk, and beautiful. I put one on
and salute the moon, the lone face over me
shining through the grates on the front door window.
You have seen me like this before, such a strange
version of the person you thought you knew.
Guess what, I’m strange to us both. It’s like
I’m not even me sometimes. Who am I? A question
for the Lord only to decide as She looks over
my résumé. Everything is different sometimes.
Sometimes there is no hand on my shoulder
but my room, my apartment, my body are containers
and I am thusly contained. How easy to forget
the obvious. The walls, blankets, sunlight, your love.

#13-- Poem for My Step-Mother - Allie Frazier

My step-mother is an incredibly strong, grounded, loving, and caring Christian woman. She thought she had finished raising children and had sent her two sons off to college, only to marry my father and inherit two very small girls that she lovingly raised like her own. She is brave, filled with wisdom, sensitive but strong, and has shaped me into a confident woman. This is an homage to her. 


Poem for My Step-Mother
Allie Frazier

She’d been around enough death to know
to clean his fridge out
when that young man from church
killed himself.

While others signed cards
and baked casseroles,
she entered the now-silent house with quivering hands,

her heart beat bursting like a beacon in the hush,
as she trashed the food he never intended
to finish.

She goes
where others can’t.
She does
what I am too weak to do.

------

Months after our breakup,
my ex's toothbrush still 
resiliently stood next to mine in the bathroom
we sometimes shared--

A sentinel of our old love.

To throw away meant I had given up,
and she knew I could never
let
him
go.

So
imagine my relief when,
on a sunny September visit home,
I entered our bathroom with
quivering hands and stinging eyes
only to discover

my toothbrush quietly standing alone;

the tiny murder I came to commit
having already been
done.

                                                                                                              -2011

#12 - April 16th, 2007 - Allie Frazier

For a few hours on this day 8 years ago, my family could not get a hold of my older sister, who studied at Virginia Tech and lived in the dorm that the first shooting took place and also took foreign language classes (where the second shooting happened.) This was the moment when I thought I had lost my sister forever. My family was lucky, but 32 others were not. Thinking about them all tonight.

 --------------

April 16th, 2007
Allie Frazier

In the few seconds it took me to read the text,
the lunchroom 

transformed.
The sharp sounds of hundreds of 
easy-breathing teens 
eating
morphed into a dull, quiet constant and 
as my friends continued silently 

speaking
laughing
living,

I 
was far removed in my frozen fear.

I could only think of the picture hanging on my grandparents' fridge--
Two sisters laughing from the coolness of an old tin bucket,
heavenly in the heat of a summer's day.
My older sister,
arm around me,
grinning up at the camera,

happy
living
breathing
but most importantly,

safe
within the old tin walls of time.
                                                                                                                                                -2009

#11 For Women Who Are Difficult to Love - Warsan Shire

Thank you to my dear friend, Bre, for introducing this incredible poem to me. So poignent in my life right now. I love this so much. The ending is just....... so so good. "you can't make homes out of human beings..."

For Women Who Are Difficult To Love

Warsan Shire

you are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable
every woman before or after you
is doused in your name
you fill his mouth
his teeth ache with memory of taste
his body just a long shadow seeking yours
but you are always too intense
frightening in the way you want him
unashamed and sacrificial
he tells you that no man can live up to the one who
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn’t you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him traveling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love

#10 i have found what you are like - e. e. cummings

i have found what you are like
the rain,

            (Who feathers frightened fields
with the superior dust-of-sleep. wields

easily the pale club of the wind
and swirled justly souls of flower strike

the air in utterable coolness

deeds of green thrilling light
                                  with thinned

newfragile yellows

                      lurch and.press

—in the woods
                      which
                              stutter
                                        and

                                              sing
And the coolness of your smile is
stirringofbirds between my arms;but
i should rather than anything
have(almost when hugeness will shut
quietly)almost,
                  your kiss

#9 Tiny Deaths - Allie Frazier

Tiny Deaths
Allie Frazier

The edges of my heart are
curling into you,
not with love
but with

ash.

Blackened embers of
your hands,
your skin,
your lips,

slowly burning,
painful.

My heart is purging itself of you--
sacrificing what was once beloved and holy
to the flames.

I will not emerge from these ashes,
graceful,
as a phoenix.

I will not, like dust, rise.

But I will, instead,
turn, into myself,
and press these ashes down,
internalize them
harden
pressurize
calcify, fossilize them

cup them in my strong palms and
squeeze
until nothing of you remains.

Just a cold, clear, hard diamond,
and in it,
reflected each time more beautiful than the last,

will be only me.

- 2014

#8 i like my body when it is with your - e. e. cummings

e. e. cummings is another favorite poet of mine. He famously did not title any of his poems, so they always are titled by the first line of the poem. One of my favorite love poems. So vivid. I especially love the terms "shocking fuzz of your electric furr" and "And eyes big love-crumbs," -- just brilliant.


i like my body when it is with your
e. e. cummings

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body.  i like what it does,
i like its hows.  i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones,and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric furr, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh….And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new

#7 Dancing Toward Bethlehem - Billy Collins

Billy Collins literally started my love affair with poetry. He's the most easily accessibly, witty, and entertaining contemporary poet out there, in my opinion. In 9th grade, my Governor's School teacher, knowing I dabbled in poetry, gave me a project involving Collin's Poetry 180 , an initiative where 1 hand-selected poem is read in high school English classes each day. I fell in love with Collin's and his humor-- he reminds me of David Sedaris. 

 

This poem is a reference to a famous poem written by Yeats at the turn of the 20th century, when WWI was imminent and the younger generation was prepping for their first experience with death and destruction. Read it here. 

 

Collins wrote this poem at the turn of the 21st century, when there was talk of the Y2K happening, etc. A beautifully written love poem.

Dancing Toward Bethlehem
by Billy Collins

 

If there is only enough time in the final
minutes of the twentieth century for one last dance
I would like to be dancing it slowly with you,

say, in the ballroom of a seaside hotel.
My palm would press into the small of your back
as the past hundred years collapsed into a pile
of mirrors or buttons or frivolous shoes,

just as the floor of the nineteenth century gave way
and disappeared in a red cloud of brick dust.
There will be no time to order another drink
or worry about what was never said,

not with the orchestra sliding into the sea
and all our attention devoted to humming
whatever it was they were playing.

#6 excerpt from The Walls Do Not Fall -- H.D.

This is a poem about walking through a war-torn city (that she compares to the Egyptian ruins at the beginning in case you are confused), where the buildings have been torn open and bombed, but yet, the frames still held. It's another poem about strength in the midst of struggle and pain. 

My favorite kind.

-----------------------------------
excerpt from
The Walls Do Not Fall
H.D.

1.

An incident here and there,
and rails gone (for guns)
from your (and my) old town square:
mist and mist-grey, no colour,
still the Luxor bee, chick and hare
pursue unalterable purpose
in green, rose-red, lapis;
they continue to prophesy
from the stone papyrus:
there, as here, ruin opens
the tomb, the temple; enter,
there as here, there are no doors:
the shrine lies open to the sky,
the rain falls here, there
sand drifts; eternity endures:
ruin everywhere, yet as the fallen roof
leaves the sealed room
open to the air,
so, through our desolation,
thoughts stir, inspiration stalks us
through gloom:
unaware, Spirit announces the Presence;
shivering overtakes us,
as of old, Samuel:
trembling at a known street-corner,
we know not nor are known;
the Pythian pronounces—we pass on
to another cellar, to another sliced wall
where poor utensils show
like rare objects in a museum;
Pompeii has nothing to teach us,
we know crack of volcanic fissure,
slow flow of terrible lava,
pressure on heart, lungs, the brain
about to burst its brittle case
(what the skull can endure!):
over us, Apocryphal fire,
under us, the earth sway, dip of a floor,
slope of a pavement
where men roll, drunk
with a new bewilderment,
sorcery, bedevilment:
the bone-frame was made for
no such shock knit within terror,
yet the skeleton stood up to it:
the flesh? it was melted away,
the heart burnt out, dead ember,
tendons, muscles shattered, outer husk dismembered,
yet the frame held:
we passed the flame: we wonder
what saved us? what from?

#5 Sheltered Garden -- H.D.

This is a poem about true beauty and strength coming out of struggle and pain, in the metaphor of well-manicured gardens vs. wind-torn, wild forests. This poem gets me every time: "let them cling, ripen of themselves, / test their own worth..."-- words to live by for sure.



Sheltered Garden
H.D.

I have had enough.
I gasp for breath,

Every way ends, every road,
every foot-path leads at last
to the hill-crest--
then you retrace your steps,
or find the same slope on the other side,
precipitate.

I have had enough--
border-pinks, clove-pinks, wax-lilies,
herbs, sweet-cress.

O for some sharp swish of a branch--
there is no scent of resin
in this place,
no taste of bark, of coarse weeds,
aromatic, astringent--
only border on border of scented pinks.

Have you seen fruit under cover
that wanted light--
pears wadded in cloth,
protected from the frost,
melons, almost ripe,
smothered in straw?

Why not let the pears cling
to the empty branch?
All your coaxing will only make
a bitter fruit--
let them cling, ripen of themselves,
test their own worth,
nipped, shrivelled by the frost,
to fall at last but fair
With a russet coat.

Or the melon--
let it bleach yellow
in the winter light,
even tart to the taste--
it is better to taste of frost--
the exquisite frost--
than of wadding and of dead grass.

For this beauty,
beauty without strength,
chokes out life.
I want wind to break,
scatter these pink-stalks,
snap off their spiced heads,
fling them about with dead leaves--
spread the paths with twigs,
limbs broken off,
trail great pine branches,
hurled from some far wood
right across the melon-patch,
break pear and quince--
leave half-trees, torn, twisted
but showing the fight was valiant.

O to blot out this garden
to forget, to find a new beauty
in some terrible
wind-tortured place.