#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.