6 posts tagged “poetry”

we are always asked
to understand the other person's
viewpoint
no matter how
out-dated
foolish or
obnoxious.

one is asked
to view
their total error
their life-waste
with
kindliness,
especially if they are
aged.

but age is the total of
our doing.
they have aged
badly
because they have
lived
out of focus,
they have refused to
see.

not their fault?

whose fault?
mine?

I am asked to hide
my viewpoint
from them
for fear of their
fear.

age is no crime

but the shame
of a deliberately
wasted
life

among so many
deliberately
wasted
lives

is.

I'll probably be spending the rest of my day playing Dino Run, instead of researching the impact meat intake has on the environment and trying to memorize Middle English for Mrs. Carpenter. Why couldn't she have given us this assignment when the rest of her classes were learning it, too, so I could feel some sort of accomplishment instead of this dull sense of dread. Megan gave me her phonetic-spelling write up of all lines and it makes it seem less intimidating, but I still don't know how to pronounce some of it. I'm probably getting way too far ahead of myself because this is the second day that we've been trying to learn it and who can memorize something in two days? She hasn't even told us how to say half of it.

What am I even talking about? I had a good time last night with Jimmy and Aaron and Billy and Chuck. We're going to have more good times this weekend, I hope, and I'm really excited about getting dressed up for dinner on Saturday but it seems so far away. At least it's not Monday. But then again it could be Friday. I've been messing with photos on Flickr a lot today, too, outside of my dino running. I want to download the (pirated) version of Photoshop for OS X but I feel slightly guilty editing my photos. I mean, I want them to be honest and tell the whole story. I could easily manipulate them to force them to say exactly what I want them to say, but some of the beauty is in the personal interpretation. That sounds silly, doesn't it? A picture shows what is in a picture and that's what it is, right? Just looking through my photo library (there are seriously tons of things saved on my hard drive) I can remember what a specific photograph said to me at a certain point, but now it means something different. When I randomly explore things on Flickr, I see things from someone else's point of view.. but through my lens. But will editing a picture change that? No. It's still art, open to interpretation and criticism from others. What I'm saying is, personally, my integrity feels slightly challenged if I edit something a present it as the truth. It's different if it's going to be something I offer as fiction, or.. well, it's hard to get into words. Kinda like Addie Bundren, speaking from her coffin and saying words aren't enough. Someone needs to come up with a mental thought-transducer or something.. but that would be scary.

Flat Stanley

MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
    Yet this enjoys before it woo,
    And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
    And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
    Though use make you apt to kill me,
    Let not to that self-murder added be,
    And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

A woman tries to saw her leg off.
Before she can finish, she passes out.
She wakes up in the hospital, discovers
the leg's still there, makes
her next plan: railroad tracks, a train.

She doesn't want to die,
she wants to get rid of the leg,
which she hates. Nothing's wrong with it,
but when she looks in a mirror
the woman she sees has only one leg.

Nobody's shocked anymore to hear
about men who believe they're women,
women who need to be men.
Some people dream of themselves
without legs or arms. Some dream
of making love to those without legs
or arms. Some dream of watching.

Are these arguments against
the existence of God? Not if this
is what God likes to do—experiment
with the endless ways desire
can make us crazy. How easy it must be
to do that to people. Is there anything
someone hasn't wanted? So the woman

is happy to lie down in the dark
on the cold tracks, the train
blindly approaching—and then
the thought that really
this isn't going to work, and then

the voice she's heard once or twice before
tells her to be still, tells her
not to be afraid,
tells her she can hardly imagine
how beautiful she will be.

"Damage"
    -Lawrence Raab

The bonsai tree
in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,
It is your nature to be small and cozy,
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in.
With living creatures
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers
the hands you
love to touch.

"A Work of Artifice"
    -Marge Piercy

What is one of your favorite poems?
Submitted by marvel is my pen name.

There Will Come Soft Rains

There will come soft rains and the small of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

         -Sara Teasdale

Yeah, okay, I'm a closet environmentalist. Or maybe not-so-closeted.