poetry
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The Socks in a Box
You are viewing stuff tagged with poetry.
Essie recites The Night Before Christmas based on her memory of our reading it to her.
Ira Glass’s Favorite Part of David Rakoff’s Last Writings - The Atlantic:
It was sadness that gripped him, far more than the fear
That, if facing the truth, he had maybe a year.
When poetic phrases like “eyes, look your last”
Become true, all you want is to stay, to hold fast.
A new, fierce attachment to all of this world
Now pierced him, it stabbed like a deity-hurled
Lightning bolt lancing him, sent from above,
Left him giddy and tearful. It felt like young love.
He’d thought of himself as uniquely proficient
At seeing, but now that sense felt insufficient.
He wanted to grab, to possess, to devour
To eat with his eyes, how he needed that power.
Not too long ago, while Mykala was driving us to Ikea, I was watching spring out the window of the car. For the first time, while admiring the buds, I caught myself thinking about the autumn coming later this year. Caught me off-guard, and I felt old. A poem seemed appropriate. So, more bad poetry, a blessedly rare occurrence here:
And it was only at day’s end
Upon hearing joy in her laughter
That the sting of the day
Healed to a scar
An interesting snippet I saw today in a wonderful illustrated piece in the Times about Thomas Jefferson:
Time wastes too fast: every letter
I trace tells me with what rapidity life follows my pen. The days and hours
of it are flying over our heads like clouds of a windy day never to return
And now, some real poetry. SCENE III. A room in PETRUCHIO’S house.:
Well, come, my Kate; we will unto your father’s
Even in these honest mean habiliments:
Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor;
For ‘tis the mind that makes the body rich;
And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds,
So honour peereth in the meanest habit.
What is the jay more precious than the lark,
Because his fathers are more beautiful?
Or is the adder better than the eel,
Because his painted skin contents the eye?
Some might say
We’d be better off searching
For an eternity of happiness
Wading through the detritus of our own minds
I would posit the opposite
That, seizing that which
Presents itself to us
Brings us home
To hear the earth-shattering chord
Is to hear nothing at all
For the power of it springs from within
A great Minnesota poet died recently. His name was Bill Holm. Alas, I did not know of him until after his death, when I heard a wonderful tribute to him on April 19, on Minnesota Public Radio Presents. I had just jumped in the shower and (thanks to the shower radio from Kourtni) heard a beautiful poem by another Minnesota poet, Robert Bly. Mr. Bly was reading (with musical backing) some of his works, to honor the late Bill Holm. One of these pieces was particularly beautiful, so I had to give you the opportunity to listen:
In this calm before an approaching intellectual storm of more school, I find all the energies of my brain bent on the Big Questions™. I’ve always found it interesting that I only begin to ponder these questions when the day-to-day worries of my life are at a local minima — indeed, the vast majority of folks are just too busy to care. Sadly, I’ll soon rejoin that majority. That reminds me of a piece from a great article (certainly the best item I’ve read about higher education since Nussbaum’s “Cultivating Humanity”) entitled “The Disadvantages of an Elite Education” by William Deresiewicz:
I had a wonderful weekend with Mykala: we celebrated my birthday Friday night with a little dental school shirt shopping and Cheesecake Factory dinner. It’s almost warm enough to eat outside — summer is still struggling to get its act together. I pretended to be warm for the duration of our meal out on the restaurant’s patio… but I somehow don’t think I was fooling anyone. If Mykala asks though, I was perfectly toasty — I have to maintain some masculine bravado, even if it’s only in the realm of temperature tolerance.
I want summer so badly I can barely contain myself. I mean, I can’t remember ever having pre-spring fever with this intensity. I day-dream about going outside without a protective covering of down, wool, and leather. Dimly, I remember a time when it was still light at 9pm and the warmth of the day lingered through leisurely dinners on patios. Tennis, running, basketball. Swimming holes, lawn sprinklers, sunburns.
Found this in an abandoned office.
No new picture here
Eliciting the response
Horrors! No picture?
Dentistry, cleaning
Recently took over me
And all of my time
Kindly understand
More pics will be posted soon
For now, please sit tight
Living vicariously has advantages
No aches
No risks
No good
Where to go, then, on daydreamt journeys?
I’ll take a trip to the past
Or the future
Anywhere to salvage now
Eyes on the horizon
We find our place on the ground in front of us
Recently, I ran out of soap while taking a shower. That’s a bummer, because you think you can accomplish one thing (getting clean), yet you manage to fail at it. I guess the soapy water I rinsed the bottle out with counted as soap. But that isn’t what this post is about. It is, interestingly enough, random poem time. Bad poetry is extremely easy. Good poetry is extremely difficult. I’ll settle for middling here.
Your Voice - I love this poem. I love this music.
I’m not tired but I should sleep.
I know what to do but I’m confused.
I’m not thirsty but I drink the water.
What’s pulling on my being?
An issue wasn’t settled
A demon wasn’t laid to rest
Something is creeping
Something is waiting
There is a persistence in this beast
It will grow as it waits
And strengthen as it feeds
On my sense of security and the illusion my choice was right
Nothing is missing
But something is mis-shapen
Molded over the wrong last
Twisted from the outset
I will straighten the form and in doing so, know more deeply what life is.