Tag Archives: poem

Kindness

books poetry lit January 24, 2014 Leave a comment

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

-Naomi Shihab Nye, “Kindness”

STUNNED TO BE IN UGLINESS SO DEEP

books poetry lit January 22, 2014 Leave a comment

And breathing. Like a bird choked on air. And sun come in still. Stunned.
And be about you being. And as still not seein’
No way in from out. Or reverse, or worse. Stunned
From thinking all the every part of day and night, and still not never
Nobody say you right. Or wrong. No they do say that.

Stunned. And not young anymore. Maybe never, not really
That. Old enough to breathe in trap door logic. In amazement. And stirred around
By what you know you don’t and don’t. As if they cd spell the matter better
Or trail the dog who need killing faster. Ok.

They is everywhere you is not, except where you swear you is going.
And them that look at you say that don’t exist in the 1st second and 3rd places

I wanted to be myself but knowing something beside that. And found out
That everything was locked in time and space and that you could find out anything
If you had the time and space and method and direction. Imagine the lost
Imaginings

Where you were thinking about dumb shit and didn’t know it was that.

Here’s a game
If you aint in sane
Look at the missing part of your image in the mirror
Now say to everybody who need to see this
There aint nothing missing

-Amira Baraka, Rattle

Claim – For The Ocean

art & illustration, books poetry lit January 14, 2014 Comments: 2

sea(sea by Shana)

We’re drunk by now
and even then you’re inside your own
head, floating, deciding what to surrender
to and what to leave submerged.
Once, on the island that made
me, the ocean was a ritual
too. I climbed mountains
in an old car in the middle of the night to make
love at its shores, to remember where I had
come from so that it might stay
with me where I was going. That night
the water came up; lapped at our bodies, furious
in the sand. We wept.
We filled
each other’s cups. We put the ocean
to our mouths. We drank.

from “Claim – For the Ocean” by Roger Bonair-Agard, Drunken Boat

How It Will Happen, When

books poetry lit January 12, 2014 Leave a comment

There you are, exhausted from a night of crying, curled up on the couch, the floor, at the foot of the bed, anywhere you fall you fall down crying, half amazed at what the body is capable of, not believing you can cry anymore. And there they are, his socks, his shirt, your underwear and your winter gloves, all in a loose pile next to the bathroom door, and you fall down again. Someday, years from now, things will be different, the house clean for once, everything in its place, windows shining, sun coming in easily now, sliding across the high shine of wax on the wood floor. You’ll be peeling an orange or watching a bird spring from the edge of the rooftop next door, noticing how, for an instant, its body is stopped on the air, only a moment before gathering the will to fly into the ruff at its wings and then doing it: flying. You’ll be reading, and for a moment there will be a word you don’t understand, a simple word like now or what or is and you’ll ponder over it like a child discovering language. “Is,” you’ll say over and over until it begins to make sense, and that’s when you’ll say it, for the first time, out loud: He’s dead. He’s not coming back. And it will be the first time you believe it.

-Dorianne Laux

WHY I OPTED FOR THE MORE EXPENSIVE OIL AT JIFFY LUBE

books poetry lit January 6, 2014 Leave a comment

This one is better for a car as old as yours, he says.
It won’t glob up, he says. And spring is almost here,
so of course you need a thicker oil.

And I say, So with this good oil my car will run better
and it’ll be washed and waxed every time I get in it?

Yes, he says. And you’ll never have to put another drop of gas in it.

And when I start the car, a big bag of money will appear in the back seat?

Yes, he says. And cash will shoot out your exhaust pipe
and people will be glad when they see you coming.

And will I look rested? Like I’ve gotten plenty of sleep every night?

That goes without saying, he says.

And when I roll over in bed and look at the man
who says he loves me, will I finally believe he loves me?

You, he says, won’t be able to believe anything else. Your heart
will soak up the goodness and you will smile and beam and sigh
like a pig in mud.

And what about my parents? I ask. Will this oil keep them from dying?
They’re very old.

Let’s call them and tell them the happy news, he says.

-Julie Price Pinkerton, Rattle

There’s more than a trace of magical realism in this poem that made me fall instantly for it.