Fluent

By John O’Donohue

I would love to live

Like a river flows,

Carried by the surprise

Of its own unfolding.

Late Fragment

By Raymond Carver

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

Mysteries, Yes

by Mary Oliver

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous

to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

in allegiance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds

will never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say

“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,

and bow their heads.

Viewpoint

By Mahmoud Darwish, translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah

The difference between narcissus

and sunflower

is a point of view: the first

stares at his image in water

and says, there is no I but I

and the second looks

at the sun and says I am

what I worship.

And at night, difference shrinks

and interpretation widens.

Tin Bucket

By Jenny George

The world is not simple.

Anyone will tell you.

But have you ever washed a person’s hair

over a tin bucket,

gently twisting the rope of it

to wring the water out?

At the end of everything,

dancers just use air as their material.

A voice keeps singing even

without an instrument.

You make your fingers into a comb.

The Tyger

By William Blake

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat.

What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp.

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears

And water'd heaven with their tears:

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,

In the forests of the night:

What immortal hand or eye,

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

This Moment

By Charles Bukowski

it’s a farce, the great actors, the great poets, the great statesmen, the great painters,

the great composers, the great lovers, it’s a farce, a farce, a farce,

history and the recording of it, forget it, forget it.

you must begin all over again.

throw all that out.

all of them out

you are alone with now.

look at you fingernails.

touch your nose.

begin.

the day flings itself upon you.

To make a prairie

By Emily Dickinson

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,

One clover, and a bee.

And revery.

The revery alone will do,

If bees are few.

Dove That Ventured Outside

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Dove that ventured outside, flying far from the dovecote:

housed and protected again, one with the day, the night,

knows what serenity is, for she has felt her wings

pass through all distance and fear in the course of her wanderings.

The doves that remained at home, never exposed to loss,

innocent and secure, cannot know tenderness;

only the won-back heart can ever be satisfied: free,

through all it has given up, to rejoice in its mastery.

Being arches itself over the vast abyss.

Ah the ball that we dared, that we hurled into infinite space,

doesn't it fill our hands differently with its return:

heavier by the weight of where it has been.

The Thing Is

By Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even

when you have no stomach for it

and everything you’ve held dear

crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,

your throat filled with the silt of it.

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat

thickening the air, heavy as water

more fit for gills than lungs;

when grief weights you down like your own flesh

only more of it, an obesity of grief,

you think, How can a body withstand this?

Then you hold life like a face

between your palms, a plain face,

no charming smile, no violet eyes,

and you say, yes, I will take you

I will love you, again.

Sonnet 65: Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea

By William Shakespeare

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea

But sad mortality o’er-sways their power,

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,

Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out

Against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days,

When rocks impregnable are not so stout,

Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?

O fearful meditation! where, alack,

Shall time’s best jewel from time’s chest lie hid?

Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?

Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?

O, none, unless this miracle have might,

That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

Give All to Love

By Ralph Waldo Emerson

Give all to love;

Obey thy heart;

Friends, kindred, days,

Estate, good-fame,

Plans, credit and the Muse,—

Nothing refuse.

’T is a brave master;

Let it have scope:

Follow it utterly,

Hope beyond hope:

High and more high

It dives into noon,

With wing unspent,

Untold intent:

But it is a god,

Knows its own path

And the outlets of the sky.

It was never for the mean;

It requireth courage stout.

Souls above doubt,

Valor unbending,

It will reward,—

They shall return

More than they were,

And ever ascending.

Leave all for love;

Yet, hear me, yet,

One word more thy heart behoved,

One pulse more of firm endeavor,—

Keep thee to-day,

To-morrow, forever,

Free as an Arab

Of thy beloved.

Cling with life to the maid;

But when the surprise,

First vague shadow of surmise

Flits across her bosom young,

Of a joy apart from thee,

Free be she, fancy-free;

Nor thou detain her vesture’s hem,

Nor the palest rose she flung

From her summer diadem.

Though thou loved her as thyself,

As a self of purer clay,

Though her parting dims the day,

Stealing grace from all alive;

Heartily know,

When half-gods go,

The gods arrive.

Rain

By Raymond Carver

Woke up this morning with

a terrific urge to lie in bed all day

and read. Fought against it for a minute.

Then looked out the window at the rain.

And gave over. Put myself entirely

in the keep of this rainy morning.

Would I live my life over again?

Make the same unforgiveable mistakes?

Yes, given half a chance. Yes.

The Poet with His Face in His Hands

By Mary Oliver

You want to cry aloud for your

mistakes. But to tell the truth the world

doesn’t need anymore of that sound.

So if you’re going to do it and can’t

stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can’t

hold it in, at least go by yourself across

the forty fields and the forty dark inclines

of rocks and water to the place where

the falls are flinging out their white sheets

like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that

jubilation and water fun and you can

stand there, under it, and roar all you

want and nothing will be disturbed; you can

drip with despair all afternoon and still,

on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched

by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,

puffing out its spotted breast, will sing

of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.

For One Who Is Exhausted, a Blessing

By John O’Donohue

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,

Time takes on the strain until it breaks;

Then all the unattended stress falls in

On the mind like an endless, increasing weight.

The light in the mind becomes dim.

Things you could take in your stride before

Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.

Gravity begins falling inside you,

Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued has gone out.

And you are marooned on unsure ground.

Something within you has closed down;

And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.

The desire that drove you has relinquished.

There is nothing else to do now but rest

And patiently learn to receive the self

You have forsaken in the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken

And sadness take over like listless weather.

The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;

Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up

To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain

When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,

Taking time to open the well of color

That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone

Until its calmness can claim you.

Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.

Learn to linger around someone of ease

Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,

Having learned a new respect for your heart

And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

Sonnets to Orpheus II.XII

By Rainer Maria Rilke

Strive for transformation, O be inspired with the flame

Wherein, rich in changes, a thing withdraws from your reach;

the planning spirit who masters everything earthly,

loves above all in the sweep of the figure

the point where it turns.

What locks itself in endurance grows rigid;

sheltered in unassuming grayness, does it feel safe?

Wait, from the distance, hardness is menaced by something still harder.

Alas-: a remote hammer is poised to strike.

Knowledge knows him who pours forth as a spring;

Delighted she guides him, showing him what was created in joy

And often concludes with beginning and starts with the end.

Every happy space they traverse in wonder

Is child or grandchild of parting. And Daphne, transformed,

feeling herself laurel, wants you to change into wind.

The Holy Longing

by Goethe, translated by Robert Bly and David Whyte

Tell a wise person or else keep silent

for those who do not understand

will mock it right away.

I praise what is truly alive

what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm waters of the love nights

where you were begotten, where you have begotten

a strange feeling creeps over you

as you watch the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught

in the obsession with darkness

and a desire for higher lovemaking

sweeps you upwards.

Distance does not make you falter,

now, arriving in magic, flying

and finally insane for the light

you are the butterfly, and you are gone.

And so long as you have not experienced

this: to die and so to grow

you are only a troubled guest

on the dark earth.

On The Pulse Of Morning

By Maya Angelou

A Rock, A River, A Tree

Hosts to species long since departed,

Marked the mastodon,

The dinosaur, who left dried tokens

Of their sojourn here

On our planet floor,

Any broad alarm of their hastening doom

Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,

Come, you may stand upon my

Back and face your distant destiny,

But seek no haven in my shadow.

I will give you no hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than

The angels, have crouched too long in

The bruising darkness

Have lain too long

Face down in ignorance.

Your mouths spilling words

Armed for slaughter.

The Rock cries out to us today, you may stand upon me,

But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,

A River sings a beautiful song. It says,

Come, rest here by my side.

Each of you, a bordered country,

Delicate and strangely made proud,

Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.

Your armed struggles for profit

Have left collars of waste upon

My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.

Yet today I call you to my riverside,

If you will study war no more. Come,

Clad in peace, and I will sing the songs

The Creator gave to me when I and the

Tree and the rock were one.

Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your

Brow and when you yet knew you still

Knew nothing.

The River sang and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to

The singing River and the wise Rock.

So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew

The African, the Native American, the Sioux,

The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek

The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheik,

The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,

The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.

They hear. They all hear

The speaking of the Tree.

They hear the first and last of every Tree

Speak to humankind today. Come to me, here beside the River.

Plant yourself beside the River.

Each of you, descendant of some passed

On traveller, has been paid for.

You, who gave me my first name, you,

Pawnee, Apache, Seneca, you

Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then

Forced on bloody feet,

Left me to the employment of

Other seekers—desperate for gain,

Starving for gold.

You, the Turk, the Arab, the Swede, the German, the Eskimo, the Scot,

You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought,

Sold, stolen, arriving on the nightmare

Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am that Tree planted by the River,

Which will not be moved.

I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree

I am yours—your passages have been paid.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need

For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain

Cannot be unlived, but if faced

With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon

This day breaking for you.

Give birth again

To the dream.

Women, children, men,

Take it into the palms of your hands,

Mold it into the shape of your most

Private need. Sculpt it into

The image of your most public self.

Lift up your hearts

Each new hour holds new chances

For a new beginning.

Do not be wedded forever

To fear, yoked eternally

To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,

Offering you space to place new steps of change.

Here, on the pulse of this fine day

You may have the courage

To look up and out and upon me, the

Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.

No less to Midas than the mendicant.

No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here, on the pulse of this new day

You may have the grace to look up and out

And into your sister’s eyes, and into

Your brother’s face, your country

And say simply

Very simply

With hope—

Good morning.

When I am Among the Trees

by Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,

especially the willows and the honey locust,

equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,

they give off such hints of gladness.

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,

in which I have goodness, and discernment,

and never hurry through the world

but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves

and call out, “Stay awhile.”

The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,

“and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine.”

A Spiritual Journey

by Wendell Berry

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,

no matter how long,

but only by a spiritual journey,

a journey of one inch,

very arduous and humbling and joyful,

by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,

and learn to be at home.

When All the World is Young, Lad

by Charles Kingsley

When all the world is young, lad,

And all the trees are green;

And every goose a swan, lad,

And every lass a queen;

Then hey for boot and horse, lad,

And round the world away!

Young blood must have its course, lad,

And every dog his day.

When all the world is old, lad,

And all the trees are brown;

And all the sport is stale, lad,

And all the wheels run down;

Creep home, and take your place there,

The spent and maimed among;

God grant you find one face there,

You loved when all was young.

Sonnets to Orpheus II.XXIX

By Rainer Maria Rilke

Quiet friend who has come so far,

feel how your breathing makes more space around you.

Let this darkness be a bell tower

and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.

Move back and forth into the change.

What is it like, such intensity of pain?

If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,

be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,

the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,

say to the silent earth: I flow.

To the rushing water, speak: I am.

The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean—

the one who has flung out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Style

By Charles Bukowski

style is the answer to everything --

a fresh way to approach a dull or a

dangerous thing.

to do a dull thing with style

is preferable to doing a dangerous thing

without it.

Joan of Arc had style

John the Baptist

Christ

Socrates

Caesar,

Garcia Lorca.

style is the difference,

a way of doing,

a way of being done.

6 herons standing quietly in a pool of water

or you walking out of the bathroom naked

without seeing

me.

Lost

by David Wagoner

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you

Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,

Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,

I have make this place around you.

If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.

No trees are the same to Raven.

No two branches are the same to Wren.

If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,

You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows

Where you are. You must let it find you.

Everything is Waiting for You

by David Whyte

Your great mistake is to act the drama

as if you were alone. As if life

were a progressive and cunning crime

with no witness to the tiny hidden

transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny

the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,

even you, at times, have felt the grand array;

the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding

out your solo voice. You must note

the way the soap dish enables you,

or the window latch grants you freedom.

Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.

The stairs are your mentor of things

to come, the doors have always been there

to frighten you and to invite you,

and the tiny speaker in the phone

is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into

the conversation. The kettle is singing

even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots

have left their arrogant aloofness and

seen the good in you at last. All the birds

and creatures of the world are unutterably

themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

Day in Autumn

By Rainer Maria Rilke

After the summer's yield, Lord, it is time

to let your shadow lengthen on the sundials

and in the pastures let the rough winds fly.

As for the final fruits, coax them to roundness.

Direct on them two days of warmer light

to hale them golden toward their term, and harry

the last few drops of sweetness through the wine.

Whoever's homeless now, will build no shelter;

who lives alone will live indefinitely so,

waking up to read a little, draft long letters,

and, along the city's avenues,

fitfully wander, when the wild leaves loosen.

Fragmentary Blue

By Robert Frost

Why make so much of fragmentary blue

In here and there a bird, or butterfly,

Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,

When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?

Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)—

Though some savants make earth include the sky;

And blue so far above us comes so high,

It only gives our wish for blue a whet.

i have been a thousand different women

By Emory Hall

make peace

with all the women

you once were.

lay flowers

at their feet.

offer them incense

and honey

and forgiveness.

honor them

and give them

your silence.

listen.

bless them

and let them be.

for they are the bones

of the temple

you sit in now.

for they are

the rivers

of wisdom

leading you toward

the sea.

The Privileged Lovers

By Rumi

The moon has become a dancer

at this festival of love.

This dance of light,

This sacred blessing,

This divine love,

beckons us

to a world beyond

only lovers can see

with their eyes of fiery passion.

They are the chosen ones

who have surrendered.

Once they were particles of light

now they are the radiant sun.

They have left behind

the world of deceitful games.

They are the privileged lovers

who create a new world

with their eyes of fiery passion.

I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone

By Rainer Maria Rilke

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone

enough

to truly consecrate the hour.

I am much too small in this world, yet not small

enough

to be to you just object and thing,

dark and smart.

I want my free will and want it accompanying

the path which leads to action;

and want during times that beg questions,

where something is up,

to be among those in the know,

or else be alone.

I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,

never be blind or too old

to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.

I want to unfold.

Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;

for there I would be dishonest, untrue.

I want my conscience to be

true before you;

want to describe myself like a picture I observed

for a long time, one close up,

like a new word I learned and embraced,

like the everyday jug,

like my mother's face,

like a ship that carried me along

through the deadliest storm.

When the Heart

By Michael Leunig

When the heart

Is cut or cracked or broken,

Do not clutch it;

Let the wound lie open.

Let the wind

From the good old sea blow in

To bathe the wound with salt,

And let it sting.

Let a stray dog lick it,

Let a bird lean in the hole and sing

A simple song like a tiny bell,

And let it ring.

Blank Joy

By Rainer Maria Rilke

She who did not come, wasn't she determined

nonetheless to organize and decorate my heart?

If we had to exist to become the one we love,

what would the heart have to create?

Lovely joy left blank, perhaps you are

the center of all my labors and my loves.

If I've wept for you so much, it's because

I preferred you among so many outlined joys.

Had I not seen the Sun

by Emily Dickinson

Had I not seen the Sun

I could have borne the shade

But Light a newer Wilderness

My Wilderness has made—

I am afraid to own a Body—

by Emily Dickinson

I am afraid to own a Body—

I am afraid to own a Soul—

Profound—precarious Property—

Possession, not optional—

Double Estate—entailed at pleasure

Upon an unsuspecting Heir—

Duke in a moment of Deathlessness

And God, for a Frontier.

Sometimes with the Heart

by Emily Dickinson

Sometimes with the Heart

Seldom with the Soul

Scarcer once with the Might

Few—love at all.

Walls

By Constantine P. Cavafy

Without consideration, without pity, without shame

they have built great and high walls around me.

And now I sit here and despair.

I think of nothing else: this fate gnaws at my mind;

for I had many things to do outside.

Ah why did I not pay attention when they were building the walls.

But I never heard any noise or sound of builders.

Imperceptibly they shut me from the outside world.

Coat

By Vicki Feaver

Sometimes I have wanted

to throw you off

like a heavy coat.

Sometimes I have said

you would not let me

breathe or move.

But now that I am free

to choose light clothes

or none at all

I feel the cold

and all the time I think

how warm it used to be.

“Poet Talking to Himself in the Mirror”

by Gregory Corso

Hey, in life

Where I went, I went

Where I stopped, I stopped

Where I spoke, I spoke

What I listened, I listened

What I ate, I ate

What I loved, I loved

Love After Love

By Derek Walcott

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

The Grass so little has to do

By Emily Dickinson

The Grass so little has to do --

A Sphere of simple Green --

With only Butterflies to brood

And Bees to entertain --

And stir all day to pretty Tunes

The Breezes fetch along --

And hold the Sunshine in its lap

And bow to everything --

And thread the Dews, all night, like Pearls --

And make itself so fine

A Duchess were too common

For such a noticing --

And even when it dies -- to pass

In Odors so divine --

Like Lowly spices, lain to sleep --

Or Spikenards, perishing --

And then, in Sovereign Barns to dwell --

And dream the Days away,

The Grass so little has to do

I wish I were a Hay!

Looking Up in the Garden

by W.S. Merwin

These trees have no names‬

whatever we call them

where will the meanings be

when the words are forgotten

will I see again

where are you

will you be sitting

in Fran’s living room

will the dream come back

will I know where I am

will there be birds

On Living

By Nâzim Hikmet

Living is no laughing matter:

you must live with great seriousness

like a squirrel, for example—

I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,

I mean living must be your whole occupation.

Living is no laughing matter:

you must take it seriously,

so much so and to such a degree

that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,

your back to the wall,

or else in a laboratory

in your white coat and safety glasses,

you can die for people—

even for people whose faces you’ve never seen,

even though you know living

is the most real, the most beautiful thing.

I mean, you must take living so seriously

that even at seventy, for example, you’ll plant olive trees—

and not for your children, either,

but because although you fear death you don’t believe it,

because living, I mean, weighs heavier.

Let’s say we’re seriously ill, need surgery—

which is to say we might not get up

from the white table.

Even though it’s impossible not to feel sad

about going a little too soon,

we’ll still laugh at the jokes being told,

we’ll look out the window to see if it’s raining,

or still wait anxiously

for the latest newscast. . .

Let’s say we’re at the front—

for something worth fighting for, say.

There, in the first offensive, on that very day,

we might fall on our face, dead.

We’ll know this with a curious anger,

but we’ll still worry ourselves to death

about the outcome of the war, which could last years.

Let’s say we’re in prison

and close to fifty,

and we have eighteen more years, say,

before the iron doors will open.

We’ll still live with the outside,

with its people and animals, struggle and wind—

I mean with the outside beyond the walls.

I mean, however and wherever we are,

we must live as if we will never die.

III

This earth will grow cold,

a star among stars

and one of the smallest,

a gilded mote on blue velvet—

I mean this, our great earth.

This earth will grow cold one day,

not like a block of ice

or a dead cloud even

but like an empty walnut it will roll along

in pitch-black space . . .

You must grieve for this right now

—you have to feel this sorrow now—

for the world must be loved this much

if you’re going to say “I lived”. . .

To make a prairie

By Emily Dickinson

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,

One clover, and a bee.

And revery.

The revery alone will do,

If bees are few.

My People

By Langston Hughes

Dream-singers,

Story-tellers,

Dancers,

Loud laughers in the hands of Fate—

My People.

Dish-washers,

Elevator-boys,

Ladies’ maids,

Crap-shooters,

Cooks,

Waiters,

Jazzers,

Nurses of babies,

Loaders of ships,

Porters,

Hairdressers,

Comedians in vaudeville

And band-men in circuses—

Dream-singers all,

Story-tellers all.

Dancers—

God! What dancers!

Singers—

God! What singers!

Singers and dancers,

Dancers and laughers.

Laughers?

Yes, laughers….laughers…..laughers—

Loud-mouthed laughers in the hands of Fate.

How to Hold the Heavy Weight of Now

By Dana Levin

She said, “You just made this gesture with your

body–” and opened her arms as if she could

barely fit them around an enormous ball—

“Make that shape again,” she said, and so I did.

“Now let it change,” she said, and I did—

slowly closing the space between my arms,

fingertips converging until they touched—

I watched my hands turn together, align pinkie-

side to pinkie-side, I watched

my palms open, pushing gently forward, leading

my body forward, I watched them

let a bird go, I watched my hands

make

an offering—

An Hour is not a House

By Jane Hirshfield

An hour is not a house,

a life is not a house,

you do not go through them as if

they were doors to another.

Yet an hour can have shape and proportion,

four walls, a ceiling.

An hour can be dropped like a glass.

Some want quiet as others want bread.

Some want sleep.

My eyes went

to the window, as a cat or dog left alone does.

Tree

By Jane Hirshfield

It is foolish

to let a young redwood

grow next to a house.

Even in this

one lifetime,

you will have to choose.

That great calm being,

this clutter of soup pots and books—

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.

Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

Love in August

By Jane Hirshfield

White moths

against the screen

in August darkness.

Some clamor

in envy.

Some spread large

as two hands

of a thief

who wants to put

back in your cupboard

the long-taken silver.

Do not ask your children to strive

By William Martin

Do not ask your children

to strive for extraordinary lives.

Such striving may seem admirable,

but it is the way of foolishness.

Help them instead to find the wonder

and the marvel of an ordinary life.

Show them the joy of tasting

tomatoes, apples and pears.

Show them how to cry

when pets and people die.

Show them the infinite pleasure

in the touch of a hand.

And make the ordinary come alive for them.

The extraordinary will take care of itself.

This Is Just To Say

By William Carlos Williams

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

To L.L.

By Oscar Wilde

Could we dig up this long-buried treasure,

Were it worth the pleasure,

We never could learn love's song,

We are parted too long.

Could the passionate past that is fled

Call back its dead,

Could we live it all over again,

Were it worth the pain!

I remember we used to meet

By an ivied seat,

And you warbled each pretty word

With the air of a bird;

And your voice had a quaver in it,

Just like a linnet,

And shook, as the blackbird's throat

With its last big note;

And your eyes, they were green and grey

Like an April day,

But lit into amethyst

When I stooped and kissed;

And your mouth, it would never smile

For a long, long while,

Then it rippled all over with laughter

Five minutes after.

You were always afraid of a shower,

Just like a flower:

I remember you started and ran

When the rain began.

I remember I never could catch you,

For no one could match you,

You had wonderful, luminous, fleet

Little wings to your feet.

I remember your hair—did I tie it?

For it always ran riot—

Like a tangled sunbeam of gold:

These things are old.

I remember so well the room,

And the lilac bloom

That beat at the dripping pane

In the warm June rain;

And the colour of your gown,

It was amber-brown,

And two yellow satin bows

From your shoulders rose.

And the handkerchief of French lace

Which you held to your face—

Had a small tear left a stain?

Or was it the rain?

On your hand as it waved adieu

There were veins of blue;

In your voice as it said good-bye

Was a petulant cry,

‘You have only wasted your life.’

(Ah, that was the knife!)

When I rushed through the garden gate

It was all too late.

Could we live it over again,

Were it worth the pain,

Could the passionate past that is fled

Call back its dead!

Well, if my heart must break,

Dear love, for your sake,

It will break in music, I know.

Poets' hearts break so.

But strange that I was not told

That the brain can hold

In a tiny ivory cell,

God's heaven and hell.

Life Dance

By Charles Bukowski

the area dividing the brain and the soul

is affected in many ways by

experience –

some lose all mind and become soul:

insane.

some lose all soul and become mind:

intellectual.

some lose both and become:

accepted.

Roll the Dice

By Charles Bukowski

if you’re going to try, go all the

way.

otherwise, don’t even start.

if you’re going to try, go all the

way. this could mean losing girlfriends,

wives, relatives, jobs and

maybe your mind.

go all the way.

it could mean not eating for 3 or

4 days.

it could mean freezing on a

park bench.

it could mean jail,

it could mean derision,

mockery,

isolation.

isolation is the gift,

all the others are a test of your

endurance, of

how much you really want to

do it.

and you’ll do it

despite rejection and the

worst odds

and it will be better than

anything else

you can imagine.

if you’re going to try,

go all the way.

there is no other feeling like

that.

you will be alone with the

gods

and the nights will flame with

fire.

do it, do it, do it.

do it.

all the way

all the way.

you will ride life straight to

perfect laughter,

it’s the only good fight

there is.

The Panther

By Rainer Maria Rilke

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,

has grown so weary that it cannot hold

anything else. It seems to him there are

a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,

the movement of his powerful soft strides

is like a ritual dance around a center

in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils

lifts, quietly—. An image enters in,

rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,

plunges into the heart and is gone.

Some People

By Charles Bukowski

some people never go crazy.

me, sometimes I'll lie down behind the couch

for 3 or 4 days.

they'll find me there.

it's Cherub, they'll say, and

they pour wine down my throat

rub my chest

sprinkle me with oils.

then, I'll rise with a roar,

rant, rage -

curse them and the universe

as I send them scattering over the

lawn.

I'll feel much better,

sit down to toast and eggs,

hum a little tune,

suddenly become as lovable as a

pink

overfed whale.

some people never go crazy.

what truly horrible lives

they must lead.

Phenomenal Woman

By Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.

I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size

But when I start to tell them,

They think I'm telling lies.

I say,

It's in the reach of my arms

The span of my hips,

The stride of my step,

The curl of my lips.

I'm a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

I walk into a room

Just as cool as you please,

And to a man,

The fellows stand or

Fall down on their knees.

Then they swarm around me,

A hive of honey bees.

I say,

It's the fire in my eyes,

And the flash of my teeth,

The swing in my waist,

And the joy in my feet.

I'm a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

Men themselves have wondered

What they see in me.

They try so much

But they can't touch

My inner mystery.

When I try to show them

They say they still can't see.

I say,

It's in the arch of my back,

The sun of my smile,

The ride of my breasts,

The grace of my style.

I'm a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

Now you understand

Just why my head's not bowed.

I don't shout or jump about

Or have to talk real loud.

When you see me passing

It ought to make you proud.

I say,

It's in the click of my heels,

The bend of my hair,

the palm of my hand,

The need of my care,

'Cause I'm a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

I went fishing with my family when I was five

By Tao Lin

when i was five

i went fishing with my family

my dad caught a turtle

my mom caught a snapper

my brother caught a crab

i caught a whale

that night we ate crab

the next night we ate turtle

the next night we ate snapper

the next night we ate whale