Lies, by Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Telling lies to the young is wrong.
Proving to them that lies are true is wrong.
Telling them that God's in his heaven
and all's well with the world is wrong.
The young know what you mean. The young are people.
Tell them the difficulties can't be counted,
and let them see not only what will be
but see with clarity these present times.
Say obstacles exist they must encounter
Sorrow happens, hardship happens.
The hell with it. Who never knew
the price of happiness will not be happy.
Forgive no error you recognize,
it will repeat itself, increase,
and afterwards our pupils
will not forgive in us what we forgave.

The Promotion, by James Tate

I was a dog in my former life, a very good
dog, and, thus, I was promoted to a human being.
I liked being a dog. I worked for a poor farmer,
guarding and herding his sheep. Wolves and coyotes
tried to get past me almost every night, and not
once did I loose a sheep. The farmer rewarded me
with good food, food from his table. He may have
been poor, but he ate well. And his children
played with me, when they weren't in school or
working in the field. I had all the love any dog
could hope for. When I got old, they got a new
dog, and I trained him in the tricks of the trade.
He quickly learned, and the farmer bought me into
the house to live with the family. I brought the farmer
his slippers in the morning, as he was getting
old, too. I was dying slowly, a little bit at a
time. The farmer knew this and would bring the
new dog in to visit me from time to time. The
new dog would entertain me with his flips and
flops and nuzzles. And then one morning I just
didn't get up. They gave me a fine burial down
by the stream under a shade tree. That was the
end of my being a dog. Sometimes I miss it so
I sit by my window and cry. I live in a high-rise
that looks out at a bunch of other high-rises.
At my job I work in a cubicle and barely speak
to anyone all day. The human wolves don't even see me.
They fear me not.

To Myself, by W.S. Merwin

Even when I forget you
I go on looking for you
I believe I would know you
I keep remembering you
sometimes long ago but then
other times I am sure you
were here for a moment before
and the air is still alive
around where you were and I
think then I can recognize
you who are always the same
who pretend to be time but
you are not time and who speak
in the words but you are not
what they say you who are not
lost when I do not find you

To Waiting, by W.S. Merwin

You spend so much of your time
expecting to become
someone else
always someone
who will be different
someone to whom a moment
whatever it may be
at last has come
and who has been
met and transformed
into no longer being you
and so has forgotten you

meanwhile in your life
you hardly notice
the world around you
lights changing
sirens dying along the buildings
your eyes intent
on a sight you do not see yet
not yet there
as long as you
are only yourself

with whom as you
recall you were
never happy
to be left alone for long

Juniper-Linden (original version of You Are Late of Autumn) by Richard Fox

There you are--
late of autumn, reader of books
and one after my own heart--
a penny for your thought.

The world will trend
the way it will--under linden
under juniper--I'll always
think of you as I pretend

to eat the living air or pull
an origami swan out of nowhere
or out of someone's ear.

From one so worldly, by Curtis Tuckey

-
From one so worldly,
wondering,
what it is we would,
I worry we won't
remember
that we didn't when we could.

Written Summer 2003

With Nothing Left

WIth nothing left
to see, to hear, to taste. . .
no work left to be done
the party --day-- is over.
Your body's weary, tired.
And as you're blinking, blinking. . .
each time they stay closed longer.
And time is slipping, slipping. . .
the lights-- you turn them off.
You lie your head down on the pillow
and let your thoughts rise to the sky
where they meet mine and mingle, mingle. . .
among the clouds
in the night sky.

Written 2-14-03

The Expulsion, by Katha Pollitt

Adam was happy--now he had someone to blame
for everything--shipwrecks, Troy,
the gray face in the mirror.

Eve was happy: now he would always need her.
She walked on boldly, swaying her beautiful hips.

The serpent admired his emerald coat,
the Angel burst into flames
(he'd never approved of them, and he was right).

Even God was secretly pleased: Let
History Begin!

The dog had no regrets, trotting by Adam's side
self-importantly, glad to be rid

of the lion, the toad, the basilisk, the white-footed mouse,
who were alse happy and forgot their names immediately.

Only the Tree of Knowledge stood forlorn,
its small hard bitter crab apples

glinting high up, in a twilight of black leaves:
how pleasant it had been, how unexpected

to have been, however briefly,
the center of attention.

The Truth, by Philip Shultz

You can hide it like a signature
or birthmark but it's always there
in the greasy light of your dreams,
the knots your body makes at night,
the sad innuendos of your eyes,
whispering insidious asides in every
room you cannot remain inside. It's
there in the unquiet ideas that drag and
plead one lonely argument at a time,
and those who own a little are contrite
and fearful of those who own too much,
but owning none takes up your life.
It cannot be replaced with a house or a car,
a husband or wife, but can be ignored,
denied, and betrayed, until the last day,
when you pass yourself on the street
and recognize the agreeable life you
were afraid to lead, and turn away.

The Word "I", by Franz Wright

Harder to breathe
near the summit, and harder

to remember
where you came from,

why you came

Winter's
harder, and harder to say
the word "I"
with a straight face,
and sleep--

who can sleep. Who has time

to prepare for the big day
when he will be required
to say goodbye to everyone, including
the aforementioned pronoun, relinquish
all earthly attachment
completely, and witness
the end of the world--

harder in other words
not to love it

not to love it so much

Do not stand at my grave and weep, by Mary Frye (1932)

Do not stand at my grave and weep. I am not there, I do not
sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glint on
snow.
I am the sun ripened grain. I am the soothing gentle
rain.
When you awake in morning hush, I am the swift uplifting
rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the stars that shine at
night.
DO not stand at my grave and cry. I am not there. I did not
die.

Breakfast Song by Elizabeth Bishop

My love, my saving grace,
your eyes are awfully blue.
I kiss your funny face,
your coffee-flavored mouth.
Last night I slept with you.
Today I love you so
how can I bear to go
(as soon I must, I know)
to bed with ugly death
in that cold, filthy place,
to sleep there without you,
without the easy breath
and nightlong, limblong warmth
I've grown accustomed to?
--Nobody wants to die;
tell me it is a lie!
But no, I know it's true.
It's just the common case;
there's nothing one can do.
My love, my saving grace,
your eyes are awfully blue
early and instant blue.

Colours by Yevgeny Yevtushenko

When your face
appeared over my crumpled life
at first I understood
only the poverty of what I have.
Then its particular light
on woods, on rivers, on the sea,
became my beginning in the coloured world
in which I had not yet had my beginning.
I am so frightened, I am so frightened,
of the unexpected sunrise finishing,
of revelations
and tears and the excitement finishing.
I don't fight it, my love is this fear,
I nourish it who can nourish nothing,
love's slipshod watchman.
Fear hems me in.
I am conscious that these minutes are short
and that the colours in my eyes will vanish
when your face sets.

[For my beloved, Pooty.]

It Is Not the Fact That I Will Die That I Mind

but that no one will love as I did
the oak tree out my boyhood window,
the mother who set herself
so stubbornly against life,
the sister with her serious frown
and her wish for someone at her side,
the father with his dreamy gaze
and his left hand idly buried
in the fur of his dog.
And the dog herself,
that mournful look and huge appetite,
her need for absolute stillness
in the presence of a bird.
I know how each of them looks
when asleep. And I know how it feels
to fall asleep among them.
No one knows that but me,
No one knows how to love the way I do.

--by Jim Moore

To The Poet

He still listens to the songs, yes,
the ones you put together so meticulously.

He listens to them at night, sometimes, and sometimes
he imagines how you must have pored through each one,

"This one won't do, no. This one, maybe."

The morsels of delicious words you concocted, as well,
will always nourish him, but not just him,
not anymore.

Whenever he takes a thoughtful stab with his own fingers,
he thinks of you. The mechanics are the same,
"This one won't do, no. This one, maybe," and sometimes,
for just a second, his hands become completely numb.

From Endgame, by Samuel Beckett

“What is it, my pet? Time for love?”

(Nell, to Nagg, after Nagg has just rapped on her trash lid.)

To a Stranger By Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass

PASSING stranger! You do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me, as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me, or a girl with me,
I ate with you, and slept with you—your body has become not yours only, nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass—you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you—I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at night alone,
I am to wait—I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

It's not in the listening to the absurdities

-

It's not in the listening to the absurdities
that spill out of your mouth, like milk
from a feeding infant's

nor in the sitting, eating, sleeping
together, as if we were brothers,
that I've come to understand

Honestly, I couldn't tell you how it is that
I know your emptiness, perhaps
we were brothers once, although now,
that seems impossible.

Forgive me if I ever have, I don't
pity you. That emptiness isn't real. It's clear
when you exhale on a cold fall night
and pause to admire the billowing clouds of warmth

In those nebulous formations (I know you see the same
as I do) your life; welling up from within

Its façade cold solid silent stone,

-

Its façade cold solid silent stone,
its windows, small and always heavily draped.

This kind of edifice was
well put together, of course,
Of course, no one would say different.

In such places things are private and secure, people,
behind their walls, never receiving guests, no no, but only
venturing out sometimes because, oh,
there is much too much to hide in a place like this
yes, much too much to hide.

Yes Yes anyone would say

Yes Yes anyone would say
I was crazy to leave when I did,
as I did, in that way.

No No I was not happy anymore
I was not happy and I could not
tell you. I can't remember why anymore.

Yes Yes I should have said something
I should have said anything. It would have
been better than leaving like that.

No No I couldn't tell you what
went through my head that day, no,
there was never a reason, or I've forgotten it.

Jokes aside by JAC (click here)

Jokes aside,
Between us
Silence

Sunk inside,
Between us
War

For friendship's sake,
This isolation

But truth be told
Between us
More.

The Great Figure by William Carlos Williams

Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.

2 poems by Edgar De La Piedra

|| UNTITLED ||

En el rincón que me ves
llorando-- alli mi vida se esconde.

Quando ya no esté
mi rincón se convertira,
poco a poco,
en Tú rincón
de lagrimas.

:: English Translation ::

The corner in which I stand,
as you watch me crying-- my life
is hidden there.

When I am gone, my corner will become,
bit by bit, your corner
of tears

|| UNTITLED ||

Si me acompañas
Seras mi Tierra
Si me dejas
Sere tu Luna

:: English Translation ::

As my companion
You are my Earth
If we’re apart
I'll be your Moon

Written by Edgar De La Piedra 6-18-04
Translated by me

sugarcoated

It took a moment to go down,
with an awful burning.

"That means it's working," he thought. "Killing
off the bad. . ."

The pain was the only sacrifice,
but not really,
not in this case.

It's only the initial taste
he would later complain about
saying, "The bitter truth
is better taken
with a bit of sugar."

Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath

I have done it again.

One year in every ten

I manage it--



A sort of walking miracle, my skin

Bright as a Nazi lampshade,

My right foot



A paperweight,

My face featureless, fine

Jew linen.



Peel off the napkin

O my enemy.

Do I terrify?--



The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?

The sour breath

Will vanish in a day.



Soon, soon the flesh

The grave cave ate will be

At home on me



And I a smiling woman.

I am only thirty.

And like the cat I have nine times to die.



This is Number Three.

What a trash

To annihilate each decade.



What a million filaments.

The peanut-crunching crowd

Shoves in to see



Them unwrap me hand and foot--

The big strip tease.

Gentlemen, ladies



These are my hands

My knees.

I may be skin and bone,



Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.

The first time it happened I was ten.

It was an accident.



The second time I meant

To last it out and not come back at all.

I rocked shut



As a seashell.

They had to call and call

And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.



Dying

Is an art, like everything else.

I do it exceptionally well.



I do it so it feels like hell.

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I've a call.



It's easy enough to do it in a cell.

It's easy enough to do it and stay put.

It's the theatrical



Comeback in broad day

To the same place, the same face, the same brute

Amused shout:



'A miracle!'

That knocks me out.

There is a charge



For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge

For the hearing of my heart--

It really goes.



And there is a charge, a very large charge

For a word or a touch

Or a bit of blood



Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.

So, so, Herr Doktor.

So, Herr Enemy.



I am your opus,

I am your valuable,

The pure gold baby



That melts to a shriek.

I turn and burn.

Do not think I underestimate your great concern.



Ash, ash--

You poke and stir.

Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--



A cake of soap,

A wedding ring,

A gold filling.



Herr god, Herr Lucifer

Beware

Beware.



Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air.


23-29 October 1962

Because the hole, by Richard Fox

-


Because the hole

left by the stone
in my halved avocado was smooth

& undamaged & perfectly round
I could ignore fashion

& step out on my own. I would ape
neither image nor text as I had before:

would be the very best of friends
my own best man:

no dog
no boy
no love
no moon

Thirst

I turn the handle and wait
as the water fills my cup.

It's early morning-- most probably you
are asleep. I hear the birds wake
with their chirps, their songs. The sky

is just beginning to turn the color of twilight.

Does it matter to me
if someone else is in your bed with his
arms wrapped around you
the way mine would?

I ponder that as my glass fills, as
I look through the window up
at the sky...

The clouds are big and gray, so it looks
like rain and suddenly,

it's not water I want.

The Listener, by Billy Collins, from Nine Horses

I cannot see you a thousand miles from here,
but I can hear you
whenever you cough in your bedroom
or when you set down
your wineglass on a granite counter.

This afternoon
I even heard scissors moving
at the tips of your hair
and the dark snips falling
onto a marble floor.

I keep the jazz
on the radio turned off.
I walk across the floor softly,
eyes closed,
the windows in the house shut tight.

I hear a motor on the road in front,
a plane humming overhead,
someone hammering,
then there is nothing
but the white stone building of silence.

You must be asleep
for it to be this quiet,
so I will sit and wait
for the rustle of your blanket
or noise from your dream.

Meanwhile, I will listen to the ant beating
a dead comrade
across these floorboards---
the noble sounds
of his tread and his low keening.

Desire, Desire, Desire...

-

I see you at the train station—
figment—
with our lives dragging behind you

all that time— spent

but it's not you in
black pants—
the way you'd wear yours, a
coat—
like I imagine you'd wear now


--Written December 05, 2004 (revised 8-20-05)


[Rewrite]
I see your figment at the train station
with our lives dragging behind

black pants like yours;
coat like one you'd wear now

but it's only me in a strange wanting,
no stranger to a stranger wanting.
--[Rewritten] December 24, 2004

--------------------

I am nutritious
Eat me
Digest me
Let my flesh
Feed yours

Let me satisfy you

Your body will
Decompose me

I'll feed your cells
I'll give your heart
Generous pulse

I'll flow through your veins
In your blood

Let me become so much
of you

Let me...
--Written July 18, 2004

--------------------

So many unsent letters

And unsaid words

I dont want to bother you

I want to leave you alone

And I can

But really

I am dying to be with you again!
--Written June18, 2004

Sculpt me out of a small block of marble

-


Sculpt me out of a small block of marble

for my face a song
my torso
carved undone, chipped...

for my arms two poems

and for my legs and feet
I'd like blades

of grass
--Written December 16,2004

I watched the sunset from my office window.

-


I watched the sunset from my office window.

Up here, far away
from two lives down there

the one I have
and the one I want

I see the city, a running pattern
of broken amber dots

on a black plane
stretching over the

slowly darkening horizon.

Written---November 6, 2004

Last night

-


Last night
I felt your breath on my neck.

I put on my clothes and shoes;
left a note
taped to the door.

I left you.

At home the sun
was being filtered through the linen curtain
of my bedroom window.

Unbuttoned, unzipped, unclothed
I sank into my bed.
I smelled of you
and of too much to drink
--Written June 26, 2004

This morning

-


This morning
I opened my eyes
and saw you lying next to me.

Each eye resting behind
a thin layer of flesh.

The sound of your breathing...
before you woke up.

--Written October 2003

Touch Me - By Stanley Kunitz

Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that's late,
it is my song that's flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
______________and it's done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.

yes is a pleasant country:

yes is a pleasant country:
if's wintry
(my lovely)
let's open the year

both is the very weather
(not either)
my treasure,
when violets appear

love is a deeper season
than reason;
my sweet one
(and april's where we're)

by e. e. cummings

Photography

The sheets still
in the bed where I knew you.

The formula for landscape
is one-third sky two-thirds land:

the lumber-wanting forest
turns itself carnal.

In the love scene
the cool breath of bed sheets lifts

and my heart is a muscular door stop
shifting under your hand,

the sheets remaking me.
Through the door

the unstopped night
will come. The bed

soon inclement and bleached with snow
will still. While reading

I will concentrate on the falling asleep
I must do. My body

is a tunnel I hide in whenever the sky
turns particular.

You buy clothes to wear
that have never touched the skin

of other men. I take
a picture about it.

By RICHARD FOX
Date Unknown

A poem, by Curtis Tuckey

The smog that hides the stars above,
The gun that shoots the flying dove,
The piercing knife and strangling glove:
These are the lasting emblems of
Your love.

Date Unknown

An excerpt from the book "Naive. Super" by Erlend Loe

-

"Walking a dog in the streets of New York is absurd. But it gives me perspective. Lots of it. I'm so far away from home. In a big city. All the people. And I am only one. The only thing I can be sure of at any given time is what I am thinking myself. I have no idea what the others are thinking. Do they think space is big and dangerous? I do. What do they believe in? I think nobody ought to be alone. That one should be with someone. With friends. With the person one loves. I think it is important to love. I think it is the most important thing."

Translated from the Norwegian.

There were full glasses on the table

-

There were full glasses on the table
that first night, and your scent
was faint, but sweet.

Our conversation went something like,

"no, better... usually alone...
no, worse... happy...
something like that... yes."

Something like that... yes.

You were endearing.

Our glasses were filled
again and again

and then they were empty.

The night became warm
but we were no longer thirsty.

There Were Multiple Things We Did

-
in all the wrong order.

Dissatisfied
with the functioning of things
we get the vague urge
to tinker.

We were wrong when we said
there is always time--
study the structure
of a crowd:
someone is always leaving
or coming back;
someone is always lost or missing.
--Written by Richard Fox
Date unknown

The Eye is Dark-Adapted

-

& the weight of weather
is supported by someone's watching eye.
Something potential readies itself.

Because I photograph this glass of ice again & again
just to see how it looks photographed
I will never have to look anything in the eye again.

Inside there are ceilings
because someone misses
having the sky. There are notions
collecting overhead
because someone sleeps square
beneath the fluted lighting fixture
pretty as a wedding cake
hanging in the dark.

The night inflates itself
after daylight stutters. A luna moth
slips into a streetlamp
overspun with a rash of spider mites
& takes a piece of the moon.

There is a technique to sadness
just as there is to photography;
I remember each step in the mechanics:

first there is the thing which saddens
next memory is engaged all penny dreadful
then there is always at least one problem to be solved:

how do I do this
how do I do that
will I need to remember this

how?

Written by Richard Fox
Date Unknown

The Dead

This morning
I made my way through the cemetery.

The flowers,
roses of many colors,
like the ones we bought together.

I don't know why I thought he would be waiting,
sitting on his patch of grass,
smiling at me.

When I arrived,
he was of course not sitting there.

But then, I of course
did not expect to see him there. I of course
was not at the cemetery today.
No one has died,

but today, I felt that someone had.

Written February 12, 2005

[a fragment poem, based on found text] By Richard Fox

-


It is very good to bathe in such weather as today,

when the sun slightly slept
I can not speak anything concrete.

I am compelled to you to speak good-bye,
still interesting and clear.

I have gone still today, into a garden:
there is a monkey wrench in the thorn room.

In the street, in a shadow:
here the present is warm

and lucklessness has developed so
that I have lost loved persons, places and things.

It was huge to mountain
when I learned what it was lost.

In the head may not come at all that
I have an inclination to the grave:

we are very much adhered from childhood.

The inclination practically never deceived me.
Also I think what she has brought me now

and now. On this I would like to add a word:
eyes at me brown; hair, on a nature, dark.

Written by Richard Fox
Date Unknown

You are late of autumn, By Richard Fox

You are late of autumn
& one after my own heart:
a penny for your thought.

The world will trend
the way it will under linden,
under juniper: I’ll always
think of you as I pretend

to eat the living air or pull
an origami swan out of nowhere
or out of someone’s ear.
--Date unknown