by Billy Collins
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
by Simon Armitage
You’re Beautiful because you’re classically trained. ,
I’m ugly because I associate piano wire with strangulation.
You’re beautiful because you stop to read the cards in newsagents’ windows about lost cats and missing dogs.
I’m ugly because of what 1 did to that jellyfish with a lolly-stick and a big stone
You’re beautiful because for you, politeness is instinctive, not a marketing campaign
I’m ugly because desperation is impossible to hide.
Ugly like he is,
Beautiful like hers,
Beautiful like Venus,
Ugly like his,
Beautiful like she is,
Ugly like Mars.
You’re beautiful because you believe in coincidence and the power of thought.
I’m ugly because I proved God to be a mathematical impossibility
You’re beautiful because you prefer home-made soup to the packet stuff.
I’m ugly because once, at a dinner party, I defended the aristocracy and wasn’t even drunk.
You’re beautiful because you can’t work the remote control.
I’m ugly because of satellite television and twenty-four hour rolling news.
Ugly like he is,
Beautiful like hers,
Beautiful like Venus,
Ugly like his,
Beautiful like she is,
Ugly like Mars.
You’re beautiful because you cry at weddings as well as funerals.
I’m ugly because I think .of children as another species from a different world.
You’re beautiful because you look great in any colour including red.
I’m ugly because I think shopping is strictly for the acquisition of material goods.
You’re beautiful because when you were born, undiscovered planets lined up to peep over the rim of your cradle and lay gifts of gravity and light at your miniature feet.
I’m ugly for saying ‘love at first sight’ is another form of mistaken identity and that the most human of all responses is to gloat.
Ugly like he is,
Beautiful like hers,
Beautiful like Venus,
Ugly like his,
Beautiful like she is,
Ugly like Mars.
You’re beautiful because you’ve never seen the inside of a car-wash,
I’m ugly because I always ask for a receipt.
You’re beautiful for sending a box of shoes to the third world.
I’m ugly because I remember the telephone numbers of ex-girlfriends and the year Schubert was born.
You’re beautiful because you sponsored a parrot in a zoo.
I’m ugly because when I sigh it’s like the slow collapse of a circus tent.
Ugly like he is,
Beautiful like hers,
Beautiful like Venus,
Ugly like his,
Beautiful like she is,
Ugly like Mars.
You’re beautiful because you can point at a man in a uniform and laugh.
I’m ugly because I was a police informer in a previous life.
You’re beautiful because you drink a litre of water and eat three pieces of fruit a day.
I’m ugly for taking the line that a meal without meat is a beautiful woman with one eye.
You’re beautiful because you don’t see love as a competition and you know how to lose.
I’m ugly because I kissed the FA Cup then held it up to the crowd.
You’re beautiful because of a single buttercup in the top buttonhole of your cardigan.
I’m ugly because I said the World’s Strongest Woman was a muscleman in a dress.
You’re beautiful because you couldn’t live in a lighthouse.
I’m ugly for making hand-shadows in front of the giant bulb, so when they look up, the captains of vessels in distress see the ears of a rabbit, or the eye of a fox, or the legs of a galloping black horse.
Ugly like he is,
Beautiful like hers,
Beautiful like Venus,
Ugly like his,
Beautiful like she is,
Ugly like Mars.
Ugly like he is,
Beautiful like hers,
Beautiful like Venus,
Ugly like his,
Beautiful like she is,
Ugly like Mars.
de León Felipe
(Je, je, je…
Jo, jo, jo…
Ja, ja, ja…)
Es la risa mecánica del mundo,
la risa del magazine y la pantalla,
la risa del megáfono y del jazz,
la risa sincopada de los negros,
la risa asalariada,
la risa que se alquila y que se compra…
¡Risa de almoneda y carnaval!
Risa de diez centavos o un penique,
de albayalde, de ferias y de pista,
de cabaret, de maquillaje y de boudoir.
Risa de propaganda y de ordenanza
municipal y de pregón.
La que anuncian las rotativas,
las esquinas,
las vallas,
la radio,
el celuloide y el neón
y vende en todo el mundo
la gran firma
“Standard Smile Company”,
(Je, je, je…
Ja, ja, ja…
Jo, jo, jo…)
“¡Smile, Smile, Smile!”
Ahí pasa el pregonero.
Es aquel viejo vendedor de sombras
que ahora vende sonrisas.
“¡Risas, risas, risas!
Risas fabricadas a troquel
como pesos y como centavos.
Risas para las viudas y los huérfanos,
risas para el mendigo y el leproso,
risas para los chinos y para los judios
-a la medida y a granel-,
risas para el rey Lear
y para el rey Edipo
y risas para España,
sin cuencas ya y sin lágrimas también.”
“¡Smile, Smile, Smile!”
Polvo es el aire,
polvo de carbón apagado…
y el mecader y el gobernante
pregonando sonrisas
para esconder la sombra
y la miseria.
“¡Risas, risas, risas!”
Polvo es el aire,
polvo de carbón apagado…
y el huracán y el viento
vendiendo a gritos
risas por la calle.
(¡Ja, ja , ja!…)
¡Perseguid esa zorra,
perseguid esa zorra a pedradas,
perseguidla y matadla!
(Je, je, je…)
¡Silencio!…¡Silencio!
Aquí no ríe nadie…
¡La risa humana ha muerto!…
¡Y la risa mecánica también!
Oíd, amigos,
los que comprasteis la sonrisa en una feria,
o en un ten cent store:
el que asesina la alegría
con la sonrisa merca luego,
y el creador del llanto
es el que dice: “¡Smile!”
(¡Ja, ja, ja!…)
Debajo de esa risa
que viene entre las sombras,
está el gesto del hambre,
muchos brazos caídos,
el panadero ocioso
y vagones de trigo hacia el fondo del mar.
(¡Ja, ja, ja!…)
Debajo de esa risa de ordenanza
que llega en las tinieblas,
hay un rictus de espanto,
una boca epiléptica,
una baba amarilla
y sangre…sangre y llanto.
(¡Ja, ja, ja!…)
“Risas, risas…
viejas risas de México
para los ataúdes
y para los esqueletos.
Risas, risas,
risas para los vivos
y los muertos…”
¡Je,je! Ahora me río yo…
la risa es contagiosa.
¡Eh, tú, traficante de risas!
¡Pregonero!…
A ver cuál es la mía.
Me reiré también. Después de todo
¿no tengo yo un resorte
aquí en los maseteros
que dispara la risa?
Y en los sobacos
también tengo cosquillas.
Además, ¿no hay sueños de artificio?
¿No se compran los sueños?
Pues compraré la risa.
¿Por qué no he de reírme
y hacer que tú te rías?
¡Je, je!… Ya ves. La risa es contagiosa.
¡Bastante contagiosa!
¡Más que la Dignidad y la Justicia!
I want to peel off a hundred-dollar bill
and slap it down on the counter.
You can pick out a dress. I’ll pick out a tie: polka-dots
spinning like disco balls. Darling, let’s go
two-stepping in the sawdust at the Broken Spoke.
Let’s live downtown and go clubbing.
God save hip-hop and famous mixed drinks.
Let’s live in a cardboard box. Let’s live
in a loft above Chelsea, barely human, talking about
the newest collection of Elizabeth Peyton,
her brilliant strokes, the wine and cheese.
You can go from one state to another and never
paint the same thing twice. In New Mexico
we could live by a creek and hang our laundry
on the line. Let’s get naked in the cold waters of Michigan.
Let’s get hitched in Nevada. Just you, me, and Elvis.
We could sell cheese curd in Wisconsin.
I could pay off my bills. You could strip
in some dive on the outskirts of Pittsburgh.
Let’s bite each other on the neck.
Oh, my sexy Transylvania!
We could be relationship counselors
for trannies in South Dakota.
It must be hard to have a woman living
inside you
when you’re watching cows chew
the frozen grass of December.
You are everywhere, sweet Carolinas.
You’re my boss, Tennessee, you honeysuckle.
Give us a kiss, Hawaii. Who says we’re not an empire? Fuck ’em,
they need Jesus. They need the Holy Ghost.
Right, Kansas? Kansas! My yellow brick road of intelligent design. We are not
monkeys. They’re all in prison, right Texas? Texas,
I was with you on the Fourth of July watching the sky undress
with my friends and we were Americans on America Day,
which is every day, coming home from work, drinking a beer
and waiting for the dark,
for the night, the rocket’s red glare, lying around
on a blanket in the backyard, a girl from your hometown
leaning against you, slipping
her slender foot in and out of a saltwater sandal. She’s wearing
cherry lip balm and taking Ecstasy.
Later you can taste it. The smooth wax along her mouth, her arms
stretched out in the grass and each narrow leaf of grass
like a separate lover, the horizon
of a summer tan rising above her low-cut jeans.
She looks different here than she did in her uniform, standing behind
the counter of the Coffee-Go, steaming milk,
rows of flavored syrup above her head: almond, blackberry, mint, vanilla.
This is the Fourth of July
and she looks like the end of summer. She’s a wind
moving through the trees. She’s the best thing
about high school assemblies. We are a country at war
and she’s passing a note to you in class, your book open
to the chapter on dissecting frogs. How to keep the brain intact
when removing it from the small skull. The note says
Why were you holding Clare’s hand after lunch?
We are a country at war but it’s not really happening
here. It is not Clare or her brother or all the bourbon
in Kentucky. On the Fourth of July
I walk out among the fallen
watermelon rinds, the corncobs, paper plates with chicken grease
being pushed by a little breeze
so they look like moons spun out of orbit.
I go inside. I turn the television on.
It’s playing the Civil War again. The Battle of Gettysburg
remembering itself on the football field
at Lincoln Memorial High. A rush of gray uniforms
poised on the scrimmage line. The poor sons of Alabama
wearing the uniforms of dead soldiers.
The North marching down
toward cotton revenue and Big Tobacco. The South starving,
fighting, often without shoes, the narrator explaining
how the muskets were loaded, fired, and then reloaded.
That’s a lot of time
to think about the person you’re killing.
That’s a lot of time to wish you were home.
Unless, of course, you were home
and your house was burning down. Out of the smoke
there’s always more smoke. There’s always the hacking apart and crying.
You can go from one Civil War to another
and still not be free. The man in charge of the antique cannon
has lit his shirt on fire. The man in charge
of the horse runs Ray’s Hardware on Tenth and Main.
He’s having a liquidation sale this weekend.
The show is over
in an hour. That includes commercials
and the slow I-won’t-kill-you pace
of the reenactment. This is how it happened,
the narrator is saying,
while his producer plays a Negro spiritual. It makes you weep.
The vocalist calling out to God. Oh Lord! Oh Lord my God, she’s singing,
have pity on our souls. You can go from one state
to another and pity will meet you at the Greyhound Station.
In the stands of the Lincoln Memorial football field
a little boy is eating cotton candy while the dead men rise up
from the twenty-yard line and walk toward their families. I love
the History Channel. It’s so foreign. The old reels of Germany
having the fascism bombed out of it. Kennedy waving
from the black sedan. It’s almost real. Boston grieving. Pulling its hair out.
You can take the Chinatown bus from Boston
to the Chinatown in New York City. You can go
from one shop window
with peeled ducks hanging by their ankles
to another shop window
with peeled ducks hanging by their ankles.
In Oregon you can go from one hundred-year-old evergreen
to another hundred-year-old evergreen and never turn around.
They’re everywhere, cut down
and loaded up, like paperbacks in bookstores.
My favorite bookstore is in Evanston, Illinois.
The owner is Polish and his daughter wore a wool skirt
that kept sliding up her legs
as she sat on the edge of his desk. God bless her
for it was cold outside and I was almost alone
but for my copy of The Idiot I carried with me everywhere.
You can go from one Russian novel to another
Russian novel and never have
borsht. You can go from one daughter to another
and eventually end up with your own. You can go from one
founding father to another and still have the same
America. The same Alaska. The same Baked Alaska
served on a silver plate in the same hotel
where the waitstaff are all South American.
The same cows sleeping in the same Wyoming with the same kids
getting drunk, shooting cans, peeing on the electric fence.
The same Main Street with the same True Value. The same
flags staggered between the streetlights
like marathon runners. I walked down that street in Tacoma, Washington,
with Jennifer when Jennifer had red hair and listened
to Broadway musicals. We smoked
cigarettes in the town square
below a statue of one soldier carrying another. The plaque
read Brothers in Arms. One soldier carrying another
in his arms. We were young and mean
and thought it was funny. You can go from one town square
to another and never fall in love.
Even in New Hampshire where people Live Free or Die.
What kind of life is that
when you’re on the road and the woman
next to you is hardly there, hardly speaking, her feet
on the dashboard like two very different promises.
How are you supposed to drive
under these conditions? Forget about the rain. Forget
about Vermont and the Green Mountain’s majesty.
Forget Ted Nugent. Forget Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Forget the swimming pools in California
because if she doesn’t love you
what chance have you got with LA?
In LA you don’t get to be lonely.
You get skin peels and mud masks.
You can go from one spa to another
and watch the same lemon slices of cucumber
pressed against the eyes of thirteen-year-old girls and seventy-year-old
women. You won’t see that in Minnesota.
Minnesota! Cover me up in a wool blanket
and put me to bed. Let me sleep.
Let me have the dream again
where Kenneth Koch walks through my mother’s house
looking for a leash. He’s taking my dog for a walk. The dog
is scratching at the front door and Kenneth is saying yes, yes, I’m coming.
You can hear him telling the dog that one broken heart
deserves a heart that has been differently broken.
I had that dream in New York City. Times Square
looks like America throwing up on itself.
I want to hold its hair back. I want to sit in the park
where my brother and I drank coffee and ate donuts from Dean & DeLuca.
We watched a man fly a little wooden airplane over the green benches.
We ate lunch at the Cedar Tavern.
The French fries I ordered were covered in pepper
like the poem Frank O’Hara wrote to Mayakovski, saying
I love you. I love you, but I’m turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist. The burger was bloody in the middle as if it wasn’t through living.
My first girlfriend refused to eat meat.
She said she wouldn’t be a tomb for another living creature.
But she privately cut herself on the arms
which confused both her parents.
Senior year she moved to Idaho. I miss her, my sweet potato.
You can go from one state to another
and still hate yourself. Hide in your room listening to The Cure, carving
little commas in your skin. You can go
to Arizona State and never leave your past behind. Arizona waiting
with open arms for the new blood. The great white hope
of tailgate parties and college football. Put me in, coach, I’m ready to play!
I’m ready for the lobster rolls of Maine
and the coeds of Maryland. In Maryland
I played miniature golf with a waitress from Denny’s.
I spent the winter sitting in her section, drinking Pepsi,
watching her hips hydroplane inside a green polyester skirt.
It was the year my Uncle Joe died. He was a G.I.
He was a G.I. Joe. A man who hid under the table
if a car backfired. He refused to eat rice.
He came back from Normandy
wanting ice cream. He had a friend from Arkansas
who ended up all over his uniform. An ear burned
into the helmet. He had a friend from Colorado
who got his hands cut off, slow, and forever. His pal
from New Jersey was thrown into the sky
like a human constellation of broken teeth. You can go
from one state to another and still feel pretty good about enlisting.
Joe lived in a trance. Love saved him.
He would scratch his wife’s name over and over into the tough leather
of his boots. Hidden below the view-line
of a foxhole, his knife drawn, the word Alice, written like a child
writes on the chalkboard. Alice, Alice,
like an antidote to death. Joe died in a hospital.
You can go from one pool of blood
to another and never see your own reflection.
Oh, Mississippi, I worry about your boys.
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, are you half empty?
Washington, DC, the sons of senators
are sleeping between flannel sheets.
Darling, let’s go to Florida and sit
in the shade of an orange grove shack.
Let’s meet some Cubans and Jews. The world is so big.
Why stay up all night and only have ourselves to keep warm?
I’ve never been to West Virginia. What the hell
are West Virginians doing this weekend? Or Iowans? In Iowa
there’s a new Wal-Mart opening and I’m gonna shed some dimes.
We’ll take a bus there. A bus is a diplomat.
It throws us all together, our books,
hats, and umbrellas. I am never more human
than when I’m riding next to someone
who makes me shudder. If my body
touches his body who knows what will happen? Race issues
and cooties. The great unknown
coming home from work. You can go from one state to another
and still not know how to act. We are losing ourselves. We are somewhere
in Delaware. You are my Georgia peach. Your love
is like a field of buffalo when we still had buffalo and they looked like dark
rolling hills deep in North Dakota. America,
I’m in love with your imports and exports,
your embargoes and summits!
Let’s walk down to the river. Let’s bless the paper
boats and turn the whole thing into wine. We can sit quietly on a blanket,
watching the transcendentalists come and go, talking
of Henry David Thoreau. Take me to the river,
Ohio, put me in the water.
Missouri goes down to the river and drinks Vanilla Cokes.
Rhode Island goes down and prays for money.
Connecticut goes down and washes its clothes on the sandy bank.
We go down to the river and the moon
pulls up in its silver Cadillac.
America, let’s put our feet in the water! Let’s tie a rock
around our waist and jump in.
The moon is revving up. The river
is rolling by. Tom Petty is singing about a girl from Indiana
and I am buying you another drink. I am trying to take you home.
this man used to be an
interesting writer,
he was able to say brisk and
refreshing things.
at the time
I suggested to the editors and
the critics that he was one to
be watched
and also that he had hardly yet been
noticed
and that he certainly should now be
noticed.
this writer used some of my
remarks as blurbs for his
books, which I didn’t
mind.
all of his publications were little
chapbooks, 16 to 32
pages,
mimeographed.
they came out at a
rapid rate,
perhaps three or four a
year.
the problem was that each
chapbook seemed a little weaker
than the one that preceded
it
but he continued to use my old
blurbs.
my wife noticed the change
in his writing
too.
‘what’s happened to his
writing?’ she asked me.
'he’s doing too much of it, he’s
pushing it out, forcing it.’
'this stuff is bad, you ought to
tell him to stop using your
blurbs.’
'I can’t do that, I just wish he
wouldn’t publish so much.’
'well, you publish all the
time too.’
'with me,’ I told her, 'it’s
different.’
yesterday I received another of his
little chapbooks
with his delicate dedication scrawled
on the title page.
this latest effort was totally
flat.
the words just fell off the
page,
dead on
arrival.
where had he gone?
too much ambition?
too much just doing it for the sake
of doing it?
just not waiting for the words to
pile up inside and then
explode of their own
volition?
I decided then I should take a whole week
off,
be on the safe side,
just shut the computer down,
forget the whole damned silly
business
for awhile.
as I said, that was
yesterday.
-Charles Bukowski
1.
What shape floats
in the dark window, what
ragged form?
Mouth, scream, edges
bared, it balances
on a long spiked, crooked
stem. I know now,
as if I’d never known, this
black shape within the night’s black shape.
-
“The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.
The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.
The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.
No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.
No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.
Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor’s craft is the type.
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.
When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.”
Oscar Wilde
IS it thy will that I should wax and wane,
Barter my cloth of gold for hodden grey,
And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain
Whose brightest threads are each a wasted day?
-
Is it thy will–Love that I love so well–
That my Soul’s House should be a tortured spot
Wherein, like evil paramours, must dwell
The quenchless flame, the worm that dieth not?
-
Nay, if it be thy will I shall endure,
And sell ambition at the common mart,
And let dull failure be my vestiture,
And sorrow dig its grave within my heart.
-
Perchance it may be better so–at least
I have not made my heart a heart of stone,
Nor starved my boyhood of its goodly feast,
Nor walked where Beauty is a thing unknown.
-
Many a man hath done so; sought to fence
In straitened bonds the soul that should be free,
Trodden the dusty road of common sense,
While all the forest sang of liberty,
-
Not marking how the spotted hawk in flight
Passed on wide pinion through the lofty air,
To where the steep untrodden mountain height
Caught the last tresses of the Sun God’s hair.
-
Or how the little flower he trod upon,
The daisy, that white-feathered shield of gold,
Followed with wistful eyes the wandering sun
Content if once its leaves were aureoled.
-
But surely it is something to have been
The best belovèd for a little while,
To have walked hand in hand with Love, and seen
His purple wings flit once across thy smile.
-
Ay! though the gorgèd asp of passion feed
On my boy’s heart, yet have I burst the bars,
Stood face to face with Beauty, known indeed
The Love which moves the Sun and all the stars!
-Oscar Wilde
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.
-Charles Bukowski
Don’t believe our outlines, forget them
and begin from your own words.
As if you are the first to write poetry
or the last poet.
If you read our work, let it not be an extension of our airs,
but to correct our errs
in the book of agony.
Don’t ask anyone: Who am I?
You know who your mother is.
As for your father, be your own.
Truth is white, write over it
with a crow’s ink.
Truth is black, write over it
with a mirage’s light.
If you want to duel with a falcon
soar with the falcon.
If you fall in love with a woman,
be the one, not she,
who desires his end.
Life is less alive than we think but we don’t think
of the matter too much lest we hurt emotions’ health.
If you ponder a rose for too long
you won’t budge in a storm.
You are like me, but my abyss is clear.
And you have roads whose secrets never end.
They descend and ascend, descend and ascend.
You might call the end of youth
the maturity of talent
or wisdom. No doubt, it is wisdom,
the wisdom of a cool non-lyric.
One thousand birds in the hand
don’t equal one bird that wears a tree.
A poem in a difficult time
is beautiful flowers in a cemetery.
Example is not easy to attain
so be yourself and other than yourself
behind the borders of echo.
Ardor has an expiration date with extended range.
So fill up with fervor for your heart’s sake,
follow it before you reach your path.
Don’t tell the beloved, you are I
and I am you, say
the opposite of that: we are two guests
of an excess, fugitive cloud.
Deviate, with all your might, deviate from the rule.
Don’t place two stars in one utterance
and place the marginal next to the essential
to complete the rising rapture.
Don’t believe the accuracy of our instructions.
Believe only the caravan’s trace.
A moral is as a bullet in its poet’s heart
a deadly wisdom.
Be strong as a bull when you’re angry
weak as an almond blossom
when you love, and nothing, nothing
when you serenade yourself in a closed room.
The road is long like an ancient poet’s night:
plains and hills, rivers and valleys.
Walk according to your dream’s measure: either a lily
follows you or the gallows.
Your tasks are not what worry me about you.
I worry about you from those who dance
over their children’s graves,
and from the hidden cameras
in the singers’ navels.
You won’t disappoint me,
if you distance yourself from others, and from me.
What doesn’t resemble me is more beautiful.
From now on, your only guardian is a neglected future.
Don’t think, when you melt in sorrow
like candle tears, of who will see you
or follow your intuition’s light.
Think of yourself: is this all of myself?
The poem is always incomplete, the butterflies make it whole.
No advice in love. It’s experience.
No advice in poetry. It’s talent.
And last but not least, Salaam.
-MAHMOUD DARWISH
there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day
and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace
those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love
beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average
but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect
like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock
their finest art
Charles Bukowski
Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
There are some millionaires
With money they can’t use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They’ve got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Now if you listen closely
I’ll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
‘Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Maya Angelou