âLiving It Upâ âą The bed is on fire, and are you laughing? âą You leave the bed and leave me without thought. âą The springs want to embrace each other but theyâre afraid if they break âą their spiral, they will never be able to hold anyone. âą I wish you would let me know how difficult it is to love me. âą Then I would know you love me beneath all that difficulty. âą You are tending not only to me, you tell me, but to your other childâthe air, âą and air puts his feet in my slippers, and air scrubs his teeth on my brush, âą and we must learn to share a bed, we must learn to share a body. âą The money is running out. We will have to split one needle âą this winterâone end for me, one end for air.â ************ The difference between Max Ritvo and most of the old and dying poets scrawling their mark on the wall whom Iâve been reading, is that Max was young and he was dying of a terminal disease. And yet his verse is not tainted with regret or elegy. ************ On the contrary, it feels to me as if he was always speaking detached from himself, while fully immersed. I love his life and energy. His turns of phrase, his dark humor, the way he dismisses it all. ************ âI wish you would let me know how difficult it is to love me. Then I would know you love me beneath all that difficulty.â Almost a ballad, almost a lyric, there is sadness but I feel there is more joy hanging on to his every last word. ************ #books #poetry #literature #MaxRitvo #igreads #igbooks #instabooks #instareads #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagramsf #booklove #booknerd #bookporn #bookgram













