little gifts of loneliness

opera blog 'a woman dreaming when she should be typing/the last report of the day.' ~ Adrienne Rich, 'Dreamwood'

[pocketpoem]

From Rilke's Uncollected Poems

Untitled (Paris, end of 1913) Rainer Maria Rilke trans. Edward Snow Once I took your face into my hands. Moonlight fell on it. Most incomprehensible object under overflowing tears. Like something docile, that quietly endures, it felt almost the way a thing feels. And yet there was no being in that chill night, which endlessly eludes me. O these places toward which we surge, pushing into the scant surfaces all the waves of our heart, our pleasures and our weaknesses, and to whom do we finally hold them out? To the stranger, who misunderstood us, to the other, whom we never found, to those slaves, who bound us, to the spring winds, which promptly vanished, and to silence, that spendthrift.

[pocketpoem]

Atlas

Atlas U. A. Fanthorpe There is a kind of love called maintenance Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it; Which checks the insurance, and doesn’t forget The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs; Which answers letters; which knows the way The money goes; which deals with dentists And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains, And postcards to the lonely; which upholds The permanently ricketty elaborate Structures of living, which is Atlas. And maintenance is the sensible side of love, Which knows what time and weather are doing To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring; Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps My suspect edifice upright in air, As Atlas did the sky.

[pocketpoem]

Night in Arizona

Night in Arizona Sarah Howe The last of the sheet I shuffle off an ankle – a sound like the spilling of sand from shovel and the night air blurs for a second with its footfall. Our entwined shape a word in the dark. On my forehead and cheek each flourishing charge of your breathing is a moment’s reprieve. Heat in this place goes deeper than sleep, wraps everything, increases sheen – the forearm weighing your flank as, dreaming, you turn from me, curlicues slick on the backs of thighs, my hand at your neck and eyes aware of several kinds of dark struggling to perfect themselves – the hidden chair, the bouquet of our clothes the razory arms of a juniper rattling crazily at the edge of that endless reddening haze – glad we move on to the city at dawn.

[pocketpoem]

Lunar Shatters

Lunar Shatters Melissa Broder I came into the world a young man Then I broke me off Still the sea and clouds are Pegasus colors My heart is Pegasus colors but to get there I must go back Back to the time before I was a woman Before I broke me off to make a flattened lap And placed thereon a young man Where I myself could have dangled And how I begged him enter there My broken young man parts And how I let the mystery collapse With rugged young man puncture And how I begged him turn me Pegasus colors And please to put a sunset there And gone forever was my feeling snake And in its place dark letters And me the softest of all And me so skinless I could no longer be naked And me I had to de-banshee And me I dressed myself I made a poison suit I darned it out of myths Some of the myths were beautiful Some turned ugly in the making The myth of the slender girl The myth of the fat one The myth of rescue The myth of young men The myth of the hair in their eyes The myth of how beauty would save them The myth of me and who I must become The myth of what I am not And the horses who are no myth How they do not need to turn Pegasus They are winged in their un-myth They holy up the ground I must holy up the ground I sanctify the ground and say fuck it I say fuck it in a way that does not invite death I say fuck it and fall down no new holes And I ride an unwinged horse And I unbecome myself And I strip my poison suit And wear my crown of fuck its

[pocketpoem]

it may not always be so...

it may not always be so... e. e. cummings it may not always be so; and i say that if your lips, which i have loved, should touch another's, and your dear strong fingers clutch his heart, as mine in time not far away; if on another's face your sweet hair lay in such a silence as i know, or such great writhing words as, uttering overmuch, stand helplessly before the spirit at bay; if this should be, i say if this should be— you of my heart, send me a little word; that i may go unto him, and take his hands, saying, Accept all happiness from me. Then shall i turn my face, and hear one bird sing terribly afar in the lost lands.

[pocketpoem]

Snow and Dirty Rain

Snow and Dirty Rain Richard Siken Close your eyes. A lover is standing too close to focus on. Leave me blurry and fall toward me with your entire body. Lie under the covers, pretending to sleep, while I'm in the other room. Imagine my legs crossed, my hair combed, the shine of my boots in the slatted light. I'm thinking My plant, his chair, the ashtray that we bought together. I'm thinking This is where we live. When we were little we made houses out of cardboard boxes. We can do anything. It's not because our hearts are large, they're not, it's what we struggle with. The attempt to say Come over. Bring your friends. It's a potluck, I'm making pork chops, I'm making those long noodles you love so much. My dragonfly, my black-eyed fire, the knives in the kitchen are singing for blood, but we are the crossroads, my little outlaw, and this is the map of my heart, the landscape after cruelty which is, of course, a garden, which is a tenderness, which is a room, a lover saying Hold me tight, it's getting cold. We have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven, which brings us back to the hero's shoulders and a gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it. The lawn drowned, the sky on fire, the gold light falling backward through the glass of every room. I'll give you my heart to make a place for it to happen, evidence of a love that transcends hunger. Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars for you? That I would take you there? The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugar cube? We've read the back of the book, we know what's going to happen. The fields burned, the land destroyed, the lovers left broken in the brown dirt. And then it's gone. Makes you sad. All your friends are gone. Goodbye Goodbye. No more tears. I would like to meet you all in Heaven. But there's a litany of dreams that happens somewhere in the middle. Moonlight spilling on the bathroom floor. A page of the book where we transcend the story of our lives, past the taco stands and record stores. Moonlight making crosses on your body, and me putting my mouth on every one. We have been very brave, we have wanted to know the worst, wanted the curtain to be lifted from our eyes. This dream going on with all of us in it. Penciling in the bighearted slob. Penciling in his outstretched arms. Our Father who art in Heaven. Our Father who art buried in the yard. Someone is digging your grave right now. Someone is drawing a bath to wash you clean, he said, so think of the wind, so happy, so warm. It's a fairy tale, the story underneath the story, sliding down the polished halls, lightning here and gone. We make these ridiculous idols so we can pray to what's behind them but what happens after we get up the ladder? Do we simply stare at what is horrible and forgive it? Here is the river, and here is the box, and here are the monsters we put in the box to test our strength against. Here is the cake, and here is the fork, and here's the desire to put it inside us, and then the question behind every question: What happens next? The way you slam your body into mine reminds me I'm alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling, and they're only a few steps behind you, finding the flaw, the poor weld, the place where we weren't stitched up quite right, the place they could almost slip right through if the skin wasn't trying to keep them out, to keep them here, on the other side of the theater where the curtain keeps rising. I crawled out the window and ran into the woods. I had to make up all the words myself. The way they taste, the way they sound in the air. I passed through the narrow gate, stumbled in, stumbled around for a while, and stumbled back out. I made this place for you. A place for you to love me. If this isn't the kingdom then I don't know what is. So how would you catalog it? Dawn in the fields? Snow and dirty rain? Light brought in in buckets? I was trying to describe the kingdom, but the letters kept smudging as I wrote them: the hunter's heart, the hunter's mouth, the trees and the trees and the space between the trees, swimming in gold. The words frozen. The creatures frozen. The plum sauce leaking out of the bag. Explaining will get us nowhere. I was away, I don't know where, lying on the floor, pretending I was dead. I wanted to hurt you but the victory is that I could not stomach it. We have swallowed him up, they said. It's beautiful, it really is. I had a dream about you. We were in the gold room where everyone finally gets what they want. You said Tell me about your books, your visions made of flesh and light and I said This is the Moon. This is the Sun. Let me name the stars for you. Let me take you there. The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugar cube...We were in the gold room where everyone finally gets what they want, so I said What do you want, sweetheart? and you said Kiss me. Here I am leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack, my silent night, just mash your lips against me. We are all going forward. None of us are going back.

[pocketpoem]

Half-Light

Half-Light Frank Bidart That crazy drunken night I maneuvered you out into a field outside of Coachella—I’d never seen a sky so full of stars, as if the dirt of our lives still were sprinkled with glistening white shells from the ancient seabed beneath us that receded long ago. Parallel. We lay in parallel furrows. —That suffocated, fearful look on your face. Jim, yesterday I heard your wife on the phone tell me you died almost nine months ago. Jim, now we cannot ever. Bitter that we cannot ever have the conversation that in nature and alive we never had. Now not ever. We have not spoken in years. I thought perhaps at ninety or a hundred, two broken-down old men, we wouldn’t give a damn, and find speech. When I tell you that all the years we were undergraduates I was madly in love with you you say you knew. I say I knew you knew. You say There was no place in nature we could meet. You say this as if you need me to admit something. No place in nature, given our natures. Or is this warning? I say what is happening now is happening only because one of us is dead. You laugh and say, Or both of us! Our words will be weirdly jolly. That light I now envy exists only on this page.

[pocketpoem]

XVI from In Time of War

XVI from In Time of War W. H. Auden Here war is simple like a monument: A telephone is speaking to a man; Flags on a map assert that troops were sent; A boy brings milk in bowls. There is a plan For living men in terror of their lives, Who thirst at nine who were to thirst at noon, And can be lost and are, and miss their wives, And, unlike an idea, can die too soon. But ideas can be true although men die, And we can watch a thousand faces Made active by one lie: And maps can really point to places Where life is evil now: Nanking; Dachau.

[pocketpoem]

I go my way and think how

I go my way and think how Kapka Kassabova After we say goodbye on the dirt road by the sea, stepping over garbage to clutch and part, as if before a war, and the young man on the roof of your disintegrating bus with no brakes grins delighted, as if saying: this is life, amiga, you are not protected in your sturdy boots and nor is he, I go my way and think how destinations will undo us, eventually. In fact, as strangers spit phlegm in the dust, their baked-earth faces shiny in the grubby minutes before dark, faces unlyrical and without sunsets like the Equator, I think how it's happening already. I go my way and confirm that those who squat in the heat are sick and chew the cud of their endless present which is remarkably monotonous, their only distinction, this is what it's come to, and I am just as indistinct in the blackness of buses, in the haze of towns. I go my way spitting phlegm in the dust and it's suddenly winter, chilly stars light up the snow of the world's biggest volcanoes with longest names, white trees glitter and vanish like memories of someone's Christmas, and as the smelly type next seat reaches out a taloned hand, finally making his move, I think how destinations are illusory. In fact, the only certainty is this half-broken window through which the snow drifts in like cake-dust for the party of your absence, to celebrate the next destination we've passed at least three times now, which clearly we'll never reach, because hell is circular, because destinations are the reason why we clutch and part, and clutch and part again, thus making sure we're alive, or mostly, they are the reason for moving, or shall I say for returning, which is what we wanted all along of course, the only thing we wanted.

[pocketpoem]

Mantra for long distance lovers

Mantra for long distance lovers Kapka Kassabova When they are finally together, they'll find: the limitations of actually being there are many. She won't write about him and to him. He won't toss and turn, conjuring her multiple embrace. She won't practise chronic longing anymore. They'll have nothing to look forward to. And all because they'll be together. So star-crossed lovers, wherever you are - writing an email, boarding a plane, driving home from the airport alone with your tissues - breathe deeply, avoid abrupt movements, and repeat after me: the limitations of actually being there are many.

[pocketpoem]

Why I Sing

Why I Sing Cyril Wong At the end of an open road of a teacher's instruction, I began to achieve some perspective, able to pull every possible breath to the centre of my body, gathering of strength before that sustained blow of a note punched free from between my eyes, angling a clean path through the air, as if air was all the world was made of, or, at least, the treacherous fog of its concept. And vision rises out to meet it, stepping forward into what I dare call enlightenment — respite, more like, even mercy — and those with ears that run all the way into the emptied core of them would creep out too and join me up that track through air, wide as the crack loss draws across the back of a mind, each word in a song taking us so far from what we are we find ourselves again, become lighter than air.

[pocketpoem]

Scheherazade

Scheherazade Richard Siken Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake                                              and dress them in warm clothes again.          How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running until they forget that they are horses.                    It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,          it's more like a song on a policeman's radio,                  how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple                                                                            to slice into pieces. Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon, that means          we're inconsolable.                                Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. These, our bodies, possessed by light.                                                             Tell me we'll never get used to it.

[pocketpoem]

Postscript

Postscript Seamus Heaney And some time make the time to drive out west Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore, In September or October, when the wind And the light are working off each other So that the ocean on one side is wild With foam and glitter, and inland among stones The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans, Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white, Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads Tucked or cresting or busy underwater. Useless to think you'll park and capture it More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there, A hurry through which known and strange things pass As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

[pocketpoem]

Cruelty Without Beauty

Cruelty Without Beauty Denise Riley Go on working around my hairline with a blade and all you'll come to is a white sheen of bone and all that would tell you is that I'm, what else, human. I can tell you that now. Don't make yourself into such a fine instrument of knowledge that you slice uselessly back into your own hand shocking yourself. There is a body, or soul, under your skin too, but you won't assuage your doubts about it by unpeeling me; no, that will uncover nothing but your worse original anxiety. If I speak with formal heaviness, that's the weight of stiff grief bending down leaves, and the mild rain spotting their dust into rings. No I don't much like this bland authoritative tone either but it is what I took from years of reworded loss. So if my skin slid downwards into the ground you would see only a standing pillar of blood. Believe that this would be true also of you. - Such distanced care for self, rendered as knowing, makes anybody ill: I'll drop this clinic voice to say that this hot scowl on songs marks rage for closeness just not found in a true human love - burn, work, burn blue, since one clean word on someone's blank makes salt well under any tongue, am I to go unswollen, arm across my shoulders good, that's who off the end of a wrist? so tired of howling more more grand babe yet if there's angel too this thick extent of longing's ugly as it's true. Heavy water. Show your wound: Ah yes mine's deeper: Is that my shaming subject after all. Best get this done on paper no-one hears so I'll stay still in life where I hear water speaking, may stand where light falls as the plain light will - no that lot skims on wire rhetoric, totters form tightly civic pause to weeping open cut and back but can't get balanced; its figure sways with outflung arms, I do, to hold the deadly wish to be white eye stripped out of human motion as if sigh crashed to clearness, clean of me: Brown rock and leaden sea. Crows in the wood faced to the wind, pinned on high branches. Dark blobs. Clacks on the wind. The drumming light. Yet no-one should say to me, Nothing's enough for you, ever. But I do want to kill and die.

[pocketpoem]

High Windows

High Windows Philip Larkin When I see a couple of kids And guess he’s fucking her and she’s Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, I know this is paradise Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives— Bonds and gestures pushed to one side Like an outdated combine harvester, And everyone young going down the long slide To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if Anyone looked at me, forty years back, And thought, That’ll be the life; No God any more, or sweating in the dark About hell and that, or having to hide What you think of the priest. He And his lot will all go down the long slide Like free bloody birds. And immediately Rather than words comes the thought of high windows: The sun-comprehending glass, And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

[pocketpoem]

Toxin

Toxin (translated from the Chinese) Bei Dao

tobacco’s breath catches short

an exile’s window aims at deep-sea wings released into flight music of a winter’s day sailing closer like a flag shedding its colors

it’s yesterday’s wind, it's love

remorse deep as the fall of heavy snow when a stone reveals the end result I take this moment to weep for the rest of my life

give me another name

I've made a disguise of misfortune shelter from the mother tongue's solar blaze

[pocketpoem]

First Prologue to The Bite of the Night

First Prologue to The Bite of the Night Howard Barker They brought a woman from the street And made her sit in the stalls By threats By bribes By flattery Obliging her to share a little of her life with actors But I don't understand art Sit still, they said But I don't want to see sad things Sit still, they said And she listened to everything Understanding some things But not others Laughing rarely, and always without knowing why Sometimes suffering disgust Sometimes thoroughly amazed And in the light again, said If that's art I think it is hard work It was beyond me So much beyond my actual life But something troubled her Something gnawed her peace And she came a second time, armoured with friends Sit still, she said And again, she listened to everything This time understanding different things This time untroubled that some things Could not be understood Laughing rarely but now without shame Sometimes suffering disgust Sometimes thoroughly amazed And in the light again said This is art, it is hard work And one friend said, too hard for me And the other said, if you will I will come again Because I found it hard I felt honoured