You know my name

[indulgedandbruised]

[apoemaday]

maggie and milly and molly and may

by E.E. Cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles, and

milly befriended a stranded star whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and

may came home with a smooth round stone as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me) it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

[tifararicci1998]

I sat in front of you after years of separation, holding an old piece of memory that was once you.

You don’t remember me and I can’t recognise you.

[apoemaday]

You Are Tired (I Think)

by E.E. Cummings

You are tired, (I think) Of the always puzzle of living and doing; And so am I.

Come with me, then, And we’ll leave it far and far away  — (Only you and I, understand!)

You have played, (I think) And broke the toys you were fondest of, And are a little tired now; Tired of things that break, and  — Just tired. So am I.

But I come with a dream in my eyes tonight, And knock with a rose at the hopeless gate of your heart  — Open to me! For I will show you the places Nobody knows, And, if you like, The perfect places of Sleep.

Ah, come with me! I’ll blow you that wonderful bubble, the moon, That floats forever and a day; I’ll sing you the jacinth song Of the probable stars; I will attempt the unstartled steppes of dream, Until I find the Only Flower, Which shall keep (I think) your little heart While the moon comes out of the sea.

[stoicmike]

Keep in mind that your emotional states are only real to you. -- Michael Lipsey

[apoemaday]

I Know I Have Been Happiest

by Dorothy Parker

I know I have been happiest at your side; But what is done, is done, and all’s to be. And small the good, to linger dolefully -- Gaily it lived, and gallantly it died. I will not make you songs of hearts denied, And you, being man, would have no tears of me, And should I offer you fidelity, You’d be, I think, a little terrified.

Yet this the need of woman, this her curse: To range her little gifts, and give, and give, Because the throb of giving’s sweet to bear. To you, who never begged me vows or verse, My gift shall be my absence, while I live; But after that, my dear, I cannot swear.

[apoemaday]

The Untrustworthy Speaker

by Louise Glück

Don’t listen to me; my heart’s been broken. I don’t see anything objectively.

I know myself; I’ve learned to hear like a psychiatrist. When I speak passionately, that’s when I’m least to be trusted.

It’s very sad, really: all my life, I’ve been praised for my intelligence, my powers of language, of insight. In the end, they’re wasted —

I never see myself, standing on the front steps, holding my sister’s hand. That’s why I can’t account for the bruises on her arm, where the sleeve ends.

In my own mind, I’m invisible: that’s why I’m dangerous. People like me, who seem selfless, we’re the cripples, the liars; we’re the ones who should be factored out in the interest of truth.

When I’m quiet, that’s when the truth emerges. A clear sky, the clouds like white fibers. Underneath, a little gray house, the azaleas red and bright pink.

If you want the truth, you have to close yourself to the older daughter, block her out: when a living thing is hurt like that, in its deepest workings, all function is altered.

That’s why I’m not to be trusted. Because a wound to the heart is also a wound to the mind.

[apoemaday]

The plum you're going to eat next summer

by Gayle Brandeis

The plum you’re going to eat next summer doesn’t exist yet; its potential lives inside a tree you’ll never see in an orchard you’ll never see, will be touched by a certain number of water droplets before it reaches you, by certain angles of light, by a finite amount of bugs and dust motes and hands you’ll never know. The plum you are going to eat next summer will gather sugar, gather mass, will harden at its center so it can soften toward your mouth. The plum you’re going to eat next summer doesn’t know you exist. The plum you are going to eat next summer is growing just for you.

[birdwarde]

sea ducks!

[anxeious]

[brandneweyescd]

they were right btw. you have to dig yourself out of your grave over and over again

[weltenwellen]

Chen Chen, from "weep ode #99"

[stoicmike]

A homage to the wonderful Flanders & Swann, and their "Song Of The Reluctant Cannibal." The boy has somehow gotten the crazy idea that eating people is wrong!

[theycantalk]

mean

[apoemaday]

Song

by Adrienne Rich

You’re wondering if I’m lonely: OK then, yes, I’m lonely as a plane rides lonely and level on its radio beam, aiming across the Rockies for the blue-strung aisles of an airfield on the ocean. You want to ask, am I lonely? Well, of course, lonely as a woman driving across country day after day, leaving behind mile after mile little towns she might have stopped and lived and died in, lonely. If I’m lonely it must be the loneliness of waking first, of breathing dawn’s first cold breath on the city of being the one awake in a house wrapped in sleep. If I’m lonely it’s with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore in the last red light of the year that knows what it is, that knows it’s neither ice nor mud nor winter light but wood, with a gift for burning.

[thatsbelievable]

[apoemaday]

Nearly a Valediction

by Marilyn Hacker

You happened to me. I was happened to like an abandoned building by a bull- dozer, like the van that missed my skull happened a two-inch gash across my chin. You were as deep down as I’ve ever been. You were inside me like my pulse. A new- born flailing toward maternal heartbeat through the shock of cold and glare: when you were gone, swaddled in strange air I was that alone again, inventing life left after you.

I don’t want to remember you as that four o’clock in the morning eight months long after you happened to me like a wrong number at midnight that blew up the phone bill to an astronomical unknown quantity in a foreign currency. The U.S. dollar dived since you happened to me. You’ve grown into your skin since then; you’ve grown into the space you measure with someone you can love back without a caveat.

While I love somebody I learn to live with through the downpulled winter days’ routine wakings and sleepings, half-and-half caffeine- assisted mornings, laundry, stock-pots, dust- balls in the hallway, lists instead of longing, trust that what comes next comes after what came first. She’ll never be a story I make up. You were the one I didn’t know where to stop. If I had blamed you, now I could forgive

you, but what made my cold hand, back in prox- imity to your hair, your mouth, your mind, want where it no way ought to be, defined by where it was, and was and was until the whole globed swelling liquefied and spilled through one cheek’s nap, a syllable, a tear, was never blame, whatever I wished it were. You were the weather in my neighborhood. You were the epic in the episode. You were the year poised on the equinox.