It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?
Category: Poetry
peace offering by Ashley Makue
i have decided that
love may no longer
summon me to war
i have laid off my troops
blood-bathed my body
clean of all sin
i will no longer kiss
like breaking my law
or make love
like being broken into
i will clear my eyes
of all my specks
and then i shall see you
you see
these are the days
of the sweet treaty
shan by Momtaza Mehri
Morning papers say debris has washed up on the coastline,
and I do not know if they mean plastic or flesh.
Some of us blur these lines.
We, who live outside the membrane of being,
beyond articulation,
inside the hum of our nightly prayers,
everything we are fearful of has already happened. Is already happening.
I couldn’t tell you all the ways
land imprints on a body,
on a memory,
but each dollar sent back home carries a watermark I can’t ignore.
This sea has always swallowed us,
boats have always failed us,
land has always meant barbed wire and queuing and contributing and contributing
and contributing
until the pillar-box red gloss of documentation
lends us a humanity our fathers never had.
Shouldn’t we be grateful, brother?
At least, for this?
Breathe across a telephone line,
dream to cast this currency this birthright forth at an uncle’s feet. Know I do not mean to.
Know that this is what they name “luck”
Sunrise by Ejiọfọr Ugwu
The sun was reluctant to rise
holding grudges
from the dead night.
The gloom spread,
catching up with all of us.
I scooped water
from the mud pot
to rinse my face
and help the sun rise
and speak our cause
I fear my demons too.
They keep erupting
everywhere.
Even in my dreams
I see whiteness
and blinding lights.
The angels came.
They see decays,
we see dancers.
My dreams are diseased.
My dreams grow moths.
The rope almost loops
in an obvious feast of beheading.
absent by Ashely Makue
i dont know what it is
about leaving
and unavailable
and out of reach
and someone else’s
and begging
and desperate
and alone
and torturous
that lures me to you
i know that you’re not mine
i think that’s the thing
i am sorry
that i will lie
and build a home around you
i am sorry
that i will swallow you
and keep you in
at the cost of all my breath
i am sorry
that i will not blink
i will not move
i am sorry
that you cannot trust
me
i am sorry
that I will ask you to
i don’t know what it is
about fighting to lose
about fighting and losing
and burning
and fire
and waves
crashing into a body
sleeping with corpses
being dead
and wanting you
for as long
as you don’t want me
i think that’s the thing
Samurai Song by Robert Pinsky
When I had no roof I made
Audacity my roof. When I had
No supper my eyes dined.
When I had no eyes I listened.
When I had no ears I thought.
When I had no thought I waited.
When I had no father I made
Care my father. When I had
No mother I embraced order.
When I had no friend I made
Quiet my friend. When I had no
Enemy I opposed my body.
When I had no temple I made
My voice my temple. I have
No priest, my tongue is my choir.
When I have no means fortune
Is my means. When I have
Nothing, death will be my fortune.
Need is my tactic, detachment
Is my strategy. When I had
No lover I courted my sleep.
On 52nd Street by Philip Levine
Down sat Bud, raised his hands,
the Deuces silenced, the lights
lowered, and breath gathered
for the coming storm. Then nothing,
not a single note. Outside starlight
from heaven fell unseen, a quarter-
moon, promised, was no show,
ditto the rain. Late August of ’50,
NYC, the long summer of abundance
and our new war. In the mirror behind
the bar, the spirits—imitating you—
stared at themselves. At the bar
the tenor player up from Philly, shut
his eyes and whispered to no one,
“Same thing last night.” Everyone
been coming all week long
to hear this. The big brown bass
sighed and slumped against
the piano, the cymbals held
their dry cheeks and stopped
chicking and chucking. You went
back to drinking and ignored
the unignorable. When the door
swung open it was Pettiford
in work clothes, midnight suit,
starched shirt, narrow black tie,
spit shined shoes, as ready
as he’d ever be. Eyebrows
raised, the Irish bartender
shook his head, so Pettiford eased
himself down at an empty table,
closed up his Herald Tribune,
and shook his head. Did the TV
come on, did the jukebox bring us
Dinah Washington, did the stars
keep their appointments, did the moon
show, quartered or full, sprinkling
its soft light down? The night’s
still there, just where it was, just
where it’ll always be without
its music. You’re still there too
holding your breath. Bud walked out.
The Soul’s Expression by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
With stammering lips and insufficient sound
I strive and struggle to deliver right
That music of my nature, day and night
With dream and thought and feeling interwound
And only answering all the senses round
With octaves of a mystic depth and height
Which step out grandly to the infinite
From the dark edges of the sensual ground.
This song of soul I struggle to outbear
Through portals of the sense, sublime and whole,
And utter all myself into the air:
But if I did it,—as the thunder-roll
Breaks its own cloud, my flesh would perish there,
Before that dread apocalypse of soul.
Insomnia by Alicia Ostriker
But it’s really fear you want to talk about
and cannot find the words
so you jeer at yourself
you call yourself a coward
you wake at 2 a.m. thinking failure,
fool, unable to sleep, unable to sleep
buzzing away on your mattress with two pillows
and a quilt, they call them comforters,
which implies that comfort can be bought
and paid for, to help with the fear, the failure
your two walnut chests of drawers snicker, the bookshelves mourn
the art on the walls pities you, the man himself beside you
asleep smelling like mushrooms and moss is a comfort
but never enough, never, the ceiling fixture lightless
velvet drapes hiding the window
traffic noise like a vicious animal
on the loose somewhere out there—
you brag to friends you won’t mind death only dying
what a liar you are—
all the other fears, of rejection, of physical pain,
of losing your mind, of losing your eyes,
they are all part of this!
Pawprints of this! Hair snarls in your comb
this glowing clock the single light in the room
Heartbreak opens onto the sunrise by Dee Rees
Heartbreak opens onto the sunrise
For even breaking is opening
And I am broken
I’m open
Broken to the new light without pushing in
Open to the possibilities within, pushing out
See the love shine in through my cracks?
See the light shine out through me?
I am broken
I am open
I am broken open
See the love light shining through me
Shining through my cracks
Through the gaps
My spirit takes journey
My spirit takes flight
Could not have risen otherwise
And I am not running
I’m choosing
Running is not a choice from the breaking
Breaking is freeing
Broken is freedom
I am not broken
I’m free.
~ Spoken by Alike (Adepero Oduye)
Written by Dee Rees
Compassion Camp 