Hope was but a timid friend;
She sat without the grated den,
Watching how my fate would tend,
Even as selfish-hearted men.
She was cruel in her fear;
Through the bars, one dreary day,
I looked out to see her there,
And she turned her face away!
Like a false guard, false watch keeping,
Still, in strife, she whispered peace;
She would sing while I was weeping;
If I listened, she would cease.
False she was, and unrelenting;
When my last joys strewed the ground,
Even Sorrow saw, repenting,
Those sad relics scattered round;
Hope, whose whisper would have given
Balm to all my frenzied pain,
Stretched her wings, and soared to heaven,
Went, and ne’er returned again!
Tag: Poetry
Default Message by Carmen Giménez Smith
I have thirty seconds to convince you
that when I’m not home, my verve is still,
online or if I’m sleeping when you call,
sheep are grazing on yesterday’s melodrama.
Does anybody know what the burning umbrella
really meant? Forget it. Tell me what you need.
Leave me a map. Leave me your net worth
for reference. Leave me more than you ever planned.
Frankly, I’m anxious your message will be a series
of blurs, that you’ll leave the endearing part out,
garble your confession: A misstep here, a domain there.
A ventriloquism. The phone is in the kitchen,
but I’ve lost my way. It must be hunting season.
I retract every last gesture for your same retraction.
Fatigue Performance by Noah Falck
Tonight the wind is in your voice.
And the gods are nervous
about the drinking water.
Someone hijacks the background
with three simple dance moves.
Or maybe the clouds
paused on the television
set during a ball game.
The silence inside
the photograph
of you eating alone
in an old yearbook.
This is going to be over
before you know it.
But not before your hands
become small birds
in celebration
of the present snow.
An expressed panic
attack of harmonics.
It’s like listening to your heartbeat
in a club, all the lights off,
all by yourself.
Imagining Starry by Marie Ponsot
The place of language is the place between me
and the world of presences I have lost
—complex country, not flat. Its elements free-
float, coherent for luck to come across;
its lines curve as in a mental orrery
implicit with stars in active orbit,
only their slowness or swiftness lost to sense.
The will dissolves here. It becomes the infinite
air of imagination that stirs immense
among losses and leaves me less desolate.
Breathing it I spot a sentence or a name,
a rescuer, charted for recovery,
to speak against the daily sinking flame
& the shrinking waters of the mortal sea.
Alone With Everybody by Charles Bukowski
the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.
there’s no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.
nobody ever finds
the one.
the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill
nothing else
fills.
The Summer Day by Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Vulnerability By Tiamo De Vettori
Sometimes the wind changes
But my migration pattern
Remains the same
I refuse to shake my vulnerability
And over-protect myself
From an enemy
That never existed
I won’t buy
The next love proof vest
That I see on the shelf
Because the experience of hurt
Is what makes joy
So deliciously possible
It doesn’t take talent
To be unmoved
When all you have
Becomes paralyzed
Before you fall
I can see for miles
As I run through the future
And neglect the past
That is too often
Overrated
Because experience
Is the ultimate reference book
But some experiences
Are still meant
To be had
Shedding protective layers
Is not something I do with ease
While climbing up slopes
Of possibilities
There are no views
Not worth seeing
If you understand
The dichotomy of love
That’s why I read
What hasn’t been written
That’s why I choose
To leave my home base
Yet home is only safe
Because at some point
You went to the edge
And decided to leave it
The More Loving One by W. H. Auden
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
Guitar Repair Woman by Buddy Wakefield
My mother told me,
“If you ever become a rock star
do not smash the guitar.
There are too many poor kids out there
who have nothin’
and they see that shit
when all they wanna do is play that thing.
Boy
you better let’m play.”
Okay, if she ever starts in on one of these
lectures,
your best bet is to pull up a chair, chief,
‘cause Momma don’t deal in the abridged
version.
She worries about me so much some days
it feels like I’m watching windshield wipers
on high speed
during a light sprinkle
and I gotta tell’er, “Ma,
yer makin’ me nervous.”
She was born to be laid back,
y’all, I swear,
but some of us were brought up in households
where Care Free
is a stick of gum,
and the only option for getting out
is to walk faster.
The woman
can run
in high heels
backwards
while bursting my bubble,
double checking my homework,
rolling enough pennies
to make sure I have lunch money,
and preparing for a meeting at school
on her only day off
so she can tell Miss Goss the music teacher,
“If you ever touch my boy again, big lady,
I’ll bounce a hammer off yer skull.”
I remember her doing these things swiftly
and with a smile
in her discounted thrift store business suits off
layaway.
She wore them bright and distinguished
enough
to cover up the 30 years of highway scars
truckin’ through her spine.
Some accidents
you don’t need to see, rubbernecker.
Keep movin’
’cause she made it.
She’s alive
and she’s famous.
We can stretch Van Gogh paintings
from Kilgore, TX to Binghamton, NY
and you still won’t find the brilliant brush
strokes
it takes to be a single mother
sacrificing the best part of her dreams
to raise a baby boy who-on most days-
she probably wants to strangle.
We disagree-a lot.
For instance, she still thinks it’s okay
to carry on a conversation
full throttle
at 7 a.m.
whereas I think…
Oh, wait, I’m sorry…
I don’t think at seven in the morning.
But we both agree that
Love
makes no mistakes.
So at night time,
when she’s winding down
and I’m still writing books about
how to get comfortable in this skin she gave me,
I see rock stars on stages
smashing guitars.
It’s then when I wanna find’m a comfortable chair
get’m a snack,
and introduce them to Daylight:
This is my mother,
Tresa B. Olsen.
Runner of the tight shift.
Taker of the temperature.
Leaver of the light on.
Lover of the underdog.
Mover of the mountain.
Winner of the good life.
Keeper of the
hope
chest.
Guitar
Repair
Woman.
And I am her son,
Buddy Wakefield.
I play a tricked-out electric pen,
thanks to the makers of music and metaphor,
but I do my best to keep the words in check,
and I use a padded microphone
so I don’t hurt you,
because sometimes I smash things,
and I don’t ever wanna let’er down.
For a New Beginning by John O’Donohue
Awaken to the mystery of being here
and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.
Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.
Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon.
Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to
follow its path.
Let the flame of anger free you of all falsity.
May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame.
May anxiety never linger about you.
May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of
soul.
Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek
no attention.
Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.
May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven
around the heart of wonder.
Compassion Camp 