a poem


A Prayer for Rain

BY LISEL MUELLER
Let it come down: these thicknesses of air
have long enough walled love away from love;
stillness has hardened until words despair
of their high leaps and kisses shut themselves
back into wishing. Crippled lovers lie
against a weather which holds out on them,
waiting, awaiting some shrill sign, some cry,
some screaming cat that smells a sacrifice
and spells them thunder. Start the mumbling lips,
syllable by monotonous syllable,
that wash away the sullen griefs of love
and drown out knowledge of an ancient war—
o, ill-willed dark, give with the sound of rain,
let love be brought to ignorance again.

another




If I Were Another

BY MAHMOUD DARWISH
TRANSLATED BY FADY JOUDAH
If I were another on the road, I would not have looked
back, I would have said what one traveler said
to another: Stranger! awaken
the guitar more! Delay our tomorrow so our road
may extend and space may widen for us, and we may get rescued
from our story together: you are so much yourself ... and I am
so much other than myself right here before you!

If I were another I would have belonged to the road,
neither you nor I would return. Awaken the guitar
and we might sense the unknown and the route that tempts
the traveler to test gravity. I am only
my steps, and you are both my compass and my chasm.
If I were another on the road, I would have
hidden my emotions in the suitcase, so my poem
would be of water, diaphanous, white,
abstract, and lightweight ... stronger than memory,
and weaker than dewdrops, and I would have said:
My identity is this expanse!

If I were another on the road, I would have said
to the guitar: Teach me an extra string!
Because the house is farther, and the road to it prettier—
that’s what my new song would say. Whenever
the road lengthens the meaning renews, and I become two
on this road: I ... and another!

your voice

Tim Walker



your voice

"your voice
i lean to struggle against the wind
the sound fills the desert and covers within like a warm blanket
the excitement washes over my skin like tiny diamonds

you call out her name with colours that reach the heavens
as i touch the ocean floor
and i say "chow," bella... at last i heard your voice"

-- Anonymous  

Tim Walker




floating

via 
Flickr

An image of poetry with the beautiful calm of floating.



Very soon I'll find that void and let everything only wash over me.  I can almost feel the water now.
I say goodbye to you dear friend, 17 years of creamy yellow fur and unconditional love.  You press your head in my lap as if to say, "I love you, please let me go."  While you wait in the cool grass I spend the day with my lens pointed to the new life growing inside a beautiful woman.  Draping fabric to accentuate the anticipation of new beginnings, every caring fold.  While I hold my breath to click the shutter you are only a few feet away struggling to take your last.  I send them on their way to their life of this new astonishing joy.  I take you for a last ride holding you all the way.  And in the final dose I don't know why I thought you would go with a whimper and a soft sigh for you screeched out a loud scream and I screamed with you in spite of myself.  Dim your eyes and heart and rest.  In only one more day I'll be taking fleeting moments under the cool water with the warmth of you in my heart gentle boy. 








Anne Sexton (1928 - 1974) - Poet

photo by, Rollie McKenna


Admonitions to a Special Person

Watch out for power, for its avalanche can bury you, snow, snow, snow, smothering your mountain.
Watch out for hate, it can open its mouth and you’ll fling yourself out to eat off your leg, an instant leper.
Watch out for friends, because when you betray them, as you will, they will bury their heads in the toilet and flush themselves away. Watch out for intellect, because it knows so much it knows nothing and leaves you hanging upside down, mouthing knowledge as your heart falls out of your mouth. Watch out for games, the actor’s part, the speech planned, known, given, for they will give you away and you will stand like a naked little boy, pissing on your own child-bed. Watch out for love (unless it is true, and every part of you says yes including the toes), it will wrap you up like a mummy, and your scream won’t be heard and none of your running will end. Love? Be it man. Be it woman. It must be a wave you want to glide in on, give your body to it, give your laugh to it, give, when the gravelly sand takes you, your tears to the land. To love another is something like prayer and can’t be planned, you just fall into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief. Special person, if I were you I’d pay no attention to admonitions from me, made somewhat out of your words and somewhat out of mine. A collaboration. I do not believe a word I have said, except some, except I think of you like a young tree with pasted-on leaves and know you’ll root and the real green thing will come. Let go. Let go. Oh special person, possible leaves, this typewriter likes you on the way to them, but wants to break crystal glasses in celebration, for you, when the dark crust is thrown off and you float all around like a happened balloon.
-- Anne Sexton