Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth. -Samuel Johnson
Poetry catches a lot of slack in this modern literary world of vampires and hunger games (guilty on the latter). It’s either dubbed too emotional, too hard to read, or just plain boring. Austin likes to joke that anyone can be a poet, anything a poem—which is ironically poetic itself, although he’d never admit it because he is a skeptic and usually in a bad mood (medical school).
I love poetry. It is a religion for me; beautiful, sacred, a holy place of words and broken sentences. Vertical magic.
A few of my favorite poems below, including one I wrote long ago for a 7pm poetry class with the scariest professor I’ve ever met. I saw her smile only once.
Authors (in order): Mary Oliver, Mary Oliver, Margaret Atwood, Hafiz, Margaret Atwood.
*
The Journey
*
Habitation
Marriage is not
a house or even a tent
it is before that, and colder:
The edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn
where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far
we are learning to make fire
*
Untitled
Even
After
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,
“You owe me.”
Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.
*
Against Still Life
to walk around it
at a distance, saying
it’s an orange:
nothing to do
with us, nothing
else: leave it aloneI want to pick it up
in my hand
I want to peel the
skin off; I want
more to be said to me
than just Orange:
want to be told
everything it has to say
And you, sitting across
the table, at a distance, with
your smile contained, and like the orange
in the sun: silent:Your silence
isn’t enough for me
now, no matter with what
contentment you fold
your hands together; I want
anything you can say
in the sunlight:
stories of your various
childhoods, aimless journeyings,
your loves; your articulate
skeleton; your posturings; your lies.
(sunlight and hidden smile)
make me want to
wrench you into saying;
now I’d crack your skull
like a walnut, split it like a pumpkin
to make you talk, or get
a look inside. But quietly:
if I take the orange
with care enough and hold it
gentlyI may find
an egg
a sun
an orange moon
perhaps a skull; center
of all energy
resting in my handcan change it to
whatever I desire
it to beand you, man, orange afternoon
lover, wherever
you sit across from me
(tables, trains, buses)if I watch
quietly enough
and long enoughat last, you will say
(maybe without speaking)
(there are mountains
inside your skull
garden and chaos, ocean
and hurricane; certain
corners of rooms, portraits
of great grandmothers, curtains
of a particular shade;
your deserts; your private
dinosaurs; the first
woman)
all I need to know
tell me
everything
just as it was
from the beginning.
*
Untitled
We’re stuck, suffocating. Gasping and clawing searching for air in the cruel metal box. Screaming for the clown man to stop. + Our limbs tossed like salad bang and bruise, bust and bumble, a montage of arms and legs. I can’t breathe. + As the oldest, I try to console her, it must end soon. Surely— the wheels will slow, stop, turn us right side up, outside in, back to little girls. Here, just hold on to me and stare through the paint chipped mud caked rubbed raw cracks And focus instead on the cotton candy caramel apple love sick mouths. + And there, grandma! Waving like a loon, ice-cream on her chin, watching her babies being murdered by the round metal snake. +***
Leave your favorite poems or poets in the comments below.
