In the new year

Life is very very busy right now. D is neck-deep in work, trying to finish his thesis on time. We found out this week that we have to move out in a month, as the landlord wants to sell the house. This is very frustrating, as we (I wish dearly I could do it all myself and save D the time, but there are things only he can do) must sell all our furniture and stuff. We're probably going to stay with friends, hopping from place to place as necessary until we go traveling in May. I'm sad to leave our house, as D and I have lots of beautiful memories there. But I'm hoping our 2014 Year of Travel will be an exciting (and not too stressful) adventure. Of course there is also work and worry about jobs (I have a love-hate relationship with my current means of earning money) and careers (am I a failure for not being employed in a "real" job a year after I've graduated?) and visas (asd;flaksdfnv) and just trying to be healthy and happy (should I be worried that I worry a lot? is looking forward to getting on Medicare so I can afford to visit the doctor and the dentist a sign that I've lost my youth?) are big things on my plate. And I really miss New Mexico. Like, a lot. But I must get through all of the above and then some before I can go back.

So, in honour of all the STUFF that I have to deal with and get rid of this year, here's a poem:

New Year Resolve

by May Sarton

The time has come
To stop allowing the clutter
To clutter my mind
Like dirty snow,
Shove it off and find
Clear time, clear water.

Time for a change,
Let silence in like a cat
Who has sat at my door
Neither wild nor strange
Hoping for food from my store
And shivering on the mat.

Let silence in.
She will rarely speak or mew,
She will sleep on my bed
And all I have ever been
Either false or true
Will live again in my head.

For it is now or not
As old age silts the stream,
To shove away the clutter,
To untie every knot,
To take the time to dream,
To come back to still water.

Let the wind have its way

Advice to Myself

Leave the dishes. Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic—decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in through the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.




by Louise Erdrich

I'll give everyone a poem I didn't write

Next Time

I'll know the names of all of the birds
and flowers, and not only that, I'll
tell you the name of the piano player
I'm hearing right now on the kitchen
radio, but I won't be in the kitchen,

I'll be walking a street in
New York or London, about
to enter a coffee shop where people
are reading or working on their
laptops. They'll look up and smile.

Next time I won't waste my heart
on anger; I won't care about
being right. I'll be willing to be
wrong about everything and to
concentrate on giving myself away.

Next time, I'll rush up to people I love,
look into their eyes, and kiss them, quick.
I'll give everyone a poem I didn't write,
one specially chosen for that person.
They'll hold it up and see a new
world. We'll sing the morning in,

and I will keep in touch with friends,
writing long letters when I wake from
a dream where they appear on the
Orient Express. "Meet me in Istanbul,"
I'll say, and they will.




by Joyce Sutphen

Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith

by Mary Oliver

Every summer
        I listen and look
                 under the sun's brass and even
                         in the moonlight, but I can't hear

anything, I can't see anything—
        not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,
                 nor the leaves
                         deepening their damp pleats,

nor the tassels making,
        nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
                 And still,
                         every day,

the leafy fields
        grow taller and thicker—
                 green gowns lifting up in the night,
                         showered with silk.

And so, every summer,
        I fail as a witness, seeing nothing—
                 I am deaf too
                         to the tick of the leaves,

the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet—
        all of it
                 happening
                         beyond all seeable proof, or hearable hum.

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
        Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
                 Let the wind turn in the trees,
                         and the mystery hidden in dirt

swing through the air.
        How could I look at anything in this world
                 and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
                         What should I fear?

One morning
        in the leafy green ocean
                 the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body
                         is sure to be there.

Distance and a Certain Light

by May Swenson

Distance
and a certain light
makes anything artistic—
it doesn't matter what.

From an airplane, all
that rigid splatter of the Bronx
becomes organic, logical
as web or beehive. Chunks

of decayed cars in junkyards,
garbage scows (nimble roaches
on the Harlem), herds of stalled
manure-yellow boxes on twisting reaches

of rails, are punched clean and sharp
as ingots in the ignition of the sun.
Rubbish becomes engaging shape—
you only have to get a bead on it,

the right light filling the corridor
of your view—a gob of spit
under a microscope, fastidious
in structure as a crystal. No contortion

without intention, and nothing ugly.
In any random, sprawling, decomposing thing
is the charming string
of its history—and what it will be next.

What is Divinity

What is Divinity

What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch,
These are the measures destined for her soul.



by Wallace Stevens

sometimes life is sudden

Psalm

So many cars have driven past me
without a head-on collision.
I started counting them today:
there were a hundred and nine
on the way to the grocery,
a hundred and two on the way back home.
I got my license
when I was seventeen.
I've driven across country
at least twelve times;
I even drive
late Saturday nights.
I shall not want.



 by Marilyn Nelson

Out Of Nowhere

Interval

Sometimes, out of nowhere, it comes back,
that night when, driving home from the city,
having left the nearest streetlight miles behind us,

we lost our way on the back country roads
and found, when we slowed down to read a road sign,
a field alive with the blinking of fireflies,

and we got out and stood there in the darkness,
amazed at their numbers, their scattered sparks
igniting silently in a randomness

that somehow added up to a marvel
both earthly and celestial, the sky
brought down to earth, and brought to life,

a sublunar starscape whose shifting constellations
were a small gift of unexpected astonishment,
luminous signalings leading us away

from thoughts of where we were going
or coming from, the cares that often drive us
relentlessly onward and blind us

to such flickering intervals when moments
are released from their rigid sequence
and burn like airborne embers, floating free.



by Jeffrey Harrison

for wonder is the chorus that makes us all a choir

Come Picnic on Mars

for Zoë, age 5

On a distant glad November,
when our hearts are running high,
and the dreambats all have vanished
into the limestone of the sky,
why don't we take a fiery stroll
straight up to Mars? Just you and I.

We will pack a mental picnic
for years before we go.
Some will say the sky's the limit,
but we will answer: No,
the mind was made to travel.
So, too, indentured hearts,
and knitted fears unravel
with adventure in the dark.

A world of blues will slowly dwindle,
as Mars glows round the bend;
the differences that blind us
will bind us in the end,
for wonder is the chorus
that makes us all a choir,
and time will not forgive us
if, slug-a-beds, we lie
fat and bored and cranky
in our hammock in the sky.

So, come and take the waters
that jet across the seas
that lie between the planets
we crawl to on metal knees.
Oh! when we arrive, what fancy stuff
we'll see: the swooning sands of Paradise,
dust-devils, a volcanic sea.
Then, when twilight falls, by double moon,
we'll feast on ra-
ta-
touille!

"Come Picnic on Mars" by Diane Ackerman, from Jaguar of Sweet Laughter.

Read this poem out loud; it's like candy in your mouth.

Also, this:

Science

Science

What little we have ever understood
is like an offering we make beside the sea.
It is pure worship when pursued
as its own end, to find out. Mystery,
the undiminishable silent flood,
stretches on out from where we pray
round the clear altar flame. The god
accepts the sacrifice and turns away.


by Ursula K. Le Guin





It has been a big few weeks. I submitted my Big Deal Grant application, and my interview is this week. I have science and offerings on my mind.

Two Poem Day

I Could Take

I could take
two leaves
         and give you one.
Would that not be
a kind of perfection?

But I prefer
one leaf
         torn to give you half
              showing

(after these years, simply)
love's complexity in an act,
         the tearing and
              the unique edges —
one leaf (one word) from the two
imperfections that match.


  by Hayden Carruth


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Unification

The Mississippi at its mouth
Joins the Gulf of Mexico,
The west wind mixes with the south,
High pressure with the low.
Nothing in nature stands apart,
All things rendezvous—
I'd like to mingle with you.
Intermingled, intertwined,
This is what I have in mind.
I just feel a sudden urge
To merge.

The compound that is chlorophyll
Formed as the light increases
Makes every little flower thrill
With photosynthesis.
The morning glory mingles
With the honeysuckle vine,
Come wrap your little tendrils around mine.

I've been lonely as a cloud,
Drifting miserable and proud,
Lonely as a limestone butte—
Handsome, noble, destitute,
But I need you, I confess
Let's coalesce.


by Ramon Montaigne.

Human Beauty

Human Beauty


If you write a poem about love...
the love is a bird,

the poem is an origami bird.
If you write a poem about death...

the death is a terrible fire,
the poem is an offering of paper cutout flames

you feed to the fire.
We can see, in these, the space between

our gestures and the power they address
—an insufficiency. And yet a kind of beauty,

a distinctly human beauty. When a winter storm
from out of nowhere hit New York one night

in 1892, the crew at a theater was caught
unloading props: a box

of paper snow for the Christmas scene got dropped
and broken open, and that flash of white

confetti was lost
inside what it was a praise of.



by Albert Goldbarth

Some More Poetry

You Shall Above All Things Be Glad and Young

you shall above all things be glad and young
For if you're young, whatever life you wear

It will become you;and if you are glad
whatever's living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love

whose any mystery makes every man's
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think,may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation's dead undoom.

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance


by e.e. cummings

Dan watching the sun set over Coral Bay our first night

Mambo Cadillac

Drive me to the edge in your Mambo Cadillac,
      turn left at the graveyard and gas that baby, the black
night ringing with its holy roller scream. I'll clock
      you on the highway at three a.m., brother, amen, smack
the road as hard as we can, because I'm gonna crack
      the world in two, make a hoodoo soup with chicken necks,
a gumbo with plutonium roux, a little snack
      before the dirt-and-jalapeño stew that will shuck
the skin right off your slinky hips, Mr. I'm-not-stuck
      in-a-middle-class-prison-with-someone-I-hate sack
of blues. Put on your high-wire shoes, Mr. Right, and stick
      with me. I'm going nowhere fast, the burlesque
queen of this dim scene, I want to feel the wind, the Glock
      in my mouth, going south, down-by-the-riverside shock
of the view. Take me to Shingles Fried Chicken Shack
      in your Mambo Cadillac. I was gone, but I'm back
for good this time. I've taken a shine to daylight. Crank
      up that radio, baby, put on some dance music
and shake your moneymaker, doll, rev it up to Mach
2, I'm talking to you, Mr. Magoo. Sit up, check
out that blonde with the leopard print tattoo. O she'll lick
      the sugar right off your doughnut and bill you, too, speak
French while she do the do. Parlez-vous français? So, pick
      me up tonight at ten in your Mambo Cadillac
Chile, Argentina, Peru. Take some time off work;
we're gonna be a lot longer than a week
or two. Is this D-day or Waterloo? White or black—
it's up to you. We'll be in Mexico tonight. Pack
a razor, pack some glue. Things fall apart off the track,
and that's where we'll be, baby, in our Mambo Cadillac,
      cause you're looking for love, but I'm looking for a wreck.

by Barbara Hamby

The Indian Ocean at Coral Bay (for Uncle Stevie and Aunt Sammy)

Poetry and Music (I'm Still Here!)

So many things are happening all at once! More trips and excitement, but sadly fewer good photos to share (that's what I get for letting other people take pictures on their -admittedly far superior- cameras); I'll try to get more pictures soon, I promise.

So much uni work (brain overload), so many activities I want to cram into my last few months (trips, events, and fun, oh my!), and so many things to think about and ponder and reflect on as my time in Oz begins to draw to a close (I'll have to save those meandering thoughts until I have time and mental space to write it all out).

Thus, in the meantime so you beloved readers don't think I've forgotten about you, I'll put up a few poems and songs that have been floating around at the back of my head throughout this crazy time.

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Now I Become Myself

Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before--"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!


by May Sarton
{I don't believe I've become myself -but I think I'm a lot closer than I was before}
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I am madlymadlymadly in love with this song and music video. XD I tend to find really upbeat dance songs when I have to chain myself to a computer for days on end for uni projects, and this is a particularly excellent one.

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Okay, so I know I'm clearly biased because Joe is my bro, but SERIOUSLY GUYS, he is an incredible musician. (Joe, quit making me cry with your damn beautiful sad music! Jerk!)

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Human Atlas

Because the body really
is Mars, is Earth or Venus or the saddest downsized
Pluto, can be booked, bound, mapped then.
Or rendered like something off the bone, fat just under
the animal skin, to lard,
cheaper, quicker than butter, like stillness
belies restlessness, like every yes
was or will be not, never, no,
                                                  none of that.
A full section in such a book
keeps the skeleton quiet. (So untroubled to be specific, to say
femur, rib, half-minute of splendor,
to stare like that
stops time...) Or slick pages and pages given over
to slow the blood, remake muscle, to un-secret
that most mysterious lymph, its arsenal
of glands under the arm, at groin, at neck, awful
ghost lightning in it. Inscrutable.
                                                            Complete: because
the whole body ends, remember?
But each ending
goes on and on. Complete: because some
minor genius with a pencil, with ink, with drastic color
makes that arm you've known for years
raw, inside out, near wanton run of red vessel and nerve,
once a sin to look, weirdly now,
what should be hidden. Oh, it's garish
                                                               equals austere.
Compute. Does not compute. Tell me.
Then tell me who that
me is, or the
you understood, the any of us, our precious
everything we ever, layer upon
bright layer.



by Marianne Boruch
{I've been thinking a lot about home and homes and of course people}
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Inhale Those Smoky Nights

Last week mostly sucked. It would be nice if I could get through a day without all those little injustices that aim straight for your weak points (of which I seem to have a lot). But poetry helps cure those wounds, so here are a few poems I love....

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The Blind Old Man
by Robert Bly

I don't know why so much sweetness hovers around us.
Nor why the wind blows the curtains in the afternoons,
Nor why the earth mutters so much about its children.

We'll never know why the snow falls through the night,
Nor how the heron stretches her long legs,
Nor why we feel so abandoned in the morning.

We have never understood how birds manage to fly,
Nor who the genius is who makes up dreams,
Nor how heaven and earth can appear in a poem.

We don't know why the rain falls so long.
The ditchdigger turns up one shovel after another.
The herons go on stitching the heavens together.

We've never heard about the day we were conceived
Nor the doctor who helped us to be born,
Nor that blind old man who decides when we will die.

It's hard to understand why the sun rises,
And why our children are mostly fond of us,
And why the wind blows the curtains in the afternoon.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Antilamentation
by Dorianne Laux

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook, not
the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication, not
the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punch line, the door or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don't regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the living room couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You've walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You've traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the window.
Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied of expectation.
Relax. Don't bother remembering any of it. Let's stop here,
under the lit sign on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What I Know
by Lee Robinson

What I know for sure is less and less:
that a hot bath won't cure loneliness.

That bacon is the best bad thing to chew
and what you love may kill you.

The odd connection between perfection
and foolishness, like the pelican
diving for his fish.

How silly sex is.
How, having it, we glimpse
our holiness.

What I know is less and less.
What I want is more and more:

you against me—
your ferocious tenderness—

love like a star,
once small and far,
now huge, now near.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

God Says Yes To Me
by Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

Australian Poetry

I am currently about neck deep in essays and projects right now, so here's just a little something to tide you guys over until I have time to write up some of the more complex thoughts that have been stewing in the back of my mind....


My Country by Dorothea Mackellar

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold -
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

Some Poetry

Song of the Open Road by Walt Whitman

Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road,

Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune --I myself am good fortune;

Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,

Strong and content, I travel the open road.

The earth --that is sufficient;

I do not want the constellations any nearer;

I know they are very well where they are;

I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens;

I carry them, men and women --I carry them with me wherever I go;

I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them;

I am fill'd with them, and I will fill them in return.)

"We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine." -H.L. Mencken

"Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost." -Henry Miller

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.

-J.R.R. Tolkien, from The Fellowship of the Ring

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

By Rumi

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.

Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill

where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.