"I am offering this poem to you, since I have nothing else to give." ~Jimmy Santiago Baca
Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.
“Ten Thousand Flowers in Spring” by Wu-Men, The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry. © Harper Perennial, 1993.
In second grade we did an experiment with static electricity,
We rubbed balloons on our heads
And stuck them to walls.
And kissing you is kinda like that.
My hair stands on end,
I get shocked when I touch things
And I want to tell you stupid stuff like
Kissing you is a bundle of kittens
Colliding with my face at .5 miles an hour
It’s like being shot with a dart gun made of hummingbirds
That shoots darts made of hummingbirds
And your lips are so soft I can’t actually tell when we are touching
Like braiding hair underwater
Like napping under a blanket filled with rainbows and clouds
And your favorite books
When you kiss me the cartoon devil and angel on my shoulder
Climb into my ears
Lick all of my neurons
And start fucking on my brainstem
If you were a 300 pound professional weight lifter
And I were a Kia Sorento
You could drag me anywhere
Kissing you is patient and impossibly slow
Like peeling paint off the wall with glittery stickers
Or cooking a turkey with a lighter
You remind me of the time in second grade
When Bethany Hopkirk
Called me a freak face and stabbed me in the arm with a pencil
Cause Kissing you is kinda like that
Unhealthy and will probably result in disfigurement
But baby, bring on the facial scars and lead poisoning
Cause when you kiss me you are dangling me off a bridge by a belt
You are the screen door of my childhood
All taste and swinging
So full of holes you could never keep anything in
You are every black eye
You’re a semitruck and I’m a turtle with two broken legs
And a broken heart
You are illegal fireworks falling down stairs together
Driving on four flat tires
Playing Frisbee at night with a saw blade
Kissing you is like falling out of a 37 story window
Exploding into a cloud of robins and reappearing on the ground with my mouth full of feathers
And when I can’t kiss you
I try to find the static electricity in my apartment
I dig around in light sockets
Change lightbulbs with my teeth
And make out with the toaster
And I know we’ve only been seeing each other for a couple weeks
But baby when you kiss me
I can’t remember my middle name
Or which one is my left foot.
So come over tonight
We’ll shuffle around the apartment in our socks
And we’ll let our lips drift toward each other
Like tectonic plates made…
Out of kittens.
Neil Hilborn, (facebook) (twitter @Neilicorn); video via Button Poetry.
.
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“[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]” Copyright 1952, © 1980, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust, from Complete Poems: 1904-1962 by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage.
Source: Poetry (June 1952).
1200 miles from home on the southeast side of Vermont,
I sat at a table outfitted with strawberry rhubarb pie
and sweet tea good enough for any southerner. Below,
a blind mare bumped into the side of the barn-turned-home
of a woman who had invited me into her way of life long before
I left Alabama to settle myself in her kitchen. I watched
as she chose her words: hardly as pared down as her poetry,
but just as precise. She eyed me when she spoke; it made me nervous
for reasons she couldn’t understand, and warm in a way
I couldn’t word. This woman, whose writing had made me want
to taste words and run inside them, conversed with me
earnestly, without hinging on a thing other than finer details
of my phrasing. After finishing off my third glass of tea,
I found my way to her living room and sat myself down on the floor
next to her dogs. With my hand on the belly of her youngest,
who had wallowed her way up to my lap, I spied Kathryn looking
at me as if I were more than some silly kid that took a shine
to her. It sent a batch of shivers over me to see her see me
as someone that meant something, whatever the adjectives
for me were in her head. I’d only looked at one other person
with so much adoration in my whole life, and I had buried her
less than a year before my trek north. I needed someone
with a careful eye and a simple threading of words to speak
to me – to fit me back together the way my grandmother
had kept me whole. Kathryn showed me her kindness; the grace
of her poetry became a second thought, only after the tenderness
of her reach. I came back home to Alabama with dog hair all over
my dress and a story I wish I could have told my grandmother.
“Kathryn” by Rachel Nix was originally published in Issue 6 of Bop Dead City, where it was the winner of the ‘Home’ poetry contest. A print copy of the magazine may be purchased here.
Rachel dedicated “Kathryn” to Kathryn King, “who has no idea what kind of effect she’s had on me.” You may read more of Rachel’s poetry at chasingthegrey.com or even “hear more” on her Soundcloud page “Rachel’s Readings.”
“Walking, I can almost hear the redwoods beating. And the oceans are above me here, rolling clouds, heavy and dark. It is winter and there is smoke from the fires. It is a world of elemental attention, of all things working together, listening to what speaks in the blood. Whichever road I follow, I walk in the land of many gods, and they love and eat one another. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.”
– Linda Hogan, Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World
Words ... for the Time Being 