Author: Christina's Words

“The darkness around us is deep.” ~ William Stafford

“Song” by Allen Ginsberg

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The weight of the world
            is love.
Under the burden
            of solitude,
under the burden
            of dissatisfaction

            the weight,
the weight we carry
            is love.

Who can deny?
            In dreams
it touches
            the body,
in thought
            constructs
a miracle,
            in imagination
anguishes
            till born
in human—

looks out of the heart
            burning with purity-
for the burden of life
            is love,
but we carry the weight
            wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
            at last,
must rest in the arms
            of love.

No rest
            without love,
no sleep
            without dreams
of love—
            be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
            or machines,
the final wish
            is love
—cannot be bitter,
            cannot deny,
cannot withhold
            if denied:

the weight is too heavy

            —must give
for no return
            as thought
is given
            in solitude
in all the excellence
            of its excess.

The warm bodies
            shine together
in the darkness,
            the hand moves
to the center
            of the flesh,
the skin trembles
            in happiness
and the soul comes
            joyful to the eye—

yes, yes,
            that's what
I wanted,
            I always wanted,
I always wanted,
            to return
to the body
            where I was born.

“Song” by Allen Ginsberg from Collected Poems 1947-1980. © Harper Collins.

“Author’s Prayer” by Ilya Kaminsky

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If I speak for the dead, I must leave
this animal of my body,

I must write the same poem over and over,
for an empty page is the white flag of their surrender.

If I speak for them, I must walk on the edge
of myself, I must live as a blind man

who runs through rooms without
touching the furniture.

Yes, I live. I can cross the streets asking “What year is it?”
I can dance in my sleep and laugh

in front of the mirror.
Even sleep is a prayer, Lord,

I will praise your madness, and
in a language not mine, speak

of music that wakes us, music
in which we move. For whatever I say

is a kind of petition, and the darkest
days must I praise.

Ilya Kaminsky, “Author’s Prayer” from Dancing in Odessa. Copyright © 2004 by Ilya Kaminsky.

“There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” by Kevin Young (RIP Prince)

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Don’t dream it’s over you don’t
know what’s it’s like it’s like that
& that’s the way it be near me be near
close to you crazy for you got the look
what you done done a do run run
run away run away she was lying
in the grass & she was it something
I said I know what boys like a prayer
a virgin girls just wanna boys
don’t cry don’t don’t you
want me don’t fall on me O
what a feelin’ more than keep
feeling fascination hush hush
voices carry too shy too shy close
to me & you don’t you
forget about hold me now don’t try
to live your life in one day it’s my
life nobody walks in LA woman
every breath you take you take
my breath away there’s always
something in the water
does not compute no new
tale to tell me if you still care
computer love went to her house
to bust a move & had to leave
real early tell me tell me
how to be you & me when I’m alone
in my room sometimes I stare at where
are you calling from call me
tell me fall on me let me be your time
will reveal won’t give me time I’ll
stop the world shut your mouth
on mine I can’t I can’t I can’t
stand losing cause this
is thriller thriller night fine
young pretty young thing is ooh
I like it sends chills up you gots
to chill party up you got to let
me know nobody loves you I am
only human & need you back
in love again bring on
the dancing let’s dance let’s
stay together & dance this mess
around dance dance dance
see how we are family I got
all I need to get by your side
to side back & forth word up for
the down stroke me everybody
wants you let’s go crazy let’s pretend
we’re married let’s wait awhile
again spin me right round baby
I’m a star under the milky way
tonight.

“There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” by Kevin Young from VQRonline.org

(Originally shared here on 7/20/14. Reposted today in honor of Prince and his ever-lasting impact on music.)

***

RIP Prince

Prince Rogers Nelson (June 7, 1958 – April 21, 2016)

 

(and since Prince’s music has a way of getting removed from YouTube, below is one of my favorite Prince covers: “She’s Always in My Hair” by D’Angelo.)

“The Glass Essay” by Anne Carson

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

Yet her poetry from beginning to end is concerned with prisons,
vaults, cages, bars, curbs, bits, bolts, fetters,
locked windows, narrow frames, aching walls.

“Why all the fuss?” asks one critic.
“She wanted liberty. Well didn’t she have it?
A reasonably satisfactory homelife,

a most satisfactory dreamlife—why all this beating of wings?
What was this cage, invisible to us,
which she felt herself to be confined in?”

Well there are many ways of being held prisoner,
I am thinking as I stride over the moor.
As a rule after lunch mother has a nap

and I go out to walk.
The bare blue trees and bleached wooden sky of April
carve into me with knives of light.

Something inside it reminds me of childhood—
it is the light of the stalled time after lunch
when clocks tick

and hearts shut
and fathers leave to go back to work
and mothers stand at the kitchen sink pondering

something they never tell.
You remember too much,
my mother said to me recently.

Why hold onto all that? And I said,
Where can I put it down?
She shifted to a question about airports.

Crops of ice are changing to mud all around me
as I push on across the moor
warmed by drifts from the pale blue sun.

On the edge of the moor our pines
dip and coast in breezes
from somewhere else.

Perhaps the hardest thing about losing a lover is
to watch the year repeat its days.
It is as if I could dip my hand down

into time and scoop up
blue and green lozenges of April heat
a year ago in another country.

 

Anne Carson, “The Glass Essay” (excerpt) from Glass, Irony, and God. Copyright © 1994 by Anne Carson.

Via Poetryfoundation.org (visit site to read full poem)

“What’s Left” by Kerrie Hardie

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(for Peter Hennessy)

I used to wait for the flowers,
my pleasure reposed on them.
Now I like plants before they get to the blossom.
Leafy ones – foxgloves, comfrey, delphiniums –
fleshy tiers of strong leaves pushing up
into air grown daily lighter and more sheened
with bright dust like the eyeshadow
that tall young woman in the bookshop wears,
its shimmer and crumble on her white lids.

The washing sways on the line, the sparrows pull
at the heaps of drying weeds that I’ve left around.
Perhaps this is middle age. Untidy, unfinished,
knowing there’ll never be time now to finish,
liking the plants – their strong lives –
not caring about flowers, sitting in weeds
to write things down, look at things,
watching the sway of shirts on the line,
the cloth filtering light.

I know more or less
how to live through my life now.
But I want to know how to live what’s left
with my eyes open and my hands open;
I want to stand at the door in the rain
listening, sniffing, gaping.
Fearful and joyous,
like an idiot before God.

 

Kerrie Hardie, Cry for the Hot Belly