“Knowledge does not make us bulletproof. Bones break the same way no matter the intention.”
Thuli Zuma – “One” (Poetry Observed)
via Button Poetry
Author: Christina's Words
“The darkness around us is deep.” ~ William Stafford
“Take pride in your pain …
“Take pride in your pain; you are stronger than those who have none.”
– Lois Lowry, Gathering Blue
“On Rain” by C.S. Bhagya
This is a poem about rain,
not you,
so you will forgive me
if I only refer to you in the oblique,
fleetingly,
between the L-shaped sounds
of water,
shadowy places,
and a cerise sky.
Sometimes,
when the night is deep
you are out on the streets
and I’m waiting for sleep,
I send out rain
to follow you,
lopsidedly, as if a kind
ghost, as if through an
hourglass
you were seeing
sand at a slant.
So if I open the window a little,
swaying against glass,
test the air
for a possibility of rain,
perhaps you will forget
how, sometimes,
rain is complicated,
rain can break you if it wants.
Who knew, one night
rain under streetlamps
would aspire to the condition
of glow-worms?
This rain is a letter,
how it pulses through,
angling words
out of the slow scent of raw earth,
sudden lights.
But this poem is rain,
on you.
C.S. Bhagya, “On Rain”
“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses …
“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
“Music in the Morning” by Dorianne Laux
When I think of the years he drank, the scars
on his chin, his thinning hair, his eye that still weeps
decades after the blow, my knees weaken with gratitude
for whatever kept him safe, whatever stopped
the glass from cracking and shearing something vital,
the fist from lowering, exploding an artery, pressing
the clot of blood toward the back of his brain.
Now, he sits calmly on the couch, reading,
refusing to wear the glasses I bought him,
holding the open book at arm’s length from his chest.
Behind him the windows are smoky with mist
and the tile floor is pushing its night chill
up through the bare soles of his feet. I like to think
he survived in order to find me, in order
to arrive here, sober, tired from a long night
of tongues and hands and thighs, music
on the radio, coffee– so he could look up and see me,
standing in the kitchen in his torn t-shirt,
the hem of it brushing my knees, but I know
it’s only luck that brought him here, luck
and a love that had nothing to do with me,
except that this is what we sometimes get if we live
long enough, if we are patient with our lives.
“Music in the Morning” by Dorianne Laux, Facts About the Moon
Words ... for the Time Being 