Author: Christina's Words

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

“Before the swallow, before the daffodil …

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Before the swallow, before the daffodil, and not much later than the snowdrop, the common toad salutes the coming of spring after his own fashion, which is to emerge from a hole in the ground, where he has lain buried since the previous autumn, and crawl as rapidly as possible towards the nearest suitable patch of water. Something — some kind of shudder in the earth, or perhaps merely a rise of a few degrees in the temperature — has told him it is time to wake up … At this period, after his long fast, the toad has a very spiritual look, like a strict Anglo-Catholic towards the end of Lent. His movements are languid but purposeful, his body is shrunken, and by contrast his eyes look abnormally large. This allows one to notice, what one might not at any other time, that a toad has about the most beautiful eye of any living creature. It is like gold, or more exactly it is like the golden-coloured semi-precious stone which one sometimes sees in signet rings, and which I think is called a chrysoberyl.

-George Orwell, Some Thoughts on the Common Toad

“The Trouble with Poetry” by Billy Collins

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry4 Comments

The trouble with poetry, I realized
as I walked along a beach one night —
cold Florida sand under my bare feet,
a show of stars in the sky —

the trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry,
more guppies crowding the fish tank,
more baby rabbits
hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass.

And how will it ever end?
unless the day finally arrives
when we have compared everything in the world
to everything else in the world,

and there is nothing left to do
but quietly close our notebooks
and sit with our hands folded on our desks.

Poetry fills me with joy
and I rise like a feather in the wind.
Poetry fills me with sorrow
and I sink like a chain flung from a bridge.

But mostly poetry fills me
with the urge to write poetry,
to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame
to appear at the tip of my pencil.

And along with that, the longing to steal,
to break into the poems of others
with a flashlight and a ski mask.

And what an unmerry band of thieves we are,
cut-purses, common shoplifters,
I thought to myself
as a cold wave swirled around my feet
and the lighthouse moved its megaphone over the sea,
which is an image I stole directly
from Lawrence Ferlinghetti —
to be perfectly honest for a moment —

the bicycling poet of San Francisco
whose little amusement park of a book
I carried in a side pocket of my uniform
up and down the treacherous halls of high school.

– Billy Collins from The Trouble With Poetry

In parallel with Words for the Weekend: “Forget everything you ever read about poetry” – Vol. 28

“I went up in the ferris wheel for a last ride …

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London Eye by Mary Pierce From Mary's flash fiction piece: "Until a tiny thing trips you up"
London Eye by Mary Pierce
From Mary’s flash fiction piece: “Until a tiny thing trips you up“

 

“I went up in the ferris wheel for a last ride before being thrown into seventh grade. It went up into the stars and fell back to earth and rose again, and I had a magnificent vision, or think I did, though it’s hard to remember if it was that year with the chocolate cake or the next one with the pigs getting loose. The ferris wheel is the same year after year. it’s like all one ride to me: we go up and I think of people I knew who are dead and I smell fall in the air, manure, corn dogs, and we drop down into blazing light and blaring music. Every summer I’m a little bigger, but riding the ferris wheel, I feel the same as ever, I feel eternal. The combination of cotton candy, corn dogs, diesel smoke, and sawdust, in a hot dark summer night, it never changes, not an inch. The wheel carries us up high, high, high, and stops, and we sit swaying, creaking, in the dark, on the verge of death. You can see death from here. The wind blows from the northwest, from the farm school in Saint Anthony Park, a chilly wind with traces of pigs and sheep in it. This is my vision: little kids holding on to their daddy’s hand, and he is me. He looks down on them with love and buys them another corn dog. They are worried they will lose him, they hang on to his leg with one hand, eat with the other. This vision is unbearably wonderful. Then the wheel brings me down to the ground. We get off and other people get on. Thank you, dear God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough.”

~ Garrison Keillor, Leaving Home

Hi Mary! Thanks to your piece for inspiring today’s quote.

“The Whole Mess … Almost” by Gregory Corso

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I ran up six flights of stairs
to my small furnished room   
opened the window
and began throwing out
those things most important in life

 

First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink:
“Don’t! I’ll tell awful things about you!”
“Oh yeah? Well, I’ve nothing to hide … OUT!”
Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement:   
“It’s not my fault! I’m not the cause of it all!” “OUT!”   
Then Love, cooing bribes: “You’ll never know impotency!   
All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!”
I pushed her fat ass out and screamed:
“You always end up a bummer!”
I picked up Faith Hope Charity
all three clinging together:
“Without us you’ll surely die!”
“With you I’m going nuts! Goodbye!”

 

Then Beauty … ah, Beauty—
As I led her to the window
I told her: “You I loved best in life
… but you’re a killer; Beauty kills!”   
Not really meaning to drop her
I immediately ran downstairs
getting there just in time to catch her   
“You saved me!” she cried
I put her down and told her: “Move on.”

 

Went back up those six flights
went to the money
there was no money to throw out.
The only thing left in the room was Death   
hiding beneath the kitchen sink:
“I’m not real!” It cried
“I’m just a rumor spread by life … ”   
Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all   
and suddenly realized Humor
was all that was left—
All I could do with Humor was to say:   
“Out the window with the window!”

 

Gregory Corso, “The Whole Mess … Almost” from Herald of the Autochthonic Spirit. 

“I try to believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast. …

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“I try to believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast. Count them, Alice. One, there are drinks that make you shrink. Two, there are foods that make you grow. Three, animals can talk. Four, cats can disappear. Five, there is a place called Underland. Six, I can slay the Jabberwocky.”

– Lewis Carrol