Author: Christina's Words

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

 “ruin” by Charles Bukowski

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry9 Comments

William Saroyan said, “I ruined my
life by marrying the same woman
twice.”

there will always be something
to ruin our lives,
William,
it all depends upon
what or which
finds us
first,
we are always
ripe and ready
to be
taken.

ruined lives are
normal
both for the wise
and
others.

it is only when
that life
ruined
becomes ours
we realize
then
that the suicides, the
drunkards, the mad, the
jailed, the dopers
and etc. etc.
are just as common
a part of existence
as the gladiola, the
rainbow
the
hurricane
and nothing
left
on the kitchen
shelf.

 “ruin,” by Charles Bukowski from Septuagenarian Stew (Black Sparrow Press).

Special Announcement Re: The Writer’s Almanac (Good News!)

On By Christina's WordsIn Blog News, Poetry3 Comments

A quick post to share the great news with everyone.

The Writer’s Almanac archive is now back on-line!

Please share the word.

I received this note via email earlier today.

Happy Poetry Month, indeed. Thank you, Minnesota Public Radio and Mr. Keillor.

(Edited to add website link: https://www.writersalmanac.org )

“The Obligation to be Happy” by Linda Pastan

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry1 Comment

It is more onerous
than the rites of beauty
or housework, harder than love.
But you expect it of me casually,
the way you expect the sun
to come up, not in spite of rain
or clouds but because of them.

And so I smile, as if my own fidelity
to sadness were a hidden vice—
that downward tug on my mouth,
my old suspicion that health
and love are brief irrelevancies,
no more than laughter in the warm dark
strangled at dawn.

Happiness. I try to hoist it
on my narrow shoulders again—
a knapsack heavy with gold coins.
I stumble around the house,
bump into things.
Only Midas himself
would understand.

 

Linda Pastan, “The Obligation to be Happy” from Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998, published by  W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.  Copyright © 1998 by Linda Pastan.

 

“You, Reader” by Billy Collins

On By Christina's WordsIn Art, Poetry3 Comments
Still life with Apples and Pears by Paul Cézanne at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I wonder how you are going to feel
when you find out
that I wrote this instead of you,

that it was I who got up early
to sit in the kitchen
and mention with a pen

the rain-soaked windows,
the ivy wallpaper,
and the goldfish circling in its bowl.

Go ahead and turn aside,
bite your lip and tear out the page,
but, listen– it was just a matter of time

before one of us happened
to notice the unlit candles
and the clock humming on the wall.

Plus, nothing happened that morning–
a song on the radio,
a car whistling along the road outside–

and I was only thinking
about the shakers of salt and pepper
that were standing side by side on a place mat.

I wondered if they had become friends
after all these years
or if they were still strangers to one another

like you and I
who manage to be known and unknown
to each other at the same time–

me at this table with a bowl of pears,
you leaning in a doorway somewhere
near some blue hydrangeas, reading this.

 

“You, Reader,” by Billy Collins from The Trouble with Poetry (Random House)

 

“Death” by Ron Starbuck

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry2 Comments

Look at someone you love today,
for one minute,

as if you saw them for
the first time.

As if they were the first ray
of sunlight, caught by

the tender passion of your eye,
lighting up your whole world.

– Ron Starbuck, “Death“