Category: Poetry

“Today and Two Thousand Years from Now” by Philip Levine

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

The job is over. We stand under the trees
waiting to be told what to do,
but the job is over.

The darkness pours between the branches above,
but the moon’s not yet
on its walk

through the night sky trailed by stars.
Suddenly a match flares, I see
there are only us two,

you and me, alone together in the great room
of the night world, two laborers
with nothing to do,

so I lean to the little flame and light my Lucky
and thank you, comrade, and again
we are in the dark.

Let me now predict the future. Two thousand years
from now we two will be older,
wiser, having escaped

the fleeting incarnations of workingmen.
We will have risen from the earth
of southern Michigan

through the tangled roots of Chinese elms
or ancient rosebushes to take
the tainted air

into our leaves and send it back, purified,
down the same trail we took
to escape the dark.

Two thousand years passed in a flash to shed
no more light than a wooden match
gave under the trees

when you and I were lost kids, more scared than
now, but warm, useless, with names
and different faces.

– Philip Levine

“Wasted” by Charles Bukowski

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry5 Comments

too often the people complain that they have
done nothing with their
lives.
and then they wait for somebody to tell them
that this isn’t so.
look, you’ve done this and that and you’ve
done that and that’s
something.
you really think so?
of course.

but they had it right.
they’ve done nothing.
shown no courage.
no inventiveness.
they did what they were taught to
do.
they did what they were told to
do.
they had no resistance, no thoughts
of their own.
they were pushed and shoved
and went obediently.
they had no heart.
they were cowardly.
they stank in life.
they stank up life.

and now they want to be told that
they didn’t fail.
you’ve met them.
they’re everywhere.
the spiritless.
the dead-before-death gang.

be kind?
lie to them?
tell them what they want to hear?
tell them anything they want to hear?

people with courage made them what they
aren’t

and if they ask me, I’ll tell them what they
don’t want to hear.

it’s better you
keep them away from me, or
they’ll tell you I’m a cruel man.

it’s better that they confer
with you.

I want to be free of
that.

– Charles Bukowski from What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through The Fire 

“Leaves” by Lloyd Schwartz

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry1 Comment 
             1 

Every October it becomes important, no, necessary
to see the leaves turning, to be surrounded
by leaves turning; it’s not just the symbolism,
to confront in the death of the year your death,
one blazing farewell appearance, though the irony 
isn’t lost on you that nature is most seductive
when it’s about to die, flaunting the dazzle of its 
incipient exit, an ending that at least so far 
the effects of human progress (pollution, acid rain)
have not yet frightened you enough to make you believe
is real; that is, you know this ending is a deception
because of course nature is always renewing itself—
        the trees don’t die, they just pretend,
        go out in style, and return in style: a new style.





                        2 

Is it deliberate how far they make you go
especially if you live in the city to get far 
enough away from home to see not just trees 
but only trees? The boring highways, roadsigns, high 
speeds, 10-axle trucks passing you as if they were 
in an even greater hurry than you to look at leaves:
so you drive in terror for literal hours and it looks 
like rain, or snow, but it’s probably just clouds
(too cloudy to see any color?) and you wonder, 
given the poverty of your memory, which road had the 
most color last year, but it doesn’t matter since 
you’re probably too late anyway, or too early—
        whichever road you take will be the wrong one
        and you’ve probably come all this way for nothing.






                        3 

You’ll be driving along depressed when suddenly
a cloud will move and the sun will muscle through
and ignite the hills. It may not last. Probably
won’t last. But for a moment the whole world
comes to. Wakes up. Proves it lives. It lives—
red, yellow, orange, brown, russet, ocher, vermilion,
gold. Flame and rust. Flame and rust, the permutations
of burning. You’re on fire. Your eyes are on fire.
It won’t last, you don’t want it to last. You 
can’t stand any more. But you don’t want it to stop. 
It’s what you’ve come for. It’s what you’ll
come back for. It won’t stay with you, but you’ll 
        remember that it felt like nothing else you’ve felt
        or something you’ve felt that also didn’t last.

Copyright © 1992 by Lloyd Schwartz. From Goodnight, Gracie (The University of Chicago Press, 1992)

“The Months” by Linda Pastan

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry
January
Contorted by wind,
mere armatures for ice or snow,
the trees resolve
to endure for now,
they will leaf out in April.
And I must be as patient
as the trees—
a winter resolution
I break all over again,
as the cold presses
its sharp blade
against my throat.

 

February
After endless
hibernation
on the windowsill,
the orchid blooms—
embroidered purple stitches
up and down
a slender stem.
Outside, snow
melts midair
to rain.
Abbreviated month.
Every kind of weather.

 

March
When the Earl King came
to steal away the child
in Goethe’s poem, the father said
don’t be afraid,
it’s just the wind. . .
As if it weren’t the wind
that blows away the tender
fragments of this world—
leftover leaves in the corners
of the garden, a Lenten Rose
that thought it safe
to bloom so early.

 

April
In the pastel blur
of the garden,
the cherry
and redbud
shake rain
from their delicate
shoulders, as petals
of pink
dogwood
wash down the ditches
in dreamlike
rivers of color.

 

May
May apple, daffodil,
hyacinth, lily,
and by the front
porch steps
every billowing
shade of purple
and lavender lilac,
my mother’s favorite flower,
sweet breath drifting through
the open windows:
perfume of memory—conduit
of spring.

 

June
The June bug
on the screen door
whirs like a small,
ugly machine,
and a chorus of frogs
and crickets drones like Musak
at all the windows.
What we don’t quite see
comforts us.
Blink of lightning, grumble
of thunder—just the heat
clearing its throat.

 

July
Tonight the fireflies
light their brief
candles
in all the trees
of summer—
color of moonflakes,
color of fluorescent
lace
where the ocean drags
its torn hem
over the dark
sand.

 

August
Barefoot
and sun-dazed,
I bite into this ripe peach
of a month,
gathering children
into my arms
in all their sandy
glory,
heaping
my table each night
with nothing
but corn and tomatoes.

 

September
Their summer romance
over, the lovers
still cling
to each other
the way the green
leaves cling
to their trees
in the strange heat
of September, as if
this time
there will be
no autumn.

 

October
How suddenly
the woods
have turned
again. I feel
like Daphne, standing
with my arms
outstretched
to the season,
overtaken
by color, crowned
with the hammered gold
of leaves.

 

November
These anonymous
leaves, their wet
bodies pressed
against the window
or falling past—
I count them
in my sleep,
absolving gravity,
absolving even death
who knows as I do
the imperatives
of the season.

 

December
The white dove of winter
sheds its first
fine feathers;
they melt
as they touch
the warm ground
like notes
of a once familiar
music; the earth
shivers and
turns towards
the solstice.

 

Source: Poetry (October 1999).

“Ode to the Vinyl Record” by Thomas R. Smith

On By Christina's WordsIn Music, Poetry

The needle lowers into the groove
and I’m home. It could be any record
I’ve lived with and loved a long time: Springsteen
or Rodrigo, Ray Charles or Emmylou
Harris: Not only the music, but
the whirlpool shimmering on the turntable
funneling blackly down into the ocean
of the ear—even the background
pops and hisses a worn record
wraps the music in, creaturely
imperfections so hospitable to our own.
Since those first Beatles and Stones LPs
plopped down spindles on record players
we opened like tiny suitcases at sweaty
junior high parties while parents were out,
how many nights I’ve pulled around
my desires a vinyl record’s cloak
of flaws and found it a perfect fit,
the crackling unclarity and turbulence
of the country’s lo-fi basement heart
madly spinning, making its big dark sound.

“Ode to the Vinyl Record” by Thomas R. Smith, from The Foot of the Rainbow. © Red Dragonfly Press, 2010.

 

“Put Your Records On” by Corinne Bailey Rae