Category: Poetry

“Bone Burying” by Andrea Gibson

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry8 Comments

My dog Squash has recently discovered the art of bone burying.  Whenever I give her a bone she will spend a good hour or so looking for the perfect burying place.  The order typically goes something like this: under the couch cushion, under the couch, under the kitchen broom, under the bedroom curtain, under the living room plant, behind the guitar,  behind the suitcase, under the chair pillow, and then finally-always-she eventually decides to bury the bone under ME.  Wherever I am sitting in the house, she will find me, jump up in the chair with me, and start burying the bone under one of my thighs.  After that, every time, she jumps down, gives me a satisfied look, then falls asleep on the floor.

Lately I’ve been spending a good part of nearly every day thinking about love. Romantic love.  The kind of love that involves french kissing and mix tapes and spooning in New York City in the summer when it’s by most people’s standards too disgustingly humid to spoon. The kind of love you wanna bring home to your grandma and say, “Grandma, look at this love! Just look at this LOVE!” Lately I’ve been thinking about who I want to love, and how I want to love, and why I want to love the way I want to love, and what I need to learn to love that way, and who I need to become to become the kind of love I want to be…….and when I break it all down, when I whittle it into a single breath, it essentially comes out like this:  Before I die, I want to be somebody’s favorite hiding place, the place they can put everything they know they need to survive, every secret, every solitude, every nervous prayer, and be absolutely certain I will keep it safe.  I will keep it safe.

~ Andrea Gibson, “Bone Burying“

“grief counseling” by Caitlyn Siehl

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry4 Comments

when they first go,
let yourself think every selfish, no-good, dirty, angry, filthy, horrible thought. let the waves of anger wash through you.
let grief do its work.
do not swallow your tongue
when it turns into a blade.
scream a little, if you have to, but don’t swallow that sharp. don’t.
blame God, if you have to. shake your fist at the sky.
let it happen. he will forgive you.
eat. remember to feed yourself.
shower, if you can. sleep.
kiss your loved ones on the forehead.
recognize how and where love still exists.
forgive tomorrow for never showing up for them.
grab your anger by the shoulders and shake it until it crumbles.
be sad. let your heart be heavier than wet jeans.
feel how much weight there is on your chest.
sit in wonder at how you are still alive, how this didn’t kill you, too.
hold yourself like a child. sing yourself to sleep.
go where the warmth is.
dry your clothes in sunlight, then wear the warmth.
this pain is permanent, but, like a scar, it will fade. a crescent moon on your arm.
make no apologies for what you’ve done to survive.
it is okay to miss them every second.
it is okay to howl at the moon.
pain is an animal with sharp teeth and a soft heart.
wait.
it will get easier.
time will slip its fingers inside of that gaping hole
and pull the darkness out, little by little.
wait.
listen for their voice, whispering,
“I AM HAPPY. WHEREVER I AM. LIVE IN PEACE.”

– grief counseling | Caitlyn Siehl

“Air and Light and Time and Space” by Charles Bukowski

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry2 Comments

”– you know, I’ve either had a family, a job,
something has always been in the
way
but now
I’ve sold my house, I’ve found this
place, a large studio, you should see the space and
the light.
for the first time in my life I’m going to have
a place and the time to
create.”

no baby, if you’re going to create
you’re going to create whether you wor
k 16 hours a day in a coal mine
or
you’re going to create in a small room with 3 children
while you’re on
welfare,
you’re going to create with part of your mind and your
body blown
away,
you’re going to create blind
crippled
demented,
you’re going to create with a cat crawling up your
back while
the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment,
flood and fire.

baby, air and light and time and space
have nothing to do with it
and don’t create anything
except maybe a longer life to find
new excuses
for.

~ Charles Bukowski, from The Last Night of the Earth Poems

(via BrainPickings.org)

 

“Be Drunk” by Charles Baudelaire

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking…ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: “It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.”

– Charles Baudelaire, “Be Drunk”, From Modern Poets of France: A Bilingual Anthology

“Polyamory, with Knives” by Jeanann Verlee

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

Just because you fell in love with the river
doesn’t mean you must feed it your bones.

You can take new lovers. Wine, for instance.
And bread. Difficult shoes. Little blue pills.

The first boy’s knife. The bowie, the buck,
the chef’s. Switch, pocket, butcher, butter.

You can submerge in a hotel bath, drainage
ditch, Newton Creek, East River. The sea.

Eat the whole pan of lasagna. The entire box
of Thin Mints. You can go down in mimosas.

You can lose yourself in Clifton, or Sexton,
Walker, Hooks, Rich, Atwood. Or Hughes.

Even the boxer whose poems sewed you shut.
Whose hands pulled you from the red red tub.

The boy who became boxer who became
man who became poet who became husband.

Yes, you can love the river. The knife. The pills.
The wine. You can love a thousand lonelinesses.

You can love the man and each of his hands.
Love the brine and the meat and all the tiny ruins.

~ Jeanann Verlee, via NailedMagazine