1247 Love poems

There's no cause for vanity and none for pride: it's just a matter of assembling words in lines, then dividing them up (or letting them divide themselves), hoping they sound good or bad. (What's important is that they sound like something.) It's all a question of staying alert so that red doesn't bleed into orange or orange into yellow or yellow into silence. There's no cause for rejecting silence and none for accepting it, either. We should speak when there's noth- ing to say and be quiet when others talk. That's the poet's business, so get used to it. There's nothing glorious about it. The future doesn't count for anything and the past just laughs at us. There's no cause for writing this poem and none for deleting it, either.

Doesn’t that shining line Of ocean, broken Suggest a ship at sea, Or something? Ah, if to be “At sea” is to be lost, Left out, or just un- Certain of the meaning, Someone else chimes in. Nevermind, I’m sure it’s Nothing, someone else insists Of this impossible vessel — Crafted of affect and lack Of glasses, the sail a conceit Of low clouds, the bow A row of breakers, sun Glinting off the port- Hole (imagined) of the cabin Below whose bed is also, As we say, the sea- Bed or floor(as if it were A dwelling down there, Where the restless sleepers Are scattered bone). A ship At sea is only a figure Of speech somebody else Claims: a quick shape — Suggested by the passage Of a cloud and the tug Of  the current; a thin dream Already almost forgotten ... If you can forget the cargo, Another adds, which was Human: though that fact Was somehow less visible To the traders than the trade Routes traced out across The dissolving paper Map, under a spill of silver Coins poured out. Life Is brief, one might sigh At this point: a matter Of water in water Moving, each of us Carefully bearing The bags we packed With cherished flotsam And jetsam, clutching A one-way ticket Printed on a spume Of wind-blown white ... A pretty image, used To excuse too much: As if the lives enslaved Were worthless as this Sudden welling up Of what is mostly self- Pity (salt at my lips, You say, my vision Swimming). Nothing. It’s nothing but ... It’s nothing. To be At sea is also to be, As we say, astray or In the dark, hoping For terra firma, and To be enlightened, Soon, as to just what Was meant by that sad Laugh and last remark.

Thirty days hath September, April, June and November. All the rest have thirty-one, Excepting February alone, And that has twenty-eight days clear And twenty-nine in each leap year.

from Certain Sonnets Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust; And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things; Grow rich in that which never taketh rust; Whatever fades but fading pleasure brings. Draw in thy beams and humble all thy might To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be; Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the light, That both doth shine and give us sight to see. O take fast hold; let that light be thy guide In this small course which birth draws out to death, And think how evil becometh him to slide, Who seeketh heav'n, and comes of heav'nly breath. Then farewell, world; thy uttermost I see: Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me.

Stand still, and I will read to thee A lecture, love, in love's philosophy. These three hours that we have spent, Walking here, two shadows went Along with us, which we ourselves produc'd. But, now the sun is just above our head, We do those shadows tread, And to brave clearness all things are reduc'd. So whilst our infant loves did grow, Disguises did, and shadows, flow From us, and our cares; but now 'tis not so. That love has not attain'd the high'st degree, Which is still diligent lest others see. Except our loves at this noon stay, We shall new shadows make the other way. As the first were made to blind Others, these which come behind Will work upon ourselves, and blind our eyes. If our loves faint, and westwardly decline, To me thou, falsely, thine, And I to thee mine actions shall disguise. The morning shadows wear away, But these grow longer all the day; But oh, love's day is short, if love decay. Love is a growing, or full constant light, And his first minute, after noon, is night.

When the Amish girl gets off the bus she walks over and stomps her small black boot into a drift in front of McDonald's. She is maybe new to winter this far north and wants to know its depth. Its give. Oh, be careful. It already has you by the night of your dress, violet-black with white-dotted print.

—cooked by crooked math—is more than enough. For example, the rough patch on the roof of the mouth we tongue— a light fixture, chandelier of texture—is so much more than mere canker. And when fingering the clasp on Father's snuffbox, his fine initials grate against our fingerprints' grain like an engraved last gasp. Less, being more, makes of the tectonic plates of molehills a mountain ridge the way the stark plain of the White Album's sleeve raises the Beatles' embossed logo to the level of topography— the way tiny things can't help being, next to nothing, something— the unanticipated mole that makes a one-night stand's upturned ass, the last leaf out on a limb, the little going a long way.

We must not look for poetry in poems. —Donald Revell You must not skirt the issue wearing skirts. You must not duck the bullet using ducks. You must not face the music with your face. Headbutting, don’t use your head. Or your butt. You must not use a house to build a home, and never look for poetry in poems. In fact, inject giraffes into your poems. Let loose the circus monkeys in their skirts. Explain the nest of wood is not a home at all, but a blind for shooting wild ducks. Grab the shotgun by its metrical butt; aim at your Muse’s quacking, Pringled face. It’s good we’re talking like this, face to face. There should be more headbutting over poems. Citing an 80s brand has its cost but honors the teenage me, always in skirts, showing my sister how to Be the Duck with a potato-chip beak. Take me home, Mr. Revell. Or make yourself at home in my postbellum, Reconstruction face— my gray eyes, my rebel ears, all my ducks in the row of a defeated mouth. Poems were once civil. But war has torn my skirts off at the first ruffle, baring my butt

Let me not thirst with this Hock at my Lip, Nor beg, with domains in my pocket—

At the farmer’s market in Rosarito, Mexico, a man touched my arm. He sat on a stool at a wooden table, and in the center, a blue pitcher of water beaded under the sun. Hunkered over his lap, he worked with a gouge on a block of walnut, and he blew at the dust, and the dust swirled in the breeze. Done stripping the sapwood vulnerable to rot, the man held the heart of the wood, a purple wood hard against the chisel’s cutting edge. He looked up from his work, and his gray eyes told me I must listen. “This wood must be strong or the heart cracks before the real work is done. See this?” he asked softly, and he lifted a mallet carved from a branch of apple, “Strong wood,” he said. “It wanted to be more than a tree.” He rubbed fresh walnut dust between his palms. We drank glasses of ice water, talked about life in general, and he used the pitcher, billowed and wet like the sail of a boat, to cool his neck. Later, through the soft meat of an avocado, I felt the pit longing to be free.