17 Strength poems

Survival is the final offer that arrives at the eleventh hour just when pain to the tenth power would kill you with another ninth degree. By then, relief strikes you brief as an eighth note; you wear doom proudly; it's your seventh seal. But life whispers through your sixth sense of what might await you in some fifth dimension where miracle is saved for the fourth quarter. Tricked, you sigh and rise on the third day. You know better, but with no second thought, risk that first step—absurd as first love at first sight— as if you were back at ground zero, as if it cost nothing, as if this were not the last laugh.

Extreme exertion isolates a person from help, discovered Atlas. Once a certain shoulder-to-burden ratio collapses, there is so little others can do: they can’t lend a hand with Brazil and not stand on Peru.

Any fool can get into an ocean But it takes a Goddess To get out of one. What’s true of oceans is true, of course, Of labyrinths and poems. When you start swimming Through riptide of rhythms and the metaphor’s seaweed You need to be a good swimmer or a born Goddess To get back out of them Look at the sea otters bobbing wildly Out in the middle of the poem They look so eager and peaceful playing out there where the water hardly moves You might get out through all the waves and rocks Into the middle of the poem to touch them But when you’ve tried the blessed water long Enough to want to start backward That’s when the fun starts Unless you’re a poet or an otter or something supernatural You’ll drown, dear. You’ll drown Any Greek can get you into a labyrinth But it takes a hero to get out of one What’s true of labyrinths is true of course Of love and memory. When you start remembering.

The prisoner can’t go any longer, but he does. The beggar can’t go on begging, but watch— Tomorrow he’ll be in the alley, holding out a bowl To everyone, to even a young, possibly poorer, child. The mother can’t go on believing, But she will kneel for hours in the cathedral, Holding silence in her arms. The rain goes on, daily, sometimes, and we cry, As often as not alone. The fishmonger, the bell ringer, the cook, each Can be corrupted in a less than dire way. Nothing can replace the sea breezes you were born to. Nothing can stay the shy ache in the palm you hold out to the fortune-teller. The concrete lions on her steps go on Making bloodless journeys, they go on Hunting in air longer than any of you will live to watch, Hunting still after your futures become all irises and blamelessness.

still here after everything still here they did not finish us we are inconveniently still here and we will be here tomorrow making it harder to ignore

my mom says i'm better than you and she's not wrong but that's not really the point is it the point is i loved you anyway that says something about me not you

I lost things i don't talk about to the years before this people and time and chances i can't get them back i can make different ones