"On the Necessity of Sadness" by Mikael de Lara Co

Let me tell you about longing.
Let me presume that I have something
new to say about it, that this room,
naked, its walls pining for clocks,
has something new to say
about absence. Somewhere
the crunch of an apple, fading
sunflowers on a quilt, a window
looking out to a landscape
with a single tree. And you
sitting under it. Let go,
said you to me in a dream,
but by the time the wind
carried your voice to me,
I was already walking through
the yawning door, towards
the small, necessary sadnesses
of waking. I wish
I could hold you now,
but that is a line that has
no place in a poem, like the swollen
sheen of the moon tonight,
or the word absence, or you,
or longing. Let me tell you about
longing. In a distant country
two lovers are on a bench, and pigeons,
unafraid, are perching beside them.
She places a hand on his knee
and says, say to me
the truest thing you can.
I am closing my eyes now.
You are far away.

"When I Think" by Jeanne Marie Beaumont

about how naive I was though never

admitting it, how badly I chose early on


pending my affections carelessly as

spare change then making quick getaways

igniting the bridges—or when I think of the time

wasted brooding and stewing, my heart a sort of

crock-pot simmering bitterness, it’s good to be

grown-up at last with boxes of journals I’m unlikely

to get back to and albums of photos as a very

selective mnemonic aid as though most of life

had been a string of holidays, reunions, bright

birthday parties when of course it’s dreary Mondays,

Friday nights watching old black-and-white movies,

hands ink stained from the newspaper, waits

at the post office, subways, trips to the drugstore,

thousands of bowls of cereal, pots of soup—And

when I think of all those I went to school with,

worked alongside, ate with, taught, those I will not

ever see again due to the odd cruel way time

shakes us and scatters us and never recombines

us even perhaps someone I was married to, even

him, and those I failed or let down or otherwise

proved myself a disappointment to, and those I will

never share the same time and place with, we will never

coincide, and that’s a shame but also reassuring

because how much are we capable of accumulating,

of absorbing I wonder, for already I try to grasp

one thing only to feel another slip away to make room,

a musical chairs of the mind and who keeps taking

a chair away—so that when I think of the finite

it seems the most profound fact, the boundaries

of minutes, years, borders of gardens and countries,

frame of the painting, edge of the screen, that one

chair left though it has the softest fabric, high back,

cushions to nod right off in until the music stops.

"Monologue for an Onion"- Suji Kwock Kim

I don't mean to make you cry.
I mean nothing, but this has not kept you
From peeling away my body, layer by layer,

The tears clouding your eyes as the table fills
With husks, cut flesh, all the debris of pursuit.
Poor deluded human: you seek my heart.

Hunt all you want. Beneath each skin of mine
Lies another skin: I am pure onion--pure union
Of outside and in, surface and secret core.

Look at you, chopping and weeping. Idiot.
Is this the way you go through life, your mind
A stopless knife, driven by your fantasy of truth,

Of lasting union--slashing away skin after skin
From things, ruin and tears your only signs
Of progress? Enough is enough.

You must not grieve that the world is glimpsed
Through veils. How else can it be seen?
How will you rip away the veil of the eye, the veil

That you are, you who want to grasp the heart
Of things, hungry to know where meaning
Lies. Taste what you hold in your hands: onion-juice,

Yellow peels, my stinging shreds. You are the one
In pieces. Whatever you meant to love, in meaning to
You changed yourself: you are not who you are,

Your soul cut moment to moment by a blade
Of fresh desire, the ground sown with abandoned skins.
And at your inmost circle, what? A core that is

Not one. Poor fool, you are divided at the heart,
Lost in its maze of chambers, blood, and love,
A heart that will one day beat you to death.

Sonnet CXVI- William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

----

I was helping my sister memorize a passage from Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" today, so I thought I'd post some Shakespeare in her honor.

"if you like my poems let them" by E.E. Cummings

if you like my poems let them
walk in the evening,a little behind you

then people will say
"Along this road i saw a princess pass
on her way to meet her lover(it was
toward nightfall)with tall and ignorant servants."

---

Another ee cummings poem for you, since I forgot to post a poem yesterday.

"i carry your heart with me" by E.E. Cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

----

One of my favorite poems. I've memorized it- it's a marvelous poem to recite.

"The canals. The liquor coming through" by Joshua Beckman

The canals. The liquor coming through
the straw. The canals the land and
the bridge and the landing by the bridge
destroyed. The liquor. The little anger
growing inside the friends. The canal.
The pile of wood up against the bank.
The liquor. The friends. A little
anger growing inside them. The canal.
The jets. The wood in piles along
the bank. The dead. The jets. Liquor
through a straw. Speaking. A little anger
grows inside them. The jets. The dead.
The bank. The sky. The friends. The jets.
The dead. A little anger grows inside them.

----

There's something breathtaking about the repetition in this poem, especially with the increasing urgency in the rhythm at the end.