"
Single
Window.
Through murky glass, outside glimpses.
No roses, hibiscus or bachelor’s buttons are planted here.
But in insolent defiance, a bird of paradise
runs
amok
with colour. Screaming in ancient tongue
my spirit to fray.
Even pain cannot breach
my conviction that the best in us cannot die.
From
that window
sunlight
trembles in the musty air,
caressing my torturer’s arm pausing him in
downward
blow.
Sweat blisters his face
and when the blow connects drawing blood,
spittle, broken teeth, it is
soft sweet
lover’s embrace.
"Chris Abani, “Birds of Paradise,” from Kalakuta Republic
"
Totally conscious, and apropos of nothing, you come to see me.
Is someone here? I ask.
The moon. The full moon is inside your house.
My friends and I go running out into the street.
I’m in here, comes a voice from the house, but we aren’t listening.
We’re looking up at the sky.
My pet nightingale sobs like a drunk in the garden.
Ringdoves scatter with small cries, Where, Where.
It’s midnight. The whole neighborhood is up and out
in the street thinking, The cat burglar has come back.
The actual thief is there too, saying out loud,
Yes, the cat burglar is somewhere in this crowd.
No one pays attention.
Lo, I am with you always means when you look for God,
God is in the look of your eyes,
in the thought of looking, nearer to you than your self,
or things that have happened to you.
There’s no need to go outside.
Be melting snow.
Wash yourself of yourself.
A white flower grows in the quietness.
Let your tongue become that flower.
Rumi, “Be Melting Snow.” Trans. Coleman Barks
"
All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.
This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I’ll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I’m like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?
Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.
This poetry. I never know what I’m going to say.
I don’t plan it.
When I’m outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.
We have a huge barrel of wine, but no cups.
That’s fine with us. Every morning
we glow and in the evening we glow again.
They say there’s no future for us. They’re right.
Which is fine with us.
Rumi, “Who Says Words with My Mouth?”
“The Alcoholic in the 3rd Week of the 3rd Treatment,” by John Berryman
He has taught the Universe to realize itself,
and that must have been: very simple.
Surely he has a recovery for me
and that must be, after all my complex struggles: very simple.
I do, despite my self-doubts, day by day
grow more & more but a little confident
that I will never down a whiskey again
or gin or rum or vodka, brandy or ale.
It is, after all, very very difficult to despair
while the wonder of the sun occurs this morning
as yesterday & probably tomorrow.
It all is, after all, very simple.
You just never drink again all each damned day.
Anne Sexton reads “For My Lover Returning to His Wife”
"
The lousy job my father lands
I’m tickled pink to celebrate.
My mother’s rosary-pinching hands
stack pigs in blankets on a plate.
Teeny uncircumcised Buddha penises
(cocktail hot dogs in strips of dough):
I gobble these puffed-up weenie geniuses
as if they’d tell me what I need to know
to get the fuck out of here.
They don’t only stink of fear.
They’re doom and shame and dumb pig fate.
I tell my mom I think they’re great.
Dad chews his slowly with a pint of gin,
and says he eats a whole shit deal
because of us. My mom’s in tears again.
I don’t know who to hate or how to feel.
Michael Ryan, “Hard Times”
"my happiness bears
no relation to happiness."
Taha Muhammad Ali, from “Warning”
"Writing is in itself a joy,
Yet saints and sages have long since held it in awe.
For it is being, created by tasking the great void;
And it is sound rung out of profound silence.
In a sheet of paper is contained the infinite,
And, evolved from an inch-sized heart, an endless panorama.
The words, as they expand, become all-evocative,
The thought, still further pursued, will run the deeper,
Till flowers in full blossom exhale all-pervading fragrance,
And tender boughs, their saps running, grow to a whole jungle of splendor.
Bright winds spread luminous wings, quick breezes soar from the earth,
And, nimbus-like amidst all these, rises the glory of the literary world."
Lu Chi, from Essay on Literature, “The Joy of Writing”
"
This far south such crippling
Radiance. People surge
From their homes onto the streets, certain
This is the end,
For it is 1943
And they are tired.
Thomas walks out of the movie house
And forgets where he is.
He is drowning and
The darkness above him
Spits and churns.
What shines is a thought
Which has lost its way. Helpless
It hangs and shivers
Like a veil. So much
For despair.
Thomas, go home.
Rita Dove, “Aurora Borealis”
"In the pitch-black night sky
The roses grow full
Tens of thousands of them wriggle in the darkness
I know the heavy nighttime dew
Falling on the nape of my neck
Is the sweat of the roses as they crowd together"
“Darkness,” Tada Chimako, trans. Jeffrey Angles
