Your Favorite Poems

[daisygrrl]

"The Last Time" by Marie Howe
(from What the Living Do, focusing on her brother's struggle with AIDS)


The last time we had dinner together in a restraurant
with white table clothes, he leaned forward

and took my two hands in his and said,
I'm going to die soon. I want you to know that.

And I said, I think I do know.
And he said, what surprises me is that you don't.

And I said, I do. And he said, What?
And I said, Know that you're going to die.

And he said, No, I mean know that you are.

[Soon]

Variations on the Word Love


This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn't what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.


By Margaret Atwood

[Pixie]

The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

[Kätzchen]

Originally Posted by daisygrrl

"The Last Time" by Marie Howe
(from What the Living Do, focusing on her brother's struggle with AIDS)


The last time we had dinner together in a restraurant
with white table clothes, he leaned forward

and took my two hands in his and said,
I'm going to die soon. I want you to know that.

And I said, I think I do know.
And he said, what surprises me is that you don't.

And I said, I do. And he said, What?
And I said, Know that you're going to die.

And he said, No, I mean know that you are.

I just love this poem. It makes me think of my Rico, who did nearly the same thing with me, telling me over a quiet dinner together about his stage 4 Kidney cancer and the ensuing moments following his personal admission to me. Those moments we shared that summer evening over dinner are indelible in my heart of hearts.

Thanks for sharing Maria Howe's poem (The Last Time).

PS/ I like your signature line quote, too.

You can’t change that system by just getting your own rights, tinkering with the engine and leaving.
You have to take on the whole machine. ~Riki Anne Wilchins

[Kätzchen]

True Love

True love. Is it normal
is it serious, is it practical?
What does the world get from two people
who exist in a world of their own?

Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason,
drawn randomly from millions but convinced
it had to happen this way - in reward for what?
For nothing.
The light descends from nowhere.
Why on these two and not on others?
Doesn't this outrage justice? Yes it does.
Doesn't it disrupt our painstakingly erected principles,
and cast the moral from the peak? Yes on both accounts.

Look at the happy couple.
Couldn't they at least try to hide it,
fake a little depression for their friends' sake?
Listen to them laughing - its an insult.
The language they use - deceptively clear.
And their little celebrations, rituals,
the elaborate mutual routines -
it's obviously a plot behind the human race's back!

It's hard even to guess how far things might go
if people start to follow their example.
What could religion and poetry count on?
What would be remembered? What renounced?
Who'd want to stay within bounds?

True love. Is it really necessary?
Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence,
like a scandal in Life's highest circles.
Perfectly good children are born without its help.
It couldn't populate the planet in a million years,
it comes along so rarely.

Let the people who never find true love
keep saying that there's no such thing.

Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.

~ Wislawa Szymborska-Wlodek
(Kraków, Poland: July 2, 1923 - February 1, 2012)

[StillettoDoll]

An Endearing Trait

The scatterbrain,
is a little like,
the patter of rain.

Neither here,
nor there,
but everywhere.

- Lang Leav

[StillettoDoll]

Bequest.

You left me , sweet , two legacies,-
A legacy of love
A heavenly Father would content,
Had He the offer of;

You left me boundaries of pain
Capacious as the sea ,
Between eternity and time ,
Your consciousness and me.

Emily Dickinson

[Stone-Butch]

It was a noble Roman,
In Rome's imperial day,
Who heard a coward croaker
Before he castle say,-
"They're safe in such a fortress:
There is no way to shake it!"
"On! on!" exclaimed the hero;
"I'll find a way, or make it!"

Is fame your asperation?
Her path is steep and high;
In vain he seeks her temple,
Content to gaze and sigh.
The shining throne is waiting,
But he alone can take it
Who says, with Roman firmness,
"I'll find a way , or make it!"

Is learning your ambition?
There is no royal road;
Alike the peer and peasant
Must climb to her abode;
Who feels the thirst for knowledge,
In Helicon may slake it,
If he hs still the Roman will
"To find a way, or make it!;

Are riches worth the getting?
They must be bravely sought;
With wishing and with fretting
The boon can not be bought;
To all the prize is open,
But only he can take it,
Who says, with Roman courage,
"I'll find a way, or make it!"

[kittygrrl]

Whatever happens with us, your body
will haunt mine—tender, delicate
your lovemaking, like the half-curled frond
of the fiddlehead fern in forests
just washed by sun. Your traveled, generous thighs
between which my whole face has come and come—