i wanna write like bassey

it’s funny how certain names come in and out of my mind’s eye or awareness. over the weekend…i discovered or re-discovered bassey ikpi…and was reminded of the weakness in my own world of words.

throwing candy hearts over my shoulder…

(and loving pablo neruda…) AND…i think it’s funny how we say ‘good night’ in the morning.

happy heart’s day.
solo o doble

September 8th
by Pablo Neruda

Today, this day was a brimming cup,
today, this day was the immense wave,
today, it was all the earth.

Today the stormy sea
lifted us in a kiss
so high that we trembled
in a lightning flash
and, tied, we went down
to sink without untwining.

Today our bodies became vast,
they grew to the edge of the world
and rolled melting
into a single drop
of wax or meteor.

Between you and me a new door opened
and someone, still faceless,
was waiting for us there.

do it, justice like…

love that is…i was getting some of my favorite poets together for my favor-RIGHT…scored with this nikki giovanni great.

Resignation

I love you
because the Earth turns round the sun
because the North wind blows north
sometimes
because the Pope is Catholic
and most Rabbis Jewish
because winters flow into spring
and the air clears after a storm
because only my love for you
despite the charms of gravity
keeps me from falling off the Earth
into another dimension
I love you
because it is the natural order of things
I love you
like the habit I picked up in college
of sleeping through lectures
or saying I’m sorry
when I get stopped for speeding
because I drink a glass of water
in the morning
and chain-smoke cigarettes
all through the day
because I take my coffee Black
and my milk with chocolate
because you keep my feet warm
through my life a mess
I love you
because I don’t want it
any other way
I am helpless
in my love for you
It makes me so happy
to hear you call my name
I am amazed you can resist
locking me in an echo chamber
where your voice reverberates
through the four walls
sending me into spasmatic ecstasy
I love you
because it’s been so good
for so long
that if I didn’t love you
I’d have to be born again
and that is not a theological statement
I am pitiful in my love for you
The Dells tell me Love
is so simple
the thought though of you
sends indescribably delicious multitudinous
thrills throughout and through-in my body
I love you
because no two snowflakes are alike
and it is possible if you stand tippy-toe
to walk between the raindrops
I love you
because I am afraid of the dark
and can’t sleep in the light
because I rub my eyes
when I wake up in the morning
and find you there
because you with all your magic powers were
determined that
I should love you
because there was nothing for you but that
I would love you
I love you
because you made me
want to love you
more than I love my privacy
my freedom my commitments
and responsibilities
I love you `cause I changed my life
to love you
because you saw me one friday
afternoon and decided that I would
love you
I love you I love you I love you

raisin pumpernickel

by Marge Piercy

You shine, my love, like a sugar maple in October
Like a golden-orange overarching blaze of leaves,
each painted its own tint of flames
tossed on the ground bright as silk scarves.
So are you happy.

My curly one, my stubborn fierce butter,
down with the head and charge all horns
and the blattering thunk of bone head on bone,
the smoke and hot rubber stench of overheated temper.
So are you angry.

The tomcat is a ready lover. He can do it at dawn
when the birds are still yawning, he can do it
while the houseguest walks up the drive, do it after
four parties and an all-night dance, on a convenient floor.
So are you able.

Your love comes down rich as the warm spring rain.
Now it charges like a tawny dark maned lion.
Now it envelopes me in wraiths of silken mist.
Now it is a thick hot soup that sustains me.
So are you loving.

You’re an endless sink of love, a gaping maw
into which I shovel attention like a soft coal
into an old furnace; you’re a limitless love source,
a great underground spring surging of rock
to feed a river.

You cry your needs, bold as a six-week kitten.
You’re devious as a corporate takeover and direct
as an avalanche. What ten years into this conversation
commands my interest? You’re still the best novel
I’ve ever read.

Secretly we both think we are bred for each other
as part of an experiment in getting dreams made
flesh and then having to feed on the daily bread
of passion. So we die and die with loving
and go on living.

crackerjacks

Crackerjacks
by assata shakur

I coulda told you,
in the old days,
in the park,
or skating down some hill
what it was all about.

I coulda sat next to you
on some stairway
and gave you half my bubblegum,
and, in between the bubbles
and the giggles,
I coulda told you.

But we are grown up now.
And it is all so complicated
when you dig somebody.

Now, when i open up my crackerjacks,
I find no heart-shaped ring.
Only a puzzle
that i don’t wanna solve.

affirmation

affirmation
by assata shakur

i believe in living.
i believe in the spectrum
of Beta days and Gamma people.
i believe in sunshine.
In windmills and waterfalls,
tricycles and rocking chairs;
And i believe that seeds grow into sprouts.
And sprouts grow into trees.
i believe in the magic of the hands.
And in the wisdom of the eyes.
i believe in rain and tears.
And in the blood of infinity.

i believe in life.
And i have seen the death parade
march through the torso of the earth,
sculpting mud bodies in its path
i have seen the destruction of the daylight
and seen bloodthirsty maggots
prayed to and saluted

i have seen the kind become the blind
and the blind become the bind
in one easy lesson.
i have walked on cut grass.
i have eaten crow and blunder bread
and breathed the stench of indifference

i have been locked by the lawless.
Handcuffed by the haters.
Gagged by the greedy.
And, if i know anything at all,
it’s that a wall is just a wall
and nothing more at all.
It can be broken down.

i believe in living
i believe in birth.
i believe in the sweat of love
and in the fire of truth.

And i believe that a lost ship,
steered by tired, seasick sailors,
can still be guided home to port.

swimming in tuscany

i am gonna miss my tuscany 2007 calendar.

ideally this poem …this nightly try at words… was gonna be about my december picture that illustrates the sun in all its radiance on a very soft landscape, a house and yard peppered with yellow flowers…but i guess i had other things on my mind…
sweet self-indulgence.

– – – – –

drowning victim

by heartbreak

i am not afraid to swim
or walk or run
it…it’s just that my timing is off
and my watch is behind
and my lungs sometimes mind

on rainy beaches where sun is not
my mind follows fog
and i become fixated on time
rain or shine

my anxious heart i tied into a knot
and my brain is an unbreakable anchor line
and on the outside and to the lifeguards
i appear all right

but on the inside, the knot is too tight
and as i run into the beckoning ocean side
the fog blinds my eyes
and my breathing falls behind
and i forget
i forget how to swim

Antilamentation

Antilamentation
By Dorianne Laux

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.
Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.
Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don’t regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don’t bother remembering
any of it. Let’s stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

****i wish i woulda wrote this. a poem from my poem supplier.

here i love you

“Here I Love You”
By Pablo Neruda

Here I love you.
In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself.
The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters.
Days, all one kind, go chasing each other.

The snow unfurls in dancing figures.
A silver gull slips down from the west.
Sometimes a sail. High, high stars.

Oh the black cross of a ship.
Alone.
Sometimes I get up early and even my soul is wet.
Far away the sea sounds and resounds.
This is a port.
Here I love you.

Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.
I love you still among these cold things.
Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels
that cross the sea towards no arrival.
I see myself forgotten like those old anchors.
The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there.
My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose.
I love what I do not have. You are so far.
My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights.
But night comes and starts to sing to me.

The moon turns its clockwork dream.
The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.
And as I love you, the pines in the wind
want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.

The Leaden-Eyed

The Leaden-Eyed
by Vachel Lindsay

Let not young souls be smothered out before
They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride.
It is the world’s one crime its babes grow dull,
Its poor are oxlike, limp and leaden-eyed.

Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly;
Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap;
Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve;
Not that they die, but that they die like sheep.

(extra thanks to the person who shared this with me…yeah…thanks.)