And the Strangest Things Seem Suddenly Routine

A poem to carry into the new year and new decade:

The Journey
Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

I have fed
the cats
that were circling my feet
and mewing

and which
you probably fed
like
half an hour ago

Forgive me
they were adorable
and trying
to kill me

Sex Without Love
Sharon Olds

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

To NyQuil, or not to NyQuil: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The wracking coughs and throat-aches of a nasty cold,
Or to take NyQuil against the pains of illness,
And by the miracle of modern chemistry, end them? To sleep: to dream
Of crazy things; and by a sleep to say we end
The nighttime sniffling, sneezing, coughing, achy, stuff-head, fever
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a relief
Devoutly to be wish'd. To rest, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of Green Death what dreams may come

Via jonathancarroll, one of my new favorite poems:

For Desire
Kim Addonizio

Give me the strongest cheese, the one that stinks best;
and I want the good wine, the swirl in crystal
surrendering the bruised scent of blackberries,
or cherries, the rich spurt in the back
of the throat, the holding it there before swallowing.
Give me the lover who yanks open the door
of his house and presses me to the wall
in the dim hallway, and keeps me there until I’m drenched
and shaking, whose kisses arrive by the boatload
and begin their delicious diaspora
through the cities and small towns of my body.
To hell with the saints, with martyrs
of my childhood meant to instruct me
in the power of endurance and faith,
to hell with the next world and its pallid angels
swooning and sighing like Victorian girls.
I want this world. I want to walk into
the ocean and feel it trying to drag me along
like I’m nothing but a broken bit of scratched glass,
and I want to resist it. I want to go
staggering and flailing my way
through the bars and back rooms,
through the gleaming hotels and weedy
lots of abandoned sunflowers and the parks
where dogs are let off their leashes
in spite of the signs, where they sniff each
other and roll together in the grass, I want to
lie down somewhere and suffer for love until
it nearly kills me, and then I want to get up again
and put on that little black dress and wait
for you, yes you, to come over here
and get down on your knees and tell me
just how fucking good I look

I've been remiss in posting poetry, either mine or others', for poetry month, but I've been inspired. byronium posted a gorgeously evocative David Wagoner poem, which reminded me of how I first discovered and fell in love with Wagoner's poetry: looking online for a particular Wallace Stevens poem back in junior high and not yet versed in good search techniques, I stumbled across "Wallace Stevens on His Way to Work." Below is the Stevens poem I was looking for, which is one of my absolute favorite pieces of literature to read out loud because "whip/In kitchen cups concupiscent curds" rolls off the tongue like no other phrase in the language. You can find Wagoner's "Wallace Stevens on His Way to Work" here, and another of my favorite Wagoner poems here.

The Emperor of Ice Cream
Wallace Stevens

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

The sun our star
Is burning, burning, burning
At some point there will be nothing left
Uh-oh.
--Dr A