rhiannonstone: (Default)
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.
rhiannonstone: (Default)
O the shortest day came, and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing
To drive the dark away... ✨

rhiannonstone: (pancake on my head)
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
rhiannonstone: (california)
Bye Bye Fog see you later
Tell the egrets wait for me
Give my love to shoreline breezes
So long ocean view
We’ll be back beside the bay
Sure as tides and sunset

--Poem found at a shellmound
rhiannonstone: (the real 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.
rhiannonstone: (the real me)
Cats and Porn

Some say the 'net is great for porn,
Some say cats.
From what I've seen of naked chicks
I'll go with images and flicks
But if I needn't choose 'tween this and that
I think I know enough of LOL
To say that for use of bandwidth cats
Are also droll
And where it's at.
rhiannonstone: (the real me)
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
rhiannonstone: (the real me)
Once again, Jonathan Carroll posts beautiful poetry that pierces me right through the heart. I am always worried about being too much.

The Too Much
Christa Bell

I
Couldn’t have been more beautiful
Than I was last night.
I couldn’t have been sexier,
Juicier,
Or more luscious.
My ass couldn’t have been bigger
Or glowed more brightly.
My teeth couldn’t have been whiter,
Skin softer,
Hair shinier.
I couldn’t have smelled any sweeter,
Been nicer,
Skinnier,
Funnier,
Or more holy.

And still I was not enough
For you.
‘Not enough,’
My friends tell me,
Will never be my issue.
They say it’s ‘the too much’
That leaves lovers like me
Strangled by our own question marks.

You see—
Some women love lightly,
Like whispers wrapped in spun sugar.
And these are the ones who make it so hard
For the blue-black molasses
Ever-lasting taffy kind of love
That overwhelms the tongue.
They make it hard for those of us who,
Due to circumstances beyond our control,
Are destined to always
Over-love with a vengeance. Read more... )
rhiannonstone: (i love the world)
Via [livejournal.com profile] 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
rhiannonstone: (foodporn2)
The last few lines of this poem popped into my head earlier this week after a delicious dinner, but then I got too distracted to share it. So here it is now:

Recipe for a Salad
by Sydney Smith

To make this condiment, your poet begs
The pounded yellow of two hard-boil'd eggs;
Two boiled potatoes, passed through kitchen sieve,
Smoothness and softness to the salad give.
Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, half-suspected, animate the whole.
Of mordant mustard add a single spoon,
Distrust the condiment that bites so soon;
But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault
To add a double quantity of salt;
Four times the spoon with oil of Lucca crown,
And twice with vinegar procur'd from town;
And lastly, o'er the flavour'd compound toss
A magic soupçon of anchovy sauce.
Oh, green and glorious! Oh, herbaceous treat!
'Twould tempt the dying anchorite to eat:
Back to the world he'd turn his fleeting soul,
And plunge his fingers in the salad-bowl!
Serenely full, the epicure would say,
"Fate cannot harm me, I have dined today."
rhiannonstone: (symbols)
I've been remiss in posting poetry, either mine or others', for poetry month, but I've been inspired. [livejournal.com profile] 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.
rhiannonstone: (symbols)
My Stompy Boots

In my stompy boots I am bigger than you.
Sure you've got height; at six-four you can
reach the top shelf, change lightbulbs without a ladder
But in my stompy boots I can turn men into boys, boys into girls,
and girls into little puddles on the floor that I can splash in,
their sweet precious girl-tears licking my stompy boots clean.
And I can reach the stars, pull one down from the sky without even standing on my toes,
and hold its burning brightness against your chest until your scream fills the night
and you fall to your knees to kiss my stompy boots.
And the gods look down and laugh with delight, knowing me one of them: a goddess,
Earthbound, but a goddess nonetheless, from my midnight hair
all the way down to the soles of my stompy boots.

What's your six-four got on my goddess?

****************************


Incidental Boot-Related Haiku )
rhiannonstone: (dead like me)
The sun our star
Is burning, burning, burning
At some point there will be nothing left
Uh-oh.
--Dr A
rhiannonstone: (the real me)
The bizarre things my Stats instructor says often sound like poetry. From today's lecture on approximating functions:

I am swimming in my universe
My function is beautiful
Don't disturb me.
--Dr. A

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