#139: Poems with a whole lot of heart
Good morning!
Over the last week, I’ve been trying to embrace these words by Richard Feynman:
You are under no obligation to remain the same person you were a year ago, a month ago, or even a day ago. You are here to create yourself, continuously.
– Richard Feynman
As human beings, we are constantly changing and evolving, revealing hidden layers of our self which we often didn’t know existed till they manifest. While I fought this change for many years because it often felt overwhelming, I’m more at peace with it today. It feels like a big change is coming for me. Or has been on its way for a while now. It’s disappointing to keep trying to be your best self and it seldom making an appearance. But I have gradually learnt that the patience is part of the experience of becoming who we are. When the time is right, something will gently transform within. I’d like to think so anyway.
And until that day arrives, I am grateful for poetry, for it is the one source of truth and nurturing I keep returning to that has stays unchanged. I’ve been sharing poems I love with this community for over six years now. But truth be told, it is the poems that find me, not the other way round.
I’m delighted to share these gorgeous poems that found me over the last week, poems that talk of universal experiences and have a whole lot of heart. I hope you enjoy reading them:
1. True Love by Sharon Olds
In the middle of the night, when we get up
after making love, we look at each other in
complete friendship, we know so fully
what the other has been doing. Bound to each other
like mountaineers coming down from a mountain,
bound with the tie of the delivery room,
we wander down the hall to the bathroom, I can
hardly walk, I wobble through the granular
shadowless air, I know where you are
with my eyes closed, we are bound to each other
with huge invisible threads, our sexes
muted, exhausted, crushed, the whole
body a sex—surely this
is the most blessed time of my life,
our children asleep in their beds, each fate
like a vein of abiding mineral
not discovered yet. I sit
on the toilet in the night, you are somewhere in the room,
I open the window and snow has fallen in a
steep drift, against the pane, I
look up, into it,
a wall of cold crystals, silent
and glistening, I quietly call to you
and you come and hold my hand and I say
I cannot see beyond it. I cannot see beyond it.
2. Home Remedies by Couri Johnson
First;
I will weave heartache into a blanket
the way my mother taught me, white knuckled,
catching it on hooks held between browning fingers.
When it is done I will wear it as a shawl when I am out,
at night lay it down on the vacant side of the bed
and wake tangled in it and suffocating.
Next;
I will unlearn my manners. Rub sand paper
and salt along the skin that had been kissed
and caressed soft, grow the callouses back
in my voice and nip the word sweetheart
off of my tongue. I will call you once before dawn
to tell you I was never sweet, but all you will hear
is blood and breath, and the final click of bones
resetting into a primal shape.
Finally;
I will brew coffee without a filter; black and bitter
thick like the soil after thunderstorms. I will curl my fingers
around the cup and let it burn my palm. I will let its steam
sting in my eyes. I will read our future by flicking ash
off the end of my cigarette into the mug.
I will watch it sink. I will watch it dissolve.
I will watch it turn into nothing at all.
3. Subject Matter by Hal Sirowitz
The reason you don't have much
to talk about, my therapist said, is
because you're not doing anything. If I
stayed in my room all day, I'd have
nothing to talk about, either. You should
go to a dance, & even if you don't meet anyone,
you can at least describe to me what it was like,
which I'd find interesting, because I don't
go out anymore. I'm not trying to sway you.
If you insist on talking about nothing,
I'd still listen, but I'm convinced you'll be
much happier if you had something to talk about.
4. Upon request by Anton Korteweg
That I love you, I want to finally
have that written down, now that
you ask. Because I love you and
not just sometimes, given
the four thousand days and nights.
That it seems as if you hardly
have grown older, that
you sometimes gaze into the distance
as if love struck, that
your hands are still beautiful, further
than this I'd rather not go.
That I sometimes look for your cheek
and not your lips.
5. anthem for my belly after eating too much by Kara Jackson
i look in the mirror, and all the chips i’ve eaten
this month have accumulated
like schoolwork at the bottom of my tummy,
my belly—a country i’m trying to love.
my mouth is a lover devoted to you, my belly, my belly
the birds will string a song together
with wind for you and your army
of solids, militia of grease.
americans love excess, but we also love jeans,
and refuse to make excess comfortable in them.
i step into a fashionable prison,
my middle managed and fastened into
suffering. my gracious gut,
dutiful dome, i will wear a house for you
that you can live in, promise walls
that embrace your growing flesh,
and watch you reach toward everything possible.
6. The White Lilies by Louise Glück.
As a man and woman make
a garden between them like
a bed of stars, here
they linger in the summer evening
and the evening turns
cold with their terror: it
could all end, it is capable
of devastation. All, all
can be lost, through scented air
the narrow columns
uselessly rising, and beyond,
a churning sea of poppies–
Hush, beloved. It doesn’t matter to me
how many summers I live to return:
this one summer we have entered eternity.
I felt your two hands
bury me to release its splendor.
Recommended Listening:
1. Pavane pour une infante défunte - Sviatoslav Richter
2. Jazz Popcorn
3. If It Comes in the Morning - Hiss Golden Messenger
5. Marissa Nadler's Love Playlist
6. The Real von Trapp Family Sing Edelweiss From‘The Sound of Music
Links of the Week:
2. Museum of Memories (So happy to see Dhruvi's poem here.)
3. Malawian Musician Plays a Homemade Bass Guitar With a Glass Bottle and Stick
4. Father and Son Build ‘Stick Library’ for Local Dogs To “Borrow” Sticks + A Twin Peaks lodge built for squirrels
5. Zoom Escaper (Best. Tool. Ever.)
7. Flipping Fantastic Pancakes
8. Watch: 20 People Share Their Vivid COVID-19 Dreams
10. "We have been well-trained to resist inconvenience, even of the mildest sort: I want what I want, I want it this way, and at this cost, and I want it now." -Anne Helen Peterson
This is my newsletter: Anjali Menon
Until a few years ago, there was a rigidity to the hopelessness I lived with. It was fuelled by the hard-core conviction that time was working against me. All ice-creams at Marine Drive were eaten in a hurry, all cups of chai at Prithvi were inhaled. I knew that this was a ridiculous way to live, but I don’t think I believed that there were other options. I can declare now that on those days — when I sat at train stations with empty juice boxes in my bag, when half-eaten doughnuts bought at Juhu would rot in the fridge for weeks — I denied myself agency and ownership over my own life.
The realization that each day's 24-hour offering is abundant and more than enough is a fairly recent one. In a more renewed sense, today, personhood for me has begun to look like a home that is being lived in — where the light goes out sometimes, pipes break, sinks get clogged, wires trip, paint on the walls chips off.
-Anjali Menon
Read the beautifully worded and curated takeover of This is my newsletter by Anjali Menon here. Anjali documents her journey with words, art, and questions in her newsletter Six Impossible Things.
New on the Website:
1. Artist Showcase: Charles Bailey aka BigFatBambini
"I find it hard to articulate my thoughts and feelings throughout my life so I’ve always used art as a means of expressing myself. I’m an observer rather than a talker and I find people miss beauty in small interactions, which I find most of my inspiration when creating."
-Charles Bailey
See more artworks by BigFatBambini here.
2. Homesick by Vinitha R
I made potato curry today because I wanted to summon you.
Peel the potatoes, rinse, dice into small cubes.
Add finely chopped ginger, chilies and kadi patta.
Add water. It is supposed to be watery.
A pinch of turmeric, and salt to taste. Let it boil.
When the scent of gingerturmericpotato rises,
you come. Like the Amar Chitra Katha stories of gods
rising from yangnas... only you come and it's easier.
I spoon a mouthful and when I shut my eyes,
I'm enfolded in the soft pleats of your cotton saree
Your pale, soft belly is cool with a sheen of sweat on it.
In real life these moments were but fleeting.
But I held on to them, hold on to them.
One, brief moment of safety
Stretched. Wrapped around me like a shroud.
Potato curry, potato curry fragrance
Summoned whenever, wherever I went. Homesick.
to sooth my tumultuous heart.
3. The River’s Love Song by Binu Sivan (Excerpt)
“‘My poems are born of you,’
the river whispered to the mountains.
As the wind carried the river’s gentle sighs,
high up to the land of clouds and veils
nestled in the skies,
the mountains trembled.
It had felt the young love of his beloved
as she skipped, laughed and tripped along with him.
Majestic he had stood, watching her antics,
she had murmured her delight and thundered in pleasure.”
-Binu Sivan
Read the full poem here.
Here’s a reminder from Lesley Imgart before you go about your day:
Take care of yourselves! And make sure to get your Vitamin D fix by absorbing some summer sunshine. :)
P.S. 19th March was World Sleep Day and 21st March was World Poetry Day. The universe is reminding you to get more sleep and read more poetry! :)
Until next Monday,
Rohini
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