Bluebird

  

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I'm too tough for him,

I say, stay in there, I'm not going

to let anybody see

you.

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I pur whiskey on him and inhale

cigarette smoke

and the whores and the bartenders

and the grocery clerks

never know that

he's

in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I'm too tough for him,

I say,

stay down, do you want to mess

me up?

you want to screw up the

works?

you want to blow my book sales in

Europe?

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I'm too clever, I only let him out

at night sometimes

when everybody's asleep.

I say, I know that you're there,

so don't be

sad.

then I put him back,

but he's singing a little

in there, I haven't quite let him

die

and we sleep together like

that

with our

secret pact

and it's nice enough to

make a man

weep, but I don't

weep, do

you?

Charles Bukowski

in, Love is a Dog From Hell  

Let It Enfold You

 

Bongeka Ngcobo

 

Either peace or happiness,

let it enfold you

when I was a young man

I felt these things were

dumb, unsophisticated.

I had bad blood, a twisted

mind, a precarious

upbringing.

I was hard as granite, I

leered at the

sun.

I trusted no man and

especially no

woman.

I was living a hell in

small rooms, I broke

things, smashed things,

walked through glass,

cursed.

I challenged everything,

was continually being

evicted, jailed, in and

out of fights, in and out

of my mind.

women were something

to screw and rail

at, I had no male

friends,

I changed jobs and

cities, I hated holidays,

babies, history,

newspapers, museums,

grandmothers,

marriage, movies,

spiders, garbagemen,

english accents,spain,

france,italy,walnuts and

the color

orange.

algebra angred me,

opera sickened me,

charlie chaplin was a

fake

and flowers were for

pansies.

peace and happiness to me

were signs of

inferiority,

tenants of the weak

and

addled

mind.

but as I went on with

my alley fights,

my suicidal years,

my passage through

any number of

women-it gradually

began to occur to

me

that I wasn't different

from the

others, I was the same,

they were all fulsome

with hatred,

glossed over with petty

grievances,

the men I fought in

alleys had hearts of stone.

everybody was nudging,

inching, cheating for

some insignificant

advantage,

the lie was the

weapon and the

plot was

empty,

darkness was the

dictator.

cautiously, I allowed

myself to feel good

at times.

I found moments of

peace in cheap

rooms

just staring at the

knobs of some

dresser

or listening to the

rain in the

dark.

the less I needed

the better I

felt.

maybe the other life had worn me

down.

I no longer found

glamour

in topping somebody

in conversation.

or in mounting the

body of some poor

drunken female

whose life had

slipped away into

sorrow.

I could never accept

life as it was,

i could never gobble

down all its

poisons

but there were parts,

tenuous magic parts

open for the

asking.

I re formulated

I don't know when,

date, time, all

that

but the change

occurred.

something in me

relaxed, smoothed

out.

i no longer had to

prove that I was a

man,

I didn't have to prove

anything.

I began to see things:

coffee cups lined up

behind a counter in a

cafe.

or a dog walking along

a sidewalk.

or the way the mouse

on my dresser top

stopped there

with its body,

its ears,

its nose,

it was fixed,

a bit of life

caught within itself

and its eyes looked

at me

and they were

beautiful.

then- it was

gone.

I began to feel good,

I began to feel good

in the worst situations

and there were plenty

of those.

like say, the boss

behind his desk,

he is going to have

to fire me.

I've missed too many

days.

he is dressed in a

suit, necktie, glasses,

he says, 'I am going

to have to let you go'

'it's all right' I tell

him.

He must do what he

must do, he has a

wife, a house, children,

expenses, most probably

a girlfriend.

I am sorry for him

he is caught.

I walk onto the blazing

sunshine.

the whole day is

mine

temporarily,

anyhow.

(the whole world is at the

throat of the world,

everybody feels angry,

short-changed, cheated,

everybody is despondent,

disillusioned)

I welcomed shots of

peace, tattered shards of

happiness.

I embraced that stuff

like the hottest number,

like high heels, breasts,

singing,the

works.

(don't get me wrong,

there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism

that overlooks all

basic problems just for

the sake of

itself-

this is a shield and a

sickness.)

The knife got near my

throat again,

I almost turned on the

gas

again

but when the good

moments arrived

again

I didn't fight them off

like an alley

adversary.

I let them take me,

I luxuriated in them,

I made them welcome

home.

I even looked into

the mirror

once having thought

myself to be

ugly,

I now liked what

I saw, almost

handsome, yes,

a bit ripped and

ragged,

scares, lumps,

odd turns,

but all in all,

not too bad,

almost handsome,

better at least than

some of those movie

star faces

like the cheeks of

a baby's

butt.

and finally I discovered

real feelings of

others,

unheralded,

like lately,

like this morning,

as I was leaving,

for the track,

i saw my wife in bed,

just the

shape of

her head there

(not forgetting

centuries of the living

and the dead and

the dying,

the pyramids,

Mozart dead

but his music still

there in the

room, weeds growing,

the earth turning,

the tote board waiting for

me)

I saw the shape of my

wife's head,

she so still,

I ached for her life,

just being there

under the

covers.

I kissed her in the

forehead,

got down the stairway,

got outside,

got into my marvelous

car,

fixed the seatbelt,

backed out the

drive.

feeling warm to

the fingertips,

down to my

foot on the gas

pedal,

I entered the world

once

more,

drove down the

hill

past the houses

full and empty

of

people,

I saw the mailman,

honked,

he waved

back

at me.

Charles Bukowski

in, Love is a Dog From Hell  

Sob escombros

 

 Anatolii Savitskii

Um tempo houve em que,

de tão próximo, quase podias ouvir

o silêncio do mundo pulsando

onde também tu eras mundo, coisa pulsante.

Extinguiu-se esse canto

não na morte

mas na vida excluída

da clarividência da infância

e de tudo o que pulsa,

fins e começos,

e corrompida pela estridência

e pela heterogeneidade.

Agora respondes por nomes supostos,

habitante de países hábeis e reais,

e precisas de ajuda para as coisas mais simples,

o pensamento, o sofrimento, a solidão.

A música, só voltarás a escutá-la

numa noite lívida,

uma noite mais vulnerável do que todas

(o presente desvanecendo-se, o passado cada vez mais lento)

um pouco antes de adormece

sob escombros.

Manuel António Pina 

in, "Todas as palavras - poesia reunida 1974-2011"

What to Remember When Waking

 

In that first

hardly noticed

moment

in which you wake,

coming back

to this life

from the other

more secret,

moveable

and frighteningly

honest

world

where everything

began,

there is a small

opening

into the day

that closes

the moment

you begin

your plans.

What you can plan

is too small

for you to live.

What you can live

wholeheartedly

will make plans

enough for the vitality

hidden in your sleep.

To be human

is to become visible

while carrying

what is hidden

as a gift to others.

To remember

the other world

in this world

is to live in your

true inheritance.

You are not

a troubled guest

on this earth,

you are not

an accident

amidst other accidents,

you were invited

from another and greater

night than the one

from which

you have just emerged.

Now, looking through

the slanting light

of the morning window

toward the mountain presence

of everything that can be,

what urgency

calls you

to your one love?

What shape

waits in the seed of you

to grow and spread

its branches

against a future sky?

Is it waiting

in the fertile sea?

In the trees

beyond the house?

In the life

you can imagine

for yourself?

In the open

and lovely

white page

on the waiting desk?

David Whyte

in,The House of Belonging

Just Beyond Yourself

Flickr

 

Just beyond

yourself.

It’s where

you need

to be.

Half a step

into

self-forgetting

and the rest

restored

by what

you’ll meet.

There is a road

always beckoning.

When you see

the two sides

of it

closing together

at that far horizon

and deep in

the foundations

of your own

heart

at exactly

the same

time,

that’s how

you know

it’s the road

you

have

to follow.

That’s how

you know

it’s where

you

have

to go.

That’s how

you know

you have

to go.

That’s

how you know.

Just beyond

yourself,

it’s

where you

need to be.

David Whyte

O Peso do Mundo

 

Simoningate

Poderia libertar-me do peso do mundo nos teus braços; 

poderia tirá-lo de cima de mim, atirá-lo para o outro lado 

da casa, para algum canto escondido; e poderia 

ficar contigo, na leveza do teu corpo, ouvindo 

o cair do tempo nalgum relógio invisível. 

O mundo, no entanto, insiste comigo. Está ali, 

no fundo da casa, com o seu peso. Espera que alguém 

pegue nele, e volte a descer a escada, curvado, como 

se tudo o que tivéssemos de fazer fosse carregá-lo 

para baixo e para cima, nestas escadas sem elevador. 

E eu, contigo, ao abraçar-te, espero que o mundo 

não se mexa no seu canto, no fundo da casa. Abraço-te 

como se o teu corpo me libertasse desse peso, como 

se ele nao estivesse à minha espera, para que o desça 

e suba por estas escadas de um prédio sem elevador. 

Mas o amor também tem o peso do mundo. E as 

palavras com que nos despedimos, antes que eu pegue nele 

e te deixe entregue à tua leveza, trazem o eco das coisas 

que atirei para o fundo da casa, onde não quero que vás, 

para que não tenhas de carregar, também tu, o peso do mundo.

Nuno Júdice

Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong

 

Alexandra Saper

 

Ocean, don’t be afraid.

The end of the road is so far ahead

it is already behind us.

Don’t worry. Your father is only your father

until one of you forgets. Like how the spine

won’t remember its wings

no matter how many times our knees

kiss the pavement. Ocean,

are you listening? The most beautiful part

of your body is wherever

your mother's shadow falls.

Here's the house with childhood

whittled down to a single red trip wire.

Don't worry. Just call it horizon

& you'll never reach it.

Here's today. Jump. I promise it's not

a lifeboat. Here's the man

whose arms are wide enough to gather

your leaving. & here the moment,

just after the lights go out, when you can still see

the faint torch between his legs.

How you use it again & again

to find your own hands.

You asked for a second chance

& are given a mouth to empty out of.

Don't be afraid, the gunfire

is only the sound of people

trying to live a little longer

& failing. Ocean. Ocean —

get up. The most beautiful part of your body

is where it's headed. & remember,

loneliness is still time spent

with the world. Here's

the room with everyone in it.

Your dead friends passing

through you like wind

through a wind chime. Here's a desk

with the gimp leg & a brick

to make it last. Yes, here's a room

so warm & blood-close,

I swear, you will wake —

& mistake these walls

for skin.

Ocean Vuong 

in, Night Sky With Exit Wounds 

Modern Love

 

Thinkstock

 And what is love? It is a doll dress’d up

For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle;

A thing of soft misnomers, so divine

That silly youth doth think to make itself

Divine by loving, and so goes on

Yawning and doting a whole summer long,

Till Miss’s comb is made a pearl tiara,

And common Wellingtons turn Romeo boots;

Then Cleopatra lives at number seven,

And Antony resides in Brunswick Square.

Fools! if some passions high have warm’d the world,

If Queens and Soldiers have play’d deep for hearts,

It is no reason why such agonies

Should be more common than the growth of weeds.

Fools! make me whole again that weighty pearl

The Queen of Egypt melted, and I’ll say

That ye may love in spite of beaver hats.

 John Keats

Prayer for an Invitation

 

 I pray for you, world

to come and find me,

to see me and recognize me

and beckon me out,

to call me

even when I lose

the ability to call on

you who have searched

so long for me.

I pray to understand

the stranger inside me

who will emerge in the end

to take your gift.

I pray for the world

to find me

in its own wise way.

I pray to be wanted

and needed

by those I have

learned to love

and those

I must learn to love.

I pray to be wanted

and needed

by those I cannot

recognize

in my self-imposed

aloneness.

And

I pray to be wanted

and needed

by those

I wish to be wanted by.

But I acknowledge

the power of your beautiful

disguise, and I ask

for the patient heart

of all things

to understand

the uncertain, abiding

and intimate invitation

in my fear of leaving,

in my fear of arriving,

in my fear of taking your hand

to follow

that hidden, difficult

and forever beckoning way.

David Whyte

in, The Bell and the Blackbird 

Sharing the Grail

 

 When we arrive, and sooner

than we think, at that final goodbye

we seem to have anticipated so clearly.

When we arrive at the place

we have understood until now,

only through distance.

When we sit at the bedside

of the loved one as if sitting

by a well where we drink

from the source of all memory;

when we sip together from the grail

of that common memory

and we taste an essence

of love from that memory

that until now we could never fully say,

we are getting ready to be ready

to give the goodbye

we came all along to give.

And if our faith

and the vulnerability

of that faith,

and the wounded

nature of that faith

is felt finally and fully

at the side of that well,

we find ourselves

speaking completely and utterly

the love that we thought had

turned only to memory.

So that after the words

of goodbye are said

everything around us

in the quiet room

and everything spreading

out from the room

becomes like the well itself,

holding the same sacred water,

which is never just still water,

but a hidden flow always arriving,

a never-ending invitation

to drink from the depths,

and perhaps, most of all,

an invitation to somehow rest

in those depths: to rest in that love

that you spoke and they heard,

to wave confusion goodbye,

as you enter

the hallway of presence,

to accompany them

as you always

wanted to accompany them,

and then, to bring everyone

they loved with you,

those you have loved too

and even, those you tried to

and could not,

and then, to make room

inside you, for every single guest.

And above all to be generous now,

as you pass around the grail

of water, saying,

‘This will do.

For now and for eternity.’

David Whyte

in, Still Possible