Light-skinned-ed Girl

A Poem by Irena Klepfisz

A Poem for Judy beginning a new job

by Irena Klepfisz from Different Enclosures

I will keep this simple
not give it
universal significance
nor transform it
into art.

You say:
"I will not do this
forever.  I paint."

I've learned now
that it's no solace
to point out   the others
so many others
straining   wasting
unable to do
what they know
they must do

for such loss
is always solitary
and unshared
outside the scope
of bloodless theory.

You do not paint
and what must happen
does not happen:
the transformation
on the empty canvas
of the elusive marble
into the shadowy water
or of the simple water
into impenetrable rock

and nothing
nothing
not even a loving embrace
nor special intimate
midnight talk
wil ever make up
or diminish that loss
for you
or for her
or her
or her

or her.

Photo by sugarpacketchad.

A Poem by Sharon Olds

from The Father (Knopf 1995)

Close to Death by Sharon Olds

Always, now, I feel it, a steady

even pressure, all over my body,

as if I were held in a flower-press.

I am waiting for the phone to ring,

they will say it and I will not be ready,

I do not have a place prepared,

I do not know what will happen to him

or where he will go.  I always thought

I had a salvation for him, hidden,

even from myself, in my chest.  But when the phone rings,

I don't know who he will be then,

or where, I have nothing for him, no net,

no heaven to catch him--he taught me only

the earth, night, sleep, the male

body in its beauty and fearsomeness,

he set up that landscape for me

to go to him in, and I will go to him

and give to him, what he gave me I will give him,

the earth, night, sleep, beauty, fear.

A Poem for you by Joy Harjo

The Poem I Just Wrote

by Joy Harjo

The poem I just wrote is not real.

And neither is the black horse

who is grazing on my belly.

And neither are the ghosts

of old lovers who smile at me

from the jukebox.

A Poem for you by Maurya Simon

If you don't know this poet, you should.  I met her at Djerassi, a wonderful northern California artist colony, a few years ago.  This poem is one of my favorites!

Dedication

by Maurya Simon, from Days of Awe

If ever I had a muse, it was you,

your artist’s hands narrow and white,

your eyes so amazingly blue

they seem to overtake the world

and re-tinge it; your familiar face

always hovering in and out of mine.

A certain violence in likenesses,

and in our differences, makes

you my most solid witness—

and at times you’re the only door

my being passes through, as if

through a curtain made of flesh

that parts us each in two, splitting

us into yin and yang, those forces

eternally at odds, and at one.

There are things to say that we

have never said, and are likely

to forget or softly put away

along with the old arguments,

the jealousies and dreads.

But let me say, if anything,

that you’re my telltale tongue,

my luminous eye, my fountain pen.

I owe you everything that’s good

upon the page, and even my rage

over what’s bad, false, leaden.

If I can claim but one truth won,

it’s that you gave me first what

I didn’t have: another self to love

Unconditionally, and to forgive.

A Poem for you by Adrienne Rich

NOVEMBER 1968

(from the collection The Will to Change - poems 1968-1970)

Adrienne Rich - b 1929 - American.

Stripped
you're beginning to float free
up through the smoke of bushfires
and incinerators
the unleafed branches won't hold you
nor the radar aerials

You're what the autumn knew would happen
after the last collapse
of primary colour
once the last absolutes were torn to pieces
you could begin

How you broke open, what sheathed you
until this moment
I know nothing about it
my ignorance of you amazes me
now that I watch you
starting to give yourself
away to the wind

Thanks to the brilliant writer Jeanette Winterson for sharing this on her blog.

A Poem for You by William Stafford . . .

Being a Person  by William Stafford

Be a person here.  Stand by the river, invoke

the owls.  Invoke winter, then spring.

Let any season that wants to come here make its own

call.  After that sound goes away, wait.

A slow bubble rises through the earth

and begins to include sky, stars, all space,

even the outracing, expanding thought.

Come back and hear the little sound again.

Suddenly this dream you are having matches

everyone’s dream, and the result is the world.

If a different call came there wouldn’t be any

world, or you, or the river, or the owls calling.

How you stand here is important.  How you

listen for the next things to happen.  How you breathe.

Puppy love and Shakespeare

I was an odd kid--I don't just mean the whole biracial thing--I cultivated weird.  As a teenager I preferred PBS to MTV, and jazz to anything that played on the radio or the "black" music that came on KBOO only on Saturday nights.  But still, I fell in love (many times) the way teenagers do.  Oh, love made me so helpless and hopeless.  So, I turned to poetry.  I thought of this today as I was looking at my bookshelf and saw my old copy of Shakespeare's sonnets.  This sonnet, which I was surprised to realize I still have memorized, was my companion as I suffered through many unrequited loves.

Sonnet 57

BEING your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor sevices to do, till you require.

Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu;

Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are how happy you make those!

So true a fool is love, that in your Will,
Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.

A Poem for You By Audre Lorde

A LITANY FOR SURVIVAL

For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children's mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours:

For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother's milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.

And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive

- Audre Lorde, The Black Unicorn

That Unfamiliar Voice is Your Own: A Poem for You by William Stafford

When I Met My Muse

by William Stafford

I glanced at her and took my glasses off—they were still singing. They buzzed like a locust on the coffee table and then ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and knew that nails up there took a new grip on whatever they touched. "I am your own way of looking at things," she said. "When you allow me to live with you, every glance at the world around you will be a sort of salvation." And I took her hand.

—William Stafford

A Poem for you by Jane Hirshfield . . .

. . . just to remind myself of the importance of everyday and the everdayness' import.

It Was Like This: You Were Happy

by Jane Hirshfield

It was like this:

you were happy, then you were sad,

then happy again, then not.

It went on.

You were innocent or you were guilty.

Actions were taken, or not.

At times you spoke, at other times you were silent.

Mostly, it seems you were silent—what could you say?

Now it is almost over.

Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.

It does this not in forgiveness—

between you, there is nothing to forgive—

but with that simple nod of a baker at the moment

he sees the bread is finished with transformation.

Eating, too, is a thing now only for others.

It doesn’t matter what they will make of you

or your days: they will be wrong,

they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,

all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.

Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,

you slept, you awakened.

Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.

Copyright Jane Hirshfield