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Boo's Books

B00!

Double Shadow by Carl Phillips

The Shore
Don’t be afraid— Don’t go— Passenger me back to
a land called neither Honeycomb nor Danger— Yes,
that’s what they kept whispering, as if in prayer (but
to what, or whom?), or at least sometimes whispering,
other times more loudly: You’re a memory You’re
the future You’re a memory...as from a wilderness of
longing for something by now so clearly irretrievable
(we look back once, I think, if we’re lucky—if
twice lucky, we never look back again), their bodies
meanwhile lifting, falling, sexual, like hammers, like
a hammer thrown up into and across where the sky
had begun—slowly, then more slowly—to seem
too wrecked enough already to sustain more damage

Clear, Cloudless
Tonight—in the foundering night, at least,
of imagination, where what I don’t in fact
believe anymore, all the same, is true—
the stars look steadily down upon me. I look
up, at the stars. Life as a recklessly fed bonfire
growing unexpectedly more reckless seems
neither the best nor worst of several choices
within reach, still. I wear on my head a crown
of feathers—among which, sure, I have had
my favorites. Fear, though, is the bluest feather,
and it is easily the bluest feather that the wind loves most.

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B00!

What Was It That I Wanted?

What was it that I wanted? I forget ---
To have a place called home, these quiet hills
I look on as I write, the trees I grew
As seedlings now full-blown and full of birds,
Sparrows and thrushes singing as I work;
Even the snow beating against the panes ---
I wanted that. And you, dear one, stopping
Outside my study door, then going on . . .
That loving pause that longs but still respects
My solitude - - - I wanted you most of all!

I wanted a voice, oh yes, one that would tell
Simply but with the mute heart’s eloquence
Who I was, what my brief time on earth
Was all about. And more, there was always more:
I wanted to be wanted, to belong
In school, country, gender, neighbourhood ---
One of the good girls everybody loves,
The heroine of the story of my own life
With a happy ending. I wanted that ---
Who knows why anymore? --- but yes, I did.

Some things I wanted but I couldn’t get
I wanted not to want --- my mother’s love,
That look of urgent cherishing I’ve glimpsed
In the soft eyes of dogs and the dying,
I wanted Papa’s love, unhinged from shame,
His own and mine. I wanted not to feel
That yearning for the child I never had.
What else was it I wanted? I forget.
Or could it be that longing that I want
To make my stretch beyond the lot I got?

B00!

The Quiet Machine

I'm learning so many different ways to be quiet. There's how I stand
in the lawn, that's one way. There's also how I stand in the field
across from the street, that's another way because I'm farther from
people and therefore more likely to be alone. There's how I don't
answer the phone, and how I sometimes like to lie down on the
floor in the kichen and pretend I'm not home when people knock.
There's daytime silence when I stare, and a nighttime silent when I
do things. There's shower silent and bath silent and California silent
and Kentucky silent and car silent and then there's the silence that
comes back, a million times bigger than me, sneaks into my bones
and wails and wails and wails until I can't be quiet anymore. That's
how this machine works.

B00!

Insight
After we die, we hover awhile
at treetop level with the mourners
beneath us, but we are not separate
from them nor they from us.
They are singing but the words
don't mean anything in our new language.

B00!

This evening, I sat by an open window
and read till the light was gone and the book
was no more than a part of the darkness.
I could easily have switched on a lamp,
but I wanted to ride this day down into night,
to sit alone and smooth the unreadable page
with the pale gray ghost of my hand.

B00!

And what will you do now? How will you live?

..................................As birds do, Mother.

Free solo: dearest, I am losing you,
not now (one hopes!) but slowly, over time.
Admit that there is nothing left to do
but re-devote our efforts to the climb,
remembering that the second side is less
than a reprieve—more sheer and far from kind—
before the gentle, sloping wilderness
enwraps us and we let go of the sky.
Your living hand guides home my dangled foot.
At gravity’s unlikely slant, we smear
across the arkose, knowing that the root
has taken hold deep in the layers. Here,
a thrust fault pushed up rock, and, as it rose,
it found its altitude in its repose.

B00!

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"...I try to be good but sometimes
a person just has to break out and
act like the wild and springy thing
one used to be. It’s impossible not
to remember wild and want it back..."

The Gardener
Have I lived enough? Have I loved enough?
Have I considered Right Action enough, have I
come to any conclusion?
Have I experienced happiness with sufficient gratitude?
Have I endured loneliness with grace?
I say this, or perhaps I'm just thinking it.
Actually, I probably think too much.
Then I step out into the garden,
where the gardener, who is said to be a simple man,
is tending his children, the roses.

Today
Today I’m flying low and I’m not saying a word
I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.
The world goes on as it must, the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten. And so forth.
But I’m taking the day off. Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling a terrific distance.
Stillness. One of the doors into the temple.

B00!

Maybe we should've fallen in love
Or pretended to be.
What was there to lose
except a few hours sleep.
You needed me.
But that wasn't reason enough
and love is no charity...
...What did we expect?

...A man kissed a woman.
Because it is Friday.
Because no one has to to go work tomorrow.
Because, in direct opposition to Church and State,
a man kissed a woman
oblivious to the consequence of sorrow.

A man kisses a woman unashamed,
within a universe of two I'm certain.
...On an intersection busy with tourists and children.
Every day little miracles like this occur.

A man kisses a woman in the rain
and I am envious of that simple affirmation.
I who timidly took and gave—
you who never admitted a public grace.
We of the half-dark who were unbrave.

B00!

If there is a witness to my little life,
To my tiny throes and struggles,
He see’s a fool;
And it is not fine for gods to menace fools.

You say you are holy,
And that
Because I have not see you sin.
Aye, but there are those
Who see you sin, my friend.

B00!

Dancer Holding Still
Her husband has left and no man moves her.
A breeze might turn her face so the hair
would hang long behind her shoulders,
but no man does. She stands because her body
wants to stand. She sits for the same reason.
She sleeps on her side in the night. Years
of dark, with stars sometimes, sometimes with
summer fire in the grass. She is not waiting.
She keeps from knowing the grief of separation.
She thinks the love will not kill her. His love
is powerful in her, the way metal loves heat.

B00!

If you don't break your ropes while you're alive, do you think ghosts will do it after? - Kabir

The question is,
what will it be like
after the last day?
Will I float
into the sky
or will I fray
within the earth or a river—
remembering nothing?
How desperate I would be
if I couldn't remember
the sun rising, if I couldn't
remember trees, rivers; if I couldn't
even remember, beloved,
your beloved name.

B00!

On New Terms
I’d like to begin again. Not touch my
own face, not tremble in the dark before
an intruder who never arrives. Not
apologize. No scurry, not pace. Not
refuse to keep notes of what means the most.
Not skirt my father’s ghost. Not abandon
piano, or a book before the end.
Not count, count, count and wait, poised — the control,
the agony controlled — for the loss of
the one, having borne, I can’t be, won’t breathe
without: the foregone conclusion, the pain
not yet met, the preemptive mourning
about which
nothing left of me but smoke.

B00!

....Already I'm forgetting what felt
like a great love, forgetting that world
which for the short while I lived there
had me fooled into believing
it was the only world; now
it is beginning to vanish,
along with everything in it,
and this is their only elegy."

Eating Together
I know my friend is going,
though she still sits there
across from me in the restaurant,
and leans over the table to dip
her bread in the oil on my plate; I know
how thick her hair used to be,
and what it takes for her to discard
her man’s cap partway through our meal,
to look straight at the young waiter
and smile when he asks
how we are liking it. She eats
as though starving—chicken, dolmata,
the buttery flakes of filo—
and what’s killing her
eats, too. I watch her lift
a glistening black olive and peel
the meat from the pit, watch
her fine long fingers, and her face,
puffy from medication. She lowers
her eyes to the food, pretending
not to know what I know. She’s going.
And we go on eating.

B00!

...by Judith Viorst

Just Wondering
...........or.................
Something Else to Think About When You're Wide Awake in the Middle of the Night

I look at you. You look at me.
We're each a human being.
But how much of the person that
We're seeing are we seeing?

Is what you see when you see me
The me that I see too?
Is what I see when I see you
The you that's truly you?

Are we the same inside and out?
Or are there two of us:
The one that's shown. The one not known.
It's quite mysterious.

B00!

Chance
may favor obscure brainy aptitudes in you
and a love of the past so blind you would
venture, always securing permission,
into the back library stacks, without food
or water because you have a mission:
to find yourself, in the regulated light,
holding a volume in your hands as you
yourself might like to be held. Mostly your life
will be voices and images. Information. You
may go a long way alone, and travel much
to open a book to renew your touch.

B00!

A Pretty Song

From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return.
No answer, no coming out of it.

Which is the only way to love, isn't it?
This isn't a playground, this is
earth, our heaven, for a while.

Therefore I have given precedence
to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods
that hold you in the center of my world.

And I say to my body: grow thinner still.
And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song,
And I say to my heart: rave on.

The Uses of Sorrow
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

B00!

Youth

Through all of youth I was looking for you
without knowing what I was looking for

or what to call you I think I did not
even know I was looking how would I

have known you when I saw you as I did
time after time when you appeared to me

as you did naked offering yourself
entirely at that moment and you let

me breathe you touch you taste you knowing
no more than I did and only when I

began to think of losing you did I
recognize you when you were already

part memory part distance remaining
mine in the ways that I learn to miss you

from what we cannot hold the stars are made

B00!

(NOT my favourite poet)

Excerpt from Praying
...God why do so many of your plants have thorns...
Strangeness envelops me. I know I too am dying but I don’t say that
Here. Why? Why does even the use of the question mark seem too
Pronounced for the way it feels. Once an angel cried out.
Once “once” had a long tail, time went backwards and also
Forwards, and the crisp shadows of the roses on the wall
Made all the sense I needed to live by. There were, also,
Seasons. Yes I know, there still are seasons, but you also know
We’re not sure…

B00!

When the train stops, the woman said, you must get on it.
But how will I know, the child asked, it is the right train?
It will be the right train, said the woman, because it is the right time.
A train approached the station; clouds of grayish smoke streamed from the chimney.
How terrified I am, the child thinks, clutching the yellow tulips
she will give to her grandmother.
Her hair has been tightly braided to withstand the journey.
Then, without a word, she gets on the train,
from which a strange sound comes,
not in a language like the one she speaks,
something more like a moan or a cry.

B00!

Balance
BY ALICE B. FOGEL

Balance is everything, is the only
way to hold on.
I've weighed the alternatives, the hold
as harbor: It isn't safe
to let go. But consider the hover,
choices made, the moment
between later and too late.
Hesitation is later, regret
too late. You can't keep turning
and turning, or expecting
to return. This earth
is not a wheel, it is a rock
that erodes, mountain by mountain.
And I have been too soft,
like sandstone, but there is a point
where I stand without a story,
immutable and moved, solid
as a breath in winter air.

I have seen my death and I know
it is my neighbor, my brother,
my keeper. In my life
I am going to keep trying
for the balance,
remembering the risks and the value
of extremes, and that experience
teaches the length of allowable lean;
that it is easier — and wiser —
to balance a stone as if on one toe
though it weigh a hundred pounds
than to push it back against the curve
of its own world.