Poetry – Fourteen Lines

To My Mother

“I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.”
Edgar Allan Poe

To My Mother

By Edgar Allan Poe

Because I feel that, in the Heavens above,

The angels, whispering to one another,

Can find, among their burning terms of love,

None so devotional as that of “Mother,”

Therefore by that dear name I long have called you—

You who are more than mother unto me,

And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you

In setting my Virginia’s spirit free.

My mother—my own mother, who died early,

Was but the mother of myself; but you

Are mother to the one I loved so dearly,

And thus are dearer than the mother I knew

By that infinity with which my wife

Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.

Sonnets Are Full of Love

By Christina Rossetti

Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome
Has many sonnets: so here now shall be
One sonnet more, a love sonnet, from me
To her whose heart is my heart’s quiet home,
To my first Love, my Mother, on whose knee
I learnt love-lore that is not troublesome;
Whose service is my special dignity,
And she my loadstar while I go and come

And so because you love me, and because
I love you, Mother, I have woven a wreath
Of rhymes wherewith to crown your honoured name:
In you not fourscore years can dim the flame
Of love, whose blessed glow transcends the laws
Of time and change and mortal life and death.

You Hungry Thing

Ron Padgett

The writing of poems and the living of life seem to requiring pay hard attention to any and everything, and experiencing a kind of mental orgasm…
Ron Padgett

The Love Cook

By Ron Padgett

Let me cook you some dinner.

Sit down and take off your shoes

and socks and in fact the rest

of your clothes, have a daquiri,

turn on some music and dance

around the house, inside and out,

it’s night and the neighbors

are sleeping, those dolts, and

the stars are shining bright,

and I’ve got the burners lit

for you, you hungry thing.

My partner teaches fifth grade. One of the things she attempts to impart to her students who are lucky enough to spend a year with her is that perfection is impossible. She tries to help young people who are often obsessed with the idea of perfection that there is a healthier measure of yourself and others. Her message is we are all beautifully imperfect and acceptance of our own imperfection is the key to happiness in accepting ourselves and other’s. Since perfect is a banned word in our house, I found Padgett’s poem below wonderfully on point in his off beat humor and sage advice. None of us are perfect, but we can all take a tiny step towards accepting our imperfection by reading Padgett. Enjoy.

How to Be Perfect

By Ron Padgett

Everything is perfect, dear friend.
—Kerouac

Get some sleep.

Don’t give advice.

Take care of your teeth and gums.

Don’t be afraid of anything beyond your control. Don’t be afraid, for

instance, that the building will collapse as you sleep, or that someone

you love will suddenly drop dead.

Eat an orange every morning.

Be friendly. It will help make you happy.

Raise your pulse rate to 120 beats per minute for 20 straight minutes

four or five times a week doing anything you enjoy.

Hope for everything. Expect nothing.

Take care of things close to home first. Straighten up your room

before you save the world. Then save the world.

Know that the desire to be perfect is probably the veiled expression

of another desire—to be loved, perhaps, or not to die.

Make eye contact with a tree.

Be skeptical about all opinions, but try to see some value in each of

them.

Dress in a way that pleases both you and those around you.

Do not speak quickly.

Learn something every day. (Dzien dobre!)

Be nice to people before they have a chance to behave badly.

Don’t stay angry about anything for more than a week, but don’t

forget what made you angry. Hold your anger out at arm’s length

and look at it, as if it were a glass ball. Then add it to your glass ball

collection.

Be loyal.

Wear comfortable shoes.

Design your activities so that they show a pleasing balance

and variety.

Be kind to old people, even when they are obnoxious. When you

become old, be kind to young people. Do not throw your cane at

them when they call you Grandpa. They are your grandchildren!

Live with an animal.

Do not spend too much time with large groups of people.

If you need help, ask for it.

Cultivate good posture until it becomes natural.

If someone murders your child, get a shotgun and blow his head off.

Plan your day so you never have to rush.

Show your appreciation to people who do things for you, even if you

have paid them, even if they do favors you don’t want.

Do not waste money you could be giving to those who need it.

Expect society to be defective. Then weep when you find that it is far

more defective than you imagined.

When you borrow something, return it in an even better condition.

As much as possible, use wooden objects instead of plastic or metal

ones.

Look at that bird over there.

After dinner, wash the dishes.

Calm down.

Visit foreign countries, except those whose inhabitants have

expressed a desire to kill you.

Don’t expect your children to love you, so they can, if they want to.

Meditate on the spiritual. Then go a little further, if you feel like it.

What is out (in) there?

Sing, every once in a while.

Be on time, but if you are late do not give a detailed and lengthy

excuse.

Don’t be too self-critical or too self-congratulatory.

Don’t think that progress exists. It doesn’t.

Walk upstairs.

Do not practice cannibalism.

Imagine what you would like to see happen, and then don’t do

anything to make it impossible.

Take your phone off the hook at least twice a week.

Keep your windows clean.

Extirpate all traces of personal ambitiousness.

Don’t use the word extirpate too often.

Forgive your country every once in a while. If that is not possible, go

to another one.

If you feel tired, rest.

Grow something.

Do not wander through train stations muttering, “We’re all going to

die!”

Count among your true friends people of various stations of life.

Appreciate simple pleasures, such as the pleasure of chewing, the

pleasure of warm water running down your back, the pleasure of a

cool breeze, the pleasure of falling asleep.

Do not exclaim, “Isn’t technology wonderful!”

Learn how to stretch your muscles. Stretch them every day.

Don’t be depressed about growing older. It will make you feel even

older. Which is depressing.

Do one thing at a time.

If you burn your finger, put it in cold water immediately. If you bang

your finger with a hammer, hold your hand in the air for twenty

minutes. You will be surprised by the curative powers of coldness and

gravity.

Learn how to whistle at earsplitting volume.

Be calm in a crisis. The more critical the situation, the calmer you

should be.

Enjoy sex, but don’t become obsessed with it. Except for brief periods

in your adolescence, youth, middle age, and old age.

Contemplate everything’s opposite.

If you’re struck with the fear that you’ve swum out too far in the

ocean, turn around and go back to the lifeboat.

Keep your childish self alive.

Answer letters promptly. Use attractive stamps, like the one with a

tornado on it.

Cry every once in a while, but only when alone. Then appreciate

how much better you feel. Don’t be embarrassed about feeling better.

Do not inhale smoke.

Take a deep breath.

Do not smart off to a policeman.

Do not step off the curb until you can walk all the way across the

street. From the curb you can study the pedestrians who are trapped

in the middle of the crazed and roaring traffic.

Be good.

Walk down different streets.

Backwards.

Remember beauty, which exists, and truth, which does not. Notice

that the idea of truth is just as powerful as the idea of beauty.

Stay out of jail.

In later life, become a mystic.

Use Colgate toothpaste in the new Tartar Control formula.

Visit friends and acquaintances in the hospital. When you feel it is

time to leave, do so.

Be honest with yourself, diplomatic with others.

Do not go crazy a lot. It’s a waste of time.

Read and reread great books.

Dig a hole with a shovel.

In winter, before you go to bed, humidify your bedroom.

Know that the only perfect things are a 300 game in bowling and a

27-batter, 27-out game in baseball.

Drink plenty of water. When asked what you would like to drink,

say, “Water, please.”

Ask “Where is the loo?” but not “Where can I urinate?”

Be kind to physical objects.

Beginning at age forty, get a complete “physical” every few years

from a doctor you trust and feel comfortable with.

Don’t read the newspaper more than once a year.

Learn how to say “hello,” “thank you,” and “chopsticks”

in Mandarin.

Belch and fart, but quietly.

Be especially cordial to foreigners.

See shadow puppet plays and imagine that you are one of the

characters. Or all of them.

Take out the trash.

Love life.

Use exact change.

When there’s shooting in the street, don’t go near the window.

My True Verse

The following is a re-posting from October of 2017 of a portion of one of the first blog entries on Fourteenlines in honor of my Mother’s birthday. If you would like to read the entire post use the calendar side bar to revisit it.

__________________________

Nothing Gold Can Stay

by Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

October in Minneapolis is a sacred month. It has the last warm days of the season mixed with a visual feast of greens, yellows, orange and reds beneath a blue harvest sky. Minnesotans know what’s coming next; cold weather, snow, icy sidewalks, short foggy grey overcast days and leafless trees. Please, don’t ruin our enjoyment of being sozzled by beauty for a couple of weeks by reminding us of our winter hangover that is yet to come. Nature throws a hell of party at summer’s closing time in Minneapolis, with a last round of a Kaleidoscope of colors for our bacchanalian fall over indulgence.

October is sacred for another reason for me personally. It is the month of my mother’s birth and the one year anniversary of her ashes being interred at Lakewood Cemetery, next to her parents and grandmother.

The only reason I am a poet and writing this blog is because of my mother. Poetry was and is a visceral connection to her. She and I shared a love of poetry going back to my childhood but it intensified as time went on. My mother returned to Minnesota for the last four years of her life, after 28 years of living in other parts of the world, always pronouncing steadfastly during short visits, that she would never return to live here again. That she relented on that declaration was a gift beyond measure. Her return to Minneapolis, coming full circle back to the neighborhood where she grew up and first taught grade school after graduating from the University of Minnesota, allowed me and my oldest sister to spend time with her on a weekly basis, as she lived less than two miles away from each of us in those remaining years.

Soon after she returned, my mother and I created a tradition called poetry night. It started out informally but grew to have regular rules. We each would pick out 5 or 6 poems to read aloud to each other and eat a meal together once every 3 or 4 months. The rule was you had to read each poem twice (her rule, in part because of her struggles with hearing aids, but also so that you can listen carefully and internalize more of the poem the second time through). We would take turns, alternating, reading each poem we had selected one at a time, then asking each other questions, laughing, telling stories, talking about the author and why we chose each poem, before moving on to the next. We were planning another poetry night shortly before she died. It was a lovely way to spend 3 hours in her presence. Here is a poem I had set aside to read to her on our next poetry night.

Love is a Place

by e. e. cummings

love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skillfully curled) all worlds

My mother lived and lives in a yes world, and wished for all of her family and friends to live a loving life with brightness of peace.

It is a daunting thing to try and write something in honor of your mother. Words never measure up. I wrote the following poem as part of my grief process. It began as a sonnet, but it morphed a little to become something sonnet-light. The day of her internment was overcast, grey and slightly rainy. I read it before the small group of family and friends that had gathered to remember and celebrate her life.

Happy Birthday Mom.

My True Verse

by T. A. Fry

Laid bare before life’s mighty eyes,
Farewell beloved I leave behind.
Look past the rain, the grey torn sky.
And if you weep this day, then go resigned.
Keep no somber vigil by silent ash.
As my spirit lives with those I loved.
For I lay beyond mere earthen cache,
My love of you forever proved.
So when in need of kindly word,
Amid drag and drone of a rambling curse.
Listen for my voice in brook or bird.
And hear the truest of my true verse.

Feel Me To Do Right

The summer that I was ten – Can it be there was only one summer that I was ten? It must have been a long one then.
May Swenson

That The Soul May Wax Plump

by May Swenson

“He who has reached the highest degree of
emptiness will be secure in repose.”
—A Taoist saying

My dumpy little mother on the undertaker’s slab
had a mannequin’s grace. From chin to foot
the sheet outlined her, thin and tall. Her face
uptilted, bloodless, smooth, had a long smile.
Her head rested on a block under her nape,
her neck was long, her hair waved, upswept. But later,
at “the viewing,” sunk in the casket in pink tulle,
an expensive present that might spoil, dressed
in Eden’s green apron, organdy bonnet on,
she shrank, grew short again, and yellow. Who
put the gold-rimmed glasses on her shut face, who
laid her left hand with the wedding ring on
her stomach that really didn’t seem to be there
under the fake lace?

Mother’s work before she died was self-purification,
a regimen of near starvation, to be worthy to go
to Our Father, Whom she confused (or, more aptly, fused)
with our father, in Heaven long since. She believed
in evacuation, an often and fierce purgation,
meant to teach the body to be hollow, that the soul
may wax plump. At the moment of her death, the wind
rushed out from all her pipes at once. Throat and rectum
sang together, a galvanic spasm, hiss of ecstasy.
Then, a flat collapse. Legs and arms flung wide,
like that female Spanish saint slung by the ankles
to a cross, her mouth stayed open in a dark O. So,
her vigorous soul whizzed free. On the undertaker’s slab,
she lay youthful, cool, triumphant, with a long smile.

Feel Me

By May Swenson

“Feel me to do right,” our father said on his deathbed.

We did not quite know—in fact, not at all—what he meant.

His last whisper was spent as through a slot in a wall.

He left us a key, but how did it fit? “Feel me

to do right.” Did it mean that, though he died, he would be felt

through some aperture, or by some unseen instrument

our dad just then had come to know? So, to do right always,

we need but feel his spirit? Or was it merely his apology

for dying? “Feel that I do right in not trying,

as you insist, to stay on your side. There is the wide

gateway and the splendid tower, and you implore me

to wait here, with the worms!”

Had he defined his terms, and could we discriminate

among his motives, we might have found out how to “do right”

before we died—supposing he felt he suddenly knew

what dying was. “You do wrong because you do not feel

as I do now” was maybe the sense. “Feel me, and emulate

my state, for I am becoming less dense—I am feeling right

for the first time.” And then the vessel burst,

and we were kneeling around an emptiness.

We cannot feel our father now. His power courses through us,

yes, but he—the chest and cheek, the foot and palm,

the mouth of oracle—is calm. And we still seek

his meaning. “Feel me,” he said, and emphasized that word.

Should we have heard it as a plea for a caress—

a constant caress, since flesh to flesh was all that we

could do right if we would bless him?

The dying must feel the pressure of that question—

lying flat, turning cold from brow to heel—the hot

cowards there above protesting their love, and saying,

“What can we do? Are you all right?” While the wall opens

and the blue night pours through. “What can we do?

We want to do what’s right.”

“Lie down with me, and hold me, tight. Touch me. Be

with me. Feel with me. Feel me to do right.”

Lost To All Music Now

I am part of all that I have met.
Alfred Lord Tennyson

In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIT MDCCCXXXIII: 5

by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809 – 1892)

I sometimes hold it half a sin

To put in words the grief I feel;

For words, like Nature, half reveal

And half conceal the Soul within.

But, for the unquiet heart and brain,

A use in measured language lies;

The sad mechanic exercise,

Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er,

Like coarsest clothes against the cold;

But that large grief which these enfold

Is given in outline and no more.

The Bad Season Makes the Poet Sad

By Robert Herrick (1591 – 1674)

Dull to myself, and almost dead to these

My many fresh and fragrant mistresses;

Lost to all music now, since everything

Puts on the semblance here of sorrowing.

Sick is the land to th’ heart, and doth endure

More dangerous faintings by her desp’rate cure.

But if that golden age would come again

And Charles here rule, as he before did reign;

If smooth and unperplex’d the seasons were

As when the sweet Maria lived here;

I should delight to have my curls half drown’d

In Tyrian dews, and head with roses crown’d.

And once more yet (ere I am laid out dead)

Knock at a star with my exalted head.

All Life Is Built From Song

You are young, gifted, and Black. We must begin to tell our young, There’s a world waiting for you, Yours is the quest that’s just begun.
James Weldon Johnson

If-ing

by Langston Hughes (1901 – 1967)

If I had some small change
I’d buy me a mule,
Get on that mule and
Ride like a fool.

If I had some greenbacks
I’d buy me a Packard,
Fill it up with gas and
Drive that baby backward.

If I had a million
I’d get me a plane
And everybody in America’d
Think I was insane.

But I ain’t got a million,
Fact is, ain’t got a dime —
So just by if-ing
I have a good time!

Now and Then

by James Weldon Johnson

“All life is built from song”
In youth’s young morn I sang;
And from a top-near hill
The echo broke and rang.

The years with pinions swift
To youth’s high noon made flight,
“All life is built from song”
I sang amid the fight.

To life’s sun-setting years,
My feet have come—Alas!
And through its hopes and fears
Again I shall not pass.

The lusty song my youth
With high-heart ardor sang
Is but a tinkling sound—
A cymbal’s empty clang.

And now I sing, my Dear,
With wisdom’s wiser heart,
“All life is built from love,
And song is but a part.”

Love Will Endure

We have to dare to be ourselves, no matter how frightening or strange that self may prove to be.
May Sarton

Poem in Autumn

by May Sarton

Now over everything the autumn light is thrown
And every line is sharp ad every leaf is clear,
Now without density or weight the airy sun
Sits in the flaming boughs, an innocent fire
That shines but does not burn nor wither.
The leaves, light-penetrated, change their essence,
Take on the gold transparence of the weather,
Are touched by death, then by light’s holy presence.

So we, first touched by death, were changed in essence,
As if grief grew transparent and turned to airy gold
And we were given days of special radiance,
Light-brimmed, light-shaken, and with love so filled
It seemed the heartbeat of the world was in our blood,
And when we stood together, love was everywhere,
And no exchange was needed, if exchange we could
The blessedness of sunlight poised on air.

Autumn Sonnets

by May Sarton

If I can let you go as trees let go
Their leaves, so casually, one by one;
If I can come to know what they do know,
That fall is the release, the consummation,
Then fear of time and the uncertain fruit
Would not distemper the great lucid skies
This strangest autumn, mellow and acute.
If I can take the dark with open eyes
And call it seasonal, not harsh or strange
(For love itself may need a time of sleep),
And, treelike, stand unmoved before the change,
Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep,
The strong root still alive under the snow,
Love will endure – if I can let you go

There’s A Bluebird In My Heart

Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.
Charles Bukowski

Bluebird

by Charles Bukowski (1920 – 1994)

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 pour 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?

Bluebird

By Joyce Peseroff

My mother’s voice is at my throat

—”Try a scarf in the neckline”—

and on my lips: “Just a little

lipstick.” Today I’m wearing both.

My “mother’s voice,” pitched high, carries

reprimand and care:

“No boom on the table!” My daughter

swats me as I carry her

away from the dearest

activity on earth—sticks, stones, struck

as if the coffee table were a flint.

“Barbarian,” I croon

in heels. “What’s that?” she asks and rips

a nylon with a fingernail.

She cries at the turtleneck

pulled over her head. “I’ll give you something

to cry about!” I hush, succeeding for another

day, or an hour—another minute

late for work. Tonight I’ll choose

a lullaby: “Bluebird

at my window,” Mother sang to me,

a voice that could broom sorrow

through the door . . . A decal

staggered on the painted bureau,

blue wing seeking, finding no way out.

Summer In The Stomach

And pray what more can a reasonable man desire, in peaceful times, in ordinary noons, than a sufficient number of ears of green sweet corn boiled, with the addition of salt.
Henry David Thoreau

Coming Home At Twilight In Late Summer

by Jane Kenyon

We turned into the drive,
and gravel flew up from the tires
like sparks from a fire. So much
to be done—the unpacking, the mail
and papers … the grass needed mowing ….
We climbed stiffly out of the car.
The shut-off engine ticked as it cooled.

And then we noticed the pear tree,
the limbs so heavy with fruit
they nearly touched the ground.
We went out to the meadow; our steps
made black holes in the grass;
and we each took a pear,
and ate, and were grateful.

Self-Portrait as a Bear

by Donald Hall

Here is a fat animal, a bear
that is partly a dodo.
Ridiculous wings hang at his shoulders
as if they were collarbones
while he plods in the bad brickyards
at the edge of the city, smiling
and eating flowers. He eats them
because he loves them
because they are beautiful
because they love him.
It is eating flowers which makes him so fat.
He carries his huge stomach
over the gutters of damp leaves
in the parking lots in October,
but inside that paunch
he knows there are fields of lupine
and meadows of mustard and poppy.
He encloses sunshine.
Winds bend the flowers
in combers across the valley,
birds hang on the stiff wind,
at night there are showers, and the sun
lifts through a haze every morning
of the summer in the stomach

Springing Naked To The Light

Sir, say no more.

Within me ’t is as if

The green and climbing eyesight of a cat

Crawled near my mind’s poor birds.

Live Blindly And Upon The Hour

By Trumbull Stickney

Live blindly and upon the hour. The Lord,

Who was the Future, died full long ago.

Knowledge which is the Past is folly. Go,

Poor child, and be not to thyself abhorred.

Around thine earth sun-wingèd winds do blow

And planets roll; a meteor draws his sword;

The rainbow breaks his seven-coloured chord

And the long strips of river-silver flow:

Awake! Give thyself to the lovely hours.

Drinking their lips, catch thou the dream in flight

About their fragile hairs’ aërial gold.

Thou art divine, thou livest,—as of old

Apollo springing naked to the light,

And all his island shivered into flowers.

I Used To Think

by Trumbull Stickney

I used to think

The mind essential in the body, even

As stood the body essential in the mind:

Two inseparable things, by nature equal

And similar, and in creation’s song

Halving the total scale: it is not so.

Unlike and cross like driftwood sticks they come

Churned in the giddy trough: a chunk of pine,

A slab of rosewood: mangled each on each

With knocks and friction, or in deadly pain

Sheathing each other’s splinters: till at last

Without all stuff or shape they ’re jetted up

Where in the bluish moisture rot whate’er

Was vomited in horror from the sea.