I know it's not bad luck. All that's happened to me. I understand things end. I am glad I learned this lesson, it wasn't easy.
But I think I'm gonna give 2009 the bird anyway.
- Posted from my iPhone
December 2009 Archives
- Posted from my iPhone
3
Forsake me not when my wild hours come;
grant me sleep nightly, grace soften my dreams;
achieve in me patience till the thing be done,
a careful view of my achievement come.
Make me from time to time the gift of the shoulder.
When all hurt nerves whine shut away the whiskey.
Empty my heart toward Thee.
Let me pace without fear the common path of death.
Cross am I sometimes with my little daughter:
fill her eyes with tears. Forgive me, Lord.
Unite my various soul,
sole watchman of the wide & single stars.
9
A Prayer for the Self
Who am I worthless that You spent such pains
and take may pains again?
I do not understand; but I believe.
Jonquils respond with wit to the teasing breeze.
Induct me down my secrets. Stiffen this heart
to stand their horrifying cries, O cushion
the first the second shocks, will to a halt
in mid-air there demons who would be at me.
May fade before, sweet morning on sweet morning,
I wake my dreams, my fan-mail go astray,
and do me little goods I have not thought of,
ingenious & beneficial Father.
Ease in their passing my beloved friends,
all others too I have cared for in a travelling life,
anyone anywhere indeed. Lift up
sober toward truth a scared self-estimate.
- Posted from my iPhone. In bed. Wicked late.
- Posted from my iPhone
A little girl is singing for the faithful to come ye
Joyful and triumphant, a song she loves,
And also the partridge in a pear tree
And the golden rings and the turtle doves.
In the dark streets, red lights and green and blue
Where the faithful live, some joyful, some troubled,
Enduring the cold and also the flu,
Taking the garbage out and keeping the sidewalk shoveled.
Not much triumph going on here--and yet
There is much we do not understand.
And my hopes and fears are met
In this small singer holding onto my hand.
Onward we go, faithfully, into the dark
And are there angels singing overhead? Hark.
- Posted from my iPhone in bed, Christmas day.
Argh.
It hurts us precious.
- Posted from my iPhone
So you think you're in the middle of the ocean
Stranded on an island of your own
Or stuck in the top of a mountain
Either way you're gonna say you're all alone
And I hesitate to say that you're a liar
I never tell the truth myself
But I tried to chase you down and I got tired
So I'm leaving you to you or someone else
'cause you never want to hook up in the middle
And I'd meet you there to talk if you would show
But you answer every question with a riddle
And refuse to even choose to let me go
It used to be I'd tell you all my secrets
Giving you the credit you deserve
I guess you didn't care to lose or keep it
And we never quite connected from the first
And I wish I had a way to make it better
To rearrange the world and make you smile
But it's dumb to even think I had that power
And we haven't been that close in a while
And I don't even want to try to name it
Explain it for the one who couldn't care
'cause all that matters is the way you choose to frame it
And I hesitate to say that you're a liar
I never tell the truth myself
But I tried to chase you down and I got tired
So I'm leaving you to you or someone else cause you never want to hook up in the middle
And I'd meet you there to talk if you would show
But you answer every question with a riddle
And refuse to even choose to let me go.
- Posted from my iPhone
A gift from my sisters to cheer me up.
- Posted from my iPhone. Carefully.
Nobody in the hospital
Could tell the age
Of the old woman who
Was called Susanna
I knew she spoke some English
And that she was an immigrant
Out of a little country
Trampled by armies
Because she had no visitors
I would stop by to see her
But she was always sleeping
All I could do
Was to get out her comb
And carefully untangle
The tangles in her hair
One day I was beside her
When she woke up
Opening small dark eyes
Of a surprising clearness
She looked at me and said
You want to know the truth?
I answered Yes
She said it's something that
My mother told me
There's not a single inch
Of our whole body
That the Lord does not love
She then went back to sleep.
- Posted from my bed at 3 am.
Even in the cave of the night when you
wake and are free and lonely,
neglected by others, discarded, loved only
by what doesn't matter--even in that
big room no one can see,
you push with your eyes till forever
comes in its twisted figure eight
and lies down in your head.
You think water in the river;
you think slower than the tide in
the grain of the wood; you become
a secret storehouse that saves the country,
so open and foolish and empty.
You look over all that the darkness
ripples across. More than has ever
been found comforts you. You open your
eyes in a vault that unlocks as fast
and as far as your thought can run.
A great snug wall goes around everything,
has always been there, will always
remain. It is a good world to be
lost in. It comforts you. It is
all right. And you sleep.
William Stafford
I open my eyes to see how the night
is progressing. The clock glows green,
the light of the last-quarter moon
shines up off the snow into our bedroom.
Her portion of our oceanic duvet
lies completely flat. The words
of the shepherd in Tristan, "Waste
and empty, the sea," come back to me.
Where can she be? Then in the furrow
where the duvet overlaps her pillow,
a small hank of brown hair
shows itself, her marker that she's here,
asleep, somewhere down in the dark
underneath. Now she rotates
herself a quarter turn, from strewn
all unfolded on her back to bunched
in a Z on her side, with her back to me.
I squirm nearer, careful not to break
into the immensity of her sleep,
and lie there absorbing the astounding
quantity of heat a slender body
ovens up around itself.
Her slow, purring, sometimes snorish,
perfectly intelligible sleeping sounds
abruptly stop. A leg darts back
and hooks my ankle with its foot
and draws me closer. Immediately
her sleeping sounds resume, telling me:
"Come, press against me, yes, like that,
put your right elbow on my hipbone, perfect,
and your right hand at my breasts, yes, that's it,
now your left arm, which has become extra,
stow it somewhere out of the way, good.
Entangled with each other so, unsleeping one,
together we will outsleep the night."
- Posted from my bed at 5 am.
- Posted from my iPhone
I'm having trouble just being happy lately. Unfortunately when adversity happens we forget ourselves.
It's normal I suppose but it's upsetting and brings a sense of helplessness.
Sometimes it just takes a friend to remind us. My friends do this.
Thank you, Fred.
- Posted from my iPhone
At dawn Warren is on my bed,
a ragged lump of fur listening
to the birds as if deciding whether or not
to catch one. He has an old man's
mimsy delusion. A rabbit runs across
the yard and he walks after it
thinking he might close the widening distance
just as when I followed a lovely woman
on boulevard Montparnasse but couldn't equal
her rapid pace, the click-click of her shoes
moving into the distance, turning the final
corner, but when I turned the corner
she had disappeared and I looked up
into the trees thinking she might have climbed one.
When I was young a country girl would climb
a tree and throw apples down at my upturned face.
Warren and I are both searchers. He's looking
for his dead sister Shirley, and I'm wondering
about my brother John who left the earth
on this voyage all living creatures take.
Both cat and man are bathed in pleasant
insignificance, their eyes fixed on birds and stars
- Posted from my iPhone
