If I Can’t Love You If I can’t love you, then I want to live on some blind sea,Wherever the freighters squint along the horizon,Wherever it is your look arrives from, that is, whereverThe branches dream of rain, wherever your goodbyeGrasps the stems of stars, someplace where the dayLearns to live leaf by leaf,… Continue reading Richard Jackson
I have been here before,But when or how I cannot tell:I know the grass beyond the door,The sweet keen smell,The sighing sound, the lights around the shore. You have been mine before,—How long ago I may not know:But just when at that swallow’s soarYour neck turn’d so,Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.… Continue reading Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Sleep was fitful at bestWakened early by their staccato cantingLike Knopfler’s guitar – equal parts mournful yet mysticA mise-en-scène for a morning catechism of tobacco and caffeineAnd thoughts of becoming Mexican, if only for the bird watchingThe sexuality of mangos, the labial likeness of gorditas,And sights of tanned señoritas in peasant dresses I’m wondering if… Continue reading John M. Medeiros
I wish I were not more than this, a written pulse, a hushed whisper of thought, braced against the great nothing. For what am I but an elaborate case for my consciousness? — jhlumyk, section I of “Sunday as it was”
The first poetry is always written againstthe wind by sailors & farmers who sing with thewind in their teeth. The second poetry is written by scholarsand wine drinkers who have learned to know a goodthing. The third poetry is sometimes never writtenbut when it is, it’s by those who have broughtnature and art together into… Continue reading Walter Inglis Anderson
You come like a soft whisper Riding the crest of an autumn breezeThrough an indigo drenched morning Breaching my eardrumsPenetrating my aching blood vessels Pouring into my heart Like a river to the sea You bloom like a supernova Blazing radiant in a neon vacuumA juvenescent surge of electricity Pulsing through this weary machineRupturing my… Continue reading Richard Miller
Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water. And everyone you love is made of stardust, and I know sometimes you cannot even breathe deeply, and the night sky is no home, and you have cried yourself to sleep enough times that you are down to your last two percent, but nothing is infinite, not… Continue reading Finn Butler
The door in my heartopened on its hinges,and once more the galleryof my history was revealed.Once more the little plazawith flowering acacias,once more the clear fountaintelling its tale of love… — Antonio Machado, “The Door of My Heart,” Songs of the High Country
As my prayer become more attentive and inwardI had less and less to say.I finally became completely silent.I started to listen– which is even further removed from speaking.I first thought that praying entailed speaking.I then learnt that praying is hearing,not merely being silent.This is how it is.To pray does not mean to listen to oneself… Continue reading Søren Kierkegaard
Late night and rain wakes me, a downpour,wind thrashing in the leaves, hugeears, huge feathers,like some chased animal, a giantdog or wild boar. Thunder & shiveringwindows; from the tin roofthe rush of water. I lie askew under the net,tangled in damp cloth, salt in my hair.When this clears there will be fireflies& stars, brighter than… Continue reading Margaret Atwood
The Vale of Soul-Making 