Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts

Friday 17 March 2017

Cat

I absolutely love all things Lake Woebeon/Garrison Keillor. 

I get a daily poem from him, but I love them so much my inbox is just full of unread ones I don't want to forget. Here's a great one about cats.
Leave a door open long enough, a cat will enter.
Leave food, it will stay.
Soon, on cold nights,
you’ll be saying “Excuse me”
if you want to get out of your chair.
But one thing you’ll never hear from a cat
is “Excuse me."
Nor Einstein’s famous theorem.
Nor "The quality of mercy is not strained."
In the dictionary of Cat, mercy is missing.
In this world where much is missing,
a cat fills only a cat-sized hole.
Yet your whole body turns toward it
again and again because it is there.
 "A Small-Sized Mystery" by Jane Hirshfield from Come, Thief.

Monday 18 November 2013

Poem: Epithalamium

Nick Laird (2011)

You're beeswax and I'm bird shit.
I'm mostly harmless. You're irrational.
If I'm iniquity then you're theft.
One of us is supercalifragilistic.

If I'm the most insane disgusting filth
you're hardly curiosa.
You're bubble wrap to my fingertips.
You're winter sleep and I'm the bee dance.

And I am menthol and you are eggshell.
When you're atrocious I am Spellcheck.
You're the yen. I'm the Nepalese pound.
If I'm homesteading you're radical chic.

I'm carpet shock and you're the rail.
I'm Memory Foam Day on Price-Drop TV
and you're the Lord of Misrule who shrieks
when I surface in goggles through duckweed,

and I am Trafalgar, and you're Waterloo,
and frequently it seems to me that I am you,
and you are me. If I'm the rising incantation
you're the charm, or I am, or you are.


(epithalamium
ˌɛpɪθəˈleɪmɪəm/
noun
noun: epithalamium; plural noun: epithalamia; plural noun: epithalamiums
  1. a song or poem celebrating a marriage.)
     

Tuesday 2 July 2013

A Poem About Mental Health

Instead of Killing Yourself by Derrick C. Brown


wait until
a year from now
where you say,
“Holy fuck,
I can’t believe I was going to kill myself before I etcetera’d
before I went skinny dipping in Tennessee,
made my own IPA,
tried out for a game show,
rode a camel drunk,
skydived alone,
learned to waltz with clumsy old people,
photographed electric jellyfish,
built a sailboat from trash,
taught someone how to read,
etc. etc. etc.”

The red washing
down the bathtub
can’t change the color of the sea
at all.

A poem by this man, found on this blog. Mental (ill) health is an issue forever close to my own heart, I'm sure we all have stories where we wish we could go back in time and do a simple thing like give someone a hug, make a cup of tea, or show them a little poem like this. Most importantly, I guess, look out for yourself. Don't deny yourself what you need, know how to make yourself happy. Self-knowledge is the greatest tool we possess.