Some more poetry links...

Five fabulous poems I've stumbled across in the past couple of weeks:

1) "I'm a Fool to Love You" by Cornelius Eady. A sad but beautiful poem--and this link has an audio clip of the poet reading it. It begins with this terrific opening:

Some folks will tell you the blues is a woman,
Some type of supernatural creature.
My mother would tell you, if she could,
About her life with my father...

And ends with this truth about the lies we sometimes tell ourselves when we think we are in love:

This is the way the blues works
Its sorry wonders,
Makes trouble look like
A feather bed,
Makes the wrong man's kisses
A healing.

2) "Lullaby" by Paul Guest. (And there's audio of the poet here, too.)

I'm not sure I get this one completely--if the speaker is talking to a child or a lover, but it reminds me of my dad, who always told (and still tells) me the most interesting stories and facts. Some people give him a hard time about this--roll their eyes or whatever, but it's one of my favorite things about him. When I was a child, there was always such a comfort in hearing his voice say these things--these seemingly insignificant, inconsequential facts that made me feel like he wanted to talk with me, to teach me things. (I am afraid that's much sappier than what Guest intends in this poem, but there you have it.)

Here's just the ending:

Which leads me to say how kamikaze
means divine wind, a fact I loved
before I loved you. And there I go, rattling
like an old fan. And still you sleep,
small and warm, having asked
in your drowsing slip of a voice
that I talk and talk, quietly, without cease,
about anything, anything at all,
until you drift and I am at last the one you dream of.

It's a poem about communication, too, isn't it? About how we want to fill the ears of those we love with the sounds of our voices--even if all we can talk about are trivial facts.

3) "Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting," by Kevin S. Powers, an Iraq War veteran. Short enough to quote in full:

I tell her I love her like not killing
or ten minutes of sleep
beneath the low rooftop wall
on which my rifle rests.

I tell her in a letter that will stink,
when she opens it,
of bolt oil and burned powder
and the things it says.

I tell her how Pvt. Bartle says, offhand,
that war is just us
making little pieces of metal
pass through each other.

It is not easy to write a love poem that says anything in a new way, but Powers does that here in those first lines. And what a devastating description of war in those last lines.

4) "Small Moth" by Sarah Lindsay. It's also short enough to quote in full:

She's slicing ripe white peaches
into the Tony the Tiger bowl
and dropping slivers for the dog
poised vibrating by her foot to stop their fall
when she spots it, camouflaged,
a glimmer and then full on—
happiness, plashing blunt soft wings
inside her as if it wants
to escape again.

Dang it if that's not how happiness often hits us--and how we feel when it does.

5) And finally, "To be alive" by Gregory Orr. Another short one that I won't comment on because anything I say will only take away from what's so amazing about it:

To be alive: not just the carcass
But the spark.
That's crudely put, but…

If we're not supposed to dance,
Why all this music?