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An Untitled Poem by Rachel McKibbens (aka "last love")

To my daughters, I need to say: Go with the one who loves you biblically. The one whose love lifts its head to you despite its broken neck. Whose body bursts sixteen arms electric to carry you, gentle, the way old grief is gentle. Love the love that is messy in all its too much, The body that rides best your body, whose mouth saddles the naked salt of your far gone hips, whose tongue translates the rock language of all your elegant scars. Go with the one who cries out for his tragic sisters as he chops the winter’s wood, the one whose skin Triggers your heart into a heaven of blood waltzes. Go with the one who resembles most your father. Not the father you can point out on a map, But the father who is here. Is your home. Is the key to your front door. Know that your first love will only Be the first. And the second and third and even fourth will unprepare you for the most important: The Blessed. The Beast. The Last love. Which is, of course, the most terrifying kind. Because which of us wants to go with what can murder us? Can reveal to us Our true heart’s end and its thirty years spent in poverty? Can mimic the sound of our birdthroated mothers, replicate the warmth of our brothers' tempers? Can pull us out of ourselves until We are no longer sisters or daughters or sword swallowers but, instead, Women. Who give. And lead. And take and want And want And want And want Because there is no shame in wanting. And you will hear yourself say: Last Love, I wish to die so I may come back to you new and never tasted by any other mouth but yours. And I want to be the hands that pull your children out of you and tuck them deep inside myself until they are Ready to be the children of such a royal and staggering love. Or you will say: Last Love, I am old, and have spent myself on the courageless, have wasted too many clocks on less-deserving men, so I hurl myself At the throne of you and lie humbly at your feet. Last Love, let me never roll out of this heavy dream of you. Let the day I was born mean my life will end where you end. Let the man behind the church do what he did if it brings me to you. Let the girls in the locker room corner me again if it brings me to you. Let the wrong beds find me if it brings me to you. Let this wild depression throw me beneath its hooves if it brings me to you. Let me pronounce my hoarded joy if it brings me to you. Let my father break me again and again if it brings me to you. Last love, I let other men borrow your children. Forgive me. Last love, I vowed my heart to another. Forgive me. Last Love, I have let my blind and anxious hands wander into a room and come out empty. Forgive me. Last Love, I have cursed the women you loved before me. Forgive me. Last Love, I envy your mother’s body where you resided first. Forgive me. Last Love, I am all that is left. Forgive me. Last Love, I did not see you coming. Forgive me. Last Love, every day without you was a life I crawled out of. Amen. Last Love, you are my Last Love. Amen. Last Love, I am all that is left. Amen. I am all that is left. Amen.

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Excerpts from "How to be Perfect" - Ron Padgett

Get some sleep. Eat an orange every morning. Be friendly. It will help make you happy. 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. 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. Wear comfortable shoes. Do not spend too much time with large groups of people. 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. After dinner, wash the dishes. Calm down. Don't expect your children to love you, so they can, if they want  to. Don't be too self-critical or too self-congratulatory. Don't think that progress exists. It doesn't. Imagine what you would like to see happen, and then don't do anything to make it impossible. Forgive your country every once in a while. If that is not  possible, go to another one. If you feel tired, rest. 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 ice on it immediately. If you bang your finger with a hammer, hold your hand in the air for 20 minutes. you will be surprised by the curative powers of ice and gravity. Do not inhale smoke. Take a deep breath. Do not smart off to a policeman. Be good. Be honest with yourself, diplomatic with others. Do not go crazy a lot. It's a waste of time.  Drink plenty of water. When asked what you would like to  drink, say, "Water, please." Take out the trash. Love life. Use exact change. When there's shooting in the street, don't go near the window.

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"10 Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You" - CHARLES WHEELAN

Look to your left and then to your right. Is that pretty girl Phi Beta Kappa? Marry her.

Class of 2012,

I became sick of commencement speeches at about your age. My first job out of college was writing speeches for the governor of Maine. Every spring, I would offer extraordinary tidbits of wisdom to 22-year-olds—which was quite a feat given that I was 23 at the time. In the decades since, I've spent most of my career teaching economics and public policy. In particular, I've studied happiness and well-being, about which we now know a great deal. And I've found that the saccharine and over-optimistic words of the typical commencement address hold few of the lessons young people really need to hear about what lies ahead. Here, then, is what I wish someone had told the Class of 1988:

1. Your time in fraternity basements was well spent. The same goes for the time you spent playing intramural sports, working on the school newspaper or just hanging with friends. Research tells us that one of the most important causal factors associated with happiness and well-being is your meaningful connections with other human beings. Look around today. Certainly one benchmark of your postgraduation success should be how many of these people are still your close friends in 10 or 20 years.

2. Some of your worst days lie ahead.Graduation is a happy day. But my job is to tell you that if you are going to do anything worthwhile, you will face periods of grinding self-doubt and failure. Be prepared to work through them. I'll spare you my personal details, other than to say that one year after college graduation I had no job, less than $500 in assets, and I was living with an elderly retired couple. The only difference between when I graduated and today is that now no one can afford to retire.

3. Don't make the world worse. I know that I'm supposed to tell you to aspire to great things. But I'm going to lower the bar here: Just don't use your prodigious talents to mess things up. Too many smart people are doing that already. And if you really want to cause social mayhem, it helps to have an Ivy League degree. You are smart and motivated and creative. Everyone will tell you that you can change the world. They are right, but remember that "changing the world" also can include things like skirting financial regulations and selling unhealthy foods to increasingly obese children. I am not asking you to cure cancer. I am just asking you not to spread it.

4. Marry someone smarter than you are. When I was getting a Ph.D., my wife Leah had a steady income. When she wanted to start a software company, I had a job with health benefits. (To clarify, having a "spouse with benefits" is different from having a "friend with benefits.") You will do better in life if you have a second economic oar in the water. I also want to alert you to the fact that commencement is like shooting smart fish in a barrel. The Phi Beta Kappa members will have pink-and-blue ribbons on their gowns. The summa cum laude graduates have their names printed in the program. Seize the opportunity!

5. Help stop the Little League arms race. Kids' sports are becoming ridiculously structured and competitive. What happened to playing baseball because it's fun? We are systematically creating races out of things that ought to be a journey. We know that success isn't about simply running faster than everyone else in some predetermined direction. Yet the message we are sending from birth is that if you don't make the traveling soccer team or get into the "right" school, then you will somehow finish life with fewer points than everyone else. That's not right. You'll never read the following obituary: "Bob Smith died yesterday at the age of 74. He finished life in 186th place."

6. Read obituaries. They are just like biographies, only shorter. They remind us that interesting, successful people rarely lead orderly, linear lives.

7. Your parents don't want what is best for you. They want what is good for you, which isn't always the same thing. There is a natural instinct to protect our children from risk and discomfort, and therefore to urge safe choices. Theodore Roosevelt—soldier, explorer, president—once remarked, "It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed." Great quote, but I am willing to bet that Teddy's mother wanted him to be a doctor or a lawyer.

8. Don't model your life after a circus animal. Performing animals do tricks because their trainers throw them peanuts or small fish for doing so. You should aspire to do better. You will be a friend, a parent, a coach, an employee—and so on. But only in your job will you be explicitly evaluated and rewarded for your performance. Don't let your life decisions be distorted by the fact that your boss is the only one tossing you peanuts. If you leave a work task undone in order to meet a friend for dinner, then you are "shirking" your work. But it's also true that if you cancel dinner to finish your work, then you are shirking your friendship. That's just not how we usually think of it.

9. It's all borrowed time. You shouldn't take anything for granted, not even tomorrow. I offer you the "hit by a bus" rule. Would I regret spending my life this way if I were to get hit by a bus next week or next year? And the important corollary: Does this path lead to a life I will be happy with and proud of in 10 or 20 years if I don't get hit by a bus.

10. Don't try to be great. Being great involves luck and other circumstances beyond your control. The less you think about being great, the more likely it is to happen. And if it doesn't, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being solid.

Good luck and congratulations.

— Adapted from "10½ Things No Commencement Speaker Has Ever Said," by Charles Wheelan. To be published May 7 by W.W. Norton & Co.

A version of this article appeared April 28, 2012, on page C3 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: 10 Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You.

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"Under One Small Star" - Wislawa Szymborska

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity My apologies to necessity if I'm mistaken, after all. Please, don't be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due. May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade. My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second. My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first. Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home. Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger. I apologise for my record of minuets to those who cry from the depths. I apologise to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep today at             five a.m. Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time. Pardon me, deserts, that I don't rush to you bearing a spoonful of water. And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the same cage, you gaze always fixed on the same point in space, forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed. My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs. My apologies to great questions for small answers. Truth, please don't pay me much attention. Dignity please be magnanimous. Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional thread from             your train. Soul, don't take offense that I've only got you now and then. My apologies to everyone that I can't be everywhere at once. My apologies to everyone that I can't be each woman and each man. I know that I won't be justified as long as I live, since I myself stand in my own way. Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words, then labor heavily so that they may seem light.

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The Power of Vulnerability

Brene Brown

Ted Talk

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"Who understands me but me" - Jimmy Santiago Baca

They turn the water off, so I live without water, they build walls higher, so I live without treetops, they paint the windows black, so I live without sunshine, they lock my cage, so I live without going anywhere, they take each last tear I have, I live without tears, they take my heart and rip it open, I live without heart, they take my life and crush it, so I live without a future, they say I am beastly and fiendish, so I have no friends, they stop up each hope, so I have no passage out of hell, they give me pain, so I live with pain, they give me hate, so I live with my hate, they have changed me, and I am not the same man, they give me no shower, so I live with my smell, they separate me from my brothers, so I live without brothers, who understands me when I say this is beautiful? who understands me when I say I have found other freedoms? I cannot fly or make something appear in my hand, I cannot make the heavens open or the earth tremble, I can live with myself, and I am amazed at myself, my love, my beauty, I am taken by my failures, astounded by my fears, I am stubborn and childish, in the midst of this wreckage of life they incurred, I practice being myself, and I have found parts of myself never dreamed of by me, they were goaded out from under rocks in my heart when the walls were built higher, when the water was turned off and the windows painted black. I followed these signs like an old tracker and followed the tracks deep into myself, followed the blood-spotted path, deeper into dangerous regions, and found so many parts of myself, who taught me water is not everything, and gave me new eyes to see through walls, and when they spoke, sunlight came out of their mouths, and I was laughing at me with them, we laughed like children and made pacts to always be loyal, who understands me when I say this is beautiful?

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"Slow Leak" - Ellen Doré Watson

I don’t know how to wish you well. Your hair is out of control, you are downgraded and strange. You used to be the man who whopped open his chest, wandered on a happy shoestring, made a nearly perfect girl. Times we were electric. Our talks teased out newness, mixed surprising pigment. Our battles were not over ground that mattered, so we walked away from them with invisible limps, beautiful sticks with no blood. Thinking ourselves a perfect fit, we began to forget each other. The way the roots of a perfect lawn watered too much get lazy. You thought you should not have to ask. I thought my private fizzings and stirrings weightless, but you got sapped. Your secret began as a scar and turned to a decision flavored with payback. The size of my thirst, your silence! Between us now is the continent we didn’t finish, and one person’s regret. Because you have none, this is what I will never tell you: I took too many days off from loving you. And: I thought we could both get larger. And: Neither of us was the right one to unlock the other’s body. My iron lung of a father has become soft tissue, joshing and washing the woman not quite still my mother—a long tack in a small, hand-made boat. You and I were so full of beans and promise— I’m ashamed we failed at forever.

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"Arriving" - Marge Piercy

People often labor to attain what turns out to be an entrance to a small closet or a deep pit or sorrow like a toothache of the brain. I wanted you. I fought you for yourself, I wrestled to open you, I hung on. I sat on my love as on the lid of a chest holding a hungry bear. You were what I wanted: you still are. Now my wanting feeds on success and grows, a cowbird chick in a warbler’s nest, bigger by the hour, bolder and louder, screeching and gaping for more, flapping bald wings. I am ungainly in love as a house dancing. I am a factory chimney that has learned to play Bach like a carillon. I belch rusty smoke and flames and strange music. I am a locomotive that wants to fly to the moon. I should wear black on black like a Greek village woman, making signs against the evil eye and powder my head white. Though I try to hide it I burn with joy like a bonfire on a mountain, and tomorrow and the next day make me shudder equally with hope and fear.

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"Harmony in the Boudoir" - Mark Strand

After years of marriage, he stands at the foot of the bed and

tells his wife that she will never know him, that for everything

he says there is more that he does not say, that behind each

word he utters there is another word, and hundreds more be-

hind that one. All those unsaid words, he says, contain his true

self, which has been betrayed by the superficial self before her.

"So you see," he says, kicking off his slippers, "I am more than

what I have led you to believe I am." "Oh, you silly man," says

his wife, "of course you are. I find that just thinking of you

having so many selves receding into nothingness is very excit-

ing. That you barely exist as you are couldn't please me more."

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(click Here to get to the article and short video)

"We think of love as oxytocin... and all that, that binds us to other people.

But in the figurative sense, I would say that love is an unselfish attachment to another person,

in that you're attached to somebody both for what they can do for you, but mostly what you can do for the other person."

(Words taken from the end of the video)

--

The most intimate article I've ever read, and the most mature young couple I've heard of.

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leilockheart

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"We don’t condemn it as immature" - W. Timothy Gallway

from Paulo Coelho's blog:

In the newspaper, a text I cut out and place on my briefcase. The author is W. Timothy Gallway: “When we plant a rose seed in the earth, we notice it is small, but we do not criticize it as “rootless and stemless.” ‘We treat it as a seed, giving it the water and nourishment required of a seed. “When it first shoots up out of the earth, we don’t condemn it as immature and underdeveloped, nor do we criticize the buds for not being open when they appear. ‘We stand in wonder at the process taking place, and give the plant the care it needs at each stage of its development. “The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. ‘It seems to be constantly in the process of change: Yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is. “A flower is not better when it blooms than when it is merely a bud; at each stage it is the same thing — a flower in the process of expressing its potential.”

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"Coping" | Audre Lorde

It has rained for five days running the world is a round puddle of sunless water where small islands are only beginning to cope a young boy in my garden is bailing out water from his flower patch when I ask him why he tells me young seeds that have not seen sun forget and drown easily.

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"The Country of Marriage" - Wendell Berry

1.

I dream of you walking at night along the streams

of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs,   

of birds opening around you as you walk.

You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep.

 2.

This comes after silence. Was it something I said   

that bound me to you, some mere promise   

or, worse, the fear of loneliness and death?   

A man lost in the woods in the dark, I stood

still and said nothing. And then there rose in me,   

like the earth’s empowering brew rising

in root and branch, the words of a dream of you   

I did not know I had dreamed. I was a wanderer   

who feels the solace of his native land

under his feet again and moving in his blood.   

I went on, blind and faithful. Where I stepped   

my track was there to steady me. It was no abyss   

that lay before me, but only the level ground.

3.

Sometimes our life reminds me

of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing   

and in that opening a house,

an orchard and garden,

comfortable shades, and flowers

red and yellow in the sun, a pattern

made in the light for the light to return to.   

The forest is mostly dark, its ways

to be made anew day after day, the dark

richer than the light and more blessed,   

provided we stay brave   

enough to keep on going in.

4.

How many times have I come to you out of my head   

with joy, if ever a man was,

for to approach you I have given up the light   

and all directions. I come to you

lost, wholly trusting as a man who goes

into the forest unarmed. It is as though I descend   

slowly earthward out of the air. I rest in peace   

in you, when I arrive at last.

 5.

Our bond is no little economy based on the exchange   

of my love and work for yours, so much for so much

of an expendable fund. We don’t know what its limits are—

that puts it in the dark. We are more together

than we know, how else could we keep on discovering   

we are more together than we thought?

You are the known way leading always to the unknown,

and you are the known place to which the unknown is always   

leading me back. More blessed in you than I know,   

I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing   

not belittled by my saying that I possess it.   

Even an hour of love is a moral predicament, a blessing   

a man may be hard up to be worthy of. He can only   

accept it, as a plant accepts from all the bounty of the light   

enough to live, and then accepts the dark,   

passing unencumbered back to the earth, as I   

have fallen time and again from the great strength   

of my desire, helpless, into your arms.

6.

What I am learning to give you is my death   

to set you free of me, and me from myself

into the dark and the new light. Like the water   

of a deep stream, love is always too much. We   

did not make it. Though we drink till we burst   

we cannot have it all, or want it all.

In its abundance it survives our thirst.

In the evening we come down to the shore   

to drink our fill, and sleep, while it

flows through the regions of the dark.

It does not hold us, except we keep returning   

to its rich waters thirsty. We enter,

willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.

7.

I give you what is unbounded, passing from dark to dark,   

containing darkness: a night of rain, an early morning.   

I give you the life I have let live for love of you:   

a clump of orange-blooming weeds beside the road,   

the young orchard waiting in the snow, our own life   

that we have planted in this ground, as I

have planted mine in you. I give you my love for all   

beautiful and honest women that you gather to yourself   

again and again, and satisfy—and this poem,   

no more mine than any man’s who has loved a woman.

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"Love, Forgive Me" - Sierra DeMulder

after Rachel McKibbens My sister told me a soul mate is not the person who makes you the happiest but the one who makes you feel the most, who conducts your heart to bang the loudest, who can drag you giggling with forgiveness from the cellar they locked you in. It has always been you. You are the first person I was afraid to sleep next to, not because of the fear you would leave in the night but because I didn’t want to wake up ungracefully. In the morning, I crawled over your lumbering chest to wash my face and pinch my cheeks and lay myself out like a still-life beside you. Your new girlfriend is pretty like the cover of a cookbook. I have said her name into the empty belly of my apartment. Forgive me. When I feel myself falling out of love with you, I turn the record of your laughter over, reposition the needle. I dust the dirty living room of your affection. I have imagined our children. Forgive me. I made up the best parts of you. Forgive me. When you told me to look for you on my wedding day, to pause on the altar for the sound of your voice before sinking myself into the pond of another love, forgive me. I mistook it for a promise.