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A Western Ballad

When I died, love, when I died

My heart was broken in your care;

I never suffered love so fair

As now I suffer and abide

When I died

When I died, love, when I died

I wandered in an endless maze

That men have walked for centuries

As endless as the gate was wide

When I died, love, when I died

When I died, love, when I died

There was a war in the upper air:

All that happens, happens there;

There was an angel by my side

When I died, love, when I died

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Tears by Allen Ginsberg

I’m crying all the time now.

I cried all over the street when I left the Seattle Wobbly Hall.

I cried listening to Bach.

I cried looking at the happy flowers in my backyard, I cried at the sadness of the middle aged trees.

Happiness exists I feel it.

I cried for my soul, I cried for the world’s soul.

The world has a beautiful soul.

God appearing to be seen and cried over. Overflowing heart of Paterson.

Artic, 1956

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A True Account of Talking to the Sun on Fire Island

The Sun woke me this morning loud

and clear, saying "Hey! I've been

trying to wake you up for fifteen

minutes. Don't be so rude, you are

only the second poet I've ever chosen

to speak to personally

so why

aren't you more attentive? If I could

burn you through the window I would

to wake you up. I can't hang around

here all day."

"Sorry, Sun, I stayed

up late last night talking to Hal."

"When I woke up Mayakovsky he was

a lot more prompt" the Sun said

petulantly. "Most people are up

already waiting to see if I'm going

to put in an appearance."

I tried

to apologize "I missed you yesterday."

"That's better" he said. "I didn't

know you'd come out." "You may be

wondering why I've come so close?"

"Yes" I said beginning to feel hot

wondering if maybe he wasn't burning me

anyway.

"Frankly I wanted to tell you

I like your poetry. I see a lot

on my rounds and you're okay. You may

not be the greatest thing on earth, but

you're different. Now, I've heard some

say you're crazy, they being excessively

calm themselves to my mind, and other

crazy poets think that you're a boring

reactionary. Not me.

Just keep on

like I do and pay no attention. You'll

find that people always will complain

about the atmosphere, either too hot

or too cold too bright or too dark, days

too short or too long.

If you don't appear

at all one day they think you're lazy

or dead. Just keep right on, I like it.

And don't worry about your lineage

poetic or natural. The Sun shines on

the jungle, you know, on the tundra

the sea, the ghetto. Wherever you were

I knew it and saw you moving. I was waiting

for you to get to work.

And now that you

are making your own days, so to speak,

even if no one reads you but me

you won't be depressed. Not

everyone can look up, even at me. It

hurts their eyes."

"Oh Sun, I'm so grateful to you!"

"Thanks and remember I'm watching. It's

easier for me to speak to you out

here. I don't have to slide down

between buildings to get your ear.

I know you love Manhattan, but

you ought to look up more often.

And

always embrace things, people earth

sky stars, as I do, freely and with

the appropriate sense of space. That

is your inclination, known in the heavens

and you should follow it to hell, if

necessary, which I doubt.

Maybe we'll

speak again in Africa, of which I too

am specially fond. Go back to sleep now

Frank, and I may leave a tiny poem

in that brain of yours as my farewell."

"Sun, don't go!" I was awake

at last. "No, go I must, they're calling

me."

"Who are they?"

Rising he said "Some

day you'll know. They're calling to you

too." Darkly he rose, and then I slept.

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“The blue seems eternal;”

— Virginia Woolf, from a diary entry dated May 22, 1919. (via xshayarsha)

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“(…) how I would like to have wings— blue ones— ribbons of flame. How I would like to open them, and rise”

— Mary Oliver, from Spring Azures in “New And Selected Poems: Volume One” (via adrasteiax)

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“and everything burned in blue, everything a star”

— Pablo Neruda, 100 love sonnets: XXIV (via words-and-coffee)

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“Why blue? People ask me this question often. I never know how to respond. We don’t get to choose what or whom we love, I want to say. We just don’t get to choose.”

— Maggie Nelson, Bluets (via thebluesthour)

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When I Think About Myself, by Maya Angelou

When I think about myself,

I almost laugh myself to death,

My life has been one great big joke,

A dance that's walked

A song that's spoke,

I laugh so hard I almost choke

When I think about myself.

Sixty years in these folks' world

The child I works for calls me girl

I say "Yes ma'am" for working's sake.

Too proud to bend

Too poor to break,

I laugh until my stomach ache,

When I think about myself.

My folks can make me split my side,

I laughed so hard I nearly died,

The tales they tell, sound just like lying,

They grow the fruit,

But eat the rind,

I laugh until I start to crying,

When I think about my folks.

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Quiet Girl, by Langston Hughes

I would liken you

To a night without stars

Were it not for your eyes.

I would liken you

To a sleep without dreams

Were it not for your songs.

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Alone, by Maya Angelou

Lying, thinking

Last night

How to find my soul a home

Where water is not thirsty

And bread loaf is not stone

I came up with one thing

And I don't believe I'm wrong

That nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires

With money they can't use

Their wives run round like banshees

Their children sing the blues

They've got expensive doctors

To cure their hearts of stone.

But nobody

No, nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely

I'll tell you what I know

Storm clouds are gathering

The wind is gonna blow

The race of man is suffering

And I can hear the moan,

'Cause nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

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To Be In Love, by Gwendolyn Brooks

To be in love

Is to touch with a lighter hand.

In yourself you stretch, you are well.

You look at things

Through his eyes.

A cardinal is red.

A sky is blue.

Suddenly you know he knows too.

He is not there but

You know you are tasting together

The winter, or a light spring weather.

His hand to take your hand is overmuch.

Too much to bear.

You cannot look in his eyes

Because your pulse must not say

What must not be said.

When he

Shuts a door-

Is not there_

Your arms are water.

And you are free

With a ghastly freedom.

You are the beautiful half

Of a golden hurt.

You remember and covet his mouth

To touch, to whisper on.

Oh when to declare

Is certain Death!

Oh when to apprize

Is to mesmerize,

To see fall down, the Column of Gold,

Into the commonest ash.

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Horse and Tree, by Rita Dove

Everybody who’s anybody longs to be a tree—

or ride one, hair blown to froth.

That’s why horses were invented, and saddles

tooled with singular stars.

This is why we braid their harsh manes

as if they were children, why children

might fear a carousel at first for the way

it insists that life is round. No,

we reply, there is music and then it stops;

the beautiful is always rising and falling.

We call and the children sing back one more time.

In the tree the luminous sap ascends.

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La Marchande D’Habits

The lively eyes that prod

the contents of my clothes

shuck me out of those

and I go bare as a god.