I am happily married and we have two sons whom I love dearly and who are wonderful, funny, creative, loving boys who make me proud. I like to live near the sea.
“Welcome to Diane’s Consolidated Miseries.
Diane is unavailable to take your call
but if you would like to leave a message just recall
the pitch and timbre and volume of her hostility.
Your call is important to us. If you want a tirade
against her father and mother, ninety-one and ninety-three,
press one; against her brother and his family,
press two; against the ‘entire goddamn world,’
press three; against the men who left her,
press four; against her body she’s shrunk to eighty-six
pounds, press five. The other five numbers
are screams, execrations, a witch’s Sabbath hex
against you. Remember, phoning her, you asked for it.
The machine took down your number. She’ll call you back.”
by Peter Cooley
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He arose early, the morning tinged with excitement,
eager to be at his desk. He had toast and eggs, cigarettes
and coffee, musing all the while on the work ahead, the hard
path through the forest. The wind blew clouds across
the sky, rattling the leaves that remained on the branches
outside his window. Another few days for them and they'd
be gone, those leaves. There was a poem there, maybe;
he'd have to give it some thought. He went to
his desk, hesitated for a long moment, and then made
what proved to be the most important decision
he'd make all day, something his entire flawed life
had prepared him for. He pushed aside the folder of poems-
one poem in particular still held him in its grip after
a restless night's sleep. (But, really, what's one more, or
less? So what? The work would keep for a while yet,
wouldn't it?) He had the whole wide day opening before him.
Better to clear his decks first. He'd deal with a few items
of business, even some family matters he'd let go far
too long. So he got cracking. He worked hard all day-love
and hate getting into it, a little compassion (very little), some
fellow-feeling, even despair and joy.
There were occasional flashes of anger rising, then
subsiding, as he wrote letters, saying "yes" or "no" or
"it
depends" -explaining why, or why not, to people out there
at the margin of his life or people he'd never seen and never
would see. Did they matter? Did they give a damn?
Some did. He took some calls too, and made some others, which
in turn created the need to make a few more. So-and-so, being
unable to talk now, promised to call back next day.
Toward evening, worn out and clearly (but mistakenly, of course)
feeling he'd done something resembling an honest day's work,
he stopped to take inventory and note the couple of
phone calls he'd have to make next morning if
he wanted to stay abreast of things, if he didn't want to
write still more letters, which he didn't. By now,
it occurred to him, he was sick of all business, but he went on
in this fashion, finishing one last letter that should have been
answered weeks ago. Then he looked up. It was nearly dark outside.
The wind had laid. And the trees-they were still now, nearly
stripped of their leaves. But, finally, his desk was clear,
if he didn't count that folder of poems he was
uneasy to look at. He put the folder in a drawer, out
of sight. That was a good place for it, it was safe there and
he'd know just where to go lay his hands on it when he
felt like it. Tomorrow! He'd done everything he could do
today. There were still those few calls he'd have to make,
and he forgot who was supposed to call him, and there were a
few notes he was required to send due to a few of the calls,
but he had it made now, didn't he? He was out of the woods.
He could call today a day. He'd done what he had to do.
What his duty told him he should do. He'd fulfilled his sense of
obligation and hadn't disappointed anybody.
But at that moment, sitting there in front of his tidy desk,
he was vaguely nagged by the memory of a poem he'd wanted
to write that morning, and there was that other poem
he hadn't gotten back to either.
So there it is. Nothing much else needs be said, really. What can be said for a man who chooses to blab on the phone
all day, or else write stupid letters
while he lets his poems go unattended and uncared for, abandoned-
or worse, unattempted. This man doesn't deserve poems
and they shouldn't be given to him in any form.
His poems, should he ever produce any more,
ought to be eaten by mice.
by Raymond Carver
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You have no enemies, you say?
Alas! my friend, the boast is poor;
He who has mingled in the fray
Of duty, that the brave endure,
Must have made foes! If you have none,
Small is the work that you have done.
You’ve hit no traitor on the hip,
You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip,
You’ve never turned the wrong to right,
You’ve been a coward in the fight.
by Charles Mackay
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When William Blake came fashionably late
to parties he’d blame it on archangels,
prophecies broadcast between the leaves
of ordinary trees in the orchard: those who restrain desire do so because
theirs is weak enough to be restrained…
As in Martinsville, Wisconsin, when we
allowed Mike Meinholz to get in the car,
surely a mistake, since the wheels would start
churning up the twelve-packs of Budweiser
he never restrained himself from drinking.
We all have our excuses for wanting
to avoid conversation with mortals,
to restrain ourselves from the fools we are
in the neon light that only darkens
with beer, fears we can never quite drown.
One hundred people trapped in one small town
with just one bar, one church, and one butcher. Expect poison from standing water,
bewildering Blake would probably say,
if he’d been around to help drag the drunk
from my Impala, down our steep driveway,
to the back lawn where he would sleep, where we
stood that night without the assistance
of good sense, grass, or Romantic verse,
and heard, I swear, a voice come from below
where the woods dropped into the gulley:
a woman in pain, we thought at first,
which nearly made us run the other way,
but then it shrieked like a snared rabbit,
or was it some keening itch branches scratched,
or nothing but a dull thud in the chest,
nothing but what we wanted it to be, then,
some housecat that couldn’t find its way down,
some worried awe that barely held us up,
some trembling thing in a tree we couldn’t see.
by Christopher Bakken
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You thought you could ride a bicycle but, turns out, those weren’t bikes they were extremely bony horses. And that wasn’t a meal you cooked, that was a microwaved hockey puck. And that wasn’t a book that was a taco stuffed with daisies. What if you thought you could tie your laces? But all this time you were just wrapping a whole roll of sellotape round your shoe and hoping for the best? And that piece of paper you thought was your tax return? A crayon drawing of a cat. And your best friend is actually a scarecrow you stole from a field and carted away in a wheelbarrow. Your mobile phone is a strip of bark with numbers scratched into it. Thousands of people have had to replace their doors, at much expense, after you battered theirs to bits with a hammer believing that was the correct way to enter a room. You’ve been pouring pints over your head. Playing card games with a pack of stones. Everyone’s been so confused by you: opening a bottle of wine with a cutlass, lying on the floor of buses, talking to babies in a terrifyingly loud voice. All the while nodding to yourself like ‘Yeah, this is how it’s done.’ Planting daffodils in a bucket of milk.
by Caroline Bird
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There’s an honesty to planting, in saying to seeds, here’s what I want from you: grow.
Grow until your heads touch the tallest slat on the tumbledown wall and then bud. Break open your heads and flower, and when that’s done, fruit. In return, I will give you meal, minerals, the dung of cloven animals. I will take measure of your soil and add what you need, take what I should.
In January, I will hang you with leftover fir, grind trees to place at your feet.
I’ll pluck snails from your leaves, sluggish brown bodies loathe to part from your succulence.
I will water you in a slow warm stream, the garden hose wrapped at my feet, a gently coiled cobra who will not strike.
I will break back your dead wood. I will feed you in spring. I will take only what I need, and then I will say to you: sleep.
by Kate Buckley
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In the quiet silent seconds I turned off the light switch And I came down to meet you in the half light the moon left While a cluster of night jars sang some songs out of tune A mantle of bright light shone down from a room
Come down in time I still hear her say So clear in my ear like it was today Come down in time was the message she gave Come down in time and I'll meet you half way
Well I don't know if I should have heard her as yet But a true love like hers is a hard love to get And I've walked most all the way and I ain't heard her call And I'm getting to thinking if she's coming at all
Come down in time I still hear her say So clear in my ear like it was today Come down in time was the message she gave Come down in time and I'll meet you half way
There are women and women, and some hold you tight While some leave you counting the stars in the night
Shadows are fallin' and I've been here all day It's too hot to sleep and time is runnin' away Feel like my soul has turned into steel I've still got the scars that the sun didn't heal There's not even room enough to be anywhere It's not dark yet but it's gettin' there
Well, my sense of humanity has gone down the drain Behind every beautiful thing there's been some kind of pain She wrote me a letter and she wrote it so kind She put down in writin' what was in her mind I just don't see why I should even care It's not dark yet but it's gettin' there
Well, I've been to London and I been to gay Paris I've followed the river and I got to the sea I've been down on the bottom of the world full of lies I ain't lookin' for nothin' in anyone's eyes Sometimes my burden is more than I can bear It's not dark yet but it's gettin' there
I was born here and I'll die here against my will I know it looks like I'm movin' but I'm standin' still Every nerve in my body is so naked and numb I can't even remember what it was I came here to get away from Don't even hear the murmur of a prayer It's not dark yet but it's gettin' there
Teenage, had a race for the night time Spent my cash on every high I could find Wasted time in every school in L.A Gettin' loose, I didn't care what the kids say
We're white punks on dope Mom and Dad live in Hollywood Hang myself when I get enough rope Can't clean up, though I know I should
White punks on dope, white punks on dope White punks on dope, white punks on dope
Other dudes are living in the ghetto
But born in Pacific Heights Don't seem much betto
We're white punks on dope Mom and Dad live in Hollywood Hang myself when I get enough rope I can't clean up, though I know I should
White punks on dope, white punks on dope White punks on dope, white punks on dope
I go crazy cause my folks are so fuckin’ rich
Have to score when I get that rich white punk itch
Sounds real classy, living in a chateau
So lonely, all the other kids will never know
We're white punks on dope Mom and Dad live in Hollywood Hang myself when I get enough rope I can't clean up, though I know I should
White punks on dope, white punks on dope White punks on dope, white punks on dope White punks on dope, white punks on dope
I have gone out, a possessed witch, haunting the black air, braver at night; dreaming evil, I have done my hitch over the plain houses, light by light: lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind. A woman like that is not a woman, quite. I have been her kind. I have found the warm caves in the woods, filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves, closets, silks, innumerable goods; fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves: whining, rearranging the disaligned. A woman like that is misunderstood. I have been her kind. I have ridden in your cart, driver, waved my nude arms at villages going by, learning the last bright routes, survivor where your flames still bite my thigh and my ribs crack where your wheels wind. A woman like that is not ashamed to die. I have been her kind.
by Anne Sexton
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Like columns of mist in some temple to a vanished god, the late cloud-stacks mass over a June reduced to the sickly greens of the Norfolk broads; and, above the steam-soiled mess where earthworms grovel, where lumpish toads set up the resistances of grace, where badgers undermine the tarred road, I watch the canvas of that underpainted sky through a jellied glass of vermouth while the gravestone crops up and an oily wind steels itself to the south. There certain winged creatures from a century misplaced on shelves take the day down with a moaning chant known to themselves.
by William Logan
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That summer, she had a student who was obsessed with the order of adjectives. A soldier in the South Vietnamese army, he had been taken prisoner when Saigon fell. He wanted to know why the order could not be altered. The sweltering city streets shook with rockets and helicopters. The city sweltering streets. On the dusty brown field of the chalkboard, she wrote: The mother took warm homemade bread from the oven. City is essential to streets as homemade is essential to bread. He copied this down, but he wanted to know if his brothers were lost before older, if he worked security at a twenty-story modern downtown bank or downtown twenty-story modern. When he first arrived, he did not know enough English to order a sandwich. He asked her to explain each part of Lovely big rectangular old red English Catholic leather Bible. Evaluation before size. Age before color. Nationality before religion. Time before length. Adding and, one could determine if two adjectives were equal. After Saigon fell, he had survived nine long years of torture. Nine and long. He knew no other way to say this.
by Alexandra Teague
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