new favorite poet.

failing and flying
by jack gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

Going There
by Jack Gilbert

Of course it was a disaster.
The unbearable, dearest secret
has always been a disaster.
The danger when we try to leave.
Going over and over afterward
what we should have done
instead of what we did.
But for those short times
we seemed to be alive. Misled,
misused, lied to and cheated,
certainly. Still, for that
little while, we visited
our possible life.

Tear It Down
by Jack Gilbert

We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of racoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within the body.

a picture and a poem.

things are pretty plain right now, and i’ve really got nothing to post about….

so here’s a pic from new years eve and poem from my form and theory class.

enjoy.

‘my mother’s funeral’

The rabbi doesn’t say she was sly and peevish,  
fragile and voracious, disheveled, voiceless and useless,
at the end of her very long rope. He never sat beside her
like a statue while radio voices called to her from God.
He doesn’t say how she mamboed with her broom,
staggered, swayed, and sighed afternoons,
till we came home from school to feed her. She never frightened him,
or bent to kiss him, sponged him with a fever, never held his hand,
bone-white, bolted doors, and shut the blinds. She never sent
roaches in a letter, he never saw her fall down stairs, dead sober.
He never watched her sweep and murmur, he never saw
spiderwebs she read as signs her life was over, long before
her frightened husband left, long before
they dropped her in a box, before her children turned
shyly from each other, since they never learned to pray.
If I must think of her, if I can spare her moment on the earth,
I’ll say she was one of God’s small sculptures,
polished to a glaze, one the wind blew off a shelf.

                                                        

still sick, (for those of you who didn’t know).

sinuses. 

hate them.

strep throat in the winter, migranes in the spring and fall. 

sucks.

but, despite all that, i completely kicked ass in the staff meeting today.  i mean -ROCKED- ass.

i knew my entire presentation from memory, fielding all questions without referring to my notes, (and had an a competent answer for all questions), and –inbetween blowing my nose and coughing– had acurate counterpoints for the usual b.s. 

and yes, i do really have a beard.

and for over-emphasis, i absolutely feel like rolled up dog shit.

phone calls i needed.

in no relation to my previous post, i got two calls from some of my other distant friends today.

i hadn’t heard from either of them in a while, so i was surprized and it made my day.

but now, i will firmly plant my head back into the books and tonight, will write something about a sonnet.

*note: this pic is in the top ten of the worst pictures of me ever.

somethings just make me happy.

what’s new?…

work is busy again.  sucks. (that’s not new)

i started going to new gym, i really like it.  my old one is closer, like literally down the street from where i work, which is also close to where i live, so the new one isn’t practical, BUT, the facilities are so much better at the new one–i never have to wait on equipment, (huge pet peeve).  plus, at the new gym, there are actually chicks there… army gyms just don’t have those, or atleast ones anybody wants to look at.

also, a frat brother of mine had a family member do a very stupid thing.

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and thanks for this.