Love Poem for What It Is

Credit: marcil francesca

There’s nothing in the world that loves you
more than the space you already take up.
There’s nothing in the world that won’t
forget you faster than you forgot
the last person that stepped out from your life.
When the cat reaches up
one needled paw to drag down a book
from your desk, then another,
that’s not love—that’s dominance.
When you reach up your hand and try to wheedle
someone else’s to hold it, that’s love
dominating you. There’s no word for loving more
than you should, just the feeling of excess,
as if your tongue burst in a rash of red sequins,
as if everyone can see your stutter in the air,
staccato love you, love you, and nothing in the world
standing in that space to receive it.

~ Rebecca Hazelton

Love Poem for What It Is

Credit: marcil francesca

There’s nothing in the world that loves you
more than the space you already take up.
There’s nothing in the world that won’t
forget you faster than you forgot
the last person that stepped out from your life.
When the cat reaches up
one needled paw to drag down a book
from your desk, then another,
that’s not love—that’s dominance.
When you reach up your hand and try to wheedle
someone else’s to hold it, that’s love
dominating you. There’s no word for loving more
than you should, just the feeling of excess,
as if your tongue burst in a rash of red sequins,
as if everyone can see your stutter in the air,
staccato love you, love you, and nothing in the world
standing in that space to receive it.

~ Rebecca Hazelton

Writing on Not Writing

Source: Music Gateway

I can feel my ship about to come in.
A white ship in a snowstorm
moving in.

The ship is made of gulls
huddled together
in the shape of a ship.

When it arrives, they will fly out into the storm,
leaving a space inside it
clear as reason.

I can tell there’s going to be a blizzard
of being somewhere else
any minute

because of time’s noise eating itself up
that is the noise of listening
that looks like a seething, florid whiteout of wings.

~ Jack Myers

Writing on Not Writing

Source: Music Gateway

I can feel my ship about to come in.
A white ship in a snowstorm
moving in.

The ship is made of gulls
huddled together
in the shape of a ship.

When it arrives, they will fly out into the storm,
leaving a space inside it
clear as reason.

I can tell there’s going to be a blizzard
of being somewhere else
any minute

because of time’s noise eating itself up
that is the noise of listening
that looks like a seething, florid whiteout of wings.

~ Jack Myers

RipRap

Credit: Bruna Fernandes

Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
      placed solid, by hands  
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
 in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall

riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,

straying planets,
These poems, people,

lost ponies with
Dragging saddles—
             and rocky sure-foot trails.  
The worlds like an endless

four-dimensional
Game of Go.

ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word

a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained

with torment of fire and weight  
Crystal and sediment linked hot

all change, in thoughts,   

As well as things.

~ Gary Snyder

RipRap

Credit: Bruna Fernandes

Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
      placed solid, by hands  
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
 in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall

riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,

straying planets,
These poems, people,

lost ponies with
Dragging saddles—
             and rocky sure-foot trails.  
The worlds like an endless

four-dimensional
Game of Go.

ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word

a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained

with torment of fire and weight  
Crystal and sediment linked hot

all change, in thoughts,   

As well as things.

~ Gary Snyder

Fire

Photo credit: priyanphoenix from morguefile.com

What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.

So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.

When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of the fuel
together, that make fire possible.

We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.
A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.

~ Judy Brown

Fire

Photo credit: priyanphoenix from morguefile.com

What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.

So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.

When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of the fuel
together, that make fire possible.

We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.
A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.

~ Judy Brown