The Conversation by Jeannine Hall Gailey
Hey, April is National Poetry Month!
(Source: vega-ofthe-lyre)
The Signature Thing
Tagged
poetry
More than putting another man on the moon,
more than a New Year’s resolution of yogurt and yoga,
we need the opportunity to dance
with really exquisite strangers. A slow dance
between the couch and dining room table, at the end
of the party, while the person we love has gone
to bring the car around
because it’s begun to rain and would break their heart
if any part of us got wet. A slow dance
to bring the evening home, to knock it out of the park. Two people
rocking back and forth like a buoy. Nothing extravagant.
A little music. An empty bottle of whiskey.
It’s a little like cheating. Your head
resting on his shoulder, your breath moving up his neck.
Your hands along her spine. Her hips
unfolding like a cotton napkin
and you begin to think about how all the stars in the sky
are dead. Then my body
is talking to your body slow dance. The Unchained Melody,
Stairway to Heaven, power-cord slow dance. All my life
I’ve made mistakes. Small
and cruel. I made my plans.
I never arrived. I ate my food. I drank my wine.
The slow dance doesn’t care. It’s all kindness like children
before they turn four. Like being held in the arms
of my brother. The slow dance of siblings.
Two men in the middle of the room. When I dance with him,
one of my great loves, he is absolutely human,
and when he turns to dip me
or I step on his foot because we are both leading,
I know that one of us will die first and the other will suffer.
The slow dance of what’s to come
and the slow dance of insomnia
pouring across the floor like bath water.
When the woman I’m sleeping with
stands naked in the bathroom,
brushing her teeth, the slow dance of ritual is being spit
into the sink. There is no one to save us
because there is no need to be saved.
I’ve hurt you. I’ve loved you. I’ve mowed
the front yard. When the stranger is wearing a sheer white dress
covered in a million beads
comes toward me like an over-sexed chandelier suddenly come to life,
I take her hand in mine. I spin her out
and bring her in. This is the almond grove
in the dark slow dance.
It is what we should be doing right now. Scrapping
for joy. The haiku and honey. The orange and orangutan slow dance.
more than a New Year’s resolution of yogurt and yoga,
we need the opportunity to dance
with really exquisite strangers. A slow dance
between the couch and dining room table, at the end
of the party, while the person we love has gone
to bring the car around
because it’s begun to rain and would break their heart
if any part of us got wet. A slow dance
to bring the evening home, to knock it out of the park. Two people
rocking back and forth like a buoy. Nothing extravagant.
A little music. An empty bottle of whiskey.
It’s a little like cheating. Your head
resting on his shoulder, your breath moving up his neck.
Your hands along her spine. Her hips
unfolding like a cotton napkin
and you begin to think about how all the stars in the sky
are dead. Then my body
is talking to your body slow dance. The Unchained Melody,
Stairway to Heaven, power-cord slow dance. All my life
I’ve made mistakes. Small
and cruel. I made my plans.
I never arrived. I ate my food. I drank my wine.
The slow dance doesn’t care. It’s all kindness like children
before they turn four. Like being held in the arms
of my brother. The slow dance of siblings.
Two men in the middle of the room. When I dance with him,
one of my great loves, he is absolutely human,
and when he turns to dip me
or I step on his foot because we are both leading,
I know that one of us will die first and the other will suffer.
The slow dance of what’s to come
and the slow dance of insomnia
pouring across the floor like bath water.
When the woman I’m sleeping with
stands naked in the bathroom,
brushing her teeth, the slow dance of ritual is being spit
into the sink. There is no one to save us
because there is no need to be saved.
I’ve hurt you. I’ve loved you. I’ve mowed
the front yard. When the stranger is wearing a sheer white dress
covered in a million beads
comes toward me like an over-sexed chandelier suddenly come to life,
I take her hand in mine. I spin her out
and bring her in. This is the almond grove
in the dark slow dance.
It is what we should be doing right now. Scrapping
for joy. The haiku and honey. The orange and orangutan slow dance.
I bought plum blossoms
more for the name
than for the color;
I buy lipstick that way, too.
In other words,
if it sounds like a poem,
I’ll take it.
more for the name
than for the color;
I buy lipstick that way, too.
In other words,
if it sounds like a poem,
I’ll take it.
Funny, this was still exactly what NYU was like when I was there a good 40 years after this was published.
This reminds me of when we saw Cruel Intentions at McCarren Park and that guy was wondering through the audience, unsuccessfully looking for his friends, and shooted, “You all look the same! We all look the sameeee!”
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild —W.B. Yeats, “The Stolen Child”
This is a thing that happened today and it made me so happy.
The LMFAO and YOLO ones are perfect.
1. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold - “I Knew a Woman” by Theodore Roethke
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!2. A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh - The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
…I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.3. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe - “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;4. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck - “To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough” by Robert Burns
But little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!5. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy - “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” by Thomas Gray
Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife
Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
Along the cool sequester’d vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.6. Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust - “Sonnet 30″ by William Shakespeare
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:7. Endless Night by Agatha Christie - “Auguries of Innocence” by William Blake
Every night and every morn,
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night,
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.8. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway - “Meditation XVII” by John Donne
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
9. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers - “The Lonely Hunter” by William Sharp
O never a green leaf whispers, where the green-gold branches swing:
O never a song I hear now, where one was wont to sing.
Here in the heart of Summer, sweet is life to me still,
But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill.10. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou - “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings —
I know why the caged bird sings!11. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald - “Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.12. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster - Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Passage to India!
Struggles of many a captain–tales of many a sailor dead!
Over my mood, stealing and spreading they come,
Like clouds and cloudlets in the unreach’d sky.
I want
To do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.
To do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.
I don’t ask you to love me always like this,
but i ask you to remember.
Somewhere lost inside me
there’ll always be the person
I am tonight.
but i ask you to remember.
Somewhere lost inside me
there’ll always be the person
I am tonight.
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
