Lisa Marie Blair

Tag: Poetry

  • And Why?

    — Michael Bazzett, from “Inside the Trojan Horse”, The Echo-Chamber: Poems

  • Allow It to Walk Away

    Mercy by Rudy Francisco

    She asks me to kill the spider.
    Instead, I get the most
    peaceful weapons I can find.

    I take a cup and a napkin.
    I catch the spider, put it outside
    and allow it to walk away.

    If I am ever caught in the wrong place
    at the wrong time, just being alive
    and not bothering anyone,

    I hope I am greeted
    with the same kind
    of mercy.

  • Resurrection

    Easter by Marie Howe

    Two of the fingers on his right hand
    had been broken

    so when he poured back into that hand it surprised
    him — it hurt him at first.

    And the whole body was too small. Imagine
    the sky trying to fit into a tunnel carved into a hill.

    He came into it two ways:
    From the outside, as we step into a pair of pants.

    And from the center — suddenly all at once.
    Then he felt himself awake in the dark alone.

  • The Activation Is Ongoing

    — Brandon Shimoda, “When It’s Naked“

  • The Drowning and the Shore

    Blake Auden

  • Be a Mirror

    on how to not take on their mess.

    listen.
    ask questions.
    be a mirror.

    it’s not about you.
    it’s not about you.
    it’s not about you.

    protect your heart.

    — Adrian Michael, love language. (via swissmiss)

  • April Comes Like an Idiot

    Spring by Edna St. Vincent Millay

    To what purpose, April, do you return again?
    Beauty is not enough.
    You can no longer quiet me with the redness
    Of little leaves opening stickily.
    I know what I know.
    The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
    The spikes of the crocus.
    The smell of the earth is good.
    It is apparent that there is no death.
    But what does that signify?
    Not only under ground are the brains of men
    Eaten by maggots.
    Life in itself
    Is nothing,
    An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
    It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
    April
    Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

  • Who Among Us

    Food-hunger. Love-hunger. Faith-hunger. Soul-hunger.

    Who among us has not been hungry? Who among us has not been vulnerable? Who among us has not been a starving lion? Who among us has not been a prey animal? Who among us has not been a predator?”

    — Sherman Alexie, from Sonnet, with Pride

  • I Keep On

    All the time I pray to Buddha
    I keep on
    killing mosquitoes.”

    — Kobayashi Issa

  • Time

  • My Mother’s Body

    “My Mother’s Body” from The Kingdom of Ordinary Time // Marie Howe

    Bless my mother’s body, the first song of her beating
    heart and her breathing, her voice, which I could dimly hear,

    grew louder. From inside her body I heard almost every word she said.
    Within that girl I drove to the store and back, her feet pressing

    the pedals of the blue car, her voice, first gate to the cold sunny mornings,
    rain, moonlight, snow fall, dogs . . .

    Her kidneys failed, the womb where I once lived is gone.
    Her young astonished body pushed me down that long corridor,

    and my body hurt her, I know that—24 years old. I’m old enough
    to be that girl’s mother, to smooth her hair, to look into her exultant frightened eyes,

    her bedsheets stained with chocolate, her heart in constant failure.
    It’s a girl, someone must have said. She must have kissed me

    with her mouth, first grief, first air,
    and soon I was drinking her, first food, I was eating my mother,

    slumped in her wheelchair, one of my brothers pushing it,
    across the snowy lawn, her eyes fixed, her face averted.

    Bless this body she made, my long legs, her long arms and fingers,
    our voice in my throat speaking to you now.

  • They Shift

    What can you know about a person? They shift
    in the light. You can’t light up all sides at once. Add
    a second light and you get a second darkness”

    — Richard Siken, “Portrait of Fryderyk in Shifting Light”, War of the Foxes

  • Walt Whitman

    Let others dispose of questions, I dispose of nothing, I arouse
    unanswerable questions,
    Who are they I see and touch, and what about them?
    What about these likes of myself that draw me so close by tender
    directions and indirections?”

    — Walt Whitman, “Myself and Me”, On the Beach at Night Alone

  • Questionnaire

    Amanda Palmer reads “Questionnaire” by Wendell Berry (via Brainpickings)
    1. How much poison are you willing to eat for the success of the free market and global trade? Please name your preferred poisons.
    2. For the sake of goodness, how much evil are you willing to do? Fill in the following blanks with the names of your favorite evils and acts of hatred.
    3. What sacrifices are you prepared to make for culture and civilization? Please list the monuments, shrines, and works of art you would most willingly destroy.
    4. In the name of patriotism and the flag, how much of our beloved land are you willing to desecrate? List in the following spaces the mountains, rivers, towns, farms you could most readily do without.
    5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes, the energy sources, the kinds of security, for which you would kill a child. Name, please, the children whom you would be willing to kill.

    — Questionnaire by Wendell Berry