(no subject)
I'm clearing out stuff from under my bed, and in all the folders I used for A-levels, there are poems written in the front that I obviously came across and wanted to keep, so I thought I'd archive them here. Some I still like. Some I have no idea why I wrote them out.
Somebody Else
If I was not myself, I would be somebody else.
But actually I am somebody else.
I have been somebody else all my life.
It's no laughing matter going about the place
all the time being somebody else:
people mistake you; you mistake yourself.
-Jackie Kay
The Mirror
Watching you in the mirror I wonder
what it is like to be so beautiful
and why you do not love
but cut yourself, shaving
like a blind man. I think you let me stare
so you can turn against yourself
with greater violence,
needing to show me how you scrape the flesh away
scornfully and without hesitation
until I see you correctly,
as a man bleeding, not
the reflection I desire.
-Louise Gluck
perdoname
forgive me
si tu no vives
if you are not living
si tu, querida, amor mio
if you, beloved, my love
si tu has muerto
if you have died
todas las hojas cueran en mi pecho
all the leaves will fall on my breast
llovera sobre mi alma noche y dia
it will rain on my soul all night, all day
mis pies querran marchar hacia donde tu duermes
my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping
pero seguire vivo
but I shall go on living
-Pablo Neruda
Take no offence, love, if I shift
My eyes from you to someone else
And find along another's glance
Mysterious quickening of the pulse;
Or lie within another's arms
And feel a different body press
With curious passion on my own,
My mouth accept a starnger's kiss.
Fidelity is what we are
And needs no action to confirm:
Whoever's breast I weep upon
Yours is the heart I keep from harm.
-John Smith
Star
I leak words onto my pillow at night. I imagine they drip out my
ears like hot water after a day at the pool, each letter a thick
shimmering drop onto flannel sheets. Cholera. Helium.
Zoroastrian. But by the time I find them in the morning they are
hard, stuck to my pillowcase like a grain of rice stuck to your
jeans after a dinner of stir-fry and beer. Aloha. Felatio. I buy
twenty cheap white towels at the Puerto Rican grocery across the
street and place one under my head each night before I turn off
the lamp. Every morning there is a new crusty stain.
Gubernatorial. Chutney. Internet. They are no color and every
color against the thin terrycloth. I hang them in the window
overlooking the street and soon people are knocking on my door,
asking how much they cost. The people are knocking on my
door at all hours and I have to get a chain lock and an agent. The
agent asks me how many I can do each night. He puts me on a
rotating schedule of waking and sleeping. We find I can produce
seven words per cycle. Jade. Lighthouse. Vex. Phenomenology.
Peacock, Asparagus. Balls. My words hang now in a gallery
downtown where they fly off the walls like hotcakes. My agent
takes fifteen percent; still I am able to move into an apartment
with a greener view of the city and a larger bed. I never see the
gallery because I am busy sleeping, though the agent and the
lawyer and the gallery owner do take me out to dinner in a
snappy restaurant with glowing fish tanks and waitresses in
black evening wear. They pour me wine and ask if I can do a
straight week of drug induced sleep to catch up with demand.
With the pills my words come out all wrong. Constulation.
Sykidelic. Enuff. I cannot tell they are wrong, because I cannot
see them in my big apartment with the blackened windows, but
my assistant phones to tell me my spelling is off. Don't change
anything my agent says when he comes to visit, the new words
are even hotter than the old ones. He refills my prescription. I
am sleeping all the time.
-Danielle Dutton
Memory
There is no prophecy, only memory.
What happens tomorrow
has happened a thousand years ago
the same way, to the same end-
and does my ancient memory
say that your false memory
is the history of the featherhearted bird
transformed into a crow atop a marble mountain?
The same woman will be there
on the path to reincarnation
her cage of black hair
her generous and bitter heart
like an amphora full of serpents.
There is no prophecy, things happen
as they have before-
death finds you in the same bed
lonely and without sorrow, shadowless
as trees wet with night.
There is no destiny, only laws of biology;
fish splash in water
pine trees breathe on mountains.
-Luljeta Lleshanaku
Forgetfulness
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never
even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a
bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
-Billy Collins
Somebody Else
If I was not myself, I would be somebody else.
But actually I am somebody else.
I have been somebody else all my life.
It's no laughing matter going about the place
all the time being somebody else:
people mistake you; you mistake yourself.
-Jackie Kay
The Mirror
Watching you in the mirror I wonder
what it is like to be so beautiful
and why you do not love
but cut yourself, shaving
like a blind man. I think you let me stare
so you can turn against yourself
with greater violence,
needing to show me how you scrape the flesh away
scornfully and without hesitation
until I see you correctly,
as a man bleeding, not
the reflection I desire.
-Louise Gluck
perdoname
forgive me
si tu no vives
if you are not living
si tu, querida, amor mio
if you, beloved, my love
si tu has muerto
if you have died
todas las hojas cueran en mi pecho
all the leaves will fall on my breast
llovera sobre mi alma noche y dia
it will rain on my soul all night, all day
mis pies querran marchar hacia donde tu duermes
my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping
pero seguire vivo
but I shall go on living
-Pablo Neruda
Take no offence, love, if I shift
My eyes from you to someone else
And find along another's glance
Mysterious quickening of the pulse;
Or lie within another's arms
And feel a different body press
With curious passion on my own,
My mouth accept a starnger's kiss.
Fidelity is what we are
And needs no action to confirm:
Whoever's breast I weep upon
Yours is the heart I keep from harm.
-John Smith
Star
I leak words onto my pillow at night. I imagine they drip out my
ears like hot water after a day at the pool, each letter a thick
shimmering drop onto flannel sheets. Cholera. Helium.
Zoroastrian. But by the time I find them in the morning they are
hard, stuck to my pillowcase like a grain of rice stuck to your
jeans after a dinner of stir-fry and beer. Aloha. Felatio. I buy
twenty cheap white towels at the Puerto Rican grocery across the
street and place one under my head each night before I turn off
the lamp. Every morning there is a new crusty stain.
Gubernatorial. Chutney. Internet. They are no color and every
color against the thin terrycloth. I hang them in the window
overlooking the street and soon people are knocking on my door,
asking how much they cost. The people are knocking on my
door at all hours and I have to get a chain lock and an agent. The
agent asks me how many I can do each night. He puts me on a
rotating schedule of waking and sleeping. We find I can produce
seven words per cycle. Jade. Lighthouse. Vex. Phenomenology.
Peacock, Asparagus. Balls. My words hang now in a gallery
downtown where they fly off the walls like hotcakes. My agent
takes fifteen percent; still I am able to move into an apartment
with a greener view of the city and a larger bed. I never see the
gallery because I am busy sleeping, though the agent and the
lawyer and the gallery owner do take me out to dinner in a
snappy restaurant with glowing fish tanks and waitresses in
black evening wear. They pour me wine and ask if I can do a
straight week of drug induced sleep to catch up with demand.
With the pills my words come out all wrong. Constulation.
Sykidelic. Enuff. I cannot tell they are wrong, because I cannot
see them in my big apartment with the blackened windows, but
my assistant phones to tell me my spelling is off. Don't change
anything my agent says when he comes to visit, the new words
are even hotter than the old ones. He refills my prescription. I
am sleeping all the time.
-Danielle Dutton
Memory
There is no prophecy, only memory.
What happens tomorrow
has happened a thousand years ago
the same way, to the same end-
and does my ancient memory
say that your false memory
is the history of the featherhearted bird
transformed into a crow atop a marble mountain?
The same woman will be there
on the path to reincarnation
her cage of black hair
her generous and bitter heart
like an amphora full of serpents.
There is no prophecy, things happen
as they have before-
death finds you in the same bed
lonely and without sorrow, shadowless
as trees wet with night.
There is no destiny, only laws of biology;
fish splash in water
pine trees breathe on mountains.
-Luljeta Lleshanaku
Forgetfulness
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never
even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a
bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
-Billy Collins