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“I want you to tell me about every person you’ve ever been in love with. Tell me why you loved them, then tell me why they loved you. Tell me about a day in your life you didn’t think you’d live through. Tell me what the word “home” means to you and tell me in a way that I’ll know your mother’s name just by the way you describe your bedroom when you were 8. See, I wanna know the first time you felt the weight of hate and if that day still trembles beneath your bones. Do you prefer to play in puddles of rain or bounce in the bellies of snow? And if you were to build a snowman, would you rip two branches from a tree to build your snowman arms? Or would you leave the snowman armless for the sake of being harmless to the tree? And if you would, would you notice how that tree weeps for you because your snowman has no arms to hug you every time you kiss him on the cheek? Do you kiss your friends on the cheek? Do you sleep beside them when they’re sad, even if it makes your lover mad? Do you think that anger is a sincere emotion or just the timid motion of a fragile heart trying to beat away its pain? See, I wanna know what you think of your first name. And if you often lie awake at night and imagine your mother’s joy when she spoke it for the very first time. I want you to tell me all the ways you’ve been unkind. Tell me all the ways you’ve been cruel. Tell me—knowing I often picture Gandhi at ten years old beating up little boys at school. If you were walking by a chemical plant, where smoke stacks were filling the sky with dark, black clouds, would you holler, “Poison! Poison! Poison!” really loud or would you whisper, “That cloud looks like a fish” and “That cloud looks like a fairy”? Do you believe that Mary was really a virgin? Do you believe that Moses really parted the sea? And if you don’t believe in miracles, tell me, how would you explain the miracle of my life to me? See, I wanna know if you believe in any god, or if you believe in many gods. Or better yet, what gods believe in you. And for all the times you’ve knelt before the temple of yourself, have the prayers you’ve asked come true? And if they didn’t, did you feel denied? And if you felt denied, denied by who? I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror on a day you’re feeling good. I wanna know what you see in the mirror on a day you’re feeling bad. I wanna know the first person who ever taught you your beauty could ever be reflected on a lousy piece of glass. If you ever reach enlightenment, will you remember how to laugh? Have you ever been a song? Would you think less of me if I told you I have lived my entire life a little off key and I’m not nearly as smart as my poetry I just plagiarized the thoughts of the people around me who have learned the wisdom of silence? Do you believe that concrete perpetuates violence? And if you do, I want you to tell me of a meadow where my skateboard will soar. See, I wanna know more than what you do for a living. I wanna know how much of your life you spend just giving. And if you love yourself enough to also receive sometimes. I wanna know if you bleed sometimes through other people’s wounds. And if you dream sometimes that this life is just a balloon that if you wanted to you could pop—but you never would because you’d never want it to stop. If a tree fell in the forest, and you were the only one there to hear it, if its fall to the ground didn’t make a sound, would you panic in fear that you didn’t exist or would you bask in the bliss of your nothingness? And lastly, let me ask you this: if you and I went for a walk, and the entire walk we didn’t talk, do you think eventually we’d kiss? No way. That’s askin’ too much—after all, this is only our first date.”

—Andrea Gibson

“1. it’s like her body makes forgiveness the way mine makes blood. the way it flows from her when she’s injured. 2. she says 'there is no such thing as destiny there is nothing you can’t control.' but she is wrong. she is so, so wrong. 3. i choke on my secrets. i show her my scars. she says 'memories are like family, you can always walk away.' (she hasn’t seen her father since high school.) 4. she’s one of those anarchists that’s really just hopeful. revolutionaries that in their hearts are still children with tree branch swords. deep down, she believes the world is perfectible.”

—“on loving an optimist” - clementine von radics

“If you were music I would listen to you ceaselessly And my low spirits would brighten up.”

—Anna Akhmatova

Links to some of my favourite poems

Tatamkhulu Afrika

Maya Angelou

John Ashbery

Margaret Atwood

W.H. Auden 

Charles Baudelaire

Charles Bernstein

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Robert Browning

Charles Bukowski

William S Burroughs

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

ee cummings

Emily Dickinson

Carol Ann Duffy

T.S. Eliot

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Robert Frost

Allen Ginsberg

Thomas Hardy

Langston Hughes

Ted Hughes

Denise Levertov

Pablo Neruda

Grace Nichols

Frank O’Hara

Dorothy Parker

Sylvia Plath

Ezra Pound

Saib-e-Tabrizi

Sonia Sanchez

James Schuyler

Anne Sexton

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Gertrude Stein

Wallace Stevens

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Oscar Wilde

William Carlos Williams

Walt Whitman

William Butler Yeats

“I strive for poetry and produce only words.”

—William Taylor Jr. 

Let's not sugar-coat this

Go ahead, numb the pain
with niceties and your sad attempt
at an apologetic expression
that didn’t fool anyone for a second.
It doesn’t change the fact
that there are needles
puncturing all of my
vital organs. (I haven’t forgotten that
you put them there.)
So let’s play your favourite game:
how many spoonfuls of sugar
can you feed me
before I realize
it’s poison?

“Everywhere you go will be somewhere you’ve never been. ”

—Natasha Trethewey, “Theories of Time and Space”

Trethewey will serve a second term as U.S. Poet Laureate.
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