Karen's favorite poetry

"we have entered
the realm of the absurd. you are taking the dog.
we’ll call this a breakup poem. we’ll call this the
quiet disintegration of a longer ride.
what we once called home.
the house gets emptier and emptier.
in the end you’re not here."

Arianne Zwartjes, excerpt from we don’t speak or speak only of butter & eggs

(via grammatolatry)

"

Looking through a complex eye
poisoned by countless vials of nitroglycerin
the world sings a familiar tune of
an ineradicable human urge for lethal conflict.

A world view
of culturally intolerant tyrants and a place
where Robin Hood does not exist, instead
his former self sits wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity.
Society now aids the pauper,
who is but a superficial vagabond sitting intrigued by
hopeless people from distant lands.

As the innocent of Beirut lie murdered
the reaper tastes regret,
while bank accounts paint self portraits
instilled by ephemeral yet righteous morality.
Dangerously speeding through the lanes of life
to make it home just before it rains;
the world all encompassing
is never the concern.

Halos hover above diet pills dressed in simple linens
for everything is an easy fix;
lies, hatred, ignorance, and blatant evil,
all can be fixed by ignoring the even lies (the even lines that lie above).

"

Dissonant Livelihood by John Hosack

"Do not make things too easy.
There are rocks and abysses in the mind
As well as meadows.
There are things knotty and hard: intractable.
Do not talk to me of love and understanding.
I am sick of blandishments.
I want the rock to be met by a rock.
If I am vile, and behave hideously,
Do not tell me it was just a misunderstanding."

Do Not Make Things Too Easy by Martha Baird

"When a friend dies
the salmon run no fatter.
The wheat harvest will fill no more bellies.
Nothing is won by endurance
but endurance.
A hunger sucks at the mind
for gone color after the last bronze
chrysanthemum is withered by frost.
A hunger drains the day,
a homely sore gap
after a tooth is pulled,
a red giant gone nova,
an empty place in the sky
sliding down the arch
after Orion in the night as wide
as a sleepless staring eye.
When pain and fatigue wrestle
fatigue wins. The eye shuts.
The pain rises again at dawn.
At first you can stare at it.
Then it blinds you."

When a Friend Dies by Marge Piercy

"

I am an inconvenient woman.
I’d be more useful as a pencil sharpener or a cash register.
I do not love you the way I love Mother Jones or the surf
Coming in
Or my pussycats or a good piece of steak.
I love the sun prickly on the black stubble of your cheek.
I love you wandering floppy making scarecrows of despair.
I love you when you are discussing changes in the class structure
And it jams my ears and burns in the tips of my fingers.

I am an inconvenient woman.
You might trade me in on a sheepdog or a llama.
You might trade me in for a yak.
They are faithful and demand only straw.
They make good overcoats.
They never call you up on the telephone.

I love you with my arms and my legs
And my brains and my cunt and my unseemly history.
I want to tell you about when I was ten and it thundered.
I want you to kiss the crosshatched remains of my burn.
I want to read you poems about drowning myself
Laid like eggs without shells at fifteen under Shelly’s wings.
I want you to read my old loverletters.

I want you to want me
As directly and simply and variously
As a cup of hot coffee.
I want to, to have to, to miss what can’t have room to happen.
I carry my love for you
Around with me like teeth
And I am starving.

"

The Nuisance by Marge Piercy

"

There is no difference between being raped
and being pushed down a flight of cement steps
except that the wounds also bleed inside.

There is no difference between being raped
and being run over by a truck
except that afterward men ask if you enjoyed it.

There is no difference between being raped
and being bit on the ankle by a rattlesnake
except that people ask if your skirt was short
and why you were out alone anyhow.

There is no difference between being raped
and going head first through a windshield
except that afterward you are afraid
not of cars
but half the human race.

The rapist is your boyfriend’s brother.
He sits beside you in the movies eating popcorn.
Rape fattens on the fantasies of the normal male
like a maggot in garbage.

Fear of rape is a cold wind blowing
all of the time on a woman’s hunched back.
Never to stroll alone on a sand road through pine woods,
never to climb a trail across a bald
without that aluminum in the mouth
when I see a man climbing toward me.

Never to open the door to a knock
without that razor just grazing the throat.
The fear of the dark side of hedges,
the back seat of the car, the empty house
rattling keys like a snake’s warning.
The fear of the smiling man
in whose pocket is a knife.
The fear of the serious man
in whose fist is locked hatred.

All it takes to cast a rapist to be able to see your body
as jackhammer, as blowtorch, as adding-machine-gun.
All it takes is hating that body
your own, your self, your muscle softens to flab.

All it takes is to push what you hate,
what you fear onto the soft alien flesh.
To bucket out invincible as a tank
armored with treads without senses
to possess and punish in one act,
to rip up pleasure, to murder those who dare
live in the left flesh open to love.

"

Rape Poem by Marge Piercy