Author: Justin

Poetry

Promenade

by JustinLeave a Comment on Promenade
Openly wanting something
like the opened up lungs of a singer.
I walk by the carriage of the river
and the vinegar wind assaults.
Is this an age of promise? I blush
to want. If I were walking with you,
arm-in-arm, along some
iron promenade, you could fill me up
with hope, you could push back
my stiffened hair with want. I’ll just lie down,
my ribs opened up in the old town square
and let the pigs root through my chest.
Poetry

The Indigo Field

by JustinLeave a Comment on The Indigo Field

Two bees hang
around a severed horse’s head
forgetting that they’re supposed to
pollinate
flowers instead of
the roughly opened gland
of a mammal.
Black pennies
with cow faces
down a black well.
You stood no chance
of finding the hope you longed for
I tell myself,
as the sea cannibalises.
It manages to forgive itself
every day, without visions
of the girl
making her way towards me
across the indigo field.

Love, Poetry

Franz Marc’s Blue Horses

by JustinLeave a Comment on Franz Marc’s Blue Horses

I step into the painting of the four blue horses.
I am not even surprised that I can do this.

One of the horses walks toward me.
His blue nose noses me lightly. I put my arm
over his blue mane, not holding on, just
commingling.
He allows me my pleasure.
Franz Marc died a young man, shrapnel in his brain.
I would rather die than explain to the blue horses
what war is.
They would either faint in horror, or simply
find it impossible to believe.
I do not know how to thank you, Franz Marc.
Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually.
Maybe the desire to make something beautiful
is the piece of God that is inside each of us.
Now all four horses have come closer,
are bending their faces toward me
as if they have secrets to tell.
I don’t expect them to speak, and they don’t.
If being so beautiful isn’t enough, what
could they possibly say?

– Mary Oliver

Poetry

What We Want

by JustinLeave a Comment on What We Want

What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names–
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don’t remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there
even in full sun.

– Linda Pastan

Love, Poetry

Love Poem

by JustinLeave a Comment on Love Poem

I want to write you
a love poem as headlong
as our creek
after thaw
when we stand
on its dangerous
banks and watch it carry
with it every twig
every dry leaf and branch
in its path
every scruple
when we see it
so swollen
with runoff
that even as we watch
we must grab
each other
and step back
we must grab each
other or
get our shoes
soaked we must
grab each other

– Linda Pastan

Poetry

Emily Dickinson

by JustinLeave a Comment on Emily Dickinson

We think of hidden in a white dress
among the folded linens and sachets
of well-kept cupboards, or just out of sight
sending jellies and notes with no address
to all the wondering Amherst neighbors.
Eccentric as New England weather
the stiff wind of her mind, stinging or gentle,
blew two half imagined lovers off.
Yet legend won’t explain the sheer sanity
of vision, the serious mischief
of language, the economy of pain.

– Linda Pastan