Category: Poetry

Words are all we have

Love, Poetry

This Word

by JustinLeave a Comment on This Word

I will come whenever she calls,
especially if she says
I love you,
especially that,
even if she swears
and promises nothing
but love.

The light from her
covers every
thing equally,
even my body throws no shadow
it too is consumed with light.

But this word – love
the shape of her lips
as she says it
well, this word grows and grows
inside me
it shakes itself, begins
to eat this paper
until we two shine in
its transparent throat and still
are riven, are glistening, hip and thigh,
her loosened hair
which knows no hesitation.

Love, Poetry

Come With Me

by JustinLeave a Comment on Come With Me

Come with me, I said, and no one knew
where, or how my body ached,
no carnations or barcaroles for me,
only a desire that you had opened.

I said it again: Come with me,
and no one saw the moon that bled in my mouth
or the blood that rose in the silence.

That is why, when I heard your voice say
I am coming, it was as if you had let loose
the grief, the love, the fury of a cork-trapped wine

that geysers flooding from deep in its vault:
in my mouth I felt the taste of fire again,
of blood and carnations, of salt and drops of rain.

Love, Poetry

Yes

by JustinLeave a Comment on Yes

It’s about the blood
banging in the body,
and the brain
lolling in its bed
like a happy baby.
At your touch, the nerve,
that volatile spook tree,
vibrates. The lungs
take up their work
with a giddy vigor.
Tremors in the joints
and tympani,
dust storms
in the canister of sugar.
The coil of ribs
heats up, begins
to glow. Come
here.

– Catherine Doty

Love, Poetry

Time Does Not Bring Relief

by JustinLeave a Comment on Time Does Not Bring Relief

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss her in the weeping of the rain;
I want her at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,—so with her memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell her foot or shone her face
I say, “There is no memory of her here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering her.

– Edna St. Vincent Millay (adapted)

Poetry

The Art of Being Empty

by JustinLeave a Comment on The Art of Being Empty

emptying out of my mothers belly was
my very first act of disappearance
learning to shrink for a family who
likes their daughters invisible
was the second
the art of being empty is simple
believe them when they say
you are nothing
repeat it to yourself
like a wish
i am nothing
i am nothing
i am nothing so often
the only reason you
know you’re still alive is
from the heaving
of your chest

– Rupi Kaur