The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don’t mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don’t sing
all the time
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn’t half so bad
if it isn’t you
Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen
and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to
Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs of having
inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally
‘living it up’
Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
mortician
From A Coney Island of the Mind, copyright © 1955 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Whenever I spend the day crying,
my friends tell me I look high. Good grief,
they finally understand me.
Even when the arena is empty, I thank god
for the shots I miss. If you ever catch me
only thanking god for the shots I make,
remind me I’m not thanking god. Remind me
all my prayers were answered
the moment I started praying
for what I already have.
Jenny says when people ask if she’s out of the woods,
she tells them she’ll never be out of the woods,
says there is something lovely about the woods.
I know how to build a survival shelter
from fallen tree branches, packed mud,
and pulled moss. I could survive forever
on death alone. Wasn’t it death that taught me
to stop measuring my lifespan by length,
but by width? Do you know how many beautiful things
can be seen in a single second? How you can blow up
a second like a balloon and fit infinity inside of it?
I’m infinite, I know, but I still have a measly wrinkle
collection compared to my end goal. I would love
to be a before picture, I think, as I look in the mirror
and mistake my head for the moon. My dark
thoughts are almost always 238,856 miles away
from me believing them. I love this life,
I whisper into my doctor’s stethoscope
so she can hear my heart. My heart, an heirloom
I didn’t inherit until I thought I could die.
Why did I go so long believing I owed the world
my disappointment? Why did I want to take
the world by storm when I could have taken it
by sunshine, by rosewater, by the cactus flowers
on the side of the road where I broke down?
I’m not about to waste more time
spinning stories about how much time
I’m owed, but there is a man
who is usually here, who isn’t today.
I don’t know if he’s still alive. I just know
his wife was made of so much hope
she looked like a firework above his chair.
Will the afterlife be harder if I remember
the people I love, or forget them?
Either way, please let me remember.
Copyright © 2023 by Andrea Gibson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 30, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.
If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay;
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let’s so persever,
That when we live no more we may live ever.
This poem is in the public domain.