I hope I don’t die
before I clean out
the basement
There’s bound to be
embarrassments down there
for my children
Obviously nothing would
bother me once
I was dead
That said I don’t know
why I’d care about
being found out
human by my kids
We all know we are
capable of Shakespearean
faults and vain lusts
blindly murderous impulses
petty jealousies and fooleries
Still it’s difficult to let go
of fearful parental roles
patterned after God
that one you thank
out of reflex knowing
you’ll be gone
when they discover
you were just another
love-clumsy bag of air
Reprinted from In the Weeds (Drumlummon Institute, 2021). Copyright © 2021 by Mark Gibbons. Used with permission of the author. All rights reserved.
there is always one more death to paint us an ochre without axle aiming us like a sunflower down a path a harp once followed to still the scythe before losing love against itself
Copyright © 2018 by J. Michael Martinez. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 26, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
There is no Life or Death,
Only activity
And in the absolute
Is no declivity.
There is no Love or Lust
Only propensity
Who would possess
Is a nonentity.
There is no First or Last
Only equality
And who would rule
Joins the majority.
There is no Space or Time
Only intensity,
And tame things
Have no immensity.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on December 2, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.
My love has hair
Like midnight,
But midnight fades to dawn.
My love has eyes
Like starlight,
But starlight fades in morn.
My love has a voice
Like dew-fall,
But dew-fall dies at a breath.
My love has love
Like life’s all,
But life’s all fades in death.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on June 18, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
This is not love: we cannot call it love.
Love would make me aware of infinite things,
Drive me down the spirit’s vast abyss
And through the narrow fastnesses of pain.
This is not love. Yet it holds loveliness
Beyond mere pleasure. Peace and passion both
Grow from the kiss with which I paint drab hours.
It is not love: love is for the gods
And our more godlike moments. Yet when stars
Withhold their splendor, why should we not light
Candles to warm with kindly mortal flames
The all-enfolding, cold, immortal night?
From On a Grey Thread (Will Ransom, 1923) by Elsa Gidlow. This poem is in the public domain.
Love gives all its reasons
as if they were terms for peace.
Love is this but not that
that but not this.
Love as it always was.
But there is no peace in the mountain
cleft where the fruit bats scatter
from the light.
There is no peace in the hollow when
the heat snuffs night’s blue candle.
The outline of brown leaves on
the beach is the wind’s body.
A crow is squawking at the sun
as if the screech itself is dawn.
Let me hear every perfect note.
How I loved that jasper morning.
Copyright © 2015 by Jonathan Wells. Used with permission of the author.