Poem for the Day: September 8th, 2021

Promise by Franz Wright

Long nights, short years. Forgiving 
silence 


When morning comes, and pain—


no one is a stranger, this whole world is your home.

Poem for the Day: September 7th, 2021

Instructions on Not Giving Up by Ada Limón

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out 
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s 
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving 
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate 
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of 
     white 
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave 
the pavement strewn with the confetti of 
     aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin 
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return 
to the strange idea of continuous living despite 
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

Bonus Graphic

© 2020 Fred Slusher. All rights reserved.

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Poem for the Day: September 6th, 2021

The Same Word by Jacques J. Rancourt

Last night I watched the drag queen’s hip-pad
drift down her leg 
                               and distort the full moon 
of her figure. By dawn you won’t recall 
how I hummed her song to you while you were 
     sleeping.
We call this a marriage, but it isn’t 
                                                           called that
     outside 
this room. It isn’t called a thing. I’ve searched for 
     a word 
that means what I mean it to - how we are a part
of the world as much as we are apart from it -

and it does not exist. Still, we make of this thing
an imitation, an effigy. Still, we make it each day 
because we exist, weary phantom, as both the 
     flesh 
and the illusion,
                           because we live together 
even if we live as a drag queen does, drawing 
applause from a world that holds her at bay.

Jacques J. Rancourt’s Books

In the Time of PrEP by Jacques J. Rancourt

Novena by Jacques J. Rancourt

Broken Spectre: Poems (due to be released on September 14th, 2021) by Jacques J. Rancourt

Poem for the Day: September 5th, 2021

Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night, 
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night. 

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright 
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green
     bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night. 

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding 
     sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 

And you, my father, there on the sad height, 
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I 
     pray. 
Do not go gentle into that good night. 
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

It’s almost cliché to love Dylan Thomas at this point and what a shame that is. Do not go gentle into that good night is so popular because it is so profound, opening itself up to multiple interpretations. Thomas wrote it as his father was ill and dying, the poem’s urgency borne of both his current and impending grief.

If dreams are deferred and passions put aside for more pressing matters, the regret found at the end of a life not fully lived can drive a soul to despair and a mind to madness. You want to beg for more time and the plea falls on deaf ears.

There’s also a fair amount of regret expressed: Though wise men at their end know dark is right, / Because their words had forked no lightning they / Do not go gentle into that good night. Oxford Languages gives the definition of forked lightning as “lightning that is visible in the form of a branching line across the sky.” People who are facing death are forced to reckon with the way they’ve spent their time on earth, and part of this is measuring the impact of one’s words and deeds. If dreams are deferred and passions put aside for more pressing matters, the regret found at the end of a life not fully lived can drive a soul to despair and a mind to madness. You want to beg for more time and the plea falls on deaf ears.

**Bonus: Sir Anthony Hopkins reads Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas**

What did you think about today’s poem? Do any lines strike you in particular? Let me know in the comments.

Poem for the Day: September 4th, 2021

Holy Sonnets: I am a little world made cunningly by John Donne

I am a little world made cunningly 
Of elements and an angelic sprite 
But black sin hath betray’d to endless night 
My world’s both parts, and on both parts must die. 
You which beyond that heaven which was most high 
Have found new spheres, and of new lands can write, 
Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might 
Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,
Or wash it, if it must be drown’d no more. 
But oh it must be burnt; alas the fire 
Of lust and envy have burnt it heretofore,
And made it fouler; let their flames retire,
And burn me O Lord, with a fiery zeal 
Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal.

John Donne (1572-1631), in addition to being arguably England’s chief metaphysical poet, also served as a cleric in the Anglican Church. He was made Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1621, where he spent the last decade of his life preaching and writing.

Poem for the Day: September 3rd, 2021

The Symbolic Life by Hayan Charara

They kept showing up, for days,
dead on the windowsill, 
and for days I did nothing about the ladybugs 
except to ask if their entering the house 
unnoticed and dying before I saw them 
was symbolic. 
Thinking was so easy. 
They symbolized birth and death,
change and rebirth. 
It was also possible the tiny beetles 
embodies an inborn need 
to show themselves,
to turn up in every and any place,
even as the dried out remains of the once-lively. 
Or they stood for the burden of being one thing 
relieved by becoming another,
which all the world’s children suffer. 

This went on and on, and could’ve gone on 
forever, so I finally opened the window 
and blew them into the wide open 
because everything and everyone should get a 
     chance 
to be mourned, and they got theirs, 
but first they had to die, which is life, 
not symbolism.

Poem for the Day: September 2nd, 2021

*Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart: Poems* by Alice Walker

——

Nothing will penetrate your sorrow. 
Or your loneliness. 
This I know. 
And yet 
here I am singing 
a song about doors 
at the bottom of dark wells 
stuffed already 
with rats and corpses.

Here I am telling you 
that in reality 
and as improbable 
as it may seem: 
There is no (doorless) 
bottom 
to this life.

Poem for the Day: September 1st, 2021

Vespers by Timothy Liu

So many want to be blessed. 
I only want to kneel in a quiet room. 
To love what we have or not exist 
at all. Nothing to help me sleep. 
Only a scrap of paper slipped 
into my hand: Your body an ocean, 
a song without end. Votive candles 
flickering in the dark that made us 
larger than life: hip-thrust, 
back-arch, mouth-grip, you on top 
till we collapsed in the coiled 
springs that came to rest. A chair 
where you once sat. A bowl of fruit 
neither one of us would touch.

Bonus Graphic

The most resonant part of Vespers for me is the line, “Only a scrap of paper slipped / into my hand: Your body an ocean, a song without end.” So enthralled was I by that particular imagery that I made this little ditty, which I sincerely hope you’ll enjoy (Note: The image is a royalty-free stock image—I have simply added the words to the note in the center):

Poem for the Day: August 31st, 2021

Why Bother? by Sean Thomas Dougherty

Because right now, there is                      someone 

out there with 

a wound                                       in the exact shape 

                                                        of your words.

Poem for the Day: August 30th, 2021

*Reconnaissance: Poems* by Carl Phillips

The Strong By Their Stillness by Carl Phillips

Most mornings here, mist is the first thing to go —first
the mist, then the fog, though hardly anyone seems to 
     know
the difference, or even care, the way for some a dead buck 
is a dead buck: the road, the body, a little light, the usual 
dark, light’s 
          unshakeable escort...You can love a man
more than he’ll ever love back or be able to, you can 
     confuse
your understanding of that 
                                            with a thing like acceptance or,
worse, all you’ve ever deserved. I’ve driven hard into 
the gorgeousness of spring before; it fell hard behind me:
the turning away, I mean, the finding of clothes,
the maneuvering 
                                awkwardly back into them...why not drive
forever? Respect or shame, it’s pretty much your 
own choice, is how it once got explained to me. I’ve already
said—I’m not sorry. Magnolia. Wild pear. So what if one
wish begets a next one, 
                                   only to be conquered by it, if the blooms
break open nevertheless like hope?

Bonus Graphic

So, some of you probably remember those batches of graphics I dropped on here a few weeks ago. Most of the ones I made at the time were lyrics from Taylor Swift’s folklore, but I also made some using snippets from my favorite poems, and it just so happens that I found one containing lines from today’s poem. I hope you like it. Disclaimer: I am not nor do I claim to be a professional graphic designer.