Note To Selves

Send “SISTERS OF MERCY” Ringtones to Cell

(from the album ‘SONGS OF LEONARD COHEN’)

Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.
They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can’t go on.
And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song.
Oh I hope you run into them, you who’ve been travelling so long.

Yes you who must leave everything that you cannot control.
It begins with your family, but soon it comes around to your soul.
Well I’ve been where you’re hanging, I think I can see how you’re pinned:
When you’re not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you’ve sinned.

Well they lay down beside me, I made my confession to them.
They touched both my eyes and I touched the dew on their hem.
If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn
they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.

When I left they were sleeping, I hope you run into them soon.
Don’t turn on the lights, you can read their address by the moon.
And you won’t make me jealous if I hear that they sweetened your night:
We weren’t lovers like that and besides it would still be all right,
We weren’t lovers like that and besides it would still be all right.

by Ted Kooser

In only a few months
there begin to be fissures
in what we remember,
and within a year or two,
the facts break apart
one from another
and slowly begin to shift
and turn, grinding,
pushing up over eachother
until their shapes
have been changed
and the past has become
a new world.
And after many years,
even a love affair,
one lush green island
all to itself,
perfectly detailed
with even a candle
softly lighting a smile,
may slide under the waves
like Atlantis,
scarcely rippling the heart.

This Morning
by Charles Simic

Enter without knocking, hard-working ant.
I’m just sitting here mulling over
What to do this dark, overcast day?
It was a night of the radio turned down low,
Fitful sleep, vague, troubling dreams.
I woke up lovesick and confused.
I thought I heard Estella in the garden singing
And some bird answering her,
But it was the rain. Dark tree tops swaying
And whispering. “Come to me my desire,”
I said. And she came to me by and by,
Her breath smelling of mint, her tongue
Wetting my cheek, and then she vanished.
Slowly day came, a gray streak of daylight
To bathe my hands and face in.
Hours passed, and then you crawled
Under the door, and stopped before me.
You visit the same tailors the mourners do,
Mr. Ant. I like the silence between us,
The quiet–that holy state even the rain
Knows about. Listen to her begin to fall,
As if with eyes closed,
Muting each drop in her wild-beating heart.

My wife’s burnt curls do not end

Her inner child is a fence that spins

In paisley and spirals that blend

The whole thing bends

At its constant beginnings and ends
…………………………………………….

In my wife’s life there have been three young men
She brought them home, propt them up
They fell on their knees
& she forgave their sins

……………………………………………….

My wife’s heart is a tall bronze wall
It blocks and traps
It protects me
When I charge and fall

—————–

My wife never shops: She hates the mall
Her boy socks never match
She don’t care at all

===========

This little wife of mine
Is a girl with golden brown eyes, balls
That make all the boys be dogs
THat bite, they call all night
It drives me out of my ever loving sight

)(

She hates to love me
When I lie
When I tell her she’s mine
She has sympathy for insane devils
The bitch is kind

++++++++++++++++++++++

God is heaven on earth, it’s here in the dirt,
Hell is troughs or vallies betwixt waves
On which my imperfect angel surfs

::::::::::::::::::

Our sour love isn’t real
Even though I adore her
It’s a retarded fantasy
But I won;t and cannot ignore her

When I holler at her, at the bruise, my poor wife,
I bury our heart

The bats in my brain flit from the light to the dark
When the cave is aflame
We drift away like a Noah-less ark
In the night on the ocean which seethes with real sharks

But there is no perfect pain
THere is no brides white frock
Without a stain

There are meadows surrounded by lanes

There are wives alive in the rain

At times baby jesus takes them away

Some blue birds die on the ground in May

Every color turns gray

The light of the word is fake

It never awakened the clay

The world is only a day

Hypergraphia is only something to say

& every love, not the girl
is a jail

I had my sweet tooth removed

Now the roots ache for you

If I washed out my mouth
If they cut my tongue out

I’d still talk at you,
Still lick you up and down

I’d have flyers printed
I’d tell the whole stupid town

That there is nothing but our love,
The sunset, and drugs
_________

I live at the end of the dead end street of our love
At sunset, on drugs

I sip the bitter coffee with cream of our love
I sit chain smoking the camel lights of our love
Every early morning of the drugged dusk of our love

Then I wander the small town of our love
On my two tired feet of our love
I complete the meaningless errands of our love
I count the flowers on the weeds climbing through the cracks in the concrete of our love

For our love paves the way
The cul de sacks that I search all day
For a place to wait

Til you close the pizza shop of our love
& drive the white chrysler of our love home
Drunk on the aristocrat vodka of our love
Puffing a crooked schwagg joint of our love

And then, at home in our love,
I lather your long bent body in the steamy shower of our love
And later we devour your room mate’s ramen noodle’s of our love
Into which I once crumbled pork rinds and it sounded llike rice crispies
_____________

At eventide the sky looked like it was high on drugs
That time we paddled out way too far in our love
As the light of the dying sun of our love rose over the china or australia of our love
And I climbed all the wide oak trees of our love
Lost in the north delta of our wild and tangled love
______
I fried the thanksgiving turkey of our love in the gallons of vegetable oil of our love
____________
Everything in orbit above the long blank nights of our love
In which we direct the electric surge of our love
Into the center of the unified love of our love
Will melt in the core of the whole wide world of our love
To be reborn vocanic vents on the oceanfloor of our love
And in the religions dreamt by the ancestors of our love
Since our love is the heaven that man’s religions dream of
_____
The nausea at the repitition of our love
Is only a shadow
Visible only to the enemies of our love

Who burn to death in the burning black hell of our love
As they suck the fat white ass of our love

Wrapped in half maps and gone,
Raider of the false heart

Follow fog into the cauldron of morning

Welcome to the long story
Welcome to the long story

_________

& now, for now, let;s just say
There is this Whole thing
Made of moving circles, circles

______

Don’t blame the day
It’s never the same
Count the rays

Oh so more than we
We can say
When we can see

With our circles
In our circles
and circles
and circles

Love gets queezy,
life gets stale
The sun don’t smile when you’re really pale

Poetry is cheezy,
rhyme schemes fail
I never receive any mother fucking email

………

Knowledge is numbing,
the scrolls are tattering
Smart girls are pretty but impervious to flattery

(And they know that there’s no such word as tattering)
and they know that even if so it wouldn’t rhyme with flattery)

Dry porridge is crumby,
my teeth are chattering
If I don’t pay my gas bill my heart’ll stop pitter-pattering

1

There’s dirt on my sleeve
And under my cup

I’ll be bricks that leave
If I don’t climb up
those 17 stairs

Can you change the burnt-out light?

Turn that bulb with all your might?

in the middle of every night
I’m out of my mind
When you’re out of my sight

Did I say so?
Are you in line?

How would I know?
You turn on a dime,

But you don’t know where to go

In the middle of every night

I’m out of my mind
When you’re out of my sight

down the street, around the corner

Through your screen door,
In your chest of droors

There
Under your underwear

(I read your diary)

The Old Fools Phillip Larkin