twenty ways to see the world and twenty ways to start a fight

[two-grey-rooms.livejournal.com]

"To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention--on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God--that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying. The primary task of the schoolteacher is to teach children, in a secular context, the technique of prayer."
--W.H. Auden


"To Myself"
You are riding the bus again
burrowing into the blackness of Interstate 80,
the sole passenger

with an overhead light on.
And I am with you.
I'm the interminable fields you can't see,

the little lights off in the distance
(in one of those rooms we are
living) and I am the rain

and the others all
around you, and the loneliness you love,
and the universe that loves you specifically, maybe,

and the catastrophic dawn,
the nicotine crawling on your skin--
and when you begin

to cough I won't cover my face,
and if you vomit this time I will hold you:
everything's going to be fine

I will whisper.
It won't always be like this.
I am going to buy you a sandwich.
--Franz Wright


"Field of Vision"
And if the bee, half-drunk
on the nectar of the columbine,
could think of the dying queen, the buzz
of chaos in the hive, the agitation
of the workers in their cells, the veiled
figure come again to rob the combs--
then would the summer fields
grow still, the hum of propagation
cease, the flowers spread
bright petals to no avail--as if
a plug were drawn from a socket
in the sun, the light that flowed into
the growing field would fail;
for how should the bee make honey then,
afraid to look, afraid to look away?
--Eleanor Rand Wilner


"The Apple Was a Northern Invention"
When she ate the pomegranate,
it was as if every seed
with its wet red shining coat
of sweet flesh clinging to the dark core
was one of nature's eyes. Afterward,
it was nature that was blind,
and she who was wild
with vision, condemned
to see what was before her, and behind.
--Eleanor Rand Wilner


"Lies I've Told My 3-Year-Old Recently"
Trees talk to each other at night.
All fish are named either Lorna or Jack.
Before your eyeballs fall out from watching too much TV, they get very loose.
Tiny bears live in drain pipes.
If you are very very quiet you can hear the clouds rub against the sky.
The moon and the sun had a fight a long time ago.
Everyone knows at least one secret language.
When nobody is looking, I can fly.
We are all held together by invisible threads.
Books get lonely too.
Sadness can be eaten.
I will always be there.
--Raul Gutierrez


"Sliver"
In the dark, she shivers in his arms,
hurt, wild--like that great bird
that crashed through the living room window
last Christmas--droppings, slivers
the whole way into the kitchen.
He'd cradled it wearing gardening gloves,
it only shuddered. Now, nothing he says
quiets her, stops her asking:
am i pretty? am i smart? am i all
you dreamed of? as though she doesn’t know,
as though he is her mirror,
she is pounding, pounding the glass.
--Sheila Cowing


you being in love
will tell who softly asks in love,

am i separated from your body smile brain hands merely
to become the jumping puppets of a dream? oh i mean:
entirely having in my careful how
careful arms created this at length
inexcusable, this inexplicable pleasure-you go from several
persons: believe me that strangers arrive
when i have kissed you into a memory
slowly, oh seriously
-that since and if you disappear

solemnly
myselves
ask "life, the question how do i drink dream smile

and how do i prefer this face to another and
why do i weep eat sleep-what does the whole intend"
they wonder. oh and they cry "to be, being, that i am alive
this absurd fraction in its lowest terms
with everything cancelled
but shadows
-what does it all come down to? love? Love
if you like and i like,for the reason that i
hate people and lean out of this window is love,love
and the reason that i laugh and breathe is oh love and the reason
that i do not fall into this street is love."
--e.e. cummings