Poems that I love

You who live safe  In your warm houses,  You who find on returning in the evening,  Hot food and friendly faces:  Consider if this is a man  Who works in the mud  Who does not know peace  Who fights for a scrap of bread  Who dies because of a yes or a no.  Consider if this is a woman,  Without hair and without name  With no more strength to remember,  Her eyes empty and her womb cold  Like a frog in winter.  Meditate that this came about:  I commend these words to you.  Carve them in your hearts  At home, in the street,  Going to bed, rising;  Repeat them to your children,  Or may your house fall apart,  May illness impede you,  May your children turn their faces from you.  — Primo Levi  Translated by Stuart Woolf

This world is no match for your Love Being away from you Is death aiming to take my soul away My heart, so precious I won’t trade for a hundred thousand souls Your one smile, takes it for free Hafiz, it may be that you’ve just poured a toast that will wash love clean of all its pictures. ~ Hafiz

by William Butler Yeats When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars. (One of the last poems that W.B. Yeats wrote. Born 13 June 1865 –  Died 28 January 1939)

BY LOUISE GLÜCK Spiked sun. The Hudson’s Whittled down by ice. I hear the bone dice Of blown gravel clicking. Bone- pale, the recent snow Fastens like fur to the river. Standstill. We were leaving to deliver Christmas presents when the tire blew Last year. Above the dead valves pines pared Down by a storm stood, limbs bared . . . I want you. "Early December in Croton-on-Hudson" from The First Four Books of Poems by Louise Gluck. Copyright © 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1985, 1995 by Louise Glück. Source: The First Four Books of Poems (The Ecco Press, 1995)

  Ken’s verse Issan wove a tale about a secret recipe  For chocolate chip cookies. He would share it if you helped in the kitchen. Of course I helped. We all helped. It was like a promise. Everyone did.  How could you say no to Issan? After we’d put on our aprons After all the ingredients had been found Dry stuff from the pantry Butter from the refrigerator Lots of it Sugar from the top shelf Neat brown bags with chocolate  And chocolate chips Carried in from the back seat of the car The oven was preheating. He was a stickler about the temperature The cookie sheets laid with parchment paper. We each had our bowl and task assigned None was burdensome Though some were more fun than others. When the time came we each took  What we had and Issan directed us Towards a big mixing bowl And we folded them together Not rushed or with a lot of jerky motion Big globs of butter stood out  From bits of Hershey Putting them on the sheet with the correct spacing Because h...

if you’re going to try, go all the way. otherwise, don’t even start. if you’re going to try, go all the way. this could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe your mind. go all the way. it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days. it could mean freezing on a park bench. it could mean jail, it could mean derision, mockery, isolation. isolation is the gift, all the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. and you’ll do it despite rejection and the worst odds and it will be better than anything else you can imagine. if you’re going to try, go all the way. there is no other feeling like that. you will be alone with the gods and the nights will flame with fire. do it, do it, do it. do it. all the way all the way. you will ride life straight to perfect laughter, its the only good fight there is. – Charles Bukowski

Sometimes I wish Who I was Was not What I did Did never And was also not But that’s not right To make it disappear I shift the story Slightly skewed The end is wrong It doesn’t fit It cannot ever end at all I craft my tale For a dark winter’s night When nothing’s right That‘s also wrong She says she wishes She was 18 I say 60 We only dream She says  Slight is slight I say  Dark is dark And night is night Neither’s right Who we were Is not who we are Right now Ken Ireland