A Natural Meeting Barrier

I really stared

I know it’s not polite to stare.

But the slits of her eyes were so narrow

I felt myself unnaturally squinting at her.

Because I wanted to know if she was looking at me—

Because she was an exotic Asian stereotype;

She had a math book in her little hands, moving her small circle lips,

Mouthing imaginary numbers to me.

Her hair was black black, that is describing the color of her hair;

(E.g. if her eyes were blue green; though, her eyes were also black)

She must have shampooed it one hundred times a day.

She moved her head sort of sideways when she smiled at me.

That made her hair move like those hippie-beads you find in loose doorways.

Her face was round and white but her cheeks were full with pink hue

I truly wanted

To ask if she used any make up.

Because I didn’t think she could look like a geisha naturally.

I decided she wasn’t wearing any, and if she was I didn’t care.

She wore so many clothes.

Not like those anime schoolgirls with tight tops and short skirts,

She had on an innocent pink dress like a tree peony flower,

That covered her skin on down to her ankles.

What flavorsome sugars were hidden from view?

She wore a black button coat opened up over her dress,

With bright purple slippers, pearls painted red;

They drew in my gaze to her gazelle neck.

I wanted to ease my hand around it to feel her pulse there.

I honestly needed

To say hello and goodbye,

But the barrier was our language.

So our smiles had to suffice.

If only I was in a band and could play her favorite techno music,

Was as smart as she was with math, in foreign languages,

To converse for a second, or ten decades with her.

by Aaron Barth-Martinson

A Parody on “A Psalm of Life”

Life is real, life is earnest,

And the shell is not its pen –

“Egg thou art, and egg remainest”

Was not spoken of the hen.

Art is long and Time is fleeting,

Be our bills then sharpened well,

And not like muffled drums be beating

On the inside of the shell.

In the world’s broad field of battle,

In the great barnyard of life,

Be not like those lazy cattle!

Be a rooster in the strife!

Lives of roosters all remind us,

We can make our lives sublime,

And when roasted, leave behind us,

Hen tracks on the sands of time.

Hen tracks that perhaps another

Chicken drooping in the rain,

Some forlorn and henpecked brother,

When he sees, shall crow again.

by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Ebony Life

A frightening stillness will mark that day

And the shadow of streetlights and fire-alarms will exhaust the light

All things, the quietest and the loudest, will be silent

The suckling brats will die

The tugboats the locomotives the wind will glide by in silence

We will hear the great voice which coming from far away will pass over the city

We will wait a long time for it

Then at the rich man's time of day

When the dust the stones the missing tears

form the sun's robe on the huge deserted squares

We shall finally hear the voice.

It will growl at doors for a long while

It will pass over the town tearing up flags and breaking windowpanes.

We will hear it

What silence before it, but still greater the silence

it will not disturb but will hold guilty will brand and denounce

Day of sorrows and joys

The day the day to come when the voice will pass over the city

A ghostly seagull told me she loved me as much as I loved her

That this great terrible silence was my love

That the wind carrying the voice was the great revolt of the world

And that the voice would look kindly on me.

by Robert Desnos

For the one who would not take his life in his hands

Athlete, virtuoso,

Training for happiness,

Bend arm and knee, and seek

The body's sharp distress,

For pain is pleasure's cost,

Denial is route

To speech before the millions

Or personal with the flute.

The ape and great Achilles,

Heavy with their fate,

Batter doors down, strike

Small children at the gate,

Driven by love to this,

As knock-kneed Hegel said,

To seek with a sword their peace,

That the child may be taken away

From the hurly-burly and fed.

Ladies and Gentlemen, said

The curious Socrates,

I have asked, What is this life

But a childermass,

As Abraham recognized,

A working with the knife

At animal, maid and stone

Until we have cut down

All but the soul alone:

Through hate we guard our love,

And its distinction's known.

by Delmore Schwartz

From “Later Life”

We lack, yet cannot fix upon the lack:

Not this, nor that; yet somewhat, certainly.

We see the things we do not yearn to see

Around us: and what see we glancing back?

Lost hopes that leave our hearts upon the rack,

Hopes that were never ours yet seem’d to be,

For which we steer’d on life’s salt stormy sea

Braving the sunstroke and the frozen pack.

If thus to look behind is all in vain,

And all in vain to look to left or right,

Why face we not our future once again,

Launching with hardier hearts across the main,

Straining dim eyes to catch the invisible sight,

And strong to bear ourselves in patient pain?

Star Sirius and the Pole Star dwell afar

Beyond the drawings each of other’s strength:

One blazes through the brief bright summer’s length

Lavishing life-heat from a flaming car;

While one unchangeable upon a throne

Broods o’er the frozen heart of earth alone,

Content to reign the bright particular star

Of some who wander or of some who groan.

They own no drawings each of other’s strength,

Nor vibrate in a visible sympathy,

Nor veer along their courses each toward

Yet are their orbits pitch’d in harmony

Of one dear heaven, across whose depth and length

Mayhap they talk together without speech.

by Christina Rossetti

Within the Circuit of This Plodding Life

Within the circuit of this plodding life

There enter moments of an azure hue,

Untarnished fair as is the violet

Or anemone, when the spring strews them

By some meandering rivulet, which make

The best philosophy untrue that aims

But to console man for his grievances

I have remembered when the winter came,

High in my chamber in the frosty nights,

When in the still light of the cheerful moon,

On every twig and rail and jutting spout,

The icy spears were adding to their length

Against the arrows of the coming sun,

How in the shimmering noon of summer past

Some unrecorded beam slanted across

The upland pastures where the Johnswort grew;

Or heard, amid the verdure of my mind,

The bee's long smothered hum, on the blue flag

Loitering amidst the mead; or busy rill,

Which now through all its course stands still and dumb

Its own memorial,—purling at its play

Along the slopes, and through the meadows next,

Until its youthful sound was hushed at last

In the staid current of the lowland stream;

Or seen the furrows shine but late upturned,

And where the fieldfare followed in the rear,

When all the fields around lay bound and hoar

Beneath a thick integument of snow.

So by God's cheap economy made rich

To go upon my winter's task again.

by Henry David Thoreau

To Life

O life with the sad seared face,

I weary of seeing thee,

And thy draggled cloak, and thy hobbling pace,

And thy too-forced pleasantry!

I know what thou would'st tell

Of Death, Time, Destiny -

I have known it long, and know, too, well

What it all means for me.

But canst thou not array

Thyself in rare disguise,

And feign like truth, for one mad day,

That Earth is Paradise?

I'll tune me to the mood,

And mumm with thee till eve;

And maybe what as interlude

I feign, I shall believe!

by Thomas Hardy