greenstorm | Night For Poetry

Nothing is quite right. But, altogether, maybe we begin to approach the gates of the heart.

But Listen, I Am Warning You

But listen, I am warning you
I'm living for the very last time.
Not as a swallow, nor a maple,
Not as a reed, nor as a star,
Not as spring water,
Nor as the toll of bells…
Will I return to trouble men
Nor will I vex their dreams again
With my insatiable moans.
Anna Akhmatova

Youth

Through all of youth I was looking for you
without knowing what I was looking for

or what to call you I think I did not
even know I was looking how would I

have known you when I saw you as I did
time after time when you appeared to me

as you did naked offering yourself
entirely at that moment and you let

me breathe you touch you taste you knowing
no more than I did and only when I

began to think of losing you did I
recognize you when you were already

part memory part distance remaining
mine in the ways that I learn to miss you

from what we cannot hold the stars are made.
W. S. Merwin

Another Plot Cliché

My dear, you are the high-speed car chase, and I,
I am the sheet of glass being carefully carried
across the street by two employees of Acme Moving
who have not parked on the right side
because the plot demands that they make
the perilous journey across traffic,
and so they are cursing as rehearsed
as they angle me into the street, acting as if
they intend to get me to the department store, as if
I will ever take my place as the display window, ever clear
the way for a special exhibit at Christmas, or be Windexed
once a day, or even late at night, be pressed against
by a couple who can’t make it back to his place,
and so they angle me into the street, a bright lure,
a provocative claim, their teaser, and indeed
you can’t resist my arguments, fatally flawed
though they are, so you come careening to but and butt
and rebut, you come careening, you being
both cars, both chaser and chased, both good and bad, both
done up with bullets that haven’t yet done you in.
I know I’m done for: there’s only one street
on this set and you’ve got a stubborn streak a mile long.
I can smell the smoke already.
No matter, I’d rather shatter
than be looked through all day. So come careening; I know
you’ve other clichés to hammer home: women with groceries
to send spilling, canals to leap as the bridge is rising.
And me? I’m so through. I’ve got a thousand places to be.
Rebecca Hoogs

An Assignment for Student Playwrights

I told them to go listen to people talking,
To write exactly how some people really
Talked to each other, and one young man
Came to the next workshop, looking bewildered,
Holding his notes by thumbtip and fingertip
To avoid contamination. He said, "This
Is how they talked. They weren't actually
Having a conversation, just interrupting
Each other and saying whatever it was
They wanted to keep on saying. They had to decide
Today, here and now, like whether to go on
With this, this whatever-it-was they couldn't
Think of a name for. They kept looking
This way and that way, even at me (I wasn't
Anybody, just some student scribbling),
But never at each other. You could tell
They felt bad. They were making up their minds
About something important enough to change
Their lives maybe forever. But what was coming
Out of their mouths wouldn't have passed even
Junior high school English. They were both trying
To say what hurt, what was disappointing, what wasn't
Even common courtesy, let alone love.
If they'd been actors, good ones, they'd have been making
Contact. They'd have been improvising something
More interesting than shoving their chairs back
And standing up and trying to split the bill
But dividing it wrong, dropping it, picking it up,
And arguing all the way out. Now what the hell
Am I supposed to make out of this crap?"
David Wagoner