God Says Yes To Me

[harborshore]

This poem--I don't believe in god, but there's something about it that just makes me feel like dancing.


God Says Yes To Me
Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes



Do you have a poem or a quote or a song that makes you happy? Feel free to post it in the comments, lovelings. ♥

Comments

[novembersmith.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I am just poking through all the comments here, and I have to say THANK YOU for sharing these. They are just what I needed this morning.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

looking for a rainbow I can write down, oh, yes yes yes, that is perfect and exactly what it's like, both to write and read.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, oh my god, But the light will give us no peace. Shivery and so so wonderful, oh, thank you.

(This post is totally inspired by our quote-off from way-back-when, btw. I can't find the stupid comment notification, and I know it was my turn.)

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

That right there? Is my favorite play. ♥

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

That ending right there just made me tear up. ♥

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Does that make you my god? ♥, dearest.

[turlough]

That's lovely!

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

I LOVE YOU. THE END.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

I have loved that last one ever since I first read it. YES, she was a rebel (now can we stop discussing her possible unrequited love and hermitness and get back to the revolutionary nature of her poems?).

And the ending of that first one, oh man, oh man, it's the best companion/reply to "Do not go gently," because sometimes you DO, and that is the POINT.

Re: outing myself as a huge nerd...

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

YES. I am much more upset about being related to several terrible specimens of humanity than I ever would be about knowing my own evolutionary history, about how our particular species split off and reacted differently to enviromental conditions, stood upright and started speaking. And also, what you said about the beauty of chance, yes, yes a million times.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

*beams at you adoringly*

And that book, I cannot read it without crying my eyes out. Every time, every time. ♥

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Mistress, there are portents abroad of magic and might,
and things that are yet to be done. Open the door!

That right there is one of the best reasons for daring to walk into the unknown (whatever your own unknown may be) that I have ever read. I love all of these, actually, but that one in particular struck me.

Re: enormous poetry geek, hi

[emilyenrose.livejournal.com]

I bought a copy of her collection 'Maiden Speech' for a friend and was sorely tempted to keep it for myself. Being witty is ALL ABOUT using words well, and she does it brilliantly.

Re: enormous poetry geek, hi

[emilyenrose.livejournal.com]

I don't know Edith Sodergran! Is any of her work in English? Should I look her up?

P.S. If you want awesome poetry you should look at Pomegranate. I mean, I'm biased because I've been involved with the editorial team for the last two years, but I think it's pretty awesome.

Re: enormous poetry geek, hi

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

No--she wrote primarily in Swedish, but there are a couple of poems in Russian and a fair number in German as well. The existing English translations are, hmm, some are better than others, but I've done some. So, hey, have three of her shorter poems:


God is still awake

What ails me?
– the pages go to the publisher
– everything is done.
The moon rises – my longing curls up in bed. –
Twisting in bed, my longing
laughs infernally:
God is still awake –
blissful angels, sleepless around his throne!

(1918)


Distinction

Is god a villain?

Does he cast his bravest angel from the sky?
No – I say:
He gave me honey and wormwood.
I poured the bubbling broth over earth.
The mold held.
He gave me a black-red rose –
smallest in the world.
It sets me apart from others,
visible from afar on my white robe.

(September 1918)

Scherzo

Stars above, clear and true, my heart
on earth, the clear and true.
Magnificent starry night, we are one.
Don’t I sit here, shivering on a tightrope of constellations,
as if it could snap?

Time, is that you, sleepy abyss,
yawning, mocking me?
You endanger the dancer’s feet, aching,
her climber’s arms, slackening,
recklessly taut strands of pearls.

Time – perish.
Every star, twinkling in my face: I’m you!
Every star kisses my lips: stay with me!
They circle around me, closer, closer,
my body in stardust.
What do I do in there? Do I cry?
The evening dreams. The ocean king drinks,
makes a toast from the clam.
No one may move. But the dancer rises
on her midnight toes
kneels and reaches out
kissing the fair one.

That does indeed look awesome! It will no doubt provide me with excellent distractions at work this week, which, yay. And it also makes me want to go back and look at the original poetry I wrote the fall after I got back from college. Just because I failed at editing it then and the subsequent three times that I tried doesn't mean I'll fail at editing it now, right?

Man, I love poetry, but it is a bitch sometimes.

[extemporally.livejournal.com]

I just read it a couple of days ago, and am enamoured of Thomasina! What a lovely ending it was. ♥

[softlyforgotten.livejournal.com]

&LOUISE GLUCK;



I WAS NEVER HERE.

[softlyforgotten.livejournal.com]

Oh darling, this is a WONDERFUL post.

I Live My Life In Growing Orbits
Rainer Maria Rilke (trans. Robert Bly)

I live my life in growing orbits
which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years,
and I still don't know if I am a falcon, or a storm,
or a great song.

[softlyforgotten.livejournal.com]

OH and, 1200 year old Arabic poetry--

When I visit you, and the moon
Isn't around to show me the way,
Comets of longing set my heart
So much ablaze, the earth is lit
By the holocaust under my ribs.



-Abbas Ibn al-Ahnaf

OKAY LAST ONE.

[softlyforgotten.livejournal.com]

This is a little silly, but it makes me laugh so:

Lit (or: to the scientist I am not speaking to any more)
Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

Don’t say you didn’t see this coming, Jason.

Don’t say you didn’t realize this would be my reaction
and that you never intended for me to get all worked up,
because if that were true, then you are dumber
than Lenny from Mice and Men, blinder than Oedipus
and Tierus put together and can feel less
than a Dalton Trumbo character.

You put the Dick in Dickens and the Boo in kowski
and are more Coward-ly then Noël.

But you don’t understand any of these references,
Do you, Jason? Because you ‘don’t read.'
You are a geology major and you once told me
That, ‘Scientists don’t read popular literature,
Cristin, we have more important things to do’.

Well, fuck you.

Be glad you don’t read, Jason,
because maybe you won’t understand this
as I scream it to you on your front lawn,
on Christmas Day, brandishing three hypodermic needles,
a ginsu knife and a letter of permission
from Bret Easton Ellis.

Jason, you are more absurd than Ionesco.
You are more abstract than Joyce,
more inconsistent than Agatha Christie
and more Satanic than Rushdie’s verses.

I can’t believe I used to want to Sappho you, Jason.
I used to want to Pablo Neruda you,
to Anais Nin And Henry Miller you. I used to want
to be O for you, to blow for you in ways
that even Odysseus’ sails couldn’t handle.
But self-imposed illiteracy isn’t a turn-on.

You used to make fun of me being a writer,
saying ‘Scientists cure diseases,
what do writers do?’

But of course, you wouldn’t understand, Jason.
I mean, have you ever gotten an inner thirsting
for Zora Neale Hurston?
Or heard angels herald for you
to read F Scott Fitzgerald?
Have you ever had a beat attack for Jack Kerouac?
The only Morrison you know is Jim, and you think
you’re the noble one?

Go Plath yourself.

Your heart is so dark, that even Joseph Conrad
couldn’t see it, and it is so buried under bullshit
that even Poe’s cops couldn’t hear it.

Your mind is as empty as the libraries in Fahrenheit 451.
Your mind is as empty as Silas Marner’s coffers.
Your mind is as empty as Huckleberry Finn’s wallet.

And some people might say that this poem
is just a pretentious exercise
in seeing how many literary references
I can come up with.

And some people might complain that this poem is,
at its core, shallow, expressing the same emotion again,
and again, and again. (I mean, there are only so many times
you can articulate your contempt for Jason,
before people get bored.)

But you know what, Jason? Those people would be wrong.

Because this is not the poem I am writing to express
my hatred for you.

This poem is the poem I am writing because we aren’t speaking,
and it is making my heart hurt so bad, it is all I
can do just to get up off the floor sometimes.

And this is the poem I am writing instead of writing
the ‘I miss having breakfast with you’ poem, instead of
writing the ‘Let’s walk dogs in our old schoolyard
again’ poem.

Instead of the ‘How are you doing?’ poem, the ‘I miss you’ poem,
the ‘I wish I was making fun of how much you like Garth
Brooks while sitting in front of your parents’ house
in your jeep’ poem, instead of the ‘Holidays are coming around
and you know what that means: SUICIDE!’ poem.

I am writing this so that I can stop wanting to write
the ‘I could fall in love with you again so quickly
if only you would say one more word to me’ poem.

But I am tired of loving you, Jason
cause you don’t love me right.

And if some pretentious-ass poem can stop me
From thinking about the way your laugh sounds,
about the way your skin feels in the rain,
about how I would rather be miserable with you,
then happy with anyone else in the world.

If some pretentious-ass poem can do all that?
Then I am gone with the wind, I am on the road,
I have flown over the fucking cuckoo’s nest,
I am gone, I am gone, I am gone.

I am.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Truth be told, I was completely blown away by the response. But I did know you would like it, yes. ♥

and I still don't know if I am a falcon, or a storm,
or a great song. Oh, that ending, I love it ridiculously.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

I will now proceed to reply to every one of these, because I love them all--and this is lovely, calm and clear and fiery, all at the same time.

Re: OKAY LAST ONE.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

That, oh man, that made me laugh so hard. "Go Plath yourself." Yesssssssss.

[kyasuriin.livejournal.com]

um, hi! You don't know me but I found this link through delicious and then saw that all my lovely bandom friends were jumping on board so I will too! (& I loved the poem above and many scattered between)
so, from a collection of poems on first love junior high style:

First Touch

Halfway through the movie
at the most boring part
you slowly reach up
and sort of backwards
to rub my left shoulder
and keep on rubbing it
until the movie screen
becomes a bright blur.

"Shoulder," I think
all the way home
feeling it tingle
feeling it glow:
"I have a shoulder."

-Ralph Fletcher

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Oh! That is lovely! I especially love the repetition of "feeling," I think, because it nails the intensity. ♥

PS. If there was ever a good random entry to jump in on, this one is it, right?