Poems By Others

teach us there can be movement 
in stillness. in every broken syllable 
of traffic a syllabus that says
while you are suffering we are all
going to be unwell—let us 
instead distill business as usual 
down to the speed of a tree eating 
light. as usual, business is built 
from freight trains and warships
even when ‘it’s just coffee.’
these bridges should only connect 
the living, so when the living turn 
again toward death worship
it’s time to still the delivery of plastics 
and red meats to the galas of venture 
capital. to reject our gods if they are 
not the gods who teach us all that comes 
from dirt returns to it holy—
the holiest word i know is no. 
no more money for the endless
throat of money. no more 
syllogisms that permission
endless suffering. no more.
and on the eighth day of a holiday
meant to represent a people 
fighting occupation my teachers 
who stretch a drop of oil into a week 
of light take each other’s arms
across eight bridges of this settler colony 
singing prayers older than any country 
as the chevron burns in the distance.
o stilted vernacular of life—
o pedagogs of the godly pausing—
what mycelia spreads its speaking
limbs beneath the floors of our cities. 
the only holy land i know
is where life is. in the story 
i was taught alongside my first 
language it takes god six days 
to make the terrible world 
and on seventh day he rested
and on the eighth we blocked traffic.

I walk alone;
The midnight street
Spins itself from under my feet;
When my eyes shut
These dreaming houses all snuff out;
Through a whim of mine
Over gables the moon’s celestial onion
Hangs high.

I make houses shrink
And trees diminish
By going far; my look’s leash
Dangles the puppet-people
Who, unaware how they dwindle,
Laugh, kiss, get drunk,
Nor guess that if I choose to blink
They die.

I, when in good humor,
Give grass its green
Blazon sky blue, and endow the sun
With gold;
Yet, in my wintriest moods, I hold
Absolute power
To boycott any color and forbid any flower
To be.

I know you appear
Vivid at my side,
Denying you sprang out of my head,
Claiming you feel
Love fiery enough to prove flesh real,
Though it’s quite clear
All your beauty, all your wit, is a gift, my dear,
From me.

I’m not asking you to give me a kiss,
not to apologize to me when I think you’ve made a mistake,
I won’t even ask you to hug me when I need it most,
I’m not asking you to tell me how beautiful I am even if it’s a lie,
or to write me anything nice.
I’m not even going to ask you to call me
to tell me how your day was,
or to tell me you miss me.
I’m not going to ask you to thank me for everything I do for you,
or to worry about me when I’m down,
and of course, I’m not going to ask you to support me in my decisions,
or even to listen when I have a thousand stories to tell you.
I’m not going to ask you to do anything, not even to be by my side forever.
Because if I have to ask you, then I don’t want it anymore.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MFvv_TBVjT8

In the 5th grade I won the science fair 
with a project on climate change 
That featured a paper mache ozone layer 
with a giant hole, through which a paper mache sun 
cancered the skin of a Barbie in a bikini 
on a lawn chair, glaciers melting like ice cubes 
in her lemonade.

It was 1987 in a town 
that could have invented red hats
but the school principal gave me a gold ribbon 
and not a single bit of attitude 
about my radical political stance, 

because neither he nor I knew it was a political stance. 
Science had not been fully framed as leftist propaganda. 
The president did not have a twitter feed 
starving the world of facts.

I spent that summer as I had every summer 
before, racing through the forest behind my house
down the path my father called the old logging road 
to a meadow thick with raspberry bushes
whose thorns were my very first heroes
because they did nothing with their life but protect
what was sweet.

Sundays I went to church but struggled 
to call it prayer if it didn’t leave grass stains 
on my knees. Couldn’t call it truth if it didn’t 
come with a dare to crawl into the cave
by the creek and stay put until somebody counted 
all the way to 100. 

As a kid I thought 100 was the biggest number there was. 
My mother absolutely blew my mind 
the day she said, One hundred and one. 

One hundred…AND WHAAAAAT!!!!????

Billionaires never grow out of doing that same math 
with years. Can’t conceive of counting past their own lifespans. 
Believe the world ends the day they do. 
Why are the keys to our future in the hands of those 
who have the longest commutes from their heads to their hearts? 
Whose greed is the smog that keeps us from seeing 
our own nature, and the sweetness we are here to protect?

Do you know sometimes when gathering nectar 
bees fall asleep in flowers? Do you know fish 
are so sensitive snowflakes sound like fireworks 
when they land on the water? Do you know sea otters 
hold hands when they sleep so they don’t drift apart? 
Do you know whales will follow their injured friends 
to shore, often taking their own lives 
so to not let a loved one be alone when he dies?

None of this is poetry. It is just the earth 
being who she is, in spite of us putting barcodes on the sea.  
In spite of us acting like Edison invented daylight.

Dawn presses her blushing face to my window, 
asks me if I know the records in my record collection 
look like the insides of trees. Yes, I say, 
there is nothing you have ever grown that isn’t music. 
You were the bamboo in Coltrane’s saxophone reed. 
The mulberries that fed the silkworms 
that made the slippers for the ballet. 
The pine that built the loom that wove the hemp 
for Frida Khalo’s canvas. The roses that dyed her paint 
hoping her brush could bleed for her body.

Who, more than the earth, has bled for us? 
How do we not mold our hearts after the first spruce tree 
who raised her hand and begged to be cut 
into piano keys so the elephants can keep their tusks? 

The earth is the right side of history.  
Is the canyon my friend ran to
when no else he knew would echo 
his chosen name back to him.
Is the wind that wailed through 1956 Alabama 
until the poplar trees carved themselves into Dr King’s pulpit. 
Is the volcano that poured the mercury 
into the thermometers held under the tongue of Italy, 
though she knew our fever was why her canals 
were finally running clear. She took our temperature. 
Told us we were too hot, even after 
we’d spent decades claiming she was not. 
Our hands held to her burning forehead, 
we insisted she was fine while wildfires 
turned redwoods to toothpicks, 
readying the teeth of our apocalypse.

She sent a smoke signal all the way from California.
In New York City ash fell from the sky. 
Do you know the mountains of California 
used to look like they’d been set on fire 
because they were so covered in monarch butterflies? 
Do you know monarch butterflies migrate 3000 miles 
using only the fuel they stored as caterpillars in the cocoon?

We need so much less than we take. 
We owe so much more than we give. 
Squirrels plant thousands of trees every year 
just from forgetting where they left their acorns. 

If we aimed to be just half as good
as one of the earth’s mistakes, 
we could turn so much around.
Our living would be seed, the future would have roots.
We would cast nothing from the garden of itself.
and we would make the thorns proud.

That day,
that cloudless Tuesday,
with its Chartres-blue sky,
I could not watch the news.

Instead, I taped the broadcasts
for later watching.

That night,
that quiet night
marred only by the ululation of widows,
I re-wound the tape and watched in reverse

as towers rose from toxic dust
as windows formed from shards of glass and
micrograms of mercury oxide
as confettied papers re-assembled themselves into
binders and file cabinets
and as young men
spread eagled like Icarus
   in casual business attire,
      ascended on plumes of ash
         against the Chartres-blue sky
           and reached their offices,
             just in time
              for that all
               important
10:15 conference call.

Many people will walk in and out of your life,
But only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.
To handle yourself, use your head;
To handle others, use your heart.
Anger is only one letter short of danger.

If someone betrays you once, it is his fault;
If he betrays you twice, it is your fault.
Great minds discuss ideas,
Average minds discuss events,
Small minds discuss people.

He who loses money, loses much;
He who loses a friend, loses much more;
He who loses faith, loses all.

Beautiful young people are accidents of nature,
But beautiful old people are works of art.

Learn from the mistakes of others.
You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.

Friends, you and me.
You brought another friend,
And then there were three.
We started our group,
Our circle of friends,
And like that circle –
There is no beginning or end.

Yesterday is history.
Tomorrow is mystery.
Today is a gift.
That’s why it’s called the present.

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue
or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted   
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

https://mass.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/pe11.rla.genre.poetry.collforget/forgetfulness-by-billy-collins