Rainy Day Poems

Ok, they're not about rain, but they're poems. ;)

Poverty

Ah you don’t want to,
you’re scared
of poverty,
you don’t want
to go to the market with worn-out shoes
and come back with the same old dress.

My love, we are not fond
as the rich would like us to be,
of misery. We
shall extract it like an evil tooth
that up to now has bitten the heart of man.

But I don’t want
you to fear it.
If through my fault it comes to your dwelling,
if poverty drives away
your golden shoes,
let it not drive away your laughter which is my life’s bread.
If you can’t pay the rent
go off to work with a proud step,
and remember, my love, that I am watching you
and together we are the greatest wealth
that was ever gathered upon the earth.

Pablo Neruda


To Have Without Holding

Learning to love differently is hard,
love with the hands wide open, love
with the doors banging on their hinges,
the cupboard unlocked, the wind
roaring and whimpering in the rooms
rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
that thwack like rubber bands
in an open palm.

It hurts to love wide open
stretching the muscles that feel
as if they are made of wet plaster,
then of blunt knives, then
of sharp knives.

It hurts to thwart the reflexes
of grab, of clutch; to love and let
go again and again. It pesters to remember
the lover who is not in the bed,
to hold back what is owed to the work
that gutters like a candle in a cave
without air, to love consciously,
conscientiously, concretely, constructively.

I can’t do it, you say it’s killing
me, but you thrive, you glow
on the street like a neon raspberry,
You float and sail, a helium balloon
bright bachelor’s button blue and bobbing
on the cold and hot winds of our breath,
as we make and unmake in passionate
diastole and systole the rhythm
of our unbound bonding, to have
and not to hold, to love
with minimized malice, hunger
and anger moment by moment balanced.

Marge Piercy

Colors Pass Though Us
Purple as lush tulips in May, mauve
into lush velvet purple
as the stain blackberries leave
on the lips, on the hands.
the purple of ripe grapes,
sunlit and warm as flesh.

Ever day I will give you a color
like a new flower in a bud vase
On your desk. Everyday
I will paint you, as women
color each other with henna
on hands and on feet.

Red as henna, as cinnamon,
as coals after the fire is banked,
the cardinal in the feeder,
the roses tumbling on the arbor
their weight bending the wood
the red of the syrup I make from the petals

Orange as the perfumed fruit
hanging their globes on the glossy tree,
orange as pumpkins in the field,
orange as butterfly weed and the monarchs
who come to eat it, orange as my
cat running through the high grass.

Yellow as a goat's wise and wicked eyes
yellow as a hill of daffodils,
yellow as dandelions by the highway,
yellow as butter and eggs yolks,
yellow as the school bus stopping you,
yellow as a slicker in a downpour,

Here is my bouquet, here is a sing
song of all the things you make
me think of, here is oblique
praise for the height and depth
of you and the width too
Here is my box of new crayons at your feet.

Green as mint jelly, green
as a frog on a lily pad twanging,
the green of cos lettuce upright
about to bolt into opulent towers,
Green as Grand Chatruese in a clear
glass, green as wine bottles.

Blue as cornflowers, delphiniums
bachelor's buttons. Blue as Roquefort,
Blue as Saga, blue as still water.
Blue as the eyes of a Siamese cat.
Blue as the shadows on new snow, as a spring
azure sipping from a puddle on the blacktop.

Cobalt as a midnight sky
when a day has gone without a trace
and we lie in each other's arms
eyes shut and fingers open
and all the colors of the world
pass through our bodies like strings of fire.

Marge Piercy

Will We Work Together?

You wake in the early grey
morning in bed alone and curse
me that I am only
somtimes there. But when
I am with you, I light
up the corners, I am bright
as a fireplace roaring
with love, every bone in my back
and my fingers is singing
like a tea kettle on the boil.
My heart wags me, a big dog
with a bigger tail. I am
a new coin printed with
your face. My body wears
sore before I can express
on yours the smallest part
of what moves me. Words
shred and splinter.
I want to make with you
some bold new thing
to stand in the marketplace,
the statue of a goddess
laughing, armed and wearing
flowers and feathers. Like sheep
of whose hair is made
blankets and coats, I want
to force from this fierce sturdy
rampant love some useful thing.

Marge Piercy