Poetry

for work that is real

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

We all know working isn’t the greatest. When you’re paid to do something, it makes the job less magical.

On the other hand, there’s nothing more attractive than being around hardworking people. It’s like I kinda hope their passion and work ethic will rub off on me. They inspire me to stop watching reruns of The Hills, get off the couch and get working.

I’m trying a new thing now. Or I’m trying to try a new thing. I’m looking to do work I’m truly passionate about.

There are all kinds of reasons to pursue a specific career and many of them are obvious and can’t be ignored (examples: paying rent to keep from being homeless, buying groceries to keep from starving), but when all that’s taken care of, you’re left with the “why.” Why am I working so hard at a job I’m not passionate about?

It’s a question we should ask ourselves before our mid-life crisis rolls around.

To be of use, Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

I love you. I’m glad I exist.

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

Sometimes we forget to appreciate the ordinary, everyday things. This poem reminds us to take a moment, look around, and realize how lucky we really are. It’s so simple. So good.

The Orange, Wendy Cope

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange—
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.

that in me sings no more

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

Sonnet XLIII, Edna St. Vincent Millay

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning, but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

Good Poems, Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor (2002)

For the one I love most lay sleeping by me

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane 

When I Heard at the Close of Day, Walt Whitman

When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been
    receiv'd with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy
    night for me that follow'd,
And else, when I carous'd, or when my plans were accomplish'd,
    still I was not happy,
But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health,
    refresh'd, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,
When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in
    the morning light,
When I wander'd alone over the beach, and undressing bathed,
    laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise,
And when I thought my dear friend my lover was on his way
    coming. O then I was happy,
O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food
    nourish'd me more, and the beautiful day pass'd well,
And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening
    came my friend,
And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly
    continually up the shores,
I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to me
    whispering to congratulate me,
For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in
    the cool night,
In stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined
    toward me,
And his arm lay lightly around my breast—and that night I was
    happy

Good Poems, Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor (2002)

to declare the pain of our deliverance

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

Golden hour in Southampton, Ontario (Photo credit: nokyoungxayasane / Instagram)

Golden hour in Southampton, Ontario (Photo credit: nokxayasane/Instagram)

Liberation, Abena Busia

We are all mothers
and we have that fire within us,
of powerful women
whose spirits are so angry
we can laugh beauty into life
and still make you taste
the salt tears of our knowledge—
For we are not tortured
anymore:
we have seen beyond your lies and disguises,
and we have mastered the language of words,
we have mastered speech
And know
we have also seen ourselves
We have stripped ourselves raw
and naked piece by piece until our flesh lies flayed
with blood on our own hands
What terrible thing can you do to us
which we have not done to ourselves?
What can you tell us
which we didn’t deceive ourselves with
a long time ago?
You cannot know how long we cried
until we laughed
over the broken pieces of our dreams.
Ignorance
shattered us into such fragments
we had to unearth ourselves piece by piece,
to recover with our own hands such unexpected relics
even we wondered
how we could hold such treasure.
Yes, we have conceived
to forge our mutilated hopes
into the substance of visions
beyond your imaginings
to declare the pain of our deliverance
So do not even ask,
do not ask what is we are labouring with this time.
Dreamers remember their dreams
when we are disturbed—
And you shall not escape
what we will make
of the broken pieces of our lives.

(Ghana)

The Poetry of Our World: An International Anthology of Contemporary Poetry (2000)

no your body is no prison

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

Padmapani, Breyten Breytenbach

Padmapani
No your body is no prison
your understanding has petals
sweeter than moonlight
your hair is a secret
black wave
a banner against the light
two butterflies have settled
on the twigs above your nose
if only to upset my pen
and each ear is a beach
against the wash of tides
your eyes are two shelters in the desert
two tents with brilliant peacocks
and my eyelashes lament on your shoulders
your back is a glistening lance in water
and soon after dusk your small dunes
rose from my palms
your heart moves with the quick
soundlessness of chewing peanuts
your hands are tom thumb
and all his brownish friends
where your thighs meet your belly
struts a small proud plume
o hail to the jewel in the lotus
how sweet it must be
to dive upwards
into that nothingness
no your body is no prison
Padmapani

(translated by André Brink)

(South Africa)

The Poetry of Our World: An International Anthology of Contemporary Poetry (2000)

I Love You More Than All the Windows in New York City

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

Photo credit: @nokyoungxayasane / Instagram

Photo credit: Original by Taylor Jackson Photography; Edited by nokxayasane/Instagram

I Love You More Than All the Windows in New York City
Jessica Greenbaum

The day turned into the city
and the city turned into the mind
and the moving trucks trumbled along
like loud worries speaking over
the bicycle’s idea
which wove between
the more armored vehicles of expression
and over planks left by the construction workers
on a holiday morning when no work was being done
because no matter the day, we tend towards
remaking parts of it—what we said
or did, or how we looked—
and the buildings were like faces
lining the banks of a parade
obstructing and highlighting each other
defining height and width for each other
offsetting grace and function
like Audrey Hepburn from
Jesse Owens, and the hearty pigeons collaborate
with wrought iron fences
and become recurring choruses of memory
reassembling around benches
we sat in once, while seagulls wheel
like immigrating thoughts, and never-leaving
chickadees hop bared hedges and low trees
like commas and semicolons, landing
where needed, separating
subjects from adjectives, stringing along
the long ideas, showing how the cage
has no door, and the lights changed
so the tide of sound ebbed and returned
like our own breath
and when I knew everything
was going to look the same as the mind
I stopped at a lively corner
where the signs themselves were like
perpendicular dialects in conversation and
I put both my feet on the ground
took the bag from the basket
so pleased it had not been crushed
by the mightiness of all else
that goes on and gave you the sentence inside.

Read more about this poem and poet on the Poetry Foundation website: http://bit.ly/T5U2sC.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

the world offers itself to your imagination (Photo credit: @nokyoungxayasane / Instagram)

the world offers itself to your imagination (Photo credit: @nokxayasane/Instagram)

Wild Geese, Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

letter to a lost friend

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

Letter to a Lost Friend, Barbara Hamby

There must be a Russian word to describe what has happened
              between us, like ostyt, which can be used
for a cup of  tea that is too hot, but after you walk to the next room,
              and return, it is too cool; or perekhotet,
which is to want something so much over months
              and even years that when you get it, you have lost
the desire. Pushkin said, when he saw his portrait by Kiprensky,
              “It is like looking into a mirror, but one that flatters me.”
What is the word for someone who looks into her friend’s face
              and sees once smooth skin gone like a train that has left
the station in Petersburg with its wide avenues and nights
              at the Stray Dog Cafe, sex with the wrong men,
who looked so right by candlelight, when everyone was young
              and smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, painted or wrote
all night but nothing good, drank too much vodka, and woke
              in the painful daylight with skin like fresh cream, books
everywhere, Lorca on Gogol, Tolstoy under Madame de Sévigné,
              so that now, on a train in the taiga of  Siberia,
I see what she sees — all my books alphabetized and on shelves,
              feet misshapen, hands ribbed with raised veins,
neck crumpled like last week’s newspaper, while her friends
              are young, their skin pimply and eyes bright as puppies’,
and who can blame her, for how lucky we are to be loved
              for even a moment, though I can’t help but feel like Pushkin,
a rough ball of  lead lodged in his gut, looking at his books
              and saying, “Goodbye, my dear friends,” as those volumes
close and turn back into oblong blocks, dust clouding
              the gold leaf that once shimmered on their spines.

 

Read more about this poem and poet on the Poetry Foundation website: http://bit.ly/149Pv0R.

it is fitting and delicious to lose everything
– Donald Hall

you call out to me from your hiding place

Posted on by Nokyoung Xayasane

Lao New Year, the water ceremony

Lao New Year, the water ceremony

So Father’s Day is tomorrow. It made me think of a poem I wrote for my dad when I was 22 years old.

Seven years ago!* Crazy.

Last weekend, I celebrated my 29th birthday. Birthdays make me feel pretty nostalgic. Well, if I’m being truthful, anything makes me nostalgic: the melody of a song, the way the air smells after the rain, or any number of overwrought poetic imagery that I won’t bore you with, but birthdays really do it for me. It’s a time to reflect and look back on what’s happened and to try to move on.

Now that I’m a year older and with Father’s Day around the corner, it made me think about my dad. My dad and I have had a perplexing relationship. I remember a time when I thought he knew everything. I remember feeling like he was my protector. I remember feeling safe with him.

But then things changed.

Our relationship began to unravel after me, my mom, and dad immigrated to Canada. It’s only in looking back that I realize the turmoil he was going through. He was a highly educated young man from Laos, but in Canada he was no one. He couldn’t speak the language. He felt like an outsider. He felt like less than a person.

Sadly, he took his frustrations out on the ones he loved: my mom and me. Although I don’t condone what happened between me and him and my mom, I’ve tried over the years to understand why our family life was filled with verbal and physical abuse.

I know my dad has made great strides to change himself. He’s now a pastor at the church I grew up in when we arrived in Canada. I’m really proud of him and every time he stands at the podium to speak, I can’t help but remember the man who had once been my protector and who had made me feel safe all those years ago.

Heal, Nokyoung Xayasane

when I was younger I clung to you
the roots of a tree gripping the riverbank
shifting waters could not move us
enveloped by mosquito netting and protected
while balmy breezes blew within a decrepit shanty
the cracks would not let in the pain

shards of light reflecting mirror side up
bruised forearm, broken finger
I cannot find you in your dark
hidden by your rage, I search for you

the splashing, laughing pool
flipping through the pages of a torn photo album
you call out to me from your hiding place
a quiet voice beneath the fists
loving pain, gentle brutality
comforting violence

sometimes, glimpses of you emerge
falling rain, glimmering laughter
and I hope for your light

my image in your eyes
my movements in your stance
quiet rage
shifting below
whispering madness seeps into light
mosquito netting, broken finger
morning grass, afternoon tag
and I remember you
as you were, as you are now

soft folds of a blanket
and the radio hums within the hut
hammock swaying
cradled in the softness, protected in the netting

soothing cooling
ointment glides on the burn
healing tissue replacing cut
a soft scar in the shadow of forgiveness
and I can see your light

(2009)

*Update: I just realized I wrote this poem when I was 25 years old and not 22 years old. I wrote a similar poem about my dad at 22, which had a less hopeful tone to it. The one above was written during a Creative Writing course while I was in University.