My Favorite Poems From My Chapbook Published Last Year, Specimen Poems

I Am Somebody by Glenn Ligon, 1991

Ough you go to therapy you take your meds you learn to drive you make friends you graduate college you get a dog you rent a cute apartment you learn to love properly and then one person says something and it makes you feel like a kid again, alone on the swing

who’s up thinking about after the threesome they both take you home by sue hyon bae i’m thinking about after the threesome they both take you home by sue hyon bae

I want to write you an escape.

A pocket of happy time and space.

Where you're okay.

In the mountains, in a tree, in a nothing of muted pastels.

Just somewhere where you can sing,

and your fingers don't sting from strumming.

And our lungs can go on for forever.

I can write up that sort of escape with ink and paper and imagination.

The clouds would be puffy, and grass would be wet beneath our bare feet.

The longing and worry and confusion of yesterday would slip through our fingers.

We’d watch the drops puddle and tumble and fall through the cracks out of existence.

We would stay and it falls away.

And the rain blows and the wind smiles and the leaves sing.

Nothing makes any sense, but we are safe.

Yet that place, it's not...real.

The world collapses around us and I am left with ink on paper that I can't see clearly.

Your eyes are downcast and clouded.

You can’t see my words.

I don’t know how to cocoon you in that existence.

But then you take my hand and we run away.

And we make our own escape of flesh and blood and brick.

We joke in puddles of blankets and you play your ukulele.

And yet we have to leave for the bathroom.

The conversation is jolted and a little awkward at times.

Your fingers grow tired, and strings get off key, but we are here.

We made it.

And it's just the sort of escape we needed.

Ruth Awad, “Reasons To Live”

Please don’t take your pets for granted. Even if you’re frustrated that your dog has been barking all day or your bird has been screaming for attention, remember you are all they have in this world. Give your fish that extra water change. Give your dog or cat that tummy rub they’ve been begging for. Chop up some fresh fruit as a treat for your rodents or reptiles. Just spend some time with them. Be compassionate to your animals. They are living creatures that are alive simply because you wish them to be. They may only be a small part in your life, but to them, you are their everything.

The most sure sign that someone doesn’t know much about poetry is when they insist that poetry has to rhyme.

And the most sure sign that someone is a little too pretentious about poetry is when they say that they hate rhyming poetry.

im a published poet

One day you think: I want to die. And then you think, very quietly, actually I want a coffee. I want a nap. A sandwich. A book. And I want to die turns day by day into I want to go home, I want to walk in the woods, I want to see my friends, I want to sit in the sun. I want a cleaner room, I want a better job, I want to live somewhere else, I want to live.

#80 I wish poetry came easily. 

Bright words that could naturally sweep through me. 

Like intoxicating and wonder filled seas.

Of lavender, teal and parsnip creme

Trickle from page from pen, from pen to me.

I wish the dam was never closed.

Inspiration endless but an eb and flow,  

Not brilliant wet flashes then dry lonely stones. 

Then the dam’s tight as a dish and I am alone. 

Left to smack at cement and wait in the cold 

For the stones to split apart and invite me to explore the sea. 

But I fumble and stumble, push pen forward on. 

I keep writing haiku, couplet or song,

With remaining words, mediocre and oblong as can be. 

And I feel new stream beds forming beneath me.