If You Forget Me I want you to know one thing. You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log,
Continue readingTag: poetry
Those Emergency Blues: Favourite Poems LVIV: The Curate Thinks You Have No Soul
Was thinking, by-the-by, about some dogs I have loved, and how I get along with (and like, if truth be known) dogs better than most people. So sentimentalism be damned: here’s a dog poem. St John Lucas was an early 20th century anthologist of poetry and friend and mentor to
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Favourite Poems LVIII: And You as Well Must Die, Belovèd Dust | Edna St. Vincent Millay
You sometimes forget about authors. They sort of fall out of your head. Expect more Millay in the future. And You as Well Must Die, Belovèd Dust And you as well must die, belovèd dust, And all your beauty stand you in no stead; This flawless, vital hand, this perfect
Continue readingFusing and Musing: Poem of the day
image source Invictus Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody,
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: A Poem for Easter
My own, with at least Easterish themes of death and rebirth. Originally published on 7/10/10. VSA You came to us, no vital signs, no breath Found dead, or nearly so, by the mall You last saw cars, careening carts, a child. Then falling, hard pavement, blood, a void empty Of
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Favourite Poems LI
Easter in Pittsburgh Even on Easter Sunday jungle of lilies and ferns fat Uncle Paul who loved his liquor so would pound away with both fists on the when the church was a stone pulpit shouting sin sin sin and the fiery fires of hell and I cried all after-
Continue readingDavid Climenhaga's Alberta Diary: On Milton Acorn, on his birthday, Canada’s People’s Poet
The Silver Dollar Room at the Waverly Hotel, where Milton Acorn lived on Spadina Avenue in Toronto. Below: Milton Acorn (drawing found on the Internet). Today was the birthday of Milton Acorn, the People’s Poet, who lived rough, and died before he was eligible for the Old Age Security, even
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Favourite Poems L
Yes, the fiftieth edition of Favourite Poems. You might wonder why a blog about nurses and nursing (and some other stuff, but mostly nursing) does poetry. The answer is simple: because nursing is far more than all the mundane tasks we need to do to care for our patients. Poetry
Continue readingcentre of the universe: O Lamy, my Lamy!
– Remember: No good comes of Walt Whitman – O Lamy! my Lamy! my lovely pen is gone; The pen has written every word, the letters sought not done; The book is near, the bells I hear, the people all … Continue reading →
Continue readingcentre of the universe: Method of Loci
for Marie Your name floats, fades. Not actually you just the you I see in bits and bytes Your name, hovering, bifurcated. You are in parts. Crisp sheets, bone white, scratchy, not tucked Perhaps a blanket or two, warmed or … Continue reading →
Continue readingFusing and Musing: Poem of the day
image source An Almost Made Up Poem I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny they are small, and the fountain is in France where you wrote me that last letter and I answered and never heard from you again. you
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Favourite Poems XLIX
Eight haiku by Matsuo Bashō, translated by R. K. Blyth. Wikipedia tells us the Shinto priesthood deified Basho in 1793, a sort of minor god of poetry, and for a time critical evaluation of his work was literally considered blasphemous. 1 Moonlight slants through The vast bamboo grove: A cuckoo cries 2 Ah, summer
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Favourite Poems XLVIII
In Winter in My Room In Winter in my Room I came upon a Worm – Pink, lank and warm – But as he was a worm And worms presume Not quite with him at home – Secured him by a string To something neighboring And went along. A Trifle
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Favourite Poems LXVII
A poem for a Saturday morning. Just because. To Winter O winter! bar thine adamantine doors: The north is thine; there hast thou built thy dark Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car. He hears me not, but o’er the yawning deep Rides
Continue readingMy journey with AIDS...and more!: Finding Émile
I reached another marker this week in my posthumous, intriguing, fan-like relationship with Montréal poet Émile Nelligan (1879-1941) when Craig’s partner, Claude, drove me to the site of his burial in Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges. Even with a map of the cemetery it took us a while to find Marker #588 in
Continue readingWTF? A Poem?
WTF? A bunch of racist sexist homophobic nutbarsGOP nazis spreading shit like this is somehow okay in the land of the free, home of the brave? Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (PRENDA) pretends to prevent race-based abortions, steals from the civil rights … Continue reading →
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Favourite Poems XLVI
Winter Night It snowed and snowed, the whole world over, Snow swept the world from end to end. A candle burned on the table; A candle burned. As during summer midges swarm To beat their wings against a flame Out in the yard the snowflakes swarmed To beat against the
Continue readingThe perfect blend of politics and poetry
Phil Rockstroh gives us this piece of beauty and politics and reality. A Journey to the end of Empire: It is Always Darkest Right Before it Goes Completely Black. P’n’P shall simply bask in it. A Journey To The … Continue reading →
Continue readingThe Scott Ross: The Defamiliarization of a Saturday Morning
This morning, with a brightening glow from my right I looked up from my newspaper to see a fog of falling snow across the yard, neighbouring street, and rooftops below. The unplanned and surprising sight had taken me back, contrasted all the more by the warm mug in my hand
Continue readingmark a rayner | scribblings, squibs & sundry monkey joys: A Bottle and a Friend
There’s nane that’s blest of human kind, But the cheerful and the gay, man, Fal, la, la, etc. Here’s a bottle and an honest friend! What wad ye wish for mair, man? Wha kens, before his life may end, What … Continue reading →
Continue reading