This.

http://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/702-da-art-of-storytellin

Path by Jack Hirschman

Go to your broken heart.

If you think you don’t have one, get one.

To get one, be sincere.

Learn sincerity of intent by letting

life enter because you’re helpless, really,

to do otherwise.

Even as you try escaping, let it take you

and tear you open

like a letter sent

like a sentence inside

you’ve waited for all your life

though you’ve committed nothing.

Let it send you up.

Let it break you, heart.

Broken-heartedness is the beginning

of all real reception.

The ear of humility hears beyond the gates.

See the gates opening.

Feel your hands going akimbo on your hips,

your mouth opening like a womb

giving birth to your voice for the first time.

Go singing whirling into the glory

of being ecstatically simple.

Write the poem.

Ten Statements about Poetry

by Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai
0: It can make you walk away from death.
1: If you don’t look up, you will die in these pages.
2: I spend more time not writing, than writing.
3: Quality can’t be measured by waste. Quality is quality. Waste is waste.
4: Not writing leads back to writing.
5: Once I allowed myself what I loved, it all came less painfully.
6: Writing leads back to not writing.
7: If I knew other languages, I would know other things.
8: It’s not mysterious, but wonders reveal themselves when paid attention.
9: Leaves, skin, how the ocean cleanses itself. Make your own metaphor of this work.

yes. yes. and yes again. assignment to self: write ten statements about poetry. write a poem that is not tragic or longing.

Grieving in Cameo (Can the Living Haunt the Dead?)

for Don Cornelius Belton

I’ve become an extra in the background
of your afterlife. Who thought it possible?
I knew you would choose the city.

Last week I stared at you through the
window as I separated darks from lights
at the laundromat across the street.

You strode forward to meet the wind
grinning with a ghost at each side.
Did you know that I was there?

I hope to land a speaking role next time
but that may be against the rules.
I’m sure it’s not up to you to decide.

Did you mind when I showed up
at your afterlife night spot
and told you to fix your hair?

Your hair was a shoulder-length
curtain of white beads, Rick James style.
You looked dapper, except for the little tuft.

You passed by me at the bar
on your way to the disco
down the dark staircase with a turn.

I grabbed you gently by the arm,
you paused but did not stop
when I pointed to the unruly bit.

I was only trying to earn my keep.
I wanted you to look flawless
underneath the revolving lights.

You were happy to see me, I think.
You looked me in the eye this time
before continuing your descent.

I heard the needle drop
on the record a drum
like my own heart
beat at your arrival.

Naming the Unnameable

Romayne Rubinas Dorsey posted this poem by Adrienne Rich today in memory of Don Belton and I don’t think I’ve laid my eyes on words that capture my mess of feelings better. I don’t know how to write about him yet, I can barely even lay eyes on his image. But finding solace in what others have written is part of how I will get there.

from The Dream of a Common Language, an excerpt from “Twenty-One Love Poems”

IX

Your silence today is a pond where drowned things live
I want to see raised dripping and brought into the sun.
It’s not my own face I see there, but other faces,
even your face at another age.
Whatever’s lost there is needed by both of us–
a watch of old gold, a water-blurred fever chart,
a key…Even the silt and pebbles of the bottom
deserve their glint of recognition. I fear this silence,
this inarticulate life. I’m waiting
for a wind that will gently open this sheeted water
for once, and show me what I can do
for you, who have often made the unnameable
nameable for others, even for me.