It's Not That Bad #12: Poems For Your Situations
+ an exclusive reading of an unpublished poem.
Hello you lovely lot,
This week, I put a call out on my IG stories asking for moods/situations you need poems for. Below, I’ve selected a few of my favourites and - because I like a challenge - the most specific.
‘A new chapter after leaving a toxic environment’
After leaving a toxic environment, it’s important to ground yourself in goodness and go back to what makes you feel like you. Building back what may have been drained takes time, so focus on small wonders. This poem gives me goosebumps every time I read it. I hope it heals.
You Can't Have It All
Barbara Ras
But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite
every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love,
though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam
that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys
until you realize foam's twin is blood.
You can have the skin at the center between a man's legs,
so solid, so doll-like. You can have the life of the mind,
glowing occasionally in priestly vestments, never admitting pettiness,
never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who'll tell you
all roads narrow at the border.
You can speak a foreign language, sometimes,
and it can mean something. You can visit the marker on the grave
where your father wept openly. You can't bring back the dead,
but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands
as if they meant to spend a lifetime together. And you can be grateful
for makeup, the way it kisses your face, half spice, half amnesia, grateful
for Mozart, his many notes racing one another towards joy, for towels
sucking up the drops on your clean skin, and for deeper thirsts,
for passion fruit, for saliva. You can have the dream,
the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt and you riding in the hot sand.
You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed,
at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping
of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise.
You can't count on grace to pick you out of a crowd
but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump,
how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards,
until you learn about love, about sweet surrender,
and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind
as real as Africa. And when adulthood fails you,
you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond
of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas
your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept.
There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother's,
it will always whisper, you can't have it all,
but there is this.
‘ugh’
This one is a little vague - ugh signals so much but means so little. Ugh makes me want to go MOOD. And the poet that makes me often mutter ‘mood’, is Cat Cohen.
poem I wrote after I found out that alcohol is actually just sugar
By Cat Cohen
I live in America and
there’s only one good show on TV
I wake up early to watch the sunrise
anything can be political if you tweet about it
I can’t imagine having children
I haven’t even had sex with a doctor
sometimes I sigh so loud in public
that a stranger on the street will ask if I’m okay
I’m okay my work isn’t good but it’s online
and that’s what counts.
‘My friend on her hen weekend’
May I gently plug myself, and direct you here. I know, I know. But quite a few brides bought this poem for their hens and vice versa! So! Allow the narcissism.
Oh my gosh, what a coincidence - here’s a link to where I sell prints: https://www.etsy.com/shop/chloelawspoems
‘Someone jaded who doesn’t know if love exists anymore’
Oh MATE. I want to reach through the phone screen and give you a hug and tell you that love is pretty much the only thing that does *always* exist.
My talented friend Charlie wrote this - and it unjades (totally not a word) me.
‘When I’m mad at my dog for being difficult’
I won't lie, this one stumped me. But the wonderful writer Beth McColl came to the rescue with this recommendation…
Little Dog’s Rhapsody in the Night
by Mary Oliver
He puts his cheek against mine
and makes small, expressive sounds.
And when I’m awake, or awake enough
he turns upside down, his four paws
in the air
and his eyes dark and fervent.
“Tell me you love me,” he says.
“Tell me again.”
Could there be a sweeter arrangement? Over and over
he gets to ask.
I get to tell.
‘Being unlucky in love/running from the good ones’
You say relationship troubles, I sad Kim Addonizio!
Stolen Moment
by Kim Addonizio
What happened, happened once. So now it’s best
in memory—an orange he sliced: the skin
unbroken, then the knife, the chilled wedge
lifted to my mouth, his mouth, the thin
membrane between us, the exquisite orange,
tongue, orange, my nakedness and his,
the way he pushed me up against the fridge—
Now I get to feel his hands again, the kiss
that didn’t last, but sent some neural twin
flashing wildly through the cortex. Love’s
merciless, the way it travels in
and keeps emitting light. Beside the stove
we ate an orange. And there were purple flowers
on the table. And we still had hours.
And a special mention to this:
‘In need of a big cry’
There’s only one poem for it…Gravy.
Gravy
By Raymond Carver
No other word will do. For that’s what it was. Gravy.
Gravy these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going
nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that it was all gravy, every minute
of it, up to and including when he was told about,
well, some things that were breaking down and
building up inside his head. “Don’t weep for me,”
he said to his friends. “I’m a lucky man.
I’ve had ten years longer than I or anyone
expected. Pure gravy. And don’t forget it.”
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