Sunday, October 21, 2012

Mornings with Sophie (too early) and a poem


Antilamentation


Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook, not
the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication, not
the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punch line, the door or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don't regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the living room couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You've walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You've traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the window.
Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied of expectation.
Relax. Don't bother remembering any of it. Let's stop here,
under the lit sign on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.


Dorianne Laux

Listen to it HERE.

6 comments:

  1. That photo is nothing short of art.
    And I am so grateful to you for finding these poems that I love so I don't have to look for them myself. Ha!
    Mostly I'm grateful for you.

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  2. Borrowing again, this poem that insists I write my own version just to practice finding those places and words. You've more than earned your alchemist license. Each post feels like evidence of transmutation

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  3. beautiful photo in so many ways: compositional as well as emotional.

    that poem sets me free -- is it a favorite of yours or did you stumble across it? It's so affirming - I love it.

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  4. dear god elizabeth.
    thank you.
    xoxo

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  5. That is a terrific poem, even though it leads to a sort of unresolved, ambiguous place -- like life, I suppose. I like the line, "calm as a house after the TV set has been pitched out the window." Who can't imagine just what that calmness would be like?

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