Sunning with Smiles

Casting a long, thin shadow
Rooftop, ArcLight Cinemas, Los Angeles

I was called out by Anonymous yesterday who observed that I'm often angry (mea culpa) and that my particular anger isn't the right kind. He said, I'm frequently angry, righteously angry, smarter than you angry and superior angry. He did compliment my writing, though, so there's that. I'm going to take this comment to heart and work on being -- well -- rarely angry, unrighteously angry, stupider than you angry and inferior to you angry. But angry, all the same.

Here are three poems:

A Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree. 

William Blake

When Ecstasy is Inconvenient

Feign a great calm;
all gay transport soon ends.
Chant: who knows --
flight's end or flight's beginning
for the resting gull?

Heart, be still.
Say there is money but it rusted;
say the time of moon is not right for escape.
It's the color in the lower sky
too broadly suffused,
or even the wind in my tie.

Know amazedly how
often one takes his madness
into his own hands
and keeps it.

Lorine Neidecker


Spellbound

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow.
And the storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing dear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.

Emily Bronte