The Writing Of My Life, the life changes after your death poem by Janet Kuypers

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The Writing Of My Life

i planned for everything
and you knew me, you knew i had scripted
everything out accordingly
you knew i was a writer
you knew i was a poet
you even knew i was starting my novel

did you even know that i used
your mothers maiden name
as a last name for the
scottish lab technician in my book?

well, as i was saying,
ive worked it out over the years
and ive figured out how to take care of myself
and ive figured out how to get ahead in the game
and you know, I did pretty well
i had scripted my life out

i was an open book

but i was careful, i know
that at the beginning of the page
some things made my pen swirl
and i started to write on an angle
and sometimes i’d curl around on the page
or write upside-down

but as i figure out how i wanted my life to be
i was quite meticulous in my writing
and the page actually looked quite graceful

and ive still got room left on that page
for more writing, for more living
but i think so far it was looking prety good
i figured out how i wanted the page to look
and i did just the right things
with the writing on the page
and, well, the writing of my life
was looking pretty good

and after meeting you,
you were a nice edition
to the writing of my life
you even saw me play at my last live chicago concert
and, well,
you enriched my life

even though sometimes you’d piss me off
you were vibrant, and you
helped that page look better

and then

and then you had to go die
i don’t even want to talk about you
not taking care of yourself enough
i know you worked out,
but scottish or not
you were diabetic
you should have checked your blood sugar levels more
you shouldn’t have drank so much

i know you wanted to work on the writing of your life
but you must have known
you couldn’t cram all that living into your body

you should have known that

but you know, you weren’t a writer
i don’t know if you ever looked at the writing of your life
or if you just relied on what you painted
to show how you felt
but you knew i was a writer
and you knew how i watched
over everything in my life

you knew i was the one in charge
you knew i had a plan for everything
you knew i worked my ass off
you knew i succeeded at everything i did

you knew

you knew and you had to go off and die
and mess up my whole page

because right at that point that god-damned pen
started scribbling all over the place
and it made a real mess out of part of my life

yeah, you know i cried for days for you
who am i kidding, i cried for months
and years later i still cried for you
and yeah, no one wanted anything to ever happen to you
but sometimes, you know,
like in the stages of recovery,
anger is one of them
blame is one of them
and right now all i can do
is be angry at you for dying
because i haven’t gone through all the recovery steps yet
but i have to blame someone
for making me feel this way
don’t i

Psalms 88

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13 But I, O Lord, have cried out to You for help,
And in the morning my prayer comes before You.
14 O Lord, why do You reject my soul?
Why do You hide Your face from me?
15 I was afflicted and about to die from my youth on;
I suffer Your terrors; I am overcome.
16 Your burning anger has passed over me;
Your terrors have destroyed me.
17 They have surrounded me like water all day long;
They have encompassed me altogether.
18 You have removed lover and friend far from me;
My acquaintances are in darkness.

The New American Standard Bible, 1995 Update, (La Habra, California: The
Lockman Foundation) 1996.

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Poem Light and Flames Poem by Alexandre L. Amprimoz

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LIGHT AND FLAMES I

El Greco in Venice
Drank the wine of Titian

And, at Tintorettos table,
Next to sweet Veronese,

Tasted the cardinal points
Of iconic pinecones.

The vast kernel
Of golden ratios

Awakened in rose windows.
But I, across clepsydras

And fields where each asparagus
Was an angel,

Could no longer
Close an eye

Nor guess the second
Coming of storms.

Later, when I was pacing
Along the labyrinth of insomnia,

Across centuries
Of prayers,

I caught his Cretan moments
Of sure madness

And mad certitude.
We dont have to believe,

We know the hand of God
Is at hand and time is near:

Faith you have no other definition.


LIGHT AND FLAMES II

” Whats with the oblong face?”
Asked El Greco.

And Veronese
Quoted the Inquisitor:

“buffoons, drunkards, dwarfs,
Germans, and similar vulgarities

In your painting of the Last Supper
For that monastery in Venice”.

In their mind the high drama
Began with the lowering

Of darker clouds.
Approximations of
Greenish blues,

And bluish grays
Rose in the air

With a scent of emerald
And indigo sonatas.

That was the sign:
They were on the edge

Of new colors.


LIGHT AND FLAMES III

He must have known of men
As Rilke was to know of angels;

Known what inquisitors
Heard in the dark rumbling

Of mystic souls, those long
Faced lovers of God.

He must have considered
Across some suicidal autumn

Juan de la Cruz in dim
Toledo dungeons;

And in Valladolid
He must have felt the agony

Of gloomy penitentiaries
Where Luis de León

Burned like a humble candle
Consumed by a fever

Asymptotic to the Eternal.

Later, too proud
To dance with death

Or even prolong
The study of minor miseries,

El Greco nailed spirits
On canvas.

LIGHT AND FLAMES IV

After his quest,
After the Golden Age,

He was Toledo
And he was Spain,

This man from Crete.
He saw dead angels

And called himself
The Greek.

And like an impatient ghost
He saw the dead

As everlasting,
The stark spirit

Of his old age,
His best art.

Finally understanding
Repetition as his road

To that infinite we call aleph,
He painted St. Francis in Ecstasy

Eighty times eleven.

LIGHT AND FLAMES V

Always gathering light,
Like Theresa of Jesus

He built an Interior Castle.
Centuries before him

Pliny the Elder,
Alluded to a painting:

A young boy
Blowing at an ember.

The light reflects from the flames
And conquers the boy’s face,

Then the room. The monkey
Like me was puzzled.

Alexandre Amprimoz is a poet, critic, translator, writer and programmer. He teaches Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario Canada. Books include: A Season For Birds: Selected poems by Pierre Morency. Translation.Toronto: Exile Press, 1990; Venice At Her Mirror: Essay by Robert Marteau. Translation. Toronto: Exile Press, 1990 ; Nostalgies de l’ange. Ottawa: Editions du Vermillon, 1993. He has recently published poems in: Alsop Review, Antigonish Review, Octavo, The Fiddlehead, Lichen,

I wanna Take You Poem by Sara L. Holt

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Take You
The pictures, and the postcards, and the people in between floating through my memory all the places that I’ve been to all the faces that I’ve seen looking back through those times that are total history
there’s one thing left on my mind that still means the most to me
I wanna take you
I wanna take you to the places that you never ever see
I wanna take you everyplace I go with you I’m meant to be
I wanna take you to the movies
I wanna take you to the show
I wanna take you so far down the road that you finally, lose control
I wanna take you, do you wanna go?
Sara L. Holt
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Tsunami Poem by Rochelle Hope Mehr

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Tsunami

When to look, arms outstretched and free
At the receding and beckoning arms of the sea.
When to foam at the mouth
As the meters increase,
As the dry land opens up vistas between you and me.
When to flee
Before the wall of waves lashes its fury,
While you stand there dumbstruck
By its come-hither look.
By its treachery.
Miles and miles away, the earth shook.
The waves roiled
In the doomsday book.
But all you saw was a placid sea.

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