The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Sat 11/26/05)

[RetroLounge]

Variations on the Word Love

This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn't what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.

Margaret Atwood

*************************************************

I keep coming back to Margaret Atwood. She is pretty amazing...

RL

[Misunderestimator]

1. Another great poem! Thanks again, RL.

[RetroLounge]

3. You're welcome

RL

[progmom]

2. beautiful. thank you.

[RetroLounge]

4. You are welcome

RL

[Callalily]

5. Thanks RL . . .

I'm enamored by Margaret Atwood too.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

6. My dear RetroLounge....

This is a bit more light-hearted than the others have been recently...

And quirky too....I LIKE it.....and I like you.......

Thanks for posting it, my dear!

[khashka]

7. Thanks, RL, you have excellent taste

And you can keep posting as much Atwood as your heart desires.

(Can we get a little Emily Dickinson, though? )

Khash.

[RevCheesehead]

8. Now you're just trying to get me all hot and bothered.

...you can rub it all over your body and you can cook with it too...

...the cool debaucheries of slugs under damp pieces of cardboard...

...Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising their glittering knives in salute.



What have you been doing? Peeking into the Lounge late at night?

[SeattleGirl]

9. Ah, our daily bread!

Thanks you, RL. I can see why you keep coming back to Atwood. She says so much in so few words.

[In_The_Wind]

10. Love is a tender trap ...

I love being caught up in ...



Thanks for posting this poem RL.

[Call Me Wesley]

11. Thanks for

something I read every day and won't want to miss it.

Try to get ahold of any Gottfried Benn in English, once.

[tigereye]

12. very very nice

Atwood is very cool in both book and poem form!

[RetroLounge]

13. Evening Kick

RL