The Laughing Heart
Charles Bukowski

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

In a Station of the Metro
Ezra Pound

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Reminders
av Allan Peterson

Who speaks for the body? We do.
Every eminence named, each fossa,
eloquent structures of shining bones
as if standing undone on a hill above Urbino,
artists making bright lines in bright sun,
bright language as the bones resurface
after an interim of flesh. Ribs, phalanges,
wings of the sphenoid, shapes named
for what they resemble, scapula a spade.
And how we look lovingly seeing a body
that does not clatter apart, that articulates
without ligaments, that presents in October
poignant reminders begging at our doors.