Poem in Your Pocket

Yesterday was the last day of National Poetry Month. It was dubbed "Poem in Your Pocket Day," a day when you're supposed to share with other people a favorite poem. (See, you carry it around in your pocket so that you're always ready to read it aloud to anyone you meet.) As in recent years, I photocopied some poems to share with my classes, and I tucked a couple of other poems into my back pocket and read them to colleagues and friends.

The first is one of my all-time favorites. It is, of course, by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

The second is a more recent poem. It's entitled "The Next Poem Could Be Your Last," and it's by the great Rafael Campo.

Imagine death. No fun. No poetry.
No further arguments with relatives.
No work to do. No boring life to live.
Imagine, death: like making pottery
Or writing eulogies, it takes some skill
To do it passably. Like argument,
It needs resistance to be shaped against.
Like relatives you fight the urge to kill,
You know you won't. Like work, there's never less
Of it. Imagine: death is almost life.
Except it's fascinating, like a knife.
You lose yourself just staring at the edge.
You lose yourself and suddenly you're not
Alive, you're dying and for fun you try
To write your eulogy. You tell some lies,
Pretend you're wry and brave. Imagine that.

The last poem I carried yesterday was not shared with everyone. Only a select few got to hear it. It's Aaron Smith's "Clarification," and it's one of the few good poems about sex and/or sexuality that I've read in recent years.

Last night I followed a man
around a bar hoping to brush
against his green T-shirt
to feel the pad of his chest
against my shoulder
or arm, but before that
he danced with his shirt
off, tucked in the white
band of his underwear, lights
marking his body, music
making him a story whispered
ear to ear through a room.

I've been thinking
how the erotic lives in
what we're denied, the object
about to be exposed, on the verge
of coming undone.

The night we met I asked
you to take your pants off.
What I really meant was
unzip them and let them
ride low on your hips.

Two other people distributed copies of poems yesterday, and a couple more had poems to share. I'm sure my friend C celebrated Poem in Your Pocket Day, but I didn't get a chance to see her. This post should have been made yesterday, I know, but I hope the sharing of poetry continues throughout the year.