I., Brighton, UK

I’m a recovering people-pleaser, and have just been asked to make a choice, for my long-term benefit (and thus actually, the benefit of others), that will not please a lot of people in the short term. Can you send me a poem to hold onto the bigger picture – my mind is a battleground!

I.

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November 23, 2024

BK:

Dear I.,

I wanted to amend my response.  For days now, I’ve been trying to find a poem that connects with the bigger picture.  And what is that?  Somehow, I’ve found this poem by Meena Alexander, who I met only once in my life.  We stood beneath a tree on the Arapahoe Campus of Naropa University, where Allen Ginsberg (right there) used to give talks on William Blake, and she (Meena) read her elegy for him (Allen), her spine against the trunk of that cottonwood.  In this poem, For My Father, Karachi, 1947, rain pours from a blue-silver sky, right onto the bent neck of the father.  Historical mesh is pierced with scarlet dots: “lilies spotted with blood.” Perhaps it’s that mixture of mesh and dot (far and near observations) that might be useful right now.  I am not sure. Return to the poems of Meena Alexander, or find them.  Are they nearby? 

Wishing you the best as you make your way towards and through this NO.

For My Father, Karachi 1947
Mid-May, centipedes looped over netting at the well’s mouth.
Girls grew frisky in summer frocks, lilies spotted with blood.

You were bound to meteorology,
Science of fickle clouds, ferocious winds.

The day you turned twenty-six fighter planes cut a storm,
Fissured air baring the heart’s intricate meshwork

Of want and need—
Springs of cirrus out of which sap and shoot you raised me.

Crossing Chand Bibi Road,
Named after the princess who rode with hawks,

Slept with a gold sword under her pillow,
Raced on polo fields,

You saw a man lift a child, her chest burnt with oil,
Her small thighs bruised.

He bore her through latticed hallways
Into Lady Dufferin’s hospital.

How could you pierce the acumen of empire,
Mesh of deceprion through which soldiers crawled,

Trees slashed with petrol,
Grille work of light in a partitioned land?

When you turned away,
Your blue black hair was crowned with smoke—

You knelt on a stone. On your bent head
The monsoons poured.

– Meena Alexander

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November 19, 2024

BK:

Dear I., here is a poem for you:

Ode to People Who Hate Me
I hate being hated even though I 
provoke it, not by committing major wrongs 
like murder, more like a regular 
pattern of being selfish or forgetful, 
which is another word for selfish. 
If you hate me, trust me I know—
in fact, I have a ledger of people, like you, 
who hate me, and I rifle through it every 
morning obsessing over the names more 
than they think about mine—a passing 
thought, a microsecond of dislike or worse, 
indifference like the Godzilla rays of fire 
I feel buzz out of your eyes when 
you scroll past my pictures on Instagram. 
I should focus on the people who love me,
every therapist I ever had has told me so, 
but I don’t need them to love me more, 
so that’s pointless. If we hate each other, 
I assure you my hate has a trace of love 
with a dash of hope. It’s the throbbing 
contradiction of hate’s dark thrall. 

It is a poem by Carmen Giménez, which I found in Eunsong Kim’s curation for Poem-a-Day (September 2023).

But, you’re actually asking for a poem that connects to the primordial lattice that excretes weak violet light, aka the bigger picture.  I will have to write one myself.  Here you are:

Abandon your duties.
Take to your bed.
Drink tea made of bark and oranges.

No, that’s not a poem. It’s simply a protocol of relaxation. 

Imagine visiting a Poetry Pharmacy.  Open the door and there are no vials, no queue, no blue plastic chairs, no nail clippers.  There’s just a bed.  It’s your bed.  Take to your bed.