Two Poems About Heartbreak

Two poems about heartbreak to read and re-read as needed. Bitterness with energy.

Feistiness. These women won't take no shit though their pain seems infinite. I like to imagine that I am as tough, as capable, or could be.

Poem about heartbreak that go on and on

bad love last like a big

ugly lizard crawl around the house

forever

never die

and never change itself

into a butterfly

- June Jordan

Don't Let's Talk About Being in Love

Don't let's talk about being in love, OK?

- about me being in love, in fact, OK?

about your bloated face, like a magnolia;

about marsupials,

whose little blunted pouches

I'd like to crawl inside, lips first;

about the crashing of a million waterfalls

- as if LOVE were a dome of glass beneath a lake

entered through a maze of dripping tunnels

I hoped and prayed I'd never be found inside.

At night I dream that your bedroom's crammed with ducks.

You smell of mashed-up meal and scrambled egg.

Some of the ducks are broody, and won't stand up.

And I dream of the fingers of your various wives

reaching into your private parts like beaks.

And you're lying across the bed like a man shouldn't be.

And I'm startled awake by the sound of creaking glass

as if the whole affair's about to collapse

and water come pouring in with a rush of fishes

going slurpetty-slurpetty-slurp with their low-slung mouths.

- Selma Hill

(Despair)

Just two brief excerpts, things that I can and cannot say; because I have slept and must go out, have had my coffee and my yogurt parfait, though they neglected to bring me toast; because someday we must all die; there is always, at the end, loss; and light, and the absence of light, and tissues caught on barbed wire blowing beside the field; and sheep who gather around, and bulls; and photographs of rivers and the Eiffel Tower, and the churches and the gargoyles in their places glowing yellow; and I was able to touch, alone, the inky dark of the Seine; and will be off again, will see sky again, even sunsets from the tops of clouds.

"I love you first because you wait, because

For your own sake, I cannot write

Beyond these words. I love you for these words

That sting and creep like insects and leave filth.

(…)

And all your imperfections and perfections

And all your magnitude of grace

And all this love explained and unexplained

Is just a breath."

- from V-Letter, by Karl Shapiro

"Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;

Not untwist- slack they may be- these last strands of man

In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;

Can something, hope, wish day to come, not choose not to be."

- from Carrion Comfort, by Gerard Manley Hopkins