Rage, Part 2

The Hell with Love: Poems to Mend a Broken Heart
by Mary D. Esselman, Elizabeth Ash Vélez

(Page 2 of 2)

Moving forward is what we ultimately want to do. One way to start is to acknowledge the anger and fantasize revenge, and then forgive yourself for feeling that way. You're allowed these feelings- you've lost so much, and you're so tired, disappointed, and wounded that you want someone else to hurt. It doesn't mean you're some Fatal Attraction wacko. Reveling in rage can give you the will to live again (there's a kind of giddy glee in imagining that arrow through his “shit-filled heart”)-but clinging to anger only warps your own heart. You have to move beyond anger if you want to recover completely, that is, if you want to become a trusting, caring person again.

YOU FIT INTO ME
you fit into me
like a hook into an eye

an open eye -Margaret Atwood

HATRED
I shall hate you Like a dart of singing steel Shot through still air At even-tide. Or solemnly As pines are sober When they stand etched Against the sky. Hating you shall be a game Played with cool hands And slim fingers. Your heart will yearn For the lonely splendor Of the pine tree; While rekindled fires In my eyes Shall wound you like swift arrows. Memory will lay its hands Upon your breast And you will understand My hatred.
-Gwendolyn Bennett

SOMEWHERE A SEED
Somewhere a seed falls to the ground That will become a tree That will some day be felled From which thin shafts will be extracted To be made into arrows To be fitted with warheads One of which, some day when you least expect it, While a winter sun is shining On a river of ice And you feel farthest from self-pity, Will pierce your shit-filled heart.
-Michael Fried

THE MESSAGE
Send home my long strayd eyes to mee, Which (Oh) too long have dwelt on thee, Yet since there they have learn'd such ill, Such forc'd fashions, And false passions, That they be Made by thee Fit for no good sight, keep them still. Send home my harmlesse heart againe, Which no unworthy thought could staine, Which if it be taught by thine To make jestings Of protestings, And breake both Word and oath, Keepe it, for then 'tis none of mine.

Yet send me back my heart and eyes, That I may know, and see thy lyes, and may laugh and joy, when thou Art in anguish And dost languish For some one That will none, Or prove as false as thou art now.
-John Donne

UNWRITTEN LAW
Interesting how we fall in love: in my case, absolutely. Absolutely, and, alas, often- so it was in my youth. And always with rather boyish men- unformed, sullen, or shyly kicking the dead leaves: in the manner of Balanchine. Nor did I see them as versions of the same thing. I, with my inflexible Platonism, my fierce seeing of only one thing at a time: I ruled against the indefinite article. And yet, the mistakes of my youth made me hopeless, because they repeated themselves, as is commonly true.

But in you I felt something beyond the archetype- a true expansiveness, a buoyance and love of the earth utterly alien to my nature. To my credit, I blessed my good fortune in you. Blessed it absolutely, in the manner of those years. And you in your wisdom and cruelty gradually taught me the meaninglessness of that term.
-Louise Glück

QUICK AND BITTER
The end was quick and bitter. Slow and sweet was the time between us, slow and sweet were the nights when my hands did not touch one another in despair but with the love of your body which came between them. And when I entered into you it seemed then that great happiness could be measured with the precision of sharp pain. Quick and bitter. Slow and sweet were the nights. Now is as bitter and grinding as sand- “Let's be sensible” and similar curses.

And as we stray further from love we multiply the words, words and sentences long and orderly. Had we remained together we could have become a silence.
-Yehuda Amichai

MOCK ORANGE
It is not the moon, I tell you. It is these flowers lighting the yard. I hate them. I hate them as I hate sex, the man's mouth sealing my mouth, the man's paralyzing body- and the cry that always escapes, the low, humiliating premise of union-

In my mind tonight I hear the question and pursuing answer fused in one sound that mounts and mounts and then is split into the old selves, the tired antagonisms. Do you see? We were made fools of. And the scent of mock orange drifts through the window.

How can I rest? How can I be content when there is still that odor in the world?
-Louise Glück

WISHES FOR SONS
i wish them cramps. i wish them a strange town and the last tampon. i wish them no 7-11. i wish them one week early and wearing a white skirt. i wish them one week late. later i wish them hot flashes and clots like you wouldn't believe. let the flashes come when they meet someone special. let the clots come when they want to.

let them think they have accepted arrogance in the universe, then bring them to gynecologists not unlike themselves.
-Lucille Clifton

Copyright © 2002 by Mary D. Esselman and Elizabeth Ash Vélez

About the Author

Elizabeth Ash Vélez lives in Washington, D.C.