Best Poems - Self-Improvement

Tell no one else its contents,
Never its secrets share;
When you’ve dropped in your care and worry
Keep them forever there;
Hide them from sight so completely
That the world will never dream half;
Fasten the strongbox securely—
Then sit on the lid and laugh.”

You blow your nose. You see the shrink.
You walk. You give up food and drink.
You fall in love. You make a plan.
You struggle to improve your man.
And nothing works. The outlooks grim.
You go to yoga, cry and swim.
You eat and drink. You give up looks.
You struggle to improve your books.
You cannot see the point. You sigh.
You do not smoke. You have to try.”

was once a common punishment

in England and parts of Europe?

It’s true. In 1542 Margaret Davy,

a servant, was boiled for poisoning

her employer. So says the encyclopedia.

That’s the way I like to start my day:

drinking hot black coffee and reading

the 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica.

Its pages are tissue thin and the covers

rub off on your hands in dirt colored

crumbs (the kind a rubber eraser

makes) but the prose voice is all knowing

and incurably sure of itself. My 1956

World Book runs to 18 volumes and has red

pebbly covers. It begins at ‘Aardvark’

and ends with ‘Zygote.’ I used to believe

you could learn everything you’d ever

need by reading encyclopedias. Who

was E.B. Browning? How many Buddhists

in Burma? What is Byzantine art? Where

do bluebells grow? These days, I own five

sets of encyclopedias from various

eras. None of them ever breathed

a word about the fact that this humming,

aromatic, acid flashback, pungent, tingly-

fingered world is acted out differently

for each one of us by the puppet theatre

of our senses. Some of us grow up doing

credible impressions of model citizens

(though sooner or later hairline

cracks appear in our facades). The rest

get dubbed eccentrics, unnerved and undone

by other people’s company, for which we

nevertheless pine. Curses, outbursts

and distracting chants simmer all day

long in the Crock-Pots of our heads.

Encyclopedias contain no helpful entries

on conducting life’s business while the ruckus

in your skull keeps competing for your

attention; or on the tyranny of the word

normal—its merciless sway over those

of us bedeviled and obsessed,

hopeless at school dances, repelled by

mothers’ suffocating hugs, yet entranced

by foul-smelling chemistry experiments,

or eager to pass sleepless nights seeking

rhymes for misspent and grimace.

Dear girl, your jolly blond one-year-old

brother, who adults adore, fits into

the happy category of souls mostly at home

in the world. He tosses a fully clothed doll

into the inflatable wading pool in your

backyard (splash!) and laughs maniacally

at his own comic genius. You sit alone,

twenty feet from everyone else, on a stone

bench under a commodious oak, reading aloud,

gripping your book like the steering wheel

of a race car you’re learning to drive.

Complaints about you are already filtering

in. You’re not big on eye contact or smiling.

You prefer to play by yourself. You pitch fits.

Last week you refused to cut out and paste

paper shapes with the rest of the kids.

You told the kindergarten teacher you were

going to howl like a wolf instead, which you did

till they hauled you off to the principal’s

office. Ah, the undomesticated smell

of open rebellion! Your troublesome legacy,

and maybe part of your charm, is to shine

too hotly and brightly at times, to be lost

in the maze of your sensations, to have

trouble switching gears, to be socially

clueless, to love books as living things,

and therefore to be much alone. If you like,

when I die, I’ll leave you my encyclopedias.

They’re wonderful company. Watching you

read aloud in your father’s garden, as if

declaiming a sermon for hedges, I recall

reading about Martin Luther this morning.

A religious reformer born in 1483, he nailed

his grievances, all 95 of them, to a German

church door. Fiery, impossible, untamable

girl, I bet you too post your grievances

in a prominent place someday. Anyway,

back to boiling. The encyclopedia says

the worst offenders were ‘boiled without

benefit of clergy’ which I guess means

they were denied the right to speak

to a priest before being lowered into scalding

water and cooked like beets. Martin Luther

believed we human beings contain the ‘inpoured

grace of god,’ as though grace were lemonade,

and we are tumblers brim full of it. Is grace

what we hold in without spilling a drop,

or is it an outflooding, a gush of messy

befuddling loves? The encyclopedia never

explains why Margaret Davy poisoned her employer,

what harm he might have done her or whether

she dripped the fatal liquid on his pudding or sloshed

it into his sherry. Grievances and disagreements:

can they lead the way to grace? If our thoughts

and feelings were soup or stew, would they taste

of bile when we’re defeated and be flavored

faintly with grace on better days? I await the time

and place when you can tell me, little butter pear,

screeching monkey mind, wolf cub, curious furrow

browed mammal what you think of all this.

Till then, your bookish old aunt sends you this missive,

a fumbling word of encouragement, a cockeyed letter

of welcome to the hallowed ranks of the nerds,

nailed up nowhere, and never sent, this written kiss.”

Interpret all your motives just as though
You looked on one whose aims you did not know.
Let undisguised contempt surge through you when
You see you shirk, O commonest of men!
Despise your cowardice; condemn whate’er
You note of falseness in you anywhere.
Defend not one defect that shames your eye—
Just stand aside and watch yourself go by.

And then, with eyes unveiled to what you loathe,
To sins that with sweet charity you’d clothe,
Back to your self-walled tenement you’ll go
With tolerance for all who dwell below.
The faults of others then will dwarf and shrink,
Love’s chain grows stronger by one mighty link,
When you, with ‘he’ as substituted for ‘I,’
Have stood aside and watched yourself go by.”

“Gain a little useful knowledge
Every day my boy.
Search for secrets that are hidden,
In your tool or toy;
Do not shrink from when and wherefore,
How and which and why—
They are helpers to prepare you
For the by-and-by

By-and by, when to your labor
You go forth—a man,
And the goal you seek seems saying,
‘Gain me if you can!’
A good acorn holds an oak tree:
So success may find
Its beginning in the riches
Of a well-stored mind.”

don’t let them kill you with their stare
don’t let them closet you with no air
don’t let them feed you sex piece-meal
don’t let them offer you any old deal.

i say.  step back sisters. we’re rising from the dead
i say.  step back johnnies. we’re dancing on our heads
i say.  step back man, no mo hangin by a thread
i say.  step back world. can’t let it all go unsaid.

i say. all you young girls molested at ten
i say. all you young girls giving it up again & again
i say. all you sisters hanging out in every den
i say. all you sisters needing your own oxygen.

don’t let them trap you with your coke
don’t let them treat you like one fat joke
don’t let them bleed you till you broke
don’t let them blind you in masculine smoke.

i say. step back sisters. we’re rising from the dead
i say. step back johnnies, we’re dancing on our heads
i say. step back man. no mo hanging by a thread.
i say. step back world. can’t let it go unsaid.”