Poems to Set Your Heart Ablaze

and persevere through the darkness

I can only carry on through hope. It might seem foolish or naive, but so much of perseverance is an act of mental fortitude. I can’t be faced with total darkness and expect to find my way back to the light.

In moments like this, I turn to the poets. Whether its flowery love poems or hard depictions of our world — their words ignite a spark in me. They look to the trees and find faith, they reach for their loved ones and find joy, they weave mantras together to persevere, they show us that we can make this place beautiful, they tell us how we must grow and change.

I woke up this morning in a hopeless spiral, and after reading these poems, I found my way back to reality. Reality, which has endured a millennia of turmoil and love and progression and regression and fear and hope and demise and birth and change. So much change.

What I am thinking of most is the poems (prayers, hymns) in the The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler. I’m thinking of Olamina’s (the main character’s) writings on how to live, how to adapt, how to persevere.

drawing by me, with words from Octavia Butler

“All that you touch, you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is change.”
~ Octavia Butler, The Parable of the Sower

Everyone should read these books. If there is any hope in the future, it is by embodying the positive obsession of Olamina.

Anyway, here are some poems to set your heart ablaze.

Nikki Giovanni, “The Artist,” an excerpt —

We are Sisyphus

We write the poems
We paint the portraits
We sculpt the statues
We quilt the blankets
We set the tables
We make the beds
We wipe the tears
We rock the anger
We hold on to tomorrow

We push the rock up
And we gently bring it down

We were promised
Only a gift of light

You keep me
From being
Lonely

Margaret Atwood, “Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing” —

You think I’m not a goddess?
Try me.
This is a torch song.
Touch me and you’ll burn.

Kate Baer, “For My Daughter on a Bad Day” —

Life will rough you up. Throw you to the
shore like a wave crashing — sand in your
hair, blood in your teeth. When grief sits
with you, hand dipped with rage, let it
linger. Hold its pulse in your hands. There
is no remedy for a bad haircut or ruined
love like time. Even when death is coming,
even when the filth rises in the back of
your throat —

this is not the worst of it. And if it is?
Listen for the catbird calling. No matter
the wreckage, they still sing for you.

Amanda Gormon, “& So” —

It is easy to harp,
Harder to hope.

This truth, like the white-blown sky,
Can only be felt in its entirety or not at all.
The glorious was not made to be piecemeal.
Despite being drench with dread,
This dark girl still dreams.
We smile like a sun that is never shunted.

Grief, when it goes, does so softly,
Like the exit of that breath
We just realized we clutched.

Since the world is round,
There is no way to walk away
From each other, for even then
We are coming back together.

Some distances, if allowed to grow,
Are merely the greatest proximities.

Jericho Brown, “The Trees” —

In my front yard live three crape myrtles, crying trees
We once called them, not the shadiest but soothing
During a break from work in the heat, their cool sweat

Falling into us. I don’t want to make more of it.
I’d like to let these spindly things be
Since my gift for transformation here proves

Useless now that I know everyone moves the same
Whether in tears or moving
To punch my face. A crape myrtle is

A crape myrtle. Three is a family. It is winter. They are bare.
It’s not that I love them
Every day. It’s that I love them anyway.

Maya Angelou, “Life Doesn’t Frighten Me,” excerpt —

Life doesn't frighten me at all.

Tough guys fight
All alone at night
Life doesn't frighten me at all.

Panthers in the park
Strangers in the dark
No, they don't frighten me at all.

That new classroom where
Boys all pull my hair
(Kissy little girls
With their hair in curls)
They don't frighten me at all.

Don't show me frogs and snakes
And listen for my scream,
If I'm afraid at all
It's only in my dreams.

I've got a magic charm
That I keep up my sleeve
I can walk the ocean floor
And never have to breathe.

Life doesn't frighten me at all
Not at all
Not at all.

Life doesn't frighten me at all.

Maggie Smith, “Good Bones” —

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

Mary Oliver, “A Voice from I Don’t Know Where” —

It seems you love this world very much.
“Yes,” I said. “This beautiful world.”

And you don’t mind the mind, that keeps you
busy all the time with its dark and bright wonderings?
“No, I’m quite used to it. Busy, busy
all the time.”

And you don’t mind living with those questions,
I mean the hard ones, that no one can answer?
“Actually, they’re the most interesting.”

And you have a person in your life whose hand
you like to hold?
“Yes, I do.”

It must surely, then, be very happy down there
in your heart.
“Yes,” I said. “It is.”

Nikki Giovanni, “Allowables” —

I killed a spider
Not a murderous brown recluse
Nor even a black widow
And if the truth were told this
Was only a small
Sort of papery spider
Who should have run
When I picked up the book
But she didn’t
And she scared me
And I smashed her

I don’t think
I’m allowed

To kill something

Because I am

Frightened

drawings from my comic, “To Be a Writer,” in 2022. These drawings inspired the one I made above.

Thanks for reading! Hope y’all have a good week and stay strong.

-jar