more poetry! haven't posted in forever.
I think I just like having a livejournal to belong to communities & read what pearls of wisdom other people have, and to post poems I find :]
"i like my body when it is with your"
e.e. cummings
i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like,, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big Love-crumbs,
and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you quite so new
"The Unfinished Suicides of My High School Sweetheart"
Shira Erlichman
For Jake
We were platonic high school sweethearts that fucked in the front seat
without touching and with our eyes open the whole time.
Our questions locked at the genitals like children to bicycles.
Our distant tongues sparked like forks dreaming of sockets.
We were virgin high school sweethearts that fucked with the seatbelts on
and the headlights blazing, daring passing drivers to stop and peek,
challenging cops to pull over beside us and question how safe our conversation was.
We theorized about masturbation, weed, (and the combination), football players,
our parents, Bone Thugs’ rapping techniques,
and what percentage of wrong was it to think of someone else while getting head.
We could achieve orgiastic ecstasy on a pile of purple sweatpants.
Our bodies fit together without being in one another.
We were music.
We were honest.
And that is something World Leaders are too scared to touch.
And we got angry. We got scared.
And we weren’t enough for each other.
And we were lovers.
It’s true: you were a man and I was a woman and the birds didn’t care,
and the bees stung the both of us,
but the level of intimacy made slobbering couples at school seem like
they had the attention spans of goldfish.
We were Red Rock meets blue sky of Arizona boldness,
depth of mountains the color of dried blood.
You told me you wanted to die.
Parked outside my parents’ house, asked what kept me living.
I told you my brother’s name but you only had sisters.
You said it would be easy.
One acquaintance away from getting a gun.
Knew someone who knew someone.
You were inches from releasing your feet from under the rope around your neck
and I was there, and I wasn’t.
You were scattered to red needles across the sheet of your chest
and you were only a decision away from a vertical slice
that opened the drawers of blood inside you until you were empty.
How could I tell you: you never wear sunglasses and I like that about you.
You look like a muppet and that alone still makes me smile.
You are curious yet patient.
You never make me feel ugly, gendered or crazy and that is huge.
This is friendship I keep in a drawer I will never unhinge
and spill out.
I felt you tremor from across the cup-holder
as a closed door on the left side of your chest rattled,
which must have been frightening
because the days were all empty rooms you waited in,
and the women were laughter that lived outside your walls,
and the men were impossible to be.
Jake, you look at me like I belong only in my skin,
and you ask questions, which is the biggest compliment anyone can receive.
So in the car we’re constantly in, outside our parents’ houses,
I swallow your keys to prove my commitment to finding a new way,
another road, a life you can live with.
"The arsonist stood up in court and said"
Jeffrey McDaniel
I am not an arsonist. I dreamt
the building was a phoenix
and needed my help. Before sticking me
in a sentence, like a four-syllable word
with only one meaning, consider
what becomes of the ashes: see
how after smearing a palm-full
hair grows on a bald man’s scalp, how
just a sprinkle makes irises sprout through
sidewalk cracks. You call me sick,
but have you ever seen a suicidal
parakeet, a homeless butterfly?
You want to know how you go crazy?
One marble at a time. It’s the law
of your language that dictates mess
is the precursor for messiah. You don’t
understand my logic to the hmph degree.
Your style of math is forty-three floors
beneath me. But you should have seen
the fire, a symphony of mayhem, people
leaping from windows, like lightning
bolts somersaulting out of a terrible cloud.
"Youth"
W.S. Merwin
Through all of youth I was looking for you
without knowing what I was looking for
or what to call you I think I did not
even know I was looking how would I
have known you when I saw you as I did
time after time when you appeared to me
as you did naked offering yourself
entirely at that moment and you let
me breathe you touch you taste you knowing
no more than I did and only when I
began to think of losing you did I
recognize you when you were already
part memory part distance remaining
mine in the ways that I learn to miss you
from what we cannot hold the stars are made
"I Want to Breathe"
James Laughlin
you in I'm not talking about
perfume or even the sweet odour
of your skin but of the
air itself I want to share
your air inhaling what you
exhale I'd like to be that
close two of us breathing
each other as one as that
“Unwritten Law”
Louise Glück
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.
“Failing and Falling”
Jack Gilbert
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
“Where I Am With You”
Ryan Vine
Waking from a nap,
we stand at the window
watching dark clouds crawl
across the sky, whip
state-sized wisps
down and out and up.
Lights come on early,
and people below
on the street scurry
and bumble about
My arm around you, you say—
Let it rain, let it pour.
"someone should write me a love poem but i'm stuck doing it myself"
Daphne Gottlieb
1. when i was in high school, i had to memorize the
conjugation of the latin verb "to love."
2. i have no idea what happened to my mother's wedding
ring. last night at 12:17 am, i really needed to know.
3. "beautiful" and "amazing" just mean "beautiful" and
"amazing." nothing more.
4. i memorized the latin verb by singing the forms to the
tune of "the mexican hat dance":
amo
amas
amat
amamus
amatis
amant
5. someone called at 1:19 in the morning. the area code is
from somewhere in arizona. i don't think i know anyone
in arizona. there wasn't a message.
6. if someone lets you sleep over and has to go to work while
you're still asleep and they let you sleep in even though though
they don't really know you, it's nice to leave a thank you
note. or make their bed.
7. i haven't been beautiful in days and i need more sleep.
don't think about it too much. it doesn't mean a thing.
8. i have had my shirts altered so i can wear my heart on my
sleeve.
9. told me i'm beautiful and amazing and where are you,
who told me i'm beautiful and amazing, next time please
write it down, i will be beautiful all day after i make the
bed, amazing after i throw the latex away; how is it, the
everywhere of our hands and no trace of handwriting
anywhere
10. i still sing:
amo
amas
amat
amamus
amatis
amant
“A Knock On The Door”
James Tate
They ask me if I've ever thought about the end of
the world, and I say, "Come in, come in, let me
give you some lunch, for God's sake." After a few
bites it's the afterlife they want to talk about.
"Ouch," I say, "did you see that grape leaf
skeletonizer?" Then they're talking about
redemption and the chosen few sitting right by
His side. "Doing what?" I ask. "Just sitting?" I
am surrounded by burned up zombies. "Let's
have some lemon chiffon pie I bought yesterday
at the 3 Dog Bakery." But they want to talk about
my soul. I'm getting drowsy and see butterflies
everywhere. "Would you gentlemen like to take a
nap, I know I would." They stand and back away
from me, out the door, walking toward my
neighbors, a black cloud over their heads and
they see nothing without end.
"Let's Move All Things (September)"
Denver Butson
everyday sir etceteras the wind whispers that it recognizes us
the trees hold out their handshakes the stars twirl around the sky
like bubbles in a windowsill glass everyday trains go through tunnels
like fingers through rings like scarves through a magician's fist
birds lift up like stricken punctuation marks
sir everyday I take my fistful of minutes and bet it on the wrong horse
if I weren't so scattered now sir I'd run around the block
in my new sneakers I'd show everybody how high I can jump
I'd learn to whistle all over again and I'd whistle
even though I can't really whistle
everyday sir the sun tells us what the moon did last night
how she sat in front of a mirror
lamenting the dissolution of herself
and we retrace our steps looking for something we've lost
even though we can't remember what it is we once had
we try to recall forgotten phone numbers
so we can dial them and hear voices
that belong to faces in photographs
we can no longer identify
I don't know about you sir
but I wouldn't mind a good fistfight about now
maybe a natural disaster to shake things up
I don't know about you
but sometimes it all seems like squealing car tires
with no crash at the end
we wait with faces squinched up
shoulders raised – for what?
I don't know sir
"How Could You Ever Be Fine"
Stephen Dobyns
for S.C.
I dreamt last night I heard someone speak your name,
two women talking about you and I went to them
and asked about you and they gave me your number.
So I called you and we talked and you said
you were fine, and I doubted it was really you,
because how could you ever be fine? What have
twenty years done to you? Where are you now?
You had the smoothest skin, a face like a beautiful
wax figure as you moved from one messed-up man
to another. There was one who used to shoot up
Jack Daniel's, and when I told him that was stupid,
he said, That's right, I'm stupid, I'm really stupid,
somebody should kill me! Until I said it actually
wasn't so stupid just to calm him. But all those men
who hit you and abused you and how you explained
they must have been right or else they wouldn't
have done it. I was too tame, didn't stick myself
with pins or know the names for all the drugs,
and had a vague idea of what I wanted to do
next week, next year. You would listen with one
black eye swollen half shut, then go back to the guy
who had done it so he could blacken the other.
I remember you told me how your mother had said
it was your duty to love her, and you shouted, No,
and kept shouting no. And when she died you felt glad,
but years later I took you to one funeral director
after another so you could find her ashes.
You said you wanted to talk to her, a beautiful
woman telling her troubles to a cardboard box.
Then you would sprinkle her ashes into the canal
and feel something, you weren't sure what, maybe
just done with something, the sense that something
was over. But either we couldn't find the right
funeral director or the ashes were already gone,
and that night you went back to the man who beat you,
and shortly after that you slipped out of my life--
a few cards, a few phone calls, then nothing.
Right now you are either out there or you're not--
smoking a cigarette, touching a sore place, looking
from the window and letting all the old faces
drift across your mind. It is hard to think of you
dowdy and forty, the problems you dealt with, a life
of some sort on track, hard to think of you making it
past twenty-five. At least in books we know the end,
know the characters died or got married, had great
success or failure. But you are out there someplace,
and your friend who shot up the Jack Daniel's,
and the guy I took the knife away from,
and the other who wanted to be a writer,
and the girl who quit school to have a baby,
and another girl who smashed the doors of my truck
on an acid trip. They are all out there, just
putting one foot in front of another, just like
the torturers are out there, and the men who worked
on firing squads, and the men who like to hit things
just to hurt them. And you are out there too,
picking your way between the paper, the tin cans,
the broken glass. You had the most wonderful smile.
On whom does it shine now, who does it welcome?
People on hard streets dragged to inevitable ends.
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.
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treeexoxo's journal
cold
thoughtful
tired
sick