I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain—and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I [...]]]> ACQUAINTED WITH THE NIGHT

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right
I have been one acquainted with the night.

  — Robert Frost (1874 – 1963)

My downfall: those pink articulate lips Divinely flavoured portals to a mouth Where soul dissolves … eyes darting Beneath black brows, snares for the heart, And the milk-white breasts, well shaped, The twin rosebuds, fair beyond other flowers.

To itemize thus — is this to cast dogs a bone? The poet’s pen — [...]]]> MY DOWNFALL

My downfall: those pink articulate lips
Divinely flavoured portals to a mouth
Where soul dissolves … eyes darting
Beneath black brows, snares for the heart,
And the milk-white breasts, well shaped,
The twin rosebuds, fair beyond other flowers.

To itemize thus — is this to cast dogs a bone?
The poet’s pen — secret as reeds of Midas?

  — Dioskorides (c. 3rd Century BCE), translated by Peter Whigham

Composing words of romance, verses as yet unformed.

Visions of hair, long, dark and curled, Of laughing Van Morrison eyes.

Freckled skin, kissed by the sun, Slender curves, longing to be caressed.

A heart, offered freely, given totally, Not [...]]]> … for National Poetry Day (Thursday, October 7, 2010):

The one who speaks does not know. The one who knows does not speak,

wrote the old master, which perhaps describes the situation. Meaning we were all sad.

Meaning that when you were seized by desire, it was nothing more than flesh, bared above the collarbone

she [...]]]> AFTER READING LAO TZU

The one who speaks does not know.
The one who knows does not speak,

wrote the old master, which perhaps describes
the situation. Meaning we were all sad.

Meaning that when you were seized by desire,
it was nothing more than flesh, bared above the collarbone

she poured the long night of herself
into empty coffee cans and cornfields

and brushed by air. Meaning: It’s chemical. So
that when the moon rears its parched head,

her eyes a mask on her face, the livestock snorting and pacing,
her absent husband…she died young

when you feel a finger grazing your neck,
it’s only wind created by the movement of

her daughter crying and lighting
fires under the bed

your own body. Downdraft. Live
stock. Because sadness is multiplied

don’t worry, she told me,
you can’t inherit this

by sadness. A cradle of no compare.
Loose conspiracy of mind and body,

dough swelling over the edge of the bowl,
the yeasty smell of it, a disease that is

a blanket over the window
a pillow over the face

known and not spoken and
also the other one,

who speaks and does not know
what to say.

  — Amy Newlove Schroeder

I have heard so much about you

if you claim to be you I will know it’s not true

if you say nothing I will listen as I do with my own old mixed feelings of hope and reservation

hearing through them whatever might be you

the way I see the white light [...]]]> TO PURITY

I have heard so much about you

the way I see
the white light from
the beginning
through the colors of the garden
through a face an eye

  — W.S. Merwin (b. 1927), American poet and translator.

DEBT

That ‘part
Of consciousness
That works’:

Among the pin ups, notices, conversion charts,
And skills, so little said of it

  — George Oppen (1908 – 1984), Pulitzer Prize winning American poet.

Spontaneous me, Nature, The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with, The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder, The hill-side whiten’d with blossoms of the mountain ash, The same, late in autumn—the hues of red, yellow, drab, purple, and light and dark green, The rich coverlid [...]]]> SPONTANEOUS ME

Spontaneous me, Nature,
The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with,
The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder,
The hill-side whiten’d with blossoms of the mountain ash,
The same, late in autumn—the hues of red, yellow, drab, purple, and light and dark green,
The rich coverlid of the grass—animals and birds—the private untrimm’d bank—
      the primitive apples—the pebble-stones,
Beautiful dripping fragments—the negligent list of one after another, as I happen to call
      them to me, or think of them,
The real poems, (what we call poems being merely pictures,)
The poems of the privacy of the night, and of men like me,
This poem, drooping shy and unseen, that I always carry, and that all men carry,
(Know, once for all, avow’d on purpose, wherever are men like me, are our lusty, lurking,
      masculine poems;)
Love-thoughts, love-juice, love-odor, love-yielding, love-climbers, and the climbing sap,
Arms and hands of love—lips of love—phallic thumb of love—breasts of
      love—bellies press’d and glued together with love,
Earth of chaste love—life that is only life after love,
The body of my love—the body of the woman I love—the body of the man—the body of
      the earth,
Soft forenoon airs that blow from the south-west,
The hairy wild-bee that murmurs and hankers up and down—that gripes the full-grown
      lady-flower, curves upon her with amorous firm legs, takes his will of her, and holds himself
      tremulous and tight till he is satisfied,
The wet of woods through the early hours,
Two sleepers at night lying close together as they sleep, one with an arm slanting down across
      and below the waist of the other,
The smell of apples, aromas from crush’d sage-plant, mint, birch-bark,
The boy’s longings, the glow and pressure as he confides to me what he was dreaming,
The dead leaf whirling its spiral whirl, and falling still and content to the ground,
The no-form’d stings that sights, people, objects, sting me with,
The hubb’d sting of myself, stinging me as much as it ever can any one,
The sensitive, orbic, underlapp’d brothers, that only privileged feelers may be intimate where they are,
The curious roamer, the hand, roaming all over the body—the bashful withdrawing of flesh
      where the fingers soothingly pause and edge themselves,
The limpid liquid within the young man,
The vexed corrosion, so pensive and so painful,
The torment—the irritable tide that will not be at rest,
The like of the same I feel—the like of the same in others,
The young man that flushes and flushes, and the young woman that flushes and flushes,
The young man that wakes, deep at night, the hot hand seeking to repress what would master
      him; The mystic amorous night—the strange half-welcome pangs, visions, sweats,
The pulse pounding through palms and trembling encircling fingers—the young man all color’d,
      red, ashamed, angry;
The souse upon me of my lover the sea, as I lie willing and naked,
The merriment of the twin-babes that crawl over the grass in the sun, the mother never turning
      her vigilant eyes from them,
The walnut-trunk, the walnut-husks, and the ripening or ripen’d long-round walnuts;
The continence of vegetables, birds, animals,
The consequent meanness of me should I skulk or find myself indecent, while birds and animals
      never once skulk or find themselves indecent;
The great chastity of paternity, to match the great chastity of maternity,
The oath of procreation I have sworn—my Adamic and fresh daughters,
The greed that eats me day and night with hungry gnaw, till I saturate what shall produce boys to
      fill my place when I am through,
The wholesome relief, repose, content;
And this bunch, pluck’d at random from myself;
It has done its work—I tossed it carelessly to fall where it may.

  — Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892), American poet, essayist, journalist and humanist.

Body, remember not only how much you were loved, not only the beds where you lay, but also those desires for you, shining clearly in eyes and trembling in a voice—and some chance obstacle thwarted them. Now when everything is the past, it almost looks as if you gave yourself to [...]]]> REMEMBER, BODY …  

Body, remember not only how much you were loved,
not only the beds where you lay,
but also those desires for you,
shining clearly in eyes
and trembling in a voice—and some chance
obstacle thwarted them.
Now when everything is the past,
it almost looks as if you gave yourself
to those desires as well—how they shone—
remember—in the eyes that looked at you,
how they trembled for you in the voice—remember, body.

  — C.P. Cavafy (1863 – 1933), Greek poet and journalist. Translated by Aliki Barnstone

EELS – THE LOOK YOU GAVE THAT GUY

I never thought that I could be so bold, 
 To even say these thoughts aloud. I see you with your man, your eyes just shine, While he stands tall and walking proud.


That look you give that guy, I wanna see … Looking right [...]]]>

EELS – THE LOOK YOU GAVE THAT GUY

I never thought that I could be so bold, 

To even say these thoughts aloud.
I see you with your man, your eyes just shine,
While he stands tall and walking proud.

That look you give that guy, I wanna see…
Looking right at me.
If I could be that guy, instead of me…
I’d never let you down.
I’d never let you down.

We don’t belong to each other.             We belong together.                                                                     Some poems belong together to prove the intentionality of subatomic particles.                                      Some poems eat with scissors.                                                      Some poems are like kissing a porcupine.                    God, by the way, is disappointed in some of your recent choices.                Some poems swoop.                                                    [...]]]>

BLUE OR GREEN

We don’t belong to each other.
            We belong together.
                                                                    Some poems
belong together to prove the intentionality of subatomic particles.
                                    
Some poems eat with scissors.
                                                     Some poems are like kissing a
porcupine.
                   God, by the way, is disappointed in some of your recent
choices.
               Some poems swoop.
                                                   When she said my eyes were
definitely blue, I said, How can you see that in the dark?
              How can
you not? she said, and that was like some poems.
                                                                                  Some poems are
blinded three times.
                                   Some poems go like death before dishonor.
                                                                      
Some poems go like the time she brought cherries to the movies;
later a heedless picnic in her bed.
                 Never revered I crumbs so
highly.
            Some poems have perfect posture, as if hanging by
filaments from the sky.
                                        Those poems walk like dancers,
noiselessly.
                      All poems are love poems.  
                                                                   Some poems are better off
dead.
           Right now I want something I don’t believe in.

  — James Galvin (b. 1951)