The sky is full of stars.
Just looking at you ignites me.
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.
— Maggie Smith —
vantage point…
Simplify your need:
undress for me
even when I’m not there.
Touch yourself
with the same ardour
and caress that satisfies
itself on my soft roundness.
Pull your hard certainty out
in those moments of echo
that fear you may never
watch me cum again.
Such acts are a most complex
release into the Unknown
of what Completes us.
Like a cloud upstaging the moon,
memory shields us
in order to illuminate the point.
my swirling wants…
I practice the art of not being chosen in all the ways that happens.
It follows me as a drumbeat set in rhythm to each step,
lightly tapping against my ribs.
I sing in counter melody;
the clouds keep forgetting the chorus.
Everything has become simple.
The perfection of light reflects deep and true.
I close my eyes against the shade and finally see;
memory, a key to a series of finicky handles.
I have seen Beautiful.
(Your pulse is proof.)
I have inhaled Almost-Promise.
I have screamed secrets to the moon:
Besides the wind,
I want only your hands sliding along the smoothest of my inner thigh,
a delicate slip and slide beneath my flitting skirt.
Sometimes our prayers sound exactly like chipping teeth.
Lovers prove false when
re-made in the image of (small) lifetimes built
upon pyres fueled: guilt, fear… shame, and more.
(I think I have a list somewhere around here.)
There is no coming quite like the certainty of going
and staying.
But I am not waiting;
I set down that map long ago,
even before you walked in and out the door.
The unknown:
may it be more than enough,
the very essence of our breath,
the very best yet.
the dream…
Dear, though the night is gone,
Its dream still haunts today,
That brought us to a room
Cavernous, lofty as
A railway terminus,
And crowded in that gloom
Were beds, and we in one
In a far corner lay:Our whisper woke no clocks,
We kissed and I was glad
At everything you did,
Indifferent to those
Who sat with hostile eyes
In pairs on every bed,
Arms round each others necks
Inert and vaguely sad.What hidden worm of guilt
Or what malignant doubt
Am I the victim of,
That you then, unabashed,
Did what I never wished,
Confessed another love;
And I, submissive, felt
Unwanted and went out.
— W.H. Auden —
ride the wind…
The wheat feels the shucking of its chaff as puffs of pleasure shoot and sprinkle into wild air. Rub. A sigh slides by.
We ride with abandon, parting paths with whetted tips and slickened lips. We ride.
Harvest the secrets of my heart, wrap them inside words that feel like song. See me as I am: wanton with wanting you.
mark of the beast (dodging bullets)…
A sea of faces parted and there, I found my heart.
a joy awoken that broke me wide open
A sea of kisses later, and there I left my mark.
a light reborn that guided me home
A sea of betrayals found me, and here I stand alone.
a dark i defy that was never mine to own
vernal equinox…
The scent of hyacinths, like a pale mist, lies
between me and my book;
And the South Wind, washing through the room,
Makes the candles quiver.
My nerves sting at a spatter of rain on the shutter,
And I am uneasy with the thrusting of green shoots
Outside, in the night.Why are you not here to overpower me with your
tense and urgent love?
— Amy Lowell —
i wrote a good omelet…
I wrote a good omelet…and ate
a hot poem… after loving you
Buttoned my car…and drove my
coat home…in the rain…
after loving you
I goed on red…and stopped on
green…floating somewhere in between…
being here and being there…
after loving you
I rolled my bed…turned down
my hair…slightly
confused but…I don’t care…
Laid out my teeth…and gargled my
gown…then I stood
…and laid me down…
To sleep…
after loving you
— Nikki Giovanni —
when women were birds…
Once upon a time,
When women were birds,
There was the simple understanding
That to sing at dawn
And to sing at dusk
Was to heal the world through joy.
The birds still remember what we have forgotten,
That the world is meant to be celebrated.
— Terry Tempest Williams —