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the hours…

We throw our parties… we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep. Its as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out windows, or drown themselves, or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us are slowly devoured by some disease, or, if we’re very fortunate, by time itself. There‘s just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning;
we hope, more than anything, for more.
Heaven only knows why we love it so…

— Michael Cunningham —

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quietness…

Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You’re covered with thick clouds.
Slide out the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
that you’ve died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.

The speechless full moon
comes out now.

— Rumi —

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a rubied sun in a venice-sail…

Every time I see you, my body wakes up.
I am alive.
Again.
Everywhere.
Walking away from you, the cool summer wind caresses
the silkiest parts of my thighs.
Echoes of your mouth, your hands, your breath on me.
I moan quietly –
my clit tingles with this need, these secrets.
The stars above us give witness.
Tremors, all.

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the darning needle…

your love is downy soft
a gentle brush ‘gainst lashes closed
a fist wrapped tight ’round rosemary and mint
it beats like a drum in the basement
it’s echo a pillow plumped in sheet forts built long ago
each crinkle of your smile
a constant call that does not rest
that will not abide the loss of what can be won
sweet determination
sufferance of fools
and saviour to none
your love blossoms under full moons
in the spaces between words on pages
and gasps of air ‘tween laughter that rings true
this is your fullness
the light you shine on a world living for itself
you pause when you used to run
you doubt despite assurances you are right
you speak without apology
into a mic made of bone and air
dear one
hold the hand that reaches for you
but let it go, let it be
and float
float
and float
here among the clouds of your heart’s home
hear the beat calling your own name from within
the sky that holds all that love
that is you

— Lola Moi —

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when time is spent…

Once, I met a man and I very nearly came the first time he entered me. I rode this man but I didn’t love him; I loved how his cock made me feel. He filled me beyond anything I’d ever known before.

A bird sits on my windowsill.
It fluffs its feathers and waits for others to arrive.
It doesn’t look up at the sun.
It sees me through my window and it simply serenades.

Many times, I made a man I (once) loved cum. I looked into his eyes as we filled one another; I looked because I saw him for who he was and still found joy. His lies filled me beyond anything I’d ever known before.

Sometimes we sleepwalk
Daylight fluffs its nighttime wings and whispers.
Someone traces secrets in the air that we cannot quite hear.
We blind ourselves – as one with the deaf and dumb.

I cry your name in deepest pleasure. I pull you close and feel impossibly new.  The breath I once thought my own, rides the wind over water, through trees of cedar, under bark. I sit and see truth.

In life we are undone.
In waking-dreams we are made new.
With the right person, healing happens
But first, we must awaken.

 

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out of the crowd…

1.
Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd, came a drop gently to me,
Whispering, I love you; before long I die:
I have travelled a long way, merely to look on you, to touch you:
For I could not die till I once looked on you,
For I feared I might afterward lose you.

2.
Now we have met, we have looked, we are safe;
Return in peace to the ocean, my love;
I too am part of that ocean, my love—we are not so much separated;
Behold the great rondure—the cohesion of all, how perfect!
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,
As for an hour carrying us diverse—yet cannot carry us diverse for ever;
Be not impatient—a little space—know you, I salute the air, the ocean,
and the land,
Every day, at sundown, for your dear sake, my love.

— Walt Whitman —

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the encounter…

(enchanted by this strange proximity)

Longing, and mystery, and delight…
as if from the swaying blackness
of some slow-motion masquerade
onto the dim bridge you came.

And night flowed, and silent there floated
into its satin streams
that black mask’s wolf-like profile
and those tender lips of yours.

And under the chestnuts, along the canal
you passed, luring me askance.
What did my heart discern in you,
how did you move me so?

In your momentary tenderness,
or in the changing contour of your shoulders,
did I experience a dim sketch
of other — irrevocable — encounters?

Perhaps romantic pity
led you to understand
what had set trembling that arrow
now piercing through my verse?

I know nothing. Strangely
the verse vibrates, and in it, an arrow…
Perhaps you, still nameless, were
the genuine, the awaited one?

But sorrow not yet quite cried out
perturbed our starry hour.
Into the night returned the double fissure
of your eyes, eyes not yet illumed.

For long? For ever? Far off
I wander, and strain to hear
the movement of the stars above our encounter
and what if you are to be my fate…

Longing, and mystery, and delight,
and like a distant supplication…
My heart must travel on.
But if you are to be my fate…

— Vladimir Nabokov —
translated by Olga Voronina

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black march…

I have a freind
At the end
Of the world.
His name is a breath

Of fresh air.
He is dressed in
Grey chiffon. At least
I think it is chiffon.
It has a
Peculiar look, like smoke.

It wraps him round
It blows out of place
It conceals him
I have not seen his face.

But I have seen his eyes, they are
As pretty and bright
As raindrops on black twigs
In March, and heard him say:

I am a breath
Of fresh air for you, a change
By and by.

Black March I call him
Because of his eyes
Being like March raindrops
On black twigs.

(Such a pretty time when the sky
Behind black twigs can be seen
Stretched out in one
Uninterrupted
Cambridge blue as cold as snow.)

But this friend
Whatever new names I give him
Is an old friend. He says:

Whatever names you give me
I am
A breath of fresh air,
A change for you.

 

— Stevie Smith —

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talisman…

i write these words
quickly repeat them
softly to myself
this talisman for you
fold this prayer
around your neck fortify
your back with these
whispers
may you walk ever
loved and in love
know the sun
for warmth the moon
for direction
may these words always
remind you your breath
is sacred words
bring out the god
in you

— Suheir Hammad —

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letters to a young poet…

To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far on into life, is — solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves. Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over, and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate — ?), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world for himself for another’s sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.

                                                                                                                   — Rilke