Secret Thots for a Very Private Gentleman
tales, temptation, and titillation…
You are so dear, so wonderful. I think of you all day long, and miss your grace, your… beauty, the bright sword-play of your wit, the delicate fancy of your genius, so surprising always in its sudden swallow-flights towards north and south, towards sun and moon — and, above all, yourself.
— Oscar Wilde —
Be helpless, dumbfounded,
Unable to say yes or no.
Then a stretcher will come from grace
To gather us up.
We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty
If we say we can, we’re lying.
If we say No, we don’t see it,
That No will behead us
And shut tight our window onto spirit.
So let us rather not be sure of anything,
Besides ourselves, and only that, so
Miraculous beings come running to help.
Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,
We shall be saying finally,
With tremendous eloquence, Lead us.
When we have totally surrendered to that beauty,
We shall be a mighty kindness.
— Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi —
In trains we need not choose our company
For all the logic of departure is
That recognition is suspended; we
Are islanded in unawareness, as
Our minds reach out to where we want to be.But carried thus impersonally on,
We hardly see that person opposite
Who, if we only knew it, might be one
Who, far more than the other waiting at
Some distant place, knows our true destination.
— Philip Larkin —
yours is the light by which my spirit’s born:
– you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.
— e.e. cummings —
Hours continuing long, sore and heavy-hearted,
Hours of the dusk, when I withdraw to a lonesome and un-frequented
spot, seating myself, leaning my face in my
hands;
Hours sleepless, deep in the night, when I go forth, speeding
swiftly the country roads, or through the city streets, or
pacing miles and miles, stifling plaintive cries;
Hours discouraged, distracted—for the one I cannot content
myself without, soon I saw him content himself without
me;
Hours when I am forgotten, (O weeks and months are pass-
ing, but I believe I am never to forget!)
Sullen and suffering hours! (I am ashamed—but it is useless
—I am what I am;)
Hours of my torment—I wonder if other men ever have the
like, out of the like feelings?
Is there even one other like me—distracted—his friend, his
lover, lost to him?
Is he too as I am now? Does he still rise in the morning, de-
jected, thinking who is lost to him? and at night, awak-
ing, think who is lost?
Does he too harbor his friendship silent and endless? harbor
his anguish and passion?
Does some stray reminder, or the casual mention of a name,
bring the fit back upon him, taciturn and deprest?
Does he see himself reflected in me? In these hours, does he
see the face of his hours reflected?
— Walt Whitman —
… the doorway each will soon enter:
where I will meet her again
and know her again,
dark radiance with, and then mostly without, the stars.
Very likely she has always understood
what I have slowly learned
and which only now, after being away, almost as far away
as one can get on this globe, almost
as far as thoughts can carry—yet still in her presence,
still surrounded not so much by reminders of her
as by things she had already reminded me of,
shadows of her
cast forward and waiting—can I try to express:
that love is hard,
that while many good things are easy, true love is not,
because love is first of all a power,
its own power,
which continually must make its way forward, from night
into day, from transcending union always forward into difficult
day.
And as the plane descends, it comes to me,
in the space
where tears stream down across the stars,
tears fallen on the actual earth
where their shining is what we call spirit,
that once the lover
recognizes the other, knows for the first time
what is most to be valued in another,
from then on, love is very much like courage,
perhaps it is courage, and even
perhaps
only courage. Squashed
out of old selves, smearing the darkness
of expectation across experience…
— Galway Kinnell —
Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamer,
Bring me all your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.
— Langston Hughes —
reach behind me as you kiss me
slide my panties to the side
with your other hand
slip between and split me there
my ass so sweet
pump my wet
my legs spread just so to make room
for your curious fingers
your cock swells and dances for me
as we moan
my juice
all over
us
so much juice
so much
just for you
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
— Edna St. Vincent Millay —
love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail
it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea
love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive
it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky
— e.e. cummings —