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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.

 

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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 —
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on lies, secrets, and silence…

An honorable human relationship — that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love” — is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.

It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.

It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.

It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.

— Adrienne Rich —

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the sight of the stars…

You appeared before me in my dreams;
as yet unseen, you were already dear.
Your wondrous gaze filled me with longing,
your voice resounded in my heart,
long ago… no, it wasn’t a dream!

As soon as you arrived, I recognized you.

Have you not spoken to me in silence?
Have you not stooped gently at my bedside,
and whispered words of joy and love,
and whispered the words, “who are you?”

My fate, I entrust to you.
I can wait, I can wait…
You are my terrible angel,
my beautiful tempter…

What dark can come, when love is so light?

O, night is past,
everything is awake,
and the sun is rising…

lllllllllll— Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky —

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roc…

We are come late to the love of birds
for we are come late to love.

Before we had been nothing:
a fossilized egg, a tired metaphor, old as mutton.

Now, the sharp twinge of middle age
and we are caught in love’s punctured balloon.

In banana peel sobriety.
Furred epithet, feathered lash.

We are come late to the mythology of love,
the beefheart stain of the great winged roc

upon the ground of our imaginings,
soft like the centres of some candies.

Soft like the quilted centres of our beds,
our quivering bird organs.

Give us the sweeping shadow,
down from the mountains of Araby.

Give us the claws that catch
us from the desert path, swoop us,

fat white sheep in the meadow,
into that prickled nest, high, up high.

roc

 

 

 

 

 

— Sandra Kasturi —