June 2011
92 posts
5 tags
A Decade
When you came, you were like red wine and honey, And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness. Now you are like morning bread, Smooth and pleasant. I hardly taste you at all, for I know your savor; But I am completely nourished
Amy Lowell
5 tags
I am dazed by the beauty of my body
I am dazed by the beauty of my body. today I looked at myself with your eyes. discovered the soft curve of shoulders the tired round breasts which want to sleep and slowly roll down in spite of themselves. my legs unfolding offering infinitely up to the limits absent from what is me and what beyond me throbs in every leaf in every raindrop. I saw myself as if through glass in your eyes looking at...
4 tags
Happiness Severity Index
Though in the lower standard deviation, I fall, the statistician says, within the normal range of happiness. Therefore, no drugs today.
What about tomorrow? What if doodling stars isn’t enough? Will I be asked to color the rainbow one more time?
Name three wishes that might come true? List everything I’ve been given within a minute?
Though within the normal range of happiness, I score poor on...
5 tags
Nightclub
You are so beautiful and I am a fool to be in love with you is a theme that keeps coming up in songs and poems. There seems to be no room for variation. I have never heard anyone sing I am so beautiful and you are a fool to be in love with me, even though this notion has surely crossed the minds of women and men alike. You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool is another one you don’t head. Or,...
4 tags
Forgetfulness
The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones. Long ago you kissed the names of...
4 tags
Weighing the Dog
It is awkward for me and bewildering for him as I hold him in my arms in the small bathroom, balancing our weight on the shaky blue scale, but this is the way to weigh a dog and easier than training him to sit obediently on one spot with his tongue out, waiting for the cookie. With pencil and paper I subtract my weight from our total to find out the remainder that is his, and I start to wonder if...
3 tags
Love's Not the Way to Treat a Friend
Love’s not the way to treat a friend. I wouldn’t wish that on you. I don’t want to see your eyes forgotten on a rainy day, lost in the endless purse of those who can remember nothing. Love’s not the way to treat a friend. I don’t want to see you end up that was with your body being poured like wounded marble into the architecture of those who make bridges out of crippled birds. Love’s...
4 tags
The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster
When you take your pill it’s like a mine disaster. I think of all the people lost inside of you. Richard Brautigan
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Q: What are some sounds you like?
A: 1. An asymmetrical airline carousel created a high pitched haunted voice brought on by the friction of rubbing and it sounded like a big wet finger circling the rim of a gigantic wine glass. 2. Street corner evangelists 3. Pile drivers in Manhattan 4. My wife’s singing voice 5. Horses coming/trains coming 6. Children when school’s out 7. Hungry crows 8....
3 tags
Nice Ass
There is so much lost and so much gained in these words.
Richard Brautigan
4 tags
Catch a Body
Salinger, I’m sorry, but “Don’t ever tell anybody anything” is a string of words I would like to wrap up in canvas and sink to the bottom of the Hudson, or extract by laser from the ribcage of all of us who ever believed it, who felt afraid to miss someone, to be the last one standing. “Tell everyone everything” is not exactly right, but I do believe that if your mother looks radiant in...
3 tags
Bar Napkin Sonnet #23
Sometimes you have to swallow. I love you might otherwise escape your lust-dumb lips. By dumb I mean here dim-witted, not mute, though I have learned the Helen Keller trick to see no, hear no, speak no thing like truth. How could this big dumb guy I’m sitting with have made me come so hard I damn near swooned? And now he’s watching baseball as if it’s a new religion. Jesus Christ. Who knew that...
2 tags
Poem Ending With Hands on Handlebars (excerpt)
The photograph of a man falling from the sky is the same photograph of the same man flying. Clay Matthews
4 tags
Fuck
There are people who will tell you that using the word fuck in a poem indicates a serious lapse of taste, or imagination,
or both. It’s vulgar, indecorous, an obscenity that crashes down like an anvil falling through a skylight
to land on a restaurant table, on the white linen, the cut-glass vase of lilacs. But if you were sitting over coffee when the metal
hit your saucer like a missile,...
3 tags
Subway Poem
Yo, Spring!
We need weather baby, We need tulips, lilacs, dandelions in the grass and your sweet ass Hettie Jones
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Vision of Your Body
In the dimly lit room I had a brief glimpse of bliss: sight of your naked body like a god reclining. That was all. Quite unaware you got up to get your clothes just naturally while I shuddered like the earth split open by lightning. Daisy Zamora
3 tags
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers; thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance, risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body. I love you...
3 tags
I've Always Enjoyed Her Sense of Humor
She’s an old friend And I don’t see her very often, But she has a way of turning up When I’m talking to a girl I’ve just met, And she will invariably storm up to us And confront me with, “where is the child support check?!” Then turn on her heel and storm from the room, Leaving me to make inadequate explanations.
Gerald Locklin
3 tags
The States
it’s an amazing place, where no one enjoys life but they all want to live forever George Tsongas
5 tags
The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy
Reminiscing in the drizzle of Portland, I notice the ring that’s landed on your finger, a massive insect of glitter, a chandelier shining at the end of a long tunnel. Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurt in your voice under a blanket and said there’s two kinds of women—those you write poems about and those you don’t. It’s true. I never brought you a bouquet of sonnets, or...
2 tags
Horse
I’ve never seen a soul detached from its gender, but I’d like to. I’d like to see my own that way, free from its female tethers. Maybe it would be like riding a horse. The rider’s the human one, but everybody looks at the horse. Chase Twichell
3 tags
one of Lorca’s best lines is, “agony, always agony …” think of this when you kill a cockroach or pick up a razor to shave or awaken in the morning to face the sun. Charles Bukowski
4 tags
Dogfish
You don’t want to hear the story of my life, and anyway I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen
to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.
And anyway it’s the same old story - - - a few people just trying, one way or another, to survive.
Mostly, I want to be kind. And nobody, of course, is kind, or mean, for a simple reason.
And nobody gets out of it, having to swim through...
3 tags
The Quiet World
In an effort to get people to look into each other’s eyes more, and also to appease the mutes, the government has decided to allot each person exactly one hundred and sixty-seven words, per day. When the phone rings, I put it to my ear without saying hello. In the restaurant I point at chicken noodle soup. I am adjusting well to the new way. Late at night, I call my long distance lover, ...
4 tags
The Archipelago Of Kisses
We live in a modern society. Husbands and wives don’t grow on trees, like in the old days. So where does one find love? When you’re sixteen it’s easy, like being unleashed with a credit card in a department store of kisses. There’s the first kiss. The sloppy kiss. The peck. The sympathy kiss. The backseat smooch. The we shouldn’t be doing this kiss. The but your lips...
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Web del Sol (excerpt)
Last night in your bed we were three: the moon you & me Octavio Paz
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Body Cavity
A videotape recording of this procedure will begin shortly. I will state the date and time, clearly, then the camera operator shall enter this information electronically onto the videotape.
The camera operator shall be of the same sex you are, unless you request otherwise. This option may not be possible in some areas.
During this search, assuming compliancy, a privacy barrier (e.g. curtain,...
3 tags
Gee, You're So Beautiful That It's Starting to...
Oh, Marcia, I want your long blonde beauty to be taught in high school, so kids will learn that God lives like music in the skin and sounds like a sunshine harpsichord. I want high school report cards to look like this: Playing with Gentle Glass Things A Computer Magic A Writing Letters to Those You Love A Finding out about Fish A Marcia’s Long Blonde Beauty A+! Richard Brautigan
6 tags
Next Time
Next time what I’d do is look at the earth before saying anything. I’d stop just before going into a house and be an emperor for a minute and listen better to the wind … or to the air being still. When anyone talked to me, whether blame or praise or just passing time, I’d watch the face, how the mouth has to work, and see any strain, any sign of what lifted the voice. And...
3 tags
Real Estate
I have emotions that are like newspapers that read themselves. I go for days at a time trapped in the want ads. I feel as if I am an ad for the sale of a haunted house: 18 rooms $37,000 I’m yours ghosts and all. Richard Brautigan
2 tags
Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days. Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals. Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices. Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure...
3 tags
I’ve been a shit and I hate fucking you now because I love fucking you too much; what good’s the head of my cock inside you when my other head, the one with the brains, keeps thinking how fucked up everything is, how fucked I am to be fucking you and thinking these things which take me away from you when all I want is to be close to you but fuck you for letting me fuck you now when all...
3 tags
Fuck Me Like Fried Potatoes
Fuck me like fried potatoes on the most beautifully hungry morning of my God-damn life. Richard Brautigan
3 tags
The Orange
At lunchtime I bought a huge orange The size of it made us all laugh. I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave— They got quarters and I had a half.
And that orange it made me so happy, As ordinary things often do Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park This is peace and contentment. It’s new.
The rest of the day was quite easy. I did all my jobs on my list And...
2 tags
When A Man Hasn't Been Kissed
When I haven’t been kissed in a long time, I walk behind well-dressed women on cold, December mornings and shovel the steamy exhalations pluming from their lips down my throat with both hands, hoping a single molecule will cling to my lungs. When I haven’t been kissed in a long time, I sneak into the ladies room of a fancy restaurant, dig into the trashcan for a napkin where a woman...
3 tags
On Reading Poorly Transcribed Erotica
She stood before him wearing only pantries and he groped for her Volvo under the gauze. She had saved her public hair, and his cook went hard as a fist. They fell to the bad. He shoveled his duck into her posse and all her worm juices spilled out. Still, his enormous election raged on. Her beasts heaved as he sacked them, and his own nibbles went stuff as well. She put her tong in his rear...
4 tags
In a field I am the absence of field. This is always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing. Mark Strand
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When you call me close to tell me your body is not beautiful I want my body and my hands to be pools for your looking and laughing. Leonard Cohen
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Sens-Plastique
“Take me Naked,” The flower said to the sun, “Before Night Closes My thighs.” Malcolm de Chazal
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If it doesn’t come bursting out of you, in spite of everything, don’t do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don’t do it. Charles Bukowski
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The night Hath been to me a more familiar face Than that of man; and in her starry shade Of dim and solitary loveliness I learned the language of another world. Lord Byron
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Humanity i love you because... (excerpt)
Humanity i love you because you are perpetually putting the secret of life in your pants and forgetting it’s there and sitting down on it and because you are forever making poems in the lap of death Humanity i hate you
e.e. cummings
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I almost went to bed without remembering the four white violets I put in the button-hole of your green sweater and how I kissed you then and you kissed me shy as though I’d never been your lover. Leonard Cohen
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The Second Kingdom
In the first kingdom of the stars, everything is always half-beautiful.
Your fingernails are angels sleeping after a long night of making love.
The sound of your eyes: snow coming down the stairs of the wind.
Your hair is the color of God picking flowers.
In the second kingdom of the stars there is only
you Richard Brautigan
5 tags
Love
We fall in love at weddings and auctions, over glasses of wine in Italian restaurants where plastic grapes hang on the lattice, our bodies throb in the checkout line, the bus stop, at basketball games and we can’t keep our hands off each other until we can— so we turn to rubber masks and handcuffs, falling in love again. We go to movies and sit in the air conditioned dark with strangers who are...
4 tags
Strings
We pop into life the way Particles pop in and out Of the continuum. We are a seething mass Of probability. And probably I love you. The evil of larva And the evil of stars Is a formula for the future. Some bodies can Thrust their arms into a flame and be instantly cured of this world, while others sicken. Why think, little brother Like the moon, spit out like A broken tooth. “Oh,” groans the...
4 tags
Admit One
At the ticket window, I won’t follow the body of the usher as she leans to break a twenty with a press of cash register and chest. She’ll tear my ticket and pass twelve-fifty beneath the glass, steering me past the snack bar where two rows of candies in loud yellow boxes will glow like lines on a highway and lead me to my seat. The previews will warn R for restricted, S for sex and V...
4 tags
Survival Poem #17
because this is what you do. get up. blame the liquor for the heaviness. call in late to work. go to the couch because the bed is too empty. watch people scream about love on Jerry Springer. count the ways it could be worse. it could be last week when the missing got so big you wrote him a letter and sent it. it could be yesterday, no work to go to, whole day looming. it could be last month or the...
3 tags
Lovely one, your eyes are too big for your face, your eyes are too big for the earth. There are countries, there are rivers, in your eyes. Pablo Neruda
