Sometimes I have wanted
to throw you off
like a heavy coat.
Sometimes I have said
you would not let me
breathe or move.
But now that I am free
to choose light clothes
or none at all
I feel the cold
and all the time I think
how warm it used to be.
Vicki Feaver
No one should ask the other,
“What were you thinking?”
No one, that is,
who doesn’t want to hear about the past
and its inhabitants,
or the strange loneliness of the present
filled, even as it may be, with pleasure,
or those snapshots
of the future, different heads
on different bodies.
Some people actually desire honesty.
They must never have broken
into their own solitary houses
after having misplaced the key,
never seen with an intruder’s eyes
what is theirs.
Stephen Dunn
I wake up and say: I’m through.
It’s my first thought at dawn.
What a nice way to start the day
with such a murderous thought.
God, take pity on me
―is the second thought, and then
I get out of bed
and live as if
nothing has been said.
Nina Cassian
Admit something:
Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me.”
Of course you do not do this out loud; Otherwise,
someone would call the cops.
Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us
to connect.
Why not become the one who lives with a full moon
in each eye that is always saying,
with that sweet moon language,
what every other eye in this world is dying to hear?
Hafiz (translated by Daniel Ladinsky)
I left this morning saying ‘I love you’
as if setting out for some unknown country
instead of the corner shop. I wanted
you to be sure, in case
this time - out of, say, 10,000 departures
I never made it back: although
after 50 years together, 2 countries,
3 children, and several former journeys
that would put this one to shame
you’d think there’d be no need to pause
on my own doorstep, suddenly afraid
of the distance between us, of your absolute beauty,
of the growing aloneness when I clicked the latch.
Peter Bland
I am not jealous
of what came before me.
Come with a man
on your shoulders,
come with a hundred men in your hair,
come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet,
come like a river
full of drowned men
which flows down to the wild sea,
to the eternal surf, to Time!
Bring them all
to where I am waiting for you;
we shall always be alone,
we shall always be you and I
alone on earth,
to start our life!
Pablo Neruda
I
Locate someone other than yourself.
Make sure they have lips.
II
Find out if the person you’ve located is agreeable to kissing.
You can do this any way you want, except for asking.
III
Make sure you have your lips with you.
Nothing is more embarrassing than moving to kiss someone
and realizing you’ve left your lips at home or in the car.
Unless you happen to be in the car,
where you can slyly move to adjust the radio,
slapping on your lips during the confusion.
IV
Tell the person their eyes make you want to do gymnastics,
or at least be present where gymnastics are being done.
V
Touch the hand.
Any Hand.
Not your own hand.
VI
Lean your head forward at a slight angle (such as fifteen degrees)
so your foreheads will connect first
as if you’re attempting a Vulcan mind meld.
If your minds actually begin to meld MILK IT.
VII
Slowly re-angle your head so your lips become parallel with his or hers.
Practice this ahead of time using a protractor.
VIII
Allow your lips to make contact with the other lips
BUT DON’T MOVE THEM.
Remain completely still for twenty-eight minutes
or until you hear an electronic beeping
indicating it is time to move to step nine.
This time may vary depending on political climate
and lip gloss.
IX
Repeat steps five through eight.
X
Clear your head
so the only thing you can focus on
is a PBS special on the clitoris.
XI
Begin moving your lips in a slow up and down fashion,
varying with left and right motions every fifteen seconds.
XII
Force your tongue through your subject’s lips and teeth.
Fight past their tongue.
Charge forward until you reach the uvula.
Kissing is just an intimate game of Capture the Uvula.
XIII
Abandon all tenderness
with reckless nibbling
of anything fleshy you encounter.
XIV
Congratulations!
You are now kissing.
XV
Imagine life as a Frenchman.
Rick Lupert
I like the fact that you’re not mad about me,
I like the fact that I’m not mad for you,
And that the globe of planet earth is grounded
And will not drift away beneath our shoes.
I like the fact that I can laugh here loudly,
Not play with words, feel unashamed and loose
And never flush with stifling waves above me
When we brush sleeves, and not need an excuse.
I like the fact that you don’t feel ashamed
As you, before my eyes, embrace another,
I like the fact that I will not be damned
To hell for kissing someone else with ardor,
That you would never use my tender name
In vain, that in the silence of the church’s towers,
We’ll never get to hear the sweet refrain
Of hallelujahs sung somewhere above us.
With both, my heart and hand, I thank you proudly
For everything, - although you hardly knew
You loved me so: and for my sleeping soundly,
And for the lack of twilight rendezvous,
No moonlit walks with both your arms around me,
No sun above our heads or skies of blue,
For never feeling - sadly! - mad about me,
For me not feeling - sadly! - mad for you.
Marina Tsvetaeva
Unexpectedly we’ll meet again years later,
quite on purpose we’ll mix beer and wine
with vodka, to ride bicycles in the middle of the night
around the estate, unexpectedly bumping into the high
kerbstones, trampling flowerbeds, cutting our cheeks
on branches that have sprung up unexpectedly, then un-
expectedly to fall over, and pushing our
warped bicycles, come to my place, to dress
our wounds, and then lie down to sleep, in the morning
to copulate unexpectedly like animals, out
of fear that something will unexpectedly return
that we felt years ago, copulating like people.
Tadeusz Dabrowski
You’re a European mess
rolling around in my favorite
dress,
a mouth full of hell
and a chest full of hell yes
Derrick Brown
My back against the bookcase,
your tongue on my ear, my foot
lifted to a shelf. You nearly shout,
sure you should stop, look down,
Please, I tell you with my eyes,
love that you know how to make me
always move when, Shouldn’t
start that, but yes, I add,
you say, guilty, I’m nothing, your
hands down my belly, dear
Jesus, but how to help how we,
like tissue between us, brush aside so easy.
It’s just me then and you and an Oh.
Beth Gylys
what we do in the dark has no hands. no
crossover effect, no good-bye kiss after the alarm.
what we carry in, we carry out, end of story. this
doesn’t even want to be love. except in minutes
when your face has the shape of my palm and I think
lungful. let want out with the cat. returns
and returns, something dutiful. persistent.
hold your breath, let it build, let go. this is practice.
I’m losing weight, a bad sign, I’m happy. serious,
you say. contained, I think. the cat comes back
with a dead bird to the doorstep, an offering. bloodless
this should be easy. a two-step to cowboys. you’re beautiful
but that’s not the point.
x
I know my way back perfectly well. like the back
of my hand, as it were. but look, the labyrinth walls
are high hedge and green. this also could be joy.
xx
I literally don’t know your middle name. does that
matter? what systems we arrange for intimacy, small
disclosures like miniature bridges, your mouth. not
what I’d anticipated. softer. to begin with,
I should tell the truth more. I could miss you,
and that’s a liability.
xxx
I am not often off-kilter. but you’re so silent, even
naked, and almost absent. I hush too, why
are we here. go. want to throw things, you, the clock,
break windows until something bleeds and you finally
scream. I tell you too much; we are not
those people. or nothing—maybe I say
utilitarian fuck. how would that be. I want you
to want to fall in love with me and that’s
unhealthy. wrong. leave your shoes by the door
and pretend it’s about the movie. it’s love
in the movies it’s casablanca and toy story
and water no ice come here. pockets need
to be untucked, drawers thrown open,
nobody’s safe. there, I’ve said it:
someone I was could have loved you.
Marty McConnell
I don’t know what it is,
but I distrust myself
when I start to like a girl
a lot.
It makes me nervous.
I don’t say the right things
or perhaps I start
to examine,
evaluate
compute
what I am saying.
If I say, “Do you think it’s going to rain?”
and she says, “I don’t know,”
I start thinking: Does she really like me?
In other words
I get a little creepy.
A friend of mine once said,
“It’s twenty times better to be friends
with someone
than it is to be in love with them.”
I think he’s right and besides,
it’s raining somewhere, programming flowers
and keeping snails happy.
That’s all taken care of.
BUT
if a girl likes me a lot
and starts getting real nervous
and suddenly begins asking me funny questions
and looks sad if I give the wrong answers
and she says things like,
“Do you think it’s going to rain?”
and I say, “It beats me,”
and she says, “Oh,”
and looks a little sad
at the clear blue California sky,
I think: Thank God, it’s you, baby, this time
instead of me.
Richard Brautigan
I cannot answer you tonight in small portions.
Torn apart by stormy love’s gate, I float
like a phantom facedown in a well where
the cold dark water reflects vague half-built
stars
and trades all our affection, touching, sleeping
together for tribunal distance standing like
a drowned train just beyond a pile of Eskimo
skeletons.
Richard Brautigan
The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.
Langston Hughes
I like to touch your tattoos in complete
darkness, when I can’t see them. I’m sure of
where they are, know by heart the neat
lines of lightning pulsing just above
your nipple, can find, as if by instinct, the blue
swirls of water on your shoulder where a serpent
twists, facing a dragon. When I pull you
to me, taking you until we’re spent
and quiet on the sheets, I love to kiss
the pictures in your skin. They’ll last until
you’re seared to ashes; whatever persists
or turns to pain between us, they will still
be there. Such permanence is terrifying.
So I touch them in the dark; but touch them, trying.
Kim Addonizio
“We don’t have anything in common,”
I said. “We’re two completely different people.
It doesn’t make sense to stay together.”
But then she started to rub my penis
through my pants, & I suddenly remembered
that we both did like Indian food.
Hal Sirowitz
Ah. That.
That’s what I was so disturbed
about this morning:
my desire has come back,
and I want you again.
I was doing fine,
I was above it all.
The boys and girls were beautiful
and I was an old man, loving everyone.
And now I want you again,
I want your absolute attention,
your underwear rolled down in a hurry
still hanging on one foot,
and nothing on my mind
but to be inside
the only place
that has
no inside,
and no outside.
Leonard Cohen
I don’t own an exquisite way to move around in the night
—Doug Benezra
It occurs to me that,
when I die,
they might find the necklace
I dropped behind the bed
and wonder
how long it was there,
and whether I’d missed it.
But will they care
about my favorite color,
my long-range plans,
or my habit of searching myself
for signs of rust?
Dorothea Grossman
It’s really a very beautiful exchange of values when women put their clothes on in the morning and she is brand-new and you’ve never seen her put her clothes on before.
You’ve been lovers and you’ve slept together and there’s nothing more you can do about that, so it’s time for her to put her clothes on.
Maybe you’ve already had breakfast and she’s slipped her sweater on to cook a nice bare-assed breakfast for you, padding in sweet flesh around the kitchen, and you both discussed in length the poetry of Rilke which she knew a great deal about, surprising you.
But now it’s time for her to put her clothes on because you’ve both had so much coffee that you can’t drink any more and it’s time for her to go home and it’s time for her to go to work and you want to stay there alone because you’ve got some things to do around the house and you’re going outside together for a nice walk and it’s time for you to go home and it’s time for you to go to work and she’s got some things that she wants to do around the house.
Or … maybe it’s even love.
But anyway: It’s time for her to put her clothes on and it’s so beautiful when she does it. Her body slowly disappears and comes out quite nicely all in clothes. There’s a virginal quality to it. She’s got her clothes on, and the beginning is over.
Richard Brautigan
