1247 Love poems

has been written in mud and butter and barbecue sauce. The walls and the floors used to be gorgeous. The socks off-white and a near match. The quince with fire blight but we get two pints of jelly in the end. Long walks strengthen the back. You with a fever blister and myself with a sty. Eyes have we and we are forever prey to each other’s teeth. The torrents go over us. Thunder has not harmed anyone we know. The river coursing through us is dirty and deep. The left hand protects the rhythm. Watch your head. No fires should be unattended. Especially when wind. Each receives a free swiss army knife. The first few tongues are clearly preparatory. The impression made by yours I carry to my grave. It is just so sad so creepy so beautiful. Bless it. We have so little time to learn, so much... The river courses dirty and deep. Cover the lettuce. Call it a night. O soul. Flow on. Instead.

if i said baby you might think a certain thing but nah. that’s only maybe what i mean, perhaps i’ll say ma & your mind says Cam’ron, women creeping up but i’m a changed man, & that’s not game ma. it’s practice in high school & THOT isn’t out yet. we’re classic Chicago & bustdowns bloom in our mouths. my Ma spits Too $hort & the line i catch the first time is b*tch b*tch b*tch make me rich but Ma puts me on punishment when i whisper Ludacris & tells me sex shouldn’t hurt. i say nothing & Ma lets it go until a few years later when i get becky or brain or top or dome by a white girl & Ma tells me everything i’ve risked for this escapade. i can’t fix my mouth to say but Ma what i got i didn’t ask for

You. You at the door a crumpled thing when I open surprised.Sing, you hiss.Prosecute, sentence, waving your thin not-arms like dollar bills, your bewildering moldy skin — one or two of you are you, are you a god now, bony, wing-beaten down, smaller than ever, not dead as you should be but not alive either as you indicate mumbling almost falling in on your clawed feet —I still have desire— you float — at my small door — me inside — me inside life. Are you newborn now, I ask. Are you remnant. Why.Why are there moneylenders you say swatting me away when I ask can I help, growing more crumbled, but more than just cloth — all feather, burlap, beak, fingergrip, all edge and cling. A thing not formed or not divided yet. Pre-conception. Just at the threshold. Almost falling in your uneven crouching. Your chest a pulsation. A languishment that will not die. What is die. Now there is not blood on the earth anymore. We disappear. We pixilate. Races or places, is it. Which? Remember what it was to carry your load? Your you. That weight. Wondrous it was. At intervals light-struck. Silence and then the cutting of water, sleeping audible, thrown about by breath, keeping a sharp lookout — here’s where free choice vanished, here rights, here the real meaning of the word — (you choose) — consequence, capital, commodity, con- sumption. Community? Come here says time. Just try to find it, the here. Such a good game to keep you occupied for now. The rest of the now. It’s going to be a long time. Why are you here.What are they lending you. How can it be loaned. What is a loan. The changers. Who gets to keep it. No one gets to keep it. No one. None of it. What is it. The money changers. What can you change it into. What else do you want the things to become. But it won’t stay still as currency either. It will be changed again. Shape-shifting and all the other tiny adjustments. Currency manipulation — feel it — all those other hands on it, each with its own need, having held it — grasped, changed, folded, tucked, handed — oh look it becomes virtual — the fingerprint is lifted off, its little stain — no one’s need is on it any- more. It’s clean. It has never been, and never again will be, touched. The looping ledger of the fingerprint’s wish. I signed my name to this.Did you. In the hush. At the center. Among the closed shutters at the height of the day I signed. I clenched the pen and then my dream. It flowed. No one is ever at home. I don’t know why. Had been told to live by any means possible. Did. Beyond, the sea. You could feel this period coming to an end. All of it. A bomb went off, legs went off, means went off, blew off, like gossamer — nothing stalled — you couldn’t get it to stall — seemed painted-on but it was not, was sleeping, reality finally was sleeping — so deeply — you couldn’t wake it up again, you couldn’t wake yourself again — it rained — time sputtered now and then like a regurgitation of space. It’s a jail, light says, but it looks like just being lost, full of the things we needed to learn, us ready to step up and offer our lungs, intake and out,change me we say. We want to be identified, written-in, collected. Worth me up. Give me my true value ... But still I have to bring this to you in these words, cracked glaze all over it, little holes over it, belief drilled through, self, that boutique, gone under, such dark windows, history arrested ... History arrested. How is that possible. It flowed. It flowed without us, us on it if we could catch a ride sometimes. How do you live in this end. I look at you. You have been through. Your war is done. I try to squint it in. Do you really want to begin again. Is that why you’re here. I feel I could count your fingers, each hair left on you, each thread of skin, each crease. Four or five times you cast a glance on us. But then it’s done. Your passing by us now a buzzing of flies. You stand at the window and the song begins. We don’t know what to do with it, the moon, that monster, the fame and the thirst, the night out there a shirt rolled up to reveal what dusk had hid — a murky heart, a love that would never be replaced. But they are still there on the steps — the money changers. The steps of evening rise. They want you to exchange. That is the sacrament. Why does he keep throwing them out. Day after day. Forever. Listen to me, you say, you are going off into thought, it is not a real road. Take yourself off the road. He is and is not but he is. And you are always in the holy place. Because just being in it makes it holy. Uphold it. Linger. Be eternal for this instant. Lodge in. I cannot say in what. Have spent a lifetime saying in. In flow, in promise, rich, in haste experiment crowd season in bias gnawing at hope invisible in time standing in it confounded tongue in my mouth about to curl up, speak, promise, taste promise, laugh at the ignorance, cherish ignorance — don’t leave — this is where I’ve arrived — don’t slip away, the reverse of the watching and waiting is finally here, wasn’t mine, wasn’t me speaking either. Not anymore. This is that dream. The darling of failure. No identification. All impending and then the now strikes. It is unbreakable. It is. You must believe me. I want to be here and also there where you receive this but I can’t. That’s the whole story. I will never know what is there to know. You will not be changed. You must believe.

O put a hand on her hand On Exterior Street The day was full of day On Exterior Street Moths drank tears from sleeping birds On Exterior Street You could think and look On Exterior Street The balls of the sycamore were swinging On Exterior Street Storing the definitions loading the differences Why did I still want to give it away Why not wait and write about that beautiful green sweater I was a virgin and learnt all about cells from Penelope Even the private road is exterior As one said all breasts are beautiful The Flower this flower is falling over It will never be more exalting It will always be more exalting On Exterior Street

Dear lost sharer of silences, I would send a letter the way the tree sends messages in leaves, or the sky in exclamations of pure cloud. Therefore I write in this blue ink, color of secret veins and arteries. It is morning here. Already the postman walks the innocent streets, dangerous as Aeolus with his bag of winds, or Hermes, the messenger, god of sleep and dreams who traces my image upon this stamp. In public buildings letters are weighed and sorted like meat; in railway stations huge sacks of mail are hidden like robbers' booty behind freight-car doors. And in another city the conjurer will hold a fan of letters before your outstretched hand— "Pick any card. . . " You must tear the envelope as you would tear bread. Only then dark rivers of ink will thaw and flow under all the bridges we have failed to build between us.

We buried the problem. We planted a tree over the problem. We regretted our actions toward the problem. We declined to comment on the problem. We carved a memorial to the problem, dedicated it. Forgot our handkerchief. We removed all “unnatural” ingredients, handcrafted a locally-grown tincture for the problem. But nobody bought it. We freshly-laundered, bleached, deodorized the problem. We built a wall around the problem, tagged it with pictures of children, birds in trees. We renamed the problem, and denounced those who used the old name. We wrote a law for the problem, but it died in committee. We drove the problem out with loud noises from homemade 
instruments. We marched, leafleted, sang hymns, linked arms with the problem, got dragged to jail, got spat on by the problem and let out. We elected an official who Finally Gets the problem. We raised an army to corral and question the problem. They went door to door but could never ID. We made www.problem.com so You Can Find Out About the 
problem, and www.problem.org so You Can Help. We created 1-800-Problem, so you could Report On the problem, and 1-900-Problem so you could Be the Only Daddy That Really Turns That problem On. We drove the wheels offa that problem. We rocked the shit out of that problem. We amplified the problem, turned it on up, and blew it out. We drank to forget the problem. We inhaled the problem, exhaled the problem, crushed its ember under our shoe. We put a title on the problem, took out all the articles, conjunctions, and verbs. Called it “Exprmntl Prblm.” We shot the problem, and put it out of its misery. We swallowed daily pills for the problem, followed a problem fast, drank problem tea. We read daily problem horoscopes. Had our problem palms read by a seer. We prayed. Burned problem incense. Formed a problem task force. Got a problem degree. Got on the problem tenure track. Got a problem retirement plan. We gutted and renovated the problem. We joined the Neighborhood Problem Development Corp. We listened and communicated with the problem, only to find out that it had gone for the day. We mutually empowered the problem. We kissed and stroked the problem, we fucked the problem all night. Woke up to an empty bed. We watched carefully for the problem, but our flashlight died. We had dreams of the problem. In which we could no longer 
recognize ourselves. We reformed. We transformed. Turned over a new leaf. Turned a corner, found ourselves near a scent that somehow reminded us of the problem, In ways we could never Put into words. That Little I-can’t-explain-it That makes it hard to think. That Rings like a siren inside.

Didn’t Sappho say her guts clutched up like this? Before a face suddenly numinous, her eyes watered, knees melted. Did she lactate again, milk brought down by a girl’s kiss? It’s documented torrents are unloosed by such events as recently produced not the wish, but the need, to consume, in us, one pint of Maalox, one of Kaopectate. My eyes and groin are permanently swollen, I’m alternatingly brilliant and witless —and sleepless: bed is just a swamp to roll in. Although I’d cream my jeans touching your breast, sweetheart, it isn’t lust; it’s all the rest of what I want with you that scares me shitless.

“Dark and amusing he is, this handsome gallant, Of chamois-polished charm, Athlete and dancer of uncommon talent— Is there cause for alarm In his smooth demeanor, the proud tilt of his chin, This cavaliere servente, this Harlequin? “Gentle and kindly this other, ardent but shy, With an intelligence Who would not glory to be guided by— And would it not make sense To trust in someone so devoted, so Worshipful as this tender, pale Pierrot? “Since both of them delight, if I must choose I win a matchless mate, But by that very winning choice I lose— I pause, I hesitate, Putting decision off,” says Columbine, “And while I hesitate, they both are mine.”

Heart, oh heart, I sit here writing your name on pieces of paper, folded, hidden, misplaced . . . found again. There is the element of saying and there is the element of making: one needn’t choose. I am singing the dream out from the ice, asking it to carry me like a horse or a river, down and away. This day, here in paned-glass sun: the young waitress shaking out her apron and retying it flat across her stomach— a bit of vanity—her hair swept off her neck, crash of a milk bottle on the granite counter, cream spread in a mild pool toward the rim, and the roots of habit and longing briefly seized by the mind. So noisy here! The sound echoes out of years, brought to this showing forth, unrehearsed. It seems we wake and find ourselves repeating, embodying the ancient gestures by which we recognize ourselves completed. Not one of us could be born and invent life—it must show through us— the arm flung in the air, the coffee poured out, and down the street, someone hurrying by, head down against the wind. And a man and a woman come to an old grief, carved in them, carved into them —the old way of water wearing rock— by law, and the hatred between them is equal to the hope neither will release. Each wants to be whole, to embody all of time, when nothing in this world is whole, and this is by law. When my father said bitterly to my mother:you have changed, he meant, without meaning to say, how she had changed him. A man holds his head down against the wind. Yet the wind fills him with the dust of temples, the breath of the dead. The dream of the light inside the branches— a gleam of wet, glimmer that is a bud, the leaf within the bud. The photographer comes inside and closes the lens of his camera. Then he is the lens. Then my eye is the light. This is the element of saying. The young waitress flings a paper cup behind her, into the trash can. That is a saying. The cream swirled into the coffee, the sugar dissolving, disembodied, and the body of the manager disappears, swallowed into a doorway. The element of making is slow, uncertain as a temple, a falling forward, stitching back, like a stone wall, like the panes in an arched window, like a repetition chosen beyond necessity. Yet somehow we have seen all this before— the girl in the fur hat speaking syrup into a phone; the falseness of her charm is an ancient imposter, familiar and therefore true. A door is opened and falls closed. Suddenly at every table someone looks down and is reading— books, newspapers, calendars, reading tea leaves, reading bones. A woman in a periwinkle jacket: I am reading her shoulders as the day introspects. In dream the passive construction and the past perfect tense prevail: she was being pushed on a swing. The woman with many television credits gazes out the window, heavy with years, forgetting herself, forgetting sorrow, the false husband, the crippled child, the old plots forgetting, and it is suddenly lovely, as free as something read or dreamed; the young waitress with sun on her face—her unblemished face—looks up, from the middle of eternity, her desire immaculate in the moment. When a word is beautiful above all others—your name— when a woman appears as a bird of prey and we turn away, hoping not to be recognized—oh heart!— when the light on the branches flares in a window with no sky, this is old story reading us, these are springs from words laid down before and ahead of us, and in the moment we are making an answer.

1 ONE Day the Amarous Lisander , By an impatient Passion sway'd, Surpris'd fair Cloris , that lov'd Maid, Who cou'd defend her self no longer ; All things did with his Love conspire, The gilded Planet of the Day, In his gay Chariot, drawn by Fire, Was now descending to the Sea, And left no Light to guide the World , But what from Cloris brighter Eyes was hurl'd. 2 In alone Thicket , made for Love, Silent as yielding Maids Consent, She with a charming Languishment Permits his force, yet gently strove ? Her Hands his Bosom softly meet, But not to put him back design'd, Rather to draw him on inclin'd, Whilst he lay trembling at her feet; Resistance 'tis to late to shew, She wants the pow'r to say — Ah! what do you do? 3 Her bright Eyes sweat, and yet Severe, Where Love and Shame confus'dly strive, Fresh Vigor to Lisander give : And whispring softly in his Ear, She Cry'd — Cease — cease — your vain desire, Or I'll call out — What wou'd you do ? My dearer Honour, ev'n to you, I cannot — must not give — retire, Or take that Life whose chiefest part I gave you with the Conquest of my Heart. 4 But he as much unus'd to fear, As he was capable of Love, The blessed Minutes to improve, Kisses her Lips, her Neck, her Hair ! Each touch her new Desires alarms ! His burning trembling Hand he prest Upon her melting Snowy Breast, While she lay panting in his Arms ! All her unguarded Beauties lie The Spoils and Trophies of the Enemy. 5 And now, without Respect or Fear, He seeks the Objects of his Vows ; His Love no Modesty allows : By swift degrees advancing where His daring Hand that Alter seiz'd, Where Gods of Love do Sacrifice ; That awful Throne , that Paradise, Where Rage is tam'd, and Anger pleas'd ; That Living Fountain , from whose Trills The melted Soul in liquid Drops distils. 6 Her balmy Lips encountring his, Their Bodies as their Souls are joyn'd, Where both in Transports were confin'd, Extend themselves upon the Moss . Cloris half dead and breathless lay, Her Eyes appear'd like humid Light , Such as divides the Day and Night ; Or falling Stars, whose Fires decay ; And now no signs of Life she shows, But what in short-breath-sighs returns and goes. 7 He saw how at her length she lay, He saw her rising Bosom bare, Her loose thin R obes , through which appear A Shape design'd for Love and Play ; Abandon'd by her Pride and Shame, She do's her softest Sweets dispence , Offring her Virgin-Innocence A Victim to Loves Sacred Flame ; Whilst th' or'e ravish'd Shepherd lies, Unable to perform the Sacrifice. 8 Ready to taste a Thousand Joys, Thee too transported hapless Swain, Found the vast Pleasure turn'd to Pain : Pleasure , which too much Love destroys ! The willing Garments by he laid, And Heav'n all open to his view ; Mad to possess, himself he threw On the defenceless lovely Maid. But oh ! what envious Gods conspire To snatch his Pow'r, yet leave him the Desire ! 9 Natures support , without whose Aid She can no humane Being give, It self now wants the Art to live, Faintness it slacken'd Nerves invade : In vain th' enraged Youth assaid To call his fleeting Vigour back, No Motion 'twill from Motion take, Excess of Love his Love betray'd ; In vain he Toils, in vain Commands, Th' Insensible fell weeping in his Hands. 10 In this so Am'rous cruel strife, Where Love and Fate were too severe, The poor Lisander in Despair , Renounc'd his Reason with his Life. Now all the Brisk and Active Fire That should the Nobler Part inflame, Unactive Frigid, Dull became, And left no Spark for new Desire ; Not all her Naked Charms cou'd move, Or calm that Rage that had debauch'd his Love. 11 Cloris returning from the Trance Which Love and soft Desire had bred, Her tim'rous Hand she gently laid, Or guided by Design or Chance, Upon that Fabulous Priapus , That Potent God (as Poets feign.) But never did young Shepherdess (Gath'ring of Fern upon the Plain) More nimbly draw her Fingers back, Finding beneath the Verdant Leaves a Snake. 12 Then Cloris her fair Hand withdrew, Finding that God of her Desires Disarm'd of all his pow'rful Fires, And cold as Flow'rs bath'd in the Morning-dew . Who can the Nymphs Confusion guess ? The Blood forsook the kinder place, And strew'd with Blushes all her Face, Which both Disdain and Shame express ; And from Lisanders Arms she fled, Leaving him fainting on the gloomy Bed . 13 Like Lightning through the Grove she hies, Or Daphne from the Delphick God ; No Print upon the Grassie Road She leaves, t' instruct pursuing Eyes. The Wind that wanton'd in her Hair , And with her ruffled Garments plaid, Discover'd in the flying Maid All that the Gods e're made of Fair . So Venus , when her Love was Slain, With fear and haste flew o're the fatal Plain. 14 The Nymphs resentments, none but I Can well imagin, and Condole ; But none can guess Lisander 's Soul, But those who sway'd his Destiny : His silent Griefs, swell up to Storms , And not one God, his Fury spares, He Curst his Birth , his Fate , his Stars , But more the Shepherdesses Charms ; Whose soft bewitching influence, Had Damn'd him to the Hell of Impotence .