1247 Love poems

He that loves a rosy cheek, Or a coral lip admires, Or from star-like eyes doth seek Fuel to maintain his fires; As old Time makes these decay, So his flames must waste away. But a smooth and steadfast mind, Gentle thoughts and calm desires, Hearts with equal love combin'd, Kindle never-dying fires. Where these are not, I despise Lovely cheeks, or lips, or eyes. No tears, Celia, now shall win My resolv'd heart to return; I have search'd thy soul within, And find nought, but pride, and scorn; I have learn'd thy arts, and now Can disdain as much as thou. Some power, in my revenge, convey That love to her I cast away.

O darling, the moon did not disrobe you. You fell asleep that way, nude and capsized by our wine, our Bump ‘n’ Grind shenanigans. Blame it on whatever you like; my bed welcomes whomever you decide to be: thug- mistress, poinsettia, John Doe in the alcove of my dreams. You can quote verbatim an entire album of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony with your ass in the air. There’s nothing wrong with that. They mince syllables as you call me yours. You don’t like me but still invite me to your home when your homies aren’t near enough to hear us crash into each other like hours. Some men have killed their lovers because they loved them so much in secret that the secret kept coming out: wife gouging her husband with suspicion, churches sneering when an usher enters. Never mind that. The sickle moon turns the sky into a man’s mouth slapped sideways to keep him from spilling what no one would understand: you call me God when it gets good though I do not exist to you outside this room. Be yourself or no one else here. Your do-rag is camouflage-patterned and stuffed into my mouth.

“Do you remember me? or are you proud?” Lightly advancing thro’ her star-trimm’d crowd, Ianthe said, and lookt into my eyes, “A yes, a yes, to both: for Memory Where you but once have been must ever be, And at your voice Pride from his throne must rise.”

In the thirtieth year of life I took my heart to be my wife, And as I turn in bed by night I have my heart for my delight. No other heart may mine estrange For my heart changes as I change, And it is bound, and I am free, And with my death it dies with me.

Women asleep. Carlight, east red and west white. Women, and men made of them, and lambs in their droves, and power lines east to the women-made men and women of men, when a man is a sum of what women he knows, and I blurred my vision till I saw a woman and lambs in the streets, west red and white east, and I wanted to eat. Women and men, don’t fear me, I am a hand come to wake her. Red in the west says woman is man is woman is man.

It is eighty degrees in December. It is he, on one of his furloughs, bringing himself — and hell — up to date. My Don Juan, the better climber (as the mercury yo-yos), is in a newly roused state, the world circumcised away from an out-of-season bud leaving at the scrupulous rim, as it unfurls, a darker appliqué, like O-positive frozen solid at the sight of one’s resuscitated victim. This rosebush assiduously forks over its works where most grandifloras falter, thriving as far into the year as Capricorn. While named after a lover, it decorates its own altar and wields an extraordinary thorn: once I saw it catch a football in those semiquaver quasi-teeth; it is three-headed, like Cerberus, a hybrid drawing bloodlines from a root-ball on hands all that’s impure lies beneath. Hands can train it, barbarous as it is, on an arbor, and I might like to take its thick canes in harness, first pouring cement as a base (so it would know I meant business). Always poised to strike, they eventually undo their stays, baying out like a window of garnet, as at Chartres (torture chamber in its basement, or so I hear). I wonder how such a daemon rose got its start, what fairy tale explains its scent    ... And then I go out tonight and find him, swiping right on every pretty face in candlelight. It is almost Christmas. Stacks of square plates. (It’s an open plan.) Racks of bottles. The whites and blacks, clear glass, and stainless steel sieves denote compliance with standards. A wire basket of freckled pears is transparency; sterilized knives give full disclosure; and as regards the stemware, due diligence dares a slip, especially on chanteuses like these salting down from state-of-the-art speakers. (Or is it sugar?) Does the chorizo flambé not deter him? Gold as all hell, Valkyries stand tall with beer to the brim. Beakers in Siren form flush with Chianti, if not ambi- valence. Recalling the steel meshes belting Monterosso’s cliffs against the vox Dei of the sea, the myth refleshes: ordering, in the manner of heroes, an Andromeda on the rocks.

60 Her eye (I'm very fond of handsome eyes) Was large and dark, suppressing half its fire Until she spoke, then through its soft disguise Flash'd an expression more of pride than ire, And love than either; and there would arise A something in them which was not desire, But would have been, perhaps, but for the soul Which struggled through and chasten'd down the whole. 61 Her glossy hair was cluster'd o'er a brow Bright with intelligence, and fair, and smooth; Her eyebrow's shape was like the aerial bow, Her cheek all purple with the beam of youth, Mounting at times to a transparent glow, As if her veins ran lightning; she, in sooth, Possess'd an air and grace by no means common: Her stature tall—I hate a dumpy woman. 62 Wedded she was some years, and to a man Of fifty, and such husbands are in plenty; And yet, I think, instead of such a ONE 'Twere better to have TWO of five-and-twenty, Especially in countries near the sun: And now I think on't, 'mi vien in mente,' Ladies even of the most uneasy virtue Prefer a spouse whose age is short of thirty. 63 'Tis a sad thing, I cannot choose but say, And all the fault of that indecent sun, Who cannot leave alone our helpless clay, But will keep baking, broiling, burning on, That howsoever people fast and pray, The flesh is frail, and so the soul undone: What men call gallantry, and gods adultery, Is much more common where the climate 's sultry.

“e to allor li prega Per quell' amor the i mena, e quei verranno.” INFERNO V This also is a place that love is known in, This hollow land beneath a lifeless sea Opposite to the place that he was born in, How far it is impossible to say. The brackish water as I crossed A bridge was delicately creased And stained and stale, like love-disordered linen. Lovers here must meet on unsure ground Like strangers in a circumspect hotel Which, although luxurious and grand, Trembles beneath their feet like earth in hell. Lifted on concentric gales Scraps of paper, leaves and gulls Fluttered dismally aloft and groaned. Here darkness grows and light itself decays; Rain falls from time to time and night falls too Upon earth’s civil centre that decoys The eternal with the promise that is now. There were no corners, every street Ran on infinite and straight, There is no gate, no warning and no keys. I hear a step approaching and refuse To look aside, a while your silhouette Persists, the fire illuminates your face From under as you light a cigarette; All-knowing, arch-angelic eyes, Human features cut in ice— The spark you struck at once attained the fuse. I recognize the vanity and scorn, The fear, the greed, in short the mask of love, Familiar and disdainful, and I turn About. Like children sharing what they have We learned in that experiment What the spirit’s weakness meant, The nature of the torment to be borne. What shall I give you? What will be your price? Your body’s mine, the rich, fantastic horde Of your embracements—angels live on praise, Take it, it is all I can afford. Outside a centrifugal wind Sustained a freight of souls that whined And wept along the terrible canals. And when I close my eyes I see a ship At anchor in the water of a bay. I cling to that imaginary shape Capable of taking me away To I do not know what ports. Perhaps tomorrow it departs, Anonymous, invulnerable, free.

when you drop your mate at the dock or your children at school. Don’t be cool. Don’t be coy. Or if you do, don’t assume it’s okay to act that way. For today may be your last chance at joy before it flashes away like a tin toy in one of those shooting galleries in midways: those ducks that seem to paddle a stream that’s not a stream but a rotating axle, toothed for disappearance & reappearance, a spit without point or flame, along which randomly clucks the whole game.

I remember that first time: the empty auditorium, her voice, the dark all around us, her mouth reaching into mine. She was Freddy’s foxy older sister, and I didn’t know why she wanted to kiss me. She had already finished high school and probably shouldn’t have been walking the halls, but she always called me her friend. So one Monday after gym, I found myself beside myself in front of her house—with my trench coat and lunch bag— probably not looking much like Shaft. Inside, the air held warm milk and we talked a bit about her baby    and her Aunt who paid the rent painting cars. Maybe she liked me because we were both black and mostly alone in the suburbs, but I hadn’t thought about that. It was her voice that got me—banked fire, the color of dusk—her voice, and my name was smoke in her mouth. I think about it more than I should now, that January noon—an hour before algebra—how most days I’d be thinking football    or replaying the seventy-some kisses I’d gotten over those lean years, but that day Donna and me were on the couch munching potato chips.Rrruffles have rrridges, she kidded coming from checking the baby who’d slipped into a nap. I was kind of disappointed that we hadn’t done anything, but I needed time to get back to school, so I started to stand. She said wait, look at this mess, and with her left hand, she brushed the crumbs from my lap the way you’d whisk away lint— then, swept over my pants again— to be thorough, I guessed, but slower and then some more, as if her hand were getting    drowsy. You know how sometimes you see something but just can’t believe it—like a squirrel bobbling a biscuit on your kitchen counter or a cricket creeping the red feathers of your mother’s Sunday hat? Her hand there, on my lap, could easily have been a five-fingered flying saucer from the fifth dimension. For awhile, I just watched and wondered if she knew where her hand had landed    but it was me who didn’t know: me with my six dozen kisses and the great Eden of my virginity. How do we not talk about it every day: the ways we were changed by the gift in someone’s touch—your body, suddenly a bright instrument played by an otherwise silent divinity. When I heard my zipper, I couldn’t have said where my arms were    or what a clock was for: I had no idea    I could be such a stranger and still be myself. How could I have known what a girl might do to a boy with her mouth     if she felt like doing what her mouth could do? It was a kind of miracle: the dreamed impossible—my soul finally called to my flesh. I didn’t know what I didn’t know    and then I knew.