1247 Love poems

kiss upon kiss they grow into this they wish your shad roes hand sock hard rock cold toes will blow warm will blow cold they just raid your hash then like meat bees with your cash they give they take form like your fist over love

Catullus is my master and I mix a little acid and a bit of honey in his bowl love is my subject & the lack of love which lack is what makes evil a poet must strike Catullus could rub words so hard together their friction burned a heat that warms us now 2000 years away I roll the words around my mouth & count the letters in each line thus eye and ear contend in- side the poem and draw its move- ment tight Milton thought rhyme was vulgar I agree yet sometimes if it’s hidden in the line a rhyme will richen tone the thing I most despise is quote poetic unquote diction I prefer to build with plain brown bricks of common talk American talk then set 1 Roman stone among them for a key I know Ca- tullus knew a poem is like a blow an impact strik- ing where you least expect this I believe and yet with me a poem is finally just a natural thing.

When this day returns to me I will value your heart, long hurt in long division, over mine. Mouth above mine too — say you love me, truth never more meant,say you are angry. Words, words we net with our mouths. Soul is an old thirst but not as first as the body’s perhaps, though on bad nights its melancholy eats us out, to a person. True, time is undigressing. Yet true is all we can be: rhyming you, rhyming me.

Tender only to one Tender and true The petals swing To my fingering Is it you, or you, or you? Tender only to one I do not know his name And the friends who fall To the petals’ call May think my love to blame. Tender only to one This petal holds a clue The face it shows But too well knows Who I am tender to. Tender only to one, Last petal’s latest breath Cries out aloud From the icy shroud His name, his name is Death.

Yes, I was jealous when you threw the glass. I wanted the shattering against the wood-paneled floor for myself, to be the sudden diaspora of its pieces across the apartment — and last night when we fought, I wanted you to hit me so badly I begged. And the other day walking past Renewal-on-the-Bowery, when one of the men smoking unsteadily outside called me a faggot, I thought: Good. People get what they deserve. Then I wished I were more like Jesus — capable of loving all people and all things always, capable of nothing but love. I waste half my wishes this way, wishing to be virtuous. The rest, well, I don’t have to tell you, do I?

At the market today, I look for Piñata apples, their soft-blush-yellow. My husband brought them home last week, made me guess at the name of this new strain, held one in his hand like a gift and laughed as I tried all the names I knew: Gala, Fuji, Honey Crisp—watched his face for clues—what to call something new? It's winter, only tawny hues and frozen ground, but that apple bride was sweet, and I want to bring it back to him, that new. When he cut it, the star inside held seeds of other stars, the way within a life are all the lives you might live, each unnamed, until you name it.

For the first time, I listen to a lost and secret recording of us making love near-on ten years ago. I recognize your voice, your sounds, though if I knew no better, I could be any man in any room. After, the rising sounds of rising and of dressing and once as you step up close to the deck, perhaps to pick up shoes, you sing the chorus of Sunday Morning. I call on you to hurry and we leave. It does not end then; the tape rolls on. A few late cars which sigh by might have passed us walking away triumphant, unaware we’ve left behind this mop and mow mechanism of silence to which we may never return.

(i) I woke to early sun: burning of fire, & then afterward. We kept reaching through the long night. (ii) Afterward, the small deceptions we allow ourselves: a sickness, unchecked. Like this: (iii) & first sunlight. Snow continues. I could never close my eyes to light. But there was no light & you looked like night. (iv) There must be a pattern, snow slow-dropping in wet clusters through the wooden arms of empty trees. (v) Sun fingering its way through branches I’d hung my life on. We don’t matter a bit; realization forces our eyes closed— (vi) A sickness, unchecked, like this. I’d hung my life on burning of fire, & then afterward. (vii) Our arms together we searched for patterns & sunlight. (viii) Our arms laced together, pointing together over wind-tossed grasses. Us: waist deep in night blue. (ix) There was no light. You pointed. (x) Sun overhead, you pointed to the wind-tossed grasses. This is a memory now. (xi) Together in that first sun, so vivid: there must be a pattern I’d hung my life on. (xii) Snow dropped in clusters, staggered & jagged. We don’t matter a bit. (xiii) Reflected in lake water: all these things I’ll forget. (xiv) Our arms together but we keep reaching over the wind-tossed grasses. (xv) Black smoke curling: the importance of night-blue field grass, (xvi) the importance of. The stars are close; we try to hold together. (xvii) All this ends but until then: burning of fire, & then afterward. The stars are close; we try to hold. Such distance between the fallen! (xviii) Burning of fire, & then afterward. You pointed. (xix) Grasses silently fold, a sickness, unchecked, reaching. Like this. Wooden arms of trees long since emptied. (xx) This ends in darkness, & all the stars within reach, & other constellations.

He finds her near the stack of green plastic baskets waiting to be filled and circles her waist with his left arm, entwines her fingers in his, pulls her toward him, Muzak from the ceiling shedding a flashy Salsa, and as they begin to move, she lets her head fall back, fine hair swinging a beat behind as they follow their own music—a waltz—past the peaches bursting with ripeness in their wicker baskets, the prawns curled into each other behind cold glass, a woman in a turquoise sari, her dark eyes averted. They twirl twice before the imported cheeses, fresh mozzarella in its milky liquid, goat cheese sent down from some green mountain, then glide past ranks of breads, seeds spread across brown crusts, bottles of red wine nested together on their sides. He reaches behind her, slides a bouquet of cut flowers from a galvanized bucket, tosses a twenty to the teenaged boy leaning on the wooden counter, and they whirl out the door, the blue sky a sudden surprise.

They flee from me that sometime did me seek With naked foot, stalking in my chamber. I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek, That now are wild and do not remember That sometime they put themself in danger To take bread at my hand; and now they range, Busily seeking with a continual change. Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise Twenty times better; but once in special, In thin array after a pleasant guise, When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall, And she me caught in her arms long and small; Therewithall sweetly did me kiss And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?” It was no dream: I lay broad waking. But all is turned thorough my gentleness Into a strange fashion of forsaking; And I have leave to go of her goodness, And she also, to use newfangleness. But since that I so kindly am served I would fain know what she hath deserved.