1247 Love poems

Beloved, I have to adore the earth: The wind must have heard your voice once. It echoes and sings like you. The soil must have tasted you once. It is laden with your scent. The trees honor you in gold and blush when you pass. I know why the north country is frozen. It has been trying to preserve your memory. I know why the desert burns with fever. It was wept too long without you. On hands and knees, the ocean begs up the beach, and falls at your feet. I have to adore the mirror of the earth. You have taught her well how to be beautiful.

Though I am more Che than Chavez, I am still a dove. I do not apologize to you. Or to the state of California. The IRS. New York. That administrator I bit in the third grade, who was delicious and sweet. I, oh, so cold. In the mind, the Dionysian defiles walls the Apollonian protects. I am always looking to take something down. Usually it’s me. Two bulls stand on a hill. The younger says, Father, let’s run down and fuck a cow. The father, wiser, longer in the horn, higher on the grass, reminds his son how Moses was also horned, beamed with light, that to handle a massive snake, to charm Pharaoh, to steal fire, to fly, to unzip the sea, is to speak and not tap vanity. Moses descended Mount Sinai with cracked slabs and saw a golden calf. The father said to the young bull, No son, let’s strut down and fuck them all. Thus begins the beef  between bird and bee, the isthmus isolating order from chaos. My mind is made up of so many different cuts of meat. My marbles stay as mixed as my metaphors. As my myths. As myself. At parties my favorite icebreaker involves asking strangers to describe themselves with three words. Their descriptions are a slipping away to change clothes. Identity and irony neatly knit in an ugly Christmas sweater. Sometimes I feel so Socratic: oft-laureled, poison-palmed, toga-partied, exasperated by the masses: I wouldn’t have guessed ambitious. Free-spirited, you don’t say. Other times I feel like the woman rambling among the vapors escaping the ground in Iceland’s volcanic canyon, making a bus an em dash in a rest stop, where some fifty-odd persons searching for themselves in true existentialism are yellow lupines growing on the side of the road. An epiphany can not be achieved, as a cedar waxwing cannot be more cedar qua waxwing. Eventually what we’re looking for appears. Sometimes incitation opens at the bottom of a straw, a spoon, a barrel of wine, the windfall happens while eating farfalle, while flipping through The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo. At the moon me the animal roofs atop brownstones, sin vergüenza. Upwards our eyes scamper, a reflex action, when inserting an object in the mouth, even when the object is a gun. Over hills a road erodes the way home. Only after the Coast Guard has readied a helicopter, do we descend the cold volcano in Eldg já to realize we are the woman in the search party looking for ourselves. to poetry. In moments of ecstasy we are lifted At the shore of the Aegean Sea or at the banks of the river Evros, he loosened his sandals while Pegasus stamped the soil, crushing reeds and hoofing away stray wood. The sun bandaged light on a sky that would not heal. Perseus, with eyes heavenward, formed the shapes of gods into clouds, slipped his hand into the woven sack, and felt the flint of primped snakes. He thought, But it is the cold weight of scales that protects. As sure as a child, he lined leaves rocked to sleep by salt water waves for a bed, so as not to, with sand, or with hubris, bruise Medusa’s disunited head. One day, like a beam through skylight, we realize life is a puddle jumper of  tragedy. Some stones sink fast yet still hold light. So phantom are a statue’s busted arms and toes. Everything must go. And yet I still hanger hope when shopping the racks of discount stores. Veni vidi vici when I see Vince, freeze when I see the coiled coif of Versace’s emblem. Like Sisyphus, errybody think they headed for the top. Sing,started from the bottom, to my reflection in the dressing room mirror, now we here boy when I remember that Oh my god Becky, look at her butt passes the Bechdel test. I have eaten from the tree the fig that sullies and seen that the meat’s not always fair. I was, like Perseus and Sir Mix-a-Lot, born by a riv of water, felled by pride when a brown boy, tattooed with age, obsessed with fame, took his talents to Vermont to kiss trees and tap syrup from the sap. There and there and there, he kissed. Here and here he drank. So drunk he hugged an old white woman off the ground. None of the gods I love love me. To be tipsy is to leverage one’s self. Or so I’m told. The pulley is considered civilization’s highest achievement. Icarus killed himself being lifted.

The ancients would lift a clay spout to your lips— water and honey and wine. I give you milk, softened with wine, and swear you'll never hunger, never thirst while I'm alive. What suffering I can't preclude I'll soothe with singing: My future, for you not the greenness of a leaf but of the leaves on all the April branches. Fire, I give you fuel. I sweat and chop the wood. I tender forever in you who begin where I end as if your body is my body, your elegance my elegance. Sustenance, emptiness is lack of you, yearning is the road to where you are. You are the road, the where, the song, the hunger. Child, I give you sleep, I sing you there.

My monkey-wrench man is my sweet patootie; the lover of my life, my youth and age. My heart belongs to him and to him only; the children of my flesh are his and bear his rage Now grown to years advancing through the dozens the honeyed kiss, the lips of wine and fire fade blissfully into the distant years of yonder but all my days of Happiness and wonder are cradled in his arms and eyes entire. They carry us under the waters of the world out past the starposts of a distant planet And creeping through the seaweed of the ocean they tangle us with ropes and yarn of memories where we have been together, you and I.

Nothing is plumb, level, or square: the studs are bowed, the joists are shaky by nature, no piece fits any other piece without a gap or pinch, and bent nails dance all over the surfacing like maggots. By Christ I am no carpenter. I built the roof for myself, the walls for myself, the floors for myself, and got hung up in it myself. I danced with a purple thumb at this house-warming, drunk with my prime whiskey: rage. Oh I spat rage’s nails into the frame-up of my work: it held. It settled plumb, level, solid, square and true for that great moment. Then it screamed and went on through, skewing as wrong the other way. God damned it. This is hell, but I planned it. I sawed it, I nailed it, and I will live in it until it kills me. I can nail my left palm to the left-hand crosspiece but I can’t do everything myself. I need a hand to nail the right, a help, a love, a you, a wife.

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo. Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question ... Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair — (They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”) My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin — (They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”) Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume? And I have known the eyes already, known them all— The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? And how should I presume? And I have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!) Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume? And how should I begin? Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ... I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid. And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while, To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it towards some overwhelming question, To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— If one, settling a pillow by her head Should say: “That is not what I meant at all; That is not it, at all.” And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— And this, and so much more?— It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say: “That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.” No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool. I grow old ... I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Mugoo was a sweeper boy and the cleanest of the sweeper caste. He would leap at the blush of dawn to clean the paths and the steps spotless. Gugoo was a bootmaker girl who made boots. Gugoo was higher caste than Mugoo. By rights he was the floor and she was the foot that trod. Yet after work, while the boys and girls played at tug of war, wrestling, or archery, shy boy Mugoo and shy girl Gugoo would draw the boys and girls. The children smiling at the shining visions would hug Mugoo and Gugoo. Then that couple would bury the drawings for fear their elders feel scandalized. In manhood for Mugoo and womanhood for Gugoo, how hard that Gugoo thread boots for her father when she had no golden stitch for the gaping hole in her soul. How hard that Mugoo scrub the lanes! Who dare be swept away from the law of caste by the foul stamp and passport of besotted love? Yet the hairs at their ears, their nipples, bomped by a mere sultana breeze. Then the swirling night when they’d escape for Arabia than stay near-far    ... In Mugoo and Gugoo Love was a rabbit leaping on a radish when they became runaway lovers! Like hares under the sketched moon they bobbed in the grunch wind before the tossed river. Timorous Gugoo to timorous Mugoo, “Is it not said the pure of heart are able to turn water into solid crystal orbs?” “I have heard it Gugoo. Let us swim till the waters turn dot by dot into crystal orbs, slowly mounting up for us a solid path so we can bobble across.” That cub-like couple held on a first-ever daredevil cuddle. Then snuck a parched kiss! And fell into their dive across Punjab’s muggur of an ogre — the river Ravi! They were soon to learn the blunderous water was bigger than they; they were dabbing onwards on the spot; directionless comical pups; pawdawdling    ... Only Death was woken by their swallowed screams. At the sight of a cutesome pair brinked for his maw Death’s thin lips aah’d and coo’d. To tickle himself Death tipped a witching shriek in the eardrums of the ferryman, Charan, who was rank in a dream. Charan swore at Death, “What bastard panchod is unheroing my dream? I was the River God riding the turmeric sea when the fisher king’s red bill fished me up a buxom masala mermaid!” Death hushed Charan. Bundled him into the boat. Charan, still swearing, fished for a scream-trail, for bunny-like feet in the sudden dead-stop river    ... Next morning, by the prophecy of the snake-priest, the villagers arrived at the shame-faced riverbank. Charan, in his guzzy saffron turban, was blaring at the crowd about a passion crime. Huffing too had arrived the muscly cobbler and sweeper fathers. All heard Charan, “I am my own King of the Sticks! I row two weeks that way to the flowers of Kashmir the gold-haired men with their bloated bags of honey, and one week that way for the spices of Samarkand with the red-fingered sellers of kalonji, saffron, jeera. Today I catch by the feet a fresh parable of a kutcha- pucka business. I sing it for only one rupee each!” All looked down by Charan’s sandal’d feet. Dared to be rolled in the same shivering blanket (like a chapati rolled around saag paneer) yet fearing to be parted, yet tenuously panting were Mugoo and Gugoo! The frail couple like shy red squirrels, “O father, we love you. But. Most we are    ... loving this: this that is my soul’s mirror. Mugoo is my Gugoo: Gugoo is my Mugoo.” The bony youths clung sauced together. Stiffed for the glooping apart. The bootmaker father been crunching his own fists, the sweeper father been hurling daggers from his eyes, as the crowd fell silent, the fathers spoke as one, “What draws them out of caste, their underhand idle drawings. Such fancy is inking good for nothing.” Gugoo and Mugoo raised their necks, “If all hearts were good for nothing, could love from each for each blow as one?” The apricot breeze blew a soft cadence but could it push the dominion of the communal mind past its bound and daily utility? Could sweet nothings clear the world free of blood fear? Of sweet-faced Mugoo and Gugoo in a threadbare pleading, “Do not part us.” From their mild rhetoric and politic of Love the hills and valleys had swooned into blossoms of heaven, and had set the scene with gaudiest cheeks. So who dare part them? O Love, be roused, take arms and wound for the cause of love! Or at least shackle the shadows that deepened into that tinsy couple.

The kitchen door opens onto dirt and the second half of the country all the way to the Pacific. Rusted prairie trains out of the tall weeds elbow the last century aside, rumble from every direction towards Chicago. My great-grandfather, who would be 150 years old today, put on his one tall hat and took the big trip to Omaha for my great-grandma with the family ring on his vest and winter wheat lying wait in seed. He gave her all the miles he had and she gave him the future I walk around in every day. The mountains were too far west to count so they doubled back over the land and century and the real weather kept coming from them.

For D’Andra My bowl brimming with pretzels, the snack you wanted least, I slid open the door of our sleeping car where we had been enjoying the country rushing by, as if   we were the first two people to look down into the valleys and see bright necks of pines stretch across farms and streams to the groves they once cradled. You had asked for Earl Grey cookies sandwiched around buttercream or marshmallows made of chocolate, but all the tea bags had been dunked and the chocolate melted over biscotti. When I came bearing the salted and twisted news, the room was empty but for a heel. It was black as a bunting, and wound with zippers, and every time the car rocked it looked ready to fly and escape into the cold, tangled air of   travel that always feels heavy with joy and desire, and a little sadness, always a little sadness, because of the leaving, which is what I do when I realize I’m in the wrong room and that numbers have betrayed me again while I was hunting and gathering, foraging like Homo habilis who probably never lost his cave. Out of patience, I opened every door marked with threes and eights, those conjoined twins disastrously separated at birth, and roused the scabbed eyes of sleepers like a beggar, no, an angel, a begging angel who has written on his heart will work for love . Having not found our room, not heard the sharp swing of   your voice, I descended upon the passenger cars and row upon row of couples asleep or staring out the windows like zombies trying to remember what happens next once the newspaper is well-thumbed, the tea has gone cold, and the conversation is dead. I called for you, in vain, even using your secret names, the ones only the night knows: wind-kiss, brilliant-fruit, dervish-moon    . . . Over and over, I said your names, over and over until they filled the wounded air of  the car and when there was no more room for another sound, they caught and hooked the ring of   the brakes hugging the rails. Just when I thought I wouldn’t find you, you were there, the train was pulling away, and I was watching you slowly eat a dish of whipped cream and bananas — the house special — in a cafe in a city we didn’t know. When you finished, we started walking down a road that bent like a smile, a shy smile, like the one the Japanese cat wore on your purse. The road, we were told, would take us to the end of   the line where all lovers in search of   joy packed on bullet trains — they’re the fastest on two continents — arrive every hour.

At length, by so much importunity press'd, Take, C——, at once, the inside of my breast; This stupid indiff'rence so often you blame, Is not owing to nature, to fear, or to shame: I am not as cold as a virgin in lead, Nor is Sunday's sermon so strong in my head: I know but too well how time flies along, That we live but few years, and yet fewer are young. But I hate to be cheated, and never will buy Long years of repentance for moments of joy, Oh! was there a man (but where shall I find Good sense and good nature so equally join'd?) Would value his pleasure, contribute to mine; Not meanly would boast, nor would lewdly design; Not over severe, yet not stupidly vain, For I would have the power, tho' not give the pain. No pedant, yet learned; no rake-helly gay, Or laughing, because he has nothing to say; To all my whole sex obliging and free, Yet never be fond of any but me; In public preserve the decorum that's just, And shew in his eyes he is true to his trust; Then rarely approach, and respectfully bow, But not fulsomely pert, nor yet foppishly low. But when the long hours of public are past, And we meet with champagne and a chicken at last, May ev'ry fond pleasure that moment endear; Be banish'd afar both discretion and fear! Forgetting or scorning the airs of the crowd, He may cease to be formal, and I to be proud. Till lost in the joy, we confess that we live, And he may be rude, and yet I may forgive. And that my delight may be solidly fix'd, Let the friend and the lover be handsomely mix'd; In whose tender bosom my soul may confide, Whose kindness can soothe me, whose counsel can guide. From such a dear lover as here I describe, No danger should fright me, no millions should bribe; But till this astonishing creature I know, As I long have liv'd chaste, I will keep myself so. I never will share with the wanton coquette, Or be caught by a vain affectation of wit. The toasters and songsters may try all their art, But never shall enter the pass of my heart. I loath the lewd rake, the dress'd fopling despise: Before such pursuers the nice virgin flies: And as Ovid has sweetly in parable told, We harden like trees, and like rivers grow cold.