1247 Love poems

The Linguisticator meets you at Carrefour. Un vrai galant, he buys you rouge à lèvres. Teaches socially accepted forms of extrication. If someone gropes you, say Arrête tes bêtises. If someone wonders why your hair is mussed, say C’est le mistral. If someone asks you to admire their ugly baby, say Je me sauve and leave. The Linguisticator is a veritable language experience. You programmed him in Oregon but he caught a virus. Now his Frenchness is cent fois off the spectrum. Sings Aznavour as you tour the centre historique and Piaf on the tram; Padam, Padam, when it clangs. The Linguisticator can stop a tram with one raised eyebrow, one soi-disant eyebrow. A fatalist, he has abandoned caution with certain potent liquors of the region. Ask him if he’s OK, 
he’ll say Le silence éternel de ces vastes espaces m’effraie. Ask him what irony means, he says Tout pour le mieux dans ce meilleur des mondes possibles. But if his ennui peaks, he suspends all conversation. Broods for hours muttering Putain, je suis rien qu’un two-bit trompe l’œil. Malaise on a loop. It never fades.

Clora, come view my soul, and tell Whether I have contrived it well. Now all its several lodgings lie Composed into one gallery; And the great arras-hangings, made Of various faces, by are laid; That, for all furniture, you’ll find Only your picture in my mind. Here thou are painted in the dress Of an inhuman murderess; Examining upon our hearts Thy fertile shop of cruel arts: Engines more keen than ever yet Adorned a tyrant’s cabinet; Of which the most tormenting are Black eyes, red lips, and curlèd hair. But, on the other side, th’art drawn Like to Aurora in the dawn; When in the East she slumbering lies, And stretches out her milky thighs; While all the morning choir does sing, And manna falls, and roses spring; And, at thy feet, the wooing doves Sit pérfecting their harmless loves. Like an enchantress here thou show’st, Vexing thy restless lover’s ghost; And, by a light obscure, dost rave Over his entrails, in the cave; Divining thence, with horrid care, How long thou shalt continue fair; And (when informed) them throw’st away, To be the greedy vulture’s prey. But, against that, thou sit’st afloat Like Venus in her pearly boat. The halcyons, calming all that’s nigh, Betwixt the air and water fly; Or, if some rolling wave appears, A mass of ambergris it bears. Nor blows more wind than what may well Convoy the perfume to the smell. These pictures and a thousand more Of thee my gallery do store In all the forms thou canst invent Either to please me, or torment: For thou alone to people me, Art grown a numerous colony; And a collection choicer far Than or Whitehall’s or Mantua’s were. But, of these pictures and the rest, That at the entrance likes me best: Where the same posture, and the look Remains, with which I first was took: A tender shepherdess, whose hair Hangs loosely playing in the air, Transplanting flowers from the green hill, To crown her head, and bosom fill.

Love not being in the loop. Grant the spruces’ wish, the golf compound graying out of use, suvs in the it lot, power outage, a chorus from the quad. Bless the elsewhere where others are not here or you. And rain after midnight . . . Ask yourself, is that rain or bells?

I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green. And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And Thou shalt not. writ over the door; So I turn'd to the Garden of Love, That so many sweet flowers bore. And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be: And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

My love, once upon a time your poet launched a great epic in his mind. Alas, I was not careful, and it struck your ringing anklets and came to grief. It broke up into scraps of songs and lay scattered at your feet. All my cargo of the stories of old wars was tossed by the laughing waves and soaked in tears and sank. You must make this loss good to me, my love. If my claims to immortal fame after death are shattered, make me immortal while I live. And I will not mourn for my loss nor blame you.

Feel the patient’s heart Pounding—oh please, this once— —JAMES MERRILL I’ll do what I must if I’m bold in real time. A refugee, I’ll be paroled in real time. Cool evidence clawed off like shirts of hell-fire? A former existence untold in real time ... The one you would choose: Were you led then by him? What longing, O Yaar, is controlled in real time? Each syllable sucked under waves of our earth— The funeral love comes to hold in real time! They left him alive so that he could be lonely— The god of small things is not consoled in real time. Please afterwards empty my pockets of keys— It’s hell in the city of gold in real time. God’s angels again are—for Satan!—forlorn. Salvation was bought but sin sold in real time. And who is the terrorist, who the victim? We’ll know if the country is polled in real time. “Behind a door marked DANGER” are being unwound the prayers my friend had enscrolled in real time. The throat of the rearview and sliding down it the Street of Farewell’s now unrolled in real time. I heard the incessant dissolving of silk— I felt my heart growing so old in real time. Her heart must be ash where her body lies burned. What hope lets your hands rake the cold in real time? Now Friend, the Belovèd has stolen your words— Read slowly: The plot will unfold in real time. (for Daniel Hall)

Who is that creature and who does he want? Me, I trust. I do not attempt to call out his name for fear he will tread on me. What do you believe, he asks. That we all want to be alone, I reply, except when we do not; that the world was open to my sorrow and ate most of it; that today is a gift and I am ready to receive you.

around 530 is a beautiful peaceful time you can just hear the dog lapping David lifts his smoke to his lips forever dangling chain in the middle of everything bout the top shelf or so. The party at which I sd that’s my col- lected works and every one stared my home was so small is it I’m not particularly into the task of humility at the moment but I’m not against it it’s like that deflated beach ball on a tiny chair I think of as joking with the larger one on a painting floating in air my home is large love made it large once not to get all John Wieners & believe me love made it small once this place only had sex unlike the house I love a house I fear a house a house never gets laid frankly who doesn’t like a hotel room I live in a hotel room a personal one. A young person very much like me was brutal no personal photographs please   it was anyone’s home perfect for a party now I’m going fast. How the description of a drug enters a room & changes the room thus with going fast say thus if you want to go slow. To drink the wrong thing for a moment for you to lick my thigh & your honey face I met a dog named Izzie once, I met a dog named Alan the calm person writing her calm poems now & then she shows her sacred heart she opens her chest & a monkey god is taking a shit swinging on his thing. You didn’t know I had so much inside me buckets of malice bibles of peace I don’t want to go all library on you now like my mother the mother of god or my brother named Jack who sat in a deck of cards getting hard when she squeezes in getting cozy I know less what I want to say. I can open an entire room comes out each moment that’s what I mean not things widen & flow there’s no purpose to this.

You ask me what since we must part You shall bring back to me. Bring back a pure and faithful heart As true as mine to thee. You talk of gems from foreign lands, Of treasure, spoil, and prize. Ah love! I shall not search your hands But look into your eyes.

A Girl, Her soul a deep-wave pearl Dim, lucent of all lovely mysteries; A face flowered for heart’s ease, A brow’s grace soft as seas Seen through faint forest-trees: A mouth, the lips apart, Like aspen-leaflets trembling in the breeze From her tempestuous heart. Such: and our souls so knit, I leave a page half-writ — The work begun Will be to heaven’s conception done, If she come to it.