*

because yes, yes, yes

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

Kaylin Haught

i think this is so beautiful

The Constant of the Universe

I

And under the stars tonight
I wonder if someone cares.
I’m lonely, that’s the way I feel.
(Frank Black, “Man of Steel”)

And so it’s springtime
and every fool has his lips
pursed for the kiss,
the world has spattered
on love like a cheap cologne.
But let’s chop through the false fronts,
peel off the plaster and open the walls
to the bare slats—the meat of the matter,
as they say. Loneliness is the only constant
in this universe

because your head is weighted to fall forward to the ground.
because Layton lied to us; death is never a name for beauty not in use.
because the dog keeps humping your leg and licking his balls and humping your leg and licking his balls and...and, let’s be honest, you’re starting to look forward to it.
because if you say Heraclitus too quickly while contemplating sex he’s bound to become your favourite pre-Socratic.
because people die on the last day of every war.
because of telescopes and the long gaze into darkness.
because Picasso had his blue period.
because there are parts of your lover’s body you’ll wish you hadn’t memorized: the shallow cup at the back of her knee, the soft hills of her resting palms, the galaxy of bone and muscle surrounding her ribs.
because you’ll forget the slow changes in her day-to-day scent.
because memory is a glass filled with earth.
because if loneliness wasn’t the constant, rubber consumption for condoms would destroy the rainforest, pro-sports leagues would collapse, Madonna’d be elected President, and everyone would need constant spine re-adjustments.
because Gould was humming just to himself.
because Bach, on the quiet afternoons, doubted.
because if life were an instrument, it would be a single cello.
because there’s nothing metaphysical about tears.

II

Every song has a you
A you that the singer sings to
(Ani Difranco, “Dilate”)

Ah, where are you, my
ocean, my sapphire, my lovely spring robin,
my flood, my hawk, my scarlet ribbon;
why aren’t you here in the night, my seashell,
taking my hand and whispering
“Bloom”?

because I’ve been raised in a language with no words to give her.
because of the airplane trip, the clouds stretched out like quilts over rolling lovers—and the empty seat beside me. I'm gone and her rhythms go on without me.
because I’ve flown 3000 miles only to ask the hotel clerk for a corkscrew, missing my dark beauty who is not my dark beauty at all.
because the opening of flowers after an eclipse is nothing like her quick, dark, brown eyes.
because we’ve all lived through these country songs.
because I’d welcome birds into my house, hear their tired wings flapping against the windows like heavy rose petals, and wait.
because if she and I were birds, we’d be great and terrible one-winged eagles.
because I’ve read my future in the long dark tunnel of the beer glass, and because I’ve forgotten to write it down.
because of this wanting, and because we’ve forgotten the true meaning of the word: to lack, to wane.
because Tarzan is the perfect metaphor for love: we’re all stuck in a jungle and love is the only vine—we grab hold and are in motion, but its arc ends and we must reach out, fumbling, blindly, knowing there might be nothing to grab in your hand. That anyone ever lets go of the old vine is the miracle.
because there can be no metaphor for loneliness, the form forbids it; and no simile—loneliness isn’t even like loneliness.
because I’m finally ready to buy that “Too Fucked For Zen” bumper sticker.
because love is a knife: love triangles, rectangles, pentagons or octagons—more people means more angles and more angles means more cutting edges.
because I am not a swinger of birches.
because you run and run, not away from or to something, but at, at exhaustion, throwing yourself at it like wind at a candle-flame.

III

You’re the sweetest thing, darlin’
I ever did see,
Really like your peaches
Want to shake your tree.
(Steve Miller, “The Joker”)

And maybe all this is silly,
this courting of the double edge of love
and loss. Maybe it’s a changing of priorities
that’s required; forget about falling in love,
concentrate on tripping head-first into lust,

because her body is the evolutionary tigress of love.
because the bed’s starting to creak and my hands are getting calluses and good God what if my roommate hears me moaning alone up there.
because there’s kum/
quats all over the place.
because I’d lounge with her through the night like a cat in a window facing east.
because we’ve all heard the crowing of the cock.
because of the press of lips into the soft rippling flesh of the belly, the slow curve of hands around thighs, the sudden blossom moist on the tongue, the taste of birth in your mouth. Because after this, all your words are bruised by the new language of her body.
because the lonely have always spoken in tongues, dreaming of speaking with hands, with lips.
because I’ve seen a mole on her thigh and almost asked to touch that darkened ruby.
because all the Elvis in your hips is awful forced, pretty mama.
because it’s been a long time since I’ve rubbed the magic lamp and let loose the genie, went fishing with the flesh pole, set up the tripod and used my telescope to explore the milky way, if you know what I mean.
because you all know what I mean.
because I have no right to read her love poems.
because I’ve forgotten the geography of a woman’s shoulder, how hard and brittle in places, how supple and stemlike in others.
because my desire alone isn’t enough for both of us.
because if I showed her the stars at night, she might see them as nothing but light cracking through a frail wall, and I’d have no words to comfort her.

IV

These words are dedicated to those who died
because they had no love and felt alone in the world
(Irena Klepfisz, “Bashert”)

And there is no hand
to reach for mine, to take
this pen from me, stop it from reaching
the end.
And so loneliness, in the end,
is the dotted yellow line you follow, mindless,

because it’s there, that desire to gut every painting of lovers, to poke your fingers through their eyes, and, maybe, touch your tongue to their cheeks, taste that permanence just once.
because there are days when the birds turn their backs and sing their songs away from you.
because of the bad jokes: Beethoven’s ears, Rembrandt’s eyes, Thomas’s parched Welsh tongue.
because I’ve lost hours at work from trying to picture the exact tilt of her head when she laughs.
because there was another a young woman once, with delicate, deep, deep scars on her wrists and an emptied bottle of pills and I loved her very much.
because now I don’t, and a friend has called that progress; because he’s probably right, and a part of me hates him for that—just hold your tongue and let me love.
because I’ve cut my wrists and don’t even have the scars to show for it, the unstoppable betrayal of healing.
because we have all entered rooms and wept.
because sometimes you’ve got to cry to keep from laughing.
because it’s not abstract at all.
because love, at times, isn’t either.
because of the marble in your mind you can’t get aligned to centre that tells you you’ve lived in this city two years and still don’t call it home, that it’s over, chewed up, time to move on.
because you’ve seen the clouds pulse into the sky like opened veins.
because you’ve been nothing but a visitor, an anomaly, a passing train to everyone you’ve met.
because we’re not Degas’ dancers, our bold strokes don’t blend easily into grace.
because I’d like to fall asleep and wake up someone else, watch everything that I am blow away in the wind like smouldering ash.
because only fire makes dead flowers bloom.
because fuck this prissiness. I am lonely, you are lonely, there is nothing pretty to say. Because fuck the stars, fuck the metaphors, fuck me, fuck you, fuck the walls, fuck it all. We’re all just characters in a nursery rhyme waiting to fall down.
because this is over, and I throw away all these pointless, stupid words except one.
Why?




Andy Weaver

i love you guys:)

The Wave Pictures

Tonight in Teatro de Lloseta!!!!

AAAAAAAAA!!!

I'll be there, jumping like a sillyhead.

De Momento Abril

by Anthony:)

The Forgotten Dialect Of The Heart

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say, God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according to which nation. French has no word for home, and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people in northern India is dying out because their ancient tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would finally explain why the couples on their tombs are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated, they seemed to be business records. But what if they are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light. O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper, as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor. Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script is not language but a map. What we feel most has no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.


~Jack Gilbert

El Garabato

Con un trozo de carbon
Con mi gis roto y mi lapiz rojo
dibujar tu nombre
el nombre de tu boca,
el signo de tus piernas
en la pared de nadie.
En la puerta prohibida
grabar el nombre de tu cuerpo
Hasta que la hoja de mi navaja
sangre
y la piedra grite
y el muro respire como un pecho.

Octavio Paz
1914

A River Is Not Too Much To Love

April is...

... the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

[...]



Shantih shantih shantih

T.S.Eliot

kissing the rain

I want you and you are not here. I pause
in this garden, breathing the colour thought is
before language into still air. Even your name
is a pale ghost and, though I exhale it again
and again, it will not stay with me. Tonight
I make you up, imagine you, your movements clearer
than the words I have you say you said before.

Wherever you are now, inside my head you fix me
with a look, standing here whilst cool late light
dissolves into the earth. I have got your mouth wrong,
but still it smiles. I hold you closer, miles away,
inventing love, until the calls of nightjars
interrupt and turn what was to come, was certain,
into memory. The stars are filming us for no one.

Carol Ann Duffy

and last night last night i saw a miracle. top of the car covered with a hundred snails of all sizes it was beautiful

i got caught in the store
and carried away
i got turned, turned around

i got caught in the store
that's what happened to me
so i didn't call
and you can't see me for a while

i was rising up
hitting the ground
and breaking, and breaking

i got caught in the store
things were flying around
and doors were slamming, and windows weren't breaking
and i couldn't hear what you were saying
and i couldn't hear what you were saying
i couldn't hear what you were saying

i was rising up
hitting the ground
and breaking, and breaking

rising up

rising up

kissms

tel que tu es

victoria

the xmass tree is down

A Little Love Poem

Someone who hates scrabble.

Someone who sleeps on her back near an open window in winter, her breath rolling like a river into night.

Someone who wants me to wake her in the morning by reading ee cummings' love poems, giving a small candle-flicker of a smile just before opening her eyes.

Someone who appreciates the architecture of churches, but refuses to step inside.

Someone who has hands fit to hold hurt sparrows and robins.

Someone who threw out an her Alice Cooper records when she found out he loves to golf.

Someone who would swerve a new car into the ditch to avoid a frog crossing the road.

Someone who would tattoo my name on her arm in writing the same colour as her skin, so it would appear slowly from nowhere when she suntanned, people thinking her blood was telling secrets to the world of its own accord.

Someone who learned Spanish to read Marquez, or Lorca, or Neruda.

Someone whose hips whisper their own stories of the serpent and the garden of Eden.

Someone who bites the back of my neck like a leopardess carrying her kitten to safety.

Someone who'll make me wait for her to come out of the shower.

Someone whose smallest movements amaze me: her hair falling over her eyes, the soft swell of her hips when she ties down, a deep sigh when she sleeps.

Someone who maps every ticklish part of my body and then uses her knowledge strictly for evil.

Someone who paints our bodies black and makes love with me under the stars.

Someone who burns through my chest like that first shot of scotch.

Someone whose tongue, if we're kept apart too long, would nervously trace my face into the roof of her mouth.

Someone who practises her signature with her wrong hand, in case of accidents or a sudden arrest.

Someone whose fingrnails smell faintly of her hair.

Someone who reminds me of the soft tickle of fog.

Someone who would rush outside in the middle of the night, setting a spider onto the lawn, never admitting it's because she hates rain.

Someone who understands the unforgivable importance of ravens.

Someone wholl flicker into my lips with the ferocity of a dragonfly.

Someone who will open, thick, pungent and vital, like a Mapplethorpe flower.

Someone who has searched for me like a near-sighted woman groping for her glasses, stubbing her toes and swearing in Yiddish.

Someone who would understand why Steve and Dave and Paul and I sat in a bar staring at the mirror behind us for twenty minutes because somebody had asked what would happen if you looked at yourself in a mirror using a pair of binoculars unti1 we had to admit the question was too big for us, and we turned back to the safe optics of the beer bottle.

Someone who would just happen to cut my wrist shortly after reading Ondaatje's "The Time Around Scars. "

Someone who'll stare softly but straight at me, smiling reassuringly when I tell her how my 73 year old Medieval lit prof looked up from Chaucer, stared blankly over the class's heads and said that even the happiest marriage will end in death.

Someone who understands the efficiency inherent in suicide.

Someone who knows that love can be the thickest slice of hell we’ll ever taste.

Someone who would dance with me by the sides of highways.

Andy Weaver (i think i love him just for this)

let good seasons begin

18 degrees plus and glorious sunshine:)
it's dark in the living room though, shutters closed, xmass lights on. i should take it down , really i should...

today

two major events are going to take place in my life

one- i am seeing the boy who never grew up, and we are going to have fun

two - i am taking down the xmass tree (it is almost certain)

a deceptively fine exterior

Like an unfinished painting
I change colors
reverse images
rework topography
rub textures
varnish over

like an incomplete poem
i alter meaning
change word order
repeat sounds
scan dictionaries
varnish over

like an unfinished kitchen
i move dishes
rearrange stools
hang new pictures
water old plants
varnish over

like an incomplete breath
i watch every moment
worry about tomorrow
plan out the day
ask for forgiveness
and varnish over

and then inevitably
i begin to see
my reflection
in the haze.

-Bill Schneberger

in defence of a dream

"Dreams pass into the reality of action.
From the action stems the dream again;
and this interdependence produces
the highest form of living."

Anais Nin

borracho según lo bebido

Borracho según lo bebido en la trementina de sus besos abiertos, su
cuerpo mojado acuñado entre mi cuerpo mojado y la aleta de nuestro
barco que se haga de flores, banqueteado, la dirigimos - nuestros
dedos como los sebos adornados con el metal amarillo - sobre el borde
caliente del cielo, la respiración pasada del día en nuestras velas.

Fijado por el sol entre el solsticio y el equinoccio, soñoliento y
enredado juntos mandilamos por meses y despertamos con el gusto amargo
de la tierra en nuestros labios, párpados todo pegajosos, y deseamos
cal y el sonido de una cuerda que bajaba un cubo abajo de su pozo.
Entonces, vinimos por noche a las islas afortunadas, y endecha como
pescados bajo red de nuestros besos.

Neruda

Twenty-One Love Poems

I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming.
Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other,
you've been at your desk for hours. I know what I dreamed:
our friend the poet comes into my room
where I've been writing for days,
drafts, carbons, poems are scattered everywhere,
and I want to show her one poem
which is the poem of my life. But I hesitate,
and wake. You've kissed my hair
to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem,
I say, a poem I wanted to show someone...
and I laugh and fall dreaming again
of the desire to show you to everyone I love,
to move openly together
in the pull of gravity, which is not simple,
which carried the feathered grass a long way down
the upbreathing air.

~ Adrienne Rich

*

I wish in the city of your heart
you would let me be the street
where you walk when you are most
yourself. I imagine the houses:
It has been raining, but the rain
is done and the children kept home
have begun opening their doors.

Robley Wilson

smiling into a wobbly mirror i say

YOU VE TRRNED MEINTO A LANGUAGE I CANNOT SPEAK WITHOUT YOU

up into the silence the green
silence with a white earth in it

you will(kiss me)go

out into the morning the young
morning with a warm world in it

(kiss me)you will go

on into the sunlight the fine
sunlight with a firm day in it

you will go(kiss me

down into your memory and
a memory and memory

i)kiss me,(will go)

--ee cummings

only the best

In the slaughterhouse of love
they kill only the best,
none of the weak or deformed.

Do not run away from this dying.
Whoever is not killed for love is dead meat.

Rumi

Excerpts from Shane Koyczan's "Apology"

When you've got no time to save anyone but yourself you better believe
you're worth it and you are worth the time it takes to take the time to get to know you.
We've managed to muddle through the awkward stages of "I like you" and "do you like me"
and when we both said yes life became a multiple choice test; not knowing anything,
we became each others best guess. And holding your hand is less like exploration and more like discovery.
Lady, I don't have to study you to be sure you were the choice I made before
I knew what the other choices were.

and

I also want amnesia so I can relive each kiss with a perfect newness
that leaves me smashed in the arms of rapture. I want the sky to fracture under
the impossible weight of an apology because I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I want so much.
I'm sorry that I'm using "I'm sorry" as a crutch to lean on for so long
but if you sing me that song of sweet logic again then I promise to make the effort
to stand on my own. There is a reason that our hearts are more like a muscle
and less like a bone. I've known so many people who've have grown up flexing
in front of mirrors and falling for their own reflection as if that's adequate but that's bullshit.
Because we only get now until the time we go and if they've only got time to love themselves
then nobody is going to be around to hear the sound of their heartbeat echo.
So lady, don't expect an apology when I tell you I'm only held together
by a heart that pumps blue, it's the strongest muscle in my body and I'm flexing it for you.

the beginning of things

Tonight, we make up our own legends.
As we go along we discover
Buried treasure. Why, when


Touched, does skin raise rows
Of budding flowers, a castle,
Lightning shows? Did you hear
Of the two lovers too entwined
They made the gods so jealous
They had to spend their entire lives
Aching for each other, one turned
Into a rock, the other a bay?
Only, for a few minutes each day
With the tide could they, with rage
And mad laughter, embrace. And so
I recall their tragedy in the midst
Of our pleasure, taking even more
Time to name and rename the sudden
Dip between the waist and hip,
The regions where lips rest most
At home. I conjure up a full
Moon, chant a forbidden word
Three times, and stir in our
Bed, a pool in whose clear water
I see our future. Kingdom
Of locked limbs, shared breath.
The answers now come flying
Like a winged horse or gold coins
Spilling from a magic purse.
Barefoot, I dance through fire.
I tower over trees. And I bring
To you, still smoking and warm,
The beggar hands of a goddess.


by Fatima Lim-Wilson

el amenazado

Es el amor. Tendré que ocultarme o huir.

Crecen los muros de su cárcel, como en un sueño atroz. La
hermosa máscara ha cambiado, pero como siempre es la única.
¿De qué me servirán mis talismanes: el ejercicio de las letras,
la vaga erudición el aprendizaje de las palabras que usó
el áspero Norte para cantar sus mares y sus espadas, la serena amistad,
las galerías de la Biblioteca, las cosas comunes, los hábitos, el joven
amor de mi madre, la sombra militar de mis muertos, la noche
intemporal, el sabor del sueño?
Estar contigo o no estar contigo, es la medida de mi tiempo.
Ya el cántaro se quiebra sobre la fuente, ya el hombre se levanta a la voz
del ave, ya se han oscurecido los que miran por la ventana, pero la
sombra no ha traído la paz.
Es ya lo se, el amor: la ansiedad y el alivio de oír tu voz, la espera y la
espera y la memoria, el horror de vivir en lo sucesivo.
Es el amor con sus mitologías, con su pequeñas magias inútiles.
Hay una esquina por la que no me atrevo a pasar.
Ya los ejércitos que cercan, las hordas.
(Esta habitación es irreal; ella no la ha visto.)
El nombre de una mujer me delata.
Me duele una mujer en todo el cuerpo.

Jorge Luis Borges

if

If you bring forth what is within you,
what is within you will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you,
what is within you will destroy you.

Gospel of Thomas

Sunday

The mint bed is in
bloom: lavender haze
day. The grass is
more than green and
throws up sharp and
cutting lights to
slice through the
plane tree leaves. And
on the cloudless blue
I scribble your name.

James Schuyler

*

And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to Blossom.


Anaïs Nin

THERE WAS A GIRL HER NAME WAS APPLE. SHE USED TO DANCE A LOT. SHE DANCED AND DANCED UNTIL HER FEET TURND INTO SOSSAGES THE END.

Coraline's Story by Neil Gaiman:)

fuck

There are people who will tell you
that using the word fuck in a poem
indicates a serious lapse
of taste, or imagination,

or both. It's vulgar,
indecorous, an obscenity
that crashes down like an anvil
falling through a skylight

to land on a restaurant table,
on th white linen, the cut-glass vase of lilacs.
But if you were sitting
over coffee when the metal

hit your saucer like a missile,
wouldn't that be the first thing
you'd say? Wouldn't you leap back
shouting, or at least thinking it,

over and over, bell-note riotously clanging
in the church of your brain
while the solicitous waiter
led you away, wouldn't you prop

your shaking elbows on the bar
and order your first drink in months,
telling yourself you were lucky
to be alive? And if you wouldn't

say anything but Mercy or Oh my
or Land sakes, well then
I don't want to know you anyway
and I don't give a fuck what you think

of my poem. The world is divided
into those whose opinions matter
and those who will never have
a clue, and if you knew

which one you were I could talk
to you, and tell you that sometimes
there's only one word that means
what you need it to mean, the way

there's only one person
when you first fall in love,
or one infant's cry that calls forth
the burning milk, one name

that you pray to when prayer
is what's left to you. I'm saying
in the beginning was the word
and it was good, it meant one human

entering another and it's still
what I love, the word made
flesh. Fuck me, I say to the one
whose lovely body I want close,

and as we fuck I know it's holy,
a psalm, a hymn, a hammer
ringing down on an anvil,
forging a whole new world.

by Kim Addonizio

happy birdsday deeeeee

Falling in love is like owning a dog

First of all, it's a big responsibility,
especially in a city like New York.
So think long and hard before deciding on love.
On the other hand, love gives you a sense of security:
when you're walking down the street late at night
and you have a leash on love
ain't no one going to mess with you.
Because crooks and muggers think love is unpredictable.
Who knows what love could do in its own defense?

On cold winter nights, love is warm.
It lies between you and lives and breathes
and makes funny noises.
Love wakes you up all hours of the night with its needs.
It needs to be fed so it will grow and stay healthy.

Love doesn't like being left alone for long.
But come home and love is always happy to see you.
It may break a few things accidentally in its passion for life,
but you can never be mad at love for long.

Is love good all the time? No! No!
Love can be bad. Bad, love, bad! Very bad love.

Love makes messes.
Love leaves you little surprises here and there.
Love needs lots of cleaning up after.
Sometimes you just want to get love fixed.
Sometimes you want to roll up a piece of newspaper
and swat love on the nose,
not so much to cause pain,
just to let love know Don't you ever do that again!

Sometimes love just wants to go for a nice long walk.
Because love loves exercise.
It runs you around the block and leaves you panting.
It pulls you in several different directions at once,
or winds around and around you
until you're all wound up and can't move.

But love makes you meet people wherever you go.
People who have nothing in common but love
stop and talk to each other on the street.

Throw things away and love will bring them back,
again, and again, and again.
But most of all, love needs love, lots of it.
And in return, love loves you and never stops.

Taylor Mali

:)

all flowers

in time

*

We live in a modern society. Husbands and wives don't

grow on trees, like in the old days. So where
does one find love? When you're sixteen it's easy,
like being unleashed with a credit card
in a department store of kisses. There's the first kiss.
The sloppy kiss. The peck.
The sympathy kiss. The backseat smooch. The we
shouldn't be doing this kiss. The but your lips
taste so good kiss.

The bury me in an avalanche of tingles kiss.
The I wish you'd quit smoking kiss.
The I accept your apology, but you make me really mad
sometimes kiss. The I know
your tongue like the back of my hand kiss. As you get
older, kisses become scarce. You'll be driving
home and see a damaged kiss on the side of the road,
with its purple thumb out. If you
were younger, you'd pull over, slide open the mouth's
red door just to see how it fits. Oh where
does one find love? If you rub two glances, you get a smile.
Rub two smiles, you get a warm feeling.
Rub two warm feelings and presto-you have a kiss.
Now what? Don't invite the kiss over
and answer the door in your underwear. It'll get suspicious
and stare at your toes. Don't water the kiss with whisky. It'll turn bright pink and explode into a thousand luscious splinters,
but in the morning it'll be ashamed and sneak out of
your body without saying good-bye,
and you'll remember that kiss forever by all the little cuts it left
on the inside of your mouth. You must
nurture the kiss. Turn out the lights. Notice how it
illuminates the room. Hold it to your chest
and wonder if the sand inside hourglasses comes from a
special beach. Place it on the tongue's pillow,
then look up the first recorded kiss in an encyclopedia: beneath
a Babylonian olive tree in 1200 B.C.
But one kiss levitates above all the others. The
intersection of function and desire. The I do kiss.
The I'll love you through a brick wall kiss.
Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth,
like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.

Jeffrey McDaniel

To Eve

Yesterday when I woke up
I was deep in the forest.
Night was preying on me.
I was ecstatic because earlier
I had promised to meet God
by the Falls, something he's been
wanting to show me. So I stood
up and shook off the stray leaves
from my hair and peeled off
the grass that had stuck to my skin.
I ran quickly past the bushes and thorns
past the maple trees and the apples
through the mud-streams and pools
and meadows of wind-grass and birds
until I came upon a clearing
and so I stopped. Then, my heart
began. It began to beat as I was
nearing the Falls, wading through
the feral water and fog. I saw
your shadow behind the falling flood,
then your body below the surface
swimming toward me. Your hair,
dark and wild. Slowly, you rose
from the mist. Then, my heart
began.


To Adam

It was summer and hot outside.
We wanted to visit the Park
but everybody was there, and so
in our living room we opened
the windows to let the wind in,
moved the chairs to the side, and
covered the floor with tablecloth,
our picnic basket full of the things
that you loved. I didn't know
how to cook, I lied, so when you said
you'd like to marry the woman
who baked the pie you were eating
I looked away, imagining how
the maid would run away with you
in the middle of the night,
lifting the skirt of her bridal gown
over the mud-pools in the woods.
Do you remember? You were asking
if I was hungry. I was thinking about
how the two of you would make love
in a little cabin outside town. I didn't
like the flavor, anyway. I said
no.

To the Snake

There is a reason Adam cannot match
your length. And you see this?
I want you to peddle this red
metaphor to somebody who'd
happen to pass by this tree
late in the afternoon, crying about
something. Tell her how beautiful
she is. Tell her how this garden
has a fence around it, that there could be
other men outside. Tell her
you love her. This is what you do:
Wait in this tree. Think about
suffering, the first suffering, you.
Hide in the branches. She will come
before the air darkens. Smell for her,
her smell like flesh and water-flowers.
Be ready to strike. She's a wild
creature. Watch yourself, the plan
is to make her fall in love with you
not you with her. The moment
your heart begins beating,
you will know she's around.
Gather yourself. Then, you
strike.

by Arkaye Kierulf

Fall in Love (repost)

lovigin

*

Crisp is to the apple what
flexed is to the body.

Poor apple.

Being bitten is to the crisp apple
what walking is to the ripe body, but it's more complicated than that:

the apple of the face has been given
to the running juice of the body

and the body, which is often gracious,
makes it shine.

Lucky apple.

Having a core is to the apple
what having a core is to the body, city, method, circumstance, endeavor.

Having a core is flower-shaped and hurts
in the way that having a shape hurts, which is to say

it hurts ironically, because to have limits
is not just to make a declaration upon a mountainside,

it is also to be the mountainside. Having a flowering core
also hurts in the way that being flower-like always hurts,

which is to say sexually, as if the whole self
has exceeded the skin, which it hasn't, which means

we always seem to be opening but never ever do.
Both these types of suffering color the air

when we pause to have them. The affected atoms
are hard to see amongst the billions

of sofa atoms, newsprint atoms
but, like the illnesses in the crystalline sea, they are there.

Red apple sliced, quartered, salted. Green apple,

alone in the basket.
Anything left on the shelf becomes weak,

suggestible, vulnerable to other shapes, hungry to be refilled
by something other than itself,

a poison apple.
The joining we do with others needs containing.

Apple pie.
Imagine the mess. Imagine a finger touching the sack of the heart.

Imagine being stopped, controlled that powerfully.
Imagine nothing like that being possible. Nothing ever stopping you

at the root of the breath. Huge apple.
The world in reference to you. How you move. Time a backdrop.

Or close the other eye: you in reference to the world.
How it varies and happens simultaneously.

Good morning.
Little apple.


Catie Rosemurgy

pan_trup

like this

If anyone asks you
how the perfect satisfaction
of all our sexual wanting
will look, lift your face
and say,
Like this.

When someone mentions the gracefulness
of the nightsky, climb up on the roof
and dance and say,
Like this?

If anyone wants to know what "spirit" is,
or what "God's fragrance" means,
lean your head toward him or her.
Keep your face there close.
Like this.

When someone quotes the old poetic image
about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,
slowly loosen knot by knot the strings
of your robe.
Like this?

If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,
don't try to explain the miracle.
Kiss me on the lips.
Like this. Like this.

When someone asks what it means
to "die for love," point
here.

If someone asks how tall I am, frown
and measure with your fingers the space
between the creases on your forehead.
This tall.

The soul sometimes leaves the body, then returns.
When someone doesn't believe that,
walk back into my house.
Like this.

When lovers moan,
they're telling our story.
Like this.

I am a sky where spirits live.
Stare into this deepening blue,
while the breeze says a secret.
Like this.

When someone asks what there is to do,
light the candle in his hand.
Like this.

How did Joseph's scent come to Jacob?
Huuuu.

How did Jacob's sight return?
Huuuuu.

A little wind cleans the eyes.
Like this.

When Shams comes back from Tabriz,
he'll put just his head around the edge
of the door to surprise us.
Like this.

Rumi

***

seems like it snows everywhere. everywhere but here. and i want it. i want it so much. almond trees can promise all the white confetti in the world, i will not listen. i am longing for snow. falling softly and silently. dancing and twirling, my dear.... snow on snow on snow

post 100

bogdan panait

look at the dog!

"Horses"

I believe in trees.
I believe in birds that live in trees.
I believe that behind every one bird is a sky forever expanding.
I believe all windows look out to the same sky.
I believe in keeping secrets.
I believe there is sincerity in lies.
I believe when the lights go off the furniture keep to their places.
I believe in faith.
I believe that if you believe hard enough you will soon enough be saved.
I believe in walls. That we need them.
I believe in open spaces, that we need them more.
I believe once in a while we crave loneliness.
I believe we need sadness.
I believe in the soft cave of the mouth, in what it has to say, savage and comforting.
I believe in roads and streets, that they lead to ruins.
I believe violence is a plea for mercy.
I believe in the heart's destructive implosions.
I believe behind every painting or picture is a white canvass, complete in itself.
I believe philosophy is difficult and silly; I prefer instead small delicate things like a knife.
I believe Plato's forms do not exist.
I believe behind every space is just another space, and behind that just more space, and so on.
I believe in clouds.
I believe in the divinity of clouds.
I believe mathematics is useless and noble.
I believe in numbers.
I believe that behind all distance is an admission of connectedness, that all space admits of openings.
I believe that everything is open.
I believe inside every mind is an open gun waiting to go off.
I believe the mind is a gun.
I believe behind every face is another face is another face.
I believe some of us would like to be saints but cannot.
I believe some women are virgins.
I believe some women would like to be virgins.
I believe in the inviolable and the insane.
I believe in the quiet dignity of horses.
I believe in the benefits of buying a house.
I believe every house should be surrounded by trees.
I believe in this century, that it is not yet over, that we are on the verge of yet another discovery
I believe our many voices thin out into only one voice.
I believe in the end, but only if it fuels the past to continue expanding.
I believe in the layering of clothes, one on top of another, in the Victorian style.
I believe in skirts and lingerie and long black hair and virtue.
I believe in sin.
I believe in the woman under the man and vice versa.
I believe in the invisible hand, in the wind that lifts the bird and elevates the sky.
I believe in love without proof.
I believe in landscapes.
I believe that behind all love is all love itself, pure and soft and intense.
I believe in things so huge we forget what they're about and why.
I believe in things so small that it's taken us all these years to realize we've seen nothing.

by Arkaye Kierulf

best soundtrack to walk the dog down the sea-side, drink hot chocolate by the fireplace, make cookies and love, paint round things, stare into the rainy night and imagine you near