Poetry (because it's been a while)
SELF-IMPROVEMENT
Tony Hoagland
Just before she flew off like a swan
to her wealthy parents' summer home,
Bruce's college girlfriend asked him
to improve his expertise at oral sex,
and offered him some technical advice:
Use nothing but his tonguetip
to flick the light switch in his room
on and off a hundred times a day
until he grew fluent at the nuances
of force and latitude.
Imagine him at practice every evening,
more inspired than he ever was at algebra,
beads of sweat sprouting on his brow,
thinking, thirty-seven, thirty-eight,
seeing, in the tunnel vision of his mind's eye,
the quadratic equation of her climax
yield to the logic
of his simple math.
Maybe he unscrewed
the bulb from his apartment ceiling
so that passersby would not believe
a giant firefly was pulsing
its electric abdomen in 13 B.
Maybe, as he stood
two inches from the wall,
in darkness, fogging the old plaster
with his breath, he visualized the future
as a mansion standing on the shore
that he was rowing to
with his tongue's exhausted oar.
Of course, the girlfriend dumped him:
met someone, apr�s-ski, who,
using nothing but his nose
could identify the vintage of a Cabernet.
Sometimes we are asked
to get good at something we have
no talent for,
or we excel at something we will never
have the opportunity to prove.
Often we ask ourselves
to make absolute sense
out of what just happens,
and in this way, what we are practicing
is suffering,
which everybody practices,
but strangely few of us
grow graceful in.
The climaxes of suffering are complex,
costly, beautiful, but secret.
Bruce never played the light switch again.
So the avenues we walk down,
full of bodies wearing faces,
are full of hidden talent:
enough to make pianos moan,
sidewalks split,
streetlights deliriously flicker.
TO FUCK WITH LOVE PHASE III
Lenore Kandel
to fuck with love
to love with all the heat and wild of fuck
the fever of your mouth devouring all my secrets and my alibis
leaving me pure burned into oblivion
the sweetness UNENDURABLE
mouth barely touching mouth
nipple to nipple we touched
and were transfixed
by a flow of energy
beyond anything I have ever known
we TOUCHED!
and two days later
my hand embracing your semen-dripping cock
AGAIN!
the energy
indescribable
almost unendurable
the barrier of noumenon-phenomenon
transcended
the circle momentarily complete
the balance of forces
perfect
lying together, our bodies slipping into love
that never have slipped out
I kiss your shoulder and it reeks of lust
the lust of erotic angels fucking the stars
and shouting their insatiable joy over heaven
the lust of comets colliding in celestial hysteria
the lust of hermaphroditic deities doing
inconceivable things to each other and
SCREAMING DELIGHT over the entire universe
and beyond
and we lie together, our bodies wet and burning, and
we WEEP we WEEP we WEEP the incredible tears
that saints and holy men shed in the presence
of their own incandescent gods
I have whispered love into every orifice of your body
As you have done
to me
my whole body is turning into a cuntmouth
my toes my hands my belly my breast my shoulder my eyes
you fuck me continually with your tongue you look
with your words with your presence
we are transmuting
we are as soft and warm and trembling
as a new gold butterfly
the energy
indescribable
almost unendurable
at night sometimes I see our bodies glow
Tony Hoagland
Just before she flew off like a swan
to her wealthy parents' summer home,
Bruce's college girlfriend asked him
to improve his expertise at oral sex,
and offered him some technical advice:
Use nothing but his tonguetip
to flick the light switch in his room
on and off a hundred times a day
until he grew fluent at the nuances
of force and latitude.
Imagine him at practice every evening,
more inspired than he ever was at algebra,
beads of sweat sprouting on his brow,
thinking, thirty-seven, thirty-eight,
seeing, in the tunnel vision of his mind's eye,
the quadratic equation of her climax
yield to the logic
of his simple math.
Maybe he unscrewed
the bulb from his apartment ceiling
so that passersby would not believe
a giant firefly was pulsing
its electric abdomen in 13 B.
Maybe, as he stood
two inches from the wall,
in darkness, fogging the old plaster
with his breath, he visualized the future
as a mansion standing on the shore
that he was rowing to
with his tongue's exhausted oar.
Of course, the girlfriend dumped him:
met someone, apr�s-ski, who,
using nothing but his nose
could identify the vintage of a Cabernet.
Sometimes we are asked
to get good at something we have
no talent for,
or we excel at something we will never
have the opportunity to prove.
Often we ask ourselves
to make absolute sense
out of what just happens,
and in this way, what we are practicing
is suffering,
which everybody practices,
but strangely few of us
grow graceful in.
The climaxes of suffering are complex,
costly, beautiful, but secret.
Bruce never played the light switch again.
So the avenues we walk down,
full of bodies wearing faces,
are full of hidden talent:
enough to make pianos moan,
sidewalks split,
streetlights deliriously flicker.
TO FUCK WITH LOVE PHASE III
Lenore Kandel
to fuck with love
to love with all the heat and wild of fuck
the fever of your mouth devouring all my secrets and my alibis
leaving me pure burned into oblivion
the sweetness UNENDURABLE
mouth barely touching mouth
nipple to nipple we touched
and were transfixed
by a flow of energy
beyond anything I have ever known
we TOUCHED!
and two days later
my hand embracing your semen-dripping cock
AGAIN!
the energy
indescribable
almost unendurable
the barrier of noumenon-phenomenon
transcended
the circle momentarily complete
the balance of forces
perfect
lying together, our bodies slipping into love
that never have slipped out
I kiss your shoulder and it reeks of lust
the lust of erotic angels fucking the stars
and shouting their insatiable joy over heaven
the lust of comets colliding in celestial hysteria
the lust of hermaphroditic deities doing
inconceivable things to each other and
SCREAMING DELIGHT over the entire universe
and beyond
and we lie together, our bodies wet and burning, and
we WEEP we WEEP we WEEP the incredible tears
that saints and holy men shed in the presence
of their own incandescent gods
I have whispered love into every orifice of your body
As you have done
to me
my whole body is turning into a cuntmouth
my toes my hands my belly my breast my shoulder my eyes
you fuck me continually with your tongue you look
with your words with your presence
we are transmuting
we are as soft and warm and trembling
as a new gold butterfly
the energy
indescribable
almost unendurable
at night sometimes I see our bodies glow