poetry
i'm really into poetry these days - i've kindof rediscovered my love for it through these terrible sleepless nights. and yeah, i'm horribly lonely. but i'm also remembering my love for words, and the comfort they bring. along with the way the right poem can take your breath away.
a few of my favourites right now:
Night Thoughts: Baby & Demon
by Gwen Harwood
Baby I'm sick. I need
nursing. Give me your breast.
My orifices bleed.
I cannot sleep. My chest
shakes like a window. Light
guts me. My head's not right
Demon we're old, old chap.
Born under the same sign
after some classic rape.
Gemini. Yours is mine.
sickness and health. We'll share
the end of this affair.
Baby I'm sick to death.
But I can't die. You do
the songs. You've got the breath.
Give them the old soft shoe.
Put on a lovely show.
Put on your wig, and go.
The service station flags, denticulate
plastic, snap in the wind. Hunched seabirds wait
for light to quench the unmeaning lights of town.
This day will bring the fabulous summer down.
Weather no memory can match will fade
to memory, lead drift in the pines' thick shade.
All night salt water stroked and shaped the sand.
All night I heard it. Your bravura hand
chimed me to shores beyond times' rocking swell
The last cars to leave the shabby beach motel.
Lovers and drunks unroofed in sobering air
disperse, ghost coloured in the streetlight glare.
Rock-a-bye baby
In the motel
Baby will kiss
Demon will tell
One candle lights us. Nights cool airs begin
to lick the luminous edges of our skin.
When the bough bends
The apple will fall
Baby knows nothing
Demon knows all.
Draw up the voluptuously crumpled sheet.
In rose dark silence gentle tongues repeat
The body's triumph through it's grand eclipse.
I feel your pulse beat through my finger tips.
Baby's a rocker
lost on the shore
Demon's a mocker
Baby's a whore
World of the happy, innocent and whole.
the body's the best picture of the soul
couched like an animal in savage grace
Ghost after ghost obscures your sleeping face
My baby's like a bird of day
that flutters from my side,
My baby's like an empty beach
That's ravished by the tide.
So fair are you my bonny lass,
so sick and strange am I.
That I must lie with all your loves
and suck your sweetness dry.
And drink your juices dry, my dear,
and find you grain by grain
and build your body bone by bone
and flesh those bones again
With flesh from all your loves, my love,
With tides and seasons stream,
Until you wake by candle light
from your midsummer dream,
And like come gentle creature meet
The huntsman's murderous eye,
and know you never shall escape
however fast you fly.
Unhoused I'll shout my drunken songs
and through the streets I'll go
compelling all I meet to toast
The bride they do not know.
Till all your tears are dry, my love,
and your ghosts fade in the sun
Be sure I'll have your heart, my love,
when all your loving's done.
we are hard - margaret atwood
i.
We are hard on each other
and call it honesty,
choosing our jagged truths
with care and aiming them across
the neutral table.
The things we say are
true; it is our crooked
aims, our choices
turn them criminal.
ii.
Of course your lies
are more amusing:
you make them new each time.
Your truths, painful and boring
repeat themselves over and over
perhaps because you own
so few of them.
iii.
A truth should exist,
it should not be used
like this. If I love you
is that a fact or a weapon?
iv.
Does the body lie
moving like this, are these
touches, hairs, wet
soft marble my tongue runs over
lies you are telling me?
Your body is not a word,
it does not lie or
speak truth either.
It is only
here or not here
love #2
by maggie nelson
Love #2
There was harmony in our midst; for a moment, it was sacred.
…
Later you danced like an imbecile on the roof, calling yourself The Puppet.
The heroin you carried was the color of crushed camel.
I flushed bags of it down the toilet.
Once when you were comatose, I crawled on top
and looked down into a valley of sinuses.
Sat in silence. Did not pummel you awake. Did not
insist you promised to love me through this.
[ this one was edited by me, which no, isn't right, but there are two lines i hate that i had to take out because i love the rest of it]
Marriage as a Creative Process
Julianna Baggott
Let's marry again this time as metaphor:
I'll be the idea of love and you can be
the curtains, breathing.
Allow me this: every day is a proposal,
an acceptance.
Marriage is a reckless aperture,
the sudden floods and fades of light.
No, you can be the idea of love
and I will be
the curtains, breathing.
A moment can halt us, turn us round.
We can lose our bearings in the dim kitchen
worn from our own bare feet.
There is no idea of love,
only the curtains breathing.
But we're smart
to be so doggedly messy,
leaving our hearts everywhere.
I reach for an apple and it begins
to click, to beat.
a few of my favourites right now:
Night Thoughts: Baby & Demon
by Gwen Harwood
Baby I'm sick. I need
nursing. Give me your breast.
My orifices bleed.
I cannot sleep. My chest
shakes like a window. Light
guts me. My head's not right
Demon we're old, old chap.
Born under the same sign
after some classic rape.
Gemini. Yours is mine.
sickness and health. We'll share
the end of this affair.
Baby I'm sick to death.
But I can't die. You do
the songs. You've got the breath.
Give them the old soft shoe.
Put on a lovely show.
Put on your wig, and go.
The service station flags, denticulate
plastic, snap in the wind. Hunched seabirds wait
for light to quench the unmeaning lights of town.
This day will bring the fabulous summer down.
Weather no memory can match will fade
to memory, lead drift in the pines' thick shade.
All night salt water stroked and shaped the sand.
All night I heard it. Your bravura hand
chimed me to shores beyond times' rocking swell
The last cars to leave the shabby beach motel.
Lovers and drunks unroofed in sobering air
disperse, ghost coloured in the streetlight glare.
Rock-a-bye baby
In the motel
Baby will kiss
Demon will tell
One candle lights us. Nights cool airs begin
to lick the luminous edges of our skin.
When the bough bends
The apple will fall
Baby knows nothing
Demon knows all.
Draw up the voluptuously crumpled sheet.
In rose dark silence gentle tongues repeat
The body's triumph through it's grand eclipse.
I feel your pulse beat through my finger tips.
Baby's a rocker
lost on the shore
Demon's a mocker
Baby's a whore
World of the happy, innocent and whole.
the body's the best picture of the soul
couched like an animal in savage grace
Ghost after ghost obscures your sleeping face
My baby's like a bird of day
that flutters from my side,
My baby's like an empty beach
That's ravished by the tide.
So fair are you my bonny lass,
so sick and strange am I.
That I must lie with all your loves
and suck your sweetness dry.
And drink your juices dry, my dear,
and find you grain by grain
and build your body bone by bone
and flesh those bones again
With flesh from all your loves, my love,
With tides and seasons stream,
Until you wake by candle light
from your midsummer dream,
And like come gentle creature meet
The huntsman's murderous eye,
and know you never shall escape
however fast you fly.
Unhoused I'll shout my drunken songs
and through the streets I'll go
compelling all I meet to toast
The bride they do not know.
Till all your tears are dry, my love,
and your ghosts fade in the sun
Be sure I'll have your heart, my love,
when all your loving's done.
we are hard - margaret atwood
i.
We are hard on each other
and call it honesty,
choosing our jagged truths
with care and aiming them across
the neutral table.
The things we say are
true; it is our crooked
aims, our choices
turn them criminal.
ii.
Of course your lies
are more amusing:
you make them new each time.
Your truths, painful and boring
repeat themselves over and over
perhaps because you own
so few of them.
iii.
A truth should exist,
it should not be used
like this. If I love you
is that a fact or a weapon?
iv.
Does the body lie
moving like this, are these
touches, hairs, wet
soft marble my tongue runs over
lies you are telling me?
Your body is not a word,
it does not lie or
speak truth either.
It is only
here or not here
love #2
by maggie nelson
Love #2
There was harmony in our midst; for a moment, it was sacred.
…
Later you danced like an imbecile on the roof, calling yourself The Puppet.
The heroin you carried was the color of crushed camel.
I flushed bags of it down the toilet.
Once when you were comatose, I crawled on top
and looked down into a valley of sinuses.
Sat in silence. Did not pummel you awake. Did not
insist you promised to love me through this.
[ this one was edited by me, which no, isn't right, but there are two lines i hate that i had to take out because i love the rest of it]
Marriage as a Creative Process
Julianna Baggott
Let's marry again this time as metaphor:
I'll be the idea of love and you can be
the curtains, breathing.
Allow me this: every day is a proposal,
an acceptance.
Marriage is a reckless aperture,
the sudden floods and fades of light.
No, you can be the idea of love
and I will be
the curtains, breathing.
A moment can halt us, turn us round.
We can lose our bearings in the dim kitchen
worn from our own bare feet.
There is no idea of love,
only the curtains breathing.
But we're smart
to be so doggedly messy,
leaving our hearts everywhere.
I reach for an apple and it begins
to click, to beat.