Aug 09, 2005 20:03
I bumped into this poet by chance on myspace when someone posted one of his poems. i really like him, i'm not sure exactly why. If i did know, i prolly wouldn't want to try to explain it. But im going to post 2 poems of his that i like.
Adam and Eve
I wanted to punch her right in the mouth and that's the truth.
After all, we had gotten from the station of the flickering glances
to the station of the hungry mouths,
from the shoreline of skirts and faded jeans
to the ocean of unencumbered skin,
from the perilous mountaintop of the apartment steps
to the sanctified valley of the bed--
the candle fluttering upon the dresser top, its little yellow blade
sending up its whiff of waxy smoke,
and I could smell her readiness
like a dank cloud above a field,
when at the crucial moment, the all-important moment,
the moment standing at attention,
she held her milk white hand agitatedly
over the entrance to her body and said No,
and my brain burst into flame.
If I couldn't sink myself in her like a dark spur
or dissolve into her like a clod thrown in a river,
can I go all the way in the saying, and say
I wanted to punch her right in the face?
Am I allowed to say that,
that I wanted to punch her right in her soft face?
Or is the saying just another instance of rapaciousness,
just another way of doing what I wanted then,
by saying it?
Is a man just an animal, and is a woman not an animal?
Is the name of the animal power?
Is it true that the man wishes to see the woman
hurt with her own pleasure
and the woman wishes to see the expression on the man's face
of someone falling from great height,
that the woman thrills with the power of her weakness
and the man is astonished by the weakness of his power?
Is the sexual chase a hunt where the animal inside
drags the human down
into a jungle made of vowels,
hormonal undergrowth of sweat and hair,
or is this an obsolete idea
lodged like a fossil
in the brain of the ape
who lives inside the man?
Can the fossil be surgically removed
or dissolved, or redesigned
so the man can be a human being, like a woman?
Does the woman see the man as a house
where she might live in safety,
and does the man see the woman as a door
through which he might escape
the hated prison of himself,
and when the door is locked,
does he hate the door instead?
Does he learn to hate all doors?
I've seen rain turn into snow then back to rain,
and I've seen making love turn into fucking
then back to making love,
and no one covered up their faces out of shame,
no one rose and walked into the lonely maw of night.
But where was there, in fact, to go?
Are some things better left unsaid?
Shall I tell you her name?
Can I say it again,
that I wanted to punch her right in the face?
Until we say the truth, there can be no tenderness.
As long as there is desire, we will not be safe.
Poem for Men Only
by Tony Hoagland
It wasn't easy, inventing the wheel,
dragging the first stones into place,
convincing them to be the first house.
Maybe that's why our fathers,
when they finished work
had so little to say. Instead,
they drifted - feet crossed on the divan,
hands folded over stomachs like a prayer
to middle age. They watched the game,
or snored and dreamed of flying naked
through a storm of bills. When,
like a weighty oak, my father fell,
knocked down by a streak
of lightning through his chest,
when he went on living at the height
of an adjustable bed,
below a chart of pulse and respiration lines,
then I understood
what it meant to be a man,
and land on your back in the shadow
of all your solitary strength, the masculine
tickertape of leaves whispering
judgmentally above you. Weakness
is so frightening. You speak
from the side of a sagging mouth,
hear a voice you never wanted to produce
ask for some small, despicable, important
thing - a flexible straw, a crummy
channel change. I stared through the window
across the institutional lawn
trying not to hide. Sparrows
darted to and from a single
emerald pine, a sort of bird motel.
Light purred into the grass. I tried
to see all men as brief
as birds, inhaling the powerful oxygen,
flying the lazy light, having their afternoon
as sort of millionaires -
then, at evening, forced to reenter the collective shade
and shrink, remembering their size. When I looked
for my father, when my father finally
looked for me, it was impossible. We kept
our dignity. But when did I learn
to leave everyone behind? When did I get
as strong as my old man?
Out of your strength,
you make a distance
where you can stand and look across.
Consider crossing. Think about it.
Take, if you like, all day.