Judith Shakes
But now she’s been turned away again from the stage
And she trembles with all her shame and sadness and rage
So I take her in my arms, take her in my home;
I well know her brother and I’ll not have her be alone.
I pity her situation and her vulnerability begs me
To stand by her and do what I can so we
Take off our clothes because I don’t have anything to say
And Judith needs a place to stay.
We twist and turn and swim in each other
she wears an expression dutiful and ashamed.
She lays and looks away, smelling both of sweat,
We were sugary sweet machines but between us, in between
Something was planted in the furrows and soiled and sexed.
For weeks we fucked and spoke with our own dialect:
A mixture of our dependence and regret
And she spoke like she knew that nothing would be all right.
Judith shakes, she bends and she breaks and
The life buried warm inside upsets her stomach, makes
Her need more than anything to escape.
Judith piles all her pages and pens;
She puts on a brown coat and memories of friends
That she left at home that winter when
She walked her way to town.
She piles it all and stands herself on top
Like a martyr on a post outside a butcher’s shop.
Judith shakes, she twists and turns
And looks briefly to me before her eyes drop.
She rummages for matches in her deep brown pockets,
Her voice breaks, her match strikes, her shapely body burns;
Her supple scent lingers, rank and sensual by turns.
Her thick black smoke spreads and stings my eye sockets.
She stands like a burning beacon in my memory:
A girl only seventeen who once held
The knack but is no longer speaking
To me.
So lover, loop your fingers with the rings in my spine
And erase the memory of that dead lover and child of mine-
Now buried at the crossing by the pachyderm pub-
That lover so fine when she first lay with me, clothed and reclined,
we were not in love but she made me so alive.
And she trembles with all her shame and sadness and rage
So I take her in my arms, take her in my home;
I well know her brother and I’ll not have her be alone.
I pity her situation and her vulnerability begs me
To stand by her and do what I can so we
Take off our clothes because I don’t have anything to say
And Judith needs a place to stay.
We twist and turn and swim in each other
she wears an expression dutiful and ashamed.
She lays and looks away, smelling both of sweat,
We were sugary sweet machines but between us, in between
Something was planted in the furrows and soiled and sexed.
For weeks we fucked and spoke with our own dialect:
A mixture of our dependence and regret
And she spoke like she knew that nothing would be all right.
Judith shakes, she bends and she breaks and
The life buried warm inside upsets her stomach, makes
Her need more than anything to escape.
Judith piles all her pages and pens;
She puts on a brown coat and memories of friends
That she left at home that winter when
She walked her way to town.
She piles it all and stands herself on top
Like a martyr on a post outside a butcher’s shop.
Judith shakes, she twists and turns
And looks briefly to me before her eyes drop.
She rummages for matches in her deep brown pockets,
Her voice breaks, her match strikes, her shapely body burns;
Her supple scent lingers, rank and sensual by turns.
Her thick black smoke spreads and stings my eye sockets.
She stands like a burning beacon in my memory:
A girl only seventeen who once held
The knack but is no longer speaking
To me.
So lover, loop your fingers with the rings in my spine
And erase the memory of that dead lover and child of mine-
Now buried at the crossing by the pachyderm pub-
That lover so fine when she first lay with me, clothed and reclined,
we were not in love but she made me so alive.