sex without love
is it odd when a poem goes through your head like a song might?
How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runnders: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health- just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.
~sharon olds, sex without love - the dead and the living
did you wonder if perhaps we had deserved to live
did you love us, then?
We played with dolls in that house where Father staggered with the
Thanksgiving knife, where Mother wept at
noon into her ounce of cottage cheese, praying for the strength not to
kill herself...
ecstasy
As we made love for the third day,
cloudy and dark, as we did not stop
but went into it and into it and
did not hesitate and did not hold back we
rose through the air, until we were up above
timber line. The lake lay
icy and silver, the surface shirred,
reflecting nothing. The black rocks
lifted around it into the grainy
sepia air, the patches of snow
brilliant white, and even though we
did not know where we were, we could not
speak the language, we could hardly see, we
did not stop, rising with the black
rocks to the black hills, the black
mountains rising from the hills. Resting
on the crest of the mountains, one huge
cloud with scalloped edges of blazing
evening light, we did not turn back,
we stayed with it, even though we were
far beyond what we knew, we rose
into the grain of the cloud, even though we were
frightened, the air hollow, even though
nothing grew there, even though it is a
place from which no one has ever come back.
and marilyn hacker who awakened my surprising love of form...
sestina
for D.G.B.
For a week now our bodies have whispered
together, telling each other secrets
you and I would keep. Their language,
harder and more tender than this, wakes
us suddenly in the half dawn, tangled
dragons on their map. They have a plan.
We are stranded travelers who plan
to ditch our bags and walk. The hill wind whispers
danger and rain. We are going different ways. That tangled
thornbush is where the road forks. The secrets
we told on the station bench to keep awake
were lies. I suspect from your choice of language
that you are not speaking your native language.
You will not know about the city plan
tattooed behind my knee. But the skin wakes
up in humming networks, audibly whispers
over the dead wine. Everybody's secrets
jam the wires. Syllables get tangled
with bus tickets and matchedbooks. You tangled
my hair in your fingers and language
split like a black fig. I suck the secrets
off your skin. This isn't the plan,
the subcutaneous transmitter whispers.
Be circumspect. What sort of person wakes
up twice in a wrecked car? And we wake
in wary second of each other, tangled
damply together. Your cock whispers
inside my thigh that there is a language
without memory. Your fingers plan
wet symphonies in my garrulous secret
places. There is nothing secret
in people crying at weddings and singing at wakes;
and when you pack a duffel bag and plan
on the gratuitous, you will still tangle
purpose and habit, more baggage, more language.
It is not accidental what they whisper.
Our bodies whispered under the sheet. Their secret
language will not elude us when we wake
into the tangled light without a plan.
you know every time i start to .... i begin to read olds & hacker.
,
How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runnders: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health- just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.
~sharon olds, sex without love - the dead and the living
did you wonder if perhaps we had deserved to live
did you love us, then?
We played with dolls in that house where Father staggered with the
Thanksgiving knife, where Mother wept at
noon into her ounce of cottage cheese, praying for the strength not to
kill herself...
ecstasy
As we made love for the third day,
cloudy and dark, as we did not stop
but went into it and into it and
did not hesitate and did not hold back we
rose through the air, until we were up above
timber line. The lake lay
icy and silver, the surface shirred,
reflecting nothing. The black rocks
lifted around it into the grainy
sepia air, the patches of snow
brilliant white, and even though we
did not know where we were, we could not
speak the language, we could hardly see, we
did not stop, rising with the black
rocks to the black hills, the black
mountains rising from the hills. Resting
on the crest of the mountains, one huge
cloud with scalloped edges of blazing
evening light, we did not turn back,
we stayed with it, even though we were
far beyond what we knew, we rose
into the grain of the cloud, even though we were
frightened, the air hollow, even though
nothing grew there, even though it is a
place from which no one has ever come back.
and marilyn hacker who awakened my surprising love of form...
sestina
for D.G.B.
For a week now our bodies have whispered
together, telling each other secrets
you and I would keep. Their language,
harder and more tender than this, wakes
us suddenly in the half dawn, tangled
dragons on their map. They have a plan.
We are stranded travelers who plan
to ditch our bags and walk. The hill wind whispers
danger and rain. We are going different ways. That tangled
thornbush is where the road forks. The secrets
we told on the station bench to keep awake
were lies. I suspect from your choice of language
that you are not speaking your native language.
You will not know about the city plan
tattooed behind my knee. But the skin wakes
up in humming networks, audibly whispers
over the dead wine. Everybody's secrets
jam the wires. Syllables get tangled
with bus tickets and matchedbooks. You tangled
my hair in your fingers and language
split like a black fig. I suck the secrets
off your skin. This isn't the plan,
the subcutaneous transmitter whispers.
Be circumspect. What sort of person wakes
up twice in a wrecked car? And we wake
in wary second of each other, tangled
damply together. Your cock whispers
inside my thigh that there is a language
without memory. Your fingers plan
wet symphonies in my garrulous secret
places. There is nothing secret
in people crying at weddings and singing at wakes;
and when you pack a duffel bag and plan
on the gratuitous, you will still tangle
purpose and habit, more baggage, more language.
It is not accidental what they whisper.
Our bodies whispered under the sheet. Their secret
language will not elude us when we wake
into the tangled light without a plan.
you know every time i start to .... i begin to read olds & hacker.
,