New Poems I Like
I Am Not Yours by Sara Teasdale
I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.
You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.
Oh plunge me deep in love -- put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in a rushing wind.
---
If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda
I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine
----
----
Topher Cusumano’s “What She Wanted”
She’s walking down the street in a pair of six-inch, red, patent leather heels.
She always wished she was taller.
She shaves off her eyebrows and paints them back on.
She’ll be the first to tell you she enjoys the attention-
She’s okay with that.
‘Damn, I wanna fuck this girl,’
he thinks to himself as he follows her home,
the Boston streets slowly becoming narrower,
fewer streetlights scattered in front of the old, brick rowhouses,
thick, circular patches of light surrounded by shadow.
He can hear her clicking as she walks.
She walks fast.
She knows where she’s going.
He could hear her clicking only half a block ahead of him.
“Damn, I wanna fuck this girl, yo.
Yo honey, with the fat ass!”
She stops.
She turns.
“Me?” she asks.
Softly, ladylike.
The voice he wants her to have.
The voice you can fuck, and still muffle with only one hand.
“Yeah you mommy-
You wanna come home with me tonight?
You looking real good, girl-
I wanna fuck that ass of yours real good, girl.”
“Me?” she asks again.
“You wanna fuck… me?”
She wears her tits like panties,
She’s got tits built for warfare, this girl.
She’s a battleship, unsinkable by nature.
Scars from girlhood across her thighs,
Wears short skirts so they wonder where she’s been.
She’s been… everywhere.
She walks back toward him.
“Yeah that’s right mommy.
You know what you want.”
And she does.
She knows exactly what she wants.
“You wanna fuck me?” she asks.
They’re face-to-face now.
She notices how dead his eyes are.
She knows how many girls he’s seen ripped apart,
Lying under him.
“You wanna fuck me?”
“Yeah mommy.”
She remembers fourteen.
“You wanna fuck me?”
She remembers five boys with the strength of ten men,
With fifty hands,
Felt like hours.
“You wanna fuck me?”
She could still feel them.
Burning hands, deep gashes, and pale skin.
“Yeah mommy.
You know what you want.”
“I do.
And I know what you want.
You want me to scream a little,
Put up a fight,
‘Cause it’s no fun without a fight.
But you know in the end, you’ll be stronger.”
“Then you wanna pin my arms down to my side,
And rip my shirt off with just your teeth.
Look here, just six little buttons.
You know you can get these motherfuckers off with just your teeth.”
“And of course I’ll wiggle a little,
Trying to look like I’m resisting,
But deep down,
Deep down in your soul,
You really think you’re doing me a favor.
That I’m the lucky one.”
“Then you’ll reach your hand up my skirt,
Real rough,
Just to make sure I know who’s in charge.
You’ll pull off my panties,
Ooh, yeah, boy, you’re gonna pull off my panties-
That is, if I’m wearing any.
I seem like one of those freaky kinda chicks,
‘Cause who the fuck stops to have a conversation with the guy who’s gonna rape the shit outta them in a few minutes?”
“You want me to call you “Daddy”,
And I wonder if you fuck your daughter;
That’s most likely gonna be the worst part about it.
Thinking about your daughter,
Or your someday daughter,
Having to call you “Daddy” every single day of her life.”
Silence.
He was bleeding on the sidewalk for almost four hours before anyone found him.
She knew what she wanted.
----
----
Original version of La Belle Dame Sans Merci, 1819
Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.
I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful - a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery's song.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said -
'I love thee true'.
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lulled me asleep
And there I dreamed - Ah! woe betide! -
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried - 'La Belle Dame sans Merci (pronounce: la belle daam saun mearcy)
nbsp; Hath thee in thrall!'
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.
And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
----
----
Neil Gaiman's "The Fairy Reel"
If I were young as once I was,
and dreams and death more distant then,
I wouldn't split my soul in two,
and keep half in the world of men,
So half of me would stay at home,
and strive for Faërie in vain,
While all the while my soul would stroll
up narrow path, down crooked lane,
And there would meet a fairy lass
and smile and bow with kisses three,
She'd pluck wild eagles from the air
and nail me to a lightning tree
And if my heart would run from her
or flee from her, be gone from her,
She’d wrap it in a nest of stars
and then she'd take it on with her
Until one day she'd tire of it,
all bored with it and done with it.
She'd leave it by a burning brook,
and off brown boys would run with it.
They'd take it and have fun with it
and stretch it long and cruel and thin,
They'd slice it into four and then
they'd string with it a violin.
And every day and every night
they'd play upon my heart a song
So plaintive and so wild and strange
that all who heard it danced along
And sang and whirled and sank and trod
and skipped and slipped and reeled and rolled
Until, with eyes as bright as coals,
they'd crumble into wheels of gold . . . .
But I am young no longer now,
for sixty years my heart's been gone
To play its dreadful music there,
beyond the valley of the sun.
I watch with envious eyes and mind,
the single-souled, who dare not feel
The wind that blows beyond the moon,
who do not hear the Fairy Reel.
If you don't hear the Fairy Reel,
they will not pause to steal your breath.
When I was young I was a fool.
nbsp; So wrap me up in dreams and death.
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