Archive
The Flames of Loneliness
by D.J.S.
My loneliness is sometimes so arresting.
At times my solitude becomes detesting.
I have felt a love burn so that I must tell.
A testimony of love's fiery flames burning,
Searing.
My very soul to the lower depths of hell,
Consuming.
But that love is yet fading,
Fading. For years I've remained down here brooding.
Just looming.
Dwelling in this fiery grave.
Prepared for me by the love of my affections.
Yes the woman I love has sought to extinguish.
A love I've held so dear.
As such that I had feared, I never could relinquish.
Alas that love is yet fading,
Fading.
Into the oblivion the penitentiary of my minds eye.
Still her memory yet invades.
The very core of my fired soul.
Lost
by MHK
And I've lost my footing once again
While moondrops reflect upon the sea
To cushion the love I have for you
To cushion the loss of inevitability
The driving concern to fill the need
The void deepens as I reach, reach.
For our last breath
And you hold out no arms
To brace me
From impact
So slammed
I am
Deep within the rocks
Stones shelter me
Caress the inner workings of my slight
Twist of hand
To breathe the air you breathe
To hear the words you speak
I am but the echoes of the love
You are to me
Up on a pedestal doused in esteem
It is the joy I once bathed you in
It is the love you do not feel for me
Rain Lovers
by Rickey Pittman
Holding your face,
I study your dark hair
And eyes in fascination,
Lacking the eloquence
To say what I feel.
Clothes, scattered on the ground,
Standing naked in the soft rain,
Background sheets of lightning,
Illuminating our passion,
Distant thunderings,
We whisper, oblivious
To anything but each other.
Obsession
Obsession is not Kate Moss on the side of a bus
as I walk up Amsterdam Ave.
on a NYC day over 100 degrees
I’m up past the church and school
too far north for my own safety
but there is no danger
you just have to always watch yourself
which I don’t
I think of you Sabine
us together in the café kissing
that cold rainy Paris day
how my French and your English
didn’t help the conversation
but our body language was right for the moment
and I hardly knew you
you in your capital to do your painting
me trying to study film
I think of you Sabine
the day we meet under the awning
the party when we escaped into the tub with no water
the kisses so intimate
and how you smoked cigarettes when I would go down on you
I think of you Sabine
when I close my eyes it helps
not just lids over eyeballs
but when I scrunch my face up tight
trying to make the nothing blacker
that’s when you come into focus
Tu me manque
Sabine
I buy a bottle of water from a pretzel vendor
he doesn’t try to rip me off
there are no tourists up here
Sonnet 29
by William Shakespeare
When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
VII
by e.e. cummings
i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh ... And eyes big love-crumbs,
and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you quite so new
Bowery Blues
by Jack Kerouac
The story of man
Makes me sick
Inside, outside,
I don't know why
Something so conditional
And all talk
Should hurt me so.
I am hurt
I am scared
I want to live
I want to die
I don't know
Where to turn
In the Void
And when
To cut
Out
For no Church told me
No Guru holds me
No advice
Just stone
Of New York
And on the cafeteria
We hear
The saxophone
O dead Ruby
Died of Shot
In Thirty Two,
Sounding like old times
And de bombed
Empty decapitated
Murder by the clock.
And I see Shadows
Dancing into Doom
In love, holding
TIght the lovely asses
Of the little girls
In love with sex
Showing themselves
In white undergarments
At elevated windows
Hoping for the Worst.
I can't take it
Anymore
If I can't hold
My little behind
To me in my room
Then it's goodbye
Sangsara
For me
Besides
Girls aren't as good
As they look
And Samadhi
Is better
Than you think
When it starts in
Hitting your head
In with Buzz
Of glittergold
Heaven's Angels
Wailing
Saying
We've been waiting for you
Since Morning, Jack
Why were you so long
Dallying in the sooty room?
This transcendental Brilliance
Is the better part
(of Nothingness
I sing)
Okay.
Quit.
Mad.
Stop.
The Blackbirds are Rough Today
By Charles Bukowski
Lonely as a dry and used orchard
spread over the earth
for use and surrender
shot down like an ex-pug selling
dailies on the corner
taken by tears like
an aging chorus girl
who has gotten her last check
a hanky is in order your lord your
worship
the blackbirds are rough today
like
ingrown toenails
in an overnight
jail ---
wine wine whine,
the blackbirds run around and
fly around
harping about
Spanish melodies and bones
and everywhere is
nowhere ---
the dream is as bad as
flapjacks and flat tires:
why do we go on
with our minds and
pockets full of
dust
like a bad boy just out of
school ----
you tell
me,
you who were a hero in some
revolution
you who teach children
you who drink with calmness
you who own large homes
and walk in gardens
you have killed a man and own a
beautiful wife
you tell me
why I am on fire like old dry
garbage
we might surely have some interesting
correspondence
it will keep the mailman busy
and the butterflies and ants and bridges and
cemeteries
the rocket-makers and dogs and garage mechanics
will still go on a
while
until we run out of stamps
and/or
ideas
don't be ashamed of
anything; I guess God meant it all
like
locks on
doors
The Suicide
by Jorge Luis Borges
Not a single star will be left in the night.
The night will not be left.
It will die and, with me,
the weight of the intolerable universe.
I shall erase the pyramids, the medallions
the continents and faces.
I shall erase the accumulated past.
I shall make dust of history, dust of dust.
Now I am looking on the final sunset.
I am hearing the last bird.
I bequeath nothingness to no one.
Poem to the Mysterious Woman
by Robert Desnos
I have dreamed of you so much that you are no longer real.
Is there still time to reach that living body
and kiss on that mouth the birth
of the voice which is dear to me?
I have dreamed of you so much that my arms, grown used to being crossed on my
chest as I hugged your shadow, would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body.
For faced with the real form of what has haunted me and governed me for so many
days and years, I would surely become a shadow.
O scales of feeling
I have dreamed of you so much that surely there is no more time for me to wake up.
I sleep on my feet - prey to all the forms of life and love, and you, the only one who
counts for me today, I can no more touch your face and lips than touch the lips and
face of some passerby.
I have dreamed of you so much, have walked so much, talked so much, slept so much
with your phantom, that perhaps the only thing left for me is to become a phantom
among phantoms, a shadow a hundreds times more shadow than the shadow that
moves and goes on moving, brightly, over the sun-dial of your life.
Return
by Octavio Paz
You spread out beneath my eyes,
a land of dunes - ocher, bright.
The wind in search of water stopped,
a land of heartbeats and fountains.
Vast as the night you fit
in the hollow of my hand.
Later, the motionless hurling down,
within and without ourselves.
With my eyes I ate darkness,
drank the water of time. I drank night.
Then I touched the body of a music
heard with the tips of my fingers.
Dark boats, together,
moored in the shadows,
our bodies reclined,
our souls unleashed,
lamps afloat
in the water of night.
In the end you opened your eyes.
You saw yourself seen by my eyes,
and from my eyes you saw yourself:
falling like a fruit on the grass,
like a stone in the pond,
you fell into yourself.
A tide rose within me,
with a weightless fist I beat
at the door of your lids:
my death wanted to meet you,
my death wanted to meet itself.
I was buried in your eyes.
Our bodies flow through the plains
of night: they are time wearing itself out,
a presence that disolves in a caress;
yet they are infinite, to touch them
is to bathe in rivers of heartbeats
and return to the perpetual beginning anew.
Come Slowly
by Emily Dickinson
come slowly, Eden
lips unused to thee.
bashful, sip thy jasmines,
as the fainting bee,
reaching late his flower,
round her chamber hums,
counts his nectars - alights,
and is lost in balms!
Love Song
by William Carlos Williams
I lie here thinking of you ---
the stain of love
is upon the world!
Yellow, yellow, yellow
it eats into the leaves,
smears with saffron
the horned branches that lean
heavily
against a smooth purple sky!
There is no light!
only a honey-thick stain
that drips from leaf to leaf
and limb to limb
spoiling the colors
of the whole world --
you far off there under
the wine-red selvage of the west
my love
by e.e. cummings
my love
thy hair is one kingdom
the king whereof is darkness
thy forehead is a flight of flowers
thy head is a quick forest
filled with sleeping birds
thy breasts are swarms of white bees
upon the bough of they body
thy body to me is April
in those armpits is the approach of Spring
thy thighs are white horses yoked to a chariot
of kings
they are the striking of a good minstrel
between them is always a pleasant song
my love
thy head is a casket
of the cool jewel of thy mind
the hair of thy head is one warrior
innocent of defeat
thy hair upon they shoulders is an army
with victory and with trumpets
thy legs are the trees of dreaming
whose fruit is the very eatage of forgetfulness
thy lips are satraps in scarlet
in whose kiss is the combinings of kings
thy wrists
are holy
which are the keepers of the keys of thy blood
thy feet upon thy ankles are flowers in vases
of silver
in thy beauty is the dilemma of flutes
the eyes are the betrayal
of bells comprehended through incense.
Lullaby
by Anne Sexton
It is a summer evening.
The yellow moths sag
against the locked screens
and the faded curtains
suck over the window sills
and from another building
a goat calls in his dreams.
This is the TV parlor
in the best ward in Bedlam.
The night nurse is passing
out the evening pills.
She walks on two erasers,
padding by us one by one.
My sleeping pill is white.
It is a splendid pearl;
it floats me out of myself,
my stun skin as alien
as a loose bolt of cloth.
I will ignore the bed.
I am linen on a shelf
let the others moan in secret;
let each lost butterfly
go home. Old woolen head,
take me like a yellow moth
while the goat calls hush ---
a-bye.
