Love Poetry

APPLAUDING youths laughed with young prostitutes And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway; Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes Blown by black players upon a picnic day. She sang and danced on gracefully and calm, 5 The light gauze hanging loose about her form; To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm Grown lovelier for passing through a storm. Upon her swarthy neck black, shiny curls Profusely fell; and, tossing coins in praise, 10 The wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys, and even the girls, Devoured her with their eager, passionate gaze; But, looking at her falsely-smiling face I knew her self was not in that strange place.

Claude McKay Harlem Dancer

I cannot live with You - It would be Life - And Life is over there - Behind the Shelf The Sexton keeps the Key to - Putting up Our Life - His Porcelain - Like a Cup - Discarded of the Housewife - Quaint - or Broke - A newer Sevres pleases - Old Ones crack - I could not die - with You - For One must wait To shut the Other's Gaze down - You - could not - And I - could I stand by And see You - freeze - Without my Right of Frost - Death's privilege? Nor could I rise - with You - Because Your Face Would put out Jesus' - That New Grace Glow plain - and foreign On my homesick Eye - Except that You than He Shone closer by - They'd judge Us - How - For You - served Heaven - You know, Or sought to - I could not - Because You saturated Sight - And I had no more Eyes For sordid excellence As Paradise And were You lost, I would be - Though My Name Rang loudest On the Heavenly fame - And were You - saved - And I - condemned to be Where You were not - That self - were Hell to Me - So We must meet apart - You there - I - here - With just the Door ajar That Oceans are - and Prayer - And that White Sustenance - Despair -

Emily Dickinson I cannot live with you

THE HEART asks pleasure first, And then, excuse from pain; And then, those little anodynes That deaden suffering; And then, to go to sleep; 5 And then, if it should be The will of its Inquisitor, The liberty to die.

Emily Dickinson the heart asks for pleasure first

Wild nights - Wild nights! Were I with thee Wild nights should be Our luxury! Futile - the winds - To a Heart in port - Done with the Compass - Done with the Chart! Rowing in Eden - Ah - the Sea! Might I but moor - tonight - In thee!

Emily Dickinson wild nights - wild nights!

It's my lunch hour, so I go for a walk among the hum-colored cabs. First, down the sidewalk where laborers feed their dirty glistening torsos sandwiches and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets on. They protect them from falling bricks, I guess. Then onto the avenue where skirts are flipping above heels and blow up over grates. The sun is hot, but the cabs stir up the air. I look at bargains in wristwatches. There are cats playing in sawdust. On to Times Square, where the sign blows smoke over my head, and higher the waterfall pours lightly. A Negro stands in a doorway with a toothpick, languorously agitating. A blonde chorus girl clicks: he smiles and rubs his chin. Everything suddenly honks: it is 12:40 of a Thursday. Neon in daylight is a great pleasure, as Edwin Denby would write, as are light bulbs in daylight. I stop for a cheeseburger at JULIET'S CORNER. Giulietta Masina, wife of Federico Fellini, è bell' attrice. And chocolate malted. A lady in foxes on such a day puts her poodle in a cab. There are several Puerto Ricans on the avenue today, which makes it beautiful and warm. First Bunny died, then John Latouche, then Jackson Pollock. But is the earth as full as life was full, of them? And one has eaten and one walks, past the magazines with nudes and the posters for BULLFIGHT and the Manhattan Storage Warehouse, which they'll soon tear down. I used to think they had the Armory Show there. A glass of papaya juice and back to work. My heart is in my pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy.

Frank OHara a step away from them

I'm not going to cry all the time nor shall I laugh all the time, I don't prefer one "strain" to another. I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie, not just a sleeper, but also the big, overproduced first-run kind. I want to be at least as alive as the vulgar. And if some aficionado of my mess says "That's not like Frank!", all to the good! I don't wear brown and gray suits all the time, do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera, often. I want my feet to be bare, I want my face to be shaven, and my heart— you can't plan on the heart, but the better part of it, my poetry, is open

Frank OHara my heart

Not you, lean quarterlies and swarthy periodicals with your studious incursions toward the pomposity of ants, nor you, experimental theatre in which Emotive Fruition is wedding Poetic Insight perpetually, nor you, promenading Grand Opera, obvious as an ear (though you are close to my heart), but you, Motion Picture Industry, it's you I love! In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we love. And give credit where it's due: not to my starched nurse, who taught me how to be bad and not bad rather than good (and has lately availed herself of this information), not to the Catholic Church which is at best an oversolemn introduction to cosmic entertainment, not to the American Legion, which hates everybody, but to you, glorious Silver Screen, tragic Technicolor, amorous Cinemascope, stretching Vistavision and startling Stereophonic Sound, with all your heavenly dimensions and reverberations and iconoclasms! To Richard Barthelmess as the "tol'able" boy barefoot and in pants, Jeanette MacDonald of the flaming hair and lips and long, long neck, Sue Carroll as she sits for eternity on the damaged fender of a car and smiles, Ginger Rogers with her pageboy bob like a sausage on her shuffling shoulders, peach-melba-voiced Fred Astaire of the feet, Eric von Stroheim, the seducer of mountain-climbers' gasping spouses, the Tarzans, each and every one of you (I cannot bring myself to prefer Johnny Weissmuller to Lex Barker, I cannot!), Mae West in a furry sled, her bordello radiance and bland remarks, Rudolph Valentino of the moon, its crushing passions, and moonlike, too, the gentle Norma Shearer, Miriam Hopkins dropping her champagne glass off Joel McCrea's yacht, and crying into the dappled sea, Clark Gable rescuing Gene Tierney from Russia and Allan Jones rescuing Kitty Carlisle from Harpo Marx, Cornel Wilde coughing blood on the piano keys while Merle Oberon berates, Marilyn Monroe in her little spike heels reeling through Niagara Falls, Joseph Cotten puzzling and Orson Welles puzzled and Dolores del Rio eating orchids for lunch and breaking mirrors, Gloria Swanson reclining, and Jean Harlow reclining and wiggling, and Alice Faye reclining and wiggling and singing, Myrna Loy being calm and wise, William Powell in his stunning urbanity, Elizabeth Taylor blossoming, yes, to you and to all you others, the great, the near-great, the featured, the extras who pass quickly and return in dreams saying your one or two lines, my love! Long may you illumine space with your marvellous appearances, delays and enunciations, and may the money of the world glitteringly cover you as you rest after a long day under the kleig lights with your faces in packs for our edification, the way the clouds come often at night but the heavens operate on the star system. It is a divine precedent you perpetuate! Roll on, reels of celluloid, as the great earth rolls on!

Frank Ohara to the film industry in crisis

Now when I walk around at lunchtime I have only two charms in my pocket an old Roman coin Mike Kanemitsu gave me and a bolt-head that broke off a packing case when I was in Madrid the others never brought me too much luck though they did help keep me in New York against coercion but now I'm happy for a time and interested I walk through the luminous humidity passing the House of Seagram with its wet and its loungers and the construction to the left that closed the sidewalk if I ever get to be a construction worker I'd like to have a silver hat please and get to Moriarty's where I wait for LeRoi and hear who wants to be a mover and shaker the last five years my batting average is .016 that's that, and LeRoi comes in and tells me Miles Davis was clubbed 12 times last night outside birdland by a cop a lady asks us for a nickel for a terrible disease but we don't give her one we don't like terrible diseases, then we go eat some fish and some ale it's cool but crowded we don't like Lionel Trilling we decide, we like Don Allen we don't like Henry James so much we like Herman Melville we don't want to be in the poets' walk in San Francisco even we just want to be rich and walk on girders in our silver hats I wonder if one person out of the 8,000,000 is thinking of me as I shake hands with LeRoi and buy a strap for my wristwatch and go back to work happy at the thought possibly so

Frank o hara personal poem

I could take the Harlem night and wrap around you, Take the neon lights and make a crown, Take the Lenox Avenue busses, Taxis, subways, And for your love song tone their rumble down. Take Harlem's heartbeat, Make a drumbeat, Put it on a record, let it whirl, And while we listen to it play, Dance with you till day-- Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl.

Harlem Dancer langston hughes

When I take my girl to the swimming party I set her down among the boys. They tower and bristle, she stands there smooth and sleek, her math scores unfolding in the air around her. They will strip to their suits, her body hard and indivisible as a prime number, they'll plunge in the deep end, she'll subtract her height from ten feet, divide it into hundreds of gallons of water, the numbers bouncing in her mind like molecules of chlorine in the bright blue pool. When they climb out, her ponytail will hang its pencil lead down her back, her narrow silk suit with hamburgers and french fries printed on it will glisten in the brilliant air, and they will see her sweet face, solemn and sealed, a factor of one, and she will see their eyes, two each, their legs, two each, and the curves of their sexes, one each, and in her head she'll be doing her sparkle and fall to the power of a thousand from her body.

Sharon Olds, "The One Girl at the Boys Party"

After we flew across the country we got in bed, laid our bodies delicately together, like maps laid face to face, East to West, my San Francisco against your New York, your Fire Island against my Sonoma, my New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas burning against your Kansas your Kansas burning against my Kansas, your Eastern Standard Time pressing into my Pacific Time, my Mountain Time beating against your Central Time, your sun rising swiftly from the right my sun rising swiftly from the left your moon rising slowly form the left my moon rising slowly form the right until all four bodies of the sky burn above us, sealing us together, all our cities twin cities, all our states united, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Topography by Sharon Olds

I've stayed in the front yard all my life. I want a peek at the back Where it's rough and untended and hungry weed grows. A girl gets sick of a rose. I want to go in the back yard now And maybe down the alley, To where the charity children play. I want a good time today. They do some wonderful things. They have some wonderful fun. My mother sneers, but I say it's fine How they don't have to go in at quarter to nine. My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae Will grow up to be a bad woman. That George'll be taken to Jail soon or late (On account of last winter he sold our back gate). But I say it's fine. Honest, I do. And I'd like to be a bad woman, too, And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace And strut down the streets with paint on my face.

a song in the front yard gwendolyn brooks

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations! What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons? I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys. I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel? I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective. We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier. Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight? (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.) Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely. Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage? Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

a supermarket in california allen ginsberg

At this time there are few poems about pregnancy and childbirth [3]

alice notley A Baby is Born Out of a White Owl's Forehead"

I met Ted at two parties at the same house at first he insulted me because, he said later, he was mad at girls that night; at the second we danced an elaborate foxtrot with dipping—he had taken one lesson at an Arthur Murray's. First I went into an empty room and waited for him to follow me. I liked the way his poems look on the page open but delicately arranged. I like him because he's funny he talks more like me that like books or words: he likes my knowledge and accepts its sources. I know that there are Channel swimmers and that they keep warm with grease because of an Esther Williams movie. We differ as to what kind of grease it is I suggest bacon he says it's bear really in the movie it was dark brown like grease from a car Who's ever greased a car? Not him I find he prefers to white out all the speech balloons in a Tarzan comic and print in her words for the characters. Do you want to do some? he says—No—We go to a movie where Raquel welch and Jim Brown are Mexican revolutionaries I make him laugh he says something about a turning point in the plot Do you mean, I say, when she said We shood have keeled him long ago? Finally a man knows that I'm being funny He's eleven years older than me and takes pills I take some a few months later and write I think it's eighty-three poems I forget about Plath and James Wright he warns me about pills in a slantwise way See this nose? he says, It's the ruins of civilization I notice some broken capillaries who cares I wonder who I am now myself though I haven't anticipated me entirely I have such an appetite to write not to live I'm certainly living quite fully We're good together he says because we can be like little boy and little girl I give him much later a girl's cheap Dutch brooch Delft blue and white a girl and a boy holding hands and windmills But now it's summer in Iowa City he leaves for Europe gives me the key to his library stored in a room at The Writers Workshop I write mildly yet oh there's a phrase "the Gilbert curve" how a street turns that sensation to make it permanent a daily transition as the curve opens and is walked on of the kinds of experience still in between the ones talked about in literature and even in Ted's library which finally makes poetry possible for me but I've not read a voice like my own like my own voice will be

alice notley april not an inventory but a blizzard

Poet professor in autumn years seeks helpmate companion protector friend young lover w/ empty compassionate soul exuberant spirit, straightforward handsome athletic physique & boundless mind, courageous warrior who may also like women & girls, no problem, to share bed meditation apartment Lower East Side, help inspire mankind conquer world anger & guilt, empowered by Whitman Blake Rimbaud Ma Rainey & Vivaldi, familiar respecting Art's primordial majesty, priapic carefree playful harmless slave or master, mortally tender passing swift time, photographer, musician, painter, poet, yuppie or scholar-- Find me here in New York alone with the Alone going to lady psychiatrist who says Make time in your life for someone you can call darling, honey, who holds you dear can get excited & lay his head on your heart in peace.

allen ginsbrg personal ad

My poetry, then, as always been aimed at destroying ugly shit. So why, Ronald Reagan, shd you get away?

amiri baraka ars gratia gratis

Poems are bullshit unless they are Teeth or trees or lemons piled On a step. Or black ladies dying Of men leaving nickel hearts Beating them down. **** poems And they are useful, would they shoot Come at you, love what you are, Breathe like wrestlers, or shudder Strangely after peeing. We want live Words of the hip world live flesh & Coursing blood. Hearts Brains Souls splintering fire. We want poems Like fists beating ******s out of Jocks Or dagger poems in the slimy bellies Of the owner-jews. Black poems to Smear on girdlemamma mulatto bitches Whose brains are red jelly stuck Between 'lizabeth taylor's toes. Stinking Whores! we want "poems that kill." Assassin poems, Poems that shoot Guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys And take their weapons leaving them dead With tongues pulled out and sent to Ireland. Knockoff Poems for dope selling wops or slick halfwhite Politicians Airplane poems, rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr . . .tuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuh . . .rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr . . . Setting fire and death to Whities ass. Look at the Liberal Spokesman for the jews clutch his throat & puke himself into eternity . . . rrrrrrrr There's a negroleader pinned to A bar stool in Sardi's eyeballs melting In hot flame Another negroleader On the steps of the white house one Kneeling between the sheriff's thighs Negotiating coolly for his people. Aggh . . . stumbles across the room . . . Put it on him, poem! Strip him naked To the world! Another bad poem cracking Steel knuckles in a jewlady's mouth Poem scream poison gas on beasts in green berets Clean out the world for virtue and love, Let there be no love poems written Until love can exist freely and Cleanly. Let Black people understand That they are the lovers and the sons Of warriors and sons Of warriors Are poems & poets & All the loveliness here in the world We want a black poem. And a Black World. Let the world be a Black Poem And Let All Black People Speak This Poem Silently Or LOUD

amiri baraka black art

hear yourself thinking about some person other than you and then look up and yes there will be some other person some closeness and echoed tenderness, that makes us more than dots under the far away, that makes us more than split seconds of light

amiri baraka chamber music

He & I had a fight in the pub 5 scotch on the rocks 1 beer I remember only that he said "No women poets are any good, if you want it Straight, because they don't handle money" and "Poe greater than Dickinson" Well that latter is an outright and ****ing untruth 6-line stanzas Open though some? And he forgot to put my name on our checks However, He went to get the checks however He had checks to deposit in his name Because He's older & successfuller & teachers because When you're older you don't want to scrounge for money besides it gives him a thrill he doesn't too much acknowledge, O Power! Ted Berrigan So I got pregnant I hope not last night now I'm a slave, well mildly, to a baby Though I could teach English A or type no bigshot (mildly) poet-in-residence like him Get a babysitter never more write any good poems Or, just to Scrounge it out, leave him. All I can say is This poem is in the Mainstream American Tradition

but he says i misunderstood alice notley

I Is the total black, being spoken From the earth's inside. There are many kinds of open. How a diamond comes into a knot of flame How a sound comes into a word, coloured By who pays what for speaking. Some words are open Like a diamond on glass windows Singing out within the crash of passing sun Then there are words like stapled wagers In a perforated book—buy and sign and tear apart— And come whatever wills all chances The stub remains An ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge. Some words live in my throat Breeding like adders. Others know sun Seeking like gypsies over my tongue To explode through my lips Like young sparrows bursting from shell. Some words Bedevil me. Love is a word another kind of open— As a diamond comes into a knot of flame I am black because I come from the earth's inside Take my word for jewel in your open light.

coal audre lorde

The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

elixabeth bishop one art

In Worcester, Massachusetts, I went with Aunt Consuelo to keep her dentist's appointment and sat and waited for her in the dentist's waiting room. It was winter. It got dark early. The waiting room was full of grown-up people, arctics and overcoats, lamps and magazines. My aunt was inside what seemed like a long time and while I waited I read the National Geographic (I could read) and carefully studied the photographs: the inside of a volcano, black, and full of ashes; then it was spilling over in rivulets of fire. Osa and Martin Johnson dressed in riding breeches, laced boots, and pith helmets. A dead man slung on a pole --"Long Pig," the caption said. Babies with pointed heads wound round and round with string; black, naked women with necks wound round and round with wire like the necks of light bulbs. Their breasts were horrifying. I read it right straight through. I was too shy to stop. And then I looked at the cover: the yellow margins, the date. Suddenly, from inside, came an oh! of pain --Aunt Consuelo's voice-- not very loud or long. I wasn't at all surprised; even then I knew she was a foolish, timid woman. I might have been embarrassed, but wasn't. What took me completely by surprise was that it was me: my voice, in my mouth. Without thinking at all I was my foolish aunt, I--we--were falling, falling, our eyes glued to the cover of the National Geographic, February, 1918. I said to myself: three days and you'll be seven years old. I was saying it to stop the sensation of falling off the round, turning world. into cold, blue-black space. But I felt: you are an I, you are an Elizabeth, you are one of them. Why should you be one, too? I scarcely dared to look to see what it was I was. I gave a sidelong glance --I couldn't look any higher-- at shadowy gray knees, trousers and skirts and boots and different pairs of hands lying under the lamps. I knew that nothing stranger had ever happened, that nothing stranger could ever happen. Why should I be my aunt, or me, or anyone? What similarities-- boots, hands, the family voice I felt in my throat, or even the National Geographic and those awful hanging breasts-- held us all together or made us all just one? How--I didn't know any word for it--how "unlikely". . . How had I come to be here, like them, and overhear a cry of pain that could have got loud and worse but hadn't? The waiting room was bright and too hot. It was sliding beneath a big black wave, another, and another. Then I was back in it. The War was on. Outside, in Worcester, Massachusetts, were night and slush and cold, and it was still the fifth of February, 1918.

elizabeth bishop in the waiting room

I woke up this morning with an awful aching head I woke up this morning with an awful aching head My new man had left me just a room and an empty bed Bought me a coffee grinder, got the best one I could find Bought me a coffee grinder, got the best one I could find So he could grind my coffee, 'cause he had a brand new grind He's a deep-sea diver, with a stroke that can't go wrong He's a deep-sea diver, with a stroke that can't go wrong He can touch the bottom, and his wind holds out so long He knows how to thrill me and he thrills me night and day Oh, he knows how to thrill me and he thrills me night and day He's got a new way of loving, almost takes my breath away Oh, he's got that sweet something and I told my girlfriend Lou He's got that sweet something and I told my girlfriend Lou But the way she's ravin', she must have gone and tried it too When my bed get empty, make me feel awful mean and blue When my bed get empty, make me feel awful mean and blue My springs are getting' rusty, sleepin' single like I do Bought him a blanket, pillow for his head at night Bought him a blanket, pillow for his head at night And I bought him a mattress, so he could lay just right He came home one evening with his spirit way up high He came home one evening with his spirit way up high What he had to give me, made me ring my hands and cry He give me a lesson that I never had before He give me a lesson that I never had before When he got through teachin' me, from my elbow down was sore He boiled my first cabbage and he made it awful hot He boiled my first cabbage and he made it awful hot When he put in the bacon, it overflowed the pot When you get good lovin', never go and spread the news When you get good lovin', never go and spread the news It'll build up to cross you, and leave you with them empty bed blues

empty bed blues bessie smith

Siwashing it out once in Siuslaw Forest I slept under rhododendron All night blossoms fell Shivering on a sheet of cardboard Feet stuck in my pack Hands deep in my pockets Barely able to sleep. I remembered when we were in school Sleeping together in a big warm bed We were the youngest lovers When we broke up we were still nineteen. Now our friends are married You teach school back east I dont mind living this way Green hills the long blue beach But sometimes sleeping in the open I think back when I had you. A spring night in Shokoku-ji Eight years ago this May We walked under cherry blossoms At night in an orchard in Oregon. All that I wanted then Is forgotten now, but you. Here in the night In a garden of the old capital I feel the trembling ghost of Yugao I remember your cool body Naked under a summer cotton dress. An autumn morning in Shokoku-ji Last night watching the Pleiades, Breath smoking in the moonlight, Bitter memory like vomit Choked my throat. I unrolled a sleeping bag On mats on the porch Under thick autumn stars. In dream you appeared (Three times in nine years) Wild, cold, and accusing. I woke shamed and angry: The pointless wars of the heart. Almost dawn. Venus and Jupiter. The first time I have Ever seen them close. December at Yase You said, that October, In the tall dry grass by the orchard When you chose to be free, "Again someday, maybe ten years." After college I saw you One time. You were strange. And I was obsessed with a plan. Now ten years and more have Gone by: I've always known where you were— I might have gone to you Hoping to win your love back. You still are single. I didn't. I thought I must make it alone. I Have done that. Only in dream, like this dawn, Does the grave, awed intensity Of our young love Return to my mind, to my flesh. We had what the others All crave and seek for; We left it behind at nineteen. I feel ancient, as though I had Lived many lives. And may never now know If I am a fool Or have done what my karma demands.

four poems for robin gary Snyder

Lana Turner has collapsed! I was trotting along and suddenly it started raining and snowing and you said it was hailing but hailing hits you on the head hard so it was really snowing and raining and I was in such a hurry to meet you but the traffic was acting exactly like the sky and suddenly I see a headline LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED! there is no snow in Hollywood there is no rain in California I have been to lots of parties and acted perfectly disgraceful but I never actually collapsed oh Lana Turner we love you get up

frank o hara poem (Lana turner has collapsed)

Washing Kai in the sauna, The kerosene lantern set on a box outside the ground-level window, Lights up the edge of the iron stove and the washtub down on the slab Steaming air and crackle of waterdrops brushed by on the pile of rocks on top He stands in warm water Soap all over the smooth of his thigh and stomach "Gary don't soap my hair!" —his eye-sting fear— the soapy hand feeling through and around the globes and curves of his body up in the crotch, And washing-tickling out the scrotum, little anus, his penis curving up and getting hard as I pull back skin and try to wash it Laughing and jumping, flinging arms around, I squat all naked too, is this our body? Sweating and panting in the stove-steam hot-stone cedar-planking wooden bucket water-splashing kerosene lantern-flicker wind-in-the-pines-out sierra forest ridges night— Masa comes in, letting fresh cool air sweep down from the door a deep sweet breath And she tips him over gripping neatly, one knee down her hair falling hiding one whole side of shoulder, breast, and belly, Washes deftly Kai's head-hair as he gets mad and yells— The body of my lady, the winding valley spine, the space between the thighs I reach through, cup her curving vulva arch and hold it from behind, a soapy tickle a hand of grail The gates of Awe That open back a turning double-mirror world of wombs in wombs, in rings, that start in music, is this our body? The hidden place of seed The veins net flow across the ribs, that gathers milk and peaks up in a nipple—fits our mouth— The sucking milk from this our body sends through jolts of light; the son, the father, sharing mother's joy That brings a softness to the flower of the awesome open curling lotus gate I cup and kiss As Kai laughs at his mother's breast he now is weaned from, we wash each other, this our body Kai's little scrotum up close to his groin, the seed still tucked away, that moved from us to him In flows that lifted with the same joys forces as his nursing Masa later, playing with her breast, Or me within her, Or him emerging, this is our body: Clean, and rinsed, and sweating more, we stretch out on the redwood benches hearts all beating Quiet to the simmer of the stove, the scent of cedar And then turn over, murmuring gossip of the grasses, talking firewood, Wondering how Gen's napping, how to bring him in soon wash him too— These boys who love their mother who loves men, who passes on her sons to other women; The cloud across the sky. The windy pines. the trickle gurgle in the swampy meadow this is our body. Fire inside and boiling water on the stove We sigh and slide ourselves down from the benches wrap the babies, step outside, black night & all the stars. Pour cold water on the back and thighs Go in the house—stand steaming by the center fire Kai scampers on the sheepskin Gen standing hanging on and shouting, "Bao! bao! bao! bao! bao!" This is our body. Drawn up crosslegged by the flames drinking icy water hugging babies, kissing bellies, Laughing on the Great Earth Come out from the bath.

gary snyder the bath

Behind shut doors, in the shadowy quarantine, There shines the lamp of iodine and rose That stains all love with its medicinal bloom. This boy, who is no more than seventeen, Not knowing what to do, takes off his clothes As one might in a doctor's anteroom. Then in a cross-draft of fear and shame Feels love hysterically burn away, A candle swimming down to nothingness Put out by its own wetted gusts of flame, And he stands smooth as uncarved ivory Heavily curved for some expert caress. And finally sees the always open door That is invisible till the time has come, And half falls through as through a rotten wall To where chairs twist with dragons from the floor And the great bed drugged with its own perfume Spreads its carnivorous flower-mouth for all. The girl is sitting with her back to him; She wears a black thing and she rakes her hair, Hauling her round face upward like moonrise; She is younger than he, her angled arms are slim And like a country girl her feet are bare. She watches him behind her with old eyes, Transfixing him in space like some grotesque, Far, far from her where he is still alone And being here is more and more untrue. Then she turns round, as one turns at a desk, And looks at him, too naked and too soon, And almost gently asks: Are you a Jew?

karl shapiro the first time

She had thought the studio would keep itself; no dust upon the furniture of love. Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal, the panes relieved of grime. A plate of pears, a piano with a Persian shawl, a cat stalking the picturesque amusing mouse had risen at his urging. Not that at five each separate stair would writhe under the milkman's tramp; that morning light so coldly would delineate the scraps of last night's cheese and three sepulchral bottles; that on the kitchen shelf among the saucers a pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own-- envoy from some village in the moldings... Meanwhile, he, with a yawn, sounded a dozen notes upon the keyboard, declared it out of tune, shrugged at the mirror, rubbed at his beard, went out for cigarettes; while she, jeered by the minor demons, pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found a towel to dust the table-top, and let the coffee-pot boil over on the stove. By evening she was back in love again, though not so wholly but throughout the night she woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming like a relentless milkman up the stairs.

living in sin adrienne rich

I never turned anyone into a pig. Some people are pigs; I make them Look like pigs. I'm sick of your world That lets the outside disguise the inside. Your men weren't bad men; Undisciplined life Did that to them. As pigs, Under the care of Me and my ladies, they Sweetened right up. Then I reversed the spell, showing you my goodness As well as my power. I saw We could be happy here, As men and women are When their needs are simple. In the same breath, I foresaw your departure, Your men with my help braving The crying and pounding sea. You think A few tears upset me? My friend, Every sorceress is A pragmatist at heart; nobody sees essence who can't Face limitation. If I wanted only to hold you I could hold you prisoner.

louis gluck circes power

It is not the moon, I tell you. It is these flowers lighting the yard. I hate them. I hate them as I hate sex, the man's mouth sealing my mouth, the man's paralyzing body— and the cry that always escapes, the low, humiliating premise of union— In my mind tonight I hear the question and pursuing answer fused in one sound that mounts and mounts and then is split into the old selves, the tired antagonisms. Do you see? We were made fools of. And the scent of mock orange drifts through the window. How can I rest? How can I be content when there is still that odor in the world?

louise gluck mock orange

Speak earth and bless me with what is richest make sky flow honey out of my hips rigis mountains spread over a valley carved out by the mouth of rain. And I knew when I entered her I was high wind in her forests hollow fingers whispering sound honey flowed from the split cup impaled on a lance of tongues on the tips of her breasts on her navel and my breath howling into her entrances through lungs of pain. Greedy as herring-gulls or a child I swing out over the earth over and over again.

love poem audre lorde

How the days went While you were blooming within me I remember each upon each — The swelling changed planes of my body — And how you first fluttered, then jumped And I thought it was my heart. How the days wound down And the turning of winter I recall, with you growing heavy Against the wind. I thought Now her hands Are formed, and her hair Has started to curl Now her teeth are done Now she sneezes. Then the seed opened I bore you one morning just before spring — My head rang like a fiery piston My legs were towers between which A new world was passing. Since then I can only distinguish One thread within running hours You . . . flowing through selves Toward you.

now that i am forever with child audre lorde

My Dolphin, you only guide me by surprise, a captive as Racine, the man of craft, drawn through his maze of iron composition by the incomparable wandering voice of Phèdre. When I was troubled in mind, you made for my body caught in its hangman's-knot of sinking lines, the glassy bowing and scraping of my will. . . . I have sat and listened to too many words of the collaborating muse, and plotted perhaps too freely with my life, not avoiding injury to others, not avoiding injury to myself— to ask compassion . . . this book, half fiction, an eelnet made by man for the eel fighting my eyes have seen what my hand did.

robert lowell dolphin

"The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows open. Our magnolia blossoms. Life begins to happen. My hopped up husband drops his home disputes, and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes, free-lancing out along the razor's edge. This screwball might kill his wife, then take the pledge. Oh the monotonous meanness of his lust. . . It's the injustice . . . he is so unjust— whiskey-blind, swaggering home at five. My only thought is how to keep alive. What makes him tick? Each night now I tie ten dollars and his car key to my thigh. . . . Gored by the climacteric of his want, he stalls above me like an elephant."

robert lowell to speak of woe that is in marriage

I am locked in a little cedar box with a picture of shepherds pasted onto the central panel between carvings. The box stands on curved legs. It has a gold, heart-shaped lock and no key. I am trying to write my way out of the closed box redolent of cedar. Satan comes to me in the locked box and says, I'll get you out. Say My father is a shit. I say my father is a shit and Satan laughs and says, It's opening. Say your mother is a pimp. My mother is a pimp. Something opens and breaks when I say that. My spine uncurls in the cedar box like the pink back of the ballerina pin with a ruby eye, resting beside me on satin in the cedar box. Say shit, say death, say **** the father, Satan says, down my ear. The pain of the locked past buzzes in the child's box on her bureau, under the terrible round pond eye etched around with roses, where self-loathing gazed at sorrow. Shit. Death. **** the father. Something opens. Satan says Don't you feel a lot better? Light seems to break on the delicate edelweiss pin, carved in two colors of wood. I love him too, you know, I say to Satan dark in the locked box. I love them but I'm trying to say what happened to us in the lost past. Of course, he says and smiles, of course. Now say: torture. I see, through blackness soaked in cedar, the edge of a large hinge open. Say: the father's cock, the mother's ****, says Satan, I'll get you out. The angle of the hinge widens until I see the outlines of the time before I was, when they were locked in the bed. When I say the magic words, Cock, ****, Satan softly says, Come out. But the air around the opening is heavy and thick as hot smoke. Come in, he says, and I feel his voice breathing from the opening. The exit is through Satan's mouth. Come in my mouth, he says, you're there already, and the huge hinge begins to close. Oh no, I loved them, too, I brace my body tight in the cedar house. Satan sucks himself out the keyhole. I'm left locked in the box, he seals the heart-shaped lock with the wax of his tongue. It's your coffin now, Satan says. I hardly hear; I am warming my cold hands at the dancer's ruby eye— the fire, the suddenly discovered knowledge of love.

sharon olds satan says

I hope my good old ******* holds out 60 years it's been mostly OK Tho in Bolivia a fissure operation survived the altiplano hospital-- a little blood, no polyps, occasionally a small hemorrhoid active, eager, receptive to phallus coke bottle, candle, carrot banana & fingers-- Now AIDS makes it shy, but still eager to serve-- out with the dumps, in with the condom'd orgasmic friend-- still rubbery muscular, unashamed wide open for joy But another 20 years who knows, old folks got troubles everywhere-- necks, prostates, stomachs, joints-- Hope the old hole stays young till death, relax

sphincter allen ginsberg

to have been together and known you, and despite our pain to have grasped much of what joy exists accompanied by the ring and peal of your romantic laughter is what it was about, really. Life. Loving someone, and struggling

steller nilotic amiri baraka

You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time—— Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du. In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars. But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw. It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew. The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true. With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew. I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You—— Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you. You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who Bit my pretty red heart in two. I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do. But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I'm finally through. The black telephone's off at the root, The voices just can't worm through. If I've killed one man, I've killed two—— The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now. There's a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

sylvia plath Daddy

Love set you going like a fat gold watch. The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry Took its place among the elements. Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue. In a drafty museum, your nakedness Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls. I'm no more your mother Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow Effacement at the wind's hand. All night your moth-breath Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen: A far sea moves in my ear. One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral In my Victorian nightgown. Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try Your handful of notes; The clear vowels rise like balloons.

sylvia plath morning song

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts. Nor the woman in the ambulance Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly - A gift, a love gift Utterly unasked for By a sky Palely and flamily Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes Dulled to a halt under bowlers. Oh my God, what am I That these late mouths should cry open In a forest of frosts, in a dawn of cornflowers.

sylvia plath poppies in october

Watching you in the mirror I wonder what it is like to be so beautifuland why you do not love but cut yourself, shavinglike a blind man. I think you let me stareso you can turn against yourself with greater violence,needing to show me how you scrape the flesh awayscornfully and without hesitationuntil I see you correctly,as a man bleeding, notthe reflection I desire.

the mirror louis gluck

I wanted to be sure to reach you; though my ship was on the way it got caught in some moorings. I am always tying up and then deciding to depart. In storms and at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide around my fathomless arms, I am unable to understand the forms of my vanity or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder in my hand and the sun sinking. To you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage of my will. The terrible channels where the wind drives me against the brown lips of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet I trust the sanity of my vessel; and if it sinks, it may well be in answer to the reasoning of the eternal voices, the waves which have kept me from reaching you.

to the harbormaster Frank O'Hara

Since we're not young, weeks have to do time for years of missing each other. Yet only this odd warp in time tells me we're not young. Did I ever walk the morning streets at twenty, my limbs streaming with a purer joy? did I lean from any window over the city listening for the future as I listen here with nerves tuned for your ring? And you, you move toward me with the same tempo. Your eyes are everlasting, the green spark of the blue-eyed grass of early summer, the green-blue wild cress washed by the spring. At twenty, yes: we thought we'd live forever. At forty-five, I want to know even our limits. I touch you knowing we weren't born tomorrow, and somehow, each of us will help the other live, and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.

twenty one love poems adrienne rich

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes, I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it, The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it. The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless, It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it, I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked, I am mad for it to be in contact with me. The smoke of my own breath, Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine, My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs, The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn, The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies of the wind, A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms, The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag, The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides, The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun. Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much? Have you practis'd so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,) You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

walt whitman Song of myself

I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul, The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me, The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into a new tongue. I am the poet of the woman the same as the man, And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man, And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men. I chant the chant of dilation or pride, We have had ducking and deprecating about enough, I show that size is only development. Have you outstript the rest? are you the President? It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every one, and still pass on. I am he that walks with the tender and growing night, I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night. Press close bare-bosom'd night—press close magnetic nourishing night! Night of south winds—night of the large few stars! Still nodding night—mad naked summer night. Smile O voluptuous cool-breath'd earth! Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! Earth of departed sunset—earth of the mountains misty-topt! Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue! Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river! Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake! Far-swooping elbow'd earth—rich apple-blossom'd earth! Smile, for your lover comes. Prodigal, you have given me love—therefore I to you give love! O unspeakable passionate love.

walt whitman Song of myself

Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity, Flames and ether making a rush for my veins, Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them, My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly different from myself, On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs, Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip, Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial, Depriving me of my best as for a purpose, Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist, Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture-fields, Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away, They bribed to swap off with touch and go and graze at the edges of me, No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger, Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them a while, Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me. The sentries desert every other part of me, They have left me helpless to a red marauder, They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me. I am given up by traitors, I talk wildly, I have lost my wits, I and nobody else am the greatest traitor, I went myself first to the headland, my own hands carried me there. You villain touch! what are you doing? my breath is tight in its throat, Unclench your floodgates, you are too much for me.

walt whitman Song of myself

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

walt whitman Song of myself

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son, Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them, No more modest than immodest. Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs! Whoever degrades another degrades me, And whatever is done or said returns at last to me. Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the current and index. I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy, By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms. Through me many long dumb voices, Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves, Voices of the diseas'd and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs, Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion, And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father-stuff, And of the rights of them the others are down upon, Of the deform'd, trivial, flat, foolish, despised, Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung. Through me forbidden voices, Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil'd and I remove the veil, Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur'd. I do not press my fingers across my mouth, I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart, Copulation is no more rank to me than death is. I believe in the flesh and the appetites, Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle. Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch'd from, The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer, This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds. If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it, Translucent mould of me it shall be you! Shaded ledges and rests it shall be you! Firm masculine colter it shall be you! Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you! You my rich blood! your milky stream pale strippings of my life! Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you! My brain it shall be your occult convolutions! Root of wash'd sweet-flag! timorous pond-snipe! nest of guarded duplicate eggs! it shall be you! Mix'd tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you! Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you! Sun so generous it shall be you! Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you! You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you! Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you! Broad muscular fields, branches of live oak, loving lounger in my winding paths, it shall be you! Hands I have taken, face I have kiss'd, mortal I have ever touch'd, it shall be you. I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious, Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy, I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause of my faintest wish, Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause of the friendship I take again. That I walk up my stoop, I pause to consider if it really be, A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. To behold the day-break! The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows, The air tastes good to my palate. Hefts of the moving world at innocent gambols silently rising freshly exuding, Scooting obliquely high and low. Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs, Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven. The earth by the sky staid with, the daily close of their junction, The heav'd challenge from the east that moment over my head, The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be master!

walt whitman Song of myself