You are driving to the airportAlong the glittering highwayThrough the warm night,Humming to yourself.The yellow rose buds that stoodOn the commode faded and fellTwo days ago. Last night thePetals dropped from the tulipsOn the dresser. The signs ofYour presence are leaving theHouse one by one. Being withoutYou was almost more than ICould bear. Now the work is squaredAway. All the arrangementsHave been made. All the delaysAre past and I am thirtyThousand feet in the air overA dark lustrous sea, underA low half moon that makes the wingsGleam like fish under water –Rushing south four hundred milesDown the California coastTo your curving lips and yourIvory thighs.—Kenneth Rexroth
.
My eyes want to kiss your face.
I have no power over my eyes.
They just want to kiss your face.
I flow towards you out of my eyes,
A fine heat trembles round your shoulders,
It slowly dissolves your contours
And I am there with you, your mouth
And everywhere around you -
I have no power over my eyes.
—Solveig von Schultz
.
Her lips on his could tell him better than all her stumbling words.
–Margaret Mitchell
.
Of course it was a disaster.
The unbearable, dearest secret
has always been a disaster.
The danger when we try to leave.
Going over and over afterward
what we should have done
instead of what we did.
But for those short times
we seemed to be alive. Misled,
misused, lied to and cheated,
certainly. Still, for that
little while, we visited
our possible life.—Jack Gilbert
I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.
I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.
I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,
and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.
—Pablo Neruda
.
Exchange of Fire
When your left arm touched my right
as we both reached for the dessert
menu in the all-night diner, a spark
began smouldering in my sleeve, broke
a hole the size of a heart in the patched
elbow of your jacket.
Dirty white smoke enveloped our bodies
as the conversation turned
to the underground fire we'd all seen
on the news, a fire that had raged up
to consume everything in its path.The air in the diner stank of charred meat;
under the table I took my husband's right
hand and placed it on my left thigh
where flesh and garter meet.I wanted only that, until your left knee
grazed my right, and this time
there was an explosion, just as our waiter
lit the Crepes Suzette your wife had ordered
for you. Flames engulfed our table
and we moved to another booth, my husband
and your wife saying we can't take
you two anywhere simultaneously.I had to decide: should I risk
asking for something sweet now, or abstain? -
when you said think of the women on the Titanic
who pushed away from dessert that night
because their skirts were getting tight.
It made me think all right
and then when we were all friends again,
laughing, the whole length of your left leg
rubbed the length of my right and every
light in the joint went out, life stopped
for me, it meant a scandal somewhere in the future.
I tried to focus on the scorched dessert
menu feeling the beginnings of violent
pleasure. I reached for my knee where the hair
had been singed off, where the flesh was
already oozing, and I remember thinking,
I like this. It was the beginning
of loneliness, also.
For when the lights came back on I was
afraid to move from my seat; when we rose
to say goodnight we would be expected
to embrace. We had to: the flesh
of your body down the length of my trembling
body, the thin cloth covering my breasts
covered with flames, the apologies to your wife
for the plastic buttons on your shirt front melting,
your belt buckle welding us together in our heat.
At home I'm still burning when my husband
pours lighter fluid on his hands and feet and sets
himself on fire: only by entering fire can I
put the fire out. This time I might finally
do it. It may be a threat, an end to pain,
or all there is left to make of love.
—Susan Musgrave
.
Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made of flowersFeasted, we guide it - our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal -
Over the sky's hot rim,
The day's last breath in our sails.
Pinned by the sun between solsticeAnd equinox, drowsy and tangled together
We drifted for months and woke
With the bitter taste of land on our lips,
Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime
And the sound of a rope
Lowering a bucket down its well. Then,
We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,
And lay like fish
Under the net of our kisses.
—Pablo NerudaTranslation by Christopher Logue
.
Two bicyclers pause for a kiss on the overlook ofthe Valle Grande, their helmets a pair of hungryelectrons colliding as our mouths melt down andthe heart reaches critical mass.—Jim Sagel
.
I watch your fingerspress around a pencruise words across a pagea gentle pulse of muscleripples your skin smooth, it’s silkin lamplight glimmersSuddenly, just thisis sensuouseach freckle on your forearmmust be kissedand Isend breathless caresses
—Sandy Shreve
.
When you love a man, he becomes more than a body.His physical limbs expand, and his outline recedes, vanishes.He is rich and sweet and right.He is part of the world, the atmosphere,
the blue sky and the blue water.
—Gwendolyn Brooks
I’m sorry all the kissesI scrawled on your neck were writtenin disappearing ink. Sometimes I thought of youso hard one of your legs would pop outof my ear hole, and when I was sleeping, you’d pressyour face against the porthole of my submarine.I’m sorry this poem has taken thirteen yearsto reach you. I wish that just once, instead of skiddingoff the shoulder blade’s precipice and joyridingover flesh, we’d put our hands away like chocolateto be saved for later, and deciphered the calligraphyof each other’s eyelashes, translated a paragraphfrom the volumes of what couldn’t be said.—Jeffrey McDaniel
The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy
I want
to do with you what spring does with
the cherry trees.
—Pablo Neruda
.
Mind led body
to the edge of the precipice.
They stared in desire
at the naked abyss.
If you love me, said mind,
take that step into silence.
If you love me, said body,
turn and exist.
—Anne Stevenson
.
But what lovers we were, what lover,
Even when it was all overthe deadweight bull-black wines we swungtowards each other rang and ranglike bells of blood, our own great hearts.We slung the drunk boat out of portand watched our unreal sober lifeunmoor, a continent of grief;The candlelight strange on our faceslike the silent tiny blazesAnd coruscations of its wars.We blew them out and took the stairsInto the night for the night's work,stripped off in the timbered dark,Gently hooked each other onlike aqualungs, and thundered downTo mine our lovely secret wreck.We surfaced later, breathless, backTo back, then made our way aloneup the mined beach of the dawn.
—Don Paterson
.
Some kinds of love, Marguerita told Tom
Between thought and expression lies a lifetimeSituations arise because of the weather
And no kinds of love are better than othersSome kinds of love, Marguerita told Tom
Like a dirty French novel, the absurd courts the vulgarAnd some kinds of love, the possibilities are endless
And for me to miss one would seem to be groundlessI heard what you said, Marguerita heard Tom
And of course you're a boy, but in that you're not charmlessFor a boy is a straight line, that finds a wealth in division
And some kinds of love are mistaken for visionPut jelly on your shoulder, let us do what you fear most
That from which you recoil, but which still makes your eyes moistPut jelly on your shoulder, lie down upon the carpet
Between thought and expression, let us now kiss the culpritI don't know just what it's all about
Put on your red pajamas and find out—Lou Reed
.
I would like to watch you sleeping,which may not happen.I would like to watch you,sleeping. I would like to sleepwith you, to enteryour sleep as it’s smooth dark waveslides over my headand walk with you through that lucentwavering forest of bluegreen leaveswith it’s watery sun and; three moonstowards the cave where you must descend,towards your worst fearI would like to give you the silverbranch, the small white flower, the oneword that will protect youfrom the grief at the centerof your dream, from the griefat the center. I would like to followyou up the long stairwayagain and; becomethe boat that would row you backcarefully, a flamein two cupped handsto where your body liesbeside me, and you enterit as easily as breathing inI would like to be the airthat inhabits you for a momentonly. I would like to be that unnoticedand; that necessary.—Margaret Atwoodvariation on the word sleep
.
This first interview was what every rendezvous must be between persons of passionate disposition, who have stepped over a wide distance quickly, who desire each other ardently, and who, nevertheless, do not know each other.
It is impossible that at first there should not occur certain discordant notes in the situation, which is embarrassing until the moment when two souls find themselves in unison.
If desire gives a man boldness and disposes him to lay restraint aside, the mistress, under pain of ceasing to be woman, however great may be her love, is afraid of arriving at the end so promptly, and face to face with the necessity of giving herself, which to many women is equivalent to a fall into an abyss, at the bottom of which they know not what they shall find. The involuntary coldness of the woman contrasts with her confessed passion, and necessarily reacts upon the most passionate lover. Thus ideas, which often float around souls like vapours, determine in them a sort of temporary malady. In the sweet journey which two beings undertake through the fair domains of love, this moment is like a wasteland to be traversed, a land without a tree, alternatively damp and warm, full of scorching sand, traversed by marshes, which leads to smiling groves clad with roses, where Love and his retinue of pleasures disport themselves on carpets of soft verdure.
–Honore De Balzac
night writing
this doesn’t compare to the feel of your skin
...
...
The Dalliance Of The Eagles
Skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,)
Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles,The rushing amorous contact high in space together,
The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,
In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling,Till o'er the river pois'd, the twain yet one, a moment's lull,
A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing,Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate divorce flight,
She hers, he his, pursuing.
—Walt Whitman
.
may i feel said he
(i'll squeal said she
just once said he)
it's fun said she
(may i touch said he
how much said she
a lot said he)
why not said she
(let's go said he
not too far said she
what's too far said he
where you are said she)
may i stay said he
which way said she
like this said he
if you kiss said she
may i move said he
is it love said she)
if you're willing said he
(but you're killing said she
but it's life said he
but your wife said she
now said he)
ow said she
(tiptop said he
don't stop said she
oh no said he)
go slow said she
(cccome?said he
ummm said she)
you're divine!said he
(you are Mine said she)
—E. E. Cummings
.
Coming together
it is easier to work
after our bodies
meet
paper and pen
neither care nor profit
whether we write or notbut as your body moves
under my hands
charged and waiting
we cut the leash
you create me against your thighs
hilly with images
moving through our word countries
my body writes into your flesh
the poem you make of me.
Touching you I catch midnightas moon fires set in my throat
I love you flesh into blossomI made youand take you madeinto me.
—Audre Lorde
.
Kubla Khan
In Xanadu did Kubla KhanA stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ranDown to a sunless sea.So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced;
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!The shadow of the dome of pleasureFloated midway on the waves:
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 't would win me
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798
.
sometimes i am alive because with
me her alert treelike body sleeps
which i will feel slowly sharpening
becoming distinct with love slowly,
who in my shoulder sinks sweetly teethuntil we shall attain the Springsmellingintense large togethercoloured instantthe moment pleasantly frightfulwhen, her mouth suddenly rising, whollybegins with mine fiercely to fool(and from my thighs which shrug and panta murdering rain leapingly reaches the upward
singular deepest flower
which shecarries in a gesture of her hips)
—E. E. Cummings
.
So when the fire is extinguished, and the moon sinks,the man says to the woman:
"Oh, woman, be very soft, be very soft and deep towards me,
with the deep silence.Oh, woman, do not speak and stir and wound me with
the sharp horns of yourself.Let me come into the deep, soft places, the dark, soft places
deep as between the stars.Oh, let me lose there the weariness of the day:
let me come in the power of the night.Oh, do not speak to me, nor break the deep night of
my silence and my power.Be softer than dust, and darker than any flower.Oh, woman, wonderful is the craft of your softness,
the distance of your dark depths.Oh, open silently the deep that has no end,
and do not turn the horns of the moon against me."
—D. H. Lawrence
.
Above the lawn the wild beetles mate
and mate, skew their tough wings
and join. They light in our hair,
on our arms, fall twirling and twinning
into our laps. And below us, in the grass,
the bugs are seeking each other out,
antennae lifted and trembling, tiny legs
scuttling, then the infinitesimal
ah’s of their meeting, the awkward joy
of their turnings around. O end to end
they meet again and swoon as only bugs can.
This is why, sometimes, the grass feels electric
under our feet, each blade quivering, and why
the air comes undone over our heads
and washes down around our ears like rain.
But it has to be spring, and you have to be
in love—acutely, painfully, achingly in love—
to hear the black-robed choir of their sighs.—Dorianne Laux,
The Orgasms of Organisms
.
.
Inhabited Body
Body on a horizon of water,
body open
to the slow intoxication of fingers,
body defended
by the splendour of apples,
surrendered hill by hill,
body lovingly made moist
by the tongue’s pliant sun.
Body with the taste of cropped grass
in a secret garden,
body where I am at home,
body where I lie down
to suck up silence,
to hear
the murmur of blades of grain,
to breathe
the deep dark sweetness of the bramble bush.
Body of a thousand mouths,
all tawny with joy,
all ready to sip,
ready to bite till a scream
bursts from the bowels
and mounts to the towers
and pleads for a dagger.
Body for surrendering to tears.
Body ripe for death.
Body for imbibing to the end –
my ocean, brief
and white,
my secret vessel,
my propitious wind,
my errant, unknown,
endless navigation.
Eugénio de Andrade
Translated by Alexis Levitin
.
because i love you)last night clothed in sealace appeared to me your mind drifting with chuckling rubbish of pearl weed coral and stones;
lifted,and(before my eyes sinking)inward,fled;softly your face smile breasts gargled by death:drowned only
again carefully through deepness to rise these your wrists thighs feet hands
—E. E. Cummings
.
For womenthe best aphrodisiacs are woThe G-spot is in the ears.
He who looks for it below there
is wasting his time.
—Isabel Allende
.
Young Sycamore
I must tell you
this young tree
whose round and firm trunk
between the wet
pavement and the gutter
(where water
is trickling) rises
bodilyinto the air with
one undulant
thrust half its height-
and thendividing and waning
sending out
young branches on
all sides-hung with cocoons
it thins
till nothing is left of it
but twoeccentric knotted
twigs
bending forward
hornlike at the top
—William Carlos Williams
.
Genesis
It was late, of course,just the two of us still at the tableworking on a second bottle of winewhen you speculated that maybe Eve came firstand Adam began as a ribthat leaped out of her side one paradisal afternoon.Maybe, I remember saying,because much was possible back then,and I mentioned the talking snakeand the giraffes sticking their necks out of the ark,their noses up in the pouring Old Testament rain.I like a man with a flexible mind, you said then,lifting your candlelit glass to meand I raised mine to you and began to wonderwhat life would be like as one of your ribs—to be with you all the timeriding under your blouse and skin,caged under the soft weight of your breasts,your favorite rib, I am assuming,if you ever bothered to stop and count themwhich is just what I did later that nightafter you had fallen asleepand we were fitted tightly back to front,your long legs against the length of mine,my fingers doing the crazy numbering that comes of love.—Billy CollinsHoroscopes for the Dead
.
Misery and SplendorSummoned by conscious recollection, shewould be smiling, they might be in a kitchen talking,before or after dinner. But they are in this other room,the window has many small panes, and they are on a couchembracing. He holds her tightlyas he can, she buries herself in his body.Morning, maybe it is evening, lightis flowing through the room. Outside,the day is slowly succeeded by night,succeeded by day. The process wobbles wildlyand accelerates: weeks, months, years. The light in the roomdoes not change, so it is plain what is happening.They are trying to become one creature,and something will not have it. They are tenderwith each other, afraidtheir brief, sharp cries will reconcile them to the momentwhen they fall away again. So they rub against each other,their mouths dry, then wet, then dry.
They feel themselves at the center of a powerful
and baffled will. They feel
they are an almost animal,
washed up on the shore of a world—
or huddled against the gate of a garden—
to which they can't admit they can never be admitted.
—Robert Hass
.
"I'm about", you announce,"as drunk as you're going to get me."As if I had gotten you drunk.As if the only way to proceedwas for you to be weak,and for me to exploit your weakness.You take me to your room.I had loved your body for years,its compact curves half seen, half imagined
under the drab clothing you favor.Protective coloration,as if you feared being noticed.I didn't mind; I've never believedin gilding the lily.But now your camouflage is coming offand breasts are spilling into my handslike a soft warm jackpot.I always liked the delicate line of your neckand now I nuzzle it under the edgeof your short straight hair.You seem frightened,as if this could only be due to my being blind,as if you had nothing to offerand any moment might expose your deception."Do you know how beautiful you are?" I ask,and you answer "No!" in near panic,as if it couldn't be possible,as if you'd be punished for acknowledging it.So without words, I show you how beautiful you areby drowning in your sweetness,by drowning you in mine.I sense that you want to be held, restrained,as if you think: - This isn't my doing, (no),This isn't my fault. So as we approach the terror (no)more beautiful than beauty,I hold you - (no), tight, tight,hold you down - (no)keep you from moving at all,so that no one (no) will ever blame youfor our (no, no!) upwelling bliss.for W.November 18, 1999
—Howard A. Landman
.
When I was learning wordsand you were in the baththere was a flurry of small birdsand in the aftermathof all that panicked flight,as if the red dusk willeda concentration of its light:a falcon on the sill.It scanned the orchard's bowers,then pane by pane it eyedthe stories facing oursbut never looked inside.I called you in to see.And when you steamed the roomand naked next to mestood dripping, as a bloomof blood formed in your cheekand slowly seemed to melt,I could almost speakthe love I almost felt.Wish for something, you said.A shiver pricked your spine.The falcon turned its headand locked its eyes on mine,And for a long moment I'm still inI wished and wished and wishedthe moment would not end.And just like that it vanished.—Christian Wiman
.
For you I undress down to the sheaths of my nerves.
I remove my jewelry and set it on the nightstand,
I unhook my ribs, spread my lungs flat on a chair.
I dissolve like a remedy in water, in wine.
I spill without staining, and leave without stirring the air.
I do it for love. For love, I disappear.
—Kim Addonizio
.
I loved him most
when he came home from work,
his fingers still curled from fitting pipe,
his denim shirt ringed with sweat
and smelling of salt, the drying weeds
of the ocean. I would go to him where he sat
on the edge of the bed, his forehead
anointed with grease, his cracked hands
jammed between his thighs, and unlace
the steel-toed boots, stroke his ankles,
his calves, the pads and bones of his feet.
Then I'd open his clothes and take
the whole day inside me-the ship's
gray sides, the miles of copper pipe,
the voice of the first man clanging
off the hull's silver ribs, spark of lead
kissing metal, the clamp, the winch,
the white fire of the torch, the whistle
and the long drive home.
—Dorianne Laux
.
When my body had forgotten its purpose,
when it just hung off my brainstem like whipped mule.
When my hands only wrote. When my mouth only ate.
When my ass sat, my eyes read, when my reflexes
were answers to questions we all already knew.
Remember how it was then that you slid your hand
into me, a fork in the electric toaster of my body. Jesus,
where did all these sparks come from? Where was all
this heat? Remember what this mouth did last night?
And still, this morning I answer the phone like normal,
still I drink an hour’s worth of strong coffee. And now
I file. And now I send an email. And remember how
my lungs filled with all that everything? Remember
how my heart was an animal you released from its cage?
Remember how we unhinged? Remember all the names
our bodies called each other? Remember how afterwards,
the steam rose from us, like a pair of smiling ghosts?”—Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz
.
John
He (please don’t tell) is the one man in my life(almost 70 now?) I’ve ever wanted to grab by the belt buckleand ride so fast the bed would take off.but I’d just sit there all those interminable nightsat the Center for the Arts, my thigh grazing his—through high school, Lucy and I drove to Cambridgein my mother’s car, hid a few houses from his,and followed him to the clinic where he worked,then to all his Saturday afternoon chores.We’d haunt Café Algiers.When Lucy died he called me.When I met my husband, I called him.I can tell he has come to New York.I can feel him walking in New York,I can feel him walking up my blockand stopping to buy waterand looking up my buildingup the 40 floors up through my floorup between my legsup through my head
—Martha Rhodes
.
Love: BeginningsThey're at that stage where so much desire streams between them, so much frank need and want, so much absorption in the other and the self and the self-admiring entity and unity they make -- her mouth so full, breast so lifted, head thrown back so far in her laughter at his laughter he so solid, planted, oaky, firm, so resonantly factual in the headiness of being craved so, she almost wreathed upon him as they intertwine again, touch again, cheek, lip, shoulder, brow, every glance moving toward the sexual, every glance away soaring back in flame into the sexual -- that just to watch them is to feel again that hitching in the groin, that filling of the heart, the old, sore heart, the battered, foundered, faithful heart, snorting again, stamping in its stall.
—C. K. Williams