Emotional stealth.
The small amount of skin
That hangs from the
underside of your arm
Is cold
And smooth as silk.
As I run my fingers along it
You wake and tell me
Not to be such a romantic fool;
That I wear love so
Heavy in my heart
And it really is rather
Unflattering,
Before rolling over and
drifting off again
With the most silent of sighs,
And the smallest of smiles
Still hanging from you lips.
Emptying my eyes
of all the salty lies you
would have me believe.
You had three dark spots
in a line
down your back,
more or less in line
with your gently curving spine.
Your very own Orion’s belt
you used to call it.
Each one of us,
you would say,
has our own constellation,
we have but to find it.
I didn’t care for it much,
I have to say,
but I liked the way
the corners of your mouth
turned up when you frowned,
so I stayed quiet.
But now,
when I look up to the night sky,
I find myself tracing you out,
amongst the stars.
Bluebird
- Charles Bukowski
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pur whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?
Just a little something
I’d like to be able to read
to a certain someone
some day.
hate blows a bubble of despair into
-
e. e. cummings
hate blows a bubble of despair into
hugeness world system universe and bang
-fear buries a tomorrow under woe
and up comes yesterday most green and young
pleasure and pain are merely surfaces
(one itself showing, itself hiding one)
life’s only and true value neither is
love makes the little thickness of the coin
comes here a man would have from madame death
nevertheless now and without winter spring?
she’ll spin that spirit her own fingers with
and give him nothing (if he should not sing)
how much more than enough for both of us
darling. And if i sing you are my voice
During the day,
when the drills are pounding,
we put our thoughts and feelings into empty barrels,
like grapes, to ripen.
At night
we open the lids
to sup on their sweet juices.
We lie
hand in hand,
your head in my lap,
under the shade of a low tree
beside a Normandy coastline,
in a field full of
white stone crosses.
And as the wind blows
huge, silent, grey-white clouds
across an otherwise clear sky,
and the hair across your still face,
I think about how many lives were lost
how much blood and tears were spilled,
so that we two could lie here,
so that I could watch you sleep in my arms
and dream of the future
and your silent charms.
The window is open
and you dark devils,
you long fingered night terrors,
make your way across the floor
as the grey outline of the curtain
billows effortlessly.
Your teeth are sharp and ready
to tease out my faults.
Your tongues are split and muscular
weaving in and out,
they whisper secret shames
into the black recesses of the night.
So heavy is the room
with my darkness now
that I can feel it
on my fingertips
and on each eye
forcing the lid down soundly.
My heart beats gently,
as if not to distract,
as if it were in cahoots
but then, as if suspecting
that I am considering this conjecture,
begins a sudden haste
and rushes red
inside my chest
a loathsome taste.
Slowly it seeps out of me,
as if my skin were to weep
of its own accord.
Each bead is cold and brackish
and reeks of a distinct but
unexplainable fear.
And as the pitch piles high
around my uneasy bed
like walls of brittle
death-black fear and dread
I lie back and await
nights end or
mine own at last.
You in your
cheap as chips,
mirror-tinted sunglasses:
I am continually catching
glances of myself
in unassuming poses;
moments of delightful torment.
When I try them on
I am distracted by
the slight reflections
of my own eyes
in my peripheral vision:
so wet and precise
and swept over by
the blue sky and my
black, black eyelashes
with that quite quiver
predictably,
inevitably,
pulling back
to your unflinching gaze.
Your love
is like sitting here
on a gray, vaguely wet morning
in early june
waiting for the train home
after the night that was:
disappointing.
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