One evening
a little yellow
approaching
green
Swooped
in.Roosts
on a blue.
"Never seen you here before,"
purple drawls, reinvents a
register
in
the
key
of magenta.
"Now let's see..."
"what we can
see," cerulean
mutters, meanders past
red.
One evening
a little yellow
approaching
green
Swooped
in.Roosts
on a blue.
"Never seen you here before,"
purple drawls, reinvents a
register
in
the
key
of magenta.
"Now let's see..."
"what we can
see," cerulean
mutters, meanders past
red.
I wanted you to have something waiting for you in case you checked.
We just had a wonderful tuck-in and are now in Paris, France.
We have a window on the Left Bank and a large bath.
We have hot chocolate croissants and two cafe au lait.
I would kiss you now but your mouth is full of chocolate croissant.
I am admiring the polaroids of us lounging in bed.
Here you are wearing my underwear on your head.
And here you are reading Men in the Off Hours naked.
Remember when I painted you nude in the Hotel Stratford?
You were so willing and lipstick appeared on an unlikely spot in the painting.
I've decided to write a poem about our time on the Left Bank and this is it.
Do you suppose it was the inspector in the mystery we just finished?
Paris is full of mysteries, just as you are full of mysteries...
I am full of L'Occitane lavender lotion slathered liberally over my body.
I am awaiting spontaneous enlightenment from my guru.
You are no cold potato, zipping up, I see you.
You are no dirty locomotive, you are a sunflower, Sunflower.
I wanted you to have something fabulous superterrific in case you checked.
And so I've written these lines for you, L'Amour, sweetheart.
Just as Stendhal said, 20 lines a day, genius or not.
Self Portrait
No lay off from this condensery.--Lorine Niedecker
Peach floor, pale yellow walls
art teacher sits patiently
waiting for end of hour.
Be here in mundane space
or fly away imaginary--I fly
away, smoke a Rothman or
Galoises on the Seine.
Sky's cloudy grey back in art room
pictures of van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso.
My self portrait in colored pencil, cartoonlike,
stares back.
Lips funny shaped, nose nonexistent
eyes electric blue, cheeks rosy--
she wears fuzzy fuschia sweater
hair pulled up in ponytail.
She is me at 29, compassionate
wanting to succeed, she is shy--
I mean I, I drew this image
I am the I of this portrait.
]]> I woke this morning morning's mistress
In gentle wonder spring addressed
Spring in glory, spring a-gallop—
O sing of spring and live and dance!
The trees move with us and the greening
Ever rolling hills come calling
High there, beyond beyond the earthy red—
Ecstasy! We swing out, we surrender
As a cloud's puff smooths out and over: light and free
We cannot grasp it. My heart and head try to hold it--
The hiding thriving mystery!
Sage verbage and cerebral art, pride, act, and pomp, here
Break! And the breath that emanates from spring then, infinitely
Lovelier and more vigorous, more airy than contained.
No doubt about it: sheer air we breathe the breath of
Spring, and orange-pink twinkles in the grass
Grow, shore themselves, and burst gold-vermillion.
|
Painting by Joan Mitchell
|
Uploaded on May 9, 2007
by Elif Sanem Karakoc
"Because she arrives,
vibrant,
over and over
again; we
are at the beginning
of a new history,
or rather a process
of becoming
in which several
histories
intersect with
one another.
As a subject for
history, woman
always occurs
simultaneously
in several places.
(In woman,
personal history
blends together
with the history
of all women,
as well as national
and world history.)"
--Helene Cixous, quoted in Bhanu Kapil's
The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers
]]>
Uploaded on August 23, 2007
by robynne faye
WORLD'S BLISS
Alice Notley
The men & women sang & played
they sleep by singing, what
shall I say of the most
poignant on earth the most glamorous
loneliest sought after people
those poets wholly beautiful
desolate aureate, death is a
powerful instinctive emotion--
but who would be released from
a silver skeleton? gems
& drinking cups--This
skull is Helen--who would not
be released from the
Book of Knowledge? Why
should a maiden lie on a moor
for seven nights & a day? And
he is a maiden, he is & she
on the grass the flower the spray
where they lie eating primroses
grown crazy with sorrow & all
the beauties of old--oh each poet's a
beautiful human girl who must die.
]]>