(no subject)

[thewondergirl.livejournal.com]

Love

Because of you, in gardens of blossoming flowers I ache from the
perfumes of spring.
I have forgotten your face, I no longer remember your hands;
how did your lips feel on mine?
Because of you, I love the white statues drowsing in the parks,
the white statues that have neither voice nor sight.
I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice; I have forgotten
your eyes.
Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to my vague memory of
you. I live with pain that is like a wound; if you touch me, you will
do me irreparable harm.
Your caresses enfold me, like climbing vines on melancholy walls.
I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to glimpse you in every
window.
Because of you, the heady perfumes of summer pain me; because
of you, I again seek out the signs that precipitate desires: shooting
stars, falling objects.

Pablo Neruda

The Mother by Gwendolyn Brooks

[amieinstereo.livejournal.com]

Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed
children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,
and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?--
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.

Sylvia Chong

[jadedpoet84.livejournal.com]

Countenance



Yours is a face accustomed to
tension. I know you do not
glance in the mirror
at these moments, but
I can tell you what I see. Have you
ever watched a cat? Then
you would have had a cat
watch you—eyes alternately
full moons and crescent slits,
the marble of the iris glides
in expansive circles,
taking you in with wariness,
protected wonder.

You have a cat's attention,
but the grace of a hound—
you laugh, I know, but this too
is a compliment.
Entranced by gravity,
you hide your strength behind
this weary clumsiness,
haunches drooping from
constant tension. Your dog-
tired face greets me tonight, baring
no teeth, and sighs without
breath. This night promises
sleep, but no release.

Come, let me show you your true face.
Like all mystic rituals,
it requires the dark, the quiet, and
a mirror. (But since we are human,
we will need the semi-dark, the
semi-quiet.) Pushed back onto the
pillows, your eyes grow sharp
as you guess the meaning of my gestures:
sucking, biting, licking,
I draw away these old, animal skins
with my teeth and my lips.
Perhaps it is with a sadistic pleasure
that I watch your face release its toy—
hard ball of tension, balanced
behind your tongue and dented
with teeth marks—now,
you are vulnerable, your
man's eyes are looking into mine,
your man's body tossing beneath me.
The cat and the hound have left you behind.

Were I any more the witch,
I could end this ritual
with a sacrifice.

But I flatter
myself. I am more tooth-
fairy than witch, I recognize this
gift spread out on the pillowcase.
I accept you, savor you, and
return with a quarter's worth of
kisses. Love, look at me:
look at these eyes, their motions
and jerks hard to control. Look at
my mouth, slack, silently gasping and
keening. Look at my hands,
draped like shadows about
your cheeks. You
are beautiful. You are
beautiful.