For Bonfires - Edwin Morgan

[ann-septimus.livejournal.com]

For Bonfires

I.
The leaves are gathered, the trees are dying
for a time.
A gull cries through white smoke in the garden fires
that fill the heavy air.
All day heavy air
is burning, a moody dog
sniffs and circles the swish of the rake.
In streaks of ash, the gardener drifting
ghostly, beats his hands, a cloud
of breath to the red sun.

II.
An island in the city, happy demolition men
behind windowed hoardings - look at them
trailing drills through rubble dust, kicking rubble,
smoking leaning on a pick, putting the stub
over an ear and the hot yellow helmet over that,
whistling up the collapsing chimney, kicking the
ricochet, rattling the trail with
snakes of wire, slamming slabs
down, plaster, cornice, brick, brick
on broken brick and plaster dust,
sprawling with steaming cans and pieces
at noon, afternoon bare sweat shining
paths down chalky backs, coughing
in filtered sunshine, slithering, swearing,
joking, slowly stacking and building
their rubbish into a total bonfire.
Look at that Irishman, bending
in a beautiful arc to throw
the last black rafter to the top,
stands back, walks round it singing
as it crackles into flame - old doors,
old beams, boxes, window-frames,
a rag doll, sacks, flex, old newspapers,
burst shelves, a shoe, old dusters, rags of
wallpaper rosese. And they all stand round,
and cheer the tenement to smoke.

III.
In a galvanized bucket
the letters burn. They roar and twist
and the leaves curl back one by one.
They put out claws and scrape the iron
like a living thing,
but the scrabbling to be free soon subsides.
The black pages fuse
to a single whispering mass
threaded by dying tracks of gold.
Let them grow cold,
and when they’re dead
quickly draw breath.

~ Edwin Morgan

Clydegrad - Edwin Morgan

[ann-septimus.livejournal.com]

Clydegrad

It was so fine we lingered there for hours.
The long broad streets shone strongly after rain.
Sunset blinded the tremble of the crane
we watched from, dazed the heliport-towers.
The mile-high buildings flashed, flushed, greyed, went dark,
greyed, flushed, flashed, chameleons under flak
of cloud and sun. The last far thunder-sack
ripped and spilled its grumble. Ziggurat-stark,
a powerhouse reflected in the lead
of the old twilight river leapt alive
lit up at every window, and a boat
of students rowed past, slid from black to red
into the blaze. But where will they arrive
with all, boat, city, earth, like them, afloat?

~Edwin Morgan

Sara Jane Stoner - Lesbian Academic Love Poem

[natelyswhore.livejournal.com]

Lesbian Academic Love Poem

When I buy you perfume, my dearest,
it signifies a profound respect for
your argumentative abilities. When I buy
you lingerie, I mean to say there is something
I do not understand, let me dress it in this way.
When I smear your lipstick, I am subverting
the romance that my readings of you display.

Because, as chaired faculty, I know
I Love You died eight years ago.
I might as well say, "You Mean the World to Me,"
Or, "Thinking of You With Fondness."
I have composed anagrams
        ("meteor aunt melody who?" or, "definition shown: funk got shy")
but again and again they read like endings,
sad avowals to the state of amorous communiqué.

Let me just propose to you, for argument's sake,
        (I do, after all, wear perfume even when you're away)
that my problem with Love is that is doesn't signify
in anything but a series of contradictory analogies
that happen to turn me on.
So shall we start with a map, a common philosophy of dualities,
to transcend via nuance our butches and femmes --
no matter how convincing Sue-Ellen Case has been.
        (See attached: memorandum.)

Winter Field - Ellen Bryant Voigt

[zakhad.livejournal.com]

First time posting, long time member who always enjoyed and wished she had something to contribute. I hope the formatting works.


Winter Field, by Ellen Bryant Voigt

The winter field is not
the field of summer lost in snow: it is
another thing, a different thing.

"We shouted, we shook you," you tell me,
but there was no sound, no face, no fear, only
oblivion -- why shouldn't it be so?

After they'd pierced a vein and fished me up,
after they'd reeled me back they packed me under
blanket on top of blanket, I trembled so.

The summer field, sun-fed, mutable,
has its many tasks; the winter field
becomes its adjective.
For those hours
I was some other thing, and my body,
which you have long loved well,
did not love you.

Shakespeare must have been a relationship expert!

[the-blue-dahlia.livejournal.com]

SONNET 57
Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love that in your will,
Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.