I'm Tired of the Seduction of Boys

[annani.livejournal.com]

I'm Tired of the Seduction of Boys
- J. Neil Garcia

I'm tired of the seduction of boys
touching crotches with brown careless hands,
the smiles thrown too easily,
the moist and lip-licking tongues.
On jeepneys they sidle up close,
tap your side with an errant finger, or footsy
under rheumaticky expressions of women
dogged by too much dust to care.
By the basketball courts
on streets forced into blindness by joy,
they sling creamywhite tank-tops
over shoulders, croon and preen like
fabled magnificent birds.
The gamy smell of armpits,
the shrill uncurling hairs.
Boys laid out to sweat
and be odorous in the sun:
of their tight and sour skins I'm cloyed beyond
redemption. I've tired of the concupiscent moments
of hearing the rush of blood
into my body's cavernous pockets:
of squeezing shut the dull, exclusive pain
of a throbbing, pig-headed erection.
I'm unmoved by boys
and their penises that fill my mouth
with a promise of red sunsets
bursting like bubblegum dreams, tasteful
as sweetmeats gone stale.
Perhaps it's time
to stop being much to swift to spot
in a crowd shuffling downcast and lonely.
Perhaps, it's my turn to do them a good turn,
to throw a smile and meekly touch the crotch,
flick out the dark assuming tongue,
and do the seducing
for a little, spare change.

(no subject)

[i-nevergiveup.livejournal.com]

The Pomegranate- (Eavan Boland)

The only legend I have ever loved is
the story of a daughter lost in hell.
And found and rescued there.
Love and blackmail are the gist of it.
Ceres and Persephone the names.
And the best thing about the legend is
I can enter it anywhere. And have.
As a child in exile in
A city of fogs and strange consonants,
I read it first and at first I was
as an exiled child in the crackling dusk of
the underworld, the stars blighted. Later
I walked out in a summer twilight
searching for my daughter at bed-time.
When she came running I was ready
to make any bargain to keep her.
I carried her back past whitebeams
and wasps and honey-scented buddleias.
But I was Ceres then and I knew
winter was in store for every leaf
on every tree on that road.
Was inescapable for each one we passed.
And for me.
It is winter
and the stars are hidden.
I climb the stairs and stand where I can see
my child asleep beside her teen magazines,
her can of Coke, her plate of uncut fruit.
The Pomegranate! How did I forget it?
She could have come home and been safe
and ended the story and all
our heart-broken searching but she reached
out a hand and plucked a pomegranate.
She put out her hand and pulled down
the French sound for apple and
the noise of stone and proof
that even in the place of death,
at the heart of legend, in the midst
of rocks full of unshed tears
ready to be diamonds by the time
the story was told, a child can be
hungry. I could warn her. There is still a chance.
The rain is cold. The road is flint-coloured.
The suburb has cars and cable television.
The veiled stars are above ground.
It is another world. But what else
can a mother give her daughter but such
beautiful rifts in time?
If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift.
The legend will be hers as well as mine.
She will enter it. As I have.
She will wake up. She will hold
the papery flushed skin in her hand.
And to her lips. I will say nothing.

Celebrating Naya

[chromaticity.livejournal.com]

Naya Valdellon
( Celebrating Naya )

(no subject)

[cheshirequeen.livejournal.com]

I just had lunch with the poet today. He's wonderful wonderful wonderful, and he read this poem of his at a reading at my university last night. Imagine him reading aloud that first full sentence--oh man, it's fantastic.

A Green Crab's Shell
Mark Doty

Not, exactly, green:
closer to bronze
preserved in kind brine,

something retrieved
from a Greco-Roman wreck,
patinated and oddly

muscular. We cannot
know what his fantastic
legs were like--

though evidence
suggests eight
complexly folded

scuttling works
of armament, crowned
by the foreclaws'

gesture of menace
and power. A gull's
gobbled the center,

leaving this chamber
--size of a demitasse--
open to reveal

a shocking, Giotto blue.
Though it smells
of seaweed and ruin,

this little traveling case
comes with such lavish lining!
Imagine breathing

surrounded by
the brilliant rinse
of summer's firmament.

What color is
the underside of skin?
Not so bad, to die,

if we could be opened
into this--
if the smallest chambers

of ourselves,
similarly,
revealed some sky.

Alone by Edgar Allan Poe

[ex-cugami590.livejournal.com]

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring —
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow — I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone —
And all I loved — I loved alone —
Then — in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life — was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still —
From the torrent, or the fountain —
From the red cliff of the mountain —
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold —
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by —
From the thunder and the storm —
And the cloud that took the form
When the rest of Heaven was blue
Of a demon in my view. —