Homosexuality

[22by7.livejournal.com]

So we are taking off our masks, are we, and keeping
our mouths shut? as if we'd been pierced by a glance!

The song of an old cow is not more full of judgment
than the vapors which escape one's soul when one is sick;

so I pull the shadows around me like a puff
and crinkle my eyes as if at the most exquisite moment

of a very long opera, and then we are off!
without reproach and without hope that our delicate feet

will touch the earth again, let alone "very soon."
It is the law of my own voice I shall investigate.

I start like ice, my finger to my ear, my ear
to my heart, that proud cur at the garbage can

in the rain. It's wonderful to admire oneself
with complete candor, tallying up the merits of each

of the latrines. 14th Street is drunken and credulous,
53 rd tries to tremble but is too at rest. The good

love a park and the inept a railway station,
and there are the divine ones who drag themselves up

and down the lengthening shadow of an Abyssinian head
in the dust, trailing their long elegant heels of hot air

crying to confuse the brave "It's a summer day,
and I want to be wanted more than anything else in the world."


- Frank O'Hara

(no subject)

[geosh.livejournal.com]

Bringing in the New Year
by James Tate

A colleague of mine, by the name of Harold Chance,
had a terrible accident at his own party on New Year's
Eve. He was carrying a large bowl of punch across his
living room when he slipped on a throw rug. He fell
backward, injuring his head, but then the bowl of punch
came down crashing into his face. Harold was unconscious
and bleeding profusely. His wife, Ashlie, had been flirting
with a neighbor in the kitchen, but when she heard the
commotion, she came running to his side, and promptly fainted.
An ambulance was called, and when it arrived, I volunteered
to go to the hospital with Harold, even though I secretly
detested him. Harold had large blades of crystal protruding
from his forehead, which, for a moment, I thought made him
look like Miss Liberty. One of the EMTs said he thought
he looked like a saint, but he couldn't remember
which one. Then I looked out the window and forgot about
Harold. We were going so fast nothing was familiar. There
were people on the streets, but they blurred into one another.
I couldn't tell if they were celebrating, or just lost souls.
"Is he going to live?" I asked one of the EMTs. "He may
have already ascended," he said. The drive seemed to take
forever. I saw the female EMT take a swig from a flask.
Then she smiled and offered it to me. It tasted like some
high-octane blood. I smiled back. Even Harold appeared to
be smiling. "Happy New Year," Carmen said to me. She had
a name tag on the tip of her breast. I think she expected me
to kiss her. "Look," I said, "it's as if he's wearing a
crown of ice." "It's a very common condition," she said.
"We see it all the time." "He's my first," I said. "Can
the doctors remove it?" I said. "Not even God can," she said.
I looked out the window. We were parked beside a river.
Fireworks lit up the sky.

Linda Pastan

[birdcages.livejournal.com]

WHY ARE YOUR POEMS SO DARK?

Isn't the moon dark too,
most of the time?

And doesn't the white page
seem unfinished

without the dark stain
of alphabets?

When God demanded light,
he didn't banish darkness.

Instead he invented
ebony and crows

and that small mole
on your left cheekbone.

Or did you mean to ask
"Why are you sad so often?"

Ask the moon.
Ask what it has witnessed.

(no subject)

[acreofbones.livejournal.com]

A Dream.
Gjertrud Schnackenberg.

With shadow ink, on paper that I know
Is shadow, I now make
An Arctic shadow world and ship to take
A last passage. The snow
Breaks up as though the shadow ship were there.
A man leaning against the rail

Watches the twilight North, a wail
Rises around me everywhere,
I realize
What I fear most is true,
That this is you.
And now I want to know, and my voice cries
Crying your name,

But when you turn to me, I find
Being alive is being left behind.
And being dead comes to the same.
Your pathway closes in the water

Among drifting ice continents.
I want to say you're not alone,
That I am here, to say I am your daughter,
But, instead, I stare the way you stare,

And marveling, I watch the face you wear,
Hardened into remote indifference,
Become my own.